Though not initially attracted to the pharmaceutical industry, Alberta School of Business alumnus, Salma Jutt (BCom, '98), got her first taste of marketing while selling cell phones as she studied physiology, then genetics, at the University of Alberta. After switching her direction of study accordingly, Jutt's affinity for sales and marketing, along with her interest in the health care and medical environments, landed her a job with Boehringer Ingelheim as a pharmaceutical sales representative. After a couple years of consulting with doctors' offices to educate and create awareness about Central Nervous System medications, she was promoted to a marketing role and ultimately launched her career into the world of pharmaceutical and biotech drugs, which has seen her make an impact at global companies like Boehringer and Allergan Inc.
"There's a strong link between what happens in business and what happens in pharmacy and the pharmaceutical sciences. Those two faculties, and sections of the industry, cannot operate independently," says Jutt, now the Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) at Acer Therapeutics Inc. in San Diego, California. "That link is the patient; they are at the core. There needs to be an open and integrated upstream and downstream flow between research and commercialization to ultimately serve patients."
The Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (FoPPS) at the University of Alberta sees this link too. If the pharmaceutical sciences are to lead the province into economic diversification and a healthier future, business and pharmaceutical innovation need to go hand-in-hand. From Jutt's perspective, the way forward is for FoPPS to first self-promote from a research and development standpoint.
"Grants being brought into the university, combined with research aligned with where the industry is going, like rare diseases and compound and molecule discovery, will draw a lot of attention," she says.
From a commercial and manufacturing angle, she says success will follow when specialty areas, rather than systematic pill-based manufacturing, can be identified and followed-through.
"The industry is looking for manufacturers of biologics, gene therapy vectors, inhalation, and topical drugs. It needs to be something that is emerging and specialized from an industry standpoint," says Jutt. "And beyond that, it comes down to tax rates, overhead, cost of living to attract employees, as well as cost of property."
But developing specialty and emerging areas of the pharmaceutical sciences means FoPPS, and Alberta, have to keep up with industry trends that are ever-evolving. So, what are those trends right now? According to Jutt, there are quite a few, including rare diseases, biologics, gene therapy, digital connectivity across health care providers, incubators for academic and independent drug discoveries, patient-centrality, and cannabis-based drugs, many of which align with work happening within FoPPS, and the province, right now.
Independent Biotechs & Small Start-Ups
FoPPS, and the University of Alberta at large, is no stranger to small start-ups. As a research-based University, the institution prides itself on the multitude of spin-off companies and start-ups that found their roots on campus. FoPPS is connected to many successful academic spin-offs, including household brands like Lipsorex and George's Cream and big names like Isotechnika Pharma Inc. and ContraVir. The Alberta School of Business, Jutt's alma mater, is connected to a plethora of them as well. According to Jutt, pressures on large pharmaceutical companies to drive more profit has resulted in more mergers and acquisitions than ever, which in turn has sparked the popularity of small start-ups.
"Strategic companies are looking at small biotech start-ups to pull in innovation," she says. "The emergence of small biotech companies is growing because many strategic companies are having more and more difficulty producing compounds and discoveries that align with their overall corporate strategy in an efficient manner. This includes a greater trend towards incubators, such as Bio-Labs or JLABs, where one person can come in with an idea, rent space, and have access to all those resources and start producing their data."
FoPPS values these smaller biotech companies and incubators for drug discovery too. Partnerships, like the collaborative work between Associate Professor, Carlos Velasquez-Martinez and Fedora Pharmaceuticals Inc. - a local biotech in Edmonton dedicated to the discovery and development of novel antimicrobial drug candidates that challenge antimicrobial resistance - are beginning to work on the chemical synthesis of a series of drug molecules with potential antibacterial activity, specifically against gram-negative strains resistant to current antimicrobial treatments that, if successful, will go on to save countless lives.
Cannabis-Based Drugs
Although medical cannabis has already been legal in Canada for over ten years, the recent legalization of recreational cannabis in October 2018 has opened the doors for more acceptance and less stigmatization of the drug, allowing patients to be more open to using cannabis-based drugs, and more importantly, third parties more open to funding its research and exploring the various therapeutic effects it may offer.
Jutt says as the cannabis industry emerges it will change and pave a new path for the pharmaceutical sciences - something we're already beginning to see in FoPPS, home of the Drug Development and Innovation Centre (DDIC), which is the only academic lab in Canada that has the Health Canada site license required to test and produce medical cannabis products. The DDIC has been working with cannabis for applications in the pharmaceutical industry since its founding in 2009.
"It's really important for the pharmaceutical industry, and life sciences in general, to understand cannabis as a medical compound and how to channel it into therapeutic effects that benefit patients and how to do this in an evidence based and regulatory pathway aligned way," says Jutt.
Patient-Centered Care
"Patient-centrality is finally coming to the forefront where it belongs," says Jutt. And at FoPPS, it's already one of the biggest buzzwords for pharmacists-in-training. Students studying to receive their Doctorate of Pharmacy (PharmD) learn how to provide patient-centered care from many roles and perspectives in the profession because of the large and unique scope of practice for pharmacists in Alberta, including their ability to prescribe, write referrals, give vaccinations and injections, and administer and order lab tests.
"It's about active patient engagement, not only through advertising to patients in terms of direct to consumer (DTC) advertising," something that is admittedly less familiar to those in the Canadian market and health care system, "but also being involved with advocacy groups and coalitions which bring the patient into the picture much earlier," says Jutt. "This means ensuring that clinical development plans are not created independently from the patients who are in the clinical trials, but fully integrating them and keeping them involved throughout the process."