Today Novartis holds an investor event in London to provide a comprehensive overview of the its progress in advancing its industry-leading R&D pipeline.
Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis, said that the company has had a year of breakthrough innovation in 2019, with five potential blockbuster NME approvals. The near term brings yet another catalyst-rich period with pipeline progress across the portfolio that can sustain long-term growth, he said.
The operational focus of Novartis is beginning to show results including accelerating timelines, reducing costs and improving productivity without compromising quality. The company will work on delivering new transformational treatment options to patients and continuing to reimagine medicine to address some of the world’s greatest unmet healthcare needs, he said.
Approximately 90 innovative new molecular entities (NMEs) are emerging from the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR), creating a deep and diverse early-stage portfolio. The NIBR team has advanced several new therapeutic platforms to address difficult drug targets and diseases across oncology and other therapeutic areas, including a portfolio of molecular glues that features the SHP2 inhibitor TNO155 in development in for advanced solid tumors, including those harboring KRASG12C mutations.
In addition, Novartis said it has established leadership in three advanced therapy platforms: cell, gene and radioligand therapies. Each of these three platforms has a deep pipeline of investigational drugs or new indications, with a total of 16 advanced platform therapies now in clinical development.