1st Global Innovation Summit 2021: Special address by Mr. Andrew Plump

Thank you very much. Not neat, and thank you all for the invitation to be here. It's really a privilege. Thank you all for spending the time to listen, Dr. Gupta. I will check the box: I'm a listener, and I really appreciated the comments that came out of your session. I have 15 minutes to share a perspective, and I'll try to make up some time. I'll use a sports analogy about football: running to where the ball is going to be, not where it is currently. So let me provide a perspective on where we are in the biopharmaceutical industry and talk about innovation. I'm speaking to a group predominantly in India, but I want to emphasize the importance of a global mindset. I was reading the Walter Isaacson biography on Jennifer Doudna. At one point, Isaacson talks about Feng Zhang, one of Doudna's competitors at the Broad Institute. Feng Zhang was at Harvard at the same time as Mark Zuckerberg. It struck the idea: which will leave a greater legacy this century — tech or healthcare? Not that we need to choose, but it made me think: are we the tech century or the healthcare century? If you think in days, weeks, and months, it's tech — we don't move in healthcare that quickly. But if you dial up and think in years and decades, when historians look back at the 21st century, they will define this as the golden era of healthcare. What we can do today is absolutely amazing. We can unravel the complexity of nature. Nature follows very few rules, but through our collective efforts globally and our understanding of biology, we're turning around the course of human disease. Look at regulatory approvals over the last 10 years — it's remarkable. And the quality is high. The kinds of medicines being approved are exciting modalities for diseases that had no treatments. Also, there needs to be a profit motivation to drive investors. Many of us don't get up in the morning for profits; we have a mission — physicians think of patients, scientists love the art and competitiveness of discovery. But without entrepreneurial thinking and investment, we don't innovate. In the past five years, we've seen record investments in the early space. In 2020, $250 billion was raised in new biotech financing, and 2021 will significantly eclipse that. So we're living in a really interesting era, coming out of the worst healthcare crisis ever. The COVID crisis was unbelievable and sad because we could have predicted it and been better prepared. But we rose to the challenge. Necessity is the mother of invention. We applied every tool at our disposal. Within hours and days, we sequenced the virus; within weeks and months, we understood how it usurps cells; within weeks and months, we had antibody therapies and vaccines. We came together globally. I've been involved in a group called COVID R&D, where R&D heads worked together to find solutions for managing business during a pandemic, interfacing with regulatory agencies, and running trials remotely. We found new ways of working — digital tools implemented in ways never before. Healthcare and tech follow different life cycles, but we were forced to implement technologies and found they are doable. This gives an opportunity to change the most difficult and expensive part of what we do: testing medicines in patients. Now let me step back and talk about this golden era. Two phenomena have changed drug discovery. First, human genetics. When the human genome was sequenced 20 years ago, there was hoopla, then nothing changed. But fast forward 20 years, nobody could have predicted where we'd be. We can sequence a genome at scale, understand the molecular basis of most rare diseases and many common diseases, understand somatic mutations in cancer, create predictive models for protein structure. Human genetics is involved in everything we do in drug discovery. But basic biology is still necessary — academic scientists dive into genetic observations to understand basic mechanisms. We still can't go from genetic mutation to understanding disease without that. That takes us to the third driver: the vast array of modalities. We can make small molecules that do almost everything, recombinant biologics, and advanced living technologies like cell and gene therapies. We've made huge investments in cell and gene therapy because they will transform human health over the next 10 years. Cell therapy is not reliant on a single target; introducing a living cell takes advantage of hundreds of pathways. We partner because we don't understand it all, but we built key enablers around cell process. So we are in the golden era, skyrocketing, making differences for patients. But healthcare has to be driven on a global scale. I work for a Japanese-headquartered company; we decided we can't think purely nationally. The only way to scale massive R&D investments is to think globally. Every medicine we develop must be applicable to patients everywhere. We must harmonize — different policies across ecosystems make it impossible to innovate rapidly. We have to embrace data and digital with common standards. Let me give an analogy. As India thinks about becoming more relevant globally, I encourage you to study China. What China has done in healthcare over the last five years is extraordinary. In 2016, five drugs approved in China; in 2017, leveraging a 2015 policy, 39 drugs from multinational companies. China has completely opened up and is favoring innovation. Takeda has the most breakthrough designated products in China with four, enabling discussions with regulators. Let me end by offering my perspective on how India can continue to grow. I am immensely impressed with the passion in India. The science is as great as anywhere. I've been involved with the US-India Chamber of Commerce for over a decade, leading an annual bio summit. Let me give three pieces of advice. First, think globally — do everything to elevate India in a global context. The more you look purely internally, the harder it is for India to become relevant. Second, enable innovation from beyond India — look to China. You have an obligation to patients across India; the best way to meet their needs is to bring more innovation into India. Third, as you think about elevating innovation, think about what you're trying to accomplish. If it's commoditized like generics or biosimilars, that's easier. True innovation requires looking to innovation centers like Boston, San Francisco, London. It's not just academic-industry ties or infrastructure; an entrepreneurial spirit needs to be enabled. It takes a long time. So consider whether you're building commodity or true scientific innovation — they are quite different. With that, I really appreciate your listening. I hope this perspective is helpful, and I hope you enjoy my good friend Werner Lantellier, who is up next. Thank you very much.