Archive for health care
An Eye on Innovation: Allergan
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Allergan (NYSE: AGN), the major multi-specialty pharmaceutical company with expertise in ophthalmology and beauty, has been on a tear in the stock market, driven by its bold approach to innovation. The market cap, now $25 billion, has roughly doubled in the past year. I heard CEO David Pyott speak to Jim Cramer on Mad Money last night and am impressed with the financial commitment to innovation. I am also impressed with the new product development work that is done in extending great products to new fields. For example, Botox® (Botulinum Toxin Type A), used so successfully for cosmetic surgery, also has potential to modify hyperactive bladders or juvenile cerebral palsy. Their expertise in neuroscience is also being applied to migraine headaches, where a promising product is in Stage 3 clinical trials. The Botox® approach to skin beauty is being enhanced with Juvederm® hyaluronic acid (HA) dermal filler formulation, a material that can be injected into the skin to fill some wrinkles. They are also addressing the challenge of obesity with their FDA-approved laproscopic band, a less invasive approach to bariatric treatment. In ophthalmology, one of their most profitable segments, a host of products treat eye conditions such as glaucoma or dry eye.
Allergan’s products are well suited for the needs of the aging baby boomer population and appear to be riding a wave of technical success well matched to a demographic wave. Many growth opportunities still exist, and with the heavy investment in innovation and research, Allergan appears poised to continue growing, something that is unusual for many large pharmaceutical companies these days.
The company began in 1950 when chemist Chemist Stanley Bly developed anti-allergy nose drops and got the help of his friend, Gavin S. Herbert Sr., who owned a pharmacy. Two years later, after listening to advice from a pharmacist about patient needs, they developed an eye drop with anti-histamine, the first such eye drop in the United State. Sales skyrocketed and Allergan became a major player in ophthalmology, which today makes up almost half of their business still.
Listening to market feedback and acting on clues and suggestions from knowledgeable people like a pharmacist allowed Allergan to quickly shift its focus and its product array in the early days to address an important unmet need. This led to eye products, not just nose drops, and the opportunity in ophthalmology that will continue to be huge for Allergan, now representing nearly 50% of sales, if they can keep an eye on innovation.
Dr. Sangtae Kim on the Morgridge Institute
Posted by: | CommentsDr. Sangtae Kim, the visionary leader of the Morgridge Institute for Research that is the private arm of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, discusses he Morgridge Institute in the video below beginning at about 4 minutes into the program. His comments are related to my previous Pixetell video presentation on the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery and to my presentation in Singapore last year on the parallels between the innovation experiment in Singapore and that of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. Thank, Dr. Kim!
In Conquering Innovation Fatigue, we emphasize that many innovators are motivated by the desire to make a difference in the world rather than merely obtain personal profit. We also discuss the concept of innovation competitions as a great way to fuel innovation success and access new talent. We also emphasize the importance of collaboration across disciplines and organizational boundaries as the future of innovation success. All these concepts are nicely illustrated by an organization seeking to cure ALS, Lou Gherig’s disease. Prize4Life, Inc. (Prize4Life.org) makes an interesting case study of what can be achieved in the realm of altruistic innovation using collaborative models and innovation competitions.
Meghan Kallman, Marketing & Communications Manager of Prize4Life, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, kindly shared some information with me about their inspiring innovation efforts. Here is the information she provided:
I would like to share with you the case of Avichai Kremer, co-founder and CEO of Prize4Life, Inc. Then a student at Harvard Business School, Kremer discovered in 2004 that he had ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease).
Avichai Kremer, co-founder and CEO of Prize4Life, Inc.
A computer-science engineer and ex-captain in the Israeli army, he had planned to graduate, work as a manager in a hi-tech company, and raise a family. Those plans changed drastically when he was told he would have 2-5 years to live, and that the medical establishment could do nothing for him. Kremer’s business perspective sparked his interest in the economics of ALS therapies, and inspired him to use his Harvard training to work for a cure.
