Takeda Pharmaceuticals celebrated its 240th founding anniversary this past June, marking a significant milestone in its goal of bringing better health and a brighter future to people worldwide.
The company, founded by Chobei Takeda in 1781 in Osaka, Japan, maintains a presence in more than 80 countries with 36 manufacturing plants and three research laboratories and has a prominent appearance in treating therapeutic areas, such as oncology, rare diseases, neuroscience, and gastroenterology.
The company became one of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies globally after the acquisition of Shire in 2019.
Takeda's has a vast presence in treating patients globally and has seen explosive growth from its emerging markets and the Asia-Pacific region in recent years. Takeda APAC Senior Vice President (SVP) Thomas Willemsen, who has served for two years at his current position, has contributed to such corporate growth in the region.
Willemsen believes there is still much the company can do in the APAC region and is working out concrete measures to improve the company's first-in-class access to APAC patients while renewing the company's corporate culture.
In a recent interview with Korea Biomedical Review, Willemsen explained Takeda's short- and long-term measures in the APAC region.
Question: Can you please briefly introduce Takeda Pharmaceuticals APAC, including its special and strong features?
Answer: Takeda's Growth and Emerging Markets (GEM) has the ambition to reach about $9 billion in revenue by 2030, making it the fastest-growing region in Takeda.
The greatest number of people live in the emerging markets, and many of their economies are growing into developing markets, providing more access for patients.
Our company plans to launch 100 products over the next five years in the 10 markets of our Asia-Pacific footprint while applying two distinctively different strategies to the region between developed markets like Korea vs. developing markets like most Southeast Asian countries.
Q: It's been over two years that you took this position as SVP of Takeda APAC. What are the strategic priorities you are focusing on after taking office, and what have you achieved so far?
A: As I look back on what I have achieved so far, unfortunately, most of that time was affected by Covid-19.
However, I did have eight or nine months before the Covid-19 pandemic started. I used a significant amount of my time to travel through all the markets, understand business challenges, and meet people and stakeholders in the region.
This was very good for me as my experience in Taiwan and China has taught me that, in the end, it's all about people.
That's why it's so important to understand the needs of the people, how we develop them, and how we bring them to the right capabilities to execute our strategy.
Also, during my first year, I heavily invested in bringing forward the integration of Shire and Takeda into one Takeda organization.
This is Takeda's big story, as our focus is on specialty care and transforming all our local offshoots into specialty care powerhouses.
That was an essential step as we had to develop the skills and make it clear where we wanted to focus on resource allocation.
Q: Besides the Shire-Takeda merger, did you start any new internal projects for employees?
A: I would say it's in the same context as the company's general direction is to focus on specialty care.
In this vein, divestment was one way of allocating resources to the right area and having the right strategy for the right markets based on specific archetypes.
For example, Korea is what we would call a core market. The country is the most significant contributor to APAC revenue, and it is a crucial driver for our innovation.
In the core markets, we focus on bringing our innovative pipeline to the market and building on the growth of our 14 global brands, all in specialty disease categories.
Besides the current portfolio, the company has plans for future drug development in two waves -- Wave 1 and Wave 2.
Our Wave 1 consists of 12 new molecular entities that are either first-in-class or best-in-class that have the potential to evolve into 15 launches until the financial year 2024.
When I say launch, I am talking about the initial launch in the United States and Europe. I believe it will take another year or two for launch in Korea as we must navigate the regulatory and reimbursement gap issues.
In terms of products, there's an up-and-coming antiviral agent to treat refractory and resistant cytomegalovirus.
Regarding oncology, we make substantial investments in the sector, and we have expanded this into cell therapy and gene therapy like many other companies.
We are investing heavily in off-the-shelf chimeric antigen receptor natural killer (CAR-NK) cell therapy, which is a little different from the top gene therapy products currently tailored to each individual and, therefore, is incredibly expensive.
For Korea, an absolute key market for Takeda, there are some diseases, such as a treatment for lung cancer, which we are preparing to introduce within the next couple of years.
