尊敬的用户您好,这是来自FT中文网的温馨提示:如您对更多FT中文网的内容感兴趣,请在苹果应用商店或谷歌应用市场搜索“FT中文网”,下载FT中文网的官方应用。
Everything about Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen is understated. The chief executive of Danish drugs group Novo Nordisk grew up on a pig farm in Jutland and from an early age was expected to muck out the animals.
关于周赋德(Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen)的一切都很低调。这位丹麦制药集团诺和诺德(Novo Nordisk)的首席执行官在日德兰半岛(Jutland)的一个养猪场长大,小时候还要给牲畜清理粪便。
While most of his rivals take private jets to their appointments, he waits for commercial connections. Tall, thin and thoughtful, Jørgensen is far from the conventional image of a swashbuckling, dealmaking CEO: he started his career as an economist in the healthcare and planning department.
当他的大多数竞争对手乘坐着私人飞机去赴约时,他却在等待航班中转。周赋德身材瘦高,心思缜密,与传统印象中挥斥方遒、热衷交易的首席执行官形象大相径庭:他的职业生涯始于在医疗保健和规划部门担任经济学家。
But in his low-key way, Jørgensen is pioneering a commercial innovation that could have a profound impact not just on healthcare, but on societies, on public finances and on our relationship with food.
但周赋德正在以他低调的方式开创一项商业创新,这项创新不仅会对医疗保健,还会对社会、公共财政以及我们与食物的关系产生深远影响。
Novo Nordisk is the company behind the first game-changing treatments that are used for obesity: Wegovy and Ozempic. Before these drugs, the only truly effective treatment was bariatric surgery, which is expensive and sometimes risky. Now there is a simple injection.
诺和诺德是推出第一批颠覆性肥胖症治疗药物,Wegovy和Ozempic背后的公司。在这些药物出现之前,唯一真正有效的治疗方法是减肥手术,这种手术不仅费用昂贵,有时还存在风险。现在只要注射即可。
A safe and readily available treatment for obesity could have a huge impact on human health, while also generating savings on treating other diseases. Obesity will affect an estimated 1bn people by 2030 — with all the associated impact that has on rates of diabetes, heart disease and mobility. In the US alone, the economy loses up to $30bn a year in sick days due to the condition, according to research from Cornell.
一种安全且容易获得的肥胖治疗方法可能对人类健康产生巨大影响,同时还可以节省治疗其他疾病的费用。据估计到2030年,肥胖症将影响约10亿人,并对糖尿病、心脏病和行动不便的发病率产生相关影响。康奈尔大学(Cornell)的研究显示,仅在美国,每年因肥胖症请病假造成的经济损失就高达300亿美元。
And it is not just obesity: there is now good evidence to suggest the company’s drugs could also help prevent heart attacks and there is even some hope they could be used to treat Alzheimer’s by reducing inflammation in the brain.
而且不仅仅是肥胖症:现在有充分证据表明,该公司的药物还可以帮助预防心脏病发作,甚至有希望通过减少大脑炎症来治疗阿尔茨海默氏症。
The Novo Nordisk drugs have been several decades in the works and Wegovy was first approved in the US in 2021. But this is the year that the momentum behind them has become unstoppable, when it became clear that they are more than just a celebrity fad.
诺和诺德的这些药物历经数十年研发,Wegovy于2021年首次在美国获得批准。但就在今年,这些药物的发展势头变得势不可挡,显然,它们已不仅仅是一种名人时尚。
Barclays forecasts sales of Wegovy, which is used for obesity, to hit $4.2bn this year and $7.3bn next, with Ozempic, designed for diabetes but often prescribed off-label for obesity, predicted to hit $13.3bn in 2023 and $16.5bn in 2024.