Little is known about what causes ALS and only a few companies develop ALS drugs, so Kremer and two of his Harvard colleagues queried scientists and industry executives about the gaps that have prevented researchers from finding a cure. Companies said that they needed some basic research tools to reduce the cost of the development, like a biomarker – a better way to track disease progression. So Kremer and his classmates began Prize4Life, Inc., a non-profit organization employing business theories to stimulate research, which announced in 2006 that they would give $1 million to anyone who could come up with such a biomarker. The ALS Biomarker Prize program recently awarded $100,000 in progress prizes, and the organization’s second prize, the Avi Kremer ALS Treatment Prize, hits its one-year anniversary in October 2009.
While prizes are the visible core of our results-oriented model, we are also conscious of the need to create a vibrant and supportive arena in which our participating teams can effectively compete. Prize4Life has thus created a series of innovative projects and partnerships, piggybacking on its groundbreaking prize model, to ensure that all competing teams equal opportunity to be successful.
As one example of such partnership: in June 2009, Prize4Life and the Alzheimer Research Forum announced the launch of a new ALS-focused internet portal known as the ALS Forum (http://www.researchALS.org). Initial reaction to the new web portal has been swift and positive. The site offers ALS researchers around the world a one-stop access point for cutting edge research news and unique web-based resources. We also have designed and developed a manual to help researchers design their animal trials, and are currently designing and developing a database of genes associated with ALS that we intend to make available to researchers.
About Prize4Life
Prize4Life was founded by a group of Harvard Business School students when one of them, Avi Kremer, was diagnosed with ALS at the age of 29. Prize4Life works to accelerate the discovery of a treatment and a cure for ALS by using powerful incentives to attract new people and ideas, and to leverage existing efforts and expertise in the ALS field. Among other program initiatives, the organization currently administers the ALS Biomarker Prize Challenge, the Avi Kremer ALS Treatment Prize, and the ALS Forum.THE NEXT ALS BREAKTHROUGH COULD BE YOURS
Meghan also shared with me an example of a successful outreach effort using the competition model. “We actually awarded $50,000 to a dermatologist who had never studied ALS before, and who was intrigued by the prize model, and who submitted a winning entry, which is a testament to the potential of the prize model itself.” For the complete press release with much additional information, see the press release, “Prize4Life Awards Prizes for ALS Biomarker Challenge to InnoCentive Solvers: Extends $1Million Challenge Seeking ALS Biomarker” (PDF).
Further examples of great collaboration can be seen in their press release, “Prize4Life and The Jackson Laboratory partner in fight against ALS
Non-profits join forces to provide researchers with new preclinical resources” (PDF). This describes a partnership with The Jackson Laboratory (JAX®), the world’s leading provider of mouse models, to provide preclinical resources for ALS research. Together, Prize4Life and JAX® have prepared a comprehensive training manual to enable researchers to more effectively use the SOD1 mouse model in the fight against ALS.
Their website is http://www.prize4life.org.
Want to Help?
If you would like to help, Meghan told me that there are many opportunities. “We always need donations and fundraisers (this is the link), but we also have folks who host events for us, who blog on our behalf (on their blogs or on ours), who reach out to scientists who may want to compete for our prizes, to follow us on Facebook and Twitter, to link to us on their sites, the list goes on! We have an exciting event coming up here in Boston, for those who are local–Boston’s pro lacrosse team will be featuring us at ‘Heroes Awareness Night’ at the Boston TD Garden on February 6, and donating a percentage of the proceeds to our efforts. If anyone is on the east coast and wants to attend, they should click here:http://bit.ly/512shV. Anyone interested can contact me directly, mkallman at prize4life dot org.
A great example of collaborative innovation in action, with bonus points for using innovation competitions and having altruistic goals. ALS is a terrible disease and needs more attention in the quest for cure.
The Long-Tail of Innovation: Customizing Health Care Based on Patient Genetics
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the hottest trends for modern innovation is customization of products and services to meet the unique needs of individuals. Classic examples of business model innovation based on customization include Dell computer, who developed a suite of patented supply chain advances to assist in rapidly delivering customized computers at low cost, or Netflix, whose supply chain and Internet-based services allow users to select from vast numbers of movies that could never be housed in a local brick and mortar store. Now IT-related businesses including eBay and hundreds of others are increasingly taking advantage of Internet tools, database systems, cookies and other ways of tracking customer preferences and patterns to provide customized offerings to appeal to the unique needs and wants of individuals.