The company is also working to bring in new treatments for rare bone marrow cancer and narcolepsy.
In Southeast Asia, our strategy is more focused on how to provide people with access to treatments. This is because most patients in these countries may have to pay for treatment out of their pocket due to the limited application of the reimbursement system.
We also know that dengue disease is prevalent in many countries, and we are currently planning to launch a dengue vaccine candidate by next year. We look forward to having this opportunity to help relieve the burden of dengue fever in this region.
Q: We imagine such works may not have been easy to handle with the ongoing Covid-19 epidemic. How has the epidemic changed Takeda’s operation of its business, and how is the company overcoming it?
A: On Covid-19, this is not something specific to Takeda, and we all must deal with the limitations.
For us, the biggest priority is the safety of our employees and customers. We have made sure that, whenever there's an increased risk, we limit customer engagement to the minimum or avoid it and make it an online experience rather than a face-to-face experience.
We had to be very agile as the situation kept changing, and we needed to adapt to the changing environment.
So, while Covid-19 has been a challenge, it has also been a driver of improving and becoming more agile as an organization to meet the needs of patients and customers.
Q: What about clinical trials?
A: While the Covid-19 has had a minor impact regarding clinical trials in APAC, there wasn't a massive number of patients enrolled in these trials. The effect was more extensive in terms of the trials conducted in the U.S. and Europe.
This impacted our timelines because it's tough to catch up when we get delayed by one or two quarters due to difficulties recruiting patients.
Our advantage over other companies is our strong focus on rare genetic and specialty care products.
This is because companies with large-volume trials in primary care or standard oncology treatments may have been affected more by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Therefore, the impact has been limited, but I also don't want to sugarcoat it. Like all the other companies, the Covid-19 outbreak may slow down some of the clinical trials.
Also, I want to point out that I hope to see more clinical trial participation in APAC as we advance. It's something that I work on and that I feel strongly about in Korea, Taiwan, and Australia, and we are working on getting on the radar.
We have a strong focus on the U.S., Europe, Japan, and China. Still, we need to make a case for how important it is to have significant clinical trials in these innovation markets in APAC.
Q: As you mentioned, you have different strategies for different countries in the APAC region. How do you get around with different regulatory settings in all countries?
A: If we focus on Korea, Taiwan, and Australia, we have a very sophisticated regulatory and reimbursement environment there. In the regulatory environment, it's good because all these markets comply with CHMP and ICH standards.
That makes it very easy for us to file for drug approval early.
We have also seen the Korean authorities recognize more regulatory pathways, such as accelerated approval for candidates that receive orphan drug or breakthrough designation. This allows us to submit applications without showing data, such as economic assessments.
Concerning reimbursement, we see good opportunities in rare diseases and oncology settings. I think it's an evolving environment as Korea is very open and mindful of its prices' impact on the overall global situation.
Takeda believes that we can convince the payer of the value behind our innovative treatments and the enhanced outcomes they may bring to patients with data-driven, value-based evidence.
While Korea is a very competitive market and the Korean government manages the budget with a sophisticated single-payer system, we are confident that the government will eventually support us and grant access when we have the correct data and the right impact on patients.
However, even if we have a reimbursement commitment from the payer, it may still take up to a year for the patients to access the treatment.
In some situations, we provide bridging market access schemes that help patients when the drug does not receive reimbursement to gain access and reduce the price for them to bridge between the formal approval and actual implementation of reimbursement.
That's something that we are very willing to invest into accelerating access because, without access, innovation has no value.
So, we want to make sure that our innovation can reach the patients as soon as possible.
Q: Do you have any suggestions concerning room for improvement in the APAC region?
A: The biggest room for improvement is obviously on the more developing or emerging Asian markets.
The biggest market in terms of population is Indonesia, which has a population of 260 million people.
However, access to medicines in the country is still relatively limited. We believe that healthcare shouldn't be available only to affluent people.
