Bayer’s new pharmaceutical R&D strategy to accelerate breakthrough innovations

Bayer AG hosted its Pharmaceuticals R&D Event 2023 for Investors yesterday. The company presented a deep dive on the innovation strategy in its four therapeutic core areas Oncology, Cardiovascular Diseases, Neurology & Rare Diseases and Immunology. The presentations also included status updates on Bayer Pharmaceuticals’ key assets in clinical and preclinical development as well as on its platform companies Asklepios BioPharmaceutical (AskBio), BlueRock Therapeutics (BlueRock) and Vividion Therapeutics (Vividion).

“Over the past five years, we have fundamentally advanced our portfolio and innovation approach, guided by value, differentiation, feasibility, and core competencies, while also expanding our presence in the US. With our goal to translate breakthrough science into an even greater impact on the lives of patients, our innovation strategy is also expected to ultimately provide greater value to our shareholders”, said Stefan Oelrich, Member of the Board of Management of Bayer AG and President Pharmaceuticals at Bayer. “At the same time, we are advancing our four late-stage pipeline and launch assets with a combined peak sales potential of more than €12 billion, which would by far more than offset the headwinds from loss of exclusivity that we are facing in our current portfolio near-to-midterm.”

As part of the review of its R&D strategy, Bayer narrowed its therapeutic focus and built a diverse and innovative modality toolkit as well as strategic partnerships and capabilities to accelerate its drug development processes. In parallel, the company pruned its pipeline and began to increasingly manage new drug candidates towards precision medicine.

“Our innovation strategy will allow us to increase and sustain our R&D quality and productivity to advance more meaningful and impactful innovation for patients, and enable our Bayer Pharma ambition”, said Christian Rommel, Member of the Executive Committee of Bayer’s Pharmaceuticals Division and Head of R&D. “The vast majority of our new molecular entities currently in development already offers the potential to be first- or best-in-class”.

Deep dive into Bayer’s technology platform companies

BlueRock is a pioneer and one of the leaders in stem cell engineered cell therapy, with end-to-end capabilities for delivering innovative pluripotent stem cell (PSC)-based therapies. Advancing a growing pipeline of innovative therapies for treating patients with neurological, immunological, cardiovascular, and ophthalmic diseases, BlueRock will present an update on its two lead programs. Bemdaneprocel (BRT-DA01), an investigational cell therapy comprising of PSC-derived dopaminergic neurons that are implanted into the brain, aims to target Parkinson’s Disease at its root cause. In addition, details and status of OpCT-001, a preclinical potential cell therapy for photoreceptor precursor cells aimed to restore vision by replacing degenerated tissue in the retina with functional cells, are presented.

AskBio is a pioneer in adeno-associated virus (AAV)-based gene therapy with end-to-end capabilities including demonstrated applicability as well as excellent manufacturing facilities. AskBio presents a robust pipeline with numerous discovery programs targeting rare diseases and large patient populations. Most advanced in the clinic are investigational treatments for Parkinson’s disease, Pompe disease and congestive heart failure. Gene therapy programs for Huntington’s disease and multiple systems atrophy are currently enrolling patients into first-in-human studies.

Vividion operates a leading chemoproteomics platform based on a specific library to unlock the full potential of small molecule therapies. While hundreds of proteins are known to be drivers of diseases, only around 10% of these proteins can be drugged by current therapies. Chemoproteomics technologies can be used to selectively target and bind to yet inaccessible proteins, effectively removing today’s boundaries of druggability. Bayer’s strength in small molecules provides a huge potential to leverage Vividion’s platform. Vividion is continuing to advance an attractive preclinical pipeline in Oncology and Immunology with the first program to enter the clinic in 2023.

Read more from EPM here.