The next frontier for innovation based on customization will be health care. Some think this is already happening now that health records can be electronic and advanced diagnostic tools and databases can be applied to meet patient needs, but in reality, much of health care is still based on old models of “one or two sizes fit all.” What is the right medication for a patient? In what dose? Body weight, age, and gender may be considered in writing a prescription, but there are many other factors that need to be considered, including genetics. Understanding the relationship between drugs and individual genetics represents an important frontier for innovation in medicine. Today I’d like to highlight one important example of successful research in this field.
Recently in Singapore, while speaking at an Innovation and Enterprise Week, I met keynote speaker Dr. Michael Hayden of the University of British Columbia’s Center for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics. (Not the same Michael Hayden who was a director of the CIA.) Dr. Hayden was recently named Canada’s Researcher of the Year. In his speech, Dr. Hayden spoke of his quest to understand the mysteries of disease and to reveal their genetic roots to thereby develop better approaches to treatment for patients. One exciting breakthrough that he mentioned, arising from collaboration with others at UBC and beyond, is the discovery that the terrible side effect of deafness that strikes many cancer patients on chemotherapy can be predicted with DNA testing. The popular and highly effective drug, cisplatin, is the problem. By understanding the relationship to genetics, high-risk patients can be identified and alternate medications can be prescribed. Finding genetic links to adverse drug reactions is a major step forward toward treatments that really match the unique nature of each patient.
A week after my encounter with Dr. Hayden in Singapore, I was in Mexico City’s large international airport, standing in a line, when I overheard the man behind me telling someone about his clinical work with cancer patients, and the discovery that genetics played a role in determining whether the patient would be at risk for deafness. My curiosity was aroused, so I couldn’t resist the temptation to interrupt and ask the man if he was from the University of British Columbia by any chance. Yes, in fact, he was. This was Dr. Bruce Carleton, a peer of Dr. Michael Hayden whom Dr. Hayden had mentioned in Singapore. What a small world it can be when I pay attention and reach out to others! We discussed his work briefly and I expressed my excitement at what they are doing. Today he kindly sent me a copy of his recent publication on the cisplatin work, published in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics. The publication is “Genetic variants in TPMT and COMT are associated with hearing loss in children receiving cisplatin chemotherapy” by J.D. Colin, Hagit Katzov-Eckert, Marie-Pierre Dubé, Beth Brooks, S. Rod Rassekh, Amina Barhdadi, Yassamin Feroz-Zada, Henk Visscher, Andrew M. K. Brown, Michael J. Rieder, Paul C Rogers, Michael S Phillips, Bruce C Carleton, Michael R. Hayden & the CPNDS Consortium, Nov. 2009. Here is the abstract:
Cisplatin is a widely used and effective chemotherapeutic agent, although its use is restricted by the high incidence of irreversible ototoxicity associated with it1. In children, cisplatin ototoxicity is a serious and pervasive problem, affecting more than 60% of those receiving cisplatin2–5 and compromising language and cognitive development. Candidate gene studies have previously reported associations of cisplatin ototoxicity with genetic variants in the genes encoding glutathione S-transferases and megalin6–8. We report association analyses for 220 drug-metabolism genes in genetic susceptibility to cisplatin-induced hearing loss in children. We genotyped 1,949 SNPs in these candidate genes in an initial cohort of 54 children treated in pediatric oncology units, with replication in a second cohort of 112 children recruited through a national surveillance network for adverse drug reactions in Canada. We identified genetic variants in TPMT (rs12201199, P value = 0.00022, OR = 17.0, 95% CI 2.3–125.9) and COMT (rs9332377, P value = 0.00018, OR = 5.5, 95% CI 1.9–15.9) associated with cisplatin-induced hearing loss in children.
Watch for genotyping of patients coupled with extensive research on genetics and drug performance to become a pillar for health care innovation in the future. Customization of care at many other levels can be expected as well, as long as incentives for innovation in health care remain healthy.
Congratulations to Drs. Carleton and Hayden and their partners for outstanding work that will drive further innovation in how patients are treated.