What does pharma need to do to develop this radical health model of the future?
Disease interception is a novel healthcare model that identifies, treats and sometimes cures disease before it is fully manifested. There is growing interest among pharma companies who see the opportunity to leverage their disease knowledge, patient understanding and research capacity to develop valuable new therapies for early stage intervention. But how do you get there? For an industry rooted in diagnosis and treatment of disease, the disease interception model will require a completely different mind-set, a deeper scientific understanding of underlying disease processes, a diversion of research spending, the development of completely new commercial models and new regulatory pathways to negotiate.
None of this is going to happen quickly, so what should pharma be doing now as this healthcare revolution takes shape? In The Future of Disease Interception, we interviewed experts to help you understand the challenges and benefits of the disease interception model and the steps industry can take to favourably position itself for the future.
Experts explore disease interception questions
What our experts say…
"Slow adoption is about mind-set, where companies have to move from this framework of diagnosing and treating to one where they can predict and pre-empt. Organisations are moving in that direction, with interception strategies and early interventions for cancer, for example, or even pre-malignant lesions. There is a trend to move towards early stage, which is not quite the definition of disease interception that J&J put together, and maybe other organisations are not using those very words, but the thinking is that if there was an opportunity to intervene early for the patient or the patient-to-be, then one should look at that space."
Anish Suri, Chief Scientific Officer at Cue Biopharma, US
"Measures for behaviour, context and environment will be necessary to get an understanding of external influences of diseases, from early disease markers to disease progression. Note that a genetic marker for a disease might never come to a disease state without other influencing factors."
Chris Van Hoof, Vice President of R&D at imec, Belgium
"[Barriers are] possibly a combination of structural and commercial factors, but a lot of the data that underscores hard pharmacology may be very different from datasets that determine behavioural changes or opportunities. Structurally, we need a change in terms of a research infrastructure that enables pertinent investigations that can be done concurrently in both spaces."
Anish Suri, Chief Scientific Officer at Cue Biopharma, US
"Sustaining a project amidst budget constraints will be a challenge. Gaining confidence, support and investment from leadership will rely on early successes. Budgets are constantly being squeezed and so the bar can keep getting higher to keep a project alive. Early success will build confidence in disease interception and make leadership teams more willing to invest."
Andrew Leishman, Director at Immunoconsulting Limited, UK
What is disease interception?
Although there have been different interpretations of what 'disease interception' means, it has become generally accepted that three key conditions must be satisfied for an intervention to be described as disease interception:
For the purpose of this report, disease interception is defined as:
Medical and behavioural interventions that target disease biomarkers in asymptomatic individuals, thus stopping or slowing down the development of symptoms.
What to expect
About the Expert contributors
The three experts who contributed to this report are from either pharma or consultancy firms. All have had experience in either the development of disease interception models or the development of tools and techniques to facilitate disease interception.
Why Choose FirstWord FutureViews?
FirstWord FutureViews reports analyse in detail significant emerging technology and market trends that pharma executives need to understand if they are to manage the opportunities and challenges that lay ahead. These concise and highly focused reports:
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