In January in the cherry blossom country, it is already the depth of winter.

In a luxurious office at Takeda Pharmaceutical's headquarters in Daban City, Chairman Takeda Kazuhisa stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling glass window, looking at the night in the distance, frowning in thought.

Takeda Pharmaceutical is Asia's number one pharmaceutical giant and one of the top ten pharmaceutical giants in the world. Things that can make him think deeply are obviously not simple.

Three years ago, Takeda Pharmaceuticals acquired Shire, a rare disease pharmaceutical giant in bull country, through a standard small-fish-big-fish merger. The acquisition amount was as high as US$65.9 billion, which was almost the combined revenue of the two companies.

2 times together.

This merger and acquisition made Takeda seem to be cheating, and its value has been rising. Not only has it jumped into the top ten global pharmaceuticals, its sales in the rare disease sector have surpassed Biogen, becoming the first in the rare disease track, and it has also lifted the patent cliff crisis.

, and more importantly, the transformation from chemical drugs to biopharmaceuticals has been achieved.

At the same time, this merger also saddled Takeda with a huge debt of more than US$30 billion.

Since then, Takeda Pharmaceutical has embarked on the road of repaying debt.

The company announced a non-core asset divestiture plan worth $10 billion and sold 21 non-core assets within 2 years, including its old headquarters.

Through a series of sell-offs that looked like a heroic act to the outside world, Takeda's debt reduction actions were carried out steadily and quickly. It quickly gained a foothold, achieved the goal of doubling its profits, and its revenue also increased significantly.

Takeda Pharmaceutical's divestiture of mature products is a wise move. It not only reduces debt, but also retains sufficient funds for the research and development of core products. This has enabled the company to successively strike hard in the rare disease track and launch several drugs.

Orphan drugs.

However, other multinational giants are also optimistic about this track. Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Roche, etc. continue to follow suit and launch high-value mergers and acquisitions of rare disease pharmaceutical companies.

Suddenly, all the heroes in the field of rare medicines came together to fight each other.

At this time, the Chinese pharmaceutical giant Sanqing also entered the game with a high profile and released two breakthrough genetic drugs for rare diseases, especially the SMA gene drug, which defeated the sky-high-priced orphan drugs of Novartis and Roche and was completely defeated.

Sanqing also announced that it will continue to develop genetic drugs for rare diseases and even made a list.

This formation couldn't help but make Takeda Kazuki feel something bad, as if he was facing a formidable enemy.

You must know that there are more than 7,000 rare diseases, with more than 300 million patients worldwide. It is a completely untapped blue ocean. It is not a big problem for a few more pharmaceutical companies to enter the market, and it will not constitute much competition.

But Sanqing, a pharmaceutical company, is quite special and different from other pharmaceutical companies.

It does not, like most pharmaceutical companies, develop drugs to alleviate rare diseases and force patients to take the drugs for life to maximize profits.

Instead, they directly cut the bottom of the pot and developed genetic drugs as soon as possible, which directly cured the patients and completely eliminated the root cause of rare diseases.

It is simply a lack of martial ethics and a lack of reason!

Most pharmaceutical companies actually have a tacit understanding. They are often more willing to develop drugs for chronic diseases and let patients continue to take them. In this way, patients who continue to take the drugs can often contribute profits to pharmaceutical companies for ten, twenty years, or even their entire lives.

Such drugs are the favorites of pharmaceutical companies.

One of the most obvious examples is that pharmaceutical companies hate the development of antibiotics, because after a patient becomes ill, he or she will be cured after taking a few doses, and unless the disease relapses, the patient no longer needs to take the drug.

Then pharmaceutical companies will not be able to continue to make profits from patients, so they will have little incentive to continue to develop new drugs.

The same is true for common vaccine drugs. Once you take one shot, you don’t need to take another shot. It’s a one-and-done deal. It’s surprising that pharmaceutical companies like it.

But drugs for rare diseases are different. Patients have been diagnosed with the disease since childhood and have been taking medicine since childhood. They can continue to take it until they die.

As long as a drug is developed and sold at a high price, it can continue to be sold at a high price. It is simply the perfect drug in the eyes of pharmaceutical companies.

However, this tacit understanding was immediately broken by Sanqing.

When Sanqing took action, it did not develop drugs to alleviate the disease and extract long-term profits, but directly cured all patients.

Not only did it take away the market from other pharmaceutical companies, but it also reduced the dimensionality and directly destroyed the entire market with one hammer.

How could this not make them furious, angry and frightened at the same time?

As the largest company in rare diseases, Takeda Pharmaceutical is bound to face the huge impact of Sanqing, so it has to respond.

This was also the reason why Takeda Kazuya frowned in thought.

It wasn't until the sun set and the sky was getting dark that Takeda Kazuya came back to his senses.

He called several company executives to discuss countermeasures.

"I believe you have seen a series of recent initiatives by China's Sanqing Pharmaceutical. There is no doubt that genetic drugs are attractive to patients. Once genetic drugs are interviewed, other disease-modifying drugs will completely lose the market."

"The company's current four core therapeutic areas are the digestive field, the blood products field, the anti-tumor field, and the rare disease field. Originally, we had a hard time facing Sanqing in the anti-tumor field. We have been gradually transforming, and now we are also in the rare disease field.

The field is right."

"The field of rare diseases is the field in which the company currently invests the most. We must not give up, even if we take a step back."

