Lance Glinn:

Welcome in to the Inside the ICE House Podcast as we bring you our annual AI biotech series. Joining me on today's episode is Chris Arendt. He is the chief scientific officer for Takeda. Chris, thanks so much for joining us inside the ICE House. Happy to have you here.

Chris Arendt:

What a pleasure, Lance. Thanks for this chance to speak with you today.

Lance Glinn:

So Chris, Takeda is a company with more than two centuries of history, but of course, focus of the organization from start to, as we sit today in 2026, remains on obviously addressing some of the most challenging diseases facing patients, excuse me, around the world. Its mission statement, enduring purpose of delivering better health for people and a brighter future for the world. When I say that and you think about your day-to-day and the problems that Takeda is taking on, the problems that Takeda is combating, how would you describe what that mission means to you and how it translate into what you and your team do each day?

Chris Arendt:

Yeah. Well, thanks. At the center of that mission is continuing to make a real difference for patients. That is what has sustained Takeda for 245 years. And my mission is to make sure that doesn't stop now, but that we can take that ultimately to the next level. And to do that across all of our therapeutic areas in Takeda, those are gastroenterology and inflammation, neuroscience, and oncology. And in each of these areas, there still is immense unmet medical needs. And we want to not only bring those next therapeutics to patients, but we want to deliver them to as many people across the world as we possibly can. So that is our mission. It's ambitious. It's a huge privilege to work towards that mission, but it's also incredibly challenging today because of some of the headwinds that we're facing that our peers also face. Those include the changes in policy that impact medicines and how they're delivered across the world, the payer models and all the complexities of those, the dynamic of that. It includes the intense global competition and just the increasing costs that we face. Also, just the attrition that's intrinsic to the industry that we're in. And those are all significant weighty challenges. There's so much gravity around each of those.

Yet for me, this is one of the most exciting and high potential moments that I've been contributing to the sciences. And that's because I think we have more potential to address that through what I'll call the tailwinds that are now becoming at our disposal. Those include leveraging new computational technologies, increasingly sophisticated automation, more in silico experimentation to really increase the quality and the timeline and the speed with which we can deliver these ambitious medicines.

Lance Glinn:

When talking with leaders across healthcare, scientific success and patient success are often not the same thing. And what I mean by that is a breakthrough in a lab is obviously important, but for patients, success means being able to live their life to the fullest with those breakthroughs, obviously in the lab, helping reach that point where they can then take said medicine or take said drug and obviously help recover and help live their life better than what they're currently dealing with at the time. How do you and your team stay connected to the patient perspective and how does real world decisions impact the decisions that you make?

Chris Arendt:

That is such an important question. In fact, it's so important for our ultimate success that we actually not just leverage cool science, but that we can bring forward something that's really differentiated and meaningful to patients. And to do that, of course, we need to be at the frontiers of science, especially translational science, understanding well the journeys that patients take and the challenges that they have with the disease burden across the world. It goes beyond that. It goes beyond that to what are the endpoints and quality of life components that are also really important to those patients. So one thing that we do is interface with patient groups throughout the journey of all of our development programs. It's immensely, immensely enriching for us.

The other thing that we do is in our clinical trials, we actually have endpoints. They aren't registrational endpoints, but they're additional endpoints that focus on the quality of life and the meaningful impacts of a therapeutic candidate on patients' lives. And those are extremely important as we are bringing these hopefully transformational new medicines forward into the world in terms of explaining the value that they potentially deliver holistically.

Lance Glinn:

And so Takeda, I want to go back to the company as a whole. We talked earlier over two centuries, I think you said 240 plus years of history supporting and helping innovate different medicines and drugs to help make people's lives better. Recently, a new chapter for the company with the appointment of Julie Kim as president and CEO. For you leading the scientific strategy, what has energized you about working alongside Julie and how does her vision influence the way the greater team thinks about innovation, thinks about growth, and thinks about, I think most importantly, delivering for patients?

Chris Arendt:

Yeah. Well, Julie's taking center stage at this catalyst moment for our company because as I touched on, this is a time when we are registering and hoping to launch what we believe will be three transformational medicines across our three therapeutic areas. And I think there's no one more qualified than Julie to lead that with all the experience that she brings in that commercial space. She's also a successor who's been very intentionally set up for this role by our former CEO, Christophe Weber, who had a tenure of 12 years and really brought the global scale and focus to our R&D engine. And Julie's absolutely here to build upon that. Bringing on this internal candidate in such a planful way was to ensure both the ability to deliver on these launches successfully and also to continue the momentum that we have in the engine, in that innovation engine that we're nurturing. Keep in mind, our mission is not just to deliver a few breakthrough medicines. We have to keep delivering them every single year. And Julie could not be more committed to doing what I'm here today to talk about, which is leveraging new technologies and making sure that Takeda is really at the leading edge of implementing these potentially better ways to develop medicines in the future.

