Editor’s Note:
The UK is one of the most important pharmaceutical markets in the world, the biopharmaceutical industry represents an important sector for economic growth. Luye Pharma UK is a newly established overseas company of the Group in recent years, which has an important strategic role in the Group's process of realizing its expansion into the European market. This new team is made up of members from different countries and regions, all of whom have a wealth of experience in the industry and are contributing to Luye Pharma' efforts to establish its roots in the UK market. Let's meet this new team through the first staff interview of the New Year.
Q: Thank you all for taking this interview, to start with, could you please give us a brief introduction of yourself?
Andy: My name is Andy Farrant, I’m the General Manager of Luye Pharma UK. I have been working in the pharmaceutical industry for nearly 35 years. I spent my formative years at Novartis in various roles in the UK and Switzerland. And then I had the option to join companies like Basilea and Ethypharm. I really enjoy working in a small company environment where I had the opportunity to build pharmaceutical brands and commercial affiliates. I was approached by Bruno Delie 4 years ago around the time of Luye’s acquisition of Seroquel, and that’s when I had the opportunity to join Luye Pharma and help set up the office in the UK.
Jeanette: My name is Jeanette Edwards, I joined Luye a year ago working as the Business Operations Manager. I started my career as a qualified nurse, and then moved into the pharma industry 25 years ago. I have experiences in various roles such as HR, finance, compliance, customer services and supply chain management across different companies including Eli Lilly, Novartis and Colonis.
Jessica: My name is Jessica Patel. I’m the newest member of the team, working as the Brand Manager of Luye UK. I have a degree in Business, Computing and German. I joined the pharma industry 20 years ago working in companies like Lundbeck, MSD and Consilient Health. I worked in sales for 17 years and in the past 3 years I have been working in marketing, particularly with digital promotion.
Chloe: My name is Chloe Lau, I joined Luye Pharma in 2019, currently working in the International Finance Department as Assistant Finance Manager. I’m also responsible for Luye UK’s finance work. Before joining the company, I worked in various industries including tourism, gaming business, sports and others.
Thorsten: My name is Thorsten Externbrink. I’m the Regulatory Affairs Manager at Luye Pharma Europe. Before joining Luye, I have worked for Sandoz covering various positions. Then I made the decision to move to smaller companies where I can work on broader range and topics and responsibilities. I started to work for Luye in 2018, my responsibilities include RA work relate to our own products, as well as our customers’. I’m also responsible for all the regulatory work in relate to Luye UK.
Yann: My name is Yann Barrault. I joined Luye Pharma as Business Development Director in February 2023. I’m a pharmacist by training. After a couple of years in Regulatory Affairs and Market Access in companies like GSK and Cephalon (now TEVA) where I was part of Due Diligence teams, I decided to move into Business Development and Licensing roles. It has been 20 years since I’ve been active in that field and I closed approximately 50 transactions, both from selling and buying side, from early stage to late stage assets.
Q: Andy, could you please give us a brief introduction of the UK pharmaceutical market. Why did Luye choose to build a team and office in the UK?
Andy: Strategically speaking, Luye were very keen to expand their geographical foot print in Europe, starting from the acquisition of Acino’s TDS business in 2016. We have manufacturing plants and R & D center in Miesbach, Germany and an office in Basel, Switzerland. As for the UK, after the acquisition of Seroquel from AstraZeneca, we initially needed an entity to hold the marketing authorizations. Soon after that, we realized that with a small amount of effort, we could take over the active distribution of Seroquel and shore up the sales. Luye in Miesbach also had a number of products that we were manufacturing for other partners, for example Fencino transdermal patch which we were keen to bring back to Luye. Fencino is a great product and I’m delighted we started distributing this ourselves from the beginning of last year in the UK. We now have the basis of an organization and a desire to grow the UK market with our own products rather than give them out to other companies. That’s how we had the idea to build our own infrastructure in the UK market.
The UK market is a great place if you really want to develop in Europe because a lot of countries reference UK for pricing, market access and there is a lot of R&D here. We also have a very well-known body called NICE (The National Institute from Health and Care Excellence) who review the health economic side of products and the NHS (National Health Service) who provide healthcare for all UK citizens, both of which are internationally recognized. So UK is a good place to have an organizational structure in Europe. Considering we already have some products out licensed with our partners, we want to see if we can pull some of those products back into our organization and develop gradually in the UK. In the first 2 years, we only had Seroquel and then we had the opportunity to bring Fencino back from January 2023.
