Blockbuster drugs
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 9 November 2023
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
New medicines with sales in the billions of dollars each year are what every pharmaceutical company dreams of, but how do you create one and can they really justify their often high price tags?
Evan Davis and guests discuss the changing origins of so-called 'blockbusters' and their importance to the global drug industry, including recent examples like the obesity and diabetes treatments Wegovy and Ozempic, which have made Novo Nordisk one of the richest companies in Europe.
Plus, as outright cures for some diseases begin to emerge, how can the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare systems agree on what is a reasonable price to pay for them?
Evan is joined by:
Sir Patrick Vallance, former president of research and development at GSK, chief scientific advisor to the UK government, now chair of the Natural History Museum; Ruth McKernan, venture partner at SV Health Investors; David Brown, chairman and co-founder of Healx and co-creator of Viagra; Natasha Loder, health editor, The Economist.
PRODUCTION TEAM:
Producer: Simon Tulett Editor: China Collins Sound: Graham Puddifoot Production co-ordinator: Gemma Ashman
(Picture: Rolls of dollar bills next to a bottle of pills. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.1 | Hello, welcome to the programme. |
| 0:06.6 | Now, a couple of months ago, something startling happened. |
| 0:09.5 | A Danish drug company that few people outside of the industry had heard of a few years ago |
| 0:14.4 | became briefly the most valuable listed firm in Europe. |
| 0:18.3 | Not only that, but for a time it was worth more than Denmark's entire |
| 0:21.7 | annual national income. The company is Novo Nordisk. It's worth hundreds of billions of dollars, |
| 0:27.5 | and the reason for its meteoric rise were two drugs, a Zempic and Wegovi, targeting type 2 diabetes |
| 0:34.4 | and obesity, respectively, using the medication semaglutide. |
| 0:39.1 | Two super blockbuster drugs, the kind of immensely lucrative products that drug company executives dream |
| 0:46.3 | about. Now, like winning lottery tickets, blockbusters don't come along all that often. |
| 0:51.7 | They're not guaranteed, but they do keep the global drugs industry going and cover the tens of billions of dollars companies spend researching |
| 0:59.5 | and developing drugs that never quite make it. So on the bottom line this week, where do those |
| 1:04.6 | drug blockbusters come from? And I have four guests to help me. Let's meet them. First up is |
| 1:10.1 | Natasha Loder. Now, she's a health |
| 1:11.7 | editor of the economist, 20 years of experience writing about these issues. First, Natasha, just to |
| 1:17.6 | start us up, what are we talking about when we talk about blockbusters? Well, traditionally, |
| 1:22.6 | you would be talking about a drug that's earning more than a billion dollars annually in sales. |
| 1:27.7 | Right. So a global sales of more than a billion. Just fill us in on the story about |
| 1:33.0 | Novo Nordisk and these obesity breakthroughs that have been occurring. Well, I mean, these |
| 1:37.1 | drugs are really a revolution in the treatment of obesity. I think 20 years from now, you know, |
| 1:42.7 | we'll be seeing obesity as essentially a curable |
... |
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