After a tough year marred by staff layoffs and discarded development programs, Orion Group will enter 2023 with a restructured business to reflect its amended priorities.
As of Jan. 1, Orion will be reshuffled into five business divisions: innovative medicines, branded products, generics and consumer health, animal health and the active pharmaceutical ingredients arm Fermion.
The Finnish drugmaker is sticking to its strategy of reaching 1.5 billion euros ($1.4 billion) in net sales by the end of 2025, with the innovative medicines segment seen as the main source of this growth, Orion said in a release Monday morning. The company saw overall net sales of 554 million euros for the first half of 2022, an increase on 524 million euros for the same period in 2021.
Heading up the restructured business will be Liisa Hume, who the company announced in April will take over as CEO on Nov. 1. Orion is currently in good shape, Hume insisted in today’s release.
“Medicines at different stages of their life cycle require very different investments and resources from the company,” the incoming CEO said. “The market dynamics are also very different. The new organizational structure is clear and allows the business divisions to focus more on their strengths, respective markets and customers.”
Orion will also shake up its executive management board for the new year, including commercial operations vice president Satu Ahomäki becoming senior VP of the generics and consumer health division, and senior VP of R&D Outi Vaarala, M.D., Ph.D., taking an additional role as senior VP of the innovative medicines division.
Back in March, the Finnish drug developer announced plans to refocus its operations on cancer and pain, leading to the cessation of investment in rare and neurodegenerative diseases and the departure of up to 37 employees. The refocus made sense, with Orion having seen some of its biggest successes in the oncology space, including working with Bayer to develop Nubeqa, an oral androgen receptor inhibitor that scored FDA approval in 2019.
A more recent cancer win was the $290 million upfront payment Orion received from Merck & Co. in July to jointly develop and commercialize ODM-208 and other drugs targeting an enzyme called cytochrome P450 11A1. ODM-208 is undergoing a phase 2 trial for the treatment of patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.