Growth beyond crisis: How can governments help their biopharma sectors to thrive?

“The conversations that we're having, the level of collaboration we see across the industry, and the way that we're interacting with governments gives me a really positive view as we move forward,” says Martin Meeson, CEO of FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies. The challenge now, he says, is maintaining this momentum over the next five years. 

In this interview Meeson joins Longitude editor-in-chief, Sean Kearns, to discuss how collaboration between government and the biopharma industry has evolved over the course of the pandemic and what impact this is having on access to vital medications. 

Interview transcript:

Intro VO: 

This audio interview is part of Cytiva’s research into how government-biopharma collaboration is changing. 

It is produced by Longitude, a Financial Times company, in partnership with Cytiva.

Sean Kearns: 

In the wake of the greatest public health crisis in recent memory, the role of the pharma and biopharma industry in the lives of populations globally has taken on critical significance. 

It has fuelled new paths to public-private collaboration, rapidly accelerated innovation, and shone a light on opportunities for sector-wide transformation. 

So, how has collaboration between government and the biopharma industry evolved as a result of Covid-19? How can it be improved? And what impact is it having on access to vital medications? 

I’m Sean Kearns, editor-in-chief at Longitude, and joining me to discuss this is Martin Meeson, CEO of FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies. Martin, thanks for joining me. 

When we spoke last year, you explained that Covid-19 had increased the focus on strengthening pharma supply chains globally. Has that level of collaboration been matched among governments globally? 

Martin Meeson:

I think we're seeing some very positive moves from a government intention point of view. How that starts to translate into policy is something that I think remains to be seen. And I think as we continue to talk through several of the questions we've got here, one of the things is just to make sure that we keep the focus as we go forward. How do we keep the focus for two years, three years, four years, five years, six years, to be ready for when this happens again. 

Sean Kearns: 

Exactly. And we hear a lot about gains there were made during the pandemic, ways of working that were changed, innovation that was put in place. How difficult is it for governments to be able to adapt to some of those changes and implement it in policy as you’ve just said there? How do you go from intention to policy? 

Martin Meeson:

I think what we're seeing is a really good level of collaboration with the governments that we work with around the world. They are looking out to be able to work with industry to make sure that they can complement the things that can be done from a government and a regulatory point of view, and what needs to be done by the private sector, and how you bring those together in a practical way. And we're seeing constantly strong conversations with agencies like Alder on how we are ready to respond going forward, Vaccines Taskforce and other areas of the UK government as well. Just to give two examples of how we're seeing them really ask the questions that say, how do we collaborate to make sure that we're ready to respond as we go forward?

Sean Kearns: 

And when it comes to the industry itself, I think you spoke about a hivemind approach, how the pharma industry has been very collaborative, improving communications with agencies, for example. To what degree do you think that governments or policy makers are looking at that model and trying to learn and adapt from it? So, in other words, what can you teach those policy makers about how you’ve come together? 

Martin Meeson:

I think we, as a pharma industry, and I think the people within the governments where we operate in, they feel that sense of responsibility to make sure that we learn from the things that we've seen happen. And whilst we were responding to a difficult situation for the world, there was some very positive ways of working that came out of the way that we responded. And we're all feeling, I think, now a little bit of a responsibility for, well, how do you take that forward and apply that to an oncology treatment, or the treatment of a hereditary disease. Suddenly we have these ways of bringing these treatments to market, which responded to the pandemic, and absolute kudos to everyone who's been involved in that.

Sean Kearns: 

The other thing with the pandemic is it’s raised expectation in terms of discovery, but it’s also increased pressure as well. And I wonder, with great responsibility does come that pressure as well in terms of how the industry can come together to answer some of the questions or the problems that you’ve just posed there. And I wonder, do you think it’s ready to react or are we in one of those periods where we’re reflecting on some of those challenges? 

Martin Meeson:

I think some of the areas that my colleagues within the industry are focusing on is that, oh, well, but how do we perhaps take things a little bit more quickly through clinical trial? How do we work with the agencies to make sure that we do that in a safe and effective way? And that's the piece where I think there is some level of both reflection and movement. And I would be reassuring anyone who was listening, we're not all sat around just thinking about what to do, there is already action starting to happen to embed those learnings and build the resilience as we go forward.

Sean Kearns: 

And that acceleration that you’ve talked about, that obviously led to innovations, changes to the way your company worked — continuous manufacturing was one of the examples you gave previously. I wonder if you could give a flavour, a sense of other areas of innovation within your business that will help with that acceleration. 

