Bayer has reported exciting progress in transforming its pharmaceutical business with breakthrough innovation in healthcare that will significantly help patients suffering from conditions that are currently still difficult to treat. 

 

The company has recently heavily invested in external innovation with an unprecedented number of more than 25 collaboration agreements and acquisitions, it said at its virtual Pharma Media Day.

 

“The biomedical and technological revolution that is transforming healthcare at an unprecedented pace is taking place now. Our company is at the forefront of the wave of innovation in cell and gene therapy as well as digital health,” said Stefan Oelrich, Member of the Board of Management, Bayer AG and President of Bayer’s Pharmaceuticals Division. 

 

“We are driving this transformation and growing our promising development portfolio together with our partners. Our joint goal is to bring breakthrough treatments to patients and make healthcare systems more sustainable in the mid- and long-term.”

 

At its virtual Pharma Media Day, speakers from Bayer, its partners and leading experts demonstrated under the theme “Transforming Healthcare. Transforming Bayer” how the company is committed to transforming patient health by fulfilling its strategic ambition in the areas of cell and gene therapy, digital health and by driving forward the company’s promising development portfolio.

 

Cell and Gene Therapy: Accelerating breakthrough innovation for patients

Cell and gene therapies offer for the first time the possibility to address the root cause of disease, providing options for conditions considered intractable or where the current standard of care only addresses symptoms to different degrees. Bayer’s increasing investments in the field are consolidating the company's emerging leadership and confirm its strategic significance as a growth-driver for its pharmaceutical business.

 

Bayer has just established a new Cell and Gene Therapy Platform. This platform steers Bayer’s strategy in the area and orchestrates all activities along the value chain providing an innovation ecosystem for all partners, including BlueRock Therapeutics and Asklepios BioPharmaceutical (AskBio), two companies fully owned by Bayer but independently operated. 

 

Bayer’s development portfolio of cell and gene therapies already comprises seven advanced assets in different stages of clinical development. These are focused on multiple therapeutic areas with high unmet need, such as neurodegenerative, neuromuscular and cardiovascular indications, with leading programs in Pompe disease, Parkinson’s disease, hemophilia A, and congestive heart failure. With over 15 preclinical assets in the cell and gene therapy field, the pipeline is expected to grow steadily year by year.

 

“Cell and gene therapies hold the promise to significantly impact patients’ lives by moving from treating symptoms to potentially curative approaches,” said Wolfram Carius, Executive VP and Head of Cell and Gene Therapy at Bayer. “Together with our partners, we want to accelerate innovation at its source and along the whole value chain to ensure a fast translation of science into therapies for patients who have no time to wait.”

 

BlueRock Therapeutics recently announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared their Investigational New Drug application to proceed with a Phase I study in patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease. This will be the first trial in the United States to study pluripotent stem cell-derived dopaminergic neurons in patients with Parkinson’s disease and a big step forward for the stem cell field. 

 

Digital Health: Empowering patients through Integrated Care

Digital healthcare offerings have become an important pillar of modern healthcare. The combination of conventional healthcare approaches with innovative digital technologies makes it possible to offer efficient solutions addressing the needs of a person in his/her specific environment. Bayer is developing Integrated Care concepts which offer individual support of patients. This personalized approach addresses complex and interconnected health challenges within the individual circumstances. 

 

Integrated Care is a key element of Bayer’s digital business strategy in pharma. In collaboration, Bayer and the digital health company Informed Data Systems (IDS/One Drop) are expanding their business based on IDS’s existing diabetes management platform. This solution was downloaded more than 3 million times. Together, the companies are now creating new health offerings to address the needs of patients in the areas of cardiovascular diseases, women’s health and oncology. Experts from both companies are jointly working on the first two modules, which are to become available within a year, the company said.

 

“By focusing on the individual patient, not their disease, Integrated Care is the path to truly inclusive and personalized healthcare,” said Jeanne Kehren, Senior VP of Digital & Commercial Innovation and Member of the Pharmaceuticals Executive Committee of Bayer AG. “We are determined to make Integrated Care solutions a major pillar of our company’s pharmaceutical business. Building on our expertise in the pharmaceutical sector, we can bridge the gap between tech and healthcare. In the next ten years, we expect digital health offerings to significantly contribute to our revenues.”

 

Growing a robust pipeline: New approaches for unmet medical needs

Bayer is continuing to build a strong development pipeline advancing more than 50 projects through the clinic with a focus on cardiovascular diseases, oncology and women’s health. The company highlighted two promising pipeline programs in mid-stage development demonstrating medical innovation at Bayer.

 

As an innovation leader in cardiovascular diseases with deep disease understanding and a long history of successful drug development, Bayer is particularly strong in the field of anticoagulation. Heart attack and stroke still represent a major health burden and new, more effective treatment options in thrombosis prevention are needed. The company is advancing a promising mid-stage program of Factor XI (FXI)-targeting compounds, a new class of anticoagulants, comprising of three investigational assets. A small molecule oral FXIa-inhibitor has commenced a Phase IIb program (PACIFIC), planning to enroll more than 4,000 patients in total. In addition, an anti-FXIa antibody and FXI-ligand-conjugated antisense oligonucleotide (FXI-LICA), which Bayer is developing under exclusive license from IONIS Pharnaceuticals, have recently started Phase II trials, in patients with end-stage kidney disease. FXI-pathway inhibition may offer protection from thromboembolic events without increased risk of bleeding. This may provide a treatment option to patients for whom currently no suitable therapeutic options are available.

 

With its P2X3 multi-indication program, Bayer highlighted another important candidate in mid-stage development. At Bayer, the promise of P2X3 antagonists was first identified for endometriosis within the company’s strategic research alliance with Evotec, a Germany-based drug discovery and development company. Endometriosis is a clinical condition affecting approximately 10 percent of women in reproductive age, many of whom experience severe chronic pain with debilitating effects on their professional, personal and social lives. P2X3 also has a prominent role in several other medical conditions associated with pain and neurogenic hypersensitivity such as chronic cough, overactive bladder and neuropathic pain. -TradeArabia News Service