The president of the Danish company admits difficulties due to the control of health expenditure in Spain.
The Danish company Novo Nordisk is one of the world's world giants in the pharmaceutical industry.Perhaps the company is less known than other great European laboratories such as Sanofi, Roche, Novartis or Bayer, but the almost centenary firm continues to climb positions thanks to its role as the greatest manufacturer in the world of insulin, used to treat diabetes.
Lars Fruerd Jørgensen (Denmark, 1966) is the new president and CEO of the pharmaceutical since January of this year.Talk with five days about the company's plans.
"We have to ensure that we put our future focus on innovation," he points out as one of its strategic axes to enhance the future of the company."We must have an investigation that benefits patients and also makes us sufficiently competitive," he adds.The company is the leader in the diabetes market, with 27% of the world fee, according to data from the Quintilesims consultant, and has important rivals in the world such as Sanofi and Lilly.
The Danish firm closed last year with 15,510 million euros of billing and 5,095 million net profit.In the first quarter of the year, its sales grew by 5% and improved the forecasts, since it expects an increase of between 1% and 4% at the end of the year.The company expects the commercialization of its new Tresiba drug, whose income grew 166% to March, compensates for patent losses, as stated in its latest annual report, and uncertainties that open in the US market, where nothing comes fromless than half of the business figure.
"The US market is half of our business, so what happens there is very important. The Trump government leaves, for the moment, without validity the Obamacare (the health reform of the previous president Barack Obama). It is not very easyto predict what will happen in the US.Without insurance, "he says.
In addition, Trump has insisted to those responsible for the pharmaceutical industry to lower the prices of medicines.A petition difficult to specify in a market without price regulation in that country except in the public purchase of some programs of the Medicaid and Medicare."For us, in the short term, the impact of Trump's measures is very limited and in the long term we cannot predict it," Jørgensen acknowledges about the difficulty that laboratories are finding to make forecasts in that market.
415 million affected
The company Novo Nordisk was born in 1923 precisely after a visit to the US and Canada by Danish professor August Krogh, who had received the Nobel Prize in Medicine, and his wife Marie Krogh, which was diabetic.At that time, this disease was extremely serious because there was no medical solution.The couple visited some Canadian researchers there who developed insulins as a remedy against this pathology and the couple returned to Denmark with the permission to manufacture that insulin.
This pandemia (both in type 1 and type 2) affects 415 million people in the world.It suffers from the difficulty of the body to manufacture or process insulin, a hormone created in the pancreas.Family history, environmental, food, obesity or aging reasons are the main causes to suffer.By 2040, 640 million affected are already expected, according to the International Diabetes Federation.
"The impact of short -term Trump measures is very limited. In the long term it is very difficult to predict it"
"We believeThat the growth of the pharmaceutical market of diabetes will continue at least at a rate of 5% annually.The number of affected will increase by 50% in 20 years.The greatest life expectancy causes diabetes to continue increasing, "explains this manager, master in finance and companies and expert in health economy.
That is why it emphasizes the health problem facing European countries."Diabetes is a great challenge for the sustainability of public health systems. Worldwide, systems are not sustainable. We have to find ways to prevent diabetes and also how to better manage pathology to prevent attention from being unfeasible", he says."Because treating diabetes early is significantly cheaper than later complications such as amputations, blindness and others that are very expensive to treat. Early diagnosis and first treatment should be great achievements to save money to the long -term system", he points to the strict budgetary controls and the cuts in pharmaceutical spending in the face of the austerity policies that have been imposed throughout Europe in recent years.
In our country, the main problem with laboratories is delay to approve the reimbursement prices of innovative drugs that enter public health."In Spain general we have good access, carrying the latest innovations to the market but we also find restrictions and we see market access difficulties. It is a budgetary problem linked to health expenditure," he says.Regarding the investigation, in Spain the firm currently carries out 17 clinical trials with the collaboration of 44 centers and hospitals.
"Most of our R&D is intramuros, but we will increase the degree of alliances in innovations and we will enhance some small acquisitions. In the diabetes area we are leaders and I do not believe that much innovation comes from outside the company by the company by theexperience we already have, "he says.Although it clearly points out that its other business, in that of biopharmacy (with solutions for diseases such as hemophilia), opportunities are opened to strengthen: "In the biofarma area we have a strong position but with limited growth right now, so thatWe would like some alliance or purchase that allows us greater growth in that area. "
"The number of affected will increase 50% in 20 years. The greatest life expectancy causes diabetes to continue increasing"
Novo Nordisk has 43,000 employees and its Kalundborg factory (Denmark) produces half of the insulin used in the world.The company grew in the last decade to an average of 11%.In last year, Tresiba contributed more than 40% of growth.The following drug to arrive, currently in the process of approval by the health authorities, is the semaglutidal molecule, another new generation of insulins against type 2 diabetes. "I hope that our next supervants are both three -three and semaglutida," Jørgensen advances.Triseda supposed for his accounts only 566 million last year, compared to the most consolidated insulins (6,380 million) and the previous launch of Victaza, which already raised 2,690 million.
