I'm Song Li, I'm the founder and CEO of Frontage laboratories.
By training, I am an analytical chemist. I have a PhD in analytical chemistry but most of my
career has been in pharmaceutical product development.
So I started Frontage in 2001 in New Jersey with about a $100,000 investment,
so grew that business to
currently we have about 600 or more than 600 employees, all together about
700 employees in the US and in China.
We do not really specialize in one area. We focus on
product development - we don't do discovery but product development,
from pre-clinical to phase two, so the whole spectrum of service.
We do almost a one-stop shop.
I think what's really important is
your technique, scientific expertise, quality and also the fast
turnaround to deliver the high quality results.
Yes I believe it - right now I think
a lot of pharmaceutical companies are starting to contract out
and outsource their product development and even discovery projects,
so they reduce internal resources and head counts, so they will contract
more in the future.
Most challenges are really when a client
gives us the project - the timelines are sometimes really very
critical. So we cannot really work on our time schedule
we have to really meet our clients needs, so we do our best, really, to take care
of their project - deliver it on time.
I think mainly the cost.
I think the CROs usually have a more efficient operation
and also sometimes we can do projects for different clients who can save the
cost. We are more efficient. I think that's what will drive outsourcing
for the pharma and even small start-up companies.
Yes. I think that they
would change the from just like fee-for-service to partnership. I think
right now, I think more and more pharmaceutical companies are looking for
long-term partnership. It's not just like 'oh - you're the CRO we're like the
pharmaceutical company'. They need to work together as a team.
Usually they bring, even the CROs, bring part of their internal team
Like what we do for some of our clients, we really set up the lab for their
projects even we send people to their lab to take care of their projects.
We call it a partnership.
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