Integrated Diagnostics and Personalized Care: An Interview With GE Healthcare

Article preview from Medtech Insight - June 1, 2011

To capitalize on the rapidly growing personalized medicine space, large imaging companies have been diversifying and acquiring in companies with molecular diagnostic product lines and pipelines. Medtech Insight recently spoke with two executives from GE Healthcare: Joe Camaratta, general manager, GE Healthcare's Category Solutions and Marketing Group; and Robert Dann, oncology strategic marketing leader, GE Healthcare's Medical Diagnostics Division, who provided some details on the company's overall strategy for personalized medicine and what these developments might mean for the future of patient care.

Integrated Diagnostics and Personalized Care: An Interview With GE Healthcare

Article preview from Medtech Insight - June 1, 2011

The promise of personalized medicine continues to drive innovation in diagnostic technologies and drug development, particularly in the area of cancer, where specific therapies are being targeted to genetically derived tumor types with dramatic improvements in treatment response and patient outcomes. At the recent meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), held in Chicago in June, some of these dramatic improvements were on display as researchers presented very promising data from two highly publicized studies, demonstrating the benefits of personalized cancer therapies.

The studies investigated vermurafenib (Roche) for melanoma and crizotinib (Pfizer Inc.) for non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), both of which are targeted to cancers with specific genetic mutations. In the melanoma study, 48% of patients with a mutation in the BRAF V 600E gene who were treated with vermurafenib had significant tumor shrinkage, compared to 5% of patients treated with dacarbazine, the current standard therapy. Overall, researchers concluded that vermurafenib was associated with a remarkable 74% relative reduction in the risk of either death or disease progression in these patients. Results from Pfizer's ongoing Phase II trial of crizotinib in lung cancer were equally impressive, demonstrating an 80% response rate in trial participants who harbored a specific mutation in the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene. Crizotinib is currently under expedited review with the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), and analysts predict the drug, which would be the first targeted treatment for the estimated 50,000 people who have this type of lung cancer, could be a blockbuster for Pfizer, with potential revenues of more than $2 billion annually.

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