Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 183 - Matt Erick - CCO Biocon Biologics

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Episode 183 - Matt Erick - CCO Biocon Biologics · The BioHub - by Avetix

0:06
Welcome back to another episode of the Biohub and Avetics
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podcast. Today I'm joined by Matt Eric,
0:12
Chief Commercial Officer for Advanced Markets at Biocom
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Biologics. Matt has spent over 2 decades in
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pharma and healthcare, leading commercial strategy across
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generics, biologics and complex global markets.
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At Biochem Biologics, he's responsible for driving growth
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across North America, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New
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Zealand as the company continues to expand access to high quality
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biosimilars. In this conversation, we talk
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about Biocon's journey into the US, decision to bring generics
0:41
and biologics together, the evolution of the biosimilars
0:45
market, and how the company continues to perform in a
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challenging market. It's a pleasure to have you,
0:50
Matt, How are you? Great.
0:52
Thanks Max, Thanks for having me.
0:54
It's an absolute pleasure. Honestly.
0:57
I want to start with you and, and your background.
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So you spent over 2 decades, like I said in the intro across
1:04
pharma, biologics, distribution and and healthcare services.
1:09
Can you just walk us through your journey and what ultimately
1:12
brought you to Biocon? Yeah, thanks so much.
1:15
Look, I'm a pharmacist by education, so I started my
1:18
career practising pharmacy in retail.
1:21
So I got that first hand experience with patients and the
1:24
needs that they're looking for, both from an access and
1:28
affordability position. From there, I practice retail
1:31
pharmacy for about 3 years, all different facets, running the
1:36
pharmacy, dispensing and then running a region in the United
1:40
States as well as a national region within the US.
1:45
From there, I pivoted into the US wholesaling industry,
1:49
particularly working with Cardinal Health in a variety of
1:52
executive roles from purchasing to handling national accounts to
1:57
handling retail independent pharmacies, which I was one at
2:01
one point back in the early, early days.
2:03
I'll tell you a little history. My grandfather owned 5 Eric's
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independent pharmacies and my father worked at them.
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So we're we're a family of pharmacists with a long history.
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After Cardinal Health, they had the opportunity to go work in
2:19
manufacturing with a company called Mylan, which is now
2:23
Beatrice there. I ran their injectable business,
2:26
also their North American Latin America business and then took a
2:31
little time and transitioned into running hospitals for dogs
2:36
and cats in the United States. So quite a little bit of a
2:39
switch there, but certainly it was very interesting.
2:44
My daughter wants to be a veterinarian, so it was part of
2:47
my calling from from from God that I should learn a little bit
2:50
more about this as my daughter explores this venture and
2:54
becomes a veterinarian at one point.
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This brings me to the career I'm at now at Biocon Biologics and I
3:01
think it really helped shape this.
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So I have a good retail background, I have a
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manufacturing background, I have a wholesale background and now I
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have a biologics background which incorporates generics,
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injectables, you know all the products that we see today
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migrating into this new what I call wave of opportunity within
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biologics of biosimilars within the United States and ultimately
3:27
globally within Europe and then all the other markets around the
3:30
world. This is the new, this is the new
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era of what we used to think of generics.
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It's the new area of biosimilars where multiple products are
3:41
coming off patent between now and and 2030.
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You're going to see it well over 175 billion of innovative
3:50
dollars now coming to the market through biosimilars that will
3:54
increase access and affordability.
3:56
But thank you for the question, Max.
3:58
Yeah, that's that's why I'm super excited to have you on as
4:01
well. Like just just how big the
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opportunity here is. I just want to talk about some
4:08
of the transitions you guys have made as well.
4:09
So Biocon is bringing its generics and biologics
4:13
biosimilars businesses together under Biocon.
4:18
What? What's the thinking behind that
4:19
decision? Yeah, three major regions.
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One, it has clarity to our corporate structure.
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Investors can understand now it makes really good common sense
4:29
that you have your generic business which is supportive of
4:32
your biosimilar business, especially in the area of
4:36
insulin when you think about the opportunities there.
4:39
Secondly, it allows us to take advantage of the synergies
4:43
within our own company and to be able to scale in the in this
4:48
industry of biosimilars, scaling is the key.
4:51
There's three key reasons here. You have to have scale, which
4:54
means manufacturing, you have to have a robust product pipeline,
4:59
you have to be launching products and you have to be able
5:02
to continue to add those operational synergies to be able
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to take advantages up up of operational excellence.
