Connecting to the public

Burdening complexity

Pedagogic drive

People

Conveying a sense of wonder and joy

Pharmaceutical research, despite its societal importance, is an arcane process most people are unfamiliar with. For those fluent in the science, sharing their knowledge to a wider audience is as rare as it is fulfilling. The Novartis Pavillon exhibition Wonders of Medicine gave several associates the chance to showcase their work – an opportunity they embraced readily.

Text by Goran Mijuk, photos by Adriano A. Biondo, illustration by Philip Buerli

Veteran scientist Pascale Burtin...

Table of contents

Connecting to the public

Burdening complexity

Pedagogic drive

Published on 31/05/2022

Pascale Burtin’s job as Head of Clinical Development Excellence at Novartis is all about knowledge transfer and experience sharing, a role to which she morphed almost naturally after a long and successful career that saw her work for over a decade on the development and launch of a major neurological medicine.

When the call came to participate in a video series for the Novartis Pavillon in which she and other associates could explain some of the industry’s intricacies, she not only readily accepted the offer but was happy to share her coaching experiences and professional skills with an outside public.

Others have joined her in this endeavor, including Nathan Mulure, Ronnen Roubenoff, Katie Worringer, Carien Dekker, Christopher Brain, MooJe Sung and Martin Mueller-Zsigmondy, who all work in different parts of Novartis, which employs more than 100000 associates in more than 100 countries worldwide.

“For me it was really a chance to talk about a part of my experience to a wider, non-professional audience, which seldom happened during my career,” explained Burtin, who had a background in medi-cine and pharmacology when she joined Novartis in the Translational Medicine department.

There, she spent nearly 10 years as she was able to bring a molecule through all the stages from early testing to the clinic and finally to the market. Such a journey is outstanding for a scientist as drug development is usually fraught with innumerable pitfalls.

For those who have gone through the myriad steps involved in developing a new therapy, the long journey holds countless lessons. “In many ways, drug development is really about constant problem solving and dealing with situations that no one can plan for,” Burtin says describing her take on the industry.

Connecting to the public

While her current job is about sharing her insights with development teams working on novel molecules, she believes that sharing knowledge and experience with a wider public is important too: “Part of the reputational issues that pharma has been facing has certainly to do with its innate complexity,” Burtin explains. “So, having the chance to explain some of these processes can certainly help the general understanding of our industry.”

Similar thoughts attracted Susan Longman to be part of the Pavillon project. Although her role as Global Head of Regulatory Affairs may not ring a bell with a wider audience and may be even difficult to put into words, much less a video, Longman was able to pull off one of the most widely known items of medicine as a symbol of her daily work: the patient leaflet.

Of course, this piece of paper, which accompanies every medicine, constitutes only a small part of Longman’s work, which is to register a new medicine with health regulators. She and her team, which consists of some 2000 associates worldwide, overview millions of pages of documentation, which are included in dossiers submitted to health authorities so that regulators can make informed decisions about whether to approve or reject a new drug.

The skillset needed for this job is diverse and requires a mix of science, analytics and writing expertise as well as communication and negotiation skills, among many other capabilities. Asked whether it was hard to find candidates interested in this field of work, Longman said that a recent advertisement for 10 vacancies on a postdoc program attracted more than 300 CVs from aspiring candidates.

This is also due to the rapid advancement of medicine. “Despite the complexity, people are drawn to regulatory affairs, not least because recent scientific developments in gene therapy and nuclear medicine have added new dimensions to our daily work, as we also need to make sure that regulators understand the complexity of new, high-tech therapies,” Longman explains.

Burdening complexity

The advances in medicine over the past quarter century have been tremendous. When Novartis was created in 1996, the active ingredients of most drugs were small chemical compounds, which in essence were unchanged from the first drugs produced a century earlier. Biologics were still rare 25 years ago, and approaches such as gene therapy, nuclear medicine or digital health were closer to science fiction than reality.

This picture has almost completely changed today. Gene therapy has made big inroads over the past few years and has become a promising new avenue to treat and even cure hereditary diseases. Likewise, nuclear medicine is emerging as a new weapon in the fight against some cancers, and the digitization of healthcare is changing everything from drug discovery to clinical trials.

Despite this innovation explosion, which has attracted thousands of specialists from different scientific fields such as IT or physics to the industry, the general view of the sector has been subdued – that is, until the pandemic.

The outbreak of the coronavirus and the subsequent fast-paced development of potent vaccines has helped the sector turn its reputation around. A survey based on roughly 70000 people from 15 countries by Boston-based consultancy RepTrak showed that pharma made the biggest reputational advance of all industries in 2021.

While the pandemic has certainly created more interest in the industry and science in general, the sheer complexity of the pharmaceutical industry is still creating information flow barriers, even within families, says Diane Namy. She is working as a production specialist at the biologics plant in Huningue, France, where she is part of a team producing protein-based medicines.

“Taking part in the Pavillon video series, which is designed to bring our industry closer to the public, was a great experience,” Namy says. “While I had the general public in mind, I was also thinking about my family members, who have little to no understanding of what my job in the facility actually looks like.”

Pedagogic drive

Namy hopes not only that her explanations will help visitors understand what it takes to produce a biological drug – which is made from living cells rather than through the synthesis of chemical compounds – but that they could also inspire her sister to pursue a similar career. “We are a family of lawyers with little touchpoints to medicine,” she said. “But my younger sister is interested in the field and hopefully my explanations are strong enough for her not to lose interest or curiosity.”

Daniel Baeschlin shares a similar pedagogic drive. The scientist wanted to be a teacher early on in his career but dropped the idea as he felt somewhat unfulfilled in the role. “We are a family of teachers, and it was a career path I thought I could pursue too. But I guess in the end I am more of a researcher and want to be part of the exciting story of science.”

Still, Baeschlin loves to expound on the complexities behind his work, which includes running the company’s high- throughput screening, where robots are used to test potential compounds in the early stage of drug research. As much as this is an essential step in drug research, it is also a stunning experience when one sees how a robot arm moves swiftly through a library consisting of thousands of molecules, a process Baeschlin delights in.

The researcher is also often hired to explain the intricacies of drug discovery to guests visiting the Campus. It is an opportunity he cherishes greatly as it not only gives him a chance to retest his talent as a teacher but allows him also to help people develop a better view of how technology and biology work hand in hand to produce innovative drugs.

Being part of the Pavillon series was no different. “When it comes to shedding light on what we are doing, there is always a great sense of pride, which motivates me to share my experience. Because even in my normal daily work I feel this sense of being part of something bigger. If I can convey this sense of wonder and joy, I think I have achieved quite a lot.”

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