A century-old pharmaceutical company with a profound history has not dulled its sense of smell in embracing AI technology. The most recent case is AstraZeneca.
Recently, the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca reached research and development cooperation with two pharmaceutical companies - Benevolent AI and Scorpion Therapeutics - within one day.
According to the agreement, AstraZeneca will use the two companies’ AI drug development platforms to accelerate the development of new drugs for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and heart failure (HF), as well as the development of transcription factors that are difficult to drug. Innovative anti-cancer therapies.
As early as 2019, AstraZeneca reached a research and development agreement with BenevolentAI to cooperate in the development of innovative treatments for chronic kidney disease and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The latest agreement further expands the cooperation between the two parties, adding the above two diseases to the research and development cooperation.
In cooperating with Scorpion Therapeutics, AstraZeneca hopes to combine the former’s integrated discovery platform with its own expertise in the development of precision cancer medicine to overcome the challenge of targeting transcription factors.
In recent years, AstraZeneca has been very active in digital medical layout.
In 2021, AstraZeneca established its eastern China headquarters in Hangzhou. With the help of e-commerce new retail, mobile medical and Internet industry foundations, it will focus on the three major areas of new drug research and development, medical devices and medical data, and Introducing an innovative new retail model for pharmacies.
Judging from the above actions, AstraZeneca is increasingly dissatisfied with the traditional personality of a pharmaceutical company. Why has it become an “alternative” to the pharmaceutical industry?
Benevolent AI and Scorpion Therapeutics are both AI drug discovery companies.
Among them, Benevolent AI was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in London, UK. Based on the amount of financing, BenevolentAI has become the most valuable artificial intelligence start-up company in Europe and ranks among the top five in the world.
Currently, the company has built a proprietary AI drug discovery platform that combines the scientific expertise of approximately 300 world-class scientists and technicians with complete wet laboratory capabilities to deliver drugs with a very high probability New drug candidates.
Its existing pipeline alone has the potential to serve a patient group of more than 260 million people, with a market opportunity of more than 30 billion yuan.
The company’s business segment is divided into two parts: Benevolent Bio and Benevolent Tech.
What AstraZeneca values ??is Benevolent’s comprehensive capabilities in knowledge graphs, Al drug discovery platforms and wet laboratory facilities.
Another company, Scorpion Therapeutics, is a precision oncology company founded in 2020 and headquartered in Boston, USA. It focuses on the research and development of next-generation precision treatments for cancer tumors.
The company combines genomics, proteomics, medicinal chemistry and new target identification into one platform. Currently, it has launched a research and development plan for Precision Oncology 2.0 drugs.
This time, the cooperation with AstraZeneca is based on its 2.0 plan, hoping to develop treatment candidates for "untreatable" non-enzyme targets and internally discovered protein targets, in the same field. Achieve best-in-class (best in class) and first-in-class (latest in class) in drug research and development.
Overall, of these two companies, one is experienced in the AI ??pharmaceutical industry and has a mature R&D pipeline; the other is precisely positioned in the field of cancer diseases and has full competitive potential. AstraZeneca is interested in these two companies, that is Choose to make drug research and development “deeper and more refined”.
New drug research and development is a multi-step, long-term, and high-risk project, which mainly includes four stages: drug discovery, preclinical research, clinical research, and approval and marketing.
But from the perspective of human diseases, there are more than 20,000 protein-coding genes in humans, of which 10-15 are related to diseases, and less than 700 can be used as small molecule drug targets. It is easy to The targets have been exhausted, and the remaining targets are very difficult or difficult to drug, and more time and economic costs are needed to achieve success.
The accelerated upgrading of this process has created a breakthrough point for traditional pharmaceutical companies to solve the problems of long drug development cycles, low success rates, and high costs.
AstraZeneca was founded in 1999 through the merger of two pharmaceutical companies.
In more than 20 years of development, from self-developed new drugs to agent sales, from self-developed new drugs to medical services, from innovation incubation to capital cooperation, in different eras, it has different " way of survival”.
The development history of AstraZeneca can be divided into the following stages:
At the beginning of its establishment, AstraZeneca formed a competitive advantage with its three patented products for chronic diseases and developed terminal The market scale covers front-end R&D costs, and development in the 20th century has been smooth.
