Bob Ingram, vice chairman of pharmaceuticals for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), visited with students Wednesday, Oct. 19 to discuss the industry and its future growth. Details...
Ingram’s visit was part of the Legends of Business program, sponsored by the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business. The program gives students the opportunity to interact with experienced and influential corporate and business leaders.
During a panel discussion in Yeager Recital Hall, Ingram said the pharmaceutical industry is simultaneously facing promising and challenging times.
“I don’t think there has ever been a time where what we can do through science is greater,” said Ingram, who began his career as a pharmaceutical sales representative. “I don’t think there’s ever been a more challenging time for our industry to prove its worth. Let’s face it. People don’t wake up in the morning saying, ‘Oh boy, I get to buy a pharmaceutical today.’ We don’t buy pharmaceuticals because we want them, we buy them because we need them.”
Today’s pharmaceutical industry is a high-risk venture, Ingram said. Typically, it takes researchers more than 5,000 chemical samples to produce one compound that makes it to market. GSK will spend more than $5.5 billion on research and development this year.
To fund the industry’s growth and to deliver the drugs that diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) demand, Ingram and other business leaders have joined together to bring more venture capital to North Carolina.
“North Carolina needs to attract more venture capital,” Ingram said. “It will help create and sustain more high-quality jobs. We must reward innovation in this business.”
Although pharmaceuticals are one piece of the puzzle in the fight against disease, Ingram said the industry has almost done “too good a job” at what it does. “We need to put more effort into disease prevention,” Ingram said. He said GSK plans to take money that went into television advertising for its products and spend it on messages that encourage healthy lifestyles.
Ingram also addressed concerns about the spread of bird flu and its possible mutation into a form that could infect humans. He and other pharmaceutical executives attended a meeting at the White House last week on the topic to brief the Bush administration on efforts to produce vaccines against the disease.
“We need to work collaboratively to put more production capabilities in place in the next 12 months,” Ingram said. “In the early ’80’s, more than 20 companies were doing vaccine research. Today, there are only four, because the swine flu epidemic drove most companies out of the vaccine business.”
Ingram is the former CEO of GlaxoWellcome and played an important role in the 2000 merger of GlaxoWellcome and SmithKlineBeecham to form GSK, the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical company. As vice chairman of pharmaceuticals, Ingram represents GSK as a member of the executive committee and board of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association.
Ingram serves as chairman of the board of trustees of the American Cancer Society Foundation, and was asked by former President George Bush to form and chair the CEO Roundtable on Cancer. In 2004, Ingram received the Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Award in recognition of his national and international service on behalf of GSK.