GSK’s Real Value In Outsourcing To China And India – Outsourced Pharma

There is nothing “virtual” about GSK’s Virtual Proof of Concept outsourcing program.

VPoC is as real as Shanghai and Hyderabad. As a drug discovery engine, it is as tangible as compounds progressing through the clinic and to late-stage development. According to Allen Oliff, senior vice president at GSK’s Alternative Discovery and Development, and founder and leader of VPoC, it is also the most cost-effective outsourcing on the globe.

Located with his team at GSK’s King of Prussia, PA, facilities, Oliff speaks quietly but with a determination for straightforward explanation regarding the reality in the world of outsourcing as he has experienced it.

“VPoC started in 2008 with six people overseeing two discovery programs, and we’ve grown to 25 managing 15 projects today,” says Oliff. “Nowadays, the name “virtual” to indicate we are outsourcing has become something of a misnomer. While maybe not to our level of whole-project outsourcing, externalization has become a standard for pharmaceutical research. For us, it is predominantly externalized to Asia.”

Oliff minces no words on the subject of outsourcing to Asia—specifically China and India—and deftly debunks theoreticals that get loosely repeated in the outsourcing industry. The foremost regard quality.

“Until the early 2000s, the quality of the work you could get at most Asian CROs was not up to the level of Western Europe and North America,” he says. “In the last decade or so the quality is absolutely as good there as it is any place else on the planet.”

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