However, by the first decade of the 21st century, AstraZeneca continued to "eat" patents, the cost of new drug research and development remained high, and the research and development efficiency was far inferior to that of innovative small companies, so it began to expand its business to the third world. The country transfers R&D centers while maintaining the global price system.
This forward-thinking situation has led to a serious "lack of supply" in AstraZeneca's internal product line.
Subsequently, after 2010, AstraZeneca’s patents “sit back and forth” and gradually lost patent protection. Generally speaking, under the protection of the patent system, innovative drug manufacturers can not only resist imitation by other pharmaceutical companies, but also have time to develop new innovative drugs and cultivate emerging markets.
However, AstraZeneca, which has not yet emerged from its patent trough, can only reject Pfizer's merger invitation while significantly increasing its R&D investment, merger and acquisition frequency, and fire sales.
According to incomplete statistics, in 2015 alone, AstraZeneca made 14 acquisitions, four of which exceeded US$2 billion.
In 2016, AstraZeneca concentrated on fire sales, with the number reaching 11, involving the small molecule infection department, anesthesia department, etc.
A series of weight loss and slimming actions have paved the way for AstraZeneca’s subsequent route.
2015 is an important year in the development history of AstraZeneca.
During this year, the company proposed new business innovation ideas and market strategies, and announced that it would gradually transform from a traditional foreign-funded pharmaceutical company to an innovative pharmaceutical platform company.
During this period, AstraZeneca accelerated "cross-border" cooperation with partners in the fields of pharmaceuticals, equipment, diagnosis, digitalization, capital and other fields to penetrate into the capillaries of the grassroots market.
In 2019, the Chinese market became AstraZeneca’s second largest market for the first time, accounting for one-fifth of its overall revenue. AstraZeneca even defeated Pfizer and took the top spot in the Chinese market. Top position.
In 2020, AstraZeneca continued to rank first in the Chinese market, with annual revenue of US$5.375 billion, while Merck, which ranked second, and Roche, which ranked third, both had revenues of US$3.5 billion, falling far behind. at AstraZeneca.
At this time, the “stable output” from China gave AstraZeneca a sigh of relief. Until the epidemic came, AstraZeneca was pushed again.
The combination of digital technology and various industries has played a decisive role in the epidemic, especially in the medical and health industry. The operation of offline hospitals has been hindered by the epidemic, but people's medical needs have continued unabated. Internet medical care has ushered in the strongest growth in history.
In 2021, Wang Lei said in an interview, "AstraZeneca's main business is still selling medicines, but why do you have to worry about people taking medicines?"
In Azerbaijan In Sereca's vision, pharmaceutical companies are no longer just drug sales, but "innovative platform companies that provide integrated services to patients."
If a pharmaceutical company focuses all its energy and resources on late-stage treatment based on its own product line and does not use it on early warning, disease diagnosis, and post-recovery management, it will undoubtedly increase the cost of patients and medical insurance. burden.
But if you change your business model from selling drugs to selling services and are willing to put some effort into digital marketing, it will not only help you find potential users, increase sales, and cover the long tail of the original drug sales link, but also Communicate other upstream and downstream new products to users.
In essence, this is also an inevitable move to cater to the changes in user consumption psychology and methods in the era of digital economy.
In the long term, the effects of digitalization will definitely appear. The more target groups and times that are affected, the better the effect will be, and at the same time, the marginal cost will decrease.
Therefore, in addition to selling medicines, there is also a lot of work to be done in other aspects. For example, relying on Internet of Things technology, we will gradually build a health Internet of Things network that connects medical institutions at different levels and in different regions to achieve prevention. , full course management of patients from screening, diagnosis, treatment to recovery.
Another example is seeking support from various local partners.
An important point is that China's vast market, China's local medical habits, and China's digital environment have laid the foundation for AstraZeneca to create a "Chinese model" that has been copied around the world.
In 2020, AstraZeneca issued an AI medical "Wulin Calling Order" and sought cooperation with top artificial intelligence companies at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference.
At the beginning of 2021, AstraZeneca frequently promoted business cooperation and announced that it had transformed into a platform company, with many plans in digitalization and innovation ecology.
