Winning the public's hearts and minds takes all of us: Biotech innovators appeal to large biopharmas to join the MA‑rketing Campaign

October 10, 2025

To: CEOs and Boards of Directors of large biopharma companies

• Albert Bourla, CEO, Pfizer Inc.
• Belen Garijo Ph.D, CEO, Merck KGaA
• Bill Anderson, CEO, Bayer AG
• Christophe Weber, CEO, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.
• Christopher A. Viehbacher, CEO, Biogen
• Christopher S. Boerner, CEO, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.
• Daniel P. O'Day, CEO, Gilead Sciences, Inc.
• David A. Ricks, CEO, Eli Lilly and Co.
• Emma Walmsley, CEO, GlaxoSmithKline PLC
• Herve Hoppenot, CEO, Incyte Corp.
• Isao Teshirogi, CEO, Shionogi & Co., Ltd.
• Jan van de Winkel, CEO, Genmab AS
• Jean-Christophe Tellier, CEO, UCB S.A.
• Joaquin Duato, CEO, Johnson & Johnson
• John V. Oyler, CEO, BeOne Medicines Ltd.
• Leonard S. Schleifer, CEO, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
• Makoto Inoue, CEO, Otsuka Holdings Co., Ltd.
• Martine Rothblatt, CEO, United Therapeutics Corp.
• Mike Doustdar, CEO, Novo Nordisk AS
• Naoki Okamura, CEO, Astellas Pharma Inc.
• Pascal Soriot, CEO, AstraZeneca PLC
• Paul Hudson, CEO, Sanofi SA
• Reshma Kewalramani, CEO, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc.
• Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.
• Robert A. Bradway, CEO, Amgen Inc.
• Robert A. Michael, CEO, AbbVie, Inc.
• Robert M. Davis, CEO, Merck & Co., Inc.
• Sunao Manabe, CEO, Daiichi Sankyo Co.
• Thomas Schinecker, CEO, Roche Holding Ltd.
• Tim Van Hauwermeiren, CEO, argenx SE
• Ugur Sahin, CEO, BioNTech
• Vasant Narasimhan, CEO, Novartis AG
• William H. Lewis, CEO, Insmed Incorporated
• Yvonne Greenstreet, CEO, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

The board of directors of:

• AbbVie, Inc. (Robert A. Michael, MBA, CPA, Thomas J. Falk, Jennifer L. Davis, Susan E. Quaggin, MD, Thomas C. Freyman, CPA, Rebecca Brown Roberts, Melody B. Meyer, Brett J. Hart, Robert J. Alpern, MD, William H. L. Burnside, MBA, Edward J. Rapp, Frederick H. Waddell, MBA, Roxanne Schuh Austin, CPA)
• Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (David Pyott, Carolyn Bertozzi Ph.D, Amy Schulman JD, Colleen Reitan, Margaret Hamburg MD, Michael Bonney, Dennis Ausiello Ph.D, Olivier Brandicourt MD, Yvonne Greenstreet, Phillip Sharp Ph.D, Peter Kellogg)
• Amgen Inc. (Wanda M. Austin, Robert A. Bradway, Michael V. Drake, Brian J. Druker, Robert A. Eckert, Greg C. Garland, Charles M. Holley, Jr., S. Omar Ishrak, Tyler Jacks, Mary E. Klotman, Ellen J. Kullman, Amy E. Miles)
• argenx SE (Brian Kotzin, Tim Van Hauwermeiren, Anthony Rosenberg, James Daly, Joseph deBethizy Ph.D, Pamela Klein MD, Peter Verhaeghe, Peter Verhaeghe JD, Ana Cespedes, Camilla Sylvest, Steven Krognes)
• Astellas Pharma Inc. (Tomoko Aramaki, Rie Akiyama, Yoichi Ohno, Masahiro Miyazaki, Yoshihiko Hatanaka, Naoki Okamura, Kenji Yasukawa Ph.D, Eriko Sakurai, Katsuyoshi Sugita, Takashi Tanaka, Rika Hirota)
• AstraZeneca PLC (Michel Demaré, Pascal Soriot, Aradhana Sarin, Philip Broadley, Euan Ashley, Birgit Conix, Rene Haas, Karen Knudsen, Diana Layfield, Anna Manz, Sheri McCoy, Tony Mok, Nazneen Rahman, Marcus Wallenberg)
• Bayer AG (Marianne Maehl, Otmar Wiestler MD, Norbert Bischofberger Ph.D, Nancy Simonian MD, Lori Schechter JD, Stefan Oelrich, Andrea Sacher, Heike Prinz, Alberto Weisser, Norbert Winkeljohann, Claudia Schade, Wolfgang Plischke, Simone Bagel-Trah Ph.D, Paul Achleitner Ph.D, Ertharin Cousin JD, Horst Baier, Petra Reinbold-Knape, Yuksel Karaaslan, Frank Lollgen, Heike Hausfeld, Colleen Goggins, Andre van Broich, Francesco Grioli, Werner Wenning)
• BeOne Medicines Ltd. (Olivier Brandicourt MD, Corazon Sanders Ph.D, Margaret Dugan MD, Michael Goller, Matt Allegrucci, Ranjeev Krishana, Steven Young Ph.D, Charles Sawyers MD, David Schenkein MD, Ronald Levy Ph.D, Xiaodong Wang Ph.D, John Oyler, Alessandro Riva MD, Anthony Hooper, Shalini Sharp, Donald Glazer JD)
• Biogen (Lloyd Minor MD, Christopher Viehbacher, William Hawkins III, Maria Freire Ph.D, Monish Patolawala, Stephen Sherwin MD, Eric Rowinsky MD, Caroline Dorsa, Jesus Mantas, Susan Langer)
• BioNTech (Anja Morawietz, Michael Motschmann, Helmut Jeggle, Ulrich Wandschneider Ph.D)
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (Manuel Hidalgo Medina Ph.D, Michael McMullen, Vicki Sato Ph.D, Peter Arduini, Deepak Bhatt MD, Karen Vousden Ph.D, Theodore Samuels, Julia Haller MD, Phyllis Yale JD, Christopher Boerner Ph.D, Paula Price, Derica Rice)
• Daiichi Sankyo Co. (Shizuko Ueno, Reiko Kinoshita, Takaaki Nishii, Sunao Manabe Ph.D, Hiroyuki Okuzawa, Takashi Matsumoto)
• Eli Lilly and Co. (David A. Ricks, Ralph Alvarez, Katherine Baicker Ph.D, J. Erik Fyrwald, Mary Lynne Hedley Ph.D, Jamere Jackson, Kimberly H. Johnson, William G. Kaelin Jr. M.D., Juan R. Luciano, Jon Moeller, Gabrielle Sulzberger)
• Genmab AS (Mijke Zachariasse Ph.D, Rolf Hoffmann, Paolo Paoletti MD, Anders Pedersen MD, Pernille Erenbjerg, Mats Pettersson, Elizabeth O'Farrell, Takahiro Hamatani, Deirdre Connelly)
• Gilead Sciences, Inc. (Daniel P. O'Day, Jacqueline K. Barton, Jeffrey A. Bluestone, Sandra J. Horning, Kelly A. Kramer, Ted W. Love, Harish Manwani, Javier J. Rodriguez, Anthony Welters)
• GlaxoSmithKline PLC (Judy Lewent, Jesse Goodman, Charles Bancroft, Harry Dietz, Tony Wood Ph.D, Vishal Sikka Ph.D, Hal Barron MD, Emma Walmsley, Manvinder Singh Banga, Julie Brown, Jonathan Symonds Ph.D, Anne Beal MD, Gavin Screaton)
• Incyte Corp. (Susanne Schaffert Ph.D, Jean-Jacques Bienaime, Paul Clancy, Jacqualyn Fouse Ph.D, Wendy Dixon Ph.D, Julian Baker, Otis Brawley MD, Katherine High MD, Edmund Harrigan MD, Herve Hoppenot)
• Insmed Incorporated (Alfred Altomari, Leo Lee, David Brennan, Melvin Sharoky MD, William Lewis JD, Clarissa Desjardins Ph.D, Elizabeth Anderson, Carol Schafer, David McGirr)
