From the editor: FiercePharma Senior Editor Tracy Staton published an insightful ebook on companion diagnostics last week. It’s suggested reading for anyone interested in the promises of companion diagnostics, the obstacles on the way towards their widespread adoption and suggestions for their most effective development. The FDAs policy and the recent draft guidance on companion diagnostics (also see earlier post) receive particular attention and are very well put into context. It’s no big news that co-development of drugs and companion diagnostics will be required. However, the author’s broad discussion includes valuable thoughts on why the required efforts are challenging and how early partnerships between drugmakers and diagnostics companies can help meeting these challenges. Personalized medicine is still a somewhat distant goal but we’re starting to understand better how to get there. Click here to read the article on Fierce Biotech News or get the ebook.

From the editor: Big news from Roche and Novartis raise hopes for an improved treatment of breast cancer. See some of the enthusiastic comments below. Roche’s data on pertuzumab is particularly impressive and suggests that Herceptin treatment might be complemented with pertuzumab in the future. Interestingly, this raises the possibility that new diagnostics tests will be needed to identify the optimal combination of drugs for each patient. We might be getting closer to a personalized treatment of breast cancer.

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From the editor:

In 2011, the number of articles in peer-reviewed journals published by scientists using Definiens technology increased about threefold compared to 2010. As impressive as the dynamic increase is the wide variety of image analysis tasks that are successfully solved with Definiens technology.

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