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So those are the key, key aspects we're looking at.
5:15
And I say the third one in which I mentioned is really about
5:19
adding more leverage to our portfolio and also our
5:25
foundation. Our foundation at Biocon is what
5:28
we call 4 key pillars, and that's in oncology, that's in
5:32
ophthalmology, immunology and also diabetes.
5:36
So merging these two great companies together allows us to
5:40
continue to take advantage of that scale from lab to patient
5:46
and will be one of the few that had this opportunity within the
5:51
biosimilar manufacturings in which we have the scale and
5:55
vertical integration. Yeah, it's it's exciting.
6:00
And when you look at Biocon, I mean, you guys are nearly 50
6:04
years old, but it's interesting that you only entered the US
6:09
market in in 2017. What was the transition like and
6:15
what surprised you most about operating in those advanced
6:19
markets? Yeah, thanks for the question.
6:22
Look, as you said, we're we're an old company, but we're new
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what I would call in the beginning stages almost a
6:28
billion dollar startup is how I'd like to classify it.
6:32
And what I mean is we have a great foundation.
6:35
We've been producing from an R&D perspective.
6:38
We're one of the leaders around the world from manufacturing.
6:41
We were the really the the chip inside the computer for
6:47
Beatrice. We were that engine driving all
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this. And when we looked across, we've
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been doing the rest of world markets for a long time.
6:56
And so this made a good step in our journey with this
6:59
acquisition of bringing in the commercial side of this
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business. And we realized early on to be
7:07
able to be successful in this business, the majority of your
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products has to be vertically integrated.
7:12
As I mentioned, we have a powerful R&D really taking it
7:16
from lab to manufacturing. And then with the acquisition,
7:19
we brought on the commercial piece, the commercial and
7:21
marketing piece. Now we have a closed end,
7:24
meaning that we have this from the beginning to the end to be
7:28
able to drive that value for patients, also for our doctors
7:32
and other of our customers, including our investors.
7:37
Yeah, for sure. And, and you touched on this a
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little bit earlier, but the broader industry is, is
7:46
evolving. Can you just talk about your
7:50
point of view about the industry, particularly across
7:54
generics, biologics and and biosimilars?
7:57
Yeah. Look, I'll start with generics.
8:00
Generics is a nice foundation. It was what I call the growth
8:04
engine. It's economically a part of the
8:07
business that continues to spit off cash.
8:10
With that cash comes your growth engine, which is the biosimilar
8:14
business in which you can reinvest that income profit into
8:18
scaling your biosimilar platform, which adds more
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additional growth within biosimilars.
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The more products that you have in your portfolio, the more
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opportunities that you have been shot on goal and also the more
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that you're vertically integrated and have that
8:33
scalability, the longer Len Jet longevity you have.
8:38
And why I say that is that you're going to see in my
8:41
opinion over the next three to five years consolidation within
8:45
the biosimilars and I'll tell you why.
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Number one reason is that it's expensive, one, to bring
8:52
biosimilars to the market, two, to set up the manufacturing and
8:56
three, to make sure that you can continue to scale with the
9:00
volume that's needed. We have already done that.
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We've had that cost at Biocon already over 10 years sunk into
9:07
our manufacturing, to our R&D and then now building on the
9:11
commercial scale of this business to be able to capture
9:14
that. So when we look at this in the
9:17
industry with what it takes to bring a biosimilar to market,
9:21
about 100 to 150 million now there's some changes going on
9:25
within Europe and the US of cutting down some of the
9:29
clinical trial needs. That still leaves about 50
9:32
million to 70 million to bring one single product to the
9:35
market. So to be able to scale that and
9:38
to be able to get that return on investment, you have to have a
9:42
very robust company in which you can do scalability of generics,
9:47
which you can do scalability of biosimilars.
9:50
And when you look at this, it really leaves only three
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companies that have this now across the globe.
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So other companies, if you call them like a one hit wonder,
10:01
they're going to really struggle to be able to do 1 product here,
10:06
1 product there. So scalability is going to be
10:09
the key for us to be able to move forward.
10:13
Yeah. And what what do you mean by
10:14
that? Like in terms of like the
10:15
scalability, are you talking people infrastructure facilities
10:21
like I suppose to, yeah. Yeah, great, great question.