In addition to these products, we now also have Zeyzelf (Rivastigmine for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease) manufactured in Miesbach and we hope to introduce another 3-4 products in the next 2 years. Then we can have a really nice portfolio in the UK mainly focused on CNS area, which is also a strength area of Luye Pharma internationally.
The way we are working in the UK is a hybrid model. I have two teammates at Luye UK: Jeanette and Jessica, and other external contractors working closely with us in the UK. Wherever possible we work with colleagues within the Luye group such as Yann and Thorsten from Luye Europe, as well as Chloe from Luye Singapore who all provide expertise and support to our UK business. I think this model works very well, and it demonstrates that you can make things work wherever you are located if everyone is prepared to work closely together.
Luye Pharma UK’s office is located at Surrey Technology Center in Guilford
Q: As the very first member of Luye UK, what were the challenges at the very beginning?
Andy: Personally speaking, compare with mega corporations, I really enjoy working in a relatively smaller organization. Because you have the opportunity to work across the whole organization, you get exposure to different functional areas. The challenge is you don’t have vast resources, but the benefit of working in here is you can really make a difference. You can get close to customers and get feedback from patients. However, if you work in a mega corporation, you can only work in your own department. But in Luye Pharma, I can get closer to colleagues from other departments and understand what’s going on in other parts of the business. Our colleagues all have lot of experience in their own functional areas, you have to trust each other and use everyone’s experience to achieve targets. You have to be prepared to put yourself out, and that’s how you can really learn and develop yourself. I really enjoy working in Luye Pharma, every day is different in here.
Q: Luye Pharma launched Zeyzelf (twice weekly Rivastigmine transdermal patch) in UK, how do you collaborate with the UK team to complete the launch successfully and how have you and your colleagues in Miesbach supported the UK team generally?
Thorsten: As for the regulatory affairs of Zeyzelf, we were actually involved from the very beginning, starting from application of the registration to approval, and at that point hand the product over to our colleagues in UK to prepare for the launch. It is a close cooperation with efforts of multiple functional departments. I still remember, at one point we needed to select a brand name for the Rivastigmine product from a list of different names. We went through intensive discussions with the UK team, as well as colleagues from commercial, legal. We discussed all these names and tried them with different spellings to see if the names may be misleading in the UK or other countries. In the end, we decided to go with the name Zeyzelf for this product which was accepted by the regulatory authority (MHRA).
Andy: Regulatory affairs is a very complicated and regulated area. Because of the Brexit in UK, it has created additional complexity and changes for us. It’s great to have Thorsten and his team that we can rely on. I know Thorsten is also working closely with the China team on an important tech transfer project, because Luye is planning to transfer the manufacturing of Seroquel to Yantai in the future. This is the benefit of working in Luye, because we are constantly learning and developing our knowledge.
Q: Speaking of the business operation in UK, what is the current situation? Can you explain what your role covers and who you work with both in Luye and outside Luye?
Jeanette: My role at Luye is very varied. I have the responsibility for supply chain including product forecasts and maintaining stock levels. I also manage activities across product artwork, product quality, and finance such as processing of rebates. Outside Luye, I interact with our pre-wholesaler, wholesalers, NHS Integrated Care Boards and different regulatory departments, such as Department of Health & Social Care and the Home Office. Generally speaking, the role has a very wide scope covering different areas.
One reason I enjoy being with Luye Pharma is the similarity to when I first joined Colonis, which was a startup Company for the affiliate. I am involved in a range of different roles, interacting with a wide variety of people providing the opportunity to bring in experience that I have gained over many years. It is never boring with something different required every day, which also gives the opportunity to learn further new skills.
Andy: One thing I want to mention in particular is about Seroquel. One of Jeanette’s tasks last year was to sort out the relationship with our wholesaler who supply the product to the pharmacies. Patients who use Seroquel are quite fragile, it is really important for them to get their product in time. We had a lot of difficulties with the stock at first. Jeanette has worked really hard on dealing this issue last year, and now we do not have any stock issues with Seroquel at the patient level. This is a huge benefit to patients and all the healthcare professionals. This is just one tiny part of her job, but I know it takes an enormous amount of effort and time. Jeanette has brought in her previous experience to this role, and that’s the sort of expertise we need in Luye.
Q: Luye Pharma is a relatively young brand in UK, could you please share with us about the branding progress and strategic plans to increase awareness of Luye and in relation to our products?
