신중년의 정의는 50-65세 혹은 60-75세 등 기준이 다양하지만 무엇인가 일을 해야한다는 것은 동일합니다. 신중년이 할 수 있는 다양한 일 – 재취업, 창업, 사회공헌, 귀농/귀촌 등 – 에 대해 비교적 상세히 그리고 나름의 깊이와 객관성을 가진 자료가 있어서 이것을 읽으며 제가 느낀 부분을 아래에 발췌합니다. 310쪽의 방대한 자료에 대해 각 페이지와 글을 남깁니다.
P43. 퇴직 후 긍정적 반응을 보인 퇴직자는 대부분 경제적 여유가 있는 경우에 해당한다.
P46. 남성 신중년 중에서도 사회적 역할 규범을 내면화하지 않고 가정에서 자신의 역할과 공간을 만들면서퇴직에 대한 긍정적 정서와 반응을 보이는 경우도 있다.
P47. 무엇보다도 주된 일자리 퇴직 후 신중년에게 의미 있게 나타나는 변화는 스스로 할 일을 만들며 하루의 일상을 알차게 만들려는 모습이다. 회사에 다닐 때보다 기상 시간이 한 시간 정도 늦춰진 차이밖에 없다는 인식을 보이면서 집이라는 공간을 회사에서 일하는 공간처럼 만들어 무언가를 계속할 수 있는 분위기 및 여건을 조성했다.
p51. 구직 기간이 길어지기 시작한 공백 시기에 자연에서 새 사진을 찍는 취미를 갖게 되었다. 이러한 활동은 재직 중에 취미로 시작한 것이었는데 지금은 일상의 중요한 활동이 되었다. 처음에는 가족들이 모델이 되어 주었지만 1년이 지나자 녹록지 않아 새에 대한 사진을 찍기 시작했다.
p52. 취미활동으로 기타동호회에 나가고 있다.
p52. 경제적 안정성을 어느 정도 확보한 신중년일수록 자신이 하고 싶었던 일 혹은 전문성을 발휘하여 보람 있게 할 수 있는 일을 찾고자 하는 욕구를 쉽게 찾아 볼 수 있다.
p72. 기술직 의 경우 다른 직종에 비해 상대적으로 재취업이 용이했고 재취업 일자리 적응도와 만족도가 높은 편인 것으로 나타났다.
p73. 재취업한 일자리가 퇴직 후 별다른 준비 없이 우연히 지인 소개 등을 통해 처음으로 재취업한 경우에는 그 만족도나 적응도가 더욱 낮은 것으로 나타나기도 했다. 다른 일자리를 경험한 사례자들의 경우 현재 의 일자리에 높은 만족도를 보였다.
p74. 이직 경험이 있는 경우 재취업을 돕는 다양한 고용 서비스의 필요성을 절실하게 느꼈음을 토로했으며, 활용한 서비스들의 효과에 매우 만족하는 모습을 보였다. 특히 실제로 상담자를 만나서 받는 일대일 컨설팅의 효과를 매우 높게 평가하고 있었다.
p77. 구직 실패를 경험한다는 것은 그 과정에서의 다양한 구직 활동 경험이 누적되는 것을 의미하는 것이기도 하다. 이들 역시 구직 과정에서 좀 더 나은 일자리로의 진출을 위해 직업교육 및 훈련, 구직 기술 강화 교육 등의 공공서비스 활용을 시도했다.
p78. 관점을 바꾸면 새로운 길이 보이듯, 사례자들은 하향 이동된 경력 무관 일자리도 긍정적으로 바라보고자 노력하고 있었다. 이들 역시 이동 초기에는 하향된 일자리에 쉽게 적응하지 못하고 좌절감을 경험했으나 새간이 지남에 따라 겸허히 현실을 수용하고 적응하고자 노력했다
p79. 경력 무관 일자리를 경험하는 사례자 중에는 자포자기하는 심정으로 받아들였던 일자리에서 생각지 못했던 비전을 발견하는 경우도 있었다. 그러나 이러한 비전을 발견하게 되었던 것은 일자리와 상관없이 어디서든 최선을 다하고자 하는 자세가 있었기에 가능한 것이기도 했다.
p83. “완전히 새로운 분야로 직종을 바꿨으니까 이제 초보 아닙니까. 가능하면 계속해서 더 업무를 수행할 수 있도록 도전하고, 이론과 기술을 모두 겸비한 ‘현장의 기술자’라는소리를 듣고 싶어요. 그래서 산업기사 자격도 따고, 전기기사도 따고 싶죠. 이건 출세하고는상관없어요. 그저 제 업무 분야에서 열심히 하는 거지만, 개인적인 삶의 만족은 물론 사회에도 작게나마 기여하고 싶죠.” (배기섭, 60대)
p83. 새 경력 재취업자들의 경우에는 다른 유형에 비해서 구직 기술 향상, 구직 정보 검색, 직업훈련 등 구직을 위한 다양한 활동을 보다 자발적이고 적극적으로 수행하는 것으로 나타났다. 새 경력으로의 진입을 위해서 교육, 훈련, 자격 취득 등 상대적으로 많은 시간과 노력을 들였으며 이 과정을 기꺼이 받아들이며 최선을 다하는 모습을 보여 주었다.
p91. 소확행. 내가 좋아하는 일을 하는 거 자체가 소소하지만 행복한 거 아닌가요? 내 일이 있고 직업이 있다는 것, 내가 직접 벌어서 내 용돈을 쓴다는 것, 애들한테 기대지 않고 사는 것.
p91-96. 은행 33년 퇴직 후 시설 관리 기술자로 전환 한 배기섭 (가명) 예 – 경제적 자유는 있었으나 일의 의미가 중요했던 케이스.
p97. “인텔리라는 사람들이 흔히 빠지기 쉬운 게 선민의식이잖아요. 저도 그런 게 있었죠. 그런데 퇴직하고 전기기능사 자격 따려고 직업훈련학교에 다닐 때, 처음으로 지하철 첫차를 타 봤어요. 새벽 5시 반에 지하철이 꽉 차요. 건설 현장 근로자, 일용직 근로자, 주야간 교대 근무하는 사람들 등 정말 다양하죠. 그 현장에 있어 보니 이전에 모르던 새로운 세상이 드디어 보이더라고요.”
p98. 상대적으로 충분한 퇴직 준비 기간을 가진 신중년들의 경우 혹독한 고용 시장의 현실을 미리 파악하고, 재취업, 귀농·귀어·귀촌, 창업 등 퇴직 이후의 다양한 경로를 미리 탐색하여 퇴직에 따른 변화와 충격을 완화할 수있었다. 또한 보다 이르게 시작한 은퇴 준비는 주된 일자리에서의 경력 마무리 시간을 다음 경로를 위한 의미 있는 시간으로 활용할 수 있게 했다.
p99. 다양한 사례자들의 경우 은퇴에 대한 이른 준비와 긍정적이고 겸허한 수용의 태도를 보임으로써 어려운 시기를 극복해 가고 있었다.
p100-104. 제약회사 인사임원에서 방역회사 3년 후 파견단순업무 – 고재식 (가명)님 사례 – 긍정적으로 받아들이는 자세가 중요.
p106. 재취업에서의 자기 이해와 관련하여 한 가지 함께 고려할 것은 자신의 특성이 무엇인가를 아는 것뿐 아니라, 자신의 객관적인 위치를 확인해야 한다는 점이다.
p108. 취업을 준비함에 있어 내가 진입하려는 시장에 대한 이해는 기본이다. 재취업 역시 마찬가지다. 그런데 재취업자들의 경우에 ‘고용 시장’에 오래 있었다는 사실만으로 자신이 현재 고용 시장에 대해서 ‘잘 알고 있다’는 편향에 빠져 실제 상황을 이해하는 데 소홀한 모습을 보이는 경우가 많다.
p108. “스마트공장추진단 사업은 정부에서 최소 10년을 내다보고 계획을 짠 거예요. 현재 민간 주도로 가고 있는데 지금 그 고도화 단계에서 진정한 스마트 공장은 2035년 정도에 중소기업에서 나오기 시작할 거라고 예측하고 있어요. 모든 정보가 자동화되고 그에 따라서 로봇이 움직이고 하는 그런 모델이 2035년 정도에 나올 거라는 거죠. 그럼 앞으로 10년 이상 있어야 하는 거잖아요. 제가 지금 53세인데 10년 후면 63세일 거 아니에요. 저는 최소한 그때까지는 일을 할 거라고 생각해요. 그게 희망이죠.”
p118. 재취업 준비 시 중요한 것은 페달을 빨리 밟는 것이 아닌 오래 밟을 수 있는가의 여부이다. 조바심을 내지 말고 장기적으로 준비하고 싶은 일이 있다면 시간을 좀 더 할애해서라도 그 일에 도전해 볼 것을 권유했다. 경우에 따라서 원하는 경력 목표를 달성하기까지 너무 많은 시간이 소요된다면, 비교적 단순 직종의 업무로 생계를 유지하며 훈련을 병행하는 것도 방법임을 조언해 주고 있었다. 특히 새 경력으로 진출을 도모하는 경우에 그쪽으로 진입하기 위해 상대적으로 많은 준비와 시간을 할애해야 하는 경우들이 있을 것이다.
p119, “포기하지 말아야 해요. 지금 좌절하고 실패하는 이 상황이 도약을 위한 기회일 수 있거든요. 재취업이 어렵다고 해서 인생 헛살았다는 생각을 하면 안 돼요. 우리 인생이라는 게 자전거를 타고 계속 나아가는 과정이거든요. 근데 빨리 갈 필요가 뭐가 있어요? 굳이 속도 내지 않고 천천히 가도 돼요. 중요한 건 페달에서 발을 떼지 않는 거거든요. 페달 놓는 순간 쓰러지잖아요. 주위에 사람이 있고, 많은 제도가 있으니 포기하지 않고 페달을 계속 밟는 거, 그게 제일 중요해요..”
“조급해하지 말자. 돌아가더라도 제 길로 가면 된다. 계속 속으로 되뇌었어요. 포기하지 않고 처음 마음대로 계속 취업에 도전해 보기로 결심했죠. 욕심은 소용이 없어요. 그렇다고 내가 가진 경험까지 버리고 싶지 않았어요. 어디든 내가 가진 노하우를 응용할 수 있고 접목시킬 수 있는 일을 찾아보고 싶었어요. 돌이켜보면 그게 제일 중요한 거 같아요. 다른 친구들에게도 말하고 싶은 게 목표를 세웠다면 시간이 좀 걸리거나 돌아가더라도 나아가 보라는 거예요. 언젠가는 길이 열릴 거라고 봐요.”
p122-125. 대기업 IT전문가로 조기퇴직 후 10년간 계약직 그러나 IT분야에서 포기하지 않고 곁눈질하지 않고 끝까지 버팀 – 우연한 기회에 후배의 얘기로 스마트공장사업단 전문위원이 됨 – 신영식 (가명) 님 “준비된 자에게는 우연도 기회가 된다.“
p129-133. 자동차회사 영업직에서 사업 (초기 성공 후 영업환경 변화로 실패) 호텔리어로 변신.
p145. 창업시 가장 큰 실수는 동일한 일을 해도 조직의 배경과 체계적 시스템, 동료 협력 등을 바탕으로 일정한 결과를 만들어 내는 것과, 창업을 통해 사업자로서 아무런 배경이나 시스템이 없이 모든 것을 스스로 다 해야 하는 것의 차이를 깨닫지 못하는 것이다.
p148. 창업은 수익성보다는 안전성과 지속성에 집중해야한다. 10-15년간 지속할 수 있는 장수아이템이어야 한다.
안정적 생활을 위한 최소한의 수입을 유지하는 것에 초점을 두고, 해당 수익 목표를 세워서 실천하려고 노력해야 한다.
p150. 본인이 정말 좋아서 하는 일이어야 전문성이 생기고, 이를 지속적으로 발전시켜야 사업의 전문화를 이룰 수 있다.
p174-179. 신창용님의 창업성공사례
팬텍에서 1년간 다시 현역처럼 일에만 몰두하며 신규 프로젝트를 성공적으로 이끌어 낸 그는 회사에 급여와 근무 조건을 조정해 줄 것을 제안했다. 자신이 먼저 급여를 낮추되 일주일에 2~3일만 근무하는 것으로 조정해 달라고 요구한 것이다. 충분한 여유를 두고 퇴직 이후를 준비하고 싶었기 때문이다. 회사에서도 합리적인 제안이라고 판단해서 수락했고, 그때부터 1년간은 일과 퇴직 준비를 병행하며 여유로운 시간을 보낼 수 있었다. “두 번의 퇴직을 통해 많은 걸 얻었어요. 준비 안 된 퇴직의 위험성, 체계적으로 준비하는 퇴직의 안정성 두 가지를 모두 경험할 수 있었던 거죠.”
경험을 통해서 그가 얻은 소중한 삶의 지혜는 늘 미리 ‘다음’을 준비해야 한다는 것이었다. 항상 현재에 안주하기보다는 다음 단계의 커리어를 지속적으로 계획하고, 목표한 바를 이루기 위해서는 조급함을 버리고 충분 한 시간을 들여 준비해야 한다는 것이다.
Viking Therapeutics는 Amgen Scientist였다가 Analyst였던 Brian Lian 박사에 의해 2012년에 설립되었고 Ligand Pharmaceuticals의 5개의 약물 파이프라인을 $2.5 Million Bridge Loan으로 인수함으로써 단숨에 2개의 임상 파이프라인을 포함한 약물군을 확보했습니다.
SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (NASDAQ: LGND) announces the licensing of rights to five programs to Viking Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of novel, first-in-class or best-in-class therapies for metabolic and endocrine disorders.
The therapeutic programs covered in the license agreement include Ligand’s FBPase inhibitor program for type 2 diabetes, a Selective Androgen Receptor Modulator (SARM) program for muscle wasting, a Thyroid Hormone Receptor-ß (TRß) Agonist program for dyslipidemia, an Erythropoietin Receptor (EPOR) Agonist program for anemia, and an Enterocyte-Directed Diacylglycerol Acyltransferase-1 (DGAT-1) Inhibitor program for dyslipidemia. The FBPase Inhibitor program was the subject of an option originally granted to Viking in 2012.
Each licensed program includes a fee to be paid to Ligand in Viking equity at the time of a private or public financing, milestone payments and royalties on future net sales. Viking is responsible for all development activities under the license.
As part of this transaction, Ligand has agreed to extend a $2.5 million convertible loan facility to Viking that can be used to pay Viking’s operating and financing-related expenses.
“This is a creative licensing transaction that combines a bold portfolio of early- and mid-stage assets with a company that can advance these programs to major inflection points in the near-term. Viking’s programs have the potential to generate substantial news flow over the next 12 to 24 months and to be the basis for important new drugs in major therapeutic categories,” said John Higgins, President and CEO of Ligand Pharmaceuticals.
