The Hindu Business Line : Stung by failure, Pfizer unleashes Asia strategy

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The company is also concentrating on neurosciences, inflammation, pain and the diabetes segments.
Medicines would be developed to meet the needs of different markets.

P.T. Jyothi Datta

Mumbai, March 18 Spurred by the “visible, expensive, and ego-damaging failure” of cholesterol drug Torcetrapib and inhaled diabetes drug Exubera, multinational drug major Pfizer has unleashed its Asia strategy to cast a wide net across different regions and therapeutic segments. And India sits at the very edge of this strategy, said Dr Michael Berelowitz, Pfizer Inc’s Senior Vice-President and Global Medical Head of Worldwide Development.

After a day of meetings on his maiden visit to India, the senior Pfizer representative said, he was convinced that “we do not do enough work in India.” Expressing his intent to bring more clinical trials into the country, he added, the India strategy would become clear in a few months, after he returned to the company’s headquarters to hammer out a decision on the trials and products that can be brought to India.

At present, India undertakes about 44 global trials in the country. Pfizer officials said they were looking at alternate indications of kidney-cancer drug Sutent in colorectal, breast and lung cancer.

Pfizer has sought regulatory permission for clinical trials to explore Sutent’s effectiveness in colorectal cancer, Pfizer India’s Medical Director, Dr Chandrashekhar Potkar, said, adding that breast cancer trials were on the cards.

Explaining the regionalisation strategy, Dr Jorge Puente, Pfizer’s Vice-President Medical and Regulatory Affairs for Japan and Asia, said that medicines would be developed to meet the needs of different markets.

Of the three cancers – lung, gastric and liver – two of them are infrequent in the West, he said. But this week, investigators were set to meet in Asia to initiate a Phase III clinical studies on a prospective liver cancer drug, he added.

Pfizer’s Asia strategy across Japan, South Korea and China is in the process of being implemented, and the next stop is India, said Dr Berelowitz, adding: “Not because it’s cheap, but because of the quality and speed at which they are able to deliver.”

Beside oncology, the company is also concentrating on neurosciences, inflammation, pain and the diabetes segments.

Transformation

Pfizer has been transforming itself under its new leadership, he said, morphing from a US-centric, molecule-driven company to being more mass-market.

Looking to decrease its dependence on single molecules, such as its $13 billion cholesterol drug Lipitor that is facing a generic onslaught, Pfizer has initiated business units to focus on oncology, biologics and even generics, he said. “We are depending on entrepreneurial parts of the company to make us successful. We are creating units and giving them the authority to be successful,” he said, adding: “It is better to be a patch-work quilt of success than a dinosaur!”

On Pfizer’s dependence on Lipitor, he said that it was “too-distracting” to focus on a single molecule. “Last year, for the first time, we earned outside the US than inside,” he said.

And while some of this could be because of forex, it is also because the company was going global, he added.

Partnerships, too, are on Pfizer’s radar, he said, adding, “we partner shamelessly,” provided it advances the company’s own technology or product base.

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