Albert Bourla, CEO, Pfizer 
Interviewer: Alyson Shontell, Editor-in-Chief, FORTUNE

Pfizer’s CEO led the charge on a historic COVID vaccine. Now, he wants to eradicate cancer

Conferences

Doctor Bola, thank you so much for joining us this morning in Guangzhou. Um You have achieved incredible results over the last two years, a pandemic changing vaccine built in record time, which led to record revenues, billions of the vaccine distributed. You have to redo your entire supply chain to make this happen. Um But now that COVID is receding, there's a new priority for your business. So we want to dig into all of that and more. And first, I'd like to chat about what you're doing with China. So earlier this year with China, you signed an agreement to aid their China healthy 2020 30 initiatives. What does that entail? First of all, I need to say that I'm terribly sorry, but I'm not with you right now here. Uh I was planning to come. Um you know, life is uh having unexpected turn on, so I had to stay here. Uh So I'm terribly sorry, but I'm happy that you are able to discuss Alison even through this video link and that uh show us how technology can uh uh is is progressing and that helps us uh fill the gaps that we had the previous times. Um you know, Pfizer in uh is active in China for decades now. Uh we are having a very, very strong operations. We have research centers in China, we have thousands of colleagues and we have a strong brand name, Chinese consumers, Chinese patients and the Chinese government and officials are trusting our name very, very, very much so. So we are now continuing our activities in in China and of course in China, it is important to understand what are the priorities of the government and the the good thing with the Chinese government, it is that uh they are very strategic about their priorities and very proactively, they are uh making very clear. So they have uh issued these documents but they are very clearly what are the the goals, the objectives of uh of uh Chinese government for the Chinese people by the year 2013, they call it China health in 2030. Everything we do uh aligns with their priorities because that's the best and safest way to be able to have an impact when the efforts of your company and the efforts of the government are all aligned. So this is exactly what we do. So, Pfizer finds itself in a different state than when you first took over and really in a lot of ways doctor below, this is your first time leading the company not in crisis you joined in 2019 as the CEO you had been with pfizer for many, many years. Um but took the CEO spot just ahead of this global pandemic, which you expertly led your company through. Um Now you said in May COVID will no longer be the epicenter of what we do. What is your new focus for pfizer? Um And how are you planning to lead the company and change your leadership style to go with it? You've talked about in your book, how you had to really, really motivate the team to do impossible things. You gave a motto, you know, time is life because every minute that you weren't working on a solution, fast enough lives were at stake. Now, it's a very different era and a different moment for your leadership. Yeah, the whole, the whole world has changed because of COVID. Everything is different now and that's so true for pfizer as well. And uh pfizer, we were blessed during the the pandemic to be able to have an impact that very few companies had in the world. Uh not only during the pandemic, but very few companies had in the world in general in the years. And we have been rewarded for that. And uh I'm not talking only about the financial results that allow us to invest the money in business development. But uh I'm talking also about the love that we have received from people, the trust that we have receive from governments and consumers all over the world when I meet people and I tell them or they recognize that I'm the Pfizer person. Uh The way usually they talk to me is I have two of you inside me, I have three inside me means I have three vaccines, four vaccines, five vaccines of you. It's very important for me. That means a lot because this is a very different way of consumers engaging with us. They consider that we are part of their body part of ourselves. But as you said, that was all happened in a period that they consider a period of war. And now we are moving to a period of peace and that requires different skills, different goals to lead the company into organization in peace than in war. There are few things that should remain the same you spoke about. Time is life, time is life, no matter what we do. If we were able to bring a cancer medicine one year earlier, that means the whole different, the whole a very different world for a father or a mother that that will allow them to see the graduation of the daughter of the wedding of the son. We have high awareness of the responsibility, we have to our society in doing that and asking directly your question, what is going to be your new epicenter? Clearly, Pfizer is going to continue bringing medicines, breakthroughs that change patients' lives. But our new very big focus where we put a lot of capital where we put a lot of scientific understanding and all of this cancer is on colored, we are making a significant acquisition right now that will almost double our research capabilities in cancer. And uh we are having very ambitious goals and that comes from COVID when we were able to make in eight months a vaccine that save so many millions of lives instead of eight years, that usually takes the question that we ask ourselves is if we were able to do it with COVID, why not with cancer? And the needs are also over there. Very important. So for us, oncology and cancer, it is where we are focusing right now. That is a big task ahead. I think we would all love to see the end of cancer and how realistic and how soon is that future? And is MRN the key to unlocking that I think multiple technologies will play a key role in being able to unlock the back. But when it comes to oncology and cancer, I'm quite optimistic. The reason is because science has advanced a lot. The biology of cancer is very advanced right now, we have a very, very good understanding of why cancer is created, why some medicines work and then they stop working. Why you have metastasis after 15 years? What are the genes that are driving one cancer versus another? When you have this level of knowledge and understanding of the disease, then you can apply your scientific expertise in chemistry. In medicinal scientists in being able to find targets and molecules that will fix the problem. I think that we will see constant progress starting immediately. I think every month and every year we will be seeing new innovations coming into the market, not only from us, but from the uh uh industry in general, you will bring a lot of medicines to the market. We started just, we launched one for lymphoma for uh for uh let's say uh blood cancer. And we continue with the new innovations in uh in uh breast cancer than in prostate cancer, cancers that they are affecting the masses, cancers. That breast cancer is the leading cancer of female prostate cancer is the leading cancer of males. So we are going to see significant advances year after year after year, over the next 10 years, I think the life of the cancer patients will be very, very