In the pharmaceutical industry in general, what therapies look particularly promising?
There is a plethora of different kinds of mechanisms that are being pursued that are, to me, very exciting. If I focus primarily on one disease, say, rheumatoid arthritis, we now have a number of anti-TNF [tumor necrosis factor] agents: Enbrel, Humira, Remicade, and now Cimzia, all of which basically target the TNF overproduction. After the anti-TNFs, there are a number of therapies for arthritis with very different mechanisms of action. There is the Orencia molecule, which targets the T cells and maybe the dendritic cells, to decrease inflammation. That's been approved this past year. Then, of course, the Roche/Genentech/Biongen Idec drug, MabThera/Rituxan, was approved - again, a totally different mechanism of action, really in the space of B-cell biology. Other things that have not been approved but are in late stages of trials include the Chugai Roche anti-IL-6 ...
