IPHA announces appointment of new President

Biogen’s Michael O’Connell named as new IPHA President

Michael O’Connell, Country Director for Biogen, has been named President of the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association (IPHA), the representative body for the research-based biopharmaceutical industry. Takeda’s Shane Ryan becomes Vice-President. Mr O’Connell takes over the role vacated by Pfizer’s Paul Reid after his two-year term. IPHA’s Board confirmed the appointments which take effect immediately. The industry believes it can have a shaping role on the health and enterprise landscape in Ireland through the application of science in patients’ lives and the economic upside of jobs, investments and exports linked to innovation in medicines.

Mr O’Connell pledged to focus his presidency on achieving a better environment for access, competitiveness and innovation. “This is an exciting time for the biopharmaceutical industry, in Ireland and globally. The pandemic has demonstrated the dividend of science, with protection through vaccines helping social and economic life to resume. In areas like access, competitiveness and innovation, we have new opportunities for progress. It is our role at IPHA to ensure that, by working with others, the environment is right to maximise the return on these opportunities for our society and the economy. “In access, a better funding environment and a new Framework Agreement for the Supply and Pricing of Medicines is improving Ireland’s capacity to deliver the latest treatments to patients. Next year, IPHA member companies expect to launch 30 new medicines, potentially treating more than 7,000 patients. The estimated cost of these medicines next year is ¤35 million. We will shortly bring forward proposals for a fitter and faster reimbursement process which, alongside sustained funding for new medicines, should narrow the gap between the completion of health technology assessments and the availability of new medicines for patients. “Our industry, across commercial and manufacturing operations, is distributed regionally, generating employment, tax revenues and exports. Our ability to keep the production, research and commercial investments we have, and to attract new ones in biologics and next-generation therapies, will depend on how well we can compete in a volatile global trading environment. We must maintain diverse global supply chains and avoid blunt-instrument

Biogen’s Michael O’Connell named as new IPHA President

policies like ‘near-shoring’ or ‘reshoring’ that would jeopardise supply chain resilience. We must ensure the entire medicines supply chain is insulated from energy rationing. We must keep working on the development of new training pathways for the skills needed in an ever-changing industry and take full advantage of developments like artificial intelligence, the internet of things, genomics and cell therapy. “In Europe, as the European Commission works on a legislative proposal that will shape the operating environment for medicines innovation, it is vital that intellectual property rights be protected and strengthened. In parallel, we should take steps to improve equity of access to new medicines for all Europe’s citizens. Ireland should strongly champion innovation as the basis for new jobs, investments, vaccines, treatments and cures. We have a jobs-rich industry in Ireland and a strong pipeline of new medicines for better clinical care. All that shows that the policy environment has worked for innovation. Now is not the time to damage that environment. Let us resolve to bolster it,” said Mr O’Connell.

Driving Forward Repurposing of Medicines

REMEDi4ALL launched last month with the aim of making a major leap forward in drug repurposing.

The Value Added Medicines Group, a sector group of Medicines for Europe, joins the initiative as a member of the REMEDI4ALL consortium.

This promising approach to drug development consisting in the identification, testing, and validation of new therapeutic indications for existing medications, is a developing field but faces numerous barriers and systemic inefficiencies. Still, its potential to significantly bring down times and costs of drug development -it focuses on already approved, discontinued, shelved or investigational therapeutics- makes this novel strategy attractive for rare and neglected conditions, cancer, emerging public health threats such as COVID-19 or new drug combinations. It also translates into more sustainable health systems.

The REMEDI4ALL initiative will:

• develop an innovation platform supporting promising, high impact drug repurposing projects championed by patients in any phase of development and disease area; • establish a global community that contributes to informing and shaping policy and advancing debate and knowledge exchange EATRIS, the European infrastructure for translational medicine, will lead this multidisciplinary consortium involving 24 European organisations with the common goal of making cost-effective repurposed medicines more widely available.

To advance knowledge in the field of medicine repurposing and address substantial obstacles -fragmented and siloed research; non-standardised datasets; heterogenous quality of computational tools; poor patient engagement or lack of incentives and policies to support and enhance drug repurposing- the European Union (EU) through the Horizon Europe (HE) programme will invest 23 million euros in REMEDi4ALL over the next 5 years. It is expected that, due to REMEDi4ALL, more (and better) repurposed therapeutics will be widely available thanks to more agile, cutting-edge development processes, ultimately contributing to increased sustainability of health systems.