Posts tagged ‘drug development consulting’
Making a Difference to the Lives of Cancer Patients
Sally Church has written over 900 blog posts on Pharma Strategy Blog about oncology and hematology new product development.
One series of posts stands out, and that is the “Making a Difference” interviews with thought leaders and business visionaries who are making a difference to the lives of cancer patients.
The latest in the series has just been published – a video interview with Dr Gordon B. Mills MD, PhD of MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Sally interviewed Dr Mills in Stockholm at the European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress where he gave a keynote presentation on personalized medicine in the presidential, plenary session of the meeting.
Anyone interested in cancer drug development strategy, personalized medicine and how industry and academia can collaborate together in drug development should watch this video.
The other interviews Sally has undertaken in the “Making a Difference” series are with Alain Moussy, Ross Camidge, Sue Desmond-Hellmann and Charles Sawyers.
We look forward to many more in the future.
Sally Church invited to be distinguished speaker at MD Anderson Cancer Center Science Park
August 29th, 2011
Daedalus
It is a pleasure to announce that Sally Church, PhD has been invited to be a speaker in the Distinguished Lecturer Student Seminar Series held at the Science Park campus of the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center.
The Science Park located at Smithville, just outside of Austin, TX is the location of the Victoria Harris Cockrell Cancer Research Center, where basic science research is undertaken in the Department of Molecular Carcinogenesis.
The mission of the center is “to investigate the molecular biology of cancer and to develop means for cancer prevention and detection.”
Sally’s seminar on October 5, 2011 to the graduate students in cancer research is entitled, “On Science, Blogging and Drug Development.”
We look forward to reading more about Sally’s visit and seminar on Pharma Strategy Blog.
Choosing the right target is key to Pharma and Biotech drug development success
June 23rd, 2011
Daedalus
In the run up to the 2011 BIO international convention next week in Washington DC, Pieter Droppert on Biotech Strategy Blog discusses a recent Nature Reviews Drug Discovery paper on Pharma R&D productivity.
One of the take homes from the analysis of 28,000 pharma R&D compounds investigated since 1990 is that “therapeutic innovation has become more challenging and complex.” At Icarus Consultants we agree with that conclusion.
One only has to look at the increasing complexity surrounding oncology pathways as an example. Choosing the right molecular target and one where there is a market opportunity is key to success. Increasingly, patient selection is also becoming a key part of the paradigm.
New Product professionals need to do a comprehensive landscape analysis around potential target indications. Some of the questions to ask:
- Who are your competitors?
- What stage of development are they in?
- Which sub segment are you competing in?
- What does the clinical science show regarding molecular targets?
- Which patients should be included/excluded from the trials?
- What combinations might be relevant – chemotherapy or targeted therapies?
- Which line of therapy are you going for?
- What is the market opportunity for your new product?
These are things we often help our clients with at Icarus – as we learn more about the increasingly complexity of the underlying biology of disease, so the challenge with clinical trials in terms of tumour types and patient selection increases.
Choosing the right target is key to Pharma & Biotech drug development success.
Amgen’s denosumab has been shown to reduce skeletal related events (SRE) but not improve overall survival (OS) in prostate cancer.
Icarus Consultants’ oncology new product development expert, Sally Church Ph.D looks at the role of RANKL signaling (the target of denosumab) and recent research on its role in the spread of cancer.
You can gain more insight on this interesting topic from Sally’s Pharma Strategy Blog post.