巴克莱(Barclays)预测,用于治疗肥胖症的Wegovy今年销售额将达到42亿美元,明年将达到73亿美元,而Ozempic——用于治疗糖尿病,但经常超说明书开处方用于治疗肥胖症——预计将在2023年达到133亿美元,2024年达到165亿美元。
The success has turbocharged Novo Nordisk: with little fanfare, it has become the most valuable company in Europe, overtaking luxury group LVMH, maker of Louis Vuitton and Moët & Chandon.
这一成功为诺和诺德注入了强劲动力:它悄无声息地超越了奢侈品集团路易威登(Louis Vuitton)和酩悦香槟(Moët & Chandon)的制造商路威酩轩(LVMH),成为欧洲最有价值的公司。
For his role conducting this model of patient, persistent but transformational innovation, the Financial Times has chosen Jørgensen as its Person of the Year.
英国《金融时报》将周赋德选为年度人物,以表彰他在引领这一持之以恒、坚持不懈,具有变革意义的创新范本中所发挥的作用。
Jørgensen, who drives himself to work in an electric car and goes kayaking on the lake near his house to reflect, would never be as brash as to claim his product can be a panacea for society’s ills — in the style of some Silicon Valley executives. But in his typically earnest way, he insists that the company and the industry can have a “huge chance of impacting the world”.
周赋德自己开着电动汽车上班,会在他家附近的湖上划皮艇去沉思。他绝不会像一些硅谷高管那样,轻率地宣称自己的产品是解决社会弊病的灵丹妙药。但他以自己一贯的认真态度坚持认为,公司和行业有“巨大的机会影响世界”。
“I feel a great sense of responsibility for actually succeeding together with society,” he tells the FT, “because I think as an industry and as a company, we have part of the key to solving some of the huge societal problems, ageing populations, chronic diseases.”
他对英国《金融时报》表示:“我有一种强烈的责任感,要真正与社会一起取得成功,因为我认为,作为一个行业和一家公司,我们掌握着一部分关键力量,去解决一些重大社会问题,比如人口老龄化、慢性病等等。”
Novo Nordisk also faces a number of potential obstacles that could still hamper its expected growth. The surge of popularity in the drugs — fuelled in part by slimming celebrities — has caused a supply shortage and created a booming black market. Concerns rumble about side effects. Rival Eli Lilly has won approval for its own obesity drug, which could be more effective and currently has a lower list price.
诺和诺德还面临着一些潜在障碍,这些障碍仍有可能阻碍其预期增长。在名人瘦身的部分带动下,这些药物变得炙手可热,导致了供应短缺,并催生了一个蓬勃发展的黑市。对副作用的担忧不绝于耳。竞争对手礼来公司(Eli Lilly)已获批生产自己的肥胖症药物,这种药物可能更有效,目前的标价也更低。
Most of all, Jørgensen still needs to convince many governments and cash-strapped health systems that it makes sense to pay for the drug now in order to save money later. And that in part requires a shift in mindset so that obesity is considered a disease that can be treated with medicine — like, say, high blood pressure — and not as a personal failing.
最重要的是,周赋德还需要说服许多国家的政府和资金短缺的医疗系统,让他们相信,为了节省日后开支,现在支付该药的费用是合理的。这在一定程度上需要转变观念,将肥胖视为一种可以通过药物治疗的疾病,就像高血压一样,而不是个人的失败。
The company insists that for all the growing success, it is not getting ahead of itself. According to Kasim Kutay, chief executive of Novo Holdings, which controls the company, and who is a Novo Nordisk board member, Jørgensen reacted with a sense of “immense responsibility” when the company became the largest in Europe.
该公司坚持认为,尽管取得了越来越多的成功,但它并没有超越自我。诺和诺德公司董事会成员、诺和诺德控股公司(Novo Holdings)首席执行官卡西姆•库塔伊(Kasim Kutay)认为,当公司成为欧洲最大的公司时,周赋德的反应是“责任重大”。
“It’s not something that is talked about or boasted about as . . . a feat in itself,” he says. “It’s about how do we use our scale and size to deliver on our responsibility to patients?”
