PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES: BIOTECH UNLEASHED

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PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES: BIOTECH UNLEASHED

Episode 19: AstraZeneca

September 04, 2025 • Manead Khin • Season 1 • Episode 19

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In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives: Biotech Unleashed, host Manead explores the remarkable journey of AstraZeneca, from its unlikely Swedish-British merger to blockbuster drugs like Nexium and Crestor, through near-decline, and ultimately its reinvention as a science-driven leader in oncology, cardiometabolic health, and global public health.

Discover how bold leadership, high-risk bets, and groundbreaking discoveries like Tagrisso, Enhertu, and Farxiga transformed AstraZeneca into one of today’s most innovative pharmaceutical giants.

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Hello and welcome to Petri Dish Perspectives: Biotech Unleashed, the podcast where we geek out about science and the companies shaping the future of healthcare. I’m your host, Manead, and I’m a PhD scientist by training, biotech storyteller by choice. With every new episode released on Thursday, my goal is to deliver digestible pieces of information on healthcare companies under 30 mins.

This episode will take you from the unlikely merger of a Swedish and a British pharmaceutical company, through the highs of blockbuster medicines and the lows of looming patent cliffs, all the way to AstraZeneca’s reinvention as one of today’s most innovative biotech-driven pharma giants.

By the end of this episode, you’ll understand:

How AstraZeneca emerged from its early identity struggles to become a leader in oncology and beyond.
The scientific and business breakthroughs that kept the company alive through turbulent years.
What the future holds, from next-gen therapies to global health commitments.

Quick disclaimer: full credit goes to all original sources cited in the transcript.

Grab your coffee or tea, settle in, and let’s jump right in.

Segment 1: Founding Story

The year is 1999. The pharmaceutical world is consolidating rapidly, big mergers are the trend of the decade. That’s when two unlikely players, Astra AB from Sweden and Zeneca Group from the UK, decided to join forces.

But to understand why this merger mattered, we need to go back to the very beginnings.

Astra AB was founded in 1913 in Södertälje, Sweden, by a group of businessmen led by Knut Sjöberg, a pharmacist, and Gustaf Felix, a local entrepreneur. Their goal was ambitious: to establish Sweden’s first homegrown pharmaceutical company, at a time when most medicines came from Germany or Switzerland. Astra’s early decades were modest, but the vision was clear: Sweden could, and should, stand on the map of global pharmaceuticals.

By the 1950s, Astra’s breakthrough came with Xylocaine (lidocaine), developed by Swedish chemist Nils Löfgren and marketed by Astra. This local anesthetic revolutionized surgery and dentistry worldwide. It didn’t just make Astra successful, it gave Sweden international credibility in medical science.

Now let’s jump across the North Sea.

Zeneca’s story is quite different. It wasn’t “founded” in the entrepreneurial sense, but rather born in 1993 out of necessity. Britain’s industrial giant Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) decided to spin off its pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals divisions, creating a new standalone company: Zeneca Group.

While Zeneca didn’t have a singular founder figure, its early direction was shaped by Sir Denys Henderson, ICI’s chairman, who orchestrated the spin-off, and by Sir David Barnes, Zeneca’s first CEO. Barnes was tasked with taking a newly independent company, with strengths in oncology and cardiovascular drugs and proving it could thrive without the deep pockets of a chemical conglomerate behind it.

So, by the mid-1990s, you had two very different players:

Astra, a proud Scandinavian pharma with roots in anesthesia, gastroenterology, and respiratory care.
Zeneca, a young British upstart with cutting-edge cancer research but still proving its independence.

On paper, they looked mismatched. One was nearly a century old, the other barely six years into its life. But both faced the same looming problem: scale. To compete with American pharma giants like Pfizer and Merck, they needed each other.

And so, in 1999, they merged to form AstraZeneca.

The early years weren’t smooth. Swedish egalitarian management culture met the British corporate style and sparks flew. Analysts doubted whether the deal was visionary or simply defensive. But as history would prove, that merger created a foundation strong enough to withstand the storms ahead.

Segment 2: Early Discoveries and Breakthrough Science

Despite doubts about the merger, AstraZeneca soon showed it could deliver real innovation.

One of the first big wins was Nexium, launched in 2001. To understand its story, you have to go back to Astra’s blockbuster Losec (omeprazole), the first proton pump inhibitor, a class of drugs that shut down acid production in the stomach. Losec was a revolution for patients suffering from ulcers and acid reflux. But by the late 1990s, the patent clock was ticking. If Astra didn’t find a successor, billions in revenue would vanish.

