Strategy

As Divisional Director of Molecular Neurobiology, I am a member of the research management whose job is to continually assess and select particularly promising projects for Lundbeck’s future research. In recent years, we have altered our strategy by collaborating on research with external partners at an early stage, and by including research in biological drugs.

We work on a long-term basis. When we initiate a new project now, it will hopefully lead to the launch of a new drug, but we cannot expect to market it before 2020 at the earliest. In other words, we must attempt to imagine what will be known about diseases and patients by that time and relate to where this progress takes us over a 15-year period.

I am convinced that Lundbeck has the resources and projects that are necessary to get us through to 2020 and to ensure our company’s success in the future.

New view of the patient
During recent years, Lundbeck has changed its research strategy so we now work with more types of projects than we did earlier. This change in strategy means that we now make greater efforts to understand the biology of a disease.

We put a great deal of effort into understanding why some patients respond to a compound while others do not. In Denmark, we are still doing research in compounds for treatment of schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, while our depression research takes place in our own research company in the United States. In the long term, we expect that our new research strategy will result in a better understanding of the individual diseases.

It will be necessary for drugs of the future to target the needs of the individual patient to a much greater extent than the drugs we currently prescribe. One could say that in the future we will use a precision rifle with a telescopic sight, whereas we now use a shotgun. Doctors currently prescribe a dosage that helps perhaps 60 per cent of the patients. We believe that in the future it will be possible to make far more precise diagnoses and to select the drug that is most appropriate for the individual patient.

Biological drugs
Another important part of our new strategy is development of biological drugs – in other words, drugs that are made with the aid of a living organism – besides the drugs that are produced with the aid of chemical synthesis. As of yet, Lundbeck is involved in three projects in this area, in which we intend to enter into strategic agreements to collaborate with external partners in the preliminary phase.

One of the compounds we are currently working with is known as CEPO . It is a modified form of the protein EPO which protects against brain cell death in the event of stroke – i.e. blood clots and brain haemorrhages. It is Lundbeck’s first biological drug and has been developed in collaboration with the American biotech company Warren Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Another new compound is vaccinil – a protein for vaccination against development of Alzheimer’s disease. The vaccine targets the A-beta protein which causes deposits in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients, resulting in memory failure and death of brain cells. The vaccine has been developed in collaboration with the Danish biotech company Pharmexa A/S.

The third substance is desmoteplase – an enzyme which comes from the saliva of the vampire bat. The enzyme prevents blood from coagulating, and expectations are that it can dissolve blood clots which form in connection with stroke. Desmoteplase was developed by the German biotech company PAION AG and has been in-licensed by Lundbeck.

Strategic partnerships
The three new compounds are the results of strategic partnerships, and there will be many more of these partnerships in the years ahead. Among other things, we will collaborate closely in research with universities, which marks a significant switch in paradigm. We used to obtain knowledge from universities through scientific articles and meetings, or by collaborating with biotech companies that developed projects to maturity. However, diseases are so complex that we have now decided to outsource some of our early-stage research to the universities. In doing this, it is important that we remain in the driver’s seat and determine which areas of research are most likely to lead to the development of a new drug. We must identify the best laboratories and utilize innovation that builds on academic intuition and tradition.

An up-to-date example of strategic collaboration in identification of new and innovative research projects is our new partnership with Mayo Clinic in Florida, USA , on Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. In addition to this, we are also involved in major joint research projects on schizophrenia with the universities in Leiden and Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and in projects on Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia with the University of Aarhus in Denmark.

Success criteria
When working with long-term projects, it can be difficult to identify the greatest sources of job satisfaction. But I sincerely hope that I will be with Lundbeck long enough to see one of the projects I have started become a drug.

It makes me proud when I can see that we have chosen the right strategy, and that we -with the help of our professionalism and knowledge – are actively contributing to the
development of drugs that will make a difference in people’s lives.