他说:“这本身并不是什么值得谈论或夸耀的壮举。这是关于我们如何利用我们的规模和体量来履行我们对患者的责任。”
Taking the long view
放眼长远
The drugs began life at Novo Nordisk 32 years ago — by coincidence, when Jørgensen joined the company. Wegovy and Ozempic are both made from semaglutide, a version of an appetite-reducing hormone called GLP-1. But in the body, the hormone only lasts for minutes, so Novo’s scientists spent years making it stable enough to use as a medicine.
32年前,这些药物在诺和诺德开始诞生,巧合的是,周赋德正是这时加入诺和诺德的。Wegovy和Ozempic都是由司美格鲁肽(semaglutide)制成的,司美格鲁肽是一种名为“胰高血糖素样肽-1”(GLP-1)的食欲降低激素。但这种激素在人体内只能维持几分钟,因此诺和诺德的科学家们花了数年时间使其足够稳定,可以作为药物使用。
Jørgensen’s time at the company has coincided with a long-term bet on the potential of this new science. The first real breakthrough came 14 years ago, when the drugmaker got its first approval for a GLP-1 drug for diabetes in 2009. Another version followed in 2015, targeting weight loss. But it only helped patients lose about 5 per cent of their body weight. It would take six more years until Wegovy was approved, after a trial showed an average of 15 per cent weight loss.
周赋德在公司任职期间,公司长期看好这门新科学的潜力。第一次真正的突破出现在14年前,当时该制药商在2009年首次获得GLP-1治疗糖尿病药物的批准。2015年另一种针对减肥的药物也获批。但它只帮助患者减轻了约5%的体重。又过了6年,在一项试验显示体重平均减轻15%之后,Wegovy才获得批准。
Not even Elon Musk in a wild night could take over or attempt to take over Novo Nordisk
Bent Dalager, an old friend of Jørgensen, describes how his childhood on the farm in Jutland made him a patient leader. “The thing about growing is throwing out these seeds, and they will become something later,” he says. “That’s actually a fairly good frame of mind to have if you work in the pharma industry.”
周赋德的老朋友本特•达拉格(Bent Dalager)讲述了他在日德兰半岛农场的童年是如何使他成为一个耐心的领导者的。他说:“种庄稼就是把这些种子撒出去,然后它们会长成作物的。如果你在制药行业工作,这实际上是一种相当好的心态。”
Novo Nordisk could invest for the very long term partly because of its unusual ownership structure. Initially called Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium, the company was founded in 1923 by the Danish Nobel laureate August Krogh, pharmacist August Kongsted and scientist Hans Christian Hagedorn. The Canadian scientists who discovered insulin granted the pair permission to produce it in Scandinavia, with a caveat: the proceeds from its sale should be reinvested in research.
诺和诺德之所以能够进行长期投资,部分原因在于其不同寻常的所有权结构。公司最初名为诺和诺德胰岛素实验室(Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium),由丹麦诺贝尔奖获得者奥古斯特•克罗(August Krogh)、药剂师奥古斯特•孔斯特德(August Kongsted)和科学家汉斯•克里斯蒂安•哈格多恩(Hans Christian Hagedorn)于1923年创立。发现胰岛素的加拿大科学家允许他们在斯堪的纳维亚生产胰岛素,但有一个条件:销售所得应再投资于研究。
So they set up the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which thanks to the company’s growth is now the world’s largest philanthropic foundation by assets. Novo Holdings, which manages the foundation’s wealth, has 77 per cent of the voting rights of Novo Nordisk.
因此,他们成立了诺和诺德基金会(Novo Nordisk Foundation)。由于公司的发展,该基金会目前是全球资产规模最大的慈善基金会。管理该基金会财富的诺和控股控股公司拥有诺和诺德77%的投票权。
Martin Jes Iversen, an associate professor of strategy and innovation at Copenhagen Business School, says the structure kept the company committed to its broader purpose beyond profitability.