different than the life of the cancer patients of today. Well, well, for all of us, um that is not the only thing you're working on at pfizer though. In fact, you said you're going to launch 19 drugs over the next 18 months, which is unprecedented pace. How did the pandemic and what you learned from shipping quickly change pharma innovation for you. Um And how is A I changing your processes and, and just the tech in general the Pande the pandemic, take everything and particularly the most important of all. I think it is gave our people the belief that nothing is impossible when they are part of this journey. And when they see from scratch, starting with a goal that is seemingly impossible and suddenly seeing the progress towards it. And then eventually the success. And after we have the vaccine, the success and be able to manufacture it in that scale of billions of doses, then our people develop the confidence that yes, we can do things that others cannot and human ingenuity can turn the uh even the most challenging questions upside down. So when you have this culture, this is a very big competitive advantage and then you can apply to everything you do. We are launching new products. It is unprecedented. And from them 18 was already technically completely d so they are coming into the market, there is only one of the 19 but we are still waiting date and hopefully will be successful and to launch it as well. I think that will bring, let's say very big energy to our organization and that will bring significant services to patients around the world that they are looking for these new medicines, new innovations that they are bringing the standard of care to a higher level, new level so that they can see their kids themselves, their parents living a better healthier life. So um you're clearly spending a lot in research and development and it takes a lot of money to create these world changing drugs and with COVID, I believe you poured something about like $10 billion in without fully knowing which vaccine was going to work or if one was going to work. Um And it's very expensive. Um so that can create a tension though sometimes between um revenue for your company and the choice that you make for to be better, your company versus access to the care and making it affordable. With COVID, you really went to paint to make it affordable uh based on different countries, economic means. Um You were prising the fact that you know, our vaccine costs the same amount as a dinner meal. Um In some cases, you tried to really get that price point low, but there is that tension there. And I wonder how do you deal with that as a leader thinking about what's good for your company and then what's good for the world? I think, I think the tension is always there and sometimes it's justified. Sometimes it is not justified. For example, with COVID clear was not justified because the the the vaccines were offered in tier pricing based on the income of every country, which is one of the few times that this was done systematically by a company. So and yes, you mentioned very clearly for the high income countries. Uh the owners gave it for free to the citizens but themselves, they had to buy it at the cost of a takeaway meal, not even a dinner, take away meal, dinner cost like uh three vaccines. And in the middle income countries, we need to know we gave it at half this price. And in the low cost in the low income countries, we gave it at cost. And in the low income countries, we make an agreement with the Biden administration which they bought from us 1 billion doses, 1 billion doses at cost. So we didn't make money because of that, but we didn't lose money. And then what, excuse me, what we did was that we were able to provide through this agreement completely for free. So all the low income countries, they had access to the vaccine completely for free. Unfortunately, not much of these vaccines were used because in order to see equity and health equity, it's not important only to have supply of medicines. You need to have the ability as a as a state to organize massive vaccination campaigns to have people that uh they can administer, that. You need to have infrastructure, logistics things that didn't work very well and you need to be able to convince your citizens but uh not to listen to this information and do the vaccines. So all that didn't work well. But it was not because the vaccines were not h the vaccines were in Amer uh supply and in completely free for those countries uh from, from the day one. But this doesn't mean that this is the same for all medicine as a result, what we launched the last year in Davos was uh AAA what we call an Accord for a healthier work. So Pfizer decided that we give all the medicines, not only vaccines, all the medicines that we have on patent or not on patent irrelevant at cost to 1.2 billion people living in the 45 poor standards of the world. This offer is up and valid right now And the and the price list of costs have been circulated when you speak at cost. It's really at cost. It's not reserved part of the cost. It's not administrative part of the cost. It's just the cost to manufacture it to make it and send it. And there are some African countries for example, like Rwanda, but they are making tremendous and excellent use of this offer and we train them how to use the product and we help them to organize the statistics and they are using those state of the art high technology products for people that they never see these products again. And I'm hopeful that other governments also will step up their game and will be able to make use of this offer so we can move the needle of health in Africa. So you're a US company operating globally and operating here in China. Um How do we encourage more global cooper to meet our sustainability goals and our health goals? I think uh how to, to, to, to to do that. It is. But improving, let me start. But we need to improve the political climate. And I think that will be a very important part of that, particularly speaking about the US and China, we know that there are a lot of uh tensors right now, some issues, some mis misunderstanding and that doesn't help. Uh but um I think the business communities of both countries can create uh bonds and can create uh activities that will help also uh the political debate, becoming more uh becoming smoother uh ourselves. For example, when it comes to China, we are not only interested in being able to do business in China, which means bring our medical innovation to help the Chinese patients. We are interested also to tap into the Chinese science and being able to bring Chinese innovation to help the world's patients. And we have the scale as a global company to do that. And we see a lot of tremendous progress that is happening right now. In Chinese science, there are tremendous, uh there's a huge amount of uh Chinese biotechs that they are now have been formed and are operated and some of them, they have a very, very good, they have so much data that they are very, very good. So I think we can make a difference by enabling them to do better. And I hope that in the next few years, we will be able to have tangible examples of collaboration that could help also bring a better climate between the collaboration of the country, Dr Bela. Thank you so much for joining us here and looking forward to seeing you back in the States.