How to Avoid Being Outsourced

At In the Pipeline, Derek Lowe makes a good point about the current state of outsourcing large-scale chemical production work to today's cheaper economies, like China and India:  it's not going to go away and medicinal chemists need to start expanding their idea of what it means to be a good drug discoverer. Generating ideas, doing harder chemistry, and offering top-notch communication and collaboration skills are part of it, he says. GSK and other big pharma might take note, as an article in Nature today describes the attempts of behemoth drug makers to downsize research departments to smaller, biotech-like groups and outsource R&D to CROs. "Regardless of which model is taken, it is clear that the future will hold more lay-offs," says the article.