哥本哈根商学院(Copenhagen Business School)战略与创新副教授马丁•杰斯•艾弗森(Martin Jes Iversen)表示,这种结构使公司致力于实现盈利之外的更广泛目标。
It also ensured Novo Nordisk was not for sale. “So not even Elon Musk in a wild night could take over or attempt to take over Novo Nordisk,” he says.
这也确保了诺和诺德不会被出售。“因此,即使是埃隆•马斯克也不可能在一个疯狂的夜晚突然收购或试图收购诺和诺德,”他说。
Starting at the company in 1991, Jørgensen has worked in the US, Japan and the Netherlands, where he was one of few foreign executives to learn Dutch during his posting.
周赋德于1991年加入诺和诺德,曾在美国、日本和荷兰工作过,是少数几位在任职期间学习荷兰语的外国高管之一。
Marcus Schindler, Novo Nordisk’s chief scientific officer, says Jørgensen is committed to Novo’s “ethical guardrails” and is “uncompromising” about serving patients, for example, insisting the company will never stop producing insulin, even though it is less profitable than other drugs.
诺和诺德首席科学官马库斯•辛德勒(Marcus Schindler)说,周赋德恪守诺和诺德的“道德准则”,在为患者服务方面“毫不妥协”,例如,他坚持认为公司永远不会停止生产胰岛素,即使这种药物的利润低于其他药物。
Shortly after Jørgensen joined the company’s development committee but before he became chief executive, Novo needed to decide whether to invest more in trials for an earlier obesity drug. Jørgensen says it was a “big decision” because of the potential risks to Novo’s reputation. Most other pharmaceutical companies avoided weight-loss drugs because previous attempts had been dogged by dangerous side effects.
就在周赋德加入公司研发委员会后不久,但在他成为首席执行官之前,诺和诺德需要决定是否加大对一种早期肥胖症药物试验的投资。周赋德说,这是一个“重大决定”,因为这对诺和诺德的声誉有潜在风险。其他大多数制药公司都回避减肥药,因为之前的尝试都受到了危险副作用的困扰。
“When you look at the field of obesity medicine, most of them were considered as either not very efficacious, or potentially also with an unattractive safety profile,” he recalls.
他回忆说:“纵观肥胖药物领域,大多数药物都被认为疗效不佳,还可能安全性也不怎么样。”
This year, Jørgensen says his most important decisions have been about saying no. While the organisation is full of ideas of how to invest its windfall, Jørgensen is committed to doubling down on developing products for obesity, diabetes and cardiometabolic diseases.
周赋德说,今年他最重要的决定是说“不”。虽然该组织对如何投资这笔意外之财充满了想法,但周赋德致力于加倍开发针对肥胖、糖尿病和心脏代谢疾病的产品。
“If there’s an unmet need, if it’s something that’s a core capability, I feel very, very comfortable in taking huge risks,” he explains.
他解释说:“如果存在未满足的需求,如果这是一项核心能力,我愿意承担巨大的风险。”
Cultural influence
文化影响
Unsurprisingly, Jørgensen is not on TikTok, where #Ozempic has clocked up 1.3bn mentions. He confesses the company was “late” to understanding the cultural impact of its drugs: it looked for feedback from the clinicians who the industry calls “key opinion leaders” rather than Hollywood influencers.
不出所料,周赋德不在TikTok上,而#Ozempic在TikTok上的提及次数已达13亿次。他坦言,公司对其药品的文化影响了解得“很晚”:公司寻求的是被业界称为“关键意见领袖”的临床医生的反馈,而不是好莱坞的网红。
When Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress to the Met Gala last year, she set off rumours about a diabetes drug helping celebrities slim down dramatically. Lauren Sherman, a fashion correspondent at digital media company Puck, remembers it looked like she had lost a lot of weight in the previous two weeks.
