Challenges – The crisis has clearly shown that health is the first of the common goods. What are the major transformations in pharmaceutical innovation?
Eric Ducournau – The first transformation is linked to the progress of science and technology. The second relates to the place that has become central to patients. They are now at the heart of our innovation processes. Thus, maintaining a good quality of life for the patient, during and after treatment, becomes a key criterion during clinical trials.
Are we moving towards more tailor-made medicine?
When faced with the same disease, everyone reacts differently depending on their physiological characteristics and genetic profile. Treatment should take these differences into account. We see it in Pierre Fabre in cancer therapies. Unlike chemotherapy, new therapies attack specific characteristics of tumor targets. This is the double assurance that the treatment will be more effective and better tolerated.
What is Pierre Fabre’s place in these therapeutic revolutions?
A Big pharma will hesitate before going on therapeutic indications whose market size is less than one billion euros. If we are able to identify and innovate in the right niches, then Pierre Fabre will find its place in oncology. This is what we have been doing since 2019 with targeted treatments against certain mutations in melanoma and colorectal or breast cancers. We have the same approach for rare diseases in dermatology.
Should the funding of therapeutic innovation evolve?
First of all, there should be a European agency capable of giving advice committing it to each stage of the development of a drug, like the American FDA, which takes on a real advisory role with regard to laboratories. Then, to quickly bring a drug to the market, it is necessary to be able to mobilize significant funding. Via BARDA, the US government partially funded the development of the anti-Covid vaccine and it benefited from a better price upon arrival. We have never been so close to the creation of such an agency in Europe but we are still discussing it.
How Pierre Fabre intends to work for the common good?
First of all through our economic model since we belong to a foundation recognized as being of public utility which works to provide access to healthcare in the countries of the South. We are thus the only French company to pay 86% of its dividends for the benefit of the common good. Before launching our strategic transformation plan, we redefined our raison d’être: “every time we take care of one person, we make the world a better place”. In doing so, we took the risk of subordinating all our actions to the idea of doing our part for the common good. This is what we did by tracing our decarbonization plan on the climate trajectory of the 2015 Paris Agreement. A company must agree to immerse itself in the societal debate if it wants to fully contribute to the common good.
Interview by Gil Bousquet
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