The company’s head of Development, Joerg Moeller, is taking the reins of the company’s new R&D program.
Only days after Bayer AG’s pharmaceuticals head, Dieter Weinand, defended the company’s pipeline, the company’s head of Development, Joerg Moeller, is taking the reins of the company’s new Research and Development program.
Today, the company announced it planned to bolster its strategic pharmaceutical research and development programs and bring them under a single leader. The unit will combine R&D activities for cardiology, gynecology, ophthalmology, hematology and oncology within its pharmaceuticals division. Moeller will take over on Jan. 1, 2018. The current head of Drug Discovery, Andreas Busch, is leaving to pursue opportunities at a different company.
“The combined organization will enable us to seamlessly steer all the important activities of Research and Development, with a single objective to further enhance the delivery of much needed new treatment options to patients,” Weinand, president of the Pharmaceuticals Division and member of the Board of Management, told The Financial. “Joerg has an exceptional track record of bringing new medicines to patients, which have the potential to increase their quality of life and address serious medical conditions, and I trust that our team will be even more successful in doing so together under his leadership. At the same time we thank Andreas Busch for all his valuable contributions to our company and wish him much success in his future endeavors.”
Part of the criticism of Bayer’s pipeline is related to its pending takeover of Monsanto for $63.5 billion and a key patent for Xarelto expiring in 2024. Shareholders have expressed concerns that the company’s pharmaceuticals unit may not receive appropriate funding to deliver on its pipeline as its energies and resources shift to Monsanto.
Weinand recently told Reuters, “We have increased our R&D spend by more than a billion euros since I arrived and we have now more than 50 projects in clinical development. We don’t have a pipeline problem.”
Of note was a collaboration deal with Stamford, Conn.-based Loxo Oncology to develop and commercialize larotrectinib and LOXO-195 for patients with TRK fusion cancers. Under the deal, Bayer paid Loxo $400 million upfront. Loxo is eligible for $450 million in milestone payments upon larotrectinib regulatory approvals and first commercial sale events, and another $200 million in milestone payments for LOXO-195 approvals and sales.
The investors have expressed hope that Bayer would conduct even more deals to expand its pipeline, but Wienand responded that, “Buying additional pipeline would require additional funding for an even larger pipeline, which I don’t actually need at the moment.”
Joerg Moeller ran Bayer’s Development at the pharma division since Feb. 1, 2015. He started at Bayer in 1993 in the Clinical Research International department. He was a clinical project manager at the Pharmaceutical Research Center in Wuppertal, Germany. He then took managerial roles in the U.S. and Canada before returning to Germany in 2001 as vice president of Strategic Drug Development Cardiovascular. He headed the company’s Global Clinical Strategy department of the company’s former HealthCare’s Pharmaceuticals Division from 2002 to 2003. He was then appointed head of Global Clinical Development based in the U.S. Under his new position, Moeller will report to Weinand and participate in Bayer’s Pharmaceutical Executive Committee.
