"Without a doubt, Gleevec (imitanib) is the Excalibur of the Vasella mythology. Without that "magic cancer bullet," he would be, at best, CEO of a very successful, highly diversified pharma—not a radical redesigner of R&D or a hero to CML patients.
Gleevec is the ultimate in rational drug design. Once the genetic mutation associated with CML was fingered, Novartis began screening tyrosine kinase inhibitors until they got a hit in 1999. In early human trials, the drug produced sudden, near-total remission with minimal toxicity. There remained only one hurdle: The commercial forces inside Novartis "argued against rushing and taking risks for a drug that would produce such little return on investment," according to Vasella"
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"Any fire he may have felt about acquiring cross-town rival Roche and creating Pharma Suisse has likely flickered out. After laying out $2.1 billion in 2002 to increase Novartis' stake to 33 percent, and reportedly mounting a failed charm offensive on the secretive Hoffmann-La Roche family, which owns slightly more than 50 percent of the shares, the final nail in the coffin materialized last month. A shareholder pact, which was to have expired at year's end, preserves the controlling voting rights among the family. "Nobody really believed Novartis would be able to take over Roche," said Allianz Global Investors' Joerg De Vries-Hippen in the Financial Times.
Still, the fact remains that the competition between the two firms has driven each to great feats of innovation. In what may be at once the most unlikely story of the pharma industry in this era, sleepy, cosmopolitan Basel has given rise to the world's two most dynamic drugmakers."
Ver tambien: Roche...Novartis Vidas paralelas
n a person or thing without secrecy or concealment that can be easily known or interpreted (Collins)
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