Broadening the spectrum

Published on 14/09/2022

When I started my career as a physician-scientist more than two decades ago, medicine had already made huge leaps forward. Breakthroughs in cancer, heart disease and inflammatory conditions helped millions of people improve and extend their lives. But this was only the beginning of things to come. Technological advances and increased collaboration would soon open new avenues.

As I carved my path through university and medical school and just a few years before I joined Novartis, scientists had deciphered the human genome. The first biological drugs were developed, bringing new therapeutic options to modern healthcare which for more than a century relied almost exclusively on chemical compounds.

In the years that followed, science accelerated at a rate that was hardly deemed possible when I started my own journey. The rise of genetics, the rigorous approach of chemical biology, and breakthroughs in artificial intelligence as well as rapidly improving imaging tools allowed researchers to explore human biology by studying proteins and cell structures at an atomic resolution.

Affecting the inner machinery of the cell

Drugs from our industry’s early days were generally nonspecific. Some went inside the cell, while some stayed outside the cell. In our current era, we are able to affect the inner machinery of the cell. For the first time in the history of medicine, we have the ability to impact the entire continuum of cellular machinery – to interact with what is essentially the source code of the human cell.

In just the past few years, multiple new types of treatment – a new generation of medicines – have been approved and are reaching patients. This includes RNA therapies, RNA vaccines, cell therapies, gene therapies, and radioligand therapies, which allow us to develop procedures for combating diseases that were considered untreatable at the start of the millennium.

Only 10 percent of diseases are curable

But despite these magnificent advances, today’s healthcare challenges remain as big as ever because the vast spectrum of disease still remains largely beyond the reach of treatment options. We are currently only able to significantly impact less than 10 percent of the 7000 to 8000 diseases known to affect humans.

To reap the full extent of today’s scientific and technological possibilities, accelerating collaboration will be decisive going forward. This is because science is becoming increasingly specialized and because innovation often happens at the intersection of diverse research fields such as biology and data science.

The power of collaboration has been most notable during the coronavirus crisis. It was the ensuing interaction between the many different players within the world’s scientific community, including the tremendous collaboration of companies across our industry, which was decisive for the record-breaking development and distribution of innovative vaccines and medicines that eventually helped rein in the pandemic.

Important external partners

As a science-based company which spends around USD 9 billion every year on research and development—rivaling most companies in and beyond our sector—Novartis considers collaboration a vital element in our efforts to innovate. This includes external collaboration with industry peers and academia and a growing number of stakeholders, such as patient organizations and NGOs.

Our own breakthroughs in areas such as gene therapy or nuclear medicine would not have been possible without external partners, bringing together some of the world’s leading scientists. And as we expand on these novel technologies, we will remain on this collaborative path.

More than 300 research partnerships

This is especially the case in Switzerland, whose scientific and economic success rests on its ability to connect and work with the rest of the world. While we entertain more than 300 research partnerships worldwide, Switzerland is one of our most important research hubs, where we have seen an acceleration in interactions with our peers over the past few years.

As part of these efforts, we opened our Campus in Basel to third-party companies in 2019 to strengthen the local research ecosystem and to intensify cooperation with highly specialized startups. More than 20 companies have joined us here in Basel - and counting.

We have also boosted existing partnerships with academic players such as the Friedrich Miescher Institute and have been a founding member of the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel. We have likewise intensified our partnership with the Paul Scherrer Institute in our efforts to further our research in nuclear medicine.

Left out of Horizon Europe

Although Switzerland’s research community is under increasing pressure as a result of rising geopolitical tensions and the fact that Switzerland’s academic centers have lost full access to the European Union’s research program Horizon Europe, collaboration will remain a centerpiece of the country’s science and business communities.

Zurich, Lausanne and Basel, with their closely knit research networks of universities, private research institutes, lively startup scenes and leading pharmaceutical companies, such as Novartis and Roche, are still among the world’s most innovative research hubs. While it is important that Switzerland can soon rejoin Horizon Europe, its research centers will need to work on spreading their networks outside Europe.

Public-private partnerships

Being part of and nurturing such research networks is vital for both small and large research organizations given the large pool of more than 8 million scientists worldwide. To tap into this huge knowledge reservoir, Novartis, for example, is a member of the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI), a public-private partnership which unites the pharmaceutical industry with universities, research centers, patient organizations and regulators.

The IHI not only combines much-needed expertise from different science groups, it also brings other stakeholders to the table. This idea of bringing together experts from different fields is an element which is becoming increasingly important to develop more holistic solutions in the realm of medicine and technology.

Be prepared for collaboration

The idea of broadening the spectrum of science contributors is increasingly gaining pace. While technology will continue to advance at an even faster pace in future, our ability to leverage it will rest on our willingness to work together with others. This will allow us to develop the most potent and durable therapies for patients in need and continue forging ahead on the inspiring journey we have been able to observe and participate in over the past two decades.

The op-ed was first published in the Swiss weekly HandelsZeitung.