Name: AstraZeneca CEO: “Covid is here to stay”
Uploaded: 2022-08-31
Duration: 9 min 56 s
Description: Pascal Soriot says the AZ vaccine saved the most lives globally, and Queen Elizabeth rewards him with knighthood.

Pascal Soriot says the AZ vaccine saved the most lives globally, and Queen Elizabeth rewards him with knighthood. 

AstraZeneca CEO: “Covid is here to stay” 

Leadership


Pascal Soriot says the AZ vaccine saved the most lives globally, and Queen Elizabeth rewards him with knighthood. 

Pascal Soriot says the AZ vaccine saved the most lives globally.

pascal welcome to fortune and thank you so much for joining us. Let's begin our conversation talking about Covid, your company Astrazeneca played a very important role in the research and delivery of a Covid vaccine. As you look back on your development efforts, What would you say were the upsides and the downsides? So if I look at this vaccine, if I look at this in Niagara and first of all, I think it was a great success in the sense that it delivered a huge impact on on this pandemic globally. We delivered 3.5 billion doses of vaccines and it has been independently estimated that we saved more than six million lives. Actually, our vaccine is the vaccine and save the most lives around the world. Now within this of course we have we faced setbacks for instance, we had challenges in deliveries of the quantities that europe was expecting of us. So we faced a few challenges like we always do with projects in our industry. But I would say overall we had a huge impact on this lower pandemic now that you can look back on that period. Is there anything you would have done differently? I can't think of anything that um not knowing what we know today, that we would have done differently now. What I would have hoped though, if something like this happened again is to start from the very beginning, we joined the University of Oxford in May of 2020 And they had already done a lot of work. Other companies started, they started their projects in January February of 2020. And these five months of difference created of course a big of a bit of a hurdle for us in terms of catching up to the work that needed to be done to bring this development to what was required for global regulators around the world. So I would have hoped to start earlier. But other than that, I think we just gave it our best shot. If I may say so. Well, I'm sure you've learned so much about covid over the last 2.5 years from everything that you've learned is covid here to stay. I mean, do you see a day where we won't be talking about Covid infections and hospitalizations? I think Covid is here to stay and most experts would agree with that. I'm hoping that time will come when we don't talk as much about it because we've learned to live with it. People get boosted with regular vaccine injections. Probably older people need to be boosted more often than young healthy people. And but we will learn to live with it and manage it just like we managed the flu and many other of our whole diseases. So pascal what's your vision for Astrazeneca? What do you want it to be best known for? We want to be known as a company that follows the science and innovate and discovers products that will really change the treatment of important diseases and cancer cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases like asthma COPD rare diseases and more recently we engaged in infectious diseases for vaccines and immune therapy. And ultimately we want to be seen as a company that really shapes the future of medicine. Well it's a year now since you bought Alexey in, you paid almost $40 billion for this pharma company based in the United States, how does seleccion fit into your plans? It fits very well actually. And it helps us expand our portfolio to include rare disease medicines and it's gone very well so far we are using the Dominican network globally to bring the election products to a variety of countries china emerging markets and so we are really helping them distribute the products globally. And our research and development teams are also working together. So the Alex and team can leverage their technologies to deliver to develop and and deliver new medicines for rare diseases. So it's going very well so far well do you have a blockbuster drug that's in the works and ready for the market? Yes, we are helping election globalized product that they launched recently called Ramirez which is a product that addresses a variety of rare diseases. The more recent set of data we got was in a disease called an M. O. S. D. Which is a disease that affects the optical nerve and and essentially people go blind. It's an awful disease because you lose your eyesight and you recover it and use it again another period of time. It gets worse and worse and you become blind. And until now the treatments were not really very, very strong and very good. And so this this compound really has tremendous clinical results. You mentioned that you are also doing a lot with cancer drugs and treatments. What other promising drugs do you have in the pipeline that would interest our viewers to, which is a product that is used for the treatment of breast cancer and has recently shown absolutely outstanding results. Well, it sounds like you have some really big plans for Astrazeneca. Do you intend to go it alone or are you open to a merger? We have the critical mass. We have global footprint. We have large turnover, large resources so we don't need a merger. And suddenly that's not our priority. A priority is more to do what we call Burton acquisitions, which is to complement our own pipeline with products we acquire from the outside. Are you interested more as being a buyer or a seller? Well, we are mostly a buyer. We are in a position today that we can definitely consider acquiring products or companies. But again, as I said, mostly small to mid sized companies that we can add to our portfolio. And next Allergic stands for us to complement what we are doing. Well, you know, investors still talk about fighters, huge offer to buy Astrazeneca from a couple of years ago. Any regrets or second thoughts about that, that merger didn't go through? Well, first of all they have learned in life. Do not regret what I've done in the past. But in that instance we only tell you that Asher price in the last 10 years has got report it is today $67 and it has doubled since Faisal made the offer. So I think the sharp price evolution over the last few years since Faisal made the offer has demonstrated that we could create a lot of value on our own for our shareholders, but also more importantly for patients, we have brought to patients many, many new medicines that make a big difference to the treatment of cancer, cardiovascular disease and many other conditions. So no regrets of that. You could have been a much bigger company? Well, actually, no regret. I mean in our industry really the focus has to be to innovate and come up with new medicines. It's very simple. You have to help patients with new innovative medicines. The goal can be to be very big. It has to be to innovate and create value for innovation and that's what we've done. Well, let's talk a little bit about leadership and your leadership pascal Astrazeneca is a much stronger company too. When you took over back in 2012, what do you see as the key thing that you did as a Ceo and as a leader to transform Astrazeneca into a powerhouse pharma company, you mentioned that your stock is almost quadruples during your leadership, but also you've gotten sales and revenues are so much stronger. So what was the most important thing that you did to pull this all off? I think making clear choices and choosing innovation and science, which many people might say today is obvious, but 10 years ago the industry was in a different place. So creating this focus and this set of choices, building a team. We have a tremendous team today, um you know, attracting the right people who can make a big difference and finally creating a culture where people really share a common ambition, which is to be an innovator and a company that wants to shape the future of medicine. Well, you're celebrating your 10th anniversary as Ceo, what are you most proud that you've done in this last decade? What's your proudest accomplishment? Well actually, you know, to see the impact that our medicines are having on patients is really extremely rewarding. I can tell you, I was at this council congress in Chicago a few months ago at the ASco and being in the room and have tens of thousands of oncology is from around the world giving a standing ovation to results were presented. They're not, we, but the investigators are presented is incredibly rewarding because you know, you're shaping the future of medicine, you're shaping the way cancer is treated. So that's what I'm the most proud of. And of course the team and the people working for the company and to see them grow and develop has been incredibly rewarding. Well, you were recently awarded a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth for your contributions to science and all of your work on the Covid vaccine. So Sir, pascal, what's your reaction to this high honor? What does it mean to you? It's incredibly humbling. Um You know, I come from very modest beginnings um and my career has been, you know, moving around the world, always focused on pharmaceuticals and bringing new medicines to the market. And being rewarded with this knighthood by the Queen is of course incredibly humbling and something I had to take a little bit of time to get my head around because, you know, I'm not british and this has been quite a quite a quite a remarkable achievement for me.