The San Francisco Business Times featured UCSF Chancellor, Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, as one of its “Most Influential Women.” You can read the story here.
“What I want for women and for men — for all people — I want them to believe that anything is possible and to not feel constrained by the scope of what they dream about.”
Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann was profiled in the Sunday, April 11, 2010 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle. The story was featured on the front page. It provides a personal look at what drives the new leader of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). I was fortunate to have worked with Dr. Desmond-Hellmann while at UCSF. For me, she is a role model.
Dr. Desmond-Hellmann is credited with helping to create an industry powerhouse (Genentech) and bringing the world’s most successful anti-cancer drug treatments to market. These include Rituxan, the first drug to use monoclonal antibodies, which works by attacking specific types of cancer cells; Herceptin, the seminal drug which opened the doorway to personalized medicine by targeting the HER2 gene, which defines a specific subtype of breast cancer; and Avastin, the first angiogenesis inhibitor to stop tumors by preventing the formation of new blood vessels.
In the article, Bob Cohen, a senior Genentech executive best describes Desmond-Hellmann: “(she has a) sense of obligation that runs deep…I think she has always loved UCSF, and she also has deep spiritual beliefs. She’s also brilliant. A quick study. And she never disappoints…She used all she knew to develop a portfolio of oncology drugs…She was a gifted manager of people and resources, and she bet on the right horses and was able to get them to the finish line.”
“What’s possible for patients” has been a consistent theme throughout Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann’s career. She sums it up in the article: “It’s a life-changing moment for someone to be told they
have cancer,” she said. “So I’ve always felt this incredible commitment
to being a part of something that can help them.”
Desmond-Hellmann has been both a champion of and game changing pioneer in oncology translational research – taking the basic understanding of biology, science and technology and using that deep understanding for the direct benefit of patients. She helped fundamentally transform the way we research and treat cancer, and improved and helped extend millions of lives worldwide.
Today, as Chancellor of UCSF, she is taking her experience to the next level and applying it to finding treatments and cures for an even broader array of the world’s most devastating and unsolvable diseases. The future of this great institution is in good hands.
Photo credit: Lacy Atkins/The Chronicle
UCSF’s Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann is profiled in the Sunday, April 11, 2010 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle. The story is featured on the front page.
Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann explains her translational vision for
fighting cancer during her recent keynote address to UCSF’s breast oncology leaders. She describes 1997 to 2001 as oncology’s golden years. Rituxan, Herceptin and Gleevec debuted and changed the face of cancer treatments. Dr. Desmond-Hellmann believes that academia can today play a critical role in introducing “the platinum age” of cancer drug development.
“Cancer research is too slow, too expensive, too inefficient and too uncertain…we need to understand earlier and with greater confidence what the best ideas are,” she says. Read the full article here.
UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann discusses the future of oncology
drug development and adaptive clinical trial design and what it means
to patients in an interview with Pharma Strategy Blog’s Sally Church. Here are excerpts from the post:
“What’s really neat about the I-SPY trial is that Laura Esserman, the PI of the trial, is a breast cancer surgeon here at UCSF and has added so much value to the project because she sees patients early and has a unique opportunity to offer neoadjuvant therapy.
Patients are getting their primary therapy before they get surgery, so for imaging and biomarkers – either established or exploratory – it is a fantastic opportunity. The endpoint is pathological complete response, so you can see if the tumor has disappeared or not.”
“It’s a fantastic rapid readout model so you can get answers much more quickly in a year, including pathological specimens, along with the answers from biomarkers and imaging, which are important.
The FDA has allowed a master IND agreement for this study, so it will be possible to move agents in and out of the trial quickly. So if agent A looks promising it can be advanced quickly and more patients put on it, but if agent B looks toxic, it can be discarded quickly. It’s not just a clinical trial but a experimental trial process that gives you a rapid readout of whether the agent works or not.”
“The hope is that you won’t wasting time and money in phase III trials, but most importantly, patients experience on that molecule. If the answer is yes on I-SPY, you then have a biomarker hypothesis for that agent and can then do a more traditional phase III trial having increased your chances of success.”
via www.pharmastrategyblog.com
Read about the i-Spy 2 adaptive clinical trial which was launched on March 17 in Washington.
Watch the video from the Biomarkers Consortium press conference:
CNBC’s Mike Huckman looks back at pharma’s biggest decade, and also looks ahead at what’s to come in today’s segment “Big Pharma’s Big Decade.” UCSF’s Chancellor Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann is featured in the program. Dr. Desmond-Hellmann who brought the world’s anti-cancer blockbuster drugs to market says what she’s “most proud of is that we changed the way people think about cancer.”
2010 could be a year of firsts– the first therapeutic vaccine for prostate cancer, first Lupus drug, first once a week drug to treat diabetes, and the first new flu vaccine technology since the 1950’s.
According to Dr. Desmond-Hellmann, “what is tremendous is how there is literally an explosion of biology – it should be a golden era.” She also believes that there could be a significant break-through in Alzheimer’s disease on the horizon. Drugs today just treat the symptoms but don’t slow the progression.
Dr. Desmond-Hellmann concludes by saying: “If there was a genuine breakthrough in Alzheimer’s we’re talking about the kinds of medicines that could be the biggest products in the world… bigger than Lipitor and Avastin… from a business perspective this could be huge.”
Watch the video here.
UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann is featured in the CNBC's special "Biopharma: 10 Years in the Making." Watch the segment here:
http://plus.cnbc.com/rssvideosearch/action/player/id/1372930025/code/cnbcplayershare
UCSF’s Chancellor, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH, was selected by
FORBES as one of its 7 Most Powerful Innovators of 2009. You can read
the story here.
According to the article, Desmond-Hellmann’s most influential
innovations were the blockbuster cancer drugs Avastin and Herceptin. What makes Desmond-Hellmann an innovator?
UCSF’s Chancellor, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH, was selected by FORBES as one of its 7 Most Powerful Innovators of 2009. You can read the story here. According to the article, Desmond-Hellmann’s most influential innovations were the blockbuster cancer drugs Avastin and Herceptin.
Susan Desmond-Hellmann, a physician and cancer researcher, is a hero to legions of cancer patients. While president of product development at Genentech from 2004 to April 2009, she played an integral role in the selection, testing and development of Avastin, a colon cancer drug with annual sales of $9 billion, and Herceptin, a breast cancer drug with sales of $7.8 billion. In August 2009 she became the chancellor of UCSF, a powerhouse in medical research, where she aims to continue fostering innovation in health care and science.
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