CEO John Oyler knows BeiGene’s mission from the day it was founded 14 years ago — to create life-saving oncology therapeutics — matches that of others competing in the space.
“It’s not so unusual,” he said. “A lot of people have that aspiration.”
BeiGene’s mission, however, goes a step further.
The now billion-dollar global brand wants to ensure that its medications can reach everyone on the globe — sadly, only the richest countries benefit from many medicines today — and be affordable, too.
That’s the ultimate challenge in the fight against cancer, Olyer said.
“Whether it’s in the U.S., where you have a lot of patients that can’t make their copayments, or whether it’s globally, where you just have people that don’t have access to medicine, there are big challenges,” he said.
“We said, ‘Let’s try to do the great science and make impactful medicines, but, also — as a requirement for that — let’s try to rebuild every aspect of the business along the way and understand where costs come from, and, how we can do everything possible to minimize that?’ So, when you ultimately have a product and you launch it, you can bring it in a more affordable way to patients.
“That’s the goal.”
That aim gets a big boost Tuesday, when BeiGene cuts the ribbon on an $800 million, 42-acre state-of-the-art research and manufacturing facility at the Princeton West Innovation Center in Hopewell.
The campus initially will have 400,000 square feet of space dedicated to commercial-stage biologic pharmaceutical manufacturing — but it will have the ability to expand an additional 700,000 square feet in the years ahead.
Some of the company’s more than 4,000 employees involved in oncology research and development will work from there — helping to oversee the company’s numerous clinical trials (BeiGene currently is conducting more than 140 trials involving more than 20,000 patients worldwide).
BeiGene has more than 10,000 employees in more than 40 locations on five continents. Creating such a massive hub in New Jersey — one that eventually will take the lead on many of its clinical trials and manufacturing — will be key.
It’s something Oyler realized the company has needed to implement for some time — or since he realized that clinical trials can be the cause of approximately 75% of costs that come in developing medicine.
“A lot of the work is done with third parties, a lot of the work is done with old technology — and a lot of the work is done only at the top oncology centers in the world, which don’t have the capacity and are really expensive,” he said.
“Our goal from the start was to be smarter and do them differently.”
Adjusting those cost issues will lead to greater distribution, Oyler said.
“The problem is not, how do we get medicine to the wealthiest people in the world? but, how do we really drive it to others?” he said. “We think we can drive it in an affordable business model to two-thirds of the world.”
BeiGene isn’t stopping there, Oyler said.
Oyler said getting therapies to the poorest countries, the remaining third of the world, will be a challenge. He acknowledges there will be a need to work with non-governmental organizations. And he acknowledges the mission is not profit-driven.
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“You can’t make any money in the last third of the world,” he said. “But it’s not about that. It’s about getting people medicine to help them. We need to figure out how to do that. And we shouldn’t have any expectation other than we’re going to try to help those people.”
The profits will come elsewhere, Oyler said.
“I think, for two-thirds of the world, if we really are careful about the way we approach things from a business perspective, we can do that in a way that is a sustainable industry, one that still is profitable enough to plow back all the money that we spend on R&D to make the next generation of new medicines to help patients and continue to move the needle forward.”
This mission, Oyler said, will be felt throughout the Hopewell campus.
“I think the vast majority of people that are in our organization are here because they know that we’re sincere about not just making great medicine, but when we make them, getting them to more people around the world and getting it to them more affordably,” he said.
