In this interview, Bruce Cozadd, Chairman and CEO of Jazz Pharmaceuticals, discusses Jazz’s 20-year legacy and what it means to create an organization that is both patient-focused and a great place to work.
In its early years, Jazz Pharmaceuticals focused its research and development efforts in areas of high unmet medical needs, which led to its foray into sleep medicine that now spans two decades. By infusing the learnings and expertise built from their expansive neuroscience portfolio, Jazz saw an opportunity to enter the oncology space, initially in hematologic cancers, and has since evolved into solid tumors.
Jazz’s ethos is defined not just by developing effective, differentiated treatments, but by considering all facets of the patient experience, from better diagnosis to the development of accurate resources and programs for patients. This includes health equity programs that aim to ensure that all patients who suffer from a disease have access to proper diagnosis and treatment.
This focus on patient commitment built a vibrant company culture that is rooted in its purpose, where employees feel this passion embodied each and every day. As a purpose-led company driven by innovation, collaboration, and enhancing patients’ lives, Jazz continues to attract and retain talent that shares this vision.
Watch the video or read the transcript to learn more about Jazz’s patient-centric approach.
Zohaib Sheikh: Hi, my name's Zohaib Sheikh. I'm head of content at Fierce Life Sciences, and today I'm excited to be speaking with Bruce Cozadd, chairperson and CEO of Jazz Pharmaceuticals. So Bruce, would love to jump into a couple of questions. So can you tell us about the origins of Jazz, and what led you to focus on neuroscience and oncology as two key therapeutic areas?
Bruce Cozadd: Yeah, thanks for the question. So Jazz Pharmaceuticals just celebrated its 20th anniversary a little bit earlier this year. So we were founded in early 2003, and the idea of the founding of the company was to create an organization that would be very patient-focused and also a great place to work. So a focus both on patients and employees. And we wanted to find some areas of medicine where we found there would be real unmet medical needs, a patient population where we felt we could make a unique difference, and be competitive, which as a smaller company meant probably didn't require a huge sales force. So maybe called on a specialist group of physicians. And early on, we found that neuroscience had a number of those potential places for us to play, diseases where there weren't good treatments available, that really met what patients wanted, and where we could work in that more specialist-focused environment from a physician audience. That brought us into sleep medicine among other areas, although we broadened that greatly over the years.
And then a few years into the company's journey, so actually in 2012, we also entered oncology, another area where I think most people would admit there are many cancers for which there aren't today therapeutics that truly meet patients' needs, and where we saw, again, we could make a real difference both in some smaller cancers, some rarer cancers, but even in some cancers with larger patient numbers where there's still much room for improvement. So those have been the two areas over the 20 years that we've spent virtually all our time in. If we're doing this interview 20 years from now, there might be a third or fourth area too, but we feel that neuroscience and oncology provide plenty of opportunity for us to make a real impact on patients.
Zohaib Sheikh: In Jazz's early years, your commitment to the sleep community became a priority. What is one thing you've learned as you've become a leader in sleep medicine that you've transferred across aspects of your business?
Bruce Cozadd: Starting with understanding what patients go through. When you hear that someone has a sleep disorder, that doesn't generally conjure up the kind of fear that hearing about a diagnosis of cancer or a severe neurologic condition. And yet, understanding that the lives of patients with these serious sleep disorders are upended just as much as these other diseases, that the inability to get a restorative night's sleep has daytime symptoms that are absolutely disabling. Narcolepsy, one of the diseases we treat, has a disability rate greater than that associated with multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's disease. And I think most people are surprised to hear that. So understanding that that patient need for more effective therapy can change their life is important. Understanding that the diagnosis journey that these patients go through may be long and arduous.
If you go into a physician and you describe that you're having trouble sleeping at night and trouble staying awake or being functional during the day, they don't usually jump to the correct conclusion that you may be dealing with a serious sleep disorder. They may assume you're depressed. They may refer you to a psychiatrist who may diagnose you with depression, put you on antidepressants, which are not going to help in this case if that's an incorrect diagnosis. So we hear these tragic stories of patients going 5, 10 years or more improperly diagnosed, not getting therapy that helps them. So the things that have surprised me most about sleep are probably the severity of the medical conditions and how hard it can be to get properly diagnosed.
Zohaib Sheikh: As you solidified your commitment to sleep medicine, can you tell us about your expansion into oncology and what drove that early shift into the space?
