It’s been a subdued—albeit sunny—start to healthcare’s biggest conference in San Francisco.
For Takeda's R&D head Andy Plump, M.D., Ph.D., the slower pace of the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference has been offset by the industry's consistent dealmaking over the past several months.
In October, the Japanese drugmaker paid $1.2 billion cash to Innovent Biologics for the rights to two cancer therapies, a deal Takeda didn’t time for JPM because the company was “so excited about moving that forward rapidly,” Plump explained.
“We're keen on continuing to build and grow our pipeline always, but the need to make big, splashy announcements right now is just not where our focus is,” the R&D leader told Fierce in an interview on the sidelines of the JPM conference.
Instead, Takeda is focused on transitioning its late-stage pipeline to commercial success, according to Plump.
After a wide-ranging $900 million restructure in 2024, Takeda switched up its strategy, zeroing in on more mature assets and narrowing its focus from more than 10 modalities to four: small molecules; biologics; antibody-drug conjugates; and allogeneic cell therapies. Then, last fall, the pharma axed all cell therapy work, resulting in layoffs for about 140 employees.
“It wasn’t easy,” Plump said about the decision. “I'm very excited about the potential for cell therapy, and we had made very significant investments, and I still believe in the platform.”
“Unfortunately, we—and the entire field—have failed to advance this exciting potential at the pace that we need,” he said.
“It’s not cost—it’s science. We just haven’t crafted that,” Plump said. “We haven’t figured out how to expand beyond a limited number of hematological diseases to really where the greatest unmet needs are—and that’s in solid tumors.”
Leaving behind cell therapy meant abandoning a gamma delta T-cell therapy platform from Takeda’s 2021 acquisition of GammaDelta Therapeutics, which Plump said the drugmaker was unable to advance at the necessary pace.
Plump turned to focus on the company’s eight late-stage programs—including two from Innovent—across more than 30 potential indications.
“To be in my now almost 12th year in this and to see this kind of momentum that we're carrying forward is just extraordinary … we've never had anything like this,” the R&D leader said.
‘Voilà’: Why Takeda is adding AI to all discovery efforts
To ensure that the momentum doesn’t die down, Takeda is implementing artificial intelligence across its discovery engine and redesigning research workflows to be AI-native instead of using the tech as a complementary add-on.
The decision follows work with Boston-based Nabla Bio, with which Takeda extended its partnership in October via a pact potentially worth up to $1 billion.
Takeda went to AI drug designer Nabla with an undisclosed preclinical antibody that was aggregating—a term for the formation of unwanted drug molecules—when the drugmaker tried to scale it up in manufacturing.
“We kept trying to find ways to alter, to change formulation, and we couldn’t do it,” Plump explained.
The drugmaker turned to Nabla, requesting that the company create a new molecule with the properties Takeda wanted to use to treat the undisclosed condition but not aggregate. Nabla provided the Big Pharma with several possibilities, which Takeda synthesized and, “voilà, it worked.”
“We asked, ‘Could we have come up with this ourselves using traditional approaches?’ And the answer was, ‘Never in a million years,’” Plump continued.
Takeda was actually about to end the preclinical work because there wasn’t a path forward. “AI gave us this rebirth, like a phoenix rising from the ashes,” he said.
Plump doesn’t expect that result every time, acknowledging that the situation was somewhat rare. But the leader doesn’t want to get stuck in an old way of thinking and end up leaving opportunities on the table.
“Many people call the pharmaceutical industry very conservative. I think that’s ridiculous,” Plump said. “We make massive investments, and the failure rates are huge. That’s not a conservative mindset.”
“I think where sometimes we fall flat as an industry is that we’re afraid to try new ways of looking because we fail so much, and when we find a way that works, we like to stick to it,” he said, explaining why Takeda is embracing AI in discovery and promoting more agile thinking.
The biggest threat to U.S. innovation
As Japan-headquartered Takeda implements new technologies with its processes, Plump knows others are doing the same—including government bodies.
“We’re seeing a level of sophistication and growth and innovation mindset in regulatory agencies globally, particularly in China,” the R&D leader said.
What sets China apart from other countries is the speed at which it is able to advance and grow, something Plump—an ardent optimist—deems “only a good thing.”
“That’s good because it means it brings medicines more quickly to the patients in China and it creates a global competitiveness,” he said, adding that the competition drives the U.S. to discover and aim to be the nation bringing innovative medicines to its patients first.
And, while Plump believes a lot of federal changes occurring in the U.S. over the last year represent themes he supports—such as speed, transparency and a focus on patient safety—the R&D head said many of the approaches “have been disruptive.”
“There’s been a huge turnover in workforce—over 90% of the senior leadership at FDA is no longer there,” he explained. “Leadership is fundamental to success, and the concern I have will be the lagging indicators of what we’re seeing right now.”
In 2025, there weren’t many indicators of the disruptive changes, with Takeda feeling minimal impact.
“I think the unknown is how FDA will continue to evolve,” Plump said, adding the drugmaker is keeping extremely close tabs on the matter.
Plump believes that the disruption at the National Institutes of Health and academic centers is likely the biggest threat to U.S. innovation.
“That's not an issue that our industry will be challenged by this year, in three years or maybe even five years,” he said. “But long term, that will be the biggest threat to the United States.”
Forever an optimist—as many risk-takers often must be—Plump sees a silver lining to this longer-term potential play-out.
“From a patient standpoint and a global standpoint, we're seeing the growth of innovation and academic science outside of the United States, and so there's the potential that the world can compensate for the challenges that we're seeing,” he concluded.