Jessica: Previous to me joining Luye, Andy had been working with a creative agency to start the branding process. When I joined Luye in July, there were some elements that I could pick up already but there is still a lot to do. Considering Luye wasn’t’ known in the UK, we had to do two things: launch Zeyzelf and promote Luye as a brand into UK market.
So we put together a strong digital marketing plan. I have worked with the creative agency to create materials for Luye itself and Zeyzelf. I put a media schedule for Zeyzelf to identify key targets (psychiatrists, neurologists, other influencers and general practitioners at primary care) that we want to approach to create the awareness of the product.
Promoting Zeyzelf in UK market
We approached agencies to book slots for the media schedule and also hired a consultant to support the public relations plan to create brand awareness so the public and healthcare professionals can know about the launch of Zeyzelf and also Luye UK; who we are as an organization, what we specialize in. We have also created an account on LinkedIn for Luye UK as well as a UK company website (www.luyepharma.co.uk).
We did some testing of Zeyzelf promotion at a few meetings last year and received very positive response. We still have further research and testing ongoing which will help us to better know our customers: what messages for Zeyzelf are being looked at more, which ones are not successful and other information which can help us to know people’s response to different messages.
When it comes to branding strategy, we are going much heavier in terms of face-to-face meetings in 2024. We've got a strong meeting schedule booked in already for the whole year. Our media plan is also already booked for the full 12 months and we will be testing new messaging within each of the different journals that we've chosen to advertise in. We're actually going to do some print advertising for the first time as well, which means that there will be Zeyzelf within magazines and journals. One of our new areas of focus is to have some sales team support on the ground in our target areas with our target customers. Generally speaking, we've got a strong plan in place for 2024.
Presenting Luye Pharma at meetings in UK
Q: What is our business development goal in UK? What kind of partner are we looking for?
Andy: The first part of the strategy was to see what we can do with Luye’s own products and where we've got products with partners to assess whether they would fit back into our own organization in the UK. But that's a small universe of products. Yann from Luye Europe has a much broader expertise in this area of business development.
Yann: Aside from repatriating some brands, we are also looking for alternatives for external growth. We want to leverage the presence of Luye UK, use it as a platform to get more products with the same target audience. Based on the current situation of Luye UK, we want to find late-stage products from R & D-driven companies who need our expertise in regulatory or commercial capabilities for the UK market. I have been interacting with Andy on various potential BD opportunities regularly, trying to understand how long it will take to get a new product approved in UK, what is the sales forecast look like etc. And also, in order to build Luye brand in Europe, I also participate different partnering events. Recently I presented Luye Pharma to 200 companies at an event in Amsterdam to explain what we are doing and what we are looking for. If potential companies are interested, they can approach us and offer us their products.
Q: As a member of the finance team, what are the main support tasks you provide on a day-to-day basis to the UK team? What is the key to ensuring smooth multinational teamwork?
Chloe: My main tasks with Luye UK is the accounting work, such as invoice and payments, handling taxes and other daily operational supports. We have a smooth process among all the multinational teams who work together. We have to close the gap between our communication in order to minimize any error and improve business work flow. In order to do so, we have a weekly Zoom meeting with the UK team to rectify issues and update our business. It is an effective way to close gap on communication, reduce working time for both parties, and enhance efficiency. I think to ensure a smooth multinational teamwork; communication is very important. Although we are working in different time zones, we try to communicate and identify issues based on a clear SOP, so that we identify any problems in our daily work and continue to improve.
Q: 2024 is a special year for Luye, because we will celebrate our 30th birthday, can you share your new year’s resolution with us?
Andy: For Luye Pharma UK, we want to continue the steady growth of people and products within the organization. My focus for the new year is to continue the growth of the organization, so that Luye Pharma becomes recognized as a valuable partner in the industry.
Jeanette: My new year’s resolution is to improve the efficiencies in supply chain and the wider business, reduce costs, and maintain/improve the relationships we have with our customers.
Jessica: I will continue to work with the team closely in 2024. In terms of marketing, we will be ready for some new launches and continue the efforts on Zeyzelf and Fencino, making sure everything goes well successfully.
Yann: We want to use Luye UK’s model to do a significant deal and prepare for the next stage of the plan in the rest of Europe, to become a specialty pharmaceutical company in the coming years.
Thorsten: In 2024, I will continue to facilitate the technical transfer for the UK Seroquel registration, and also register more products for Luye in other countries and regions.
Chloe: Luye Pharma UK will launch multiple products in the next few years, I believe with the strong leadership and team members’ commitments, Luye UK will embrace a promising future.