Bruce Cozadd: The company had grown in neuroscience for a number of years, had a number of programs going, but we saw an opportunity through an acquisition of another company to enter the world of acute leukemias, which is a smaller area, kind of an orphan condition. I think there are about 6,000 patients in the US diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia each year, where we had a medicine that would be specific to patients who had a hypersensitivity response to an earlier line of E. coli derived asparaginase. So a unique product that filled this need for patients to complete their full course of asparaginase treatment and have the best chance for a cure. Patients in this case largely being pediatric patients, often being treated at the ages of 4, 5, 6 years old. And so we saw an opportunity to enter that space with an existing product that was already commercial, just launched in the US.
And we grew that expertise we had internally in acute lymphoblastic leukemia and broadened into a couple of other areas that are leukemia related, including AML, which is more an adult disease, and severe veno-occlusive disease, which is a complication after the stem cell transplants that many leukemia patients have in an attempt to reach a better outcome to get to a cure. So that initial foray into oncology brought new expertise into the company, new relationships with KOLs, and treating physicians around the world that led us to focus our development efforts on other areas where we could make a difference in the years since we've broadened that focus even beyond leukemias into solid tumors as well and some more major diseases. But it all started with that focus on a real unmet medical need where we thought we had a unique product that could make a difference for patients.
Zohaib Sheikh: As the industry continues to evolve and you look at the future, how do you see Jazz continuing to reaffirm its presence in the communities it supports across neuroscience and oncology?
Bruce Cozadd: Well, our goal is to make a difference in the lives of patients and their families. And we primarily do that through the work we do in developing and then bringing to market effective treatments. Treatments that offer some differentiation from other available therapies. But we understand the needs of these patient communities are more than just for effective treatment, and we try to make a difference where we can by helping to support better diagnosis, helping people through their treatment journey, getting accurate information, having a place to turn. We do a lot of work on health equity. So once we've introduced a therapy for a particular disease, do all the patients that suffer from that disease really have access to proper diagnosis and proper treatment? A good example of that is we work in the field of small cell lung cancer. Small cell lung cancer is primarily tobacco-related.
Tobacco use tends to occur predominantly in certain parts of the country with a particular racial makeup. And we find that in some of those communities, in particular Black former smokers, now small cell lung cancer patients, may not have the same access to proper diagnosis and treatment. So we've partnered in some of those areas, including with the state of Kentucky, to support some better screening that will get patients access to that therapy. So it starts with we're developing a medicine that we think can be helpful, but it extends beyond that to what else can we do to support that patient community in getting diagnosis, getting successfully treated, and dealing with the other complications that come along with a severe disease diagnosis?
Zohaib Sheikh: Can you tell us a bit more about how the deliberate focus on patients influences Jazz's culture?
Bruce Cozadd: Well, the first way that I think a real patient focus impacts our culture is that it brings to us employees that share that passion for making a difference for patients. So I think we're able to attract and retain people that want that focus in their life and want an organization where they can feel that commitment to patients. Not that it's on a poster on the wall, not that somebody says the words, but that they see it reflected in how we do what we do and in the decisions we make day-to-day. I think our view of a focus on patients has evolved far beyond just are we trying to develop treatments that will help patients? And really goes to do we understand what would be a meaningful difference in these patients' lives? What are the issues they have with current treatments, if any, in terms of their efficacy, in terms of their tolerability, in terms of how they're dosed?
It extends into how we do our clinical trials. Did we design our clinical trials with the patients in mind? I'll go back to narcolepsy, one of the first diseases we made a serious commitment to. Narcolepsy patients who have difficulty staying awake during the days, they suffer from something called excessive daytime sleepiness, and sometimes cataplexy attacks, may not feel that it's safe to operate a motor vehicle. So designing your clinical trials to require people to travel back and forth to a clinical site, many times if they don't have their own transportation, may be a real burden to those patients. So do we either design the clinical trial in a way that requires less of that, or do we think about making available resources to patients to help them get transportation? That's one of many examples of how you can think about how a patient's experience will be enrolling in a clinical trial.
And then thinking about how we meet the patients' needs through services we can provide through a specialty pharmacy to make sure they get their questions answered. To take patients that suffer from a rare disease who may feel stigma, who may never have talked to someone else that has the same disease they have. Can we provide patient mentors unpaid by Jazz, non-promotional, that can help answer questions patients may have about an experience they're having that they feel alone in? But there are other people out there that can provide good counseling.
Zohaib Sheikh: Well, I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today, and look forward to following Jazz's journey in the future.