More than 150 guests were interested in hearing this success story first-hand from Roivant Sciences’ founder and CEO, Vivek Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy, a member of the renowned “Forbes 30 Under 30” list and also named a “prodigy” by Forbes magazine for the biggest biotech IPO in US history, gave a trenchant keynote speech before being joined by a panel of experts from Basel’s pharma and biotech industry.
Ramaswamy explained his mission: “We concentrate on promising science and passionate people to systematically reduce the time, cost and risk of bringing new medicines to market”, he said. Roivant Sciences buys and develops drugs that are shelved by other large pharmaceutical companies, and that are stuck in the middle of the drug development traffic within the organization. Ramaswamy’s mission is to create an “alternative highway” by bringing together top talent in drug development and other industries and focus on those assets within lean and dynamic structures. Ramaswamy is certain that data will make the difference in bringing drugs speedily to market.
Roivant Sciences is the umbrella company of five (and the number growing!) late-stage biopharma companies in different therapeutic areas: Axovant tackles dementia, Dermavant deals with dermatology, Myovant focuses on women’s health, Urovant concentrates on urology and Enzyvant develops therapies for patients with rare diseases. All Roivant-family companies can tap into standard capabilities built at Roivant, while each company can develop capabilities of their own to address their specific market requirements.
Settling in Basel without red tape
In his speech, Ramaswamy also made a case for Basel as a headquarters location: “Different nationalities are coming together in this place, three different languages are spoken on the street.” Although relatively small, Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft would be “punching way above their weight”. He also mentioned the thriving biotech scene and the deep humanistic tradition in Basel. In addition, Ramaswamy thanked the Basel authorities for lowering barriers in setting up a business: “There was no red tape. They made setting up here a pleasure.”
During the subsequent panel discussion, Vas Narashimhan, Global Head of Drug Development and Chief Medical Officer at Novartis, Jonathan Knowles, Chairman of the board of directors at Immunocore Limited, David Hung, CEO of Axovant and Vivek Ramaswamy discussed the future of healthcare. Moderated by Alethia de Léon from BaseLaunch, the conversation included topics such as data collection, and critical questions about the current challenges and opportunities of the pharma industry were raised. Big data and biomarkers were some of the highlighted topics as potentially helping to address some of the R&D productivity issues the industry is currently facing.
