The director of Esade’s Institute for Healthcare Management and academic sponsor of the Esade Alumni Health and Pharma Club, Manel Peiró (PhD in Management Sciences 07/ ADE 92/ GH 85), was in charge of introducing the speaker, during which he highlighted AstraZeneca’s leadership and importance in the health ecosystem. Then Patricia Valentí (MBA 02/ Promociona 17), director of Esade Alumni, welcomed the audience and underscored the importance of creating spaces of dialogue and reflection on such a strategic sector.
At the beginning of his talk, Rick R. Suárez contextualized the current juncture, which is characterized by an in-depth transformation driven by technological advances like artificial intelligence. In his words, “the industry is transforming, and thanks to tools like AI, we are learning and are able to change the way we manage projects and data much more quickly. We are moving science forward.” This technological revolution is not only impacting data management and analysis but is also redefining the professional profiles required by the industry, with an increasing need for experts in biomedicine, bioinformatics, and data analysis. Suárez stressed that for AstraZeneca, “young talent is the kind that brings new perspectives and contributes to the company’s learning and growth, regardless of age.”
Further exploring the structure and operation of AstraZeneca, Rick R. Suárez highlighted its commitment to improving people’s health and its contribution to social value through the company’s following key therapeutic areas: oncology, rare diseases, cardiovascular, renal and metabolism, respiratory and immunology, and vaccines and immunotherapy. He also stressed AstraZeneca’s high investment in R&D, which surpassed 13.6 billion dollars in 2024, accounting for 25% of its global sales. And he announced that the company is planning to launch twenty new drugs by 2030 and is awaiting the results of forty phase-II trials by late 2025.
Within this context, he highlighted the role of Spain for research worldwide and for AstraZeneca in particular. “We are fully committed to research in Spain, with 413 projects undertaken in conjunction with different research centers, 259 of which were clinical trials. We want to boost the number of clinical trials in this country by 25%,” he announced. The decision to invest in Spain, he said, is based on not only the size of the market but more importantly the quality of the talent and the solidity of the ecosystem.
AstraZeneca’s commitment to Spain has been ratcheted up in recent years, and one key milestone is the AstraZeneca Global Hub in Barcelona, which opened in March 2023. Suárez was particularly enthusiastic about this project, whose purpose is to turn Barcelona into one of the biggest hubs of clinical excellence and innovation in Europe. “Through the AstraZeneca Global Hub, we want to maximize our contribution to patients by driving innovation in areas where there are significant unmet needs, like cancer and rare diseases,” he said. It has had a considerable impact in the region by creating jobs that require high qualifications and serving as a driver of R&D. By late this year, the company expects to have 2,000 people working in Barcelona’s Estel Building, representing all the areas within the company. Moreover, it plans to earmark 1.3 billion euros in investment for this project by 2027. “It’s a project that I find exciting because it enables us to work with the Catalan ecosystem and leave a legacy,” he said, stressing the city’s and the country’s leadership potential in the field of health.
During his talk, Suárez also addressed the global challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry, including the aging of the population, increasing R&D costs, the European Union’s loss of competitiveness, the impact of climate change, and the need for innovation and technology adoption. One common challenge facing the entire sector is lowering the wait times for drugs to be brought to market. In this sense, Suárez offered an important data point: “the industry is improving people’s lives, not only in years. Every four seconds, life expectancy increases one second.” He launched a call to action to improve the research and innovation environment and stressed the need to reduce bureaucracy and boost per capita healthcare spending because “it’s not a cost; it’s an investment.” Regarding future opportunities, he mentioned key ones like a clear, equitable regulatory framework; fostering public-private cooperation; the digitalization of the sector; and the acceleration of access to new treatments.
