Charter for the Statisticians in Small Biotechs

Section 1. Background 

With the rapid growth of biotech industry in the last half century, especially the recent successes in immuno-oncology, cell and gene therapy, and mRNA technology, the biotech world has now reached an inflection point with hundreds of emerging  small biotech evolving into clinical development stage and started to employ a growing number of statisticians.  While most of our biostatistician community is still employed by the big pharma, we are seeing an increasing number of statisticians taking the leap into the small biotech world.  This trend presents a unique challenge and opportunity for ASA BIOP as well.  The current ASA BIOP committees and programs are largely formed and served by statisticians from big pharma.  The topics discussed in the ASA BIOP events rarely covers the specific challenges and topics that small biotech statisticians may face, which makes it hard for statisticians in small biotech to engage.  To better serve our community and to stay abreast of the trend of small biotech, we hereby propose to form a sub-committee in ASA BIOP section to focus on the specific opportunities and challenges for statisticians working in small biotech companies. 

Section 2. Objectives and Deliverables

1.     To identify and discuss challenges/opportunities that are unique to statisticians in small biotech companies

2.     To come up with a list of recommended solutions/ideas to these challenges/opportunities

3.     To create a community for statisticians in small biotech world to share ideas/resources and to support each other.