From the perspective of external cooperation, AstraZeneca plans to launch 200 products to support the goal of US$15 billion in revenue, including self-research, joint development, agency and investment.
These include cooperation with Kunming Pharmaceutical Group (medical big health), Zero Krypton Technology (medical big data), Junshi Biotech (a star company listed on the Hong Kong stock market), Omron (device company), Chengyi Family (digital Medical solution provider) and dozens of pharmaceutical companies have reached cooperation;
Integrating Zeqiao Doctor (medical informatization), Neptune Xingchen (pharmacy chain), Shenzhi Technology (ultrasound AI) and its own incubated Di It has introduced enterprises such as Zhejiang Pharmaceutical to its own life science innovation park;
and established partnerships with CICC Capital, Hillhouse Venture Capital, Tigermed, Yunfeng Fund, Honghui Capital, etc.
From the perspective of internal structure adjustment, at the beginning of 2022, AstraZeneca established a new business unit in China - the Omni-Channel Business Department, covering the County Chronic Disease Business Department, Retail Business Department, Community Business Department, Feiying Business Department and the East Five County Market.
In addition, in terms of personnel transfer, AstraZeneca has established a new vice president-level position to oversee digitalization-related work and integrate AstraZeneca’s IT team, smart health innovation center, and international life sciences innovation The four major teams, including campus and digital business, all pointed at the layout of channels and digitalization.
In short, what AstraZeneca wants to do is a BAT in the pharmaceutical industry.
As Wang Lei, President of China, said: "If you feel that this is not related to your core therapeutic field, let others do it as much as possible. Don't touch it, let others touch it, just do it. Meeting host, you don’t have to think about the content, just participate. Or in other words, it’s a car assembly plant, we can just do the final assembly work.”
At present, with the support of various procurement policies and digital technology. Nowadays, a large number of pharmaceutical companies are following the trend of the times and thinking about new ideas for corporate transformation.
Among them, there are companies like Kunming Pharmaceutical Group that are transforming the health field and expanding into larger consumer groups and scale;
There are companies like Hengrui Medicine that develop generic drugs while using them. Greater cash flow supports the research and development of innovative drugs;
There are also small and medium-sized pharmaceutical companies like Yahong Pharmaceutical that have reduced the scale of drug development and are pursuing their own path in the generic drug market.
But more of them are pharmaceutical giants like AstraZeneca turning into platform companies, as are Novartis, Takeda, Pfizer, etc.
After Novartis global CEO Van Sihan took office, Novartis began to transform into a pharmaceutical and health company driven by data science and digital technology in 2018, and reached chronic disease cooperation agreements with Tencent Smart Medicine, Ark Jianke, etc. Cooperate to explore more possibilities of innovative management models throughout the disease process.
Takeda, Asia’s largest pharmaceutical company, has not adopted the model of giant pharmaceutical companies rolling out the entire process for digital innovation. Instead, it has added digital modules to its existing core product lines and used digitalization to solve urgent needs.
For example, after acquiring Shire in 2017, Takeda immediately completed its global reorganization and concentrated its operating resources on core businesses such as cancer, digestive organs, and central nervous system. It built a "gastrointestinal disease" business around these core drugs. Data", "Services for Mental Illness Patients", and "AI plus New Drug Discovery and Incubator".
Due to the implementation of China's volume purchasing policy, Pfizer's core product performance has been mediocre, so it will increase the layout of new sales channels starting in 2020, and announced the establishment of a separate market expansion team in early 2021. Developing new digital platforms, e-commerce channels, internet hospitals, government partnerships and many other new initiatives to support all business units.
In short, these companies are all carrying out digital layout.
On the one hand, they see the future trend: digital knowledge and information have become new key production factors, and platformization is reshaping the new production relations in the innovative economy.
On the other hand, the external environment is forcing: the new coronavirus epidemic and the new medical reform have made the digital transformation of pharmaceutical companies must be put on the agenda.
From AI pharmaceuticals to R&D cooperation, from traditional pharmaceutical companies to platform giants, the digital transformation of pharmaceutical companies implies more propositions of the times, reflecting the changing needs of the industry and the companies themselves.
The development of pharmaceutical companies must keep up with the general trend of the times. The combination of "AI digitalization" may be an inevitable trend for pharmaceutical companies in the future.
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