去年,当金•卡戴珊穿着玛丽莲•梦露的礼服出席Met Gala时,就引发了关于糖尿病药物帮助名人大幅瘦身的传言。数字媒体公司Puck的时尚记者劳伦•谢尔曼(Lauren Sherman)记得,卡戴珊在活动前的两周里瘦了非常多。
By the Met Gala this year, Sherman says the drug had become so prevalent it was an “accessory”, even for some of the thinnest famous people. “I do think that it is causing people to think, ‘If it is accessible and I don’t do it, am I going to look like an idiot?’” she says.
谢尔曼说,到今年的Met Gala,这种药物已经普遍到成了一种“饰品”,甚至对一些最瘦的名人来说都是如此。她说:“我确实认为这会让人们产生这样的想法,‘如果它可以买到,而我不服用,我会不会看起来像个白痴?’”
Yet most celebrities, including Kardashian, deny using drugs. Sherman says this is partly because being thin is still associated with signalling that you are a “disciplined” person, who does not “overeat”.
然而,包括卡戴珊在内的大多数名人都否认使用药物。谢尔曼说,这部分是因为保持苗条仍然与“自律”、不”暴饮暴食 "联系在一起。
Their use of Ozempic, which has been in greater supply than Wegovy, highlights an inequality: the wealthy can get doctors to prescribe the drug, even if they don’t have diabetes, while some real patients have struggled to get hold of it.
他们使用Ozempic——该药物比Wegovy供应量更大——突显了一种不平等现象:有钱人可以让医生开这种药,即使他们没有糖尿病,而一些真正的病人却很难买到这种药。
Celebrities’ unofficial promotion has helped create a rush for the drugs, with regulators warning about fake injection pens, and reports that online pharmacies will prescribe it to people so thin they could be suffering from eating disorders. The surge in demand has exacerbated supply shortages partly caused by manufacturing problems.
名人的非官方宣传助长了对该药的抢购热潮,监管机构对假冒注射笔发出警告,还有报道称网上药店会给那些已经瘦到可能患有饮食紊乱症的人开药。需求激增加剧了供应短缺,这一部分是生产问题导致的。
Now, the executive management team gets updates on how the drugs are trending on social media every week. Jørgensen wants to shift from a social media debate to a medical discussion with doctors about the benefits. “It creates a sense of urgency in the company to make sure that we communicate in the right way,” he says.
现在,执行管理团队每周都会收到有关这些药在社交媒体上流行趋势的最新信息。周赋德希望从社交媒体上的争论转变为与医生就其益处进行讨论。他说:“这在公司内部形成一种紧迫感,要确保我们以正确的方式进行沟通。”
A broad impact
广泛影响
The drugs have jolted financial markets as well as parties for the rich and famous. Emily Field, an analyst at Barclays, jumped out of her chair when she saw the initial data from Novo Nordisk’s cardiac outcomes trial in August. Wegovy had shown it could cut the risk of serious cardiac events such as heart attacks by 20 per cent in overweight or obese patients with cardiovascular disease.
这些药物不仅震动了金融市场,也震动了富人和名人的聚会。巴克莱分析师艾米丽•菲尔德(Emily Field)在8月份看到诺和诺德心脏预后试验的初步数据时,从椅子上跳了起来。数据证明,对于患有心血管疾病的超重或肥胖患者,Wegovy可以心脏病发作等严重心脏事件的风险降低20%。
It was the first solid evidence that the drug was not just a slimming jab, but a powerful preventive tool. Shares jumped too: up as much as 16 per cent as even generalist investors started to appreciate this was a drug that could transform healthcare.
这是第一个确凿的证据,证明这种药物不仅是一种减肥针,还是一种强大的预防工具。该公司股价也大幅上涨:涨幅高达16%,就连多面手投资者也开始意识到,这是一种可能改变医疗行业的药物。
“It just woke up so many people to the whole story,” says Field. “It was such a game-changer.” Field says the drugs are now rightly seen as a technology with widespread impact, like artificial intelligence. Suddenly, consumer analysts were worrying about how the drug could dampen appetite for products from companies such as doughnut maker Krispy Kreme, while medical technology investors worried it could be the end of bariatric surgery.
