Medical Society Marc Dunoyer, President of GlaxoSmithKline Japan and Head of the GSK Rare Diseases Unit
On Wednesday 8 February, Mr Marc Dunoyer, President of GlaxoSmithKline Japan and Head of GSK’s Rare Diseases Unit came to speak at the Medical Society. Mr Dunoyer started with a brief introduction of his background, from earning a law degree at the University of Paris, followed by an MBA, to working as Asia Pacific Director for Hoechst Marion Roussel, to being appointed to his current position as Global Head of the GSK Rare Diseases Unit in February 2010. He then went on to talk about how Japan has changed since he first travelled there, and how medicine and GSK had developed over the same period. He explained that Japan was the second largest pharmaceuticals market globally, and how, since 2000, GSK had beaten the likes of Pfizer and MSD in acquiring the most number of approvals, with 69 in this period. He went on to explain and show how GSK had been performing globally. Next he spoke on the different classifications of pharmaceutical drugs, and how each class was dependent on the number of people it would affect. Mr Dunoyer emphasised that rare diseases continue to be an important area of medicine (‘Separately, the diseases are rare; collectively the patients are many’), and in which GSK plays a vital part.
Charlie Steele ASR
