Pharmas’ pandemic collaboration can and must continue: Plump on The BioCentury Show
Takeda’s Andy Plump sees momentum for solving major structural obstacles to drug development, health equity, and more
There’s no doubt that pharma R&D heads can recapture the collaborative spirit and coordination that was a hallmark of their pandemic response, said Andy Plump on The BioCentury Show. Efforts in that direction are already under way, with a pace that far exceeds the collective momentum before the pandemic, he said.
Plump, who is president of R&D at Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. (Tokyo:4502; NYSE:TAK), led the COVID R&D Alliance during the pandemic — a group of R&D heads from the major pharma and biotech companies that banded together in early 2020 to address the crisis. Their activities included evaluating and advancing therapeutics for COVID, starting master protocol trials, and advancing data sharing.
“There’s every possibility of us doing that more and more,” said Plump.
According to Plump, the Hever Group of pharma R&D heads has ramped up from gathering for one weekend a year to meeting every six to eight weeks, with an “agenda of topics we’re trying to take on.”
“That is the halo effect that has carried forward the most — a collective interest in doing something substantive about health equity.”
Rather than addressing specific disease biology, as they did for COVID, these topics are centered on “how we work,” said Plump. He cited Accumulus Synergy as an example, which aims to accelerate digitization and harmonization of regulatory filings across the globe. “That’s an area where it’s obvious we have to come together and create shared standards.”
Plump also wants to advance the infrastructure for improving clinical trial diversity, both as a collaborative initiative with other pharmas, and inside Takeda. Addressing this, and health disparities across racial and ethnic minorities, is a priority.
“It’s unfortunate that it took a pandemic to smoke that issue out, but that is the halo effect that has carried forward the most — a collective interest in doing something substantive about health equity.”
Technology to expand clinical trials beyond the traditional major medical centers and enable more decentralized trials will be key, and will need to be coupled with developing relationships with communities that are under-represented, and principal investigators in those communities.
“We have to go into the parts of the country where the diseases we’re treating are represented by the diversity we want to treat,” said Plump.
Inside Takeda, there is a group wholly dedicated to clinical trial diversity, he said, and metrics for improving representation are built into the program designs. “Each one of our trials has a diversity goal attached to it right from the beginning because if you do this mid-trial, forget it,” he said. “Even the informed consent, which typically speaks to a very White mainstream population, has to be designed a certain way if you’re really interested in enrolling diverse patient populations.”
Plump also discussed the need for addressing gender disparities and advancing more women to leadership positions, and how he is tackling this at Takeda. Rebuilding trust across the healthcare system is high on his priority list as well, as the reputational trust of the biopharma industry has sunk back to its pre-pandemic levels.
Plump also talked about how he has instituted change at Takeda and pipeline priorities for his R&D organization.
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