STAT+: AstraZeneca’s CEO balances cancer-fighting opportunities with political uncertainty
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot views the company's stock price — up just 10% year-to-date — as a marker of how he is doing. He’d like it to be higher.
CHICAGO — Each year, 40,000 cancer researchers, doctors, and industry executives gather here for the biggest meeting in oncology. And for seven years, it has been almost assumed that the medicines generating the most buzz will come from AstraZeneca.
Perhaps that’s why, in a wood-paneled conference room at the St. Regis Hotel far from the hubbub of the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting, Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s often pugilistic CEO, was so at ease as he spoke not only about the company’s big presentations but also about the Trump administration’s drug pricing initiatives, his company’s future, and the backlash against the Covid vaccines.
“So I think we can always be better, but I think we are in a good place today,” Soriot said, grinning, as he spoke about AstraZeneca. “Human nature is to be dissatisfied, and that’s how humanity progresses, right?”