“R&D success has been the backbone of our prolific out-licensing activities over the past few years. Our objective is to establish proof-of-concept and solid initial data packages, and then to partner with companies that are well-positioned to manage advanced clinical and regulatory development. A relationship such as this one with Viking gives Ligand the opportunity to entrust valuable internal programs to a dedicated team with the operational resources to take them to the next level. Each of these licensed programs has the hallmark of quality that has defined Ligand’s successful research heritage over the years. We are pleased to have helped establish a platform to advance the programs and to make this investment in Viking to support further progress,” Higgins continued.
“Along with our partners at Ligand, we have created through this license an excellent vehicle to develop several promising new therapies for patients, while unlocking potential value for stakeholders,” said Brian Lian, President and CEO of Viking Therapeutics. “Each of the licensed programs has what we believe to be first-in-class or best-in-class characteristics and a differentiated therapeutic profile. Importantly, the portfolio fits well within Viking’s focus, as our team has an extensive history in diabetes and endocrine drug development, including two recent drug approvals. At all levels, from preclinical through pharmaceutical development, and including our chief medical officer, we have well-aligned development expertise to bring these programs forward.”
About Viking Therapeutics, Inc.
Viking Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company focused on the development of novel, first-in-class or best-in-class therapies for metabolic and endocrine disorders. Viking’s research and development activities leverage its expertise in metabolism to develop innovative therapeutics that improve patients’ lives. Viking has a portfolio of five drug candidates in clinical trials or preclinical studies, which are based on small molecules licensed from Ligand and its affiliate. Viking’s lead clinical program is VK0612, a first-in-class, orally available drug candidate for type 2 diabetes (Phase 2b). Viking’s second clinical program is VK5211, an orally available, non-steroidal selective androgen receptor modulator, or SARM, for the treatment of cancer cachexia (Phase 2). Viking is also developing three novel preclinical programs targeting metabolic diseases and anemia.
Ligand is a biopharmaceutical company with a business model that is based upon the concept of developing or acquiring royalty revenue generating assets and coupling them to a lean corporate cost structure. Ligand’s goal is to produce a bottom line that supports a sustainably profitable business. By diversifying our portfolio of assets across numerous technology types, therapeutic areas, drug targets and industry partners, we offer investors an opportunity to invest in the increasingly complicated and unpredictable pharmaceutical industry. In comparison to its peers, we believe Ligand has assembled one of the largest and most diversified asset portfolios in the industry with the potential to generate revenue in the future. These therapies address the unmet medical needs of patients for a broad spectrum of diseases including diabetes, hepatitis, muscle wasting, Alzheimer’s disease, dyslipidemia, anemia, asthma and osteoporosis. Ligand’s Captisol platform technology is a patent protected, chemically modified cyclodextrin with a structure designed to optimize the solubility and stability of drugs. Ligand has established multiple alliances with the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies including GlaxoSmithKline, Onyx Pharmaceuticals (a subsidiary of Amgen Inc.), Merck, Pfizer, Baxter International, Eli Lilly & Co. and Spectrum Pharmaceuticals. Please visit http://www.captisol.com for more information on Captisol. For more information on Ligand, please visit http://www.ligand.com.
Ligand Pharmaceuticals has licensed the rights to five programs to Viking Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharma company focused on the development of therapies for metabolic and endocrine disorders. As part of this transaction, Ligand will extend a $2.5 million convertible loan to Viking that can be used to pay Viking’s operating and finance expenses. Ligand will receive a fee for each program, milestone payments and royalties on future sales. Viking is responsible for all development activities under the license.
The therapeutic programs include Ligand’s FBPase inhibitor for type 2 diabetes, a Selective Androgen Receptor Modulator (SARM) program for muscle wasting, a Thyroid Hormone Receptor-β (TRβ) Agonist for dyslipidemia, an Erythropoietin Receptor (EPOR) Agonist for anemia, and an Enterocyte-Directed Diacylglycerol Acyltransferase-1 (DGAT-1) Inhibitor program for dyslipidemia.
“This is a creative licensing transaction that combines a bold portfolio of early- and mid-stage assets with a company that can advance these programs to major inflection points in the near-term. Viking’s programs have the potential to generate substantial news flow over the next 12 to 24 months and to be the basis for important new drugs in major therapeutic categories,” said John Higgins, president and chief executive officer of Ligand Pharmaceuticals.
“Along with our partners at Ligand, we have created through this license an excellent vehicle to develop several promising new therapies for patients, while unlocking potential value for stakeholders,” said Brian Lian, president and chief executive officer of Viking. “Each of the licensed programs has what we believe to be first-in-class or best-in-class characteristics and a differentiated therapeutic profile. Importantly, the portfolio fits well within Viking’s focus.”
2015년에 $24 Million IPO를 했습니다. Micro-cap Biotech IPO였지요.
SAN DIEGO–Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (NASDAQ: LGND) partner Viking Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: VKTX) announced that it has priced its initial public offering of 3,000,000 shares of its common stock at an initial offering price to the public of $8.00 per share. Viking has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 450,000 shares of common stock at the same price to cover over-allotments, if any. Viking expects the shares to begin trading on the Nasdaq Capital Market on April 29, 2015 under the ticker symbol “VKTX”. Viking expects the offering to close on May 4, 2015, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.
Laidlaw & Company (UK) Ltd. is acting as the sole book-running manager for the offering. Feltl and Company, Inc. is serving as co-manager for the offering.
Ligand invested $9 million in the offering. Ligand will issue an additional press release once the transaction has closed.
IPO 한 지 근 10년이 지나 Dual GLP-1/GIP Peptide Agonist인 VK2735의 임상2상 결과가 나왔는데 경쟁 약물인 Eli Lilly의 Tirzepatide와 거의 같고 Novo Nordisk의 Semaglutide보다는 나은 체중감소를 보였습니다.
Pass the mead, because Viking Therapeutics has plenty to celebrate after its dual agonist of GLP-1 and GIP was linked to weight loss of up to 14.7% after 13 weeks of treatment, sending the biotech’s stock soaring.
Dose-dependent reductions in the weight of recipients of VK2735, which ranged from 9.1% to 14.7%, were all significantly larger than the 1.7% dip tracked in participants on placebo. While that was enough for the phase 2 study to meet its primary endpoint and clear the 8% bar Viking set as an internal hurdle, the comparison to other molecules is equally important in the increasingly competitive obesity space.
VK2735 looks good compared to the incumbents, with usual caveats about cross-trial comparisons. After 13 weeks, people in Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide phase 3 trial were yet to lose 10% of their body weight. Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide triggered faster, deeper weight loss than semaglutide, but VK2735 looks competitive against that molecule, too. That could catch the eye of pharma dealmakers—and Viking is open to talks.
“Our plan is to proceed aggressively with further clinical development. We’re always open … to [business development] discussions,” Viking CEO Brian Lian, Ph.D., said on a call with investors to discuss the data. “Right now we’re really focused on next steps with the program for us and remain with the ‘open door’ policy for discussing opportunities.”
Would-be buyers may need to dig deep to prise VK2735 away from Viking or buy the biotech outright. The company ended yesterday with a market cap of $3.9 billion but saw its stock climb 80% to above $69 in premarket trading.
Investors sent the stock skyward as they digested data from a 176-subject phase 2 trial that paints Viking as a serious force in the red-hot obesity space. Up to 88% of patients on VK2735 experienced weight loss of 10% or more, compared to 4% of people on placebo, and Viking believes further weight loss is possible beyond Week 13.
“There wasn’t really an indication yet of a plateau signal. The two higher doses, the 10 and the 15, one of them appeared to maybe be accelerating a little bit, but it’s hard to know. These are weekly reads, so you get a little bumpiness as the curve evolves,” Lian said.
Asked by an analyst why VK2735 may outperform the competition, Lian pointed to a pharmacokinetic profile that “provides very good exposures” and a half-life that is “quite long.” Lian said those connected factors may help “drive this level of efficacy.”
The next step is to hold a meeting with the FDA, something Lian expects to happen around the middle of the year. “It seems more than likely that a phase 2b will be the next step here but we’ll have a better idea after we speak with the FDA and get some guidance,” the CEO said.
On the safety and tolerability front, the discontinuation rate across all VK2735 doses was slightly lower than in the placebo group, with 13% playing off against 14%, although the rate at the highest dose was 20%.
As with other GLP-1 drugs, many patients experienced nausea, with the rate peaking at 63% at the top dose, but most of the cases were mild and none were severe. One patient went to hospital with symptoms of dizziness. The patient was diagnosed with dehydration and admitted to the hospital, triggering a serious adverse event, but then recovered.
Viking is yet to share data on markers such as liver fat and plasma lipids, but earlier studies suggest the candidate may benefit patients with comorbidities linked to obesity. Lian said the mechanism “seems to be applicable” to metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, an indication Viking knows well from its work on VK2809, but, for now, the biotech is going to direct its resources to obesity.
이 결과를 바탕으로 Public Funding을 했는데 목표했던 $550 Million보다 큰 $632 Million에 마감되었습니다. 아마도 빅파마와 협상이 진행되고 있는 것 같습니다. 어떤 결과가 나올지 궁금합니다. 최근 VK2735 Oral의 임상1상도 진행 중입니다.
Viking Therapeutics, Inc. (“Viking”) (Nasdaq: VKTX), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of novel therapies for metabolic and endocrine disorders, today announced the closing of its previously announced underwritten public offering of 7,441,650 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $85.00 per share, which included the exercise in full by the underwriters of their option to purchase up to 970,650 additional shares of common stock. The gross proceeds to Viking from this offering were approximately $632.5 million, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and offering expenses.
Morgan Stanley, Leerink Partners, William Blair, Raymond James, Stifel and Truist Securities acted as joint book-running managers for the offering. Oppenheimer & Co. acted as lead manager for the offering. BTIG, H.C. Wainwright & Co., Maxim Group LLC and Laidlaw & Company (U.K.) Ltd. acted as co-managers for the offering.
Viking currently intends to use the net proceeds from the offering for continued development of its VK2809, VK2735 and VK0214 programs and for general research and development, working capital and general corporate purposes.
현재 Viking Therapeutics의 파이프라인은 아래와 같이 3가지 입니다. Micro-Cap에서 Unicorn이 되기까지 이 여정이 참 신기하기도 합니다.
Idorsia has spun out of Actelion after Johnson & Johnson wrapped up its $30 billion takeover of the Swiss biotech. The new company starts life with $1 billion in cash, multiple clinical-phase drugs and a deal with J&J, strengths that prompted traders to drive up its share price by 30% in its first hours on the Swiss stock exchange.
Shares in Idorsia began trading at CHF 10 ($10) a piece but quickly soared higher. The stock settled around the CHF 13 mark a few hours after the market opened. That jump was foreseeable. Talking to Reuters, an anonymous trader said the initial CHF 10 “reflects the company’s cash and actually is rather cheap.”
Allschwil, Switzerland-based Idorsia’s $1 billion starting cash position is one of several eye-catching characteristics of the biotech. Unlike almost all newly minted biotechs, Idorsia also has multiple drugs in the clinic, one of which could net it a $230 million fee if J&J opts in.
The J&J agreement covers dual endothelin receptor antagonist ACT-132577, one of four phase 2 assets in Idorsia’s pipeline. Actelion posted data from a phase 2 trial of ACT-132577 last month. The readout linked the experimental therapy to statistically significant reductions in mean diastolic and systolic blood pressure.
J&J can pay $230 million and commit to royalties that range from 20% to 35% to opt-in. The 30-day opt-in countdown will start once Idorsia has shared the data with J&J and held an end-of-phase 2 meeting with the FDA. Idorisa plans to run a phase 3 trial in patients with resistant hypertension.
ACT-132577 is one of a clutch of Idorsia assets edging toward phase 3. Idorsia is a phase 2 dose-finding study away from having the data it needs to move cenerimod into a pivotal trial. Insomnia asset ACT-541468 is set to deliver the phase 2 data Idorsia needs to move it into phase 3 later this year. And regulatory talks in preparation for a phase 3 trial of Fabry disease hopeful lucerastat are taking place. Idorsia plans to start a phase 3 trial of lucerastat next year.
Investigators are also testing cerebral vasospasm treatment clazosentan in a phase 2 trial.
Further back in the pipeline, Idorsia is set on four phase 1 assets, although the long-term status of these programs is unclear
“We will be taking decisions on our phase 1 pipeline assets before the end of the year,” Idorsia CEO Jean-Paul Clozel said in a statement.
Clozel is one of several key executives who have moved from Actelion to Idorsia. The CEO is joined at the biotech by Guy Braunstein, who has taken the role of head of global clinical development.
The FDA blessed Idorsia’s Quviviq (daridorexant), a sleeping pill for those with insomnia. Because the FDA has recommended Idorsia to register Quviviq as a controlled substance, the treatment will not reach the market until May, the company said.
After more than two decades of trial and error and experiments with—by their estimate—25,000 compounds, the husband and wife team of executives at Idorsia, Jean-Paul and Martine Clozel, said they have finally reached the finish line with a drug they believe can be a game-changer.
With 25 million Americans affected by insomnia and only about 30% of them diagnosed, a huge untapped market awaits. But Idorsia has a big task ahead to distinguish Quviviq from Merck’s Belsomra, which has been on the market for seven years, uses the same mechanism and has not had the most successful market.
Quviviq is the first approval for Switzerland-based Idorsia, a company the Clozels established in 2017 after they sold Actelion to Johnson & Johnson for $30 billion.
In two phase 3 studies, Quviviq showed significant improvement over placebo in sleep onset, sleep maintenance and total sleep time, while also reducing daytime sleepiness.
Both Quviviq and Merck’s Belsomra are from the dual orexin receptor antagonist (DORA) class. Belsomra has had difficulty catching on, generating sales of $327 million in 2020. Another DORA, Eisai’s Dayvigo, was launched in 2020.
The difference between Quviviq and the other DORAs, according to Idorsia, is that it keeps people energetic and awake throughout the day. Belsomra’s development was hindered by warnings about next-day somnolence and depression, forcing Merck to cut its dosage to suboptimal levels to gain approval.
Finding a treatment that strikes the delicate balance between providing nighttime restfulness and daytime functioning is why it took so long to develop Quviviq, Martine Clozel, executive vice president and chief scientific officer,said in an interview.
“It really took us many years to arrive [at] a compound with the right duration of action,” Clozel explained.
For decades, insomnia has been treated with sedatives, such as Ambien. The generic versions of these treatments still dominate the market, though they can cause memory problems and morning sedation.
Roughly 20 years ago, scientists found it was the orexin system that keeps the brain awake. This discovery kicked off a new way of targeting insomnia. Quviviq and other DORAs block the binding of the wake-promoting neuropeptides orexins, tuning down overactive wakefulness, as opposed to sedating the brain.
At Actelion, the Clozels developed an insomnia treatment, almorexant, but had to bail on it in 2011 because of safety concerns. After licensing the drug to Midnight Pharma, Actelion got to work on another insomnia treatment.
