Solvay Healthcare

Source: Case Studies

Date :30/08/2007 16:59:32

Solvay Healthcare is treating an ageing population. Managing Director Dr John Peter explains how a focus on key research areas is producing consistent growth in a competitive pharmaceuticals industry.

Written by James Hurley & Produced by Paul Radbourne

Solvay Healthcare is the UK subsidiary of a major international pharmaceutical company and part of the multi-national Solvay Group, a successful chemicals, plastics and pharmaceuticals organization with a turnover of €9.4 billion. Based in Southampton, Solvay Healthcare is developing on ongoing strategy that focuses on treatments for cardiovascular disease and research into neuroscience. The company employs over 160 people and has a turnover of approximately £50 million.

The corporation’s main areas of focus - neurology and cardiovascular – are complimented by some significant work in gastroenterology. “The World Health Organisation publishes the top eight research areas where work is needed each year, and we’re working in five of those eight,” says Dr John Peter, Managing Director of Solvay Healthcare in the UK. “We feel we’re quite well focused in terms of society’s needs.”

Dr Peter is something of a renaissance man – at least within the broad confines of the medical and pharmaceutical industries. Beginning his career as a dentist, he then decided that he wanted to work as a facial surgeon, so he became a doctor.

“My next move was into the pharmaceutical industry, working in research with a company called Duphar in the Netherlands,” he explains. When Duphar was bought by Solvay, Dr Peter moved over to the marketing side of the business in Germany. From there, he migrated to the company’s new business operations in Holland before coming back to the UK in 1992 as head of the UK & Ireland Pharmaceuticals operation.

An industry challenge

The pharmaceutical industry is finding that it has an increasingly frequent presence in the headlines, as the drug purchasing policies of regional health trusts raise some controversial and emotive issues.

“It’s a very difficult area,” concedes Dr Peter. “There’s no doubt that no national health service can afford everything. Choices have been made, and the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) has been set up.” While the heart drug that Solvay has been working on has been approved by NICE, Dr Peter says policy makers and heath services “have to be very careful not to run a medical service based purely on what we can afford. I think we have to be more objective that that. The problem is, the whole public has to get involved in the debate, and that hasn’t happened so far – but it does have to happen now.

“It’s very easy to be objective about a drug that someone in your family, or you, doesn’t need. When it becomes personal it’s a much more difficult problem, and of course a tricky subsequent discussion. We will get there slowly, but I think we may suffer if we just pick the cheapest of everything.”

Balancing affordability of a drug when it comes to market against recouping potentially huge development costs is a major challenge for drug manufacturers, but also one that society as a whole needs to consider, Dr Peter argues.

“You could take the line of simply having longer patent protections. One of the big problems is that by the time you’ve done your R&D, you haven’t got that much patent time left. Although you’re still faced with the problem of parallel imports, at least it’s just your drug coming from somewhere else, so you still make some return. But once the patent is gone, you make nothing.

“We had a drug go off patent three years ago, and within five months we’d lost 70 percent of the business. Nobody’s stopping generics, and of course it’s perfectly legal, but it means that once generics hit, the business is gone and investment in that area is likely to stop. Ongoing research stops because you’re just doing it on behalf of generic companies, so it’s a double loss in a sense.”

As medicine and diagnosis improves, Dr Peter says that the day of the blockbuster drug is probably gone. “Diagnosis in medicine is getting a lot better and what were big syndromes will become small, specific areas. This is a good thing, but we’ll have a lot more targeted, focused drugs, while the research costs may not be dramatically different. If you don’t enable return, it will be even more difficult for people to do research in those diminishing areas, which is to nobody’s benefit. There isn’t a big thriving government industry out there producing wonderful new drugs,” he says.

The limitations and controls imposed by governments make the European market a very difficult place for everyone to be in. “Like everybody else, we need to get more out of our own R&D and I think the industry has to find a way of developing a dialogue between industry, government and academia. To some extent, with the industry-government taskforce, that is happening in the UK, which is showing a good example and doing rather better than a lot of other countries.”

Neurology and cardiovascular

In the UK, Solvay’s biggest areas of focus are on a drug for the prevention of secondary heart infarction (dead tissue resulting from the sudden loss of blood supply following a heart attack), Omacor, and a brand new drug for the treatment of advanced Parkinson’s Disease. “There’s good data that there’s a major reduction in secondary infarcts with this drug. Along with our Parkinson’s Disease drug, this will be big areas for us,” says Dr Peter.

In January 2005, Solvay Pharmaceuticals acquired Neopharma AB, a company based in Sweden, and in the process added Duodopa, an important new therapy for people suffering from advanced Parkinson's. The treatment is based on continuous dopaminergic stimulation by means of a new formulation of well-known substances, levodopa and carbidopa, dispersed as a viscous gel. Using a specially designed patient-operated portable pump, the drug is continuously delivered via a tube directly into the duodenum.

“Our focus on those two drugs will give us more than enough to do,” he says. “The Parkinson’s area is a big opportunity for Solvay and we also have other medicines around that area. If we’re being objective about it, the population is growing older and it does require medication. The need for an industry is not going to vanish overnight. It is tough and it is going to get tougher, but it it’s a big industry that will stay. People can be proud of being in an industry that’s doing something worthwhile. Pharmacy can be poor at singing its own praises. But if you think of developments such as anaesthetics and antibiotics, who would want to be without those? The industry has done a lot of good things and it will go on doing those.”

An excellent working environment

The working culture fostered at Solvay Healthcare was recognised in 2005 when, just three months after being named small company of the year at the Pharmaceutical Marketing Effectiveness Awards, Solvay was ranked 75th in the prestigious Sunday Times after 100 Best Small Companies to Work For. Solvay was the only pharma company to be listed in this category.

“In a market as large and aggressive as the pharma one, the quality and passion of our people helps us to compete effectively, and that is what we work very hard to develop and encourage,” says Dr Peter.

“We wanted to compare ourselves against the outside world. We went into the Sunday Times competition with the philosophy that as a smaller company, you may not have all the glitz and glamour, but you do have a chance to communicate and create an excellent working environment; the smaller size is to your advantage.

“It gives you a benchmark against the rest of the industry. It’s great for your employees to be able to go home and say that they work for one of the 100 best small companies in the UK.”

Dr Peter says that this is also helpful when it comes to recruitment in a competitive environment. “People have come to our website because we are one of the hundred best companies, so clearly the word does get about. You wonder when you go into these things whether people will take any notice of it, but it’s pretty clear that they do.

A lot of our employees are graduates and it’s not easy when you’re leaving university to decide where you’re going and what you will do. The pharmaceutical industry takes a lot of graduates on. Becoming a rep gives you time to see exactly what you want to do as the industry has a lot of opportunities. Graduates aren’t stuck by becoming a representative.

"We’ve done quite well, because within Solvay there have been big chances for people to move abroad and build an international career. Solvay is over 140 years old so it has a lot of established companies all around the world. It’s also a big plastics and chemicals company so there is an opportunity for people to see a broad industry. They’re not just tied to whatever this business happens to be doing. It also gives a lot of economic stability, so overall it’s a good stable environment for people to be in.”