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Welcome to “Your First 90 Days,” a series examining how pharmaceutical executives plan for success in their new roles. Today we speak with Dr. PK Morrow, Head of Oncology Therapeutic Area Unit at Takeda.
Dr. PK Morrow, former chief medical officer of CRISPR Therapeutics, said in late 2023 that First FDA approval The FDA approval of a CRISPR-based drug wasn’t the only one she was watching: She was also