Life Sciences & Healthcare

Lifescience market segments

Challenging disease areas for Drug Development

Oncology

Cancer treatment remains a significant challenge despite important advances in chemo-, radiation-, hormonal- immune- and targeted therapies. As a result of therapeutic advances some tumours have transitioned from having a very poor prognosis to becoming manageable diseases. However, there a number of solid tumours with poor initial response or loss of response to current treatment regimens. The regulatory path for new drug approval is well-versed with tailoring of new options such as the use of minimal-residual-disease or metastatic-free-survival as therapeutic advances are achieved for certain tumour types. Exploration of therapeutic targets for the tumour microenvironment (TME), both cellular and extracellular, is playing an important role in understanding cancer treatment resistance in tumours with strong protective stromal signatures and which carry some of the worst prognoses (e.g. pancreatic adenocarcinoma, ovarian cancer, glioblastoma). Additionally, observation of the influence of chemo- and radiation therapy on the TME is shedding important light on potential mechanisms for the loss of tumour response to treatment.

Neurodegeneration

The scientifically driven task of developing disease modifying therapy In the areas of neurodegeneration such as Alzheimer´s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), the Leukodystrophies and Huntington’s disease, remains extremely challenging. Although the scientific effort is producing some important breakthroughs in discovery; the pathobiology of these diseases is complex and defining a clinical trial design for testing new drug therapies that can clearly demonstrate clinically meaningful improvement using validated clinical trial endpoints is a significant challenge. This effort requires collaboration with Regulatory Authorities in carving out approval paths that meet the unmet need. Precautionary data collection in support of surrogate biomarkers that can predict clinical benefit, if available in time, may alleviate some of the strain on timelines and cost for testing of therapies in, sometimes large, pivotal Phase III trials. For disease areas where there is no established regulatory path, conducting groundwork in validating reliable tools for measurement of meaningful clinical benefit in and gaining an understanding of the heterogeneity of disease course across patient populations, is fundamental to moving the field forward in getting novel therapeutics to patients of high unmet need.

Immunology & Haematology

Moderate to severe inflammatory chronic diseases brought about by autoimmune or immune mediated disorders including the arthritis (e.g. rheumatoid, ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthropathy), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), psoriasis, multiple sclerosis (MS), inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis) all require manipulation of the immune system to control the inflammation and modify the disease with the aim of preventing irreversible end-organ damage. There is a fine balance in avoiding intercurrent serious infection while modulating the underlying inflammatory process. A high benefit:risk ratio is the objective for novel therapies that are more targeted in controlling inflammation accompanied by a lower risk for serious infection. Improvements in patient immune profiling at both the cellular and molecular level through further understanding of the disease pathobiology will enable a more personalized approach to therapy. in addition, continued development of clinical trial endpoints in the diseases that require more objective quantifiable clinically relevant measurement tools will support the development of safer and effective therapies in these challenging disease areas where heterogeneity in patient populations is a factor.

Cardiovascular & Metabolism

The cardiovascular outcome trials (CVOT) conducted in the past decade have been dominated by safety studies for new therapies in the treatment of patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Encouragingly, the sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors and the long-acting glucagon like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RA) showed cardioprotective benefits in addition to improvements in glucose control. Despite, major advances in the management of risk factors for CVD over the past 3-4 decades with a selection of effective lipid-lowering agents, antihypertensives, glucose lowering drugs in addition to healthy lifestyle modifications, CVD remains the leading cause of death worldwide. There are several confounding factors influencing this observation ranging from non-compliance with, to lack of access to, long term medication and lack of lifestyle changes. The traditional CVOT of previous years are necessarily very large to demonstrate a clinically meaningful benefit over standard of care and therefore, time consuming and expensive to operationalize.

As headhunters with expertise in the Life Sciences & Healthcare industry, our clients range from start-ups in the most preliminary stages, to local boutique players, Swiss-based market leaders, through to large, well-known international companies in both the public and private sectors.
The Life Science clients that we serve encompass organisations in wide-ranging sectors:

• General Management
• Commercial Pipeline, Commercial, Sales & Marketing 
• Product Management
• Quality Management
• Digitalization
• Research and Development
• Chemical Manufacturing
• Supply Chain Managment
• Regulatory Affairs
• Medical Liaison
• Market Access
• Biotechnology
• Medical Devices and Diagnostics
• Laboratory Diagnostics & Techniques
• Pharmaceuticals
• Contract Research Organizations (CROs)