Ten years later, the Clozels believe they’ve finally got it right. “We believe we’ve hit the jackpot with regard to the dose response” Patty Torr, president and GM of Idorsia U.S., said in an interview, also pointing to the fact that Quviviq is not a brain-sedating-type medicine. The drug will be available in 50 mg and 25 mg doses.
Getting patients to believe in this DORA will require a major marketing effort, which the company has already begun with an awareness program, Alliance for Sleep. Another effort underway is the Seize the Night campaign which will specifically touts combination of daytime and nighttime benefits provided by Quviviq.
The unmet need in insomnia is undeniable. Many are diagnosed but do not seek treatment. Additionally, of those who are prescribed medicine, 25% drop out of the market annually, Torr said.
“There’s this churn going on in the marketplace,” she said. And that spells opportunity for Idorsia.
Up to 500 roles at Idorsia are at risk as the Swiss biotech tries to halve its cash burn while it waits for its approved insomnia treatment Quviviq to pay off.
Facing a “challenging financial situation” due to “lower than anticipated product sales and a difficult global financial environment,” the company has decided to sacrifice its R&D work in order to “maximize the time the company has to deliver commercial success.”
Exactly what will happen is still to be decided. Idorsia will now review its development pipeline and jettison all candidates that can’t be “advanced rapidly and with reasonable financial investment.” Work on those unwanted programs will be either paused or prepared for partnership or out-licensing, the biotech explained in an early morning release Friday.
The ultimate goal is to reduce cash burn at the company’s Allschwil, Switzerland, headquarters by 50% by early 2024.
It means a worrying period of limbo for many employees. Up to 500 positions could be set to go as part of the “cost reduction initiative,” mostly located in the R&D team and related roles. The affected employees will be decided as part of a consultation process due to wrap up by the end of the year.
“I continue to believe that Quviviq can be the success we hope for, but unfortunately it will take longer than originally planned,” the biotech’s CEO Jean-Paul Clozel, M.D., said in the release. “Idorsia’s immediate objective is therefore to maximize the time the company has to deliver commercial success with its products. This means making any funds that are raised last as long as possible by significantly reducing our global cash-burn.”
“The cost reduction initiative together with potential collaborations will give the company the time it needs to realize the value we have created,” Clozel added. “I deeply regret having to launch such an initiative, but we simply cannot sustain current investment levels.”
While Idorsia has previously claimed that Quviviq has become the No. 1 branded insomnia treatment since Idorisa launched it onto the U.S. market in May 2022, delays in securing reimbursement meant it only brought in total net sales of 4.3 million Swiss francs ($4.9 million) in the first quarter of the 2023.
In an earnings report in April, Clozel insisted that when it came to the reimbursement delays, “progress has been made and the situation is steadily improving.”
The company ended March with 212 million Swiss francs ($245 million) in cash and equivalents. Since then, Idorsia has secured bridge financing of 75 million Swiss francs ($86 million) as well as sold its Asia-Pacific rights outside of China to Sosei Heptares.
If its commercial rollout has been slow, Idorsia hasn’t had much luck in the clinic in recent years, either. In 2021, its Fabry disease medicine lucerastat flamed out in a phase 3 trial, while cenerimod missed the primary goal in a phase 2b systemic lupus erythematosus study.The following year saw its selective orexin-1 antagonist ACT-539313 fail to hit its goal in a binge eating disorder study, prompting the company to give up on the indication.
It’s made for a tough period for a company that arrived on the biotech scene with a splash in 2017 by way of a spinout from Actelion, which was bought by Johnson & Johnson. Idorsia launched with $1 billion in cash and a handful of clinical-stage drug candidates—plus a potentially lucrative development deal with J&J for the blood pressure medication aprocitentan, which has continued to show potential in a phase 3 trial.
Shares in the company have been on a steady decline in 2023, hovering around the 6.30 Swiss franc mark this morning from a January opening price 15.33 Swiss francs.
올해 3월에 마침내 Aprocitentan (Tryvio, ACT-132577)가 FDA 승인을 받았습니다.
Idorsia Pharmaceuticals on Wednesday announced that the FDA approved its endothelin receptor antagonist aprocitentan for the treatment of hypertension to reduce blood pressure in adults who had not reached adequate control on other drugs.
Aprocitentan, which will now be sold under the brand name Tryvio, is an oral drug taken once-daily alongside other antihypertensive drugs.
Tryvio is the first FDA-approved medication that targets the endothelin pathway for hypertension. Existing treatments act via different mechanisms, including the regulation of salt and water, the reduction of extracellular calcium influx into cells and the inhibition of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone axis.
Tosh Butt, president and general manager of Idorsia U.S., in a statement said that Tryvio’s approval will “provide physicians and patients with a novel medicine working in a new pathway” to treat uncontrolled hypertension and provide additional blood pressure control. Idorsia is currently preparing its launch strategy for Tryvio and expects to make the drug available to prescribers during the second half of 2024.
Designed to be orally available, Tryvio is a small molecule drug that works by preventing the binding of the endothelin-1 ligand to its corresponding receptors. This mechanism of action dampens signaling cascades that bear many similarities with pathophysiology of hypertension, according to Idorsia’s announcement.
Tryvio comes with a black box warning for embryo-fetal toxicity, flagging the risk of major birth defects when used during pregnancy. Tryvio should not be taken by patients who are pregnant or currently trying to become pregnant.
Idorsia backed Tryvio’s regulatory bid with data from the Phase III PRECISION trial, which enrolled 730 patients who had systolic blood pressure (SBP) of at least 140 mmHg and who were taking at least three antihypertensive drugs. Before treatment, all patients were switched to a standard background regimen consisting of a calcium channel blocker, a diuretic and an angiotensin receptor blocker.
Results showed that both the 12.5-mg and 25-mg dose levels of Tryvio could significantly reduce sitting SBP compared with placebo after four weeks of treatment. Treatment benefits were consistent across several patient subgroups, including according to age, sex, race, diabetes history and body mass index. Tryvio is only approved at its 12.5-mg dose.
Tryvio’s approval comes months after Johnson & Johnson turned its back on the endothelin receptor blocker, electing in September 2023 to return Tryvio’s worldwide rights to Idorsia. The Indianapolis-based pharma bought into the promise of aprocitentan in 2017, paying $230 million for joint development and sole worldwide commercialization rights.
Under the terms of the 2023 handoff, J&J will still be entitled to 30% of any out-licensing proceeds associated with Tryvio, as well as 10% of earnings from any product deal that Idorsia enters following approval.
Lucky genes don’t fully explain super agers’ razor-sharp thinking and memory skills, says Angela Roberts, assistant professor in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Western University in Ontario. “Lifestyle matters,” she says. Here’s what they do, and what you should too:
1. Super agers control their blood sugar and blood pressure.
Super agers tend to have blood pressure and blood sugar levels that are healthier than in the general population. One way to control both is through diet. Older adults who follow an eating pattern rich in vitamin-, carotenoid- and flavonoid-packed foods such as whole grains, veggies, leafy greens, nuts, berries and fish, and low in red meat, butter and sweets slowed brain aging by 7.5 years and kept thinking and memory sharper in a 2015 Rush University study of 960 older adults.
MIND (Mediterranean-DASH Diet Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay) diet
In a 12-year study published in 2019, this eating strategy lowered the risk for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia by up to 53 percent. If you have high blood pressure or diabetes, talk with your doctor about medications and other strategies to keep these conditions under control. Setting a goal of a systolic bp (the top number in a bp reading) below 120 lowered risk for mild cognitive impairment by 19 percent in one study of 9,361 older adults who took medications for their high blood pressure. For those not taking medication for high blood pressure, it also lowered the risk for either mild cognitive impairment or dementia by 15 percent.
2. Super agers don’t exercise more, but they push themselves physically.
Spanish researchers followed a cohort of 119 people, ages 70–85, for eight years; among that group were 55 super agers who scored at least 20 years younger than their years on brain tests. Researchers found that what distinguished super agers most profoundly was that they have greater speed, mobility, agility and balance than typical older adults — despite reporting the same exercise frequency.
One reason may be that super agers tend to do more demanding and rigorous activities such as gardening or stair-climbing, even though they report similar activity levels to other adults. In other words, walking a mile is good for your health; walking fast for a mile to get your heart rate up is even better. One British study found that just nine minutes of moderate-intensity exercise daily improved thinking skills.
3. Super agers avoid stress and prioritize mental health.
Another top distinguishing factor among super agers in that recent Spanish study: They reported lower levels of anxiety and depression than normal agers.
That makes sense: A recent three-year Danish study found that depression doubled risk for dementia, and a 2023 study found that those with the perceived high stress levels had a 37 percent higher risk for memory problems compared with those reporting low stress levels. Another study found that older adults with depression who got treatment — including medication and talk therapy — were up to 32 percent less likely to develop dementia over 10 to 14 years than those who didn’t get help. A fourth study found that those whose anxiety improved with talk therapy lowered their risk for later dementia by 17 percent.
4. Super agers protect their vision and hearing.
Researchers speculate that the brain may neglect memory processing as it instead puts extra effort into decoding blurry, muted signals from the world around us. A 2022 University of Toronto study of 5.4 million older Americans, age 65-plus, found serious cognitive problems for 28 percent of people with vision loss, 20 percent of those with hearing loss and 50 percent of those who had both poor vision and poor hearing.
Caring for your eyes and ears can pay off: University of Washington researchers found that at-risk older adults who received hearing aids showed thinking and memory losses that were 48 percent slower compared with those who didn’t get hearing aids. Similarly, a study of older adults with cataracts found that those who had cataract surgery had a 29 percent lower risk for dementia for up to 24 years compared with those who did not have the procedure. Getting help for poor vision — such as eyeglasses and cataract surgery — could have prevented 100,000 current cases of dementia in the U.S., according to a 2021 study.
5. Super agers prioritize sleep.
During slumber, your brain clears away toxic waste that builds up early in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. A 2022 Canadian study found that trouble falling or staying asleep three or more nights per week for three months boosted the risk for worsening memory in older adults.
“Good sleep is really important for maintaining brain health,” says Jeff D. Williamson, professor, gerontology and geriatric medicine, Wake Forest School of Medicine, who suggests discussing sleep issues with your doctor. Don’t rely on over-the-counter and prescription sleep drugs on a regular basis. Chronic use of prescription sleep drugs boosted the risk for dementia by 48 percent over six and a half years in a 2021 University of Minnesota study of 4,197 at-risk people in their 70s.
6. Super agers do more than Wordle.
Super agers did crossword puzzles and Sudoku games more often than “normal agers” in the Spanish study. They were also more likely to frequently read, listen to music, go to concerts and movies, travel, play cards and board games, do something creative such as handicrafts or performing in a play, and attend lectures. “Variety is beneficial,” says brain-game researcher Aaron Seitz, professor of psychology, physical therapy, art and design at Northeastern University. “Your brain needs to do a lot of different things. If we want to do them well, science and common sense suggest exercising it in a lot of different ways.” Super agers tend to move out of their comfort zones and share a willingness to endure discomfort to master a new skill such as playing a musical instrument or learning a language.
7. Super agers talk to their friends — a lot.
Older adults who connected every day with others had less shrinkage in key brain areas than those who seldom had contact with pals and relatives, according to a 2023 Japanese study in the journal Neurology. Perhaps that’s why memory declined fastest and furthest in people who felt lonely most often, in a 2022 University of Michigan study that tracked 9,032 U.S. adults for 20 years.
신중년 개개인들은 어느 날 자신이 부모세대와 더 오래 살게 되면서 다른 삶을 살게 된다는 점을 부지불식간에 인식한다. 그런 신중년들을 만나보면 대부분 정년 이후의 삶, 특히 일에 대한 걱정을 많이 하고 있다는 특징이 발견된다. 그런 걱정은 대부분 일자리 부족, 나이에 대한 사회적 차별, 개인의 자존감 및 건강상태 등 다양한 사회적 혹은 개인적 문제로부터 출발한다.
우리 사회에서는 오래전부터 ‘100세 시대’라는 이야기가 들려왔고, 최근에는 ‘120세 시대’라는 이야기도 심심치 않게 들리고 있다. 이에 국가에서도 이전과 달리 인생 전반부를 마치는 신중년들의 후반부 삶을 지원하기 위해 ‘1,000인 이상의 기업 퇴직자’, ‘50세 이상’ 등을 대상으로 ‘재취업지원서비스 의무화’와 ‘생애(경력)설계’ 실행을 위한 정책을 펴고 있다. 따라서 미래에는 어떠한 형태로든 더 오래 일하게 될 신중년들에게 도움을 주고자 근로 생애에 대한 새로운 관점 3가지를 제시해본다.
첫 번째 관점 : 일자리가 아닌 일거리의 시대가 온다. 인생 후반에 들어선 신중년 대다수는 가능하다면 계속해서 일하고자 한다. 부모세대와 달리 의약품, 과학기술 및 섭생의 개선으로 더욱 건강해지고 수명도 연장됐기 때문이다. 그런데 막상 인생 후반부에 들어서면 인생 전반부와 같은 온전한 일자리를 찾기 힘들다. 이때는 먼저 일자리를 ‘온전한 직업’으로, 일거리를 ‘삶과 일을 잘 조화시키는 활동’ 개념으로 이해해야만 한다. 일자리의 개념이 ‘완벽한 직업의 개념’이라면, 일거리는 그에 미치지는 못하지만 여전히 ‘일을 하면서 활동하는 개념’이다.
이전 산업화시대의 ‘소품종 대량생산’의 개념이 4차산업혁명시대로 진입함에 따라 ‘다품종 소량생산’의 개념으로 전환되면서 공장생산보다는 개인이 직접 생산하면서 자급자족하는 일거리의 시대로 바뀌고 있다. ‘9시에서 6시’까지 일하는 고착된 일자리의 개념에서 벗어나서 개인이 자신의 근로시간을 다소 자유롭게 선택하는 일거리의 시대가 우리 앞에 성큼 다가왔다. 더불어 하나의 일자리에서 주로 일한 이전의 삶과 달리, 이후의 삶은 개인에 따라 다르겠지만, 하나 혹은 그 이상의 일거리를 가지고 살아가는 개념이다. 박영숙 유엔미래포럼 한국대표는 “2030년에는 일자리의 시대에서 일거리의 시대로 진입한다”고 강조한다. 삶과 일이 더욱 자유로운 일거리의 시대에 대비해보자!
두 번째 관점 : 100세 시대 근로생애는 80세까지다. 현재의 신중년들은 인생 후반을 맞이하면서 전환과 관련된 각종 학습을 하는데, 과연 그들의 부모세대도 그러했을까? 아니다. 신중년들은 자신의 부모보다 더 긴 시간을 살면서, 더 긴 근로생애를 맞이하기 때문에 그에 대비한 평생학습을 해야만 한다. 예를 들어 평생학습은 이전의 힘든 학교공부가 아니라 ‘핸드폰 잘 사용하는 법’ 등과 같은 세상의 변화를 따라가는 학습으로 보면 좋다.
