Penny Wan acts as her family’s primary healthcare officer, where a key objective these days is making sure her 74-year-old mum can maintain an active, healthy lifestyle.
That, of course, is important to her personally. But in her role as vice-president and general manager for US biotech firm Amgen in Japan and the Asia-Pacific region, Wan is also tackling the challenges of ageing in a much broader context.
“With Asia’s rapidly ageing population come increased rates of non-communicable disease,” says Wan, referring to everything from cardiovascular and kidney problems to cancer, psoriasis and osteoporosis. “But by understanding the biology of the human body, it is possible to find solutions that address the mechanisms involved. Pharmaceuticals fix the problem with a chemical that kills anything along the same path. Biotech harnesses the complexity of Mother Nature, so the medicines we make work by finding a receptor where a culture or living organism can reverse or reinforce a naturally occurring cell process.”
The result is innovative targeted therapies, which are often injectable or administered via an IV (intravenous) drip under the guidance of medical professionals. To assist healthy ageing, Amgen is also developing new “bone builder” drugs to prevent problems like hip fractures from reoccurring.
“The very simple goal is to find something the patient needs,” Wan says. “The scientists are the architects; they address the underlying disease. But we work with different stakeholders in the community — doctors, nurses, governments and NGOs — to bring integrated solutions.”
Wan heads a 1,000-strong team across the region, including around 180 in Hong Kong, and is encouraged by the positive progress in recent years to cut down approval times, which means new products get to patients that much faster. However, she knows more can still be done to improve efficiencies and identify unmet needs in the healthcare ecosystem.
“With this in mind, I firmly believe I’m in the right company at the right time and with the right therapies,” she says. “There are always new problems to solve, but that depends on where the science takes us.”
Born and brought up in Hong Kong, Wan opted to complete the final two years of high school in the Bentleigh area of Melbourne before starting the popular computer science degree at Monash University.
“My father’s side of the family had settled in Australia and my sister was already there. I wanted to become more independent and felt that would be a good move.”
The attraction, though, of “talking to a computer” for the next four years soon palled, so she switched instead to a double major in biochemistry and pharmacology, subjects which really spoke to her and came much more naturally.
“The whole of life science is about problem solving,” she says. “It’s to do with things that are relevant and has a positive impact in many ways.”
Research on a drug for diabetics as part of her honours programme had led to the offer of a master’s course, but Wan decided against further lab work on mice and “super rats”, preferring to return to Hong Kong in 1990, where she went into the insurance sector. The year there provided useful experience in understanding the need for affordable medicines — and the cost to society of not having them — and served as a springboard for a move to pharmaceuticals company Wyeth, (later Pfizer), where she ultimately stayed for 19 years.
Starting on the marketing side of the business, Wan went on to hold a succession of sales, commercial and management roles, including stints Taiwan and the US, before being appointed Hong Kong general manager in 2003.
“I worked on oral contraceptives and female health before going into infant nutrition and then vaccine products,” she says, noting how those moves tended to mirror stages in her personal life. “I was selling infant formula when I had a young child, which certainly gave a useful perspective.”
One incident, though, really brought home the importance of the company’s work. It was when a classmate from high school called to thank her for a particular drug, which had helped him battle depression when nothing else could.
“I always knew there was huge value in what we did, but his experience showed me it could also be life-saving,” she says. “That’s one reason I take my job very seriously; so we don’t lose an opportunity to help people.”
By joining Roche Pharma China in 2010 as their Shanghai-based general manager, those opportunities were multiplied. The company had a particular focus on cancer treatments and, in a country with a huge population of cancer patients, Wan was tireless in establishing partnerships with government, healthcare professionals and patient groups to improve access and outcomes.
Subsequently, though, the chance to build a business by putting Amgen on the map in Asia was too good to resist. For that, Hong Kong seemed the logical base and, since 2014, Wan has overseen operations and expansion in the highly fragmented Asian market. She now manages hundreds of employees, handling the distribution of products to hospitals, clinics and healthcare providers, and supporting the research and approval process.
“The next big thing for me is to help communities move from transactional to more transformative solutions,” she says. “For example, for bone fractures among the elderly, we can go from a ‘break it and fix it’ culture to a ‘predict and prevent’ concept. Prevention is a lot better than cure, so we need to engage with the community to define how you find patients prone to fractures, cardiovascular disease or cancer, and administer treatments which help prevent the problems.”
“At Amgen, we are making drugs not just to fix bones, but to make sure they don’t break again. And to fix our current system, we are trying to create conversations and to punch way above our weight. We want to see results from looking beyond the solution of supplying drugs to hospitals to, instead, redefining the healthcare model.”