• Johnson & Johnson (Joaquin Duato, Mary C. Beckerle, Jennifer A. Doudna, Marillyn A. Hewson, Paula A. Johnson, Hubert Joly, Mark B. McClellan, John Morikis, Daniel E. Pinto, Mark A. Weinberger, Nadja Y. West, Eugene A. Woods)
• Merck & Co., Inc. (Robert M. Davis, Douglas M. Baker Jr., Mary Ellen Coe, Pamela J. Craig, Thomas H. Glocer, Surendralal L. (Lal) Karsanbhai, Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey M.D., Stephen L. Mayo Ph.D., Paul B. Rothman M.D., Christine E. Seidman M.D., Inge G. Thulin, Patricia F. Russo, Kathy J. Warden)
• Merck KGaA (Khadija Hammada, Susanne Schaffert Ph.D, Peter Merck, Jurgen Glaser, Renate Koehler, Gabriele Eismann Ph.D, Helga Rubsamen-Schaeff Ph.D, Barbara Lambert, Simon Thelen, Daniel Thelen, Alexander Putz, Dietmar Oeter, Anne Lange, Belen Garijo Ph.D, Helene Roeder, Sascha Held, Michael Kleinemeier, Christian Raabe Ph.D, Birgit Biermann, Carla Kriwet Ph.D)
• Novartis AG (Giovanni Caforio M.D. (Chair), Simon Moroney D.Phil. (Vice-Chair), Nancy C. Andrews M.D. Ph.D., Ton Buechner, Patrice Bula (Lead Independent Director), Elizabeth (Liz) Doherty, Bridgette Heller, Daniel Hochstrasser, Frans van Houten, Elizabeth McNally M.D. Ph.D., Ana de Pro Gonzalo, John D. Young)
• Novo Nordisk AS (Henrik Poulsen, Liselotte Hyveled, Andreas Fibig, Thomas Rantzau, Martin Mackay Ph.D, Mette Jensen, Laurence Debroux, Christina Law, Kasim Kutay, Sylvie Gregoire Ph.D, Helge Lund, Elisabeth Christensen)
• Otsuka Holdings Co., Ltd. (Ko Sekiguchi, Masayuki Kobayashi, Yoshiro Matsuo, Ichiro Otsuka, Shuichi Takagi, Tatsuo Higuchi, Makoto Inoue, Noriko Tojo, Yuko Makino, Tatsuaki Kitachi, Mayo Mita, Yukio Matsutani, Yoshihisa Aoki)
• Pfizer Inc. (Mortimer Buckley, Albert Bourla Ph.D, James Quincey, Dan Littman Ph.D, Scott Gottlieb MD, Susan Hockfield Ph.D, Shantanu Narayen, Susan Desmond-Hellmann MD, Joseph Echevarria, Ronald Blaylock, James Kilts, Suzanne Johnson JD, Cyrus Taraporevala)
• Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (David Schenkein MD, Craig Thompson MD, George Sing, Joseph Goldstein MD, George Yancopoulos Ph.D, N. Coles MD, Christine Poon, Arthur Ryan, Huda Zoghbi MD, Bonnie Bassler Ph.D, Michael Brown MD)
• Roche Holding Ltd. (Bernard Poussot, Patrick Frost, Jemilah Mahmood, Severin Schwan JD, Anita Hauser, Andre Hoffmann, Jorg Duschmale Ph.D, Mark Schneider Ph.D, Akiko Iwasaki Ph.D, Claudia Dyckerhoff Ph.D, Richard Lifton Ph.D)
• Sanofi SA (Anne-Francoise Nesmes, Jean-Paul Kress MD, Clotilde Delbos, Gilles Schnepp, Diane Souza, Thomas Sudhof Ph.D, Rachel Duan, Lise Kingo, John Sundy Ph.D, Anne-Françoise Nesmes, Carole Ferrand, Emile Voest Ph.D, Paul Hudson, Yann Tran, Barbara Lavernos, Wolfgang Laux Ph.D, Frederic Oudea, Fabienne Lecorvaisier, Patrick Kron, Christophe Babule, Antoine Yver MD, Elisabeth Moreno, Caroline Casey, Rohini Anand Ph.D)
• Shionogi & Co., Ltd. (Yoriko Goto, Kyoko Hirose, Noriyuki Kishida, John Keller Ph.D, Koji Hanasaki Ph.D, Hiroshi Ozaki, Keiichi Ando, Isao Teshirogi Ph.D)
• Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. (Andrew Plump Ph.D, Steven Gillis Ph.D, John Maraganore Ph.D, Ian Clark, Jean-Luc Butel, Yoshiaki Fujimori, Emiko Higashi, Michel Orsinger, Olivier Bohuon, Christophe Weber Ph.D, Koji Hatsukawa, Milano Furuta)
• Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Varda Shalev MD, Richard Francis, Rosemary Crane, Sol Barer Ph.D, Tal Zaks MD, Roberto Mignone, Perry Nisen Ph.D, Janet Vergis, Ronit Satchi-Fainaro Ph.D, Amir Elstein, Chen Lichtenstein Ph.D)
• UCB S.A. (Albrecht De Graeve, Dame Davies Ph.D, Cyril Janssen, Charles-Antoine Janssen, Jean-Christophe Tellier MD, Jan Berger MD, Jonathan Peacock, Ulf Wiinberg, Pierre Gurdjian, Dolca Thomas MD)
• United Therapeutics Corp. (Jan Malcolm, Linda Maxwell MD, Judy Olian Ph.D, Tommy Thompson JD, Louis Sullivan MD, Christopher Patusky JD, Raymond Kurzweil, Richard Giltner, Raymond Dwek, Christopher Causey, Martine Rothblatt Ph.D, Nilda Mesa JD)
• Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Diana McKenzie, Jeffrey Leiden Ph.D, Nancy Thornberry, Lloyd Carney Ph.D, Bruce Sachs, Alan Garber Ph.D, Sangeeta Bhatia Ph.D, Michel Lagarde, Suketu Upadhyay, William Young Ph.D, Reshma Kewalramani MD)

