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Pharmaceuticals

Agnes Varis

A champion for the generic drug industry deftly mixes business and Democratic politics

by Rick Mullin
December 5, 2005 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 83, Issue 49

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Credit: Photo By Rick Mullin
Credit: Photo By Rick Mullin

Agnes Varis, the owner and chief executive officer of Agvar Chemicals, is a gracious host. Visitors to her office in Little Falls, N.J., are treated to Greek pastries and coffee. Drug company executives who come to her annual parties during DCAT Week in New York City have been known to take home copies of It Takes A Village signed by the author, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former first lady and the Democratic senator from New York.

Varis also likes to stir things up.

A woman entrepreneur in the predominantly Republican, solidly male pharmaceutical industry, Varis is a pioneer in an important sector of the business. She has also, over the years, held court at the hub of Democratic politics in New York City, a place that, despite the recent reelection of Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is still a Democratic bastion.

Varis founded Agvar 35 years ago to supply U.S. drug firms with generic bulk pharmaceuticals manufactured in Europe and elsewhere. Prior to that, she worked for 20 years at Fine Organics, a New Jersey-based pharmaceutical chemical manufacturer, where she rose from bench chemist to the posts of executive vice president, general manager, and member of the board of directors.

On the credenza in her conference room at Agvar are photos of friends including the Clintons and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis—the stage at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of the Jazz at Lincoln Center program where Marsalis is artistic director, is named after Varis. She points to a photo, taken in her Central Park South apartment, of Sen. Clinton holding forth before drug industry executives—an unlikely event that Varis brokered.

Varis is also friendly with New York's other Democratic senator, Charles Schumer. He commented in a recent article in the New York Times on the help she provided in passing the Schumer-McCain Greater Access to Affordable Pharmaceuticals Act, which aims to close loopholes that allow big drug companies to extend patent protection.

Schumer said that if it weren't for Agnes Varis, there would be no generics bill, Varis reminds us, moving on to the scroll over the credenza given to her by the State of Israel for her help in establishing the generics industry in that country.

And she notes, with a certain irony, that she is currently suing the biggest generics firm in Israel, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, as well as Barr Laboratories in the U.S.

In October, Agvar and Ranbaxy Laboratories filed suit against Barr and Teva charging breach of contract, fraud, and tortious interference in response to Barr's decision not to manufacture a generic version of the allergy drug Allegra. Barr transferred its 180-day exclusive marketing rights to Teva for an undisclosed share of the profit. Agvar and Ranbaxy had worked together to supply Barr with the drug's active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), fexofenadine.

What they did was a stealth act, Varis maintains, referring to a statement by Teva CEO Israel Makov that the deal was the culmination of months of work between Teva and Barr. That flabbergasted me, she says. Ranbaxy provided so much technological know-how related to the API and the dosage form. We gave them so much help. Never once did Barr say this isn't a good idea. To the contrary, they kept encouraging us and reaffirming their need.

Varis sees herself as taking a stand at a time when the pharmaceutical industry has, in her estimation, lost track of its mission. I think it's all about greed; it's all about big money, she says. How fast you can make it and how little you have to do to make it.


I think it's all about greed; it's all about big money. How fast you can make it and how little you have to do to make it.


Varis says negotiations with Barr prior to filing the suit went nowhere. Their way of negotiating is to deny and bully. And I can't be bullied. Barr has called the suit without merit.

A woman who rose to an executive position at a chemical company in the 1960s before leaving to start her own firm is not the sort of person who is easily pushed around. Varis says the problems that she confronted as a woman in industry—being paid less than men doing the same work, dealing with condescending and abusive behavior—are still faced by women in industry today. One of her passions in life, she says, is mentoring aspiring businesswomen.

And at the age of 75, Varis continues to build her own business, recently launching a second joint venture to supply drugs in the finished dosage form. Varis says the new venture, Modavar, formed with India's Cadila Pharmaceuticals, will manufacture a wider range of dosage-form drugs than her first joint venture, Aegis Pharmaceuticals, formed in 1992 with Hungary's Egis Pharmaceuticals.

Though dosage-form drugs are still a small part of her business, Varis sees a growing need for them in the U.S. market, given the number of drugs expected to come off patent in the years ahead.

Indeed, the need for affordable drugs is a standard around which Varis' business and political passions converge. She sees politicians like Sens. Clinton and Schumer shepherding drugmakers back to their original mission of societal benefit and championing a system that supports research, provides reasonable patent protection, and encourages a vigorous generics industry.

Democrats have no problem with big pharma working as the innovator at the front end of such a system, Varis says. But the consummate Democrat has a real passion for a healthy supply of generics at the other end. I like to call them affordable miracles, she says.

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