10:25
It, it's the, it's really that ability to have things that you
10:30
as a company control. And what I mean by that you are
10:35
bringing these products from a research and development which
10:37
Biocon is very good at. We were one of the first PEG,
10:41
Phil Grafton's, the first trastuzumab in the market, the
10:45
first interchangeable insulin larging.
10:47
So you need to be first to the market to be able to scale that.
10:51
The other piece of this is that we manufacture our products and
10:55
then we commercialize them. So why is that important?
10:57
That was your key question. We're not sharing in profits
11:01
across the others. If you're looking at say you're
11:04
only able to commercialize, you have to pay someone then to do
11:08
the R&D and sharing profits, you have to pay someone that's a
11:12
partner to manufacture sharing the profits.
11:15
Or if you don't have the commercial, it's reversed.
11:17
You have to then pay someone to be able to commercialize your
11:20
products with this market. The access and affordability,
11:25
the market continues to soften what I mean the market and
11:29
everybody knows declines over time, whether that be in Europe
11:32
or in the United States. So you have to be able to have
11:36
that synergies and operation excellence to be able to drive
11:41
those synergies and efficiencies to be able to weather those
11:45
storm. And then finally, the other
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piece that's important to be successful in biosimilars is you
11:51
must be launching products, new products into the market each
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year gives you that lift as the market deflates a little bit
11:58
year over year. What's that like from a
12:01
commercial standpoint in, in terms of I suppose one year your
12:05
workload looking to commercialize each year, but
12:09
then then also understanding what infrastructure you have
12:14
behind you to actually be able to cater for The Who you're
12:19
working with and and so. On it's a great question.
12:23
I mean from a commercial standpoint, you want scalability
12:26
too. For example, our oncology
12:29
products are representatives throughout the world, are very,
12:33
very highly trained in oncology to be able to speak to
12:37
caregivers, physicians, doctors, nurses, all the healthcare
12:42
professionals that are out there, to have them, to be able
12:46
to educate or inform people who are prescribing these products
12:51
to patients around the world. So that scalability is important
12:54
and that's why I talked about the four key pillars is that we
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have commercial sales force around the world in hundreds of
13:02
countries today in which we can drive that scalability as we
13:06
introduce new oncology products or new ophthalmology products or
13:10
new immunology products or in our insulin franchise.
13:15
It's scalability. We don't have to continue to
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hire you know a continue new sales force or look at laying
13:22
off sales forces because the products is changing or a new
13:25
brand was introduced. We had that scalability to
13:28
commercial and I'll tell you what, what commercial folks, if
13:32
anyones listening, commercial folks like new products.
13:35
They love shiny new toys and they like to be able to talk
13:37
about it. And I think to me, that's the
13:40
special sauce that we have is that we're going to continue to
13:43
introduce new products in which they're very familiar with and
13:46
create that excitement around being able to go out to our key
13:50
customers or physicians to talk about these new products
13:54
specifically in these key therapeutic areas I spoke about.
13:57
Yeah, I love that. I really love that.
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And you, you've talked about biosimilars as a solution for
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for access and affordability. What, what's really driving
14:08
adoption today and what, where do you still see that, that bit
14:11
of friction? Yeah.
14:14
What we're seeing now is across the globe, whether that be in
14:17
Europe or in Japan or in the United States, it seems to be a
14:22
very much bipartisan piece where the left or the right, there's
14:26
none of the politics in there. People really understand
14:29
biosimilars are bringing this affordability, bringing
14:33
additional access that when the innovators there, they're, they
14:36
play a very important role. Don't get me wrong, the
14:38
innovators are there to innovate and continue to find ways to
14:42
help us live better and better lives.
14:45
But what happens when biosimilars comes in, We can
14:48
expand that to the 8 billion people in the world that may or
14:52
may not need these products. So what you're seeing is this
14:56
bipartisan government push to say how can we look at
15:00
biosimilars as the answer? And what we like to say about
15:03
CON is how do we see this as biosimilars first?
15:07
And what I mean by that, when there's a biosimilar available
15:10
that has been approved by a Regulatory agency like EMA or
15:14
the FDA or in Visa around the world, these products are now
15:18
approved and able to be able to be prescribed and then dispensed
15:23
to patients. And this will give them better
15:26
access, better affordability, whether patients are paying out
15:30
of pocket or governments are paying, it lowers the cost of
15:34
these biosimilar, lowers the cost of biologics that are
15:37
innovators when the biosimilars come to the market.
