Opening Address by Andrew Plump, President of R&D, Takeda

Thank you very much, Karun, and thank you very much for the kind words. It's a privilege and an honor to be with all of you today. And I could say something I've never said at this summit before, which is good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, because this year this is a global summit and it's open not just to the hundreds that typically join and gather in Boston, but literally to thousands across the world. It's truly a representation of the silver lining that we have with COVID. We have a chance to open up and to engage with so many more of you. We used to call ourselves the JP Morgan of the East, and now I guess we're the JP Morgan conference of the world. But then I started thinking, people don't really like the JP Morgan conference, so we'll have to think of a new name at some point. With that said, a few introductory comments. I've had the great privilege as Karun mentioned to work with Karun and with an incredible group of committed colleagues on the board of the USA India Chamber of Commerce for over a decade, and I've had the distinct privilege to be able to serve as the master of ceremonies for the past half decade. It's just been one of the highlights of my year every year, and this one is no exception. So let me offer a few introductory comments. If I can have the first slide please up on the screen. So if we can skip to the next slide. It's we're in 2020, and if we look back over the last decade, it's just remarkable what we've accomplished. Just one illustrative way of demonstrating that is just the number of new medicines that are making their way today through patients. And of course we look back just over the past few years a record number of approvals at FDA. But it's not just the number; in fact, we're not in a numbers game, we're in a game of quality when we think about patients. But when you look at the quality of the medicines that are coming forward, it makes you scratch your head and wonder: are we reading science fiction or are we actually looking at real science? And the answer is it's real science. We're seeing an explosion of our understanding of human disease, and we're seeing an explosion of modalities: cell and gene therapies that offer transformative and even curative potential to patients. Next slide. It's really if we can move to the next slide please. We've started this theme over the course of the last couple of years at the USA India Chamber of Commerce: a theme of from N to one to N of a billion. From N to one to N of a billion. We can treat diseases where there are only one patient. We've seen actually work coming out of Tim U's lab, and we'll see a video today from Tim U that speaks to our ability to make a medicine for one patient. But we've got on the other end of the spectrum the billions of underserved individuals across the world that we also have to be thinking about. And in this forum we double click and zoom in on one of the most innovative, exciting, and important regions of the world, and also historically one of the most underserved. But things are changing. India is growing. India is now the fifth largest economy. At the beginning of this decade, India took 90 million of its 1 billion plus people and took them out of poverty. In the last few years, President Modi introduced a plan called Modi Care that offered healthcare to over half a billion people. And we started to see innovation on the clinical trial front. If you go back a decade ago, the number of global clinical trials that were run in India were little over a dozen. Today we have close to 200. It's not where it needs to be, but it's amazing progress that we're seeing in this wonderful country which we have immense commitment to. Next slide please. But we hit a stumbling block, and Karun mentioned it, and we'll talk about this extensively throughout the day: the pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, which as of Monday has affected 25 million diagnosed individuals across the world and close to a million deaths. This is a real challenge. Next slide please. But we've risen to the challenge collectively as an industry, as an ecosystem, working together, working collaboratively. We've gone at warp speed. We've worked together in ways and at speeds that I don't think any of us could have imagined. We've come together and truly out of good will we've stepped up to do what we need to do, and that's to solve this problem. Groups like the COVID R&D Alliance, which is a group of R&D leaders who've come together to enable work across the ecosystem. In the U.S. we have activity at the NIH, in the UK we have the Recovery Trial. Time and time again we're seeing this industry elevate itself and show itself what it can do. It's really been a remarkable year. And if you look at the speed and pace of even the vaccine development, we scratch our heads again and just wonder, you know, how do we do this? And I know that we'll hear more about this in the panel that is to follow. And if we go to the next slide please, it's been truly a global effort. I've been amazed at what's happened in China and how rapidly China has grabbed hold, implemented public health measures, and essentially brought back the life in China essentially to the day-to-day where it was before. Really remarkable. Next slide. And I'll just end on a note, a somber note, to remind us that we still have a lot to do. If you look at India right now, India is really battling this pandemic like no other country. India is a country with the third most infections, but the rate of new infections is growing. It took six months for India to see its first million infections, it took another month for the next million, and then it took two weeks for the third million. This isn't a trend that is a positive trend. There's a lot that we have to do to step up to make sure that we not only introduce the right public health measures in India, but ensure that whatever medicine is developed globally is provided and has access to patients in India. So with that said, I'll end these comments. I think we have an incredible day ahead. It's really a truly remarkable group of people that you will be listening into and having a chance to interact with.