CC: Communications leaders at large biopharma companies

• Amit Sachdev, EVP, chief patient and external affairs officer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc.
• Audrey Duval, EVP corporate affairs, Sanofi SA
• Barbara Schädler, head of group communications, Roche Holding Ltd.
• Beth DelGiacco, corporate communications and investor relations, argenx SE
• Christina Chan, SVP corporate affairs, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
• Christine Akinc, chief corporate communications officer, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
• Claire Mulhearn, VP corporate communications, Insmed Incorporated
• Cristal Downing, EVP & chief communications and public affairs officer, Merck & Co., Inc.
• Deborah Telman, EVP corporate affairs and general counsel, Gilead Sciences, Inc.
• Debra Barrett, VP corporate affairs, Otsuka Holdings Co., Ltd.
• Denise Brashear, VP, head of global communications, Incyte Corp.
• Eleanor Duff, SVP, head of corporate communications, BeOne Medicines Ltd.
• Jasmina Alatovic, VP corporate communications, BioNTech
• Kentaro Asakura, head of corporate communications, Daiichi Sankyo Co.
• Kim Blomley, head of global media relations, AstraZeneca PLC
• Marisol Perone, SVP global communications and corporate affairs, Genmab AS
• Michelle Weese, chief corporate affairs officer, Novartis AG
• Natacha Gassenbach, head of corporate affairs, chief communications officer, Biogen
• Oliver Renner, head of pharmaceuticals communications, Bayer AG
• Sally Jackson, SVP global communications, GlaxoSmithKline PLC
• Sally Susman, EVP, chief corporate affairs officer, Pfizer Inc.
• Susie Tappouni, head of corporate affairs, Amgen Inc.
• Takako Ohyabu, chief global corporate affairs & sustainability officer, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.
• Tania Sabroe, EVP people, organisation, and corporate affairs, Novo Nordisk AS
• Tracie Haas, SVP corporate affairs, AbbVie, Inc.
• Vanessa Broadhurst, EVP global corporate affairs, Johnson & Johnson
• Wendy Short Bartie, EVP corporate affairs, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