그렇다면 언제까지 일해야 할까? 많은 신중년이 인생 후반에 접어들면서 갖게 되는 의문이다. 현장에서 강의나 컨설팅을 하면서 신중년들에게 질문해보면 대부분 70세 정도까지 일할 것이라고 답변한다. 그러나 앞서간 신중년 선배들은 “상황이 허락하는 한 일을 계속하겠다”고 각종 설문 조사에서 밝히고 있다. 영국 런던대학교의 린다 그래턴 박사는 그의 저서 ‘일의 미래’에서 다음과 같이 이야기하고 있다. “이전에는 80세까지 살고 60세까지 일했다면, 이제는 100세까지 살고 80세까지 일해야 한다. 그를 위해서는 지속적인 학습이 필요하다”고 주장한다. 100세를 넘어선 철학자 김형석 교수도 그의 저서 ‘백년을 살아보니’에서 “80세까지 일하는 사람은 매우 행복한 사람이다”라고 밝히고 있다. 자신의 근로 생애를 스스로 80세까지 멀리 잡고 그에 대한 준비를 하자!
세 번째 관점 : 80세 근로생애의 중간에 일의 변곡점이 있다. 근로생애가 이전의 부모세대보다 연장된다고 하니 힘들게 인생 전반을 보낸 신중년들은 “나보고 또 힘들게 일하라고?” 혹은 “그렇게 오랫동안 일해야 하나?” 또는 “계속해서 일하기 위해서 또 공부해야 한다고?”라고 볼멘 목소리를 낸다. 그러나 80세 근로생애는 일하는 여정에서 일의 변곡점을 만나는데, ‘힘든 일자리’에서 ‘여유로운 혹은 자유로운 자신만의 일거리’의 개념으로 넘어가는 점이다.
이는 각자의 가족부양이나 자녀교육을 마친 이후로 부담 없이 자신이 원하는 곳에서, 원하는 일을 하면서 진정한 자아실현을 하는 개념으로 보면 된다. 개인의 상황에 따라서 차이는 있겠지만, 대부분 50세 이후에 부담 없이 일할 수 있는 변곡점이 나타나기 시작한다. 예를 들어 자녀에 대한 의무 이행으로 볼 수 있는 대학입학, 대학졸업, 취업, 결혼 등의 시점까지를 자신이 열심히 일하는 기간으로 보고, 그 변곡점 이후는 일자리 혹은 일거리에서 정말 자신을 위해 일한다는 개념이다. 이를 위해서는 먼저 부부간 대화를 통해서 여러 가지 상황을 아우르는 변곡점을 설정하고, 이후 자녀들과의 유연한 대화를 통해 그런 상황을 설명하는 것이 좋다. 그 변곡점이 올 때까지 열심히 일하고, 그 이후는 자신이 진정 바라던 일을 해보자!
이전과 달리 오래 살게 된다면 그에 따라 개인적인 삶의 패턴도 변화돼야만 한다. 힘들다기보다는 오히려 자신의 꿈을 인생 후반에서 펼칠 수 있는 기회가 될 수 있다는 긍정적인 마음을 가지고 길어진 근로생애를 맞이해보자. 자신을 위한 일자리 혹은 일거리가 기다리고 있기 때문에 인생 전반부에서 경험하지 못한 행복한 인생의 황금기를 맞이하게 된다. 앞서 언급한 김형석 교수님도 “60세에서 75세까지가 인생의 황금기”라고 말했다. 신중년을 기다리고 있는 그 황금기를 만끽해보자.
신중년 대부분은 인생 1막에서 하나의 온전한 일자리를 가지고 살아오다가 인생 2모작 혹은 인생 다모작의 삶으로 진입한다. ‘새 술은 새 부대에’라는 말이 있다. 이를 인용해서 비유해보면 ‘새 부대’는 새로운 사고방식이나 탐색방식이고, ‘새 술’은 새로운 일자리, 일거리로 이야기할 수 있다.
인생의 전환기를 맞는 사람이라면 누구라도 ‘새 부대’(=생각의 전환)에 ‘새 술’(=다양한 일자리, 일거리)을 담아보려는 희망적인 생각을 해야만 하지 않을까. 그러나 고용시장에서 보는 다수의 신중년은 인생 1막의 고정관념, 즉 재취업이나 창업 혹은 ‘하나의 온전한 일자리’를 지향하는 경우가 있다. 그런 생각을 하는 신중년들의 건강한 이후 삶을 위해서 ‘생각 열기’를 권하고 싶다.
생각 열기, 생각 확장하기
첫째, ‘새 부대’는 ‘시대의 변화에 따른 일자리, 일거리 개념의 재정립’이다. 인생 1막에서는 ‘하나의 일자리’에서 근무했다면, 그 이후에는 ‘여러 개의 일거리’ 개념으로 출발할 필요가 있다. 더 이상 다수가 정규직으로 일할 수 있는 세상이 아닌 계약직, 파트타임, 시간제, 프리랜스 등의 이름으로 일하는 세상이 왔기 때문이다. 인생 1막의 온전한 ‘하나의 일자리’가 ‘1’이라는 수입이나 일하는 시간적 볼륨을 안겨줬다면, 이후의 삶은 ‘여러 개의 일자리’에서 ‘0.1, 0.3….’ 등의 수입을 만들어가면서 온전한 ‘1’을 지향해 나가야만 한다. 좀 더 확장해보면 이전에는 생계 목적, 가족부양, 부모님의 결정 등 때문에 ‘1’을 지향하면서 일했다면 이제는 세상의 변화를 수용하는 자신의 결정에 따라 ‘0.1….’에서부터 출발한다는 개념이다. 물론 개인에 따라 출발점은 다를 수 있다.
둘째, ‘새 술’은 ‘다양하게 일하는 방식’인데, 첫째 항의 일자리, 일거리 개념을 적용하는 방식이다. 이는 인생 1막에서 주로 고려하던 취업, 창업 그리고 조금 확장된 귀농을 벗어나는 개념이다. 세상이 다양화되는 만큼 일하는 방식도 아래 그림처럼 다양해졌다는 사실을 인식하고, 다양함을 추구해야만 한다. 이전과 달리 지역에서 생산되는 ‘막걸리’만 마시는 것이 아니라 전국의 모든 막걸리를 어느 지역에 살더라도 쉽게 만나고, 쉽게 마실 수 있는 것과 같은 개념이다.
재취업의 경우에는 통상적인 동종산업?동일직무로 전환하는 것뿐만 아니라 동종산업·다른직무, 다른산업·동일직무, 다른산업·다른직무도 고려해보는 것이다. 1인 기업은 쉽게 이야기해서 자신의 서비스나 생산품을 판매하는 프리랜스를 생각해보면 되는데, 자신의 전문성에 기초하여 혼자 혹은 소수와 같이 보유한 지식 등에 기초하여 일하는 방식이다.
전문가 창업은 몇 명의 전문가가 보유한 동종 혹은 이종의 전문성에 기초해 협업기업을 구성하는 형태이다. 요즘 사회적 기업, 협동조합이 그런 협업기업의 주류를 이루고 있다.
전문계약직은 자신이 지닌 전문성에 기초해 특정 프로젝트를 일정 기간 계약 하에 수행하는 형태인데, 고용주의 고용부담도 덜면서 전문가들의 전문성을 활용하는 개념이다.
창직은 4가지로 분류하는데, 창조하거나 새로이 발견, 기존의 직업을 분화시키거나 2개 이상의 기존직업을 융합해 특정한 솔루션을 가지고 새로운 직업을 창출하는 것이다. 사회공헌의 경우에는 자신의 전문성을 사회에 환원, 보답하는 형태인데, 새로운 일자리, 주로 일거리로 옮겨갈 수 있는 기초 역할을 해주는 징검다리 역할을 한다.
귀농, 귀산, 귀어 등은 새로운 장소에서 새로운 삶을 구사하는 것으로서 유의할 점은 반드시 ‘아이템’과 ‘판로’를 어느 정도 가늠한 이후에 실행해야만 한다. 따라서 창업의 개념으로 바라보아야만 한다.
창업의 경우도 통상적인 창업을 벗어나서 기술창업, 프랜차이즈 창업, 외주창업 등으로 구분한다. 마지막으로 제3섹터는 공공기관이나 민간영리부분에서 수행하기 힘든 틈새의 일을 노리는 형태로서 주로 사회적기업, 협동조합을 만들어서 비영리업무를 수행하는 형태이다.
셋째, ‘새 술’을 담은 ‘새 부대’를 끌고 나아가는 방법인데, 이전과 달리 이제는 자기 자신을 ‘경력사업가’로 생각해야만 한다. 대부분 인생 1막에서는 내가 하고 싶은 일을 한 것이 아니라 남이 주는 일을 한 경우가 많다. 이제 인생 2막부터는 자신이 자신을 고용하는 형태로 시작해보자. 따라서 이제는 자신의 경력을 직접 구상하고 운영하는 ‘경력사업가’ 마인드를 가지고 출발해야만 한다. 다시 말하면 사업가적 마인드로 자기 경력을 만들고 거기에 시간, 노력 그리고 금전을 투자하면서 궁극적으로 경력 가치를 향상시키는 형태다.
이제는 이전과 달리 온전한 한 가지가 아닌 여러 가지의 일을 다양한 방식으로, 자기 주도적으로 꾸려나갈 시간이 왔다. 필자는 고용시장에서 꾸준히 자신이 판매할 수 있는 ‘서비스’나 ‘상품’을 개발하고, 이를 ‘기업’, ‘단체’ 그리고 ‘개인’에게 판매하면서 자신의 삶을 개척해나가는 신중년을 종종 만난다. 최초에는 여러 가지 실패를 맛보는 때도 있지만, 어느 정도 시간이 지나면 온전한 ‘경력사업가’로 거듭나는 경우를 종종 본다. 머지않아 그들에게 남의 세상이 아닌 자신의 세상이 도래할 것이다.
다음은 한창묵 (성균관대학교 행정학과 박사과정) 님이 2019년에 발표하신 논문 “신중년의 성공적 노화에 미치는 영향요인 분석”입니다.
저출산 고령화로 인해 장기적 경제성장률이 낮아질 것으로 예상되는 가운데 OECD 국가를 비롯한 각국에서는 이민정책이나 탄력근로제, 워라벨 개선 등과 같은 방식으로 젊은노동력을 확보하고자 노력하고 있습니다. 하지만 이것은 시간이 걸리는 문제이고 중장기적으로는 정년연장이나 계속고용과 같은 방식으로 50대 이후 근로자들을 오랜 기간 직장에서 근무하게 하는 것이 대안으로 거론됩니다. 이런 것은 초고령화가 가장 빠른 일본에서 지속적으로 정년연장, 정년폐지 혹은 계속고용과 같은 방식으로 일하는 연령을 기존 60세에서 차츰 늘려서 이제는 70세까지 일하도록 권고하는 방식으로 나아가는 것을 볼 때 다른 나라들도 이와 유사한 경로를 따를 것으로 생각합니다.
결국 중요한 것은 50대 이후 근로자들의 생산성을 향상시킬 수 있느냐에 대한 방안들이 될 것 같아서 이에 관한 논문을 가지고 그 결과를 좀 나누고자 합니다.
첫번째 논문은 Alliance for Organizational Psychology 에서 나온 자료로 제목은 “Active Aging at Work (직장에서 활동적 노화)” 입니다.
Active Aging (활동적 노화) 의 정의는 WHO에서 다음과 같이 정의했습니다.
The process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation, and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age. (나이듦에 따른 삶의 질을 개선하기 위해 건강, 참여, 보장에 대한 기회들을 도모하는 과정)
Active Aging을 위해
Maintain or improve their physical, mental, and social well-being (육체적, 정신적, 사회적 활력을 유지하거나 개선해야 하고)
Continue to show high levels of work engagement and performance (지속적으로 직장에서 적극적으로 참여하고 높은 업무능력을 보여주며)
Experience fair treatment and employment security. (공정한 대우와 고용 안정을 이루는 것입니다)
활동적 노화 (Active Aging)에는 4가지 요인이 있다.
개인적 요인 (Individual factors): 육체적/정신적 능력, 개인 특성, 신념/신앙, 나이에 따른 삶의 목적 변화
업무/팀 요인 (Job and Team Factors): 축적된 업무지식 및 경험을 활용할 때 실적이 향상, 일의 의미부여, 다양한 연령대의 팀에서 일할 때 만족감을 느낌
기업조직 요인 (Organizational Factors):
Depreciation model: 직원은 특정 연령에서 정점을 이루고 나이가 듦에 따라 성과가 감소한다는 모델 – 조기퇴직을 유도하는 인사정책을 펼
Conservation model: 적절하게 교육받고 관리하면 직원은 지속적으로 성과를 낸다는 모델
비업무적 사회적 요인 (Nonwork and Societal Factors): 가족돌봄이나 사회공헌 등으로 인한 업무 성과 영향 불확실, 나이와 관련한 사회적 통념 및 은퇴 종용 문화로 인한 부정적 요인, Bridge Employment (현직 정년 은퇴 후 계약직 재고용) and Self-Employment (ex. Consulting) 가 주는 긍정적 요인
직장내 활동적 노화를 위해 기업이 할 일
나이든 직원 채용 및 유지 (Recruiting and Retaining Older Workers)
경력관리: 업무영역을 확장하거나 본인에게 흥미로운 일에서 성과를 냄
교육개발: 자신의 교육 투자에 대한 자치권 중요, Self-paced training/self-directed informal learning is a major factor in an organization’s success.
Work Design and Health and Performance Management: Older workers value autonomy, meaningful work, and work allowing them to use their knowledge and skills. Job Crafting (Bottom-up job tailoring for older workers)
Managing the Transitions to Retirement and Bridge Employment: phased retirement, financial retirement planning, succession planning and knowledge transfer.
제가 한국에서 신입사원으로 일하던 시기인 1990년대 중반에 대기업이었던 저희 회사는 주5.5 시간제를 채택하고 있었습니다. 즉, 토요일을 격주로 8시간을 일하는 것이었죠. 당시에 중학교 교사였던 아내는 주6시간제를 채택하고 있어서 토요일 가정일은 저의 몫이 되곤 했던 기억이 납니다.
시간이 지나서 이제 50대 중반에 접어든 지금 코로나 팬데믹 이후 재택근무 경험을 통해 주4일제 혹은 주4.5일제 근무에 대한 연구들이 진행되고 있습니다. 보스턴 지역의 회사들은 현재 모두 주5일제로 일하고 있고 특정 업무 분야에 따라 재택근무를 해오다가 최근 들어서는 그마저도 모두 오피스 근무형태로 하고 있어서 코로나 기간 몇년간을 제외하고는 주5일제를 하지 않은 적이 없다고 느껴집니다.
