TrailblAZers in Oncology:
making breast cancer history

Grief is an undeniable part of the drug discovery journey

This is a hard lesson I continue to learn throughout my career. There are few industries where you can pour your heart and soul into your work and collaborate with some of the smartest people in the field, and still, sometimes at the end of the process feel like there is nothing to show for it. Heartbreaking failures happen in drug discovery. The thing you thought would make a difference for patients actually hasn't and you can feel like you are letting patients down – until you realise that failure can be a springboard for the most promising breakthroughs.

Finding promise in failure

I was raised in a family of medics and scientists, so my view on scientific study from a young age was that of conceptual fascination. As I considered my career path in secondary school and university, this point of view was solidified thanks to captivating teachers and lecturers that dug into big, challenging questions in the lab with enthusiasm and wonder. With that science-based foundation and a desire to find the opportunity for my contributions to have the biggest impact, I made the decision to embark on a career in the pharmaceutical industry.

During my 22 years at AstraZeneca, I’ve seen a number of discoveries that helped change outcomes for patients, from overcoming drug resistance, to lowering toxicity and gaining a better quality of life, to improving overall survival. But I’ve also seen some great ideas fail - and it’s from these failures that we learn the most.

My mentors taught me that good scientists remain agile. That can be hard to remember when you work on a compound for years, feel great about its potential, and clinical trial results don’t show improvements in patients as you expected. You don’t forget that disappointment – you never want to experience it again, but it’s simply a part of the process and you learn from it. As a global product leader, I remind my teams that we can wallow in our grief, or we can ask: what did work? What have we learned? What could we do better next time?

I’ve seen a handful of therapeutic targets that puzzled scientists for years until we designed and discovered the right drug to unlock the potential. When you’re lucky enough to experience that magic – when hard work, persistence and extraordinary science translate into great data for patients – that’s the best feeling ever. That’s when we can change what it means to be diagnosed with cancer.

Humanising to inspire

This is especially true when it comes to progress in breast cancer research. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime, and even more people are touched through their own loved ones’ diagnoses.¹ Advocacy and awareness efforts, as well as research and drug development in this area have drastically transformed what a breast cancer diagnosis means. I am among those advocates, as my mother, grandmother, sister-in-law and stepmother-in-law have been diagnosed with breast cancer and undergone treatment. I have a slide with their photos that I share whenever we talk about our goals and priorities because they are never far from my mind. I project it for my teams because these people – our family members, friends, loved ones – are what our work is all about. They are the faces behind our purpose, and they need us to deliver that purpose quickly, time is always of the essence.

The drive behind our work goes beyond the people in our lives. During past projects, my teams have kept track of each patient impacted by our clinical trials using a whiteboard to tally trial data as it reports in. Each tick mark was a cause for celebration for us as it represented a positive response from an individual patient, showing us the impact of our work in action. The personal connections we feel to each and every cancer patient, no matter if we know them personally or not, is what fuels our passion for this job – the why behind the what.

Collaboration as a key to success

At AstraZeneca, our bold ambition is to contribute to the elimination of breast cancer as a cause of death. Over the next decade alone, we hope to deliver medicines that can treat one in three breast cancer patients across subtypes and stages of disease. Let’s be honest: it's an incredibly challenging thing to do. And a goal that can’t be accomplished without an incredibly passionate team. Bringing smart people together to share skills, insights, and different perspectives – that’s the undeniable power of a team and one of the things I love most about working at AstraZeneca. Particularly in pharmaceuticals, a collaborative approach accelerates the speed and volume of progress – and in oncology, that progress can prolong lives.

Survival rates and treatment options for patients with breast cancer have improved dramatically over the last two decades, but our work is not done. I’ve been asked if we get tired. The answer is: no. Our mission is too great. That is what keeps us ever motivated, ever moving, and ever focused on discovering potential solutions to ensure all patients with breast cancer receive optimal breast cancer care.

This is the first edition of a new series: TrailblAZers in Oncology, which will spotlight colleagues on the AstraZeneca Oncology team who are making an impact, both personally and professionally.