From: Executives, Scientists, Board Members, and Investors representing smaller biopharmas and early-stage R&D-focused companies

Dear Colleagues,

The recently published “Resolving the Massachusetts Paradox” has crystallized for many of us in the small biotech community a clear and alarming truth that’s been decades in the making:

Despite the importance of our work to so many people, our industry is ranked as America’s most hated (the Paradox). All innovators are vulnerable to policies that undervalue innovation and override market-based reimbursement with price controls (calculated at home or imported from abroad). Beyond lobbying, sustained, character-driven storytelling is necessary to let the public see us as real people, not “manufacturers”, and improve how the public and policymakers understand the value of our work so we can avert and reverse these kinds of policies, which undermine our ability to bring new treatments to patients.

Our journey begins in Massachusetts, America’s leading biopharma cluster. We have a semblance of a road map and we know where we need to go. But we need the machinery and fuel from large, established pharmaceutical companies to get there: communications, marketing, and public affairs teams with experience, resources, and reach.

Your participation is essential. As smaller companies, we can contribute science, passion, and urgency. But we lack the experience, financial resources, and infrastructure to conduct campaigns at scale, test messages, build narratives, and manage public sentiment over time.

We urge leaders of industry’s established companies to encourage and enable your marketing & communications teams to sign up, contribute, and help lead the proposed MA-rketing Campaign. The MA Paradox article includes a link to sign on – please read this roadmap and share it with your colleagues. Our key points are further outlined below.

Awareness:

Much of the public and many decision makers do not appreciate the personal motivations of the people involved in drug development and the tremendous financial, scientific, and regulatory odds they must overcome to bring new medicines to patients in the US and around the world. Without clear, credible, character-driven, narrative-based communication, the public debate tends to reduce medicines to commodities and assumes that the success comes easily and profits are undeserved.

Resolving confusion over affordability is key:

Any message from us about the virtue and wonder of R&D has to explain how our medicines, even if they must be profitable to attract investment, can be affordable. Hearing that even one patient has been denied can spark a public outcry. It’s maddening to us too. We don’t invent medicines for any patient who needs them to be denied access. That’s what insurance is for and the public needs to hear from us that we are aligned with them in the fight to reform insurance to do its job. Simply put, when a doctor prescribes a treatment and the health plan authorizes it, it should be affordable to the patient. Charging an unaffordable copay for chemo and most medicines makes no sense and is unjust. That shared indignation over out-of-pocket costs has been historically missing from our messaging and must be featured prominently going forward.

Experimenting with outreach:

The MA-rketing Campaign represents a positive, multi-year strategy to proactively engage our communities, patients, the media, and local stakeholders; running message testing; creating resonant stories; making innovation more tangible; and surfacing our most compelling characters. Our efforts start at home in Massachusetts, but our success can eventually go national (Massachusetts is just a test-bed for a broader campaign; like a phase 2 trial that identifies the dosing regimen to test in a larger phase 3). And it’s not just patients who are our industry’s customers. It is everyone who pays taxes and premiums. We have long owed them a real and sustained effort at engagement that results in an educational impact that is bigger than one drug, one company, or one trade association.

We hope you’ll share this message and the Massachusetts Paradox with your colleagues and encourage them to join us by reading it and using the link in the article to join the Coalition and represent your esteemed companies. Together we can mitigate the threat of misguided price controls on novel medicines and look forward to public support for policy that promotes innovation and ensures that insurance works as intended to make proper treatments affordable for patients.

Please join us in this campaign to improve our standing with the public.

Thank you for your consideration.