반면에 한국은 최근들어 주4일제 혹은 주4.5일제에 대한 뉴스가 많이 나오기 시작했는데요. 과연 어떻게 될지에 대해 궁금하기도 하면서 염려스러운 부분도 있습니다. 코로나 이전이던 2016년부터 최근까지 나온 주4일제와 관련한 뉴스기사들을 공유합니다. 주4일제에 대한 긍정적인 기사와 부정적인 기사를 함께 넣어서 가능한한 객관적인 시각을 담으려고 했고 관련한 연구논문도 첨부하여 보실 수 있게 했습니다.
주4일제에 대한 논의가 나오게 된 원인이 무엇일까?에 대한 저의 생각을 남기며 글을 마치고자 합니다.
코로나 팬데믹과 이후의 금융시장 환경이 인플레이션 압력을 받게 되었습니다 . 특히 청년세대인 MZ세대를 중심으로 한 FIRE Movement나 조용한 사직 (Quiet Resignation)과 같은 다양한 현상들이 나타났죠. 특히 신기술의 발달로 회사들이 앞다투어 채용을 늘리는 바람에 공고를 내놓고 1년 이상 뽑지 못하는 현상이 상당기간 나타났고 그로 인한 임금인상 압력이 다시 인플레이션에 영향을 주기 시작했습니다. 임금으로 인한 인플레이션은 고정비 성향이 강하기 때문에 기업 입장에서는 부담이었고 팬데믹 이후의 사무실 임대료도 상승을 했기 때문에 이러한 경향을 토대로 주4일제와 함께 임금을 다소 줄여야 겠다는 생각이 있었던 것이 아닐까 하고 생각합니다.
대부분의 회사가 팀단위 업무를 해야 경쟁력을 유지할 수 있는데 근무시간을 줄인다고 하면 팀 업무의 효율성이 늘기 보다는 줄어들 가능성도 꽤 있어 보입니다. 하지만 연구결과는 희한하게도 반대로 나오는군요. 그 연구결과에 참여한 기업의 수와 직원 표본의 수가 그리 크지 않기 때문에 그 결과를 곧이 곧대로 믿기는 어렵겠지만 특정 기업들의 경우에는 근로시간 단축이 곧바로 생산성 감소로 이어지지 않는다는 반증도 될 수 있을 것 같습니다.
생산성에 영향을 주는 것에는 노동과 투자가 있는데 투자가 잘 이루어지는 기업들의 경우는 노동이 생산성에 미치는 영향력이 미비할 수 있기도 하고 시스템이 잘 갖추어진 기업의 경우는 그렇지 못한 기업에 비해 개인에 의존하는 경향이 줄어들기도 하기 때문이죠.
몇가지 주4일제가 시행되게 되면 일어날 수 있는 문제점도 지적이 되었습니다. 예를 들면 나이든 노동자들의 임금이 상대적으로 줄어들게 될 수도 있고 정규직이 아닌 계약직의 업무 부담은 그대로이거나 늘어나는 대신 급여는 상대적으로 줄어들 수도 있을 것 같습니다. 그렇게 되면 정규직과 계약직 간의 임금 괴리현상이나 업무 강도 차이로 인한 소득 격차가 가중될 수도 있는 것 같습니다.
이제까지 직장생활에 임하면서 정규직과 계약직 그리고 지식산업을 하는 노동자와 육체노동을 하는 노동자 사이에 일어나는 상대적인 임금 격차, 워라벨 차이 및 나아가 노후준비에 대한 차이등으로 나타나는 경우를 보았습니다.
현재 아이슬란드나 덴마크, 노르웨이, 네델란드, 벨기에 등에서 주4일제를 많이 하고 있는 것 같습니다. 이런 국가들은 사회복지국가이고 투자기반이 강한 국가들이어서 개인의 노동 생산력 대비 투입자본의 투자 생산력이 더 중요한 생산성 증가 요소가 되는 국가들이라고 생각합니다.
1990년대 중반 이후 인터넷이 등장했지만 인터넷에 의한 수익성이 본격화되고 산업 재편이 된 것은 2020년대부터였던 것 같습니다. 요즈음은 AI/ML이 등장을 해서 인공지능 기술이 수익성 사업으로 본격화되기 시작하고 생산성의 중요한 요소를 인공지능이 차지할 수 있게된다면 주4일제를 하더라도 생산성의 하락이나 정체를 겪지 않을 수 있을 것 같습니다. 논의가 나오기 시작한 것이 얼마되지 않으니 지금부터 2-30년이 지나면서 서서히 자리잡지 않을까 하고 생각합니다.
Research suggests shorter workweeks keep older employees sharp, productive.
If new research suggests that cutting the hours of older workers could boost productivity—and a company’s bottom line—should employers take heed?
While the prospect may sound outlandish, consider that Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford was viewed as a radical—and was even called “crazy”—when in 1914 he doubled employees’ pay and reduced their work time from nine to eight hours a day.
Of course, Ford’s move didn’t apply just to older workers. Researchers recently claimed workers older than 40 are more productive when working around 25 hours a week because, the researchers said, a shorter workweek reduces stress and keeps them alert.
“Employers should not ignore any credible research that has implications for employee productivity,” said Jennifer Case, an attorney with Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP in Atlanta, who weighed in on the researchers’ February study of more than 6,000 Australian workers. “Ford’s decision panned out and within a few years, Ford’s competitors made the same change. In more recent times, employers have responded to research that happier employers are more productive. Think Google and Facebook.”
The researchers, who published their findings in the Melbourne Institute’s Working Paper Series, studied about 3,500 women and 3,000 men in Australia, with various education levels, the majority of whom were between 40 and 69 years old.
The researchers wrote that working 25 to 30 hours had a positive effect on middle-aged and older men’s cognitive skills and reported similar results for older women working 22 to 27 hours. In other words, the research findings suggest that workers over 40 should enjoy four-day weekends each week to stay sharp and vigorous.
Benefits of Shorter Workweeks
While such a radical rethinking of the workweek seems implausible, the research raises compelling questions about the best ways to keep older Americans engaged and productive while on the job. At the same time, it raises equally compelling questions about equity in the workplace.
“I do think that a significant percentage of employees who think of themselves as near retirement would like to have the option of remaining employed with a reduced schedule,” said Shane Muñoz, an attorney with FordHarrison in Tampa, Fla. “Some are afraid to suggest that because they are concerned that their employer might question their commitment or their stamina. I think employers are also afraid to suggest it, for fear of creating an impression that they harbor stereotypical attitudes. Perhaps this study affords an opportunity for a more open dialogue on the subject.”
Some workplace consultants already recommend having employees work fewer hours to boost productivity, although not necessarily just for older employees.
“We recommend to our clients that they experiment with alternative schedules, flexible schedules and shorter working hours to see if it drives better outcomes,” said Bruce Tulgan, founder of management training firm RainmakerThinking, a management research, training and consulting firm in New Haven, Conn. “That experimentation should be done one person at a time. It makes sense to start with more experienced workers who already have a track record. Then it can be applied to newer workers.”
And some employers are already experimenting with shorter workweeks as a way to boost morale and productivity—although, again, not necessarily just for older workers.
“Employers are already taking a look at having fewer work hours for new hires, ” said Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and management consulting firm, and author of Promote Yourself: The New Rules for Career Success (St. Martin’s Press, 2013). “They’ve done this to prevent burnout, increase employee satisfaction and remain competitive.”
Said Muñoz: “I certainly see clients who are open to considering accommodations for employees who prefer part-time schedules and situations where some measures of performance improve with reduced hours. I don’t expect, however, that well-advised employers will single out older workers, as a group, for reduced hours based on this study.”
And in some industries, longer-tenured employees enjoy shorter workweeks as a “rite of passage,” Schawbel said.
“As you gain authority in the financial world, it gives you more flexibility. A banker’s first two years are the most challenging and they are known to give up nearly all of their personal life to their companies as analysts. After the two-year mark, they are promoted and start to reclaim a more normal lifestyle.”
Dangers
There are risks, however, to considering shorter workweeks for older employees. For instance, it could make older workers vulnerable if such research becomes an argument for employers to give them part-time work with no benefits.
“You would essentially be creating a new category of employees that may consider themselves full-time but fall below the full-time threshold that exists today,” Case said. “For example, if they work less than 30 hours a week, then employers would not be required to make an offer of coverage in accordance with the Affordable Care Act.”
Moreover, if they worked fewer hours, older workers may be viewed as more expendable than younger ones, Schawbel said.
“The issue that many older workers have is the perception that they are less capable than younger workers, which is age discrimination, and that they are expensive, so many companies will lay them off and replace them with younger workers who will work for less [money].”
Discrimination and Resentment?
In general, it is not advisable to determine employees’ work schedules based on their age, Tulgan said.
Workers older than 40 are a protected class under federal law, he noted, “so employers need to be very careful.”
“It makes no sense to determine work conditions based on age,” he said. “The generational lens through which we can learn about the workforce tells us a lot, but we recommend against trying to have employment conditions, rewards or any such thing based on age or generation.”
Said Kris Duggan, CEO of BetterWorks, a goal-setting software and services provider in the San Francisco Bay area: “While there are some exceptions, like contract workers, requiring some employees to work less hours than others could create a backlash within your organization. Questions about compensation, employee evaluations and even bias from lack of face time will immediately surge.”
Millennial workplace advisor Lindsey Pollak of The Hartford, which offers property and casualty insurance, group benefits, and mutual funds, said that “year over year, The Hartford’s Millennial research has shown that a flexible schedule is incredibly important to Generation Y.”
In The Hartford’s most recent national survey, a majority or near-majority of Millennials said they want flexibility in the following: the timing of the workday, the days they work (weekdays vs. weekends), their amount of paid time off, where they work, and the number of hours they work.
Resentment aside, treating workers of one age group differently from those of another almost always opens a company to liability, Muñoz said.
“In today’s litigious environment, I absolutely would expect legal action, but I would expect it to come from those who aren’t given the opportunity to work a ‘full’ schedule based on an assumption that because they are over 40 years of age their productivity will drop off with extended hours.”
OXFORD: A group of companies that have been trialling a four-day working week have recently reported increased revenue, with fewer employees taking time off or resigning. While it’s easy to understand the effects of a shorter week on worker well-being, the positive effects on company earnings and productivity may be more of a surprise – but research backs this up.
These firms have been participating in a trial organised by non-profit 4 Day Week Global. The four-day working week trial, which involved 33 companies and nearly 1,000 employees, saw no loss of pay for employees – organisations paid 100 per cent of their salaries for 80 per cent of their time. But employees also pledged to put in 100 per cent of their usual effort over the shorter working week. And this kind of strategy doesn’t just work for nine-to-five office jobs.
Iceland trialled reduced working hours between 2015 and 2019 in a scheme that included hospitals, schools and social service workers. The country considered it an “overwhelming success” and reduced hours – without a reduction in pay – has since been rolled out to 86 per cent of Iceland’s workforce.
Throughout history, our working patterns have adapted to the challenges of the day: Whether that be more time toiling at an industrial loom, or a farmer shifting their hours to eke out productivity during fading daylight hours.
But now, almost a century on from Henry Ford introducing the two-day “weekend” to his factories, many nations are still stuck with a 40-hour week split across five days of work, regardless of the industry. This way of working is increasingly at odds with our 21st-century lifestyles.
The latest findings from the 4-Day Week Global pilot are in line with ongoing research into working patterns that show reduced hours boost employees’ mental health and their productivity. It also brings other benefits such as reducing emissions by cutting commutes and providing the basis for evaluating our lives in more than just monetary terms.
HUGE INCREASES IN STRESS AND BURNOUT
Despite much economic growth since the 1970s, very little progress has been made on freeing up time for workers. Worse, in some cases, the trend has started going in reverse: Americans now work more hours than they did in 2000, for example.
That is starting to take its toll on employee well-being and mental health. It doesn’t take much to realise that becoming many times more productive over the past century (thanks in no small part to technology) means our human brains are being asked to process a lot more during a five-day work week than in the past. This has led to huge increases in stress, anxiety and burnout.
This is hitting national health services and families particularly hard. But employers are also bearing the cost: Accountancy firm Deloitte estimated the annual cost to employers of mental health issues is £45 billion (US$55 billion) in the United Kingdom alone. This is mostly due to absenteeism, or worse “presenteeism” – where a person is physically present at work but not engaged because they feel ill.
The UK’s Office for National Statistics estimates that there were 17 million worker days lost to stress, depression or anxiety in the UK in the period of 2021 and 2022. And the same trends show up for most other wealthy countries.
FEWER HOURS, INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY
Of course, company bosses might think: “If my employees are working 20 per cent less time, surely output will drop, too?”
But several studies have shown that is not the case. In fact, countries doing the least hours of work are often the most productive on an hourly basis.
These countries, such as Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands, are also the happiest. All work less than 1,400 hours a year on average, compared with the US and UK average of about 1,800 hours.
My own research, in collaboration with British Telecom, helps explain why working less hours doesn’t necessarily mean an equivalent loss in output. We were able to show the positive effect of feeling better during the week on weekly productivity. We found evidence of more sales and more calls per hour when workers were happy.
Based on our research, we believe the work-life balance changes and improvements in well-being coming out of the 4 Day Week pilots could lead to an increase in productivity of about 10 per cent.
Of course, a 10 per cent increase in individual productivity will not immediately make up for employees working a day less. But these productivity gains would reduce the cost of a transition to a shorter work week.
So there might still be a need for investment and subsidies from government and business alike to support this change, but people and the planet have much to gain from doing so.
TIME, OUR MOST PRECIOUS COMMODITY
It’s also important to think more holistically about the benefits of the four-day week beyond productivity and well-being.
A shorter week might even reduce the UK’s carbon footprint by cutting commuting – assuming that most people won’t travel or will travel significantly less on their day off. A four-day week could have a positive effect on gender equality as well, since the pilots suggest that women report the largest increases in well-being.
The four-day week debate also scratches the surface of an ongoing discussion among economists. Gross domestic product has long been used as the ultimate measure of a nation’s progress, often with the effect of seeing policymakers chase growth at any cost. But a country is much more than its gross domestic product.
Seeing the successful results of attempts to implement a four-day working week might convince business and policy leaders to redistribute some of the gains in GDP in terms of our most precious commodity: Our time. Now that could be considered real progress.
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve is an economist and professor at Oxford University where he directs the Wellbeing Research Centre. This commentary first appeared on The Conversation.
Coming out of the pandemic, the conversation about flexible work has largely focused on whether employees should return to the office — and how often. A third of U.S. workers who can do their jobs remotely now do so all the time. LinkedIn research shows that in May 2023, nearly one in nine U.S. job postings offered remote work, 13% of postings were hybrid, and 66% of applications were for remote and hybrid roles. A CEO told me that by putting the word “remote or hybrid” into the job description, the number of job applicants tripled.