Lance Glinn:

So Chris, you've mentioned it a few times in our conversation now. There are three therapeutics that Takeda is actively working on, actively developing that will help take the company even further and help people even further. There's one for psoriasis, one for PV, one for narcolepsy. Look, I'm no PhD, I'm no doctor, I'm no scientist, so I'll open up the floor to you. Just give us a brief explainer on these three therapeutics and how they will help people suffering from all of these different illnesses.

Chris Arendt:

Wonderful. I mean, this could not be a more exciting time in Takeda because we have the richest late stage pipeline, in fact, of our entire history. Let me start with the neuroscience molecule called oveporexton. This is an oral medicine that was developed in our own labs in Takeda that was specifically designed to fill in a missing neurotransmitter that results in a disease called narcolepsy type one. It's quite a devastating condition. It has a huge impact on quality of life for how it dysregulates both sleep and wake cycles, but also for its association with cataplexy, which is a dramatic loss of muscle tone that can be associated with moments of high emotional kind of activity. So we could not be more thrilled to be the first on this mechanism. It actually required an immense commitment over the last many years. This was the third molecule that we brought into the clinic actually that was fully optimized now to be able to be what is a first in class medicine. I can say that now because as we're recording this today in China, oveporexton was approved successfully.

Lance Glinn:

Congratulations.

Chris Arendt:

Thank you. Really excited to be able to bring this transformational medicine now forward to patients. I'll move on to oncology where we have a disease called polycythemia vera. It is a disorder of red blood cells. And it's one where just like with oveporexton, where we're filling in a missing biological component. There is a molecule that's designed to mimic an endogenous signaling molecule called hepcidin. And by injecting patients with this molecule, we can correct the red blood cell sort of over the population of blood. Basically think of blood being just full and crammed with red blood cells that results in the need for phlebotomies. So that ability to restore what's called hematocrit is really important for that patient population.

And then last but definitely not least, psoriasis is something that afflicts so many millions of people actually and also has I think an underappreciated effect on quality of life. There is a desire to have a safe and effective fast-acting therapy that can be taken orally in a way that's very convenient for patients. And zasocitinib has demonstrated that very impactful fast onset activity. And we're very, very pleased and excited to be in the registrational process for that molecule today.

Lance Glinn:

You mentioned with oveporexton, I think I'm saying that right, oveporexton.

Chris Arendt:

Yeah.

Lance Glinn:

It was obviously years in the making. There were multiple molecules before that for whatever reason had to move on to the next one, and now you're at the third one. And it seems like you've obviously ... Again, I'm not trying to jinx anything, but seemed like you're in the process of having it figured out. Or how important is, I guess, the fail fast and then learn from those failings mentality? Because if you had those two molecules before, what good is a third molecule if you don't take the learnings from the first two so that you then operate differently in the third? So how important just overall, not necessarily for oveporexton alone, but for all that you do and all that Takeda does, how important is it to learn from those failings, so to speak, even though failings might not necessarily be the right word. But to learn from previous instances so that when you move on to the next one, you know what you did wrong or you know what went wrong and you can obviously correct it moving forward?

Chris Arendt:

Actually, what you just articulated is I think the most important thing that we have an opportunity to further optimize in our industry. I'll call it decision latency and decision quality. Actually both are equally important. And with decision latency, it is about that learning loop, the loop that gets you from step to step in drug development. And obviously if informed by translational data, then the quality is also potentially augmented. So I think there's so many reasons, so many opportunities to increase both in our industry. And just one example is actually how we use negative data. Actually, that is something that's often discarded today because it's deemed to be uninteresting. But when you asked how can we ensure that in the future we're making better and better judgements, it's partly through having the right data infrastructure and capability to capture the totality of information. And across our entire spectrum of activities, we're working across an immense continuum of science from initial ideation and discovery at the bench to using in silico experimentation to doing trials in patients to actually post-launch scientific evaluation. So the ability to incorporate those learnings to further understand where the standard of care can be better addressed in the future and learn from failings, but learn from successes, integrate that is a critical opportunity space. And it's one where AI I think can have an impact.

Lance Glinn:

And I think the drug discovery process, I think you'd agree, obviously very different now than what it once was. I think through obviously the technological capabilities that we all now have, whether you're in pharmaceuticals, whether you're in just any industry, frankly, technology's obviously making things more efficient, making things faster. As someone who obviously sits at the intersection of the science and this technology, how do you anticipate drug discovery continuing to evolve and transform as AI, as we're here for the AI Bio Summit, as AI becomes even more integrated into it than it is now?

