While biotechs and contract research organizations each have their advantages, that doesn’t mean both options work for everyone. Two experts discuss the differing environments and how to pick between them.
When it comes to work environments, biotechs and contract research organizations are far from interchangeable. As Ali Pashazadeh told BioSpace, they’re very different beasts.
The founder and CEO of Treehill Partners, a global healthcare strategic and transaction advisory firm that works with both types of organizations, noted that how different depends in part on company size. For example, Pashazadeh said, at a large global contract research organization (CRO), employees don’t make principal decisions on which studies businesses run, how they run them or which indication they’re for. They provide input into the studies.
But, Pashazadeh said, “When you’re sitting within a biotech, you’re the one driving the bus. You’re the one making the decisions. And if you’re in a small biotech, you are trying to do as much as you can with as little money as possible just given where the market is, and your future very much is dependent on whether that biotech succeeds or fails.”
Advantages of CROs: variety, stability, opportunity
Egle Pavyde is vice president of business development at APICES, a European CRO that supports clinical development programs across biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device sectors. One thing she enjoys most about working at a contract research organization, she told BioSpace in a written response, is that every few weeks, she can step into a completely different scientific story.
“One day you’re discussing an oncology first-in-human trial, the next it’s a rare disease gene therapy or a metabolic disorder,” Pavyde said. “You learn incredibly fast because you’re constantly exposed to different technologies, therapeutic areas, and companies.”
Another advantage she highlighted is the stability that comes from not depending on a single pipeline.
“If one biotech has disappointing data, it’s difficult for them,” Pavyde said. “A CRO, on the other hand, supports hundreds of programs, so you’re not living or dying by one clinical readout.”
From a career perspective, Pavyde said CROs offer broad opportunities given employees work across an entire ecosystem, meaning exposure to science, operations, business development, strategy and regulatory affairs.
Pashazadeh shared a similar observation, noting that employees can move through roles in a big CRO.
Advantages of biotechs: deeper connection, greater influence
As to the advantages biotechs offer, Pavyde said they include giving people the chance to deeply invest in one mission.
“You’re not just helping develop a therapy—you’re helping build a company around it,” Pavyde said. “When positive clinical data arrive or a drug is approved, you feel that you’ve been part of the journey from the beginning.
Biotech employees also tend to have greater influence than CRO personnel over strategic decisions because they’re part of a smaller team, Pavyde noted.
“If you enjoy building something from the ground up and wearing many hats, biotech can be incredibly rewarding,” she said.
CRO vs. biotech: making the call
If someone is trying to decide between working at a contract research organization or biotech, Pavyde usually asks them one simple question: Do you enjoy variety, or do you enjoy depth?
“If you’re energized by solving new problems every month, meeting different innovators, and seeing how dozens of development programs work, a CRO is probably the better fit,” she said. “If, instead, you want to dedicate years to a single molecule or platform and celebrate every milestone as if it were your own, biotech is likely where you’ll thrive.”
Pavyde added, “Neither path is better. They’re simply different ways of contributing to the same goal: bringing better medicines to patients.”
Pashazadeh advised that people who are well suited for biotechs should like high-intensity settings where they work on a small team, budgets drive many decisions and they must fight for survival essentially from day one. That type of person is difficult to find, Pashazadeh noted.
“I think the other thing that we find in this market is if you are a flowery person who says all the right things but doesn’t know how to roll their sleeves up, you get found out in this market very quickly because there isn’t enough money for you to hide,” he said.
Ultimately, someone may start at a CRO and switch to a biotech or vice versa. One of Pashazadeh’s friends made that kind of move. After working at a large pharma, they went to a CRO.
“They really enjoyed their time there, but they said, ‘Look, I’m providing input into someone else’s journey. I just want to be more hands-on, and I want to be the one making decisions,’” Pashazadeh said, adding that their friend left the CRO to join a biotech.
While it’s relatively unusual for someone to move back and forth between biotechs and contract research organizations, Pashazadeh said, he can see his friend potentially returning to a CRO someday.
“I don’t think he’d have any hesitation in going back,” he said.