But a potential new disruption looms: We’re starting to hear from organizations that have piloted a four-day workweek. Early results suggest this structure offers benefits in productivity and well-being.
Let’s look at the evidence. According to research from jobs platform Indeed, while the overall number of job posts advertising a four-day workweek remains low (0.3% of total posts), that number has tripled in the last few years. And it’s most commonly seen in sectors requiring in-person work, such as medical, dental, veterinary, manufacturing, and production. United Auto Workers initially included a four-day workweek in its bargaining demands, although this provision wasn’t included in the final agreements.
In June 2022, 61 UK-based companies participated in a pilot program to study a four-day workweek. As of February 2023, when the first results were published, 92% said they were continuing to test the concept, with 29% saying the policy is a permanent change. Average organizational revenue rose by 1.4%; pilot companies also reported a 57% decline in the likelihood that an employee would quit, plus a 65% reduction in the number of days taken off as paid sick time.
One of the trial participants was Rivelin Robotics. The firm opted to close on Fridays and extend the working day to 8 am to 5:30 pm on the other days of the week. The change has not been without its challenges. A small, fast-growing startup with just eight staff, Rivelin reports that sometimes the work cannot wait, and a big product launch meant some of the new three-day weekends had to be sacrificed. Senior execs had to accept they’d take Friday calls and queries, as the team had turned off their phones.
The Challenges of a Four-Day Workweek
In the 1960s and 1970s, a number of organizations sought to implement four-day workweeks. Unfortunately, most of these initiatives — which attempted to condense a full 40 hours of work into four days — didn’t see the results that organizations had hoped for. One 1975 study surveyed the reactions of 474 employees of an accounting division of a large multinational corporation to a four-day, 38-hour workweek. Fatigue and slowing down at the end of the day were reported, and servicing of customer needs and meeting with co-workers were more difficult. Supervisors perceived that work quality and output in their units were adversely affected by the four-day workweek.
Looking back, we can see how these initiatives failed to consider a few critical factors. First, there is a non-linear relationship between hours worked and productivity; there is a diminishing rate of productivity for each additional hour someone works. Longer working hours also are associated with increases in errors and work injuries, as well as decreases in employee well-being indicators like satisfaction and engagement.
But who says you have to do 40 hours in four days? There’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that reduced-hour work schedules for the same level of pay are not only feasible when it comes to maintaining outcomes but also potentially advantageous across a number of metrics. Since 2015, a new, more data-informed wave of reduced working week trials have now been conducted in growing numbers in Sweden, Ireland, North America, the UK, and Australasia. We also recently worked on our own study of nine global organizations to deepen our own understanding of the practicalities of conscious work redesign. We found that although there were some costs, trade-offs, and varying levels of work involved to prepare for a four-day workweek, the results were consistently positive when it came to things like employee well-being, retention, and even business outcomes.
These initiatives only work if companies undertake substantial work redesign to reduce hours while maintaining business outcomes. This means streamlining operations, removing administrative burdens, and prioritizing high-impact work. To achieve this, our study suggests organizations need to:
Clearly define the work that matters.
Frameworks such as OKRs (objectives and key results) can define company and team-level goals and ensure everyone’s work ladders up into those goals.
Run a meeting audit.
Meetings are often one of the first areas to get scrutinized as unproductive time.
Allow employees to operate to the full extent of their education and training.
Many employees are bogged down with other administrative or menial tasks, so they can’t focus on priority tasks. We recommend stopping, automating, or outsourcing all non-priority tasks.
Embrace asynchronous communication.
When implementing a four-day workweek, asynchronous communication becomes essential to help employees from having work interrupted. To maintain employee focus, there should be a clear understanding of what requires escalation, and who will handle it.
Resetting Employee Expectations
One major challenge that accompanies the shift to a four-day workweek is ensuring employees accept that you’re asking them to produce the same amount in fewer hours. Our own research shows organizations that successfully implemented a four-day workweek began with a well-defined three-month trial period at a minimum to assess whether they could successfully reduce work time while maintaining output. These pilots included documentation, and/or training in advance for employees on redesigning work tasks, as well as productivity coaching. (What’s interesting is that even just doing this prep to streamline operations, remove administrative burdens, and prioritize high-impact work can improve company productivity substantially.)
What does this look like in action? As part of our research project, we spoke to a workplace consultancy in Australia called Inventium that started a four-day pilot in 2020. Its leadership developed productivity training to help employees more effectively utilize their time. Tactics included calendar blocking, turning cell phones off for blocks of time, and scheduling deep work around when each employee is most productive.
At Inventium, employees are encouraged to take ownership of their time and utilize it in the way that works best for them. It seems to have worked, as the company reported a 26% increase in productivity, a 21% increase in energy levels, and an 18% decrease in employee stress.
The company refers to its program as the “gift of the 5th” — highlighting that the day off is not a given. Instead, it’s achieved by getting work done efficiently and maintaining outcomes. It also signals that there may be busier months when employees need to work that 5th day, which has now been cheerfully (so far) accepted by the entire team.
To ensure success, organizations need buy-in from leadership and employees. You can start by crowdsourcing potential obstacles and ideas from employees. It’s also critical to position the pilot as an experiment with clear expectations and to be transparent with clients and external stakeholders.
The four-day week can surface organizational problems in communication, trust, work inefficiencies, and barriers to productivity. And while it provides an opportunity to address these challenges, as Joe O’Connor, director and co-founder at the Work Time Reduction Center of Excellence and one of our co-researchers warns, “This is not a cheap fix, it’s very hard work.”
In today’s economy, employees have more power, agency, and freedom than ever. Unemployment reached a 54-year low this year, wages are increasing (5% annually), and open posts are very hard to fill. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says even if every unemployed person in the country found a job, the U.S. would still have around 3 million open positions. And the worker shortage is likely to go on for years.
In today’s competitive labor market, where attracting and retaining top talent is an ongoing challenge, adopting a reduced-hour workweek can be an attractive benefit for job seekers — and could be a significant competitive advantage for recruitment teams. And for everyone else, it’s an opportunity to really get focused on what matters.
Josh Bersin is founder and CEO of human capital advisory firm The Josh Bersin Company. He is a global research analyst, public speaker, and writer on the topics of corporate human resources, talent management, recruiting, leadership, technology, and the intersection between work and life.
The idea of a four-day workweek is catching attention. Young workers in particular see it as the wave of the future, while others worry it will undermine America prosperity.
Economists have pondered the viability of a four-day workweek since research by Janice Hedges in 1971. Recently, though, a magical idea has come to the fore: Let employees work one fewer day per week at the same hours per day and same pay, and they will accomplish just as much as in a standard five-day workweek.
All the fuss prompted us to ask several hundred American business executives and several thousand American workers some pertinent questions. What we uncovered is mundane, not magical. In the language of “Harry Potter,” there is support for a “muggle” version of the four-day workweek — but not for a magical one.
In October, we asked 602 senior managers across the U.S. whether their firms offer a four-day workweek to any full-time employees, and 20 percent said yes. For those who said yes, we also asked what share of their full-time employees work a four-day week — on average, 25 percent. So about 5 percent of full-time American employees currently work a four-day week.
Is the U.S. on the cusp of a big shift to four-day workweeks? No. Of the 482 managers at firms that don’t currently offer four-day workweeks, two-thirds said there is no chance their firms will offer them by the end of 2024. The other one-third say the chances are only 16 percent, on average.
In practice, there are several versions of the four-day workweek. One involves fewer but longer workdays, with no change in weekly hours. Another cuts the number of workdays without changing the length of each workday, but recognizes that fewer hours means less output and thus lower pay. Yet another version lets employees work from home on Fridays (or Mondays) but work onsite the other four days.
We think of these variants as “muggle” versions of the four-day workweek, because they recognize the reality that output and pay are roughly proportional to time spent working.
Then there is the magical version: Let full-time employees work eight hours a day, four days a week rather than five — with no reduction in output or pay.
Keep an open mind, you say?
Consider some evidence. We asked managers at firms that currently allow four-day workweeks how many hours their full-time employees put into their jobs on those four days. The average is 9.5 hours. Just 22 percent of managers said their full-time, four-day workweek employees put in eight or fewer hours on their workdays. More than 75 percent of managers told us that some or all of their employees on a four-day workweek are expected to be available for work on “off days.”
In short, managers don’t see the magic.
But even with no magic, four-day workweeks can be beneficial. If your daily commute is 30 minutes each way, muggle versions of the four-day workweek save one hour a week. This also saves on the money costs of commuting, not to mention the aggravations of traffic jams and public transit.
To assess these benefits, we turned to our Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes, which samples thousands of American workers each month. In October, we asked survey participants who usually work five days a week whether they would prefer to work the same weekly hours over four days. Nearly 60 percent said yes. They also said shifting to a four-day workweek was worth as much, on average, as a 4 percent pay hike.
Employers can also benefit from muggle versions of the four-day workweek. For example, they can offer smaller pay raises in exchange for less commuting, perhaps by letting employees work from home one day a week. This arrangement also reduces office floorspace requirements, lowering overhead costs.
Sadly, we must live in the real world, not the world of wizards. It’s time to set aside the distractions of magical four-day workweek proposals. Happily, even realistic four-day workweek schedules can benefit both employees and their employers.
Jose Maria Barrero is assistant professor of finance at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México Business School. Steven J. Davis is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. This piece draws on research with Nick Bloom, Kevin Foster, Brent Meyer and Emil Mihaylov.
Germany’s struggle to revive its sluggish economy is about to take an experimental turn as a host of companies test out the merits of working less. A six-month program starting Feb. 1 will grant a day off every week for hundreds of employees while keeping them on full pay. The study aims to find out if labor unions are right that it could not only leave staff healthier and happier, but also more productive.
“I’m absolutely convinced that investments in ‘new work’ pay off because they increase well-being and motivation, subsequently increasing efficiency,” said Sören Fricke, co-founder of event planner Solidsense, one of 45 companies taking part in the pilot. “The four-day week, if it works, won’t cost us anything either in the long run.”
The project underscores a broader shift taking place in the German labor market, where a lack of skilled workers is putting pressure on companies to fill their ranks. The shortage — coupled with high inflation — has emboldened employees across industries to seek wage increases and preserve the flexibility and independence they gained during the pandemic. About 45 companies in Germany will trial a four-day work week to measure any productivity gains from working fewer hours.
The imbalance is fueling employer-employee tensions. Germany’s train drivers are currently holding a six-day strike, demanding that Deutsche Bahn cut the work week to 35 hours from 38 hours without any wage reduction. The country’s construction union is asking for a pay rise of more than 20% for many of its 930,000 workers — a move some economists warn could stoke inflation.
According to an industry lobby survey last year, half of German companies are at least partly unable to plug vacancies. Software giant SAP SE stopped asking for university degrees from applicants in 2022, while real estate firm Vonovia SE recruited people from Colombia last year to cope with the shortage.
And the problem is set to get worse: more than 7 million people are expected to leave the German labor force by 2035, as birthrates and immigration fall well short of what’s needed to replace the aging population.
“I can either get involved and position myself as a modern company, or I can say that we all have to work more and at some point I won’t have anyone left to work for me,” said Henning Roeper, managing director of Eurolam, a Wiegendorf-based window maker that’s also taking part in the program.
And unhappy workers come at a hefty price tag. According to a recent Gallup study, low engagement costs the global economy €8.1 trillion ($8.8 trillion) last year. That’s 9% of global gross domestic product.
While staff work fewer hours during the experiment for the same pay, their output should stay steady — or even increase, according to New Zealand-based non-profit 4 Day Week Global, which is leading the pilot. Aside from that boost in productivity, companies are also expected to benefit from a drop in costly absences due to stress, illness and burnout. The average 21.3 days Germans were incapable to work in 2022 meant a loss of a staggering €207 billion in value added, according to the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Advocates of the four-day week also argue it could attract untapped potential to the labor market in Germany — a country that has one of the highest proportions of part-timers in the EU, also among women, according to Eurostat.
While Germany has by far the biggest economic output in Europe, a lack of investment in innovation and digitization has hindered productivity gains. Without improvements in those areas, it’s unlikely German workers would see a significant productivity boost simply by cutting back hours, according to Enzo Weber, an economist at the Institute for Labor Market Research in Nuremberg.
Finance Minister Christian Lindner, a member of the business friendly Free Democrats Party, has offered more pointed criticism of the shorter week, saying such a move would threaten economic growth and German prosperity.
But previous experiments in the US and Canada suggest gains are possible, according to 4 Day Week Global. Workers who took part reported improved physical and mental health while burnout dropped. Following the studies, none of the participating companies planned to return to a five-day week.
A program in the UK, the biggest one yet with 61 participating companies, showed similar gains, including a 65% drop in sick days. In Portugal, anxiety levels and sleeping problems receded by roughly 20%. The German companies are hoping for similar gains, and some participating workers plan to provide hair samples and data from fitness watches to track stress levels more accurately.
“If I have too much time I become a perfectionist, and this is not always necessary,” said Jasmin Galle, a user-experience designer at Solidsense. “If you have less time, you still get the same result.”
Belgium became the first European country to make a 4-day-week optional in 2022, though the total weekly hours must remain the same as in a five-day week. Japan has encouraged companies to offer shorter work weeks in hopes people will use the time to spend money and have children, boosting its economy and aging population.
Jan Bühren, co-founder of Intraprenör, a Berlin consultancy working with 4 Day Week Global on the pilot program, said achieving the gains requires flexibility and creativity at the companies.
“Of course it doesn’t always work and it’s also not for everyone,” he said. “But you just have to find out exactly where it can work and where it doesn’t.”
What Bloomberg Economics Says… “A four-day week could lead to higher hourly productivity but it’s very unlikely that a productivity boost can compensate for the reduced working hours. Together with a shrinking labor force this would be a major obstacle to economic growth.” — Martin Ademmer
챗GPT로 촉발된 인공지능 이야기 잔치에 한마디 얹고자 한다. 인공지능은 범용기술이 될 것이 분명해졌으며, 그것도 전례가 드문 정도의 범용기술이 될 것으로 보인다. 산업 패러다임의 전환 정도가 아니라 사회와 인간 생활 전체를 상전벽해로 바꿀 것이다. 그런데 하필이면 한국은 지금 인구 구조에 있어서 중요한 변곡점에 서 있는 상황이다. 50대 이상의 사람들에게 인공지능으로 바뀔 미래를 스스로 준비할 수 있는 기회를 마련해줘야 한다.
범용기술이란 특정한 하나의 목적이나 용도에 복무하는 것이 아니라, 그 목적이 굉장히 넓게 심지어 무한대로 열려 있을 뿐만 아니라 누구나 일정한 자원만 투여하면 자신이 뜻하는 목적에 사용할 수 있는 종류의 기술을 뜻한다. 멀리 인류가 처음으로 출현했을 때 개발한 범용기술은 언어와 불의 사용을 들 수 있을 것이며, 문명이 시작된 이후 나타난 범용기술은 농경 목축, 수레, 화폐의 사용을 들 수 있을 것이다. 산업혁명이 시작된 이후 중요하게 이야기되는 것으로는 각종 이동수단, 전기, 컴퓨터 및 인터넷 등을 들 수 있다.