15:40
So all tides rise and there's really, I don't see any
15:44
government saying that biosimilars aren't good.
15:47
I think what we have to look at is what's the right pace and
15:51
what's the right way to introduce biosimilars into these
15:55
key markets. And we're seeing, you know,
15:57
Europe clearly adopts faster and I think the United States can
16:01
take a look at what Europe is doing and learn some of this
16:06
either from real world evidence or even, you know, some of the
16:10
evidence that's already out there.
16:12
How do we take some of the learnings from each other,
16:15
meaning FDA or EMA and say, well, why are we repeating some
16:20
of these when these agencies are very qualified?
16:23
How do we talk? How do we connect, how do we
16:26
collaborate? How do we communicate better to
16:29
really go after this biosimilar first strategy in the market?
16:35
Yeah. And then there's the other
16:36
aspect when you're looking at building long term commercial
16:40
strategies, which is the policy and regulatory dynamics,
16:43
especially when you're working across different regions as
16:46
well. How do you navigate?
16:49
Well, at the moment there's constant change in this as well.
16:52
But how do you, how do you navigate that change?
16:55
Yeah, it's important that you're part of these advocacy and
16:59
policy groups where that's associations within the United
17:05
States. States listeners might know of
17:07
the biosimilar form or AAM or if it's in medicines for Europe.
17:12
It's important for the biosimilar manufacturers to be
17:16
part of that discussion going, you know, just as a single
17:21
manufacturer to these agencies or to advocacy or policy makers
17:27
is like herding cats. It it takes a long time.
17:32
And I always like to say, you know, you, you need to make
17:34
friends before you need friends and and going through these
17:38
policy advocacy groups is key for medicines for Europe.
17:43
So we sit on boards along with the biosimilar.
17:46
I'm part of many of these boards in which we are shaping policy
17:50
or shaping the voice for the industry to really communicate
17:54
to policy folks the importance and, and how they can take more
17:59
advantage of biosimilars or a biosimilar for strategy to
18:03
expand that access affordability, to decrease
18:07
government costs or decrease, you know, individual personal
18:10
costs depending what country you're in.
18:13
That's how we're approaching it. And honestly, I see that's how
18:17
the industry's approaching it. It's the right way.
18:20
Biosimilars are newer to markets around the world.
18:24
So we have to be able to continue to communicate the
18:28
power of these platforms and how do we shape policy to open up
18:32
even more doors for key patients and prescribers to be able to
18:39
utilize biosimilars in the marketplaces.
18:43
See that that's interesting, especially when you're, you're
18:46
almost like a spokesperson who's trying to shape it.
18:50
You know that the best way of working with and I suppose who
18:53
better right like than the people who work in these
18:55
companies and and they're navigating these challenges day
18:59
in day out. Yeah.
19:01
Look, what we're seeing is that the governments are very open to
19:05
speaking to us at all levels, so that it's really hard to
19:09
generate grassroots, as you know, in certain governments.
19:13
But that piece, the grassroots of this discussion is there.
19:16
Now what we have to do as an industry is how do we shape it?
19:20
How do we shape it correctly? How do we balance the
19:23
biosimilars with the innovators and what's the right way to be
19:27
able to open continued access to these key products that are
19:31
already, you know, approved by every regulator, Regulatory
19:35
agency in the world? That's how we continue to open
19:38
up these doors. That's how we continue to have
19:41
the right discussions to be able to have people have the
19:46
opportunity to dispense or at least talk to their physician
19:50
about biosimilars to say is that best for them.
19:54
Yeah, definitely. And then if we talk about the
19:57
the market as a whole, you know, over the past few years it has
20:01
been. Tougher what?
20:04
What's allowed Biocon Biologics to stay so resilient and
20:08
continue to grow? Yeah.
20:10
I, I would say, you know, it's the presence that we have in the
20:14
markets, it's the presence that we have in the government and
20:18
and it's also our ability to launch key products and file
20:22
those through regulatory agencies and bring these new
20:26
biosimilars to market quickly. That that's the special sauce.
20:31
And then how much can we continue to do that?
