CEO likes to combine science, sales; raises profile of fast-growing drug company

The Record (Hackensack N.J.) (MCT) - Joseph Pieroni heads the fastest-growing U.S. pharmaceutical company you've never heard of.

He is the chief executive officer of Parsippany-based Daiichi Sankyo Inc. USA, a company formed by the merger of Japan-based Daiichi Pharmaceutical Co. and Sankyo Co. The company is enjoying rapid sales growth with the introduction of two products _ the blood-pressure medicine Azor and Welchol, a drug that lowers cholesterol and glucose.

Pieroni, 62, spoke with The Bergen County Record about Daiichi Sankyo's new products, his career path, and the toughest job in the pharmaceutical industry.

(Interview condensed for space.)

Question: What led you to a career in the pharmaceutical industry?

Answer: I started my graduate work at Fordham in organic chemistry and was heading toward a career in medicinal chemistry. I had the opportunity to work during the summers at Sandoz _ one of the components of Novartis. And I enjoyed that very much. But I began to realize that perhaps this is not what I'd like to do for the next 30, 40 years _ to work in a lab. I got my master's and then started an MBA, and then started to really enjoy the other side of the business, the commercial side.

Q: What made you decide you liked the business side of it more than the lab side?

A: I had an older brother who also was in chemistry, and he pushed me toward an MBA. And as I started to do the coursework, I really enjoyed it. As I started in the industry and got into product management, I realized this is what I wanted to do. But with a science background, I always gravitated toward jobs that were an interface between the commercial group and the research group.

Q: You've worked for five different pharmaceutical companies, is that right?

A: Two short stays in Sandoz. Basically, I spent a couple of years in sales; that's how I started out. But the three major companies I worked for were Merck for 10 years, and then Parke-Davis for 10 years and now here at Daiichi Sankyo for a little over 10 years.

Q: When you started out in sales, was that sales to doctors? Visiting doctors' offices?

A: Even though I was going for my MBA, someone said to me that if you really want to learn the industry, you should start at the sales level and get a feel for what it's all about. It was making calls on physicians, just as our sales reps do today. On the commercial side, even if we take people from some of the very best MBA business schools, that's the first job they take. We ask them to spend time in the field talking to doctors, because patients and doctors and the messages we provide about our products is really at the core of what we do.

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Q: Were you just going in cold _ visiting doctors _ without an appointment?

A: That varies, but in this part of the country, it basically is dropping in.

Q: I guess you really develop your people skills doing that.

A: You hit the nail on the head. That experience was probably one of the toughest things I've done in my life. It does get you to know more about yourself and how to deal with people. It was a tremendous training experience.

Q: You were quoted in a 2007 press release as saying you were hoping for 60 percent growth in sales over the next three years _ how's that going?

A: We're doing pretty well. We're tracking along that. In 2007 we were on the verge of launching several products. We launched a fixed-combination product for treatment of hypertension.

Q: Fixed combination?

A: We combined our product Benicar, as it's known in the United States, with amlodipine, which is a different class of anti-hypertensive, into what we call a fixed-dose combination _ two components in one pill.

Q: Anti-hypertensive? A high-blood-pressure medicine?

A: Yes _ it's called Azor. That's been going very well, considering most people with severe hypertension are on at least two or three products. And then we also introduced a new use for a product we've had for the last couple of years. The product is Welchol, which is used for the modification of cholesterol, and we found that it also lowers glucose. So we applied to the FDA and got approval for the treatment of diabetes. That is very important, because most people that are diabetic also have elevated cholesterol.

And we are waiting for approval from the FDA for a very important product called Effient _ an anti-platelet drug. The leading product now is Plavix, so we have a product that will compete with Plavix. We just got news that we got approval of that product in Europe.

Q: The company itself notes that Daiichi Sankyo isn't the best-known name in pharmaceuticals. How important is it to be well-known?

A: I guess in life, everybody would like to be well-known, and as a company, we would like to be well-known. It's a difficult process. Doctors generally remember products and recognize products; they often do not know the names of companies.

But we have a very long history. The company goes back over 100 years. The first president, Dr. Takemine, was one of the foremost biochemists of his time, and he was the first person to ever identify and isolate a human hormone. It was adrenaline.

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