Today's clinical trial costs can cost biopharma companies upwards of $100mn before they even begin to consider additional investment in the marketing and distribution mechanisms that will deliver new life enhancing therapies to patients. For those major drug companies that spent the last decade building a robust pipeline of early stage compounds and indications, these sky-high development costs mean they have a wide portfolio of potential assets without the resources to get them through trial phase. The result? Pharmaceutical businesses with strong R&D pipelines are losing billions each year in potential revenue while promising new therapies sit dormant, waiting for their patents to expire. In this article, Ben van der Schaaf at Arthur D. Little, gives a five-step guide to explore possible funding partnerships for lower-priority drug trials - a new model for big pharma.