Interview: Focus on the Scandinavian pharmaceutical market

With her large experience in the pharmaceutical industry, Helen Blanco currently serves as Chief Operating Officer at Node Pharma, a preclinical radiopharmaceutical company based in Norway. We recently interviewed Helen about managing a multicultural team and the Scandinavian market - discussing the challenges, strengths, and promising future. Here is another excerpt from our conversation.

In your most recent role as a VP of Operations, how did you manage cultural and international differences?

I have always worked in a multi-cultural environment, even when I started to work for AstraZeneca 24 years ago. We had a team of people working all over the world. I think that the best lesson I learned was during my time at Celgene, we counted 70 different cultural backgrounds in the clinical operations office. It was very interesting. They trained and taught us about cultural differences and how a specific person could look like or could be if they came from a different country. At the end, we had to do a test and the results indicated that I was Russian. I have never been to Russia; I have never had a close friend from Russia influencing me. But this demonstrated that most people that have spent many years abroad in an international setting, ended up with a different nationality to the one they have in their passport. And I think that's the whole thing about cultural differences - it's not about where you originally come from, it's about the person, his/her background and experiences.

When you work with different people from different countries, with different backgrounds, you copy and learn from behaviours that you like. In a multicultural team, the main point is to treat people for who they are, understand that people have different backgrounds and points of view, focus on the similarities and make the most out of the differences. Everyone is part of the team and trying to reach a goal together.

I also strongly believe that as a team leader, you must always set the stage and when companies forget this step, people will cross boundaries, and that’s when conflicts can emerge. People need to treat each other with respect, be humble, and always be open-minded to new ideas because it's so easy to get stuck in old ways of working or thinking. Another important aspect to put in place as a team member is to innovate and question processes, the right solution is not always the one previously executed. In the end, we are trying to find the best solution for everyone. I think that's a good attitude to have.

As an example, a lot of people from France were working at Celgene, they love to debate and have this intellectual discussion that can last for three hours. But when you come from Norway/Scandinavia, everything needs to be said in a few words, we like to keep it short. That was a very different culture for me, but then you understand that this is how they are and learn to see the benefit of an in-depth exchange of ideas. Once you’ve accepted people for who they are, you have more patience in the discussions, and you're more prepared when you work with people who are very different from you. I think that, in Scandinavia, we can learn how to express our ideas better. Americans are so good at it as they learn this early on at school. They learn to present ideas and express their opinions with confidence.

Japanese and Chinese cultures are very different as well. They are hierarchical, so unless you meet the right person who can make the decision, you're not going to get the decision you would hope. Scandinavians tend to prefer a flat structure, where everyone can raise their opinion.

At Celgene, I really learned a lot about the different cultures and interactions, and to work with international colleagues. We had a headquarter in the US and we were the first employees based in Europe. We worked in close collaboration with the American headquarters. To develop our office in Europe, we recruited people from all over the world, it really is challenging to work together as an international team in the most efficient way. People have to get to know each other and know their cultural differences to make it succeed.

You've mainly worked for companies based in Scandinavia. What challenges have you identified in this market and what are the strengths of this market?

I’ve also worked for three American companies: Celgene, Mylan and the CRO Covance. I spent six years in Switzerland which is a hub for the biotech and pharma industry and a year in Australia. One strength is that there are a lot of innovation hubs - One hub is around the Radium hospital in Oslo. There is also the Oslo cancer cluster, the Life Science cluster and then you have the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.

There are a lot of innovations, with good funding put in place for early-phase discoveries. If you are doing in vitro studies, in vivo preclinical studies, or phase one studies, you can get good support from the Norwegian Research Council, Innovation Norway or the Norwegian Cancer Association. As of today, there are 445 Norwegian biotech companies registered, which represents a lot of companies working on innovative projects. With early-stage development companies, the challenges are linked to funding and getting an experienced and knowledgeable team on board. The theory behind the governmental funding is that when you start your phase II studies, you have already proved that your drug is safe as you have collected your early efficacy data, and then you will in theory have no problems getting funding elsewhere.

In Sweden, companies tend to go quite quickly on the stock market. I believe this is a cultural aspect in Sweden that buying stocks on the market is quite a normal thing. In Norway and Denmark, things are different - companies rely on Angel investors, and VCs and prefer to wait for upcoming milestones and deliverables in order to not put themselves in a too risky situation.