20:34
We have a very robust engine portfolio, manufacturing and
20:39
scalability. So you'll see Biocon continues
20:43
at to be one of the leaders not only today, but also in the
20:47
future as we continue to launch biosimilars and expand our
20:50
generic portfolio. Yeah, it's exciting.
20:54
And I feel like most of the the reason you have been successful
21:00
through that tough patches from works done, work done years and
21:03
years ago that's got you, you know, to the position you are.
21:07
You've seen too many companies that have struggled in this
21:09
space because, well, they just weren't set up right, I suppose
21:13
if you think about it that way. Yeah, we we've already seen
21:18
other biosimilar companies making adjustments and a lot of
21:21
that has to do with you know, the broadness of their
21:25
portfolio. Like I said, you, you can't be a
21:27
one hit wonder here. We've already seen certain
21:30
people take different approaches like going Ingelheim, you've
21:34
seen you've seen Coheris, you've seen even Pfizer say I'm only
21:40
going to be doing oncology products.
21:42
So this leaves the door open for folks like Biocon to continue to
21:47
expand this and that As I said earlier on in our conversation,
21:51
the wave is just starting a biosimilars that's coming off
21:55
market. And so the ability to take
21:58
advantage of these that Biocon has with our scalability and
22:02
vertical integration is extremely robust and in one in
22:06
which you'll see a lot more products being launched from us
22:09
in the coming five years and sooner.
22:13
Yeah. Well, look, congratulations on
22:15
all the success you guys are having.
22:16
I'm sure it'll continue to come. It's super exciting.
22:19
And look, this brings me to the final question, which is a
22:23
question I ask every one of my guests, Matt and I I hope you've
22:27
had a bit of time to think about it.
22:29
Yeah. I have, yes.
22:31
Yeah, amazing. Well, look, if you could have
22:34
dinner with any scientist or innovator, pastor, president,
22:37
who, who would it be and why? Yeah, you know, I gave that a
22:40
lot of thought and, and picking just one is, is is difficult,
22:44
but you asked me to do that. So I'll frame it two ways.
22:49
One, I, I, I personally have to say this, and this is me.
22:54
You know, the greatest creator we have is God.
22:56
So if I could sit down at dinner with God, that would be my first
23:00
choice. Now, what would I say?
23:01
Probably panic. It wouldn't say anything, but I
23:03
would sit down at dinner. Outside of that is I looked, you
23:06
know, and I thought about our founding scientists that we
23:09
have, whether that be Isaac Newton, Einstein, Louis Pasteur,
23:15
to pick just one of those. I think I would pick Albert
23:19
Einstein. You know, somebody wears the
23:21
same brown suit every day. I would really think it'd be
23:25
interesting to talk about how that commitment was there.
23:28
But it it's a hard dinner. I'd like to make it a dinner of
23:32
12 because I think our founding scientists, it is a key to how
23:37
we started. But then I would like to add the
23:39
scientists that we don't normally think of as scientists,
23:42
but they are now that would be you are Sam Altman, your Elon
23:48
Musk, because what they're doing is very different science that's
23:53
going to impact how we look at biosimilars, how we look at the
23:57
world that our founding scientists like Albert Einstein,
24:01
if I was sitting there, started. But these new scientists are
24:04
coming, I think are going to take that foundation our
24:07
founding scientists have and really expand this to something
24:11
that I don't even know if we can dream about yet today.
24:14
That's what I look forward to. But I would sit down with Albert
24:17
asking, 1, you know, where do you get the same suit?
24:20
Why did he wear the same suit? And then really pick his brain
24:23
around, you know, what drove him in that passion to continue to
24:29
listen to the naysayers that thought he was a little bit off
24:33
but never lost his focus and really contributed to a lot of
24:36
great things in which our current scientists today are
24:40
building upon that foundation. I love that answer and I always
24:43
think Albert Einstein's an interesting one just for the
24:46
fact he was a big character himself.
24:48
So I don't think it'd be a it wouldn't be a dull dinner.
24:51
No, it'd be fun dinner too. Yeah, I I'm sure there'd be a
24:54
lot of good conversation. Yeah.
24:55
Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on,
24:58
Matt. It's been a pleasure to have
24:59
you. Lovely.
25:01
Thanks so much. Next.
25:02
Yeah. No, it's a pleasure, honestly,
25:04
and not everyone. Please like and subscribe to the
25:06
Bio Hub and and thank you so much again, Matt.