Context of Vulnerability

The Right Drug for the Right Patient

Most oncology drugs on the market today work in only a small percentage of patients for which they are indicated. As a result, many are associated with high treatment failure rates-typically 70-80 percent, with side effects that can be extremely challenging for patients and doctors alike. In addition, because of the relative non-selective nature of oncology drug development, the landscape is littered with lengthy and costly development programs and, unfortunately, high development failure rates.

The Context of Vulnerability

In cancer therapy, the "context of vulnerability" can be defined in terms of the vulnerability of the tumor to a given drug and the vulnerability of the patient to that drug. Under ideal circumstances, a drug will destroy the cancer cells effectively, without debilitating side effects.

Defining the Context

To define the context of vulnerability for a therapy, we use an advanced systems biology approach to discover, understand, and exploit the vulnerabilities that arise in cells during, and because of, the cancer process. Powerful new analytical tools based on recent discoveries in genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics are central to these efforts.

Developing the Therapy

We develop patient-selective therapies by defining and assessing the context of vulnerability for specific tumors and therapies, allowing for treatment of only those patients most likely to respond specifically to our drugs. We integrate this definition with clinical insights and mechanism-of-action information into the selection of patients for clinical trials. This approach helps to drive the design and execution of regulatory and commercialization strategies for our products and optimally positions them for success in clinical development and commercial use.

The Dream: The Right Drug for the Right Patient