Chris Arendt:

Let me answer this in the context of two horizons if I could actually. Because I think to get the aspirational one that we all want to believe in, which is that we're going to be so much faster, more efficient and smarter, is I'll call it that the second horizon. That's when you supercharge that engine of R&D. And we are very much committed to that horizon. It's actually a core part of our Takeda leadership team strategy, Julie's strategy. But let me first reflect on the first horizon because to get there, you actually need to have some fundamental things worked out really efficiently and effectively. On the research side, how you're capturing your data has to be, if you will, automated and systematized. You need to have the ability to put your data in a cloud to then be able to use it for AI, machine learning and so on. In the case of Takeda, more broadly, we need to get these launches off and going. And then we've got a rich mid-stage, late stage clinical pipeline that we'll be prosecuting, but also then research is taking off with these new automation capabilities and the new ways of working.

That step from horizon one to two involves what I think is a complete process reinvention. It's a re-engineering, actually. Sometimes I think of it as a retrofitting of all of these cutting edge technologies that require then process redesign. Because actually if we're moving at a pace of the past, ultimately there's an impedance mismatch, if you will, with the speed of AI and what the computational accelerators can deliver to us. So horizon one is about building that foundation really. And then horizon two is we're setting up for those leaps that become possible at scale as we have this closed loop model that's really able to be humming and scaling in our research labs along with automation builds that are really going to further that there.

Lance Glinn:

And I think when just looking at AI and its integration into science and pharmaceuticals and so on and so forth, it's events like these here at the NYC, this AI Bio Summit, it welcomes collaboration, it welcomes discussion. And it also welcomes, I think, the potential for partnership between obviously attending companies and the representatives that are here. How do you think about partnership as a whole and AI-centric partnership? And how would you judge what makes a collaboration right for Takeda? Because I'm sure the opportunities are there, but not every partnership is going to be the right fit. How do you judge what makes a partnership the right partnership?

Chris Arendt:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, I'm reflecting on our long history and the recognition that it was so many of the many, many partnerships that have helped us to get to where we are today. And I would say going forward, partnerships are always going to be such a core part of our ability to innovate and deliver what we need to do. I talked about the engine that needs to keep humming, and we're building a strong internal capability for that, but that needs to be augmented by partnerships. And how we look for those is first of all, we look across the world. We look for some of the best teams who really have emerging proof points for what they do. You have to be able to cut through hype. There's a piece around quality and chemistry that is also very important to us. We don't want partnerships to be transactional in the way that they operate. We really want them to be as embedded as they can be. So those are some of the attributes we look for, but then we need them as we think about reinventing our R&D there's a strategy that has to come into play because we both want to ... So we need to continue to move at speed and deliver the pipeline and partnerships can help that.

We also need to reinvent and rebuild this engine in a way that is able to be sustaining in the future. So we need to both add on pipeline enabling partnerships, but we also need to integrate new technologies that will be now fundamental ones in the architecture of our future operating model. So that becomes a really exciting space to think about. There's a lot of strategy that goes into that, I would say. And we certainly have many. If you're a scientist in Takeda, it's extremely likely that at some point you're actually helping to evaluate and strategize around partnerships. It's a core part of what we do.

Lance Glinn:

So Chris, as we come to the end of our discussion from all we talk through during this conversation, Takeda seems to be entering a period of opportunity and a period of momentum as well. When you think ahead, what excites you most about the company's ability to shape the future of medicine and improve outcomes for patients globally?

Chris Arendt:

Oh, boy. There's a lot that excites me, this late stage pipeline and seeing the molecules that we've been working on so diligently actually make a difference for patients across the world. That is now the wind in the sails as I look forward to the future. Of course, we've got an exciting late stage pipeline behind that, but my responsibility is to focus on innovating in research. And I love the combination of therapeutic area of focus that we have with the leadership commitment to innovation that we have and all of the potential we have around these new technologies like AI that give us the chance to unlock new types of insights on the one hand, but also new types of molecules. So my team is contributing to become that engine that takes it to the supercharged engine for Takeda that is able to continually deliver highly differentiated medicines that can make a difference across the world. It's an incredible privilege. It's a huge challenge, but I could not be more excited to be helping to drive this with an amazing Takeda team.

Lance Glinn:

Chris Arendt, chief scientific officer at Takeda. Chris, I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.

Chris Arendt:

Me too, Lance. Thanks for your time.