Another challenge in Scandinavian countries is the access to adequate knowledge. In Switzerland, there is a natural hub of knowledge and people who have succeeded. We have many examples of success stories with Celgene, Roche and Novartis. In Switzerland, you’re able to quickly speak to experienced and knowledgeable people and learn from their stories. It’s said that around 30% of people living in Switzerland don't originate from Switzerland, in other words, they hire and attract employees from all over the world. Switzerland is an international place to work. In Copenhagen, Denmark there is also a hub of knowledge based on success by Novo Nordisk, Lundbeck and Genmab.

In Norway, there’s limited governmental financial help once the companies get to phase two, they’re meant to stand on their own two legs and obtain funding by other means. The government supports this by stating that biotechnology is the “new oil” of Norway. We all know, there's a very big difference in funding between the USA and Europe in general. The costs of running clinical trials in the USA are much higher so I think that in Europe we try to make it cost-efficient to allow more research and more clinical trials to be conducted. I see that there are more and more clinical trials which is a good thing. Several nonprofit organisations conduct their own clinical trials, and they don't do it to earn money. They’re genuinely interested in finding a solution for cancer.

When I worked for Celgene, we used patient advocacy organisations to find patients for a rare disease trial. It was a real challenge to find sites which had access to the patient population. The patient advocacy groups are now also able to review protocols, help patients to understand better informed consent forms etc.

Over the years now, we’ve seen a big trend in radiopharmaceuticals and Norway with Xofigo, Betalutin and Radspherin creating a hot spot for this knowledge, which is clearly a strength of this market.

Looking into the future, what do you think will be most promising for the Scandinavian market?

I strongly believe in the radiopharmaceutical space. I think that with the history with Algeta and with Roy Larsen and Øyvind Bruland, they have also established a lot of other companies like Nordic Nanovector, Oncoinvent and now ARTBio, and this is attracting others to this market. It's also easier to get financing in the radiopharmaceutical industry. Quite a few of the big pharma companies are actively looking for somebody who can solve this problem in the radiopharmaceutical space.

During my time at Cantargia, I saw the stock drop from 70 crowns per stock to two Swedish crowns even with successful results because there’s not so much interest in immune therapy, where it’s harder to get funding. Companies are downsizing quite frequently due to funding issues. Vaccines within oncology are rather difficult too, I’m not so sure this is the future either. In the end, people put effort in where the financing goes and it's clear that radiopharmaceuticals have caught their eye. Node Pharma recently received funding from the Norwegian Research Council; they have a new compound with a node nanoparticle labelled with a radioisotope.

Companies that are fundraising need to pay attention to the reasons behind success stories. I believe they’re better off offering more funding to a few companies, which would secure further development plans for that company, than investing in very many companies, hence spreading the risk, but not enabling full clinical development for a promising drug candidate. It’s not only about the innovations, it’s about maintaining your strategy and focus. You have to get your drugs to market to get your first income. If you start running numerous clinical trials, you’re diverting your focus away from your main candidate and that prevents you from reaching your target while you actually could have reached your target in one indication, got something on the market and then you would have had an income to broaden your pipeline further.

You’re study results have to trigger further funding. There are 3 things we look at, at the Norwegian Research Council. First is the innovation in itself, and the 2nd is the management of the project so that they have the right set of skills.  The innovators often come from an academic background. We look at who they consult with, who are they collaborating with and if we start seeing a lot of the big pharma names pop up, in addition to consultants known for having run clinical trials or have got drugs to the market, then you know they’re in safe hands.  Compared to those who may go for a local advisor who doesn't have that experience. It has a lot to do with your network. The third pillar is that they have to show that they know something about the market and show they've done their competitive intelligence. I would say that’s where most companies are failing as they haven’t checked their competitors. They haven’t checked what is currently on the market, don't understand how many clinical trials are there in this indication/field, and who the big players are. Is it the big pharma? Which space are they in? A few companies use the global data reports that they have paid for without having looked into it. We see many companies competing in the same indications, so the question is if they have a realistic place in the market.

Contact us today for medical imaging solutions tailored to your needs and let’s get started.