The Biopharmaceutical CEO Roundtable (BCR), which represents the world's leading biopharmaceutical companies, held their first face-to-face meeting since December 2019 in Brussels on Monday 21 and Tuesday 22 June, to discuss global health challenges and public health policies impacting biomedical innovation.
The fourteen biopharmaceutical industry CEOs who attended in person represent a global industry which is heavily invested in Europe, as key players in the research and development ecosystem, local economies and with health care systems. Their programme included meetings with European Commission Vice-President Schinas, Commissioner Kyriakides and Commissioner Breton, as well as Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, and covered a range of topics, including the development and scaling up of COVID-19 vaccines and how to foster an environment that invests in innovation. The CEOs explained the incredible innovations coming down the pipeline for patients, such as combination therapies, advanced therapies and Artificial Intelligence guided therapy.
The multifaceted root cause of unavailability and delay to innovative medicines were discussed, and the need to find solutions to reduce the time before patients have access to innovative medicines. The group tabled a number of proposals including the establishment of an industry portal targeting European access hurdles reflecting the shared aspiration of companies to file pricing and reimbursement applications within 2 years from the granting of the marketing authorization. The CEO delegation made concrete proposals to ensure equity of access and solidarity across EU member states, by means of equity-based tiered pricing, which would require an intergovernmental framework for it to be implementable and effective. There was clearly a shared commitment to ensure safe and efficacious innovative products reach the market and patients, enabled by a first-class regulatory system. The EU's regulatory system, which stood up well to the pandemic challenges, could remove the bottlenecks and catch up with regulatory systems in other parts of the world in terms of speed and flexibility of assessment by rationalising the decision making (expertise based) and reducing interfaces.
The innovation eco-system involving academia, biotech SMEs, bigger pharma companies or public-private partnerships such as the IMI and the future Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) is key to future innovation and Europe's competitiveness. While many aspects of the system work well, more could be done to create a better environment for European biopharmaceutical SMEs. Encouraging a culture shift in academia to increase its focus on translational research is one key element, as is looking at how to keep entrepreneurs of biotech start-ups in Europe, who often leave for countries which have more favourable innovation and tax incentives. The fact that there are fewer large venture capital funds or similar options in Europe willing to take on the level of risk biotech SMEs face also plays a role in innovators leaving Europe.
The BCR delegation shared its views on the COVID-19 crisis and how to ensure treatments and vaccines reach all who need them. The CEOs explained how they share the ambition of ensuring global access to all therapies and vaccines especially in response to global pandemics. While considerable progress has been made to develop vaccines in record time and deliver them globally, the delegation was concerned that this aspiration had not be met yet, by any means. The delegation shared with Vice-President Schinas, Commissioner Kyriakides and Commissioner Breton their short term five step plan to urgently support stepping up dose sharing and continue efforts to optimize production of COVID-19 vaccines, so that the goal of equit...
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