인공지능이 이러한 범용기술이 될 것이라는 주장이 계속 있었지만 반론도 있었다. 특정한 목적에 관한 데이터를 모아 학습시키는 과정은 너무 많은 비용이 들고 고도의 전문성이 개입하기 때문에 보편적·일반적으로 확산되어 모든 용도에 사용되기보다는 인공지능이 꼭 필요하거나 효율적인 부문에만 도입되는 기술에 머물 것이라는 의견이었다. 그런데 이번의 챗GPT는 중요한 두 가지 혁신을 보여주었다. 먼저 기존의 ‘지도형 기계학습’ 대신 ‘생성적 사전학습’과 ‘지도형 미세조정’의 두 단계 과정을 거쳐 질이 좋은 산출물을 적은 비용으로 즉각 낼 수 있게 되었다. 이뿐만 아니라 인공지능과의 교호과정을 우리가 쓰는 언어의 대화로 바꾸어 내어 누구나 접근할 수 있는 인터페이스를 가지게 되었다. 이렇게 되면 앞에서 말한 반론의 타당성은 크게 줄어든다. 이제는 누구든 어떤 목적에서든 아주 낮은 비용으로 아주 빠른 시간 안에 일정한 수준의 결과물을 얻을 수 있게 된다. 인공지능이 범용기술로 쓰일 날이 성큼 다가온 것이다.
게다가 인공지능이라는 범용기술이 가져올 파괴적·창조적 충격의 폭과 깊이를 짐작하기 힘들다. 수긍이 간다. 범용기술이라고 해도, 수레는 이동에 대한 것이며, 전기는 에너지에 대한 것일 뿐이다. 수레의 발명이 법률 체계를 바꾸지는 못하며, 전기의 발명이 교육 체계를 바꾼 것은 아니다. 그런데 역사적으로 누적된 인간 정신의 총량을 담고 이를 자유자재로 주물러서 주어진 목적에 맞게 원하는 내용을 ‘새로이 생성’해내는 인공지능의 발명은 과연 어디까지 바꿀 것인가? 산업 전반, 나아가 사회 및 인간의 존재에까지 충격을 미칠 것임을 예측할 수 있다. ‘옥스퍼드 AI 거버넌스 핸드북’의 한 저자는 범용기술로서의 인공지능이 가져올 충격이 18세기 산업혁명과 신석기 혁명의 충격에 맞먹을 것이라고 말한다.
새 범용기술 위한 사회적 계획 필요
여기까지는 많은 이들이 입을 모아 이야기하는 부분이다. 그런데 그다음에 생각할 것이 더 있다. 이렇게 산업과 사회와 인간 생활이 포괄적으로 바뀌는 과정은 어떤 것이며, 그 시간은 얼마나 될까? 이전에 있었던 여러 범용기술의 경우에 비추어 하나의 패턴을 찾아내보자. 우선 범용기술의 혁신은 상대적으로 소소한 다른 혁신의 경우와 달리 빨리 수용되지도 않으며 그 과정이 순탄하지도 않다.
첫째, 범용기술이 정말로 범용기술이 되기 위해서는 엄청난 규모의 인프라가 건설되어야 한다. 농경이 사회 전체 차원에서 체계적으로 이루어지기 위해서는 수리 관개 시설은 물론 역법과 도량형 제정이 필요했으며, 인터넷 세상이 펼쳐지기 위해서는 전화선에서 랜선으로의 전환이 필요했다.
둘째, 사회 성원 전체가 이 범용기술을 사용하는 방법을 익혀야 하며, 거기에 엄청난 비용이 투여된다. 반세기 전만 해도 ‘타이피스트’만 할 줄 알던 작업을 오늘날에는 모든 이들이 엄지손가락 두 개로 다 처리하게 되었지만, 그렇게 되기까지 훈련의 시간과 비용을 사람들의 머릿수로 곱해보라.
셋째, 새로운 범용기술의 도입으로 대체할 수 있는 산업과 기술과 숙련을 실제로 폐기하는 데에 들어가는 엄청난 저항과 사회적·인간적 비용이다.
요컨대, 범용기술의 도입은 몇 개 공장이나 산업에서의 생산 방식 변화와 같은 ‘소소한’ 사건이 아니라, 산업 전체, 나아가 사회 전체가 잘 훈련된 축구팀처럼 발맞추어 나아가야 달성할 수 있는 전 사회적 프로젝트이므로, 길고 다사다난한 과정을 거칠 수밖에 없다. 인공지능 또한 마찬가지다. 당장에 세상이 바뀔 것처럼 떠들썩하지만, 설령 기술적으로 보자면 범용기술의 자격을 충분히 갖춘 인공지능 서비스가 출현한다고 해도 그것이 실제로 상용화되는 세상이 금세 올 수는 없다. 사회적·인간적 고통과 마찰을 최소화하면서 더 빨리 더 효율적으로 새로운 범용기술의 도입을 이룰 사회적 계획이 필요하게 된다.
50대 교육이 미래 가름할 수도
이 대목에서 우리 사회의 현재 인구 구조 문제를 떠올리지 않을 수 없다. 인구절벽의 제목 아래 새로운 젊은 경제활동인구가 격감한다는 이야기만 자꾸 나오다 보니 쉬 간과되는 사실이 있다. 가장 많은 인구를 차지하는 베이비붐 세대가 지금 50대를 통과하고 있다는 점이다. 참으로 애매한 연령대와 애매한 타이밍이다. 50대는 쉽게 새로운 기술이나 트렌드를 흡수할 의욕이나 동기부여가 젊은 세대보다 떨어지지만, 그렇다고 해서 경제활동에서 물러나 노후 생활로 접어들 나이도 아니다.
게다가 평균수명은 늘어나고 건강 상태는 개선되고, 반대로 사회 전반적인 노후 준비나 노인 복지 등은 미비한 세상이니 이 세대에 속한 이들의 다수는 어떻게든 경제 생활의 일선에 남기를 원하고 있다. 범용기술을 받아들이는 포괄적인 산업 및 사회의 전환 과정은 어떤 경우에도 이렇게 많은 숫자를 차지하는 세대와 집단을 뒤처지게 두거나 무시하고서는 성공할 수가 없다. 그런데 어쩌면 인공지능이라는 미증유의 범용기술 도입이라는 미래의 물결이 다가오는 지금, 하필 우리나라에서는 그 세대가 참으로 애매한 연령대인 50대에 위치하고 있다.
그런데 이미 우리의 50대는 위기에 처해 있다. 거의 모두가 경제활동을 계속하기를 원하지만, 빠르게 바뀌는 산업과 사회 전반의 변화 속도로 인해 기존의 직장에서 밀려나는 경우가 많다. 재취업이나 창업 등을 시도하지만 여의치 못한 경우가 많으며, 이전에 비해 부가가치와 생산성이 낮은 쪽으로 하향 곡선을 그리면서 소득 또한 점점 감소하는 불안감에 시달리는 경우가 압도적으로 많다. 만약 여기에 인공지능의 보편화라는 거대한 전환의 물결까지 덮친다면, 이들의 존재가 산업적으로 ‘노후화’되는 속도도 더 빨라질 것이며, 이들의 소득 감소와 실업 등 경제적 곤경도 더 심해질 것이다. 그리고 이는 사회 전체에 큰 비용과 마찰을 초래할 것이다.
새로운 경제활동의 길을 찾는 50대 이상의 사람들을 ‘신중년’의 이름으로 부르며 돌봄노동 등에서 일자리 창출의 활로를 모색하는 이들도 있다. 소중하고 중요한 노력이라고 공감하지만, 그 길이 어떤 특정 부문이나 분야로 제한될 이유는 없다. 인구절벽 앞에 선 우리 사회와 경제에 있어서 숫자가 많은 베이비붐 세대는 대단히 중요한 ‘인적 자원’이다. 이들이 새로운 산업 및 사회의 패러다임에 적응할 수 있도록 전환시킬 수 있느냐 없느냐가 어쩌면 우리의 미래를 가름하는 결정적인 관건이 될지도 모른다.
지금 많은 대학에서 정부의 지원으로 어린 학생들에게 디지털 전환과 인공지능 등을 교육시키는 프로그램들을 제공하고 있다. 내용도 알차고 방향도 좋아 학생과 부모들에게 모두 큰 반향을 일으키고 있다. 그런데 왜 50대 및 그 이상의 연령대를 위한 디지털과 인공지능 교육 프로그램은 없을까? 자라나는 아이와 청년들은 그 정신의 유연성이라는 장점이 있겠지만, 50대 이상의 사람들은 축적된 경험과 안목이라는 암묵지를 가지고 있으며 어쩌면 이것이 인공지능 시대에 더욱 빛을 발하는 독특한 경쟁력이 될 수 있다. 그러한 장점을 끌어낼 수 있는 교육 방식과 만난다면 말이다. 50대 이상에게 인공지능 교육과 훈련을 허하라.
The 20th and 21st century oil paintings are presenting a range of challenging conservation problems that can be distinctly different from those noted in paintings from previous centuries. These include the formation of vulnerable surface “skins” of medium and exudates on paint surfaces, efflorescence, unpredictable water and solvent sensitivity, and incidence of paint dripping which can occur within a few years after the paintings were completed.
Physicochemical studies of modern oil paints and paintings in recent years have identified a range of possible causal factors for the noted sensitivity of painting surfaces to water and protic solvents, including the formation of water-soluble inorganic salts and/or the accumulation of diacids at the paint surface, which are oxidation products of the oil binder. Other studies have investigated the relationship between water sensitivity and the degree of hydrolysis of the binder, the proportions of free fatty and dicarboxylic acids formed, as well as the relative content of free metal soaps. Thus far, data indicate that the qualitative and quantitative composition of the nonpolymerized fractions of the oil binder cannot be solely or directly related to the solvent sensitivity of the paint film. Conclusions therefore indicate that the polymeric network, formed upon the curing of the oil, plays a fundamental role, suggesting that water sensitivity, at least in some cases, may be related to the poor development and/or polar nature of the formed polymeric network rather than the composition of the nonpolymerized fractions.
Poorly developed polymeric networks, in combination with the migration of polar fractions, i.e., dicarboxylic and hydroxylated fatty acids toward the paint surface, can be related to other degradation phenomena, including the separation and migration of the paint binder which can lead to the presence of observable skins of medium as well as the more alarming phenomenon of liquefying or dripping oil paints. It is thus crucial to understand the molecular composition of these paints and their physicochemical behavior to aid the further development of appropriate conservation and preservation strategies, as the risks currently associated with surface cleaning treatments and other conservation procedures can be unacceptably high.
This Account reviews the relationships between the degradation phenomena associated with modern oil paintings and the chemical composition of the oil binder and proposes a molecular model for the development of water sensitivity and other noted degradation phenomena. It is suggested that water sensitivity (and possibly other degradation phenomena) is a consequence of processes that take place upon curing, and in particular to the rate of formation and decomposition of alkoxyl and peroxyl radicals. These reactions are strongly dependent on the type of oil present, the ambient environmental conditions, and the chemical and physical nature of the pigments and additives present in the paint formulation. When the curing environment is oxidizing, the chemistry of peroxyl radicals dominates the reaction pathways, and oxidative decomposition of the paint film overwhelms cross-linking reactions.
Pfizer announced Saturday, Jan. 6, that it was abandoning research and development into new neuroscience development, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. As a result, it will cut 300 jobs, primarily in Cambridge and Andover, Massachusetts and in Groton, Connecticut. About 200 of the job cuts will be in Massachusetts, the remaining in Connecticut.
The company indicated it will continue working on tanezumab, a late-stage drug for pain it is developing with Eli Lilly and Co., as well as Lyrica, for fibromyalgia. It also intends to continue working on developing neurological drugs for rare diseases.
In a statement, Pfizer said, “This was an exercise to re-allocate spend across our portfolio, to focus on those areas where our pipeline, and our scientific expertise, is strongest.”
Pfizer is one of the investors in a venture capital fund, the Dementia Discovery Fund, that was launched in 2015. Other drug companies that invest in the fund include GlaxoSmithKline and Lilly. Reuters notes, “However, some of Pfizer’s investments have resulted in disappointment. In 2012, Pfizer and partner Johnson & Johnson called off additional work on the drug bapineuzumab after it failed to help patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s in its second round of clinical trials.”
On Saturday, Pfizer indicated it plans to launch a new venture fund focused on neuroscience research.
The company also announced today that it was creating the Innovative Target Exploration Network (ITEN). This is a new, early-stage partnering model. It will allow collaborative relationships with specific academic institutions and principal investigators globally. The first three institutions to participate are The University of Cambridge and University of Oxford, both in the UK, and the University of Texas Southwestern (UTSW). Pfizer is planning to choose other academic institutions to be part of ITEN.
Each network is managed by an External Scientific Innovation Lead (ESIL) from Pfizer. That individual will liaise between researchers from Pfizer and the academic principal investigators from the involved institutions.
“The ITEN partnering model creates an environment of creative and agile scientific interaction,” said Uwe Schoenbeck, Pfizer’s senior vice president and chief scientific officer, External Science & Innovation, in a statement. “By establishing relationships with researchers early in the research and development process, we believe the ITEN model will better position us to identify potentially promising research projects—focused on seeking unique technology platforms and outstanding biology expertise—continually building on our mission to bring innovative new therapies to patients in need.”
The UK ITEN partnerships were established in 2017, and specific projects have already been reported. Both will focus on deubiquitinylation enzymes (DUBs), a gene family that has implications for cancer, and autoimmune, cardio-metabolic diseases and rare diseases.
The project with UTSW is a collaboration with Bruce Beutler, a Novel Prize-winning immunologist. It will focus on genetics approaches in oncology and metabolic disease.
The ITEN is expected to complement work at Pfizer’s Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI), which was launched by Pfizer in 2010 to create academic-foundation-industry collaborations. CTI has 25 academic institutions and six foundations in its network, including the National Institute of Health (NIH).
“By focusing on research collaborations around early biology and therapeutic concepts, our ITEN collaborations will seek out innovative science and technology,” Schoenbeck said in a statement. “As research projects progress, we will work with the given institution to move them into the clinical phase using therapeutically aligned research units or through CTI.”
Pfizer has followed through on its pledge to divest a hunk of its neuroscience R&D, spinning several programs into a new company called Cerevel Therapeutics backed by $350 million in venture funding.
Pfizer is contributing a trio of clinical-stage drug candidates—including a Parkinson’s therapy due to start phase 3 testing next year—plus a clutch of earlier-stage programs, while Bain Capital and affiliates stumped up the initial funding.
It’s an approach the Big Pharma company also adopted last year when it hived off its rare disease assets into a company called SpringWorks, backed by Bain Capital and others including Double Impact, Orbimed and LifeArc.
