Peter Streibl, general manager of Takeda Thailand, highlights the importance of emerging markets for Takeda globally, as well as the 50

year long commitment of Takeda to Thailand and Thai patients. Streibl further discusses how the Takeda Thailand team has worked to bring crucial innovative products and solutions in various therapeutic areas to Thailand, as well as the impact of the recent global Shire acquisition on the Thai affiliate.

 

Having previously been head of strategy & business support for emerging markets, what is the importance of emerging markets such as Thailand for Takeda globally?

We are in a part of the world with some of the largest unmet medical needs for patients and Takeda is a company where patients are at the core of everything that we do. When our CEO came onboard six years ago, he instilled this throughout the entire organization.

Emerging markets have significant importance for Takeda because our ambition is really to make life-transforming and life-saving medicines available to as many patients as possible.

In my previous emerging markets role, we were covering territories from Latin America to Russia, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and China. All of these markets are unique and have their own peculiarities. But this huge unmet medical need is really what we were focusing on and is personally what makes me get up in the morning and come to work. Because we feel we can make a real significant impact on patients’’ lives.

Thailand has the characteristics of both a maturing and emerging market and has strong infrastructure. This is also one of the reasons why there is such a lot of healthcare tourism in the country. People rely on the strength of the healthcare environment.

Another reason that Thailand is a very interesting market and close to my heart is that we also have a strong candidate in Dengue. It is a dangerous disease that is endemic here and is getting more and more serious. We hope to bring a vaccine to the market in the near future, potentially benefiting 69.5 million people across Thailand.

 

Takeda has been present in Thailand since 1969. The affiliate is ranked number 8 in the market and has been growing at 15 percent – much faster than the other Top 10 MNCs. How have you brought about this success, and what is your strategy to continue on this path?

Thailand was Takeda’s second subsidiary launched outside of Japan so we are looking at 50 years history of bringing better health and brighter future to patients in Thailand and consistently delivering growth in the market. I believe we have established Takeda as a trusted partner in the Thai healthcare environment.

We have a broad offering of medicines in key therapeutic areas such as Gastro-Intestinal, Cardiovascular-Metabolic, Oncology, Immunology, Rare Diseases and OTC – and leadership positions in several of them. We strengthen this leadership through launching new treatment options in Thailand such as PCAB for Helicobacter pylori eradication and acid-related diseases, and the once-weekly DPP-4 inhibitor for diabetes mellites type 2.

When I look at the next few years, what we intend to do in Thailand is to launch a range of new products from our rich pipeline, and these are medicines which are really innovative. Especially in the rare disease space, in oncology and in vaccines we have candidates that can address a large unmet medical need.

There are roughly 270 people in Takeda Thailand, many of whom have been with the company for some time. I think what we have is a highly engaged and motivated team on all levels. The values Takeda that is built on, such as ‘Takeda-ism’ and patient-centricity, go extremely well with the Thai culture.

My experience of the team after I joined it three months ago is that our people really enjoy what they are doing because they feel they can make a difference. Takeda has many programs in place, globally and locally, to develop people, not only in the professional space but also in bringing out the best in people. We call it “empowering our people to shine.” Being able to attract, develop and retain top talents will be a key success factor for Takeda Thailand and I have no doubt that with this continued focus on our people will be able to continue to be successful.

 

Takeda is pushing its R&D efforts in four therapeutic areas: Oncology, Gastroenterology (GI), Neuroscience and Rare Diseases. How this focus reflected at the local level?

We are motivated to expand the therapeutic value of our products and bring more innovative medicines such as Neuroscience, Rare Diseases to the country. In the last year, we have launched five products. For example, we launched a life-transforming medication in oncology that addresses Hodgkin’s Lymphoma; an irritable bowel disease treatment, which is actually Takeda’s largest product globally; and the first innovation in a long time concerned with acid-related diseases. We are also now a leader in haemophilia. We launched a recombinant product for people with haemophilia factor 8. We will also launch a number of products in the rare disease space in the coming years.

 

We see that you are bringing a lot of innovative products to the country, is it difficult or easy to do so? And what are the areas of improvement that you have identified?

I was very pleased to see in my first few weeks that the Thai healthcare environment is really recognizing innovation in healthcare more and more. And you can see that tangibly because the time it took for registrations of highly-innovative medicines to market has been reduced to a third of what it took before.

I think that is great for the people in Thailand – that all the processes, the authorities, the pharma companies, are all in line to accelerate this when there are new and innovative medicines available.

There is, of course, an opportunity to bring more and more innovation to the country and we see this happening more. Takeda is very keen on working with stakeholders to bring that innovation to the market. We have now, after the acquisition of Shire, access to a sizeable pipeline of products we can bring to market and most of them really serve completely unmet medical needs. Some of them are in rare diseases, so there is no other medication available.

 

Takeda has recently completed the acquisition of Shire. What has been the impact of your operations here in Thailand and within the region?

Let’s start with Thailand. I think the big change is that it really enables us to have this highly innovative pipeline of products. In terms of integration, it has been highly complementary in talent. So, there were limited overlaps, but it fits nicely. I think that the teams that we brought together collaborate really well already. Sometimes these integrations can be more complex, but in Thailand, it was really complementary, and therefore we are moving faster than other markets. We are operating as one company and we’ve announced a new leadership team. I think it is the outlook towards many new products that has changed.

