“This is an incredibly exciting time to bring the tools of technology to bear on the challenges of biology.”
So says Amgen CEO Bob Bradway in the latest “Innovation Realized” series of videos produced by the Nasdaq-100 stock index and highlighting how “innovators push the boundaries of what's possible to change lives and reshape reality.”
According to Bradway, “Our mission is to advance innovative new therapies for patients who are suffering from serious illnesses… Over the course of the last 40 years, we moved from having one medicine that addressed kidney disease to now having 25 medicines that we are able to bring to patients across 100 countries around the world.”
Still, the best may yet be to come.
“One of the most exciting things right now at Amgen is tackling what we call the ‘undruggable,’” says Dave Reese, Amgen’s head of R&D. “Eighty or 85% percent of protein targets that drive disease currently can't be broached with this generation of technologies. We are rapidly learning how to engineer new molecules that will make the undruggable, druggable.”
Once these molecules are created in the lab, proven in clinical trials to be safe and effective, and approved by regulators, they then need to be manufactured at scale—a complex process that often uses living cells.
“We have been one of the companies that has continuously pushed the envelope on translating great discoveries into novel medicines,” says Arleen Paulino, senior vice president of Manufacturing at Amgen. “We continuously invest in our biomanufacturing operations to ensure that we have a reliable and resilient supply (of medicines) for patients.”
“What we are seeing is the union of breathtaking advances in understanding human biology and human disease being united with the tools of tech,” Reese says. “That union is going to propel drug discovery and drug development for the next half century. That's the future.”
Watch Amgen's story as part of Nasdaq’s #InnovationRealized series below.
