Advancing Quality Through Innovation. To me, this year's American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting theme mirrors GSK's transformation within the oncology space. As a company, we are moving away from treating cancer as just one disease. Indeed we are no longer treating cancer, but now looking at ways to treat specific molecular targets.
This transition in drug development to personalized treatments is helping us get needed medicines to patients faster. Of course, the beginning stages of development can at times take longer, but by spending the time in the beginning to refine our hypothesis, we are able to accelerate the process in meaningful ways.
This year's meeting features some very important data in early trial phases (including ours), which illustrates the progress we as an industry are making in discovering how best to treat patients. Cutting edge technology is allowing us to pinpoint the mechanisms of cancer and develop exact treatments to fight them. We recognize that while we have made incredible advances in the last decade, we are also regularly presented with new challenges. Our scientists are hard at work each day to develop innovative medicines that will help us make profound differences in the lives of patients.
ASCO has been pretty interesting but I am disappointed with the lack of deliverables from so called personalized medicine companies. I am a part of a start up (www.dynemobiosystems.com) that we believe offer truly personalized medicine. Our technology can successfully predict patient response to therapy. We believe that the ability to predict therapy response is one of the key pillars of personalized medicine.