Takeda believes that universal healthcare is essentially one of the most fundamental rights that society should provide. In terms of that, there's still some way to go for countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and even Malaysia or Singapore, where many medicines are still paid out of pocket.
When it comes to Korea, it's more about hoping that the speed of change will continue. Korea needs to look at reference markets like the U.S. or Europe regarding regulatory acceleration pathways, especially orphan drugs or breakthrough designations.
Ultimately, we all have the same ambition to help patients access the medicines they need faster.
Of course, we also understand that there are no finite resources, especially with the economic impact that we now expect to see in the next two years due to the global pandemic.
We hope this will not influence the regulators' and authorities' decisions to delay access because of budget constraints. Ultimately, we have the same burden with the aging population in Europe and America as we have in Asia.
As such, it's so vital that we continuously modernize the system and involves deprioritizing products where you have lower prices generics or over the counter as an option.
Q: Moving back to Takeda's corporate philosophy of Takeda-ism, we understand the company has undergone significant changes, including the acquisition of Shire. As the organization evolves, what is the focus of the newly introduced 2021 Takeda's corporate philosophy?
A: It's essential that, first, we still retain our roots in our 240 years of history.
We see 2021 as an inflection year, meaning that we are turning to a growth direction as our global brands and new molecular entities are growing out of our Wave 1 R&D pipeline.
We deliver on our commitments as a global biopharmaceutical company with a much broader reach based on our values. Therefore, we need to ensure that our corporate philosophy evolves with us.
The principles within our corporate philosophy reinforce how we work and have transformed into the deeply ingrained values that guide what and how we do, creating lasting value for society.
Many companies have big vision statements. This is something we feel essential guide as we move into the next phase of our growth.
The biggest differentiator for us is looking at the three big Ps – Patients, People, and Planet.
It's exciting to work for a company with a long-term commitment and a corporate philosophy that embeds patients, people, and planet imperatives.
Q: Let’s talk a little more about the patient category in the 3Ps. Many multinational pharmaceuticals say that they put patients first and patient-centricity as the core of their values. Then how does Takeda's patient-centricity differ from other companies? What can you say that makes Takeda special?
A: All pharmaceutical companies, by default, should be patient centric. This is what we are here for.
The top priority is still bringing innovation to patients and ensuring that we invest in the right innovation.
In markets where the infrastructure is still poor, we try to enroll more and more patients into what we call patient assistance programs (PAPs).
These PAPs are very important to give access to patients who will not afford treatments, so it's a means-based assessment.
And that makes us a bit more patient-focused in markets where many pharmaceutical companies probably don't spend much time because the system is still underdeveloped.
We also have patient support programs (PSPs) that provide services to patients currently receiving treatment.
We currently have around 2,000 patients suffering from rare and complex diseases enrolled in more than 50 programs across APAC. The program helps patients in various ways, such as individual treatment scheduling and offering home treatment.
I believe that these programs make us a little more especially focused on patients.
Q: What are Takeda APAC's plans to move forward?
A: The company will be a very different company in about 10 or 20 years from now, and it is exciting to be part of that development.
I am very hopeful and excited about the future that we have ahead of us based on the potential of our pipeline but also based on the possibility of our people and their skills and their ambition to meet patients' needs, and that APAC will play a vital role in this.
But it's also about how we operate, being agile, being digitally-savvy and having, above all, a firm commitment to our people, and creating a trusting environment where people can thrive and enjoy working.
Because at the end of the day we work for a living, we should also not forget to live and enjoy what we do and have a good balance between work and life.
Things are changing dramatically through Covid-19. People become more mindful of spending time with family and balancing life's challenges, not just focusing on work.
This is especially the case in Korea or Japan, where you have strong work ethic cultures. So, this will change how people operate, and it's exciting to be part of that journey.
I, for one, really hope that I will be able to see strong growth for our business and people and that a lot more patients have access to our treatments and vaccines.
If I can be just a little part of that, I think I have done my job well.