Global Pharma and Biotech Summit 2024: Innovation Under Pressure

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As new innovations in medicine advance significantly, the world has seen increases in life expectancy and an aging global population. But as these innovations continue to progress, how can the pharma industry and its stakeholders properly collaborate moving forward?

At the Financial Times’ Global Pharma and Biotech Summit 2024, Christophe Weber, president and CEO, Takeda, sat down with Sarah Neville, global health editor, Financial Times, to discuss the high number of medical breakthroughs that the world is currently seeing and how the pharmaceutical industry handles the pressure that comes with it.

“It’s clear that we’re under significant pressure,” Weber began. “I think we should allocate enough financing as a result of the increased life expectancy. There is tremendous pressure, and we see that in many of our systems now, not only to reimburse pharmaceutical medicines, but also to find the correct number of nurses and doctors, and to finance hospitals. So, we should advocate for sustainable financing.

“It’s very important to advocate for it and to be able to improve health and life expectancy. For a company such as Takeda, we are squarely focused on innovative medicines, so our goal is to deliver life transforming medicines. We don’t cover many diseases, but in some diseases, such as through genome neuroscience, our goal is to deliver innovative medicines against current standard-of-care.”

The next topic of conversation was areas that sustainable financing could come from and the role of government in financing healthcare, particularly whether the government should play a major role in funding or whether there will be other sources of funding.

“A number of countries have different healthcare systems, so some of them are relying entirely on public funding,” said Weber. “You will find a system like that in many European countries. Other countries, such as the United States, rely on the mixed model of public funding and private funding. So, I think there will be different responses, but when COVID happened, it highlighted those issues. But it takes time to increase investments in publicly funded systems.

“You need to raise taxes, and nobody likes to do that. Inflation has also been significant. Not only did you have to offset some significant underfunding, but there has been a significant inflation post-COVID that has increased the pressure on healthcare systems. So, I think we need to make sure that everybody understands that the increase in life expectancy and healthy lifestyles does require funding. It’s not only about medicine, but also about systems that can support us.”

Neville then asked Weber what the opportunity costs would be for a company such as Takeda as a result of mismatches between resources and demand and whether there were innovations that the company was having challenges with in development due to market issues.

“This is how we prioritize our pipeline,” said Weber. “Our company invests approximately $6 billion a year in R&D and the science is so rich that we need to select which molecule we progress further. We rely on multiple factors for that. For example, we are never alone, as there are always some standard-of-care treatments in development. Some diseases are under more pressure than others, so it’s never one factor that would determine whether we stop or if we progress further on a program.”

Closing out the discussion, the duo turned to the topic of artificial intelligence (AI). Neville asked Weber how AI is changing the way that Takeda conducts business, given the belief that it will eventually speed up the drug development process.

“I think it’s already making a difference,” said Weber. “It’s not only AI, it’s digital programs, it’s the data, and it’s also technology. With AI, it’s a convergence of technology, which is transforming the way we design molecules. For example, we are using AI and technology in the way we are designing clinical trials, which would be more accepted by patients. As a result, we will be able to recruit patients for the trials much faster.”