Alright here's one that I find is very, very interesting.
this is breast cancer you know, one drug that has basically changed the markets
and the, and the way breast cancer has been treated, is Herceptin.
Genentech has been on the forefront of what I call, personalized medicine.
I teach another class in personalized medicine.
I've actually given lectures on personalized medicine, and, I always use
Herceptin as the first treatment, really, where there was basically a bio-marker.
And that's something that's very interesting.
If you are interested, you should read about the development of Herceptin and
how they went about it. But if you think about it, if you go back
to 1894, where Halstead realized that breast cancer spread from[UNKNOWN] and
radial mastectomy to the time that Herceptin was launched.
You know, I mean, look at the time frame, okay.
And now we are in 2012. There's number of DNA testing of
[UNKNOWN]10 different sub types. So again, learning with new technology is
what is going to be very important. And what's interesting is, as I told you,
because of technology we can now have enormous amount of data.
And Doctor Bonn who we'll present in the third lecture will tell you about this,
that will allow us to develop better drugs.
And maybe, hopefully shrink the time frame between the time that we discover a
disease to the time that we get treatment.
we spoke about this, the stakeholder. Who decides what, if the product is truly
innovative. At the end of the day, it's the payer,
okay? you can go, if you're a pharma or a
biotech company, until you are blue in the face and try to convince, you know,
this is the best business since sliced bread.
It's the best drug ever. if the payer is saying, you know, we
really don't think so. Sorry, but what you have done is not
enough to demonstrate that it's really going to change our patient's health.
They're not going to pay for it. But you have to think about all of this
as you are developing drugs. This is another way of representing what
I showed you earlier where the patient is at the center.
Self managed patients, you know, I think, that there is, if you look at the OTC
business, which is very big, patients have a tendency and especially with the
internet even more to self treat themselves and take care of their own
health. I'm curious.
How many of you know what your medical records are?
I don't. I mean I know what's my medical history
is but, I don't know all the information that the physicians have.
Wouldn't it be great if I could carry in my pocket a little card with a chip that
would give me everything since I was born.
All the disease I had, all the interaction to medication and everything
else. That I could always carry with me, or
maybe even potentially implanted. And when I go see the doc, he doesn't
have to go in the computer or ask his assistant, or to pull out a file, or make
20 calls to figure out what they have. To figure out, oh, I know exactly, so you
are so-and-so, you have such disease, you have such inter drug interaction.
All of this is doable, we have the technology.
But there's a lot of things that need to happen before it's going to happen.
Some countries where you have centralized healthcare are trying to do this, and
that potentially will transform research and development.
Because then you will be able to analyze all the data.
You'll be able to really understand how it's being delivered, how it's being
used. You'll be able to understand the
compliance. Oh, patient x was prescribed 10 days of
antibiotics therapy. He stopped after 3 days because his fever
went down, and yet, we all know that you get sure infection if you do that.
Well, if you have a monitoring system that would allow the pharmacist saying
patient x stopped his antibiotic therapy. You might want to give them a call, or
send them a tweet, okay? And tell them, by the way.
Did you forget your, pill this morning? One could argue, well, maybe it's Big
Brother. and, you know?
I can, maybe, agree with that. On the other hand, you know?
It could be very, very helpful. And prevent patients to visiting the
emergency room. Again, this is all based on the HOLNet
approach that I was telling you about. Care pathways, which is something else.
Which again, a number of countries are developing.
Same principal, you know, unwell you go to the doctor.
They do a test and diagnoses right there in the office, you know hopefully we have
in a few years we do a prick of blood, they know exactly what you have.
They know genetic code. They know your protiomics and they decide
which drug is best, which device they should put you on and so forth.
if you're healthy and that's where we can also save a huge amount of money, by
preventing and curing, you know. Type II diabetes in the US and a number
of markets, is going to be an epidemic. Over 60% of adults in the US are
overweight. And I think the number is 34% of people
are obese in this country. It's going exponentially, and it's the
same problem in Europe. It's the same problem in other countries
as well. Guess what?
Type II diabetes can be controlled, if you lose weight, if you exercise.
If you do all sorts of things, well, that's all prevention.
I'm not selling drugs when I do that, though.
You know, I know we all, all want to pop a pill and feel better afterwards, but if
there are measures that will pay for these preventative issues, people might
be more inclined to do that. So the patient also needs to take care of
themselves, and needs to really work towards becoming more healthy.