Shots:   

• Precision Medicine is a rapidly evolving field offering targeted treatments for optimal patient care   

• Education around testing is a critical need as many barriers exist that create practice gaps to patient identification  

• Testing State Awareness (TSA) is a critical component that needs to complement Brand and Disease State Awareness campaigns   

Anton Yarovoy, Group Product Director, Precision Medicine, J&J, spoke to us about his presentation “Precision Medicine: A New Hope: The approach will not be easy. The target area is only two meters wide” that he presented, on his own behalf, at the Reuters Pharma USA event held in Philly.    

Himanshu: Let’s start with some basics—what is precision medicine?  

Anton: Precision Medicine is the ability to treat a patient with a targeted therapy based on their genomic or genetic make-up. We have had tremendous innovations where patient treatment can be guided by their biomarkers to understand which therapies they would be eligible for during their treatment journey. Having a holistic understanding of the patient’s molecular profile is critical to placing them on the correct treatment path. Unfortunately, identifying some of these mutations after a different therapy has been started may prevent the patient from receiving a target therapy in the future or may lead to AEs as a result of switching.     

Himanshu: Why do you think the approach is not easy for precision medicine?  

Anton: The Star Wars analogy is a great way to describe how we have treated cancer historically in order to describe why the approach is not easy. If you look at what was done fifteen to twenty years ago and we think of the Death Star as cancer, we see that using a broad-based therapy that shoots across the cancer may hit it, but also may not, as it’s not aiming for the weakness. In Star Wars, once they identified the weak spot on the Death Star, what they referred to as a target area of only two meters wide, and were able to hit that, it caused a chain reaction that led to the Death Star being destroyed. In many ways this analogy is how Precision Medicine works with therapies that are built to act on a particular Mechanism of Action (MOA) that is driving that cancer. The challenge is getting us to finding and identifying those critical biomarkers that patients have so that they may be able to get these therapies.   

Himanshu: What is the difference between precision medicine and personalized medicine?  

Anton: Precision Medicine and personalized medicine do get used interchangeably often, but there have been some distinctions recently. Personalized Medicine is a wider term that can mean a variety of things, including therapies that are custom built for the patient, like CAR-T where the patient’s own immune cells are altered, to PGx where medication response can be measured. Precision Medicine falls under this overarching umbrella as something that is targeted based on the patient’s genomic, genetic, or other molecular profile, where the treatment is focused on what’s driving their cancer, rather than a broad-based approach that’s the same for everyone.   

Himanshu: What are your thoughts on patient analytics, RWE, and how do you think they can help in the better development of precision medicine?  

Anton: It is important for us to constantly see how patients are performing and Real-World Evidence (RWE) is a critical component that’s been driving precision medicine forward as data demonstrates benefits of shifting to this focused treatment approach. As we continue to evolve better therapies, this information needs to be communicated through Testing State Awareness campaigns, in the same way as Disease State Awareness campaigns exist today, in order to assist health care providers with the ever-changing landscape and show them these studies that can evolve their practice and may lead to better patient care.   

Saurabh: What is the role of companion diagnostics in precision medicine?  

Anton: Companion Diagnostics is what pharma companies are required to do as part of developing a therapy. If a company is going to release a product that requires genetic testing, they have to partner with a diagnostic company where that diagnostic test is utilized throughout the trials and becomes the blueprint for what markers need to be identified in order to qualify for the therapy. That blueprint may also be utilized by LDTs who are under CLIA certification and run internally validated tests to identify those markers for therapies.   

About the Author:   

Anton Yarovoy 

Anton is an executive marketing leader, described as what happens when science meets creativity, bringing 15+ years of experience in pharma and diagnostic industries, with a focus on brand management, precision medicine, launches, HCP marketing, patient marketing, and education. He is the recipient of multiple awards for HCP and patient-centric campaigns, as well as scientific achievements, for product lines valued near $1B. '  
 
Anton is a passionate patient-centric marketer and a frequent speaker at industry conferences, including Pharma CX Summit, Oncology CX Summit, MedDev eMarketing Summit West, and Pharma Engagement Technology Summit, with talks on digital marketing, precision medicine, oncology advertising, digital marketing, and the viral "Color for the Kids!" success story.   
 
Anton holds experience across a wide range of disciplines and disease states including precision medicine, lung cancer, breast cancer, companion diagnostics (CDx), customer experience, cardiothoracic surgery, hemophilia, pharmaceutical, cardiovascular, leukemia, immunochemistry, HIV/AIDS, liver enzymology, diagnostic blood testing, oncology, and immunology. 

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