The Cerevel spinoff “is similar [to SpringWorks], albeit on a larger scale in terms of number of assets, capital committed, and commercial potential,” explain Chris Gordon and Adam Koppel, M.D., Ph.D., managing directors at Bain Capital Private Equity and Bain Capital Life Sciences, respectively, who note there is also more cash in the offing if needed.
“It is a model that makes a lot of sense for pharma companies, if they can find the right partner,” they told FierceBiotech. This type of deal can push forward “assets that might not be optimally developed internally … while maintaining involvement and economic upside.”
Pfizer is retaining a 25% share in Cerevel, and two of its senior executives—Doug Giordano, senior VP of worldwide business development, and Morris Birnbaum, M.D., Ph.D., senior VP and chief scientific officer of internal medicine—will sit on the new company’s board alongside Gordon and Koppel. For now, there’s no word on who will fill the CEO role and other top positions.
Cerevel starts life with a pipeline headed by PF-06649751, a dopamine 1 partial agonist for Parkinson’s that is due to start a phase 3 study next year.
Following after are two phase 2-ready programs, including GABA 2/3 antagonist PF-06372865 for epilepsy and an M4 positive allosteric modulator that Cerevel will explore in “a psychosis-related indication,” according to Gordon and Koppel.
The remainder of Pfizer’s donated assets are all preclinical projects with “a diverse set of mechanisms [and] target indications currently in disease-modifying Parkinson’s, addiction/substance abuse disorder, psychosis, and neuroinflammation,” they noted.
Pfizer isn’t alone in deciding to downsize its direct involvement in central nervous system drug development, which tends to have a lower chance of success and higher costs than other therapeutic categories.
Other Big Pharma companies such as Sanofi, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Merck have also cut back on CNS since its heyday in the late 20th century, when psychiatric drugs for diseases like schizophrenia and depression featured prominently among the top-selling medicines in the world, in favor of more lucrative areas such as cancer and diabetes
“When Pfizer made the decision to exit internal neuroscience research, we determined that the most effective way to maximize the potential value to patients of a promising clinical and preclinical portfolio would be to invest in external opportunities with high expertise and dedicated focus in CNS,” said Birnbaum.
“We are convinced that Cerevel represents such an opportunity and will continue to develop the Pfizer compounds, fulfilling our responsibility to patients and our goal to invest in biotech companies conducting promising neuroscience research in areas of urgent unmet need.”
Biotech companies have found investors to be eager backers of their research ambitions this year, even amid the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. Forty-one biotechs have launched initial public offerings in 2020, one-third more than had done so by the same point in 2019.
Seeking cash to fund its drug development plans, Cerevel took a more unusual approach, turning instead to a special purpose acquisition company, Arya Sciences Acquisition Corp II. As the name suggests, these so-called SPACs raise funds specifically with the aim to acquire or merge with another company, at which point the combined firm takes the place of the SPAC on a public stock exchange.
More than 50 SPACs have been created this year, raising a record $21 billion for private company takeouts, including deals involving electric truck-maker Nikola, sports-betting company DraftKings and the health services firm Multiplan.
Arya Sciences, which is sponsored by the hedge fund Perceptive Advisors, has already raised $150 million, and expects proceeds of some $320 million from a wide range of healthcare investors as a result of the Cerevel deal.
Investors include Fidelity, T. Rowe Price and RA Capital, as well as existing Cerevel shareholders Pfizer and Bain.
The merger, expected to close in the fourth quarter, will result in a combined company that’s expected to be worth around $1.3 billion. Cerevel’s management team, including CEO Coles, will continue to lead the new firm, which will trade on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker CERE.
At a value of $445 million, the deal is among the largest go-public transactions for biotech in recent years, behind the IPOs of companies like Moderna, Genmab and Legend Biotech.
Cerevel’s lead drug is an experimental treatment for early- and late-stage Parkinson’s disease. This January, Cerevel launched a Phase 3 development program for the drug, which will include three trials and is expected to yield results by 2023.
Nearer term are two earlier-stage drugs for schizophrenia and epilepsy, for which Cerevel anticipates data next year and in 2022.
While development of those three compounds will account for much of the money Cerevel is raising, the biotech is also advancing drugs for substance use disorder and apathy related to Alzheimer’s disease.
Cerevel Therapeutics’ schizophrenia prospect has impressed in a phase 1b clinical trial, triggering a 136% surge in the stock price.
Shares rose to $29.69 in pre-market trading Wednesday. The Pfizer spinout is now preparing to move into phase 2 and looking into additional indications including dementia-related psychosis.
Having come through the multiple-ascending dose part of the study, Cerevel randomized 81 patients to receive placebo or one of two doses of CVL-231. The drug is designed to selectively target the M4 muscarinic receptor to provide antipsychotic activity without causing the side effects that contribute to limited patient compliance and high relapse rates associated with current treatment options.
Participants who received 30 mg of CVL-231 once a day experienced a 19.5-point reduction in severity of schizophrenia symptoms as assessed by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Cerevel said the improvement is clinically meaningful and, when compared to the 6.8-point reduction in the placebo arm, statistically significant.
A cohort of patients who received 20 mg of CVL-231 twice a day performed slightly worse, notably, on the PANSS Positive Score, but the combined treatment data set still beat placebo on the total and subscores.
Analysts at Jefferies said “PANSS improvement came in above expectations on both an absolute and placebo-adjusted basis and looked similar to, if not better than, competitor [Karuna Therapeutics].”
Cerevel’s data “look impressive,” according to Mizuho’s Vamil Divan, but he urged the company’s investors to hold their horses a bit given the small size of the study. Divan wants to see clearer data from both Karuna and Cerevel’s products before reaching a conclusion on which one is best.
Karuna’s M1-M4 muscarinic agonist spurred 17.4- and 11.5-point improvements in schizophrenia symptoms on an absolute and placebo-adjusted basis. The trial benefited from a smaller reduction in the placebo group, however.
Divan believes the competing results from Karuna and Cerevel are similar. But Boston-based Karuna has the advantage of being ahead, as the company’s results—released 20 months ago—were for a phase 2 trial, whereas Cerevel is just now planning a phase 2. The schizophrenia market is also large and drugs for the condition can often move into adjacent indications, such as dementia-related psychosis.
Shares in Karuna, which is trying to resurrect an old Eli Lilly drug, fell 9% in the wake of Cerevel’s data.
Safety scuttled muscarinic receptor agonists in the 1990s and were an area of concern going into the phase 1b readout on CVL-231. Cerevel came through the early test, finding the dropout rates in the treatment and control groups were similar and the adverse event results were free from red flags. Notably, while one patient on CVL-231 suffered increased heart rate, the feared cardiovascular side effects otherwise didn’t materialize.
“CVL-231 looks pretty clean on [cardiovascular] tox … and likely attributed to its selectivity for M4 and ability to avoid peripheral activation of M1,” the Jefferies analysts wrote in a note to investors. The study found no link between CVL-231 and extrapyramidal side effects or weight gain and only infrequent cases of gastrointestinal adverse events.
Divan said both Karuna and Cerevel’s data helps bolster the idea that muscarinic receptor agonists can be used for schizophrenia.
Investors sent shares in Cerevel soaring after seeing the data. The surge reflects increased confidence that Cerevel can deliver on its vision of establishing CVL-231 as the new standard of care in the blockbuster schizophrenia market.
Cerevel still has a long way to go to deliver that vision, starting with a planned phase 2 study.
You don’t become one of the largest and most successful drug developers on the planet by chance. Pfizer (PFE) has carefully curated its portfolio of drug products and managed pipelines across numerous therapeutic areas. More than once, the pharma titan has created spinoffs for strategic or competitive reasons.
That’s exactly how Cerevel Therapeutics (CERE) got its start. The drug developer was created in 2018 when Pfizer deprioritized its neuroscience pipeline and Bain Capital provided an initial cash infusion of $350 million. The business went public through a SPAC in late 2020 and bagged another $440 million in funding.
The assets provided by Pfizer proved to be quite valuable. Shares of Cerevel Therapeutics more than doubled in summer 2021 on phase 1 results for an experimental schizophrenia drug called emraclidine. The results were impressive, but the asset is behind a late-stage asset from Karuna Therapeutics (KRTX) that just crushed a phase 3 clinical trial.
Results from the competitive landscape forced the hand of Cerevel Therapeutics. It more than doubled its cash balance in a series of transactions to support the continued development of its pipeline — leaving nothing to chance as financial conditions tighten.
Juicing the Cash Balance
Cerevel Therapeutics, now valued at over $5 billion, is one of the premier precommercial drug developers. It wields a pipeline spanning eight unique neuroscience assets being investigated as potential treatments for schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, substance abuse, and other ailments.
A large, maturing neuroscience pipeline will be expensive to develop. Unlike rare diseases, the company’s therapeutic area of choice requires pivotal studies with hundreds of enrolled patients. The business reported R&D expenses of $127.5 million in the first half of 2022, an increase of 73% compared to the prior year.
Although Cerevel Therapeutics exited June 2022 with $531 million in cash, it decided to raise an additional $554 million from debt and stock offerings in mid-August. The competitive landscape shows why action was needed.
Keeping Pace with a Key Competitor
The funding creates a no-doubter funding pathway to develop the pipeline into the second half of this decade. Not many precommercial drug developers can boast that.
The fundraising was announced just two days after Karuna Therapeutics revealed a no-doubter of its own. The company’s lead drug candidate, KarXT, delivered a best-case scenario in a pivotal phase 3 clinical trial in schizophrenia. The drug candidate met the primary endpoint and key secondary endpoints, all measured against placebo for a period of five weeks.
Karuna Therapeutics expects to submit a new drug application (NDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in mid-2023, which suggests the drug could earn approval in the first half of 2024 and launch by mid-2024. By comparison, Cerevel Therapeutics doesn’t expect to deliver phase 2 results for emraclidine until the first half of 2024.
The competition isn’t settled just yet. Investors need to focus on characteristics that could differentiate KarXT and emraclidine.
Selectivity: Both KarXT and emraclidine hit the same molecular target, the M4 muscarinic receptor. However, KarXT also whacks M1, M2, and M3 muscarinic receptors, whereas the emraclidine is selective for M4. That could provide a potential advantage if a more selective drug compound provides safer or more durable treatment over longer treatment periods. For instance, KarXT treatment was associated with elevated heart rates.
Dosing: KarXT was administered with a flexible dose given twice daily, with the dose level increasing over time. That could complicate the durability of treatment observed beyond five weeks. By contrast, emraclidine is administered as a fixed dose given once daily. That will be easier to track and model for longer treatment periods.
The late-stage data for KarXT appears to position the asset for eventual FDA approval and commercial success. While emraclidine is relatively far behind, it could provide a better and more convenient treatment option for individuals thanks to its selectivity.
In other words, KarXT may race to a commercial lead in this head-to-head matchup, but it may just be paving the way for its competitor to gobble up the opportunity.
Investors aren’t out of the woods yet. There are multiple development, regulatory, and commercial derisking events on the horizon for both Karuna Therapeutics and Cerevel Therapeutics. Just don’t make the mistake of sleeping on this Pfizer spinout.
Private equity firm Bain Capital stands to make more than 10 times the $250 million it invested in Cerevel Therapeutics Holdings Inc (CERE.O), opens new tab following the neurology-focused drug developer’s $8.7 billion sale to AbbVie Inc (ABBV.N), opens new tab, according to regulatory filings.
Boston-based Bain committed $350 million in 2018 to carve Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Cerevel out of Pfizer Inc (PFE.N), opens new tab, but only $250 million of that was drawn, the filings show. The deal with AbbVie, announced on Tuesday, now values Bain’s 36.5% stake in Cerevel at about $2.7 billion.
This more than tenfold return is significantly higher than the private equity industry’s average return on invested capital in the healthcare sector of 2.9 times, according to investment advisor Cambridge Associates.
A Bain spokesperson declined to comment.
Bain’s success reflects the high stakes of its bet on Cerevel’s drug portfolio. It is developing medicines for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, psychosis, epilepsy and panic disorder. Its experimental drug emraclidine is in mid-stage trials as a treatment for schizophrenia that will yield data the company hopes can be used to seek regulatory approval.
Bain and Pfizer, which retained a 15% stake in Cerevel, took the company public in 2020 through the merger with a special purpose acquisition vehicle. It was one of the few such deals to have proved successful, as most companies that went public through that route in the past three years now trade at a fraction of their deal value.
Bain, which has about $180 billion in assets under management, is one of the private equity industry’s most prolific investors in the healthcare sector, completing more than 940 deals in the space since 1984.
AbbVie’s $45-per-share, $8.7 billion acquisition of the neuroscience drug developer Cerevel Therapeutics was $10 per share higher than its initial bid, according to details in an SEC filing, as the big pharma upped its price despite a lack of formal offers from other suitors.
The filing details several months of negotiations between Cerevel and other companies when it first explored a regional partnership in Japan for its lead schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease psychosis drug. Those talks eventually fell apart but would be reborn as full-fledged takeover discussions that led to the deal announced late last year.
AbbVie, which had originally been involved in the Japan partnership talks, returned to the table in October with an offer of $35 a share for the whole company. The investment bank Centerview, which has been involved in most of the major biopharma transactions this year, brought in other potential bidders.
The potentially interested parties included Pfizer, which had created Cerevel when it spun out its neuroscience work in a partnership with Bain Capital in 2018. Pfizer still owns about 15% of the biotech and had nominated two of the board’s directors, Deborah Baron and Suneet Varma, who were recused from the discussions.
Cerevel is in Phase II clinical trials with its lead schizophrenia asset, emraclidine. The drug works similarly to Karuna Therapeutics’ lead drug, KarXT, which is scheduled to get an FDA approval decision by Sept. 26. Karuna last month struck a deal to sell itself to Bristol Myers Squibb for $14 billion.
On Nov. 2, Pfizer told Cerevel it wasn’t interested in a deal before Cerevel’s clinical trial results read out in 2024 and said it wouldn’t make a competing offer. And while other companies were looking at Cerevel, they hadn’t made bids. Meanwhile, AbbVie continued to raise its offer to $40, then $41.50, while Cerevel told AbbVie that would be insufficient.
On the last day of November, as the Cerevel talks were ongoing, AbbVie said it would buy cancer drugmaker ImmunoGen for $10.1 billion — after bidding far more than its nearing rival. Cerevel inquired if that would affect any deal talks, and AbbVie said it was still interested.
On Dec. 4, an undisclosed Party C also said it would be willing to pay $40 per share, but Cerevel said it would not meet the bar.
Two days later, AbbVie said it would pay $45 per share in cash, and the deal was done. The companies expect the transaction to close in the middle of this year.
Despite FTC scrutiny picking up on the pharmaceutical sector, Gonzalez told analysts on the day of the announcement that he doesn’t expect any issues that will stop the deal.
BOSTON DR LIM 