Perceptions of AstraZeneca has placed us among the leading employers in the industry. In the 2004 Top Employers survey, conducted annually by Science’s Office of Publishing and Member Services, we placed fifth, up from sixth in the 2003 survey.

Our top three characteristics were identified as

• treats employees with respect
• innovative leader in the industry
• work and personal values are aligned

The survey confirmed a number of positives that we have worked hard to inculcate in our practices, and we knew these things were effective because of the talent we had been able to attract.

In the autumn of 2004, Louise Grochow joined our clinical research department in Boston as product medical director for emerging brands within the oncology therapy area. Previously, she was chief of the Investigational Drug Branch of the National Cancer Institute in the US. One reason Dr Grochow chose AstraZeneca over the many other biotech and pharmaceutical companies in the Boston area was our philosophy and practice of maintaining close working relationships between drug discovery and clinical scientists.

Seamless decision-making process

“My decision to join the company was primarily based on its spectacular discovery research organisation and a great pipeline for cancer therapies,” she says. “AstraZeneca is among the few pharmaceutical companies to insure clinical input is an integral part of the early drug discovery process, which adds a higher degree of confidence in the agents entering clinical trials."

"Working together, there’s a seamless decision-making process that permits the most efficient developments and hastens the time from discovery to clinical trials. In Boston, the oncology gateway team is collocated with discovery, which allows me to give continuous clinical input as projects are developing and underway. This approach is good for AstraZeneca, helping to improve productivity, and the faster we get drugs from discovery through development and onto the market, the better it is for patients."

“AstraZeneca’s broad cancer research pipeline includes both small molecules and monoclonal antibodies, and a varied range of disease targets. This puts us in the favorable position of being able to study a combination of investigational cancer agents out of its own pipeline,” she says. “The National Cancer Institute is doing that across several companies, including AstraZeneca, but very few companies can do it within their own pipelines."

Wise to do research with monoclonal antibodies

“The fact that AstraZeneca had the vision to expand its oncology research using monoclonal antibodies, and its decision to partner with an experienced biotech company –Abgenix – in the process, shows a lot of wisdom. The biology is moving forward so quickly, and the probability of success with targets that are suitable for antibodies appears much greater because there aren’t the pharmacokinetics and metabolism issues that have to be addressed with small molecule therapies,” she says. “In oncology, the attrition rate is relatively low once antibodies reach human clinical trials. Most of them are making it. And that means more and more patients will be seeing the benefits of targeted oncology drugs that destroy or alter the activity of specific cancer cells, without the harsh side effects commonly associated with cancer treatment.”

“Given that we have such an extensive array of potential cancer targets, one of the major tasks is identifying those that will result in drugs that really make a difference for patients – be they antibodies or small molecules. The targets are inherently complex, and one of the challenges is in knowing how to assess whether an agent is working or not,” she says.

Trust and responsibility important

“When I interviewed for this position, AstraZeneca made it a point to identify scientists I would be interested in meeting so I could get a good grasp of the environment. The people I spoke with, said it was a real joy to conduct their research at AstraZeneca because they were given responsibility for their work. They weren’t micromanaged, and they felt trusted as scientists,” she says. “Now that I’m here, I feel the same way. It’s all about expecting your people to do a good job, and then trusting them to do a good job.”

Published 13 June, 2005