菲尔德说:“它让很多人意识到了事情的全部。它完全是一个颠覆者。”菲尔德说,这些药物现在被正确地视为一种具有广泛影响的技术,就像人工智能一样。突然之间,消费者分析师开始担心这种药物会抑制人们对甜甜圈制造商Krispy Kreme等公司产品的兴趣,而医疗技术投资者则担心这可能是减肥手术的终结。
[Wegovy] just woke up so many people to the whole story. It was such a game-changer
(Wegovy)只是让很多人意识到事情的全部。它完全是一个颠覆者
The clinical trial was one of the first big decisions Jørgensen made after taking over as CEO in 2017. The move carried substantial risk: it can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to test a drug on 17,000 people and there was no guarantee that the results would demonstrate broad health benefits. Now the bet has paid off, Jørgensen hopes to use the data to convince health systems that the drug will save lives and cut costs.
其临床试验是周赋德在2017年接任首席执行官后做出的第一批重大决定之一。此举蕴含着巨大的风险:在1.7万人身上试验一种药物可能需要花费数亿美元,而且无法保证试验结果能够证明该药物具有广泛的健康益处。现在,赌注得到了回报,周赋德希望利用这些数据说服医疗系统,这种药物将挽救生命并降低成本。
Fatima Cody Stanford, an expert in obesity medicine at Harvard Medical School, says the drugs will be “highly influential” and may lead to a decline in the need for treatment for conditions such as hypertension, kidney disease, fatty liver disease, diabetes and sleep apnoea.
哈佛医学院(Harvard Medical School)肥胖医学专家法蒂玛•科迪•斯坦福(Fatima Cody Stanford)表示,这些药物将“极具影响力”,可能会减少对高血压、肾病、脂肪肝、糖尿病和睡眠呼吸暂停等疾病的治疗需求。
Novo Nordisk is running a late-stage trial to see if semaglutide could treat the widespread neurodegenerative disease Alzheimer’s, and external researchers are also intrigued about the potential for the drugs to be used to treat alcohol addiction.
诺和诺德正在进行一项后期试验,以确定司美格鲁肽是否可以治疗广泛存在的神经退行性疾病阿尔茨海默氏症,外部研究人员也对这种药物用于治疗酒精成瘾的潜力很感兴趣。
But there are still problems to solve. Many patients struggle with side effects of nausea, diarrhoea and constipation, especially in the early stages, clinicians are worried about muscle loss, and the European regulator is investigating if there’s a link between taking the drugs and suicidal thoughts.
但仍有一些问题需要解决。许多患者都在与恶心、腹泻和便秘等副作用作斗争,尤其是在用药初期,临床医生担心肌肉萎缩,欧洲监管机构正在调查服用这些药物与自杀念头之间是否存在联系。
For healthcare systems, the biggest concern is that when people stop taking the drugs, they regain weight. Some payers are reluctant to commit to covering a drug for the rest of people’s lives, especially when the potential pool of patients is so vast. Some 42 per cent of the population in the US is obese, and 17 per cent in the EU, while many overweight people could also benefit.
对于医疗保健系统来说,最大的担忧是,当人们停止服用这些药物时,他们的体重会反弹。一些支付方不愿承诺为患者的余生支付药物费用,尤其是在潜在患者群体如此庞大的情况下。美国约有42%的人口肥胖,欧盟为17%,而许多超重的人也可以从中受益。
The drugs risk exacerbating health inequities. Wegovy has a US list price of $1,300 a month, though the net cost is usually about half that, and the price in Europe is lower. Without greater insurance coverage in the US, or more widespread availability in European public health systems, they will be out of reach for many of the poorest.
