The economic and ethical considerations and implications of the stratification of future oncology therapeutics

This thesis investigates the economic impact of stratified medicine on industry and the subsequent ethical implications for patients. Stratified medicine involves the use of clinical biomarkers to indicate differential response among patients in efficacy or potential side effects of therapeutic agents. The advent of stratified medicine should, in theory, result in the safer, more effective use of therapeutic agents to treat cancer. However, reluctance remains within the broader life sciences community, in particular within the pharmaceutical industry, to embrace stratified medicine. I hypothesize that this is due to economic concerns. Firstly, an historical analysis of the rate of market adoption of stratified therapeutics is conducted by comparing the adoption velocity and time to peak sales of stratified therapeutics relative to traditional chemotherapeutics. The aim is to analyze whether historically, stratified medicines have been more or less successful in terms of speed of market adoption. To supplement this analysis interviews are conducted with investment analysts who cover pharmaceutical and diagnostics companies to gauge their views on stratified medicine. This is important due to the fact that publicly traded companies have an obligation to their shareholders, and shareholder views are shaped by the analyses of these individuals. In order to assess the future economic impact of stratified medicine on industry, particularly given that clinical biomarkers are now being developed much earlier in the R&D timeline, a model was constructed to predict economic outcomes based on various parameters associated with biomarker development.

Department dc:contributor.department

Harvard University--MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Sabir, Sameer A

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ernst R. Berndt and Mark Trusheim.

• Harvard University--MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/54674

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/54674