Teva is a leading global pharmaceutical company whose mission is to deliver high-quality healthcare to millions of patients every day. The company is dedicated to addressing unmet patient needs through the innovation and creativity that its integrated generics and specialty capabilities brings to the science of combining drug development capabilities, devices, services, and technologies in a holistic, patient-centric approach.

 

“At Teva my job is to create, build, and grow the personalized medicine & pharmacogenomics unit in a way that will ensure that Teva has the capabilities to integrate biomarker research, and treatment personalization, into our drug development programs – where there is a clear benefit for patients and healthcare in terms of a clinically meaningful improvement in benefit/risk profile.” says Iris Grossman, PhD, vice president, global head of personalized medicine & pharmacogenomics.

 

Grossman’s education includes Duke University, research associate, pharmacogenetics, 2005 –2007; Weizmann Institute of Science, PhD (collaboration), medicine/ pharmacogenetics, 2002 – 2005; and Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Direct PhD, medicine/pharmacogenetics, 2000 – 2005.

 

Originally, Grossman wanted to be a neurologist, “to work with patients and help people feel better.” However, while pursuing her PhD, she got a “wake-up call to the impact our genetic make-up has on the way we respond to drugs, and how solutions could potentially be engineered around it,” Grossman recalls. “This was my calling. It became clear to me that this was how I could follow my dream of helping people feel better but in much more fundamental way and on a much bigger scale.”

 

The issue, Grossman believes, is that following the more typical “one size fits all approach” to medicine is quite limited. “We all know that each of us is unique and this approach is not exactly efficient,” she says.

 

Grossman’s been fortunate to have been an interal part of projects that “had the effect of impacting mindset and strategy across multiple large pharmaceutical companies – this in itself is enormously rewarding and satisfying,” she acknowledges.

 

The one project that stands out involves developing a genetic predictive test for response to Copaxone, a well-known treatment for patients with multiple sclerosis.

 

“This has been a complex and challenging project; however, if we can successfully identify those patients who are genetically predisposed to show a high response to Copaxone, we would hope to provide those patients with a vastly superior benefit risk profile- potentially making a huge impact on the success of their treatment and on their lives,” she explains.

 

The biomedical industry has shown a great openness and willingness to allow compelling science to change the traditional way of developing drugs, she says, feeding a significant increase in investment and leading to a greater number and broader spectrum of development programs that move faster to the market.

 

“The willingness of the industry to adopt personalized medicine and pharmacogenomic techniques provides the platform for the future direction of the industry,” says Grossman. “I can only see even greater investment, further advances in understanding and application, and, subsequently, even broader outputs and therapies that cover additional diseases and larger patient populations.”

 

Grossman finds this booming area of activity incredibly satisfying. “More and more of this field allows you to link science to meaningful therapeutic solutions and to see the entire process within a reasonable time frame,” she says. “This is exciting and compelling and provides momentum for research in the field that will ensure its continued vibrancy and evolution for a long time to come.”