On a global scale, I think it is a big transformation and catapults us into a different league. We’re a top 10 company globally now. While we already enjoyed that position in Thailand, it just means there is a larger responsibility on all of us, in Thailand as well. We really want to deliver on our commitment, driving patient access. Following the acquisition, we had our annual Takeda leadership conference in Japan. What our CEO reinforced once again was, yes, the world is changing for us because we are bigger, but what is not changing is the patient-centricity at the core of everything we do. That is something for emerging markets as well, and very important.

We remain committed to making life-transforming medicines available to patients all across the globe. What we focus on is access to a medicines program that we are very proud of. Mostly emerging markets countries participate in it. As part of this, there are many programs to overcome the affordability barriers as well as build capacity in terms of disease awareness and diagnosis. We are keen on partnering with other stakeholders to drive forward these important initiatives.

 

Given the Thai market is fragmented with different payers like NHSO (UCS), Social Security Office (SSS), Minister of Finance (CSMBS), and private insurers, how do you plan to ensure your commitment to the Thai patients?

We are committed to the patient at the centre of all we do and ensure that Thai patients under different healthcare schemes get adequate and efficient treatments respecting to their needs.

Access to Medicines is one of Takeda’s priorities worldwide. Also, in Thailand we have a number of Patient Assistance Programs (PAPs) in place, which I’m very excited by. We have innovative and affordability-based approaches to make the product available. Our objective is that, if a patient is diagnosed with one of these life-threatening diseases there is access to treatment options.

Another area is working with the authorities and the various stakeholders to drive diagnosis for some of these diseases, and even disease-awareness. If you look at haemophilia, for example, there is only a portion of the estimated total patients with this disease registered in Thailand. There are many reasons for this. It just shows there is a gap, and there is not enough awareness. That is just one example. The same could be said for many other disease areas.

So, Takeda’s concept is that we want to address affordability for patients, we want to address disease awareness, and we want to help increase disease diagnosis. And all of this contributes to the standard of care. In Thailand, we do this tangibly as we have the patient access programs in place, and we work with several disease associations in driving efforts on disease awareness and diagnosis. From the patient’s perspective, the best thing would be to prevent the disease. There are programs that we have to promote a healthy lifestyle. If you look at Takeda Thailand’s use of social media, for example, we have several programs on awareness and prevention. For example, we have a run for cancer later on in the year. Are we doing enough? Maybe not. But I think we have started good initiatives and it is something we want to get further into.

 

Many of the companies and different personalities in Thai healthcare ecosystem have highlighted the crucial need for more multistakeholder collaboration in order to increase patient outcomes in the country. How do you plan to position Takeda as a partner of choice for the government, the industry and patients?

We are working very hard on some collaborations. With the Rare Disease Foundation, we are working together figuring out the right way to improve Standard of Care. We are also collaborating with the Heart to Heart Foundation, the Cancer Association of Thailand, Thai IBD patient community and other patient associations mostly on raising disease awareness. But as the association of manufacturers in Thailand, we have to establish ourselves as a trusted partner in addressing this in the bigger scheme of things. It is our job to build that trust in society. We all want to support the authorities in addressing those unmet medical needs, especially in noncommunicable diseases. There is still some way to go, but it is a priority.

 

Thailand aims to position itself as a regional hub for clinical trials. What would you highlight as the main developments in this area as well as Takedas contribution in this regard?

I think it becomes more and more important to have patients from many countries being considered in clinical trials and studies. One thing that I am very proud of, in the development of the Dengue vaccine, was that Thailand was one of the key contributors. I think we need to collaborate more closely with several stakeholders in the Thai Healthcare Ecosystem developing new ways to address unmet medical needs.

 

Earlier this year, Christophe Weber, global CEO, reaffirmed Takedas commitment to Takedaism’: IntegrityHonestyFairnessPerseverance, combined with a specific focus on PatientTrustReputationBusiness. What does Takedaismmeans to you?

I think we have a very unique opportunity at Takeda as a 238-year-old company that has consistently been applying these values and operating on a global scale. It gives that sense of belonging and trust, that you spend most of your day at an organization that wants to do the right thing. That is also what resonates very well with the team. Values are what really shaped this company over this long period of time.

It starts with the patient. We really want to build that trust, that reputation. What we want to do is behave ethically and according to our values on all levels to retain that trust. If we can make Takeda stand out as a company doing it that way, then we have succeeded.

What inspires me is that we get to work in an industry where we can develop ourselves, but at the same time, we can do something good for people out there. Not everyone has that opportunity. I stumbled into the industry coincidentally, but I realized very quickly that there is this benefit, that you get to do something that you like, and you get to do something good for others and save lives. We all have stressful days. But there is a meaning and a purpose to it. And that inspires me.

 

What is the image and key qualities of the Takeda Thailand you would like to highlight to our global audience?

Takeda Thailand really embraces that value-based approach to doing business.

We are recognized as a Top Employer for the third consecutive year since 2017, we ranked number 2 of all participating companies from Thailand this year. This achievement highlights our positive corporate culture and outstanding values of Takeda-ism (Integrity, Fairness, Honesty and Perseverance) that empower Thai employees to do truly transformational work. And with 50 years of being in the country, that’s also perceived as 50 years of dedication to the people of this country and to the patients. I would say that is why the organization has been in Thailand for a long time, has been very successful, and is looking into many more years of partnering with stakeholders in the healthcare community to address unmet medical needs for me the only thing that counts is the impact we make on people’s lives. What counts for me is we get out there and make life-saving treatments available to as many patients as possible. In five years, we can do a lot.