PharmTech.com The Real Message Behind Commercial mRNA Products April eBook 2023 Pharmaceutical Technology
®
11
mRNA
TReNds
True (Pfizer): It's a different way of thinking to
be honest, and some people deal with it better than
others. It really pushes us to expand beyond our com-
fort zones. And that's obviously very important for
innovation. I'm relatively new to Pfizer, so I cannot
take credit for all the work done in COVID. That was
a ton of people here at Pfizer working nights, week-
ends, for pretty much two years straight to get that
vaccine out and available. One of the reasons why I
joined Pfizer, I remember in my interview we talked
about breakthrough goals. Now at Pfizer, you're re-
quired to set at least a couple breakthrough goals.
And breakthrough goals, by definition, mean that
these are things that have a greater than 50% chance
of failing. This is significant because other compa-
nies that I've worked with, or at, people set the goals
that they know that they can achieve. There is very
different mentality here at Pfizer. One of the reasons
why I joined, because breakthrough mentality gets
you breakthrough results. And I think you saw that
with the COVID experience. And we're going to apply
that mentality to other things that we're looking at
for future investments. We've got the culture and the
mentality to go after these challenges.
The second thing I would say, perhaps selfishly sit-
ting where I do at Pfizer, is you're going to see a lot more
platform technologies coming in the future, especially
when you look at the genetic medicine space. This is a
huge space. It's very early. I think people are a little bit
nervous about making investments in this space.
But when you look at platform-based technologies,
not program-based or not disease-based, you look at the
technology first and see where it applies, and if it can
apply to multiple areas. This has the potential to really
disrupt the current pharma traditional operating model.
And I think that's essentially something also that we
have to think through. If you have platform-based
technologies and potentially platform-based regu-
latory pathways that might be granted in the future,
you have a mix-and-match types of components and
so forth. What it potentially means for the future of
medicines is you have things coming to market much
faster, you have more potentially coming to market
faster. And this is not something that we're, right now,
equipped to deal with. I think Pfizer's light speed men-
tality puts it ahead of others and being able to maybe
adapt to that as it comes. But, this is something that's
actually very significant for our industry. And as I see
more of these platform technologies come forward,
you're probably going to see some level of a shift in the
operating models, at least in the commercial model,
pharmaceutical companies going forward.
References
1. Simon, A.; Epstain, J.; Murray, K.; Daszak, P.; Lipkin, W.;
et al. A Strategy to Estimate Unknown Viral Diversity in
Mammals. ASM Journals Sept. 3, 2013.
2. R e u t e r s . C a n d i d a A u r i s F u n g u s S p r e a d i n g i n U S
Hospitals–CDC. Reuters.com, March 21, 2023.
3. S p i v e y, C . T h e N e x t P a n d e m i c . B i oP h a r m I n t e r n.
2022 35 (6) p. 6.
4. S p i v e y, C . I n d u s t r i o u s P h a r m a c e u t i c a l s . P h a r m .
Technol. 2022 46 (1) pp. 15-18. ■
"Because if anything
that's come out
of this, there's
more investment in
mRNA now ...
—Jane True, Pfizer
Read More About mRNA
Visit PharmTech.com and our sister publication, BioPharmInternational.com, to read the following articles on mRNA and vaccines:
• Analysis of mRNA Therapeutics and Vaccines
www.BioPharmInternational.com/view/analysis-of-mrna-therapeutics-and-vaccines
• Accelerating the Development of mRNA Therapeutics
www.BioPharmInternational.com/view/accelerating-the-development-of-mrna-therapeutics
• Overcoming Engineering Challenges to Enable Commercial Scale mRNA Vaccine Manufacturing
www.PharmTech.com/view/overcoming-engineering-challenges-to-enable-commercial-scale-
mrna-vaccine-manufacturing
• Vaccine Development Builds on COVID-19 Breakthroughs
www.PharmTech.com/view/vaccine-development-builds-on-covid-19-breakthroughs
