Marie-France Tschudin: "It makes me very frustrated to see cases of people who have waited a decade to solve a problem for which there has been medication for 15 years"

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Marie-France Tschudin

has been working in the pharmaceutical sector for 30 years and enthusiastically defends what this industry can achieve for society: developing new, more precise therapeutic options with fewer side effects,

, bet more on prevention and ensure that health is no longer seen as an expense instead of an investment.

Today, as Global President of the Innovative Medicines Unit and Chief Commercial Officer of Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, her goal as a leader is

to make an impact .

real in patients, and assures that she feels fortunate to work with people who, aware of the influence they can have, are eager to do something to ensure that a patient can spend one more Christmas with his family, a child can develop from normal way or a woman can live with breast cancer.

What obstacles do we have to overcome as a society to achieve some of these goals? First of all, I believe that

.

The problem is that the systems are being managed as cost centers, trying to lower them more and more, but without thinking about what we can do better and more efficiently.

A good example is cardiovascular diseases, whose socioeconomic burden in Europe represents between 4 and 5% of GDP and which are the leading cause of death in Spain (200,000 per year).

, and in most cases with generic drugs that cost practically nothing.

But today's healthcare systems, built after World War II, do not have prevention in mind or actively seek out patients to detect those at high risk of having a second cardiovascular event in order to treat them and avoid the hundreds of thousands of people who they are admitted every year due to cardiovascular disease. How can a company like Novartis work to reverse this situation? I have my feet on the ground, and I know that Novartis is not going to change the world, but we can start working in a different way and think about the sustainability of the health system, for example,

which is currently intended for prevention in the appropriate medication for the patient and at the appropriate time.

and convey to them that this is not a smart way to work, and that we can do better.

And we have everything to do it: medication that we didn't have 30 years ago and the ability to proactively identify patients thanks to digitization and other tools that we didn't have in the past.

We have witnessed an

but we have also seen many situations of people who have waited a decade to solve a problem for which we had medication on the market for 15 years on the market, and this causes me a lot of frustration because there is no area of ​​life in which this is tolerable.

There is much to improve and it is in our hands to do so. Along with other international representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, you recently had the opportunity to meet with the President of Spain, Pedro Sánchez.

Have these needs to transform the health system in Spain and the opportunity that the Spanish Presidency of the EU in the second half of this year may offer you? I think that

both for the next European Presidency and for the investment of 8,000 million euros to which the pharmaceutical companies in Spain have committed.

We are talking about a huge investment, which will not only go to biomedical development, but also to the development of digital tools, which will increasingly enter our lives as health consumers.

There are

and investment in high-level medical development and innovation.

Of course we are also

, which would change if we start to see them as an investment, not as an expense, and to do what is necessary so that the System and the use of resources are more efficient -not necessarily greater-.

Elements should be managed as a company, and not as a cost center where it doesn't matter where the money goes because when it's gone, it's gone.

That does not make sense.

I also think it

.

It will be very different from today, as we are compared to 10 years ago;

we have much more information than our parents and grandparents, and in the future we are going to demand more prevention.

For example, a recent study by the WifOR Institute focused on the sustainability of health systems reveals that 72% of people in Europe think that governments should invest more in prevention, to which only 3% of the European budget is allocated today. What treatments is Novartis focusing on to achieve all these goals? Among the hundreds of drugs we are developing, I would

especially with a view to the future: a compound for heart failure and another for the reduction of cholesterol levels, both in the Cardiology area;

a new indication for a monoclonal antibody for the treatment of hidradenitis suppurativa, a very severe dermatological disease for which there are not many options;

a product for paroxysmal hemoglobinuria that also has great potential in kidney diseases;

a monoclonal antibody launched in Spain last November as the first and only self-administered highly effective therapy for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, and two in the Oncology area, one in breast cancer that has three studies that have shown the longest overall survival ever reported in this disease,

and a therapy based on radioligands for metastatic prostate cancer, a great promise that we are also studying for its use in prechemotherapy. Precisely in therapies with radioligands, which specifically target the tumor without damaging healthy cells, the Swiss multinational has a extensive pipeline in development against different types of cancer and is investing in its manufacturing capacity to meet the growing demand for these treatments.

What role does Spain play in its production? Novartis has recently announced n

The Swiss multinational has a broad portfolio under development against different types of cancer and is investing in its manufacturing capacity to meet the growing demand for these treatments.

What role does Spain play in its production? Novartis has recently announced n

The Swiss multinational has a broad portfolio under development against different types of cancer and is investing in its manufacturing capacity to meet the growing demand for these treatments.

What role does Spain play in its production? Novartis has recently announced n

.

Thus, in June 2022, it announced the investment of 12.9 million euros in an innovative facility in Castellanos de Moriscos (Salamanca) for the creation of therapies with radioligands that will be supplied from there to the entire Iberian Peninsula, including hospitals that use these therapies in Portugal.

We also announced in 2022 the investment of 1.5 million euros in the expansion of the radioligand factory in Almunia de Doña Godina (Zaragoza), which will multiply its production capacity by five, double its export capacity and mean the creation 20 new jobs.

Both

in the area of ​​radioligands, a therapy that has been launched in the United States with impressive success because it is effective, very safe and without the side effects of chemotherapy, to which patients are increasingly reluctant;

something understandable. Do precision therapies and those based on radioligands anticipate the eventual disappearance of chemotherapy in future cancer treatment? That has to be the goal, because the side effects of chemotherapy are dire for patients.

of chemotherapy.

We are not at that stage yet, and chemotherapy is still the mainstay for many solid tumors, but we have made a lot of progress in hematology.

We are making progress in immunotherapy, in precision therapies, in radioligands and other therapies that we are also exploring in this field and that may also have a very important future, to the point that today we are talking about many almost chronic diseases in haematological oncology.

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