What is Melinta and what role does it play in the wider industry?
Melinta is focused on providing innovative therapies to people impacted by acute and life-threatening illnesses. We started as an antibiotics company and our vision is that all people who need our therapies will receive them. We are going through a transformational journey and focusing our expertise into becoming the leader in acute care. We have four strategic priorities: building a high-performance culture, driving profitable growth of our current portfolio, operational excellence and expanding our portfolio. Antibiotics are still important to us, but we want to include other therapeutic areas that are relevant to the hospital setting and address unmet medical needs: antivirals, Antifungals, acute cardiology, GI, urology, non-opioid pain and oncology supportive care. We are actively pursuing partnerships in this area.
What are the most exciting assets of the company's portfolio?
We have five antibiotics in our portfolio. Perhaps most exciting is our recently launched treatment for ABSSI (Acute Bacterial Skin and Skin Structure Infections) in adult patients, a one-hour intravenous infusion of Oritavancin called KIMYRSA. It was exciting to see our commercial and medical team work together with customers to make sure we can bring this important treatment to patients.
Can you tell us more about the antimicrobial resistance and why you chose to focus on this fight?
Antibiotics are the cornerstone of what we do, we are very passionate about ensuring that patients get access to the right antibiotics at the right time.
Antimicrobial resistance is the leading cause of death world-wide, triggered by the increase of infections that are resistant to existing antibiotics.
Some of the most popular antibiotics have a 40-60% failure rate because there is a tendency to misuse or overuse older generic drugs instead of innovative products, due in part to budgetary concerns. Big pharma tends to focus on more profitable areas, like oncology and rare diseases and the research and development of these products is left to small companies like ours.
How are you tackling the affordability issue, in the US but also globally?
Standardly, in the industry, most of the attention goes to the science and innovation behind a new medicine. Our main focus is on market access, on creating an environment where patients will be able to get access to the medication. We have to think about pricing, partnering with different institutions, contracting and to find practical solutions to ensure our medicine is available in every hospital. We have global rights for the majority of our products and the best way to ensure access for patients outside of the US is to bring our products and supply chain expertise and partner with companies in other regions that have market access expertise and ability to navigate the logistics and regulations locally. In Europe we have partnered with Menarini, in MENA with HIKMA and in Latin America with Europharma.
How does the current policy environment - particularly the Inflation Reduction Act - impact the industry?
The Inflation Reduction Act is multi-faceted. At its core, it is designed to help make medicine more affordable and accessible. However, depending on how it's executed, it can have unintended consequences and discourage companies from focusing on small molecules, which have less pricing protection, and focus on biologics, which are more profitable. McKinsey analysis showed in 2020, the top 20 blockbusters serve 9 million patients, down from 45 million in 2010. This shows that the therapeutic areas that have the most unmet medical needs, like infectious diseases, don't receive the necessary research financing. There is still work to be done to find the balance to support affordable access solutions while also encouraging companies to research therapies for the most common diseases. I am a newly appointed board chair of the Antimicrobials Working Group, a number of companies working together to improve the environment for emerging antimicrobials and diagnostics companies. Government intervention is needed, especially to address reimbursement, which allows patients to get access to innovative therapies, and to incentivize development of antibiotics and antimicrobials. The DISARM and PASTEUR acts propose strategies for addressing this.
What got you started in chemical engineering and how did your career lead up to this point?
I believe everyone is uniquely designed for a particular purpose in this world. My purpose is helping people lead better lives through problem solving. I decided chemical engineering was the perfect career for me when I was in high school, and during my university years I jumped at the opportunity to work at Merck. At the time, they discovered Ivermectin is an effective treatment for river blindness, that affects mostly poor communities in Africa who wouldn't be able to afford the treatment, so they decided to donate the medicine. I realized I wanted to be part of an industry that has this kind of impact on people's lives and throughout my career I have focused on finding solutions to create access for people to get the treatments they need. I'm privileged to work at Melinta now, with a team that is so focused on the same goal.