"At present, the company has launched many innovative drugs for rare diseases, covering hemophilia A, Fabry disease, Gaucher disease, hereditary angioedema and other diseases. Last year, the company launched two innovative rare disease products, Ripga

Hefei Zeyou has been successfully included in China's medical insurance catalog. This year, the company is expected to launch four innovative rare disease drugs in China."

"All this shows that the Chinese market is very important to the company, and the field of rare diseases is even more top priority!"

"Although Sanqing has not taken action against our marketed drugs yet, it will happen sooner or later. Everyone, what measures should we take?"

Takeda Kazuku finished speaking in one breath, his eyes scanning the several executives in front of him like lightning, looking forward to their answers.

The scene suddenly fell into silence.

After a long time, CEO Weber, a capable subordinate of the Gallic Kingdom, spoke calmly and solemnly first.

"Chairman, Sanqing is very powerful and is committed to gene therapy. Judging from the two genetic drugs that are about to be launched, they are more willing to choose sky-high-priced drugs, and they are more willing to focus on incurable terminal diseases.

.There is no big conflict with us in this regard.”

"You must know that our rare disease drugs have never been too expensive. The annual treatment cost of Ripga, which was launched in China last year, has been reduced to less than one million for the treatment of Fabry disease."

"We have always understood the Chinese market and dare to set low prices. Unlike Sanofi, which has always adhered to the global pricing system and refused to lower prices, every time we negotiate with China's medical insurance, we can give a quite sincere price reduction."

"Even if Sanqing's genetic drugs match ours, we still have a huge advantage in terms of price. Their genetic drugs are priced at 300,000 yuan. We can completely compete with them and set the price even lower.

, provided to patients who cannot afford genetic medicine."

"In fact, it generally takes a long time for the products of multinational pharmaceutical companies to be launched, and some products have basically recovered their costs. In China, with the support of medical insurance funds, the market size is considerable. From a business perspective, the Chinese market is a pure profit.

Sell ​​one and earn one."

"As long as we keep a low profile and give sincere quotes, we won't have to worry about having no patients. On the contrary, if we refuse to lower the price and cannot find a payer, the market for these products in China will be zero."

"Furthermore, at present, Sanqing does not have a drug that competes with us. Can we consider cooperating with them?"

Takeda Kazuhisa's eyes lit up and he praised greatly: "You are right, these are very close to my ideas."

"What kind of cooperation do you mean?"

"Of course, let's keep working together and attack different rare diseases separately."

"In fact, there are so many types of rare diseases. I would also recommend that all pharmaceutical companies join together to reach a cooperation agreement and select different rare diseases to tackle. This can effectively avoid duplication of research and development, greatly save research and development funds, and improve

R&D efficiency is also a good thing for patients.”

"Chairman, what do you think?"

Takeda and Jiu nodded repeatedly: "Yes, it's exactly what I want."

"Then, we need to hold an industry conference to bring together all pharmaceutical companies to achieve this important goal."

Takeda Kazuhisa looked serious and said righteously: "As the number one pharmaceutical company in Asia and the leader of rare diseases, Takeda Pharmaceutical naturally has to shoulder this responsibility!"

****

An invitation letter appeared on Wei Kang's desk. He opened it and took a look, and was very surprised.

"The first rare disease industry conference will be held in Haishi, and we sincerely invite Sanqing to participate in the event."

This turned out to be an invitation letter from Takeda Pharmaceutical, inviting Sanqing to attend an industry conference of rare disease pharmaceutical companies.

It is said that the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in the world have been invited to participate this time to discuss the research and development direction in the field of rare diseases, exchange the latest results of all parties, and explore the latest applications of gene therapy.

"Sounds very good!" Wei Kang was immediately interested: "We have to ask Tang Que to go with us, he must like this kind of thing."

He agreed immediately and responded quickly to the other party.

A week later, the CEOs and heads of rare disease departments of major multinational pharmaceutical companies arrived at Haishi Airport one after another, and some of them were even on the same plane.

The CEOs and senior executives all stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel booked by Takeda. Many of them were familiar with each other and had been colleagues or classmates, so they got together in advance to communicate with each other and discuss their respective strategies.

The next morning, they all gathered in the hotel's lecture hall, where major media from around the world also gathered.

This kind of global industry conference has always attracted the attention of the media. Recently, rare diseases have become very popular in China, and ordinary people will also be interested in it.

Takeda Kazuya sat at the main seat and delivered an opening speech, and then explained his purpose.

"Dear business representatives and friends from the media, I believe that everyone has heard about the purpose of the conference, and many people have discussed it earlier, so I will go straight to the topic."

"As we all know, there are many types of rare diseases, but currently pharmaceutical companies are doing their own research and development. Many times they focus on one disease and rush to it. The phenomenon of repeated research and development is very serious, resulting in several drugs being launched for certain diseases.

But some diseases have no cure."

"This is not beneficial to patients, and it also creates a lot of unnecessary competition for pharmaceutical companies. We can make better plans in advance and attack different rare diseases separately. Only in this way can we invest limited resources in

There is unlimited research and development of orphan drugs to benefit more patients."

"Takeda Pharmaceutical is aware of this and specially organized this conference. It wants to promote the major pharmaceutical companies to reach an agreement to delineate their own research and development scope, avoid vicious competition and duplication of research and development, thereby improving research and development efficiency and greatly saving funds.

, this way we can produce results as soon as possible and bring usable medicine to patients.”

"We have made a list that includes all types of rare diseases, the number of patients, and the drugs that can currently alleviate the disease. I hope everyone can take a look at this list, make your own choice after careful consideration."
To be continued...