So Astra’s scientists in Sweden went back to the lab. They re-engineered omeprazole, creating a new molecule called esomeprazole. It wasn’t just a marketing trick, esomeprazole had improved bioavailability, meaning more of the drug actually got absorbed in the body, and patients experienced more consistent acid control. The company branded it as Nexium, the “purple pill.” For patients with GERD and severe heartburn, Nexium was life-changing. For AstraZeneca, it was more than a drug, it was a financial lifeline that kept the company afloat during its early post-merger years.

Then came Crestor (rosuvastatin). Statins, as many of you know, are cholesterol-lowering drugs prescribed to people at high risk of cardiovascular disease. By the early 2000s, the statin market was already crowded and Pfizer’s Lipitor reigned supreme. Many questioned whether there was room for another competitor.

But Crestor had an edge. Discovered by Japanese scientists at Shionogi and later licensed to AstraZeneca, rosuvastatin was one of the most potent statins ever developed. Clinical trials showed it could drive cholesterol levels down further than many of its rivals. While debates over safety and dosing swirled, Crestor found its place as the go-to drug for patients who needed aggressive cholesterol lowering. At its peak, it brought in over $6 billion annually and helped AstraZeneca weather the 2000s.

But no blockbuster lasts forever. By the late 2000s, both Nexium and Crestor faced looming patent cliffs. Billions in revenue were set to disappear. Many predicted AstraZeneca would fade into irrelevance, absorbed by a bigger rival.

And then came the reinvention.

In oncology, AstraZeneca bet big and won. The jewel in the crown was Tagrisso (osimertinib), approved in 2015. The story began years earlier with the discovery that some lung cancers were driven by mutations in the EGFR gene. First-generation EGFR inhibitors like gefitinib worked well initially, but patients often relapsed due to a specific resistance mutation called T790M. AstraZeneca’s researchers designed osimertinib specifically to target that mutation. The result was remarkable: patients who previously had few options suddenly lived longer, healthier lives. Tagrisso wasn’t just a drug, it was proof that AstraZeneca could be a leader in precision oncology.

The company didn’t stop there. It formed a bold partnership with Daiichi Sankyo to co-develop Enhertu, an antibody-drug conjugate for breast cancer. Enhertu combines the targeting power of antibodies with the cancer-killing strength of chemotherapy, delivered directly to tumor cells. The data was so strong that oncologists began calling it a paradigm shift in HER2-positive breast cancer treatment.

AstraZeneca also joined the immuno-oncology race with Imfinzi (durvalumab), a checkpoint inhibitor targeting PD-L1. Competing with Merck’s Keytruda and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo wasn’t easy, but Imfinzi carved out a critical niche, particularly in lung cancer, by proving its value in patients whose tumors couldn’t be surgically removed.

And oncology wasn’t the only frontier. AstraZeneca’s Farxiga (dapagliflozin) began as a diabetes drug, part of the SGLT2 inhibitor class that lowers blood sugar by helping the kidneys flush out excess glucose. But what surprised researchers was its effect on the heart and kidneys. Clinical trials showed that Farxiga reduced hospitalizations for heart failure and slowed progression of chronic kidney disease even in patients without diabetes. This was a genuine paradigm shift, reshaping how doctors approached cardiometabolic disease.

These discoveries didn’t just rescue AstraZeneca from financial decline, they redefined its reputation. The company that once relied on acid reflux pills and cholesterol drugs became a leader in precision oncology, immunotherapy, and cardiometabolic science. AstraZeneca was no longer seen as just another “big pharma.” It was reborn as a science-led innovator.

Segment 3: Controversies & Challenges

AstraZeneca’s journey hasn’t been without turbulence.

Patent Cliffs: When blockbuster drugs like Crestor and Nexium lost patent protection, AstraZeneca faced major revenue declines. The company had to reinvent its pipeline to survive.
Mergers & Takeovers: In 2014, Pfizer launched a high-profile $118 billion bid to acquire AstraZeneca. The company resisted, arguing it would disrupt R&D. The rejection turned out to be pivotal, giving AstraZeneca room to reinvent itself.
COVID-19 Vaccine: The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was one of the first COVID-19 vaccines rolled out globally. While it saved millions of lives, it was also marred by supply disputes, rare blood clot side effects, and public relations challenges, particularly in Europe.

Despite these controversies, the vaccine solidified AstraZeneca’s role in global health, especially given its commitment to not-for-profit pricing during the pandemic.

Segment 4: Pascal Soriot

If there’s one person who symbolizes AstraZeneca’s turnaround, it’s Pascal Soriot. Pascal Soriot was born in 1959 in France. Unlike many pharma CEOs who trained in business or finance, Soriot’s path started in a very different place, veterinary medicine. He earned his doctorate in veterinary medicine from the École Nationale Vétérinaire d’Alfort in Maisons-Alfort, one of the oldest veterinary schools in the world.