这些药物还可能加剧健康不平等。Wegovy在美国的标价是每月1300美元,但净成本通常只有这个价格的一半左右,欧洲的价格也更低。如果美国的保险覆盖面不扩大,或者欧洲的公共医疗系统不能更广泛地提供这种药物,那么对于许多最贫穷的人来说,这种药物将是可望而不可及的。
This cost has also raised some questions about the likely cost savings. Airfinity, a health analytics firm, estimated that even after a 65 per cent rebate on the list price, it could cost $1.1mn spent on Wegovy to prevent one heart attack.
这一成本也引发了一些关于可能节省成本的问题。据一家医疗分析公司Airfinity估算,即使按标价打折65%,要预防一次心脏病发作,也需要在Wegovy上花费110万美元。
Mark Sculpher, director of the centre for health economics at the University of York, says the jury is still out on the long-term effects of the drugs, which could affect their true value. Like most drugs, they were approved on a few years of data. “Pharmaceutical companies are forever promising hugely transformational, innovative products,” he says. “And sometimes they are. But very often they are not.”
约克大学卫生经济学中心主任马克•斯卡尔弗(Mark Sculpher)说,这些药物的长期效果还没有定论,这可能会影响它们的真正价值。与大多数药物一样,这些药物是根据几年的数据获得批准的。他说:“制药公司总是承诺会推出具有巨大变革意义的创新产品。有时候确实是这样。但通常情况下并非如此。”
Jørgensen believes by getting ahead of disease, governments and insurers can save on the more than 80 per cent of healthcare funding that ends up being spent on chronic conditions.
周赋德认为,通过提前预防疾病,政府和保险公司可以节省超过80%的医疗资金,而这些资金最终都花在了慢性病上。
He is not alone in hoping for a substantial shift towards prevention in healthcare, but systems have struggled to make the change when their tight budgets are stretched across an already sick and ageing population. To try to reach more patients, Novo Nordisk is in talks with health systems about flexible pricing to allow them to defer some of the cost of the drugs until they are seeing benefits.
他并不是唯一一个希望医疗保健向预防方向作出重大转向的人,但当医疗系统紧张的预算已被现有患者和老龄化人口摊薄,该系统很难作出改变。为了让更多的患者受益,诺和诺德公司正在与医疗系统商讨灵活定价的问题,允许它们推迟支付部分药物费用,直到看到疗效为止。
Jørgensen sees continued innovation as another way to help make the argument. Next year, the company will complete a late-stage trial of its next generation drug CagriSema, which analysts expect to show even more significant weight loss, and report data on an early study of a promising obesity pill. In the long run, he dreams of “vaccine-type interventions” for chronic diseases and is investing in discovering how to prevent obesity in the first place.
周赋德认为,持续创新是另一种有助于论证的方式。明年,该公司将完成下一代药物CagriSema 的后期试验,分析师预计该药的减重效果将更加显著,公司还将报告一种前景看好的减肥药的早期研究数据。从长远来看,他梦想对慢性疾病进行“疫苗式干预”,并正在投资如何从一开始就预防肥胖症。
Schindler, the chief scientific officer, believes Jørgensen is probably “to some degree, embarrassed” to be chosen as the Person of the Year. “I think Lars would feel that it [the recognition] stands for many other people, it stands for an organisation, it stands for a team,” he says.
首席科学官辛德勒认为,周赋德对被选为年度人物可能“在某种程度上感到尴尬”。他说:“我认为周赋德会觉得,(这一荣耀)代表了许多其他人,代表了一个组织,代表了一个团队。”
Jørgensen says the company has long believed in the importance of the obesity drugs but that the world is only just waking up to their potential impact.
周赋德表示,该公司长期以来一直相信减肥药的重要性,但世界才刚刚意识到它们的潜在影响。
“I have many times over the years said that I believe this has the potential to be one of the most meaningful medical interventions in terms of what it does to individual patients,” Jørgensen says, “but also the contribution it [can make] to healthcare systems.”
周赋德说:“这么多年来,我曾多次说过,我相信就其对患者个人的作用而言,它有可能成为最有意义的医疗干预措施之一,同时,它也[为]医疗保健系统做出了贡献。”