Co-written by:
Senior Vice President, Late Development Oncology, AstraZeneca
Senior Vice President, Early Oncology Development and Precision Medicine, Oncology R&D, AstraZeneca
Our ambition is to one day eliminate cancer as a cause of death. To do this, we have taken big steps to expand our clinical footprint. We are committed to potentially bringing 20 new medicines to patients around the world by 2030 and have already delivered three of those in oncology since May 2024.
The majority of our diverse pipeline uses a precision medicine approach, which aims to tailor the right therapy to the right patient at the right time. In addition to these individual medicines, we believe combinations of medicines that work through different mechanisms of action could best treat the heterogeneity that defines cancer. Through combinations, we aim to maximise cures.
Combination drug development also brings with it new challenges. Success requires an innovative, joined-up approach, starting from the earliest stages of research all the way through to patient delivery. At AstraZeneca, we are focused on unified strategies across the development teams and throughout the organisation in order to share a common mission, continuously connect and apply learnings.
Achieving our bold ambition requires such an approach, helping us advance our pipeline and potentially deliver better treatments to patients. This includes leveraging new technologies for precision, combination therapies and patient-centred development.
Adopting a combinations approach:
We believe transformative cancer outcomes can be achieved through combination and sequencing of treatments, attacking cancer from multiple angles. The breadth and depth of our oncology portfolio allows us to trial the transformative potential for many novel combinations using diverse modalities.
For example, an antibody drug conjugate (ADC) or radioconjugate therapy in combination with an immuno-oncology therapy, such as cell therapy, could act as a one-two punch against tumour cells, directly killing cancer cells while helping drive the immune system against them. Together, we aim to deliver deeper, more durable responses.
Pioneering transformational technologies in cancer research:
We are leveraging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) to pioneer state-of-the-art biomarkers that can deepen disease understanding and inform combination approaches and clinical trial design.
For example, our automated computational pathology solution, Quantitative Continuous Scoring (QCS), is designed to analyse the presence and localisation of biomarkers within cells and tissues. QCS has enabled us to deliver the first-ever computational pathology predictive biomarker for an ADC, and is becoming increasingly useful for understanding the mechanism of action of targeted therapies. It is also helping our teams better identify patients who are most likely to benefit from a specific treatment as we apply it to novel assets in our pipeline.
We are also using technology to detect disease earlier, increasing the likelihood of patient benefit. We are exploring the use of circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) to detect cancer progression, choose the right treatments for patients, determine how effective the treatment could be and understand which patients may or may not benefit from additional therapy.
Our AI strategy is underpinned by domain-specific multimodal foundation models, which can bring together, process and generate insights on many different data types (e.g., images, omics, clinical text) across the entire R&D lifecycle to help enhance clinical decision-making. We’re driving innovation in this area through our partnerships with Tempus and Pathos and our acquisition of Modella AI, with the aim of accelerating and optimising every step of oncology R&D.
Insights and partnership at every step:
Our agile, end-to-end development approach brings together a wide range of expertise across discovery, clinical development and operations. This helps us identify opportunities, head off challenges and streamline knowledge sharing.
In both early and late-stage development, we collaborate with external partners and regulators to help evolve and harmonise the global regulatory environment and maximise the pace of technological change. This is vital, as out-of-date regulation and regulatory misalignment drive health inequity and can present major barriers to patients’ access to the most advanced treatments. As we expand our footprint around the globe, these partnerships help streamline the implementation of new health initiatives to put potentially life-changing medicines within the reach of as many patients as possible.
Patient centricity across R&D:
Patients are at the heart of what we do. When designing clinical trials, we are working directly with patients to develop new ways to potentially transform their experience for the better.
For example, we are using technology to break down geographic barriers and enable early and effective personalised interventions that will help expand decentralised trials, with the aim of improving patient safety and enhancing the overall trial experience. We are also collaborating with technology companies to streamline patient identification and access processes, seeking to ensure that patients eligible for clinical trials can be enrolled quickly.
When using ctDNA to detect cancer, our trial in an investigational breast cancer treatment was the first registrational trial to monitor patients via a simple blood sample for early signs that their disease might be developing resistance to the therapy they were being treated with. This potentially allows for a much quicker transition to a new therapy before the cancer has a chance to continue to progress unchecked. This truly personalised approach to medicine could unlock options to deliver the right treatment to the right patient at the right time.
At AstraZeneca, our teams are committed to a holistic approach and constant collaboration – from bench to bedside and back to bench, across functions – with the aim to improve patient outcomes and achieve our bold ambition of one day eliminating cancer as a cause of death.