Martin Meeson:

Yeah, so you mentioned continuous manufacturing is certainly one of them. There's also the knowledge that we're not quite sure which of the modalities we might need as we go forward. It's also important to make sure that we have ... And I think one of the good things about FUJIFILM Diosynth, is we have the ability to develop and manufacture in all of the modalities that we saw being used, whether it's gene therapy, whether it's an antibody, there was anything but ... We can operate in the fermentation space, and moving out now into cell therapies and mRNA and other modalities as well. One of the things I think that we have done to make sure that we're ready, not just to respond to a pandemic, to also our customers’ needs, is to make sure that we have that ability to develop and manufacture across the modalities.

And then you innovate within that space. For us, continuous manufacturing, increase titres from cell lines, making sure that you are getting as much of the product as you can, as you manufacture. Because good yields was one of the things that we really saw as we went through that response. You only have a certain amount of time, cells need growing. So being able to get strong yields from the work you're doing is part of innovation. It doesn't really sound like innovation because it doesn't sound very clever, but when you can get three, four, five times as much of the product that you need, that is a pretty good innovation when you are focused as we are in that development and manufacture space.

Sean Kearns: 

And you talked about yields there. One of the things that we’ve spoken about previously and Cytiva’s own research among the industry has found is this increase potentially in local manufacturing. So looking at the local manufacturing base and expecting it to increase over the next couple of years. Have you seen that shift take place? And if so, what are the risks and the opportunities that come with that?

Martin Meeson:

And you will see as you observe, both FUJIFILM Diosynth and other manufacturers, we are increasing the amount of capacity we have. I'm sure Cytiva sees this in the amount of supply they have for their equipment across the industry. So there is a general increase in capacity. I do not see at the moment a specific focus on one particular locality, which I think is to the benefit of the industry. We need to remain global as we look at these responses.

Sean Kearns: 

What concerns might there be around the supply chain, or any gains that you made in terms of looking at the supply chains during covid? What would be the risks to those supply chains going forward would you say? 

Martin Meeson:

I think one of the biggest risks of supply chain, is the industry has built quite a high degree of complexity into the equipment and the components that we use. And we saw that when you then place quite a quick increased demand on those items, it's quite hard for people to respond. Because instead of asking for more of one or 10 things, you're asking for more of 100 or 1,000 things.

So there is a little bit of simplicity breeds the ability to do things more simply. And I do think we just mustn't lose that as we go forward. And we must just keep that in the back of our minds as we do develop new products and new ways of working. We are constantly trying to build in more standardised and more simplistic ways of doing it. I think I spoke quite recently on the way that we're expanding. We're trying to shift the manufacturing paradigm a little bit by looking at the standard way of setting up a manufacturing facility. We are constantly repeating those different manufacturing facilities across the world, but actually they're looking very much like each other. They have very similar operating philosophies. They have very similar equipment. They have similar ways of working, ways of validating them and bringing them into operation.

Sean Kearns: 

And if we think about preparedness for what may come next, do you think we would see a different, improved policy response from governments, whether that’s in the US or the UK? Collectively have we learnt some hard lessons this time around? And are you confident they can be applied for whatever we may face next time? 

Martin Meeson:

The conversations that we're having, the level of collaboration we see across the industry, and the way that we're interacting with governments, it gives me a really positive view as we move forward. But it's how to maintain that positive view over a longer period of time, I think is going to be the, how do we keep this at the forefront of the conversation as we move over the next half a decade, is going to be the real challenge for us. These conversations, these discussions, they need to continue. We need to keep this at the forefront of people's minds and the discussions and the policy-makers' minds, to make sure that we are ready when and if this happens again.

Sean Kearns: 

And final question if I may Martin. You spoke earlier about different modalities being adaptable but also creating simplified and somewhat standardised approaches to your facilities as well. What’s that like as a leader — that challenge of being both adaptable, flexible but at the same time trying to simplify and be as intelligent as possible with your processes? 

Martin Meeson:

I think just like I spoke earlier, it's both exciting and a little bit terrifying at the same time, because you do have a responsibility. I will probably not be operating these facilities — it's going to be someone else. And I want someone to be able to look back and go, "What a great job they did setting this up for success." And that is really the responsibility that we all feel. We do have a legacy of knowledge, which we need to put into practice, which allows us to have extremely resilient ways of manufacturing and responding to both the needs of the therapeutic market and the vaccine market as we go forward.

We're all really excited, but a kind of nervous excitement to make sure that we get it right. But we're very, very focused. We've got the right people, the right teams focused on this. And the right level of passion and energy to make sure that we really get this embedded into the way that we set ourselves up to develop and manufacture as we go forward.

Sean Kearns: 

Thank you, Martin, I think passion, energy and nervous excitement is a good place to be. So thanks very much for your time. 

Martin Meeson:

Thanks, Sean, appreciate that.

Outro VO: 

This audio interview is part of Cytiva’s research into how government-biopharma collaboration is changing. 

It is produced by Longitude, a Financial Times company, in partnership with Cytiva.