EUCOPE Member Spotlight: Q&A with Bristol Myers Squibb

Regularly, EUCOPE spotlights a member company and the great work it’s doing to advance the life sciences industry and drive innovation to serve patients better. For the November edition, we spoke with Adam Parnaby, Senior Director, Market Access Policy, Europe, Bristol Myers Squibb.

Tell us about your organisation and its mission and how you drive innovation internally?

Since 1887, Bristol Myers Squibb has powered positive change for patients in Europe and around the world. Today, we are a global biopharmaceutical company whose mission is to discover, develop and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases.

In Europe, Bristol Myers Squibb employs 6,800 out of a global workforce of 30,000. Our teams around the world are defining what is possible for the future of science and the patients we serve. Our European investments, whether in manufacturing sites, commercial teams or clinical trials, are part of a global story of excellence in innovation.

We are motivated by science and inspired by patients. Through our work in oncology, hematology, immunology, neuroscience and cardiovascular disease, we are pushing the boundaries of science. We have one of the most diversified portfolios and pipelines in the industry. Our differentiated research platforms, including cell therapy, targeted protein degradation and radiopharmaceuticals, are core to our work.

We are working to advance global health equity around the world. Earlier this year, we launched ASPIRE, a 10-year strategy to improve access to our innovative medicines in in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). By 2033, our goal is to reach more than 208,000 patients in LMICs with our medicines. We will keep innovating for patients and working on ways to deliver faster access to our medicines.

How do your organisation’s activities help patients now and into the future?

At Bristol Myers Squibb, we ask ourselves: who are you working for? It is patients. We want to provide more medicines to more patients, faster. Our newly approved medicines, and the ones in the near-term pipeline, are the result of strong execution and collaboration across every part of our organization.

The impact of innovation is clear.

Take Bristol Myers Squibb’s work on HIV. We helped to take it from a death sentence to a chronic, manageable condition. Consider melanoma. Ten years ago, if you were diagnosed with advanced melanoma, you typically had less than a year to live. Now, over 40% of patients are alive after a decade. For patients with multiple myeloma, the overall five-year survival rate can range from 40% to 82%.

What about cardiovascular disease? If you are diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, your risk of stroke is five times higher than that of people without AFib. Twelve years ago, many patients had limited options for stroke prevention beyond traditional blood thinners. We have helped to change that. Beyond their direct clinical benefits, medicines can help patients stay longer in the workforce or avoid long periods in hospital.

Our research-intensive industry generates a lot of jobs – 2.8 million of them in Europe in 2022, according to a new report for EFPIA by PwC. The report values our industry’s contribution to the European economy at €448 billion. When you consider the healthcare and economic impacts of innovation, our industry is clearly a major value player.

What do you see as the biggest challenges facing the life sciences industry today?

There are many but let us take two – access and competitiveness.

Access

European patients face multiple barriers when it comes to accessing new medicines. We are seeing increasing challenges around evidence standards, different stakeholders’ evidence needs (for advanced medicinal therapeutic products [ATMPs], for example), stretched healthcare budgets and pressure on pricing.

The duration of HTA and price negotiations, which varies across Member States, determines how quickly patients get access to new medicines. The average time to access for European patients is 531 days. That ranges from 126 days in Germany to 804 days in Poland.

There are ways to improve access.

Reimbursement systems that reward value and are designed to incentivize innovation could help to drive better overall access. Forms of horizon-scanning and multi-annual budgeting could help to maintain predictable and affordable budgets. Governments should avoid cost-containment measures that save money in the short term but cost innovation. It is vital to optimize the operation of the new EU Health Technology Assessment system which begins to take effect from January.

Competitiveness

Another challenge is Europe’s sliding competitiveness, acknowledged in a recent report by former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi. The competitiveness gap is evidenced by Europe’s regulatory complexity and by a slump in clinical trials, as well as by challenges accessing new medicines.

The European Economic Area’s share of clinical trials has reduced from 22% in 2013 to 12% in 2023. Europe needs to re-power research by making harmonized multi-country clinical trials a reality. The performance of the commercial and regulatory environments influences global business decision-making. The revision of the EU General Pharmaceutical Legislation, and the promised European Life Sciences Strategy, are opportunities to restore competitiveness by modernizing the regulatory framework, protecting the intellectual property (IP) framework and coordinating policymaking.

Access will not be solved by using IP as a lever, as proposed by the European Commission.

What are the major health policy issues and themes that you are most focused on in 2024/2025?

Again, there are many but I want to focus on just one: cell therapy.

On November 21st, Renew Europe MEP Billy Kelleher will host a roundtable on patients’ access to ATMPs for the TRANSFORM Alliance, a cross-stakeholder group at the European Parliament.

I will represent Bristol Myers Squibb, a pioneer in cell therapy, at the roundtable.

Cell therapies offer innovative, personalized ways to treat diseases through the genetic re-engineering of cells or human tissue. Re-engineered T-cells amplify the immune system’s ability to recognize and remove harmful cells while leaving healthy cells alone.  Autologous CAR-T, a type of cell therapy, is personalized treatment for each patient and administered as a one-time infusion. The cancers CAR-T can treat now affect the blood – leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma.

My message at the roundtable will be that all stakeholders should work together to improve European patients’ access to cell therapies.

Cell therapies, a unique class of medicines, require a rethink of traditional ways of regulation, assessment and reimbursement.

All that takes collaboration.

Here are two areas to work on:

• Affordability and sustainability: New innovations should be able to reach patients quickly. Society and healthcare systems should be willing to invest in new treatments that meet patients’ needs and advance our understanding of managing diseases. For investment in new technologies to be sustainable, flexible access strategies are needed for evidence assessments and evaluations.
• Assessment and evaluation: Health Technology Assessment (HTA) should be adapted to take account of the complex clinical context and technological nature of cell therapies. This can lead to some uncertainty for decision-makers – but we have tools to address it. More flexible HTAs and innovative payment models can address challenges with assessment and evaluation.

Bristol Myers Squibb is building on the first generation of cell therapies. We are investigating new targets in blood and solid tumor cancers, as well as autoimmune diseases and neurological conditions.

Science is moving fast – faster than policy or legislation or regulation. Political leadership can accelerate these.

Let’s all get to work so that we solve the access problem for patients.

What attracted you to join EUCOPE and how can we help you achieve your business goals?

Bristol Myers Squibb operates in a hyper-connected global environment. The impact of what we do depends on how well the environment in which we operate functions. That environment is made up of many stakeholders – companies, policymakers, patients, doctors, researchers, non-government organizations and others.

By helping to give voice to innovator companies, EUCOPE is a vital part of the scientific and policy ecosystem. It acts as a bridge across the stakeholder environment, as well as a platform for informed debate about the policies that shape our business.

We share with EUCOPE a commitment to innovation to improve patients’ lives. If we can enhance stakeholder understanding of science and the complexity of our business model, there is a greater chance that innovation will diffuse across healthcare systems faster and more equally.

All of us working in healthcare share a common vision: to help patients.