Afterward, he pursued an MBA at HEC Paris, giving him both scientific grounding and business acumen, a rare combination that would define his career.

Soriot began his professional journey at Roussel Uclaf, a French pharmaceutical company later acquired by Hoechst and eventually absorbed into Sanofi. There, he cut his teeth in sales and marketing, learning how medicines move from lab bench to marketplace.

His career quickly went global. He joined Roche, the Swiss pharma giant, where he rose through the ranks. By 2010, he became the chief exec of Genentech, Roche’s biotechnology powerhouse in California. At Genentech, he was exposed to the cutting edge of biotech innovation, targeted therapies, biologics, and the unique culture of Silicon Valley science.

Then, in 2012, AstraZeneca came calling. When he took over as CEO in 2012, AstraZeneca was in trouble. Patent expirations were crushing revenues, the pipeline looked thin, and many analysts were calling the company a “sinking ship.” But Soriot saw something different. He believed AstraZeneca could reinvent itself if it bet boldly on science.

Oncology is now the company’s leading focus, with drugs like Tagrisso, Imfinzi (immuno-oncology), and Enhertu (in partnership with Daiichi Sankyo) driving growth.
Biopharmaceuticals remain a core strength, especially in respiratory, cardiovascular, and renal medicine.
Rare Diseases: With the 2021 acquisition of Alexion Pharmaceuticals for $39 billion, AstraZeneca entered the rare disease and immunology space, adding drugs like Soliris and Ultomiris.

Under Soriot’s leadership, AstraZeneca not only survived, it transformed into one of the fastest-growing big pharmas. His story is a reminder of how much difference a single leader can make when they’re willing to take risks, block out the noise, and focus on long-term innovation. This diversification has positioned AstraZeneca for sustainable long-term growth.

Today, AstraZeneca operates in more than 100 countries, with R&D hubs in Sweden, the UK, and the US. The company emphasizes open innovation, working with academic institutions and biotech startups.

Culturally, AstraZeneca highlights collaboration and inclusion, partly shaped by its roots in two very different countries. Its headquarters in Cambridge, UK, symbolizes its shift into being a truly science-driven company.

Segment 5: Lessons Learned from AstraZeneca

What can we, as listeners, take away from AstraZeneca’s century-long journey? Three lessons stand out.

Reinvention is possible — but painful. AstraZeneca faced repeated patent cliffs, takeover threats, and public controversies. Yet, by reinventing its pipeline and betting on science, it turned near-decline into growth. Reinvention isn’t comfortable, but it’s often essential.
Partnerships matter. From working with Daiichi Sankyo on antibody-drug conjugates, to its collaboration with Oxford on the COVID-19 vaccine, AstraZeneca thrived when it embraced collaboration over going it alone.
Scale is survival — but focus is success. The merger gave AstraZeneca the scale to compete globally, but it was the focused bets in oncology and cardiometabolic disease that gave it staying power. Big companies can’t afford to be scattered, they need focus to lead.

These lessons apply not only to pharma giants, but to startups, entrepreneurs, and even individuals navigating their careers. Sometimes, the very things that look like threats, competition, disruption, or even failure, can become the catalysts for reinvention.

Segment 6: What’s Next for AstraZeneca?

Looking forward, AstraZeneca’s ambitions are bold:

Oncology leadership — continuing to dominate targeted therapies, immuno-oncology, and antibody-drug conjugates (through its Daiichi Sankyo partnership).
Cell and Gene Therapies — building capabilities in next-generation platforms.
Sustainability — AstraZeneca has pledged to reach zero carbon emissions from operations.
Global Access — leveraging lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic to expand equitable access to medicines in low- and middle-income countries.

If AstraZeneca succeeds, it won’t just be a big pharma company, it could redefine what a responsible global healthcare leader looks like. Currently, AstraZeneca’s market cap is a little over $250B and by the time the episode was recorded, the stock price is at $81.80. Postdoctoral Fellow salaries are in the estimated range of $71K–$92K annually, while specific roles like Senior Scientist can earn around $108K-$171K.

That’s it for today’s episode of Petri Dish Perspectives: Biotech Unleashed. From its beginnings as two separate companies in Sweden and the UK, to weathering patent cliffs, takeover attempts, and a global pandemic, AstraZeneca has proven its resilience. Its story shows how a company can reinvent itself time and time again, staying relevant in one of the most competitive industries on earth.

Thank you for joining me on this journey through biotech history. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please follow, rate, and share Petri Dish Perspectives: Biotech Unleashed. I’ll see you again on next week Thursday’s episode.

References

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Manead Khin

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