Eisai opens new European HQ in the UK
pharmafile | July 8, 2009 | Feature | Manufacturing and Production, Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Eisai, Europe, HQ
Eisai has officially opened its new European headquarters in the UK, its biggest-ever single capital investment that will bring teams together from across its business.
The new £100 million ($162 million) investment from the Japanese company, dubbed the European Knowledge Centre (EKC), has been set up in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, and will uniquely integrate the full range of company functions.
The 14.5 acre site includes units for drug discovery, clinical research, production, along with sales and marketing all on the one site – something not often seen in the industry and never before at Eisai.
At its opening, president and chief executive of Eisai Haruo Naito said: “Eisai believe that integrating all the company functions on a single site will both encourage the creation of knowledge and improvements in our quality, efficiency and productivity. This in turn contributes towards achieving our corporate mission human healthcare, that is, to help to improve the lives of patients and their families by developing innovative medicines as quickly as possible.”
The whole development brings more than 500 jobs to the area, 250 of which are newly created roles in research – 60 in research and 200 in clinical development.
Naito addressed 750 staff and guests at the event, stressing the value to be gained through the new integrated site, and making jovial reference its special inter-departmental coffee bar, which he hopes will promote this kind of knowledge exchange.
Its manufacturing facility is to be Eisai’s first-ever in Europe, with £7.5 million invested in new production and warehouse equipment.
The headquarters will lead the business Eisai has built up in Europe over the last twenty years, becoming a centre for the 14 subsidiaries on the continent and the existing commercial operations in 19 countries.
Naito added: “The newly opened EKC will not only act as a hub for managing our current business across Europe but it will play an important role in supporting our operations in driving further growth for Eisai in Europe, one of our key investment markets.”
Plans for the future
Globally, Eisai operates in five regions, its home market of Japan, North America, China, Asia/Oceania/Middle East and Europe and employs more than 11,000 people.
It ranks just outside the world’s top 20 pharma companies, with global sales that last year reached $8.2 billion (£4.5 billion). Its top-selling drug Aricept, the Alzheimer’s disease treatment it co-markets with Pfizer, contributed $3.2 billion (£1.7 billion).
Eisai focuses its efforts on three therapy areas: neurology, oncology and vascular and immunological reaction.
Its future product plans include potential new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis. The company also has some oncology treatments in development. Eribulin is the first of these to emerge from Eisai’s own discovery laboratories and it’s due to be submitted to regulators this year with an indication for breast cancer.
Research at the new site could potentially cover all of these therapy areas. The company is also considering extending its Hatfield investment to accommodate a biologics research programme at a later date.
The UK: the place to be?
Folker Kindl, president and chief operating officer of Eisai Europe, will head the new European headquarters.
He said: “The thought process behind it was to have knowledge creation under one roof, and have the complete value chain on one campus. It brings a lot of advantages because we can gain information, experience, and knowledge from each other.”
Asked about the choice of the UK as a base, he said the UK’s reputation for good science had been a major draw for Eisai, noting its strong academia work around pharmaceuticals. He also said the company’s location in Hatfield would also enable it to work closely with the University of Hertfordshire.
Eisai has made the investment in the UK despite its much-publicised battle with NICE over access to its Alzheimer’s treatment Aricept.
Kindl acknowledged this and said it was the sort of challenge that Eisai would continue to face head on.
“We realise that all over Europe the regulation of pharmaceuticals – the admission to the national healthcare systems, but also the approval of products onto the market – is getting tougher. We understand there are different hurdles; on one side the public want to see better and safer products on the market, on the other, payors want more cost-effective products onto the market.”
He said the company was keen to start working with NICE to understand these pressures in more depth and overcome some of the difficulties.
“We are looking forward to working with institutions like NICE, to find ways where we can jointly develop criteria, which fairly evaluate this balance [of cost and clinical effectiveness].”
Mending an uneasy relationship
Eisai has not had an easy relationship with NICE in the past. The company took the organisation to a judicial review two years ago, over guidance for its Alzheimer’s drug Aricept.
NICE had recommended it only be prescribed to patients in the moderate stage of the disease as it showed little improvement in those in the late or early stages.
The review ended with NICE being forced to pay Eisai’s court costs and release the economic model it used for the assessment, but the guidance remained unchanged and Eisai has just announced it will not appeal again.
Kindl maintains that much of Eisai’s motivation to set up the UK relates to NICE. The theory seems to be that if it can influence NICE, it can influence the similar institutions across Europe.
“At the moment we are more focused on talking to and co-operating with NICE on how we can come up with evaluation systems that are mutually agreeable and a fair analysis on the situation.
“What we don’t like is institutions coming to tell us what to do and what not to do. I think NICE has been the first [of its kind] and a lot of other countries in Europe are taking it as an example. We want to co-operate with those institutions better and see how to adapt to those demands.”
He also acknowledged that uptake of new medicines in the UK remains slower than in other European markets, but is hopeful that co-operation with NICE could help the situation.
Setting up a new manufacturing and research facility in the UK buck the trend for moving such investments in Asia, where costs are lower and markets expanding.
Kindl said a UK base would mean higher costs compared to an Asian base, but that other factors, include the country’s science base, would make the investment worthwhile.
Industry-government relations
On this point he stressed the open relationship between the UK government and the pharma industry, a theme that ran throughout the day and was mentioned by many Eisai executives.
He said: “The industry and the UK government are looking into projects and areas around innovation, and how the existence of scientific facilities of pharma companies can better exist here in the UK.
“We are hoping that the government will bring some elements which allows us to balance this obvious disadvantage [of increased costs in Europe].”
Ivan Lewis MP, Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, was on hand to officially open the new site, and said Eisai’s choice to invest was good news for the company and the British economy.
He added: “This government has put the pharmaceutical industry at the heart of its economic agenda, and we are delighted to see this level of investment being made by Eisai. It is a real sign of confidence in the direction the UK and European economies are taking.”
Speaking to Pharmafocus, Lewis dismissed fears of excessive regulation in the UK and Europe, another common gripe from pharma leaders.
“Everyone complains about regulation, but its necessary. You only have to look what happened with the banks.”
He was optimistic that the move could encourage further investment from industry despite the fact that capital investment from pharma in the UK has declined in recent years.
Indeed, Eisai’s investment was closely followed by the announcement of more good news for the UK from Anglo-Belgian pharma company UCB. The company has expanded its UK presence with the official unveiling of a new research facility in Slough.
The opening of Eisai’s European Knowledge Centre (EKC) was also attended by best-selling author Sir Terry Pratchett, who revealed publicly he had been diagnosed with a form of Alzheimer’s disease in 2007.
He said: “We need to speed up research and, incidentally, the speed in which successful discoveries get to patients.
“I welcome the opening of the new research facility at the EKC as another step towards making these goals a reality to me and hundreds of thousands of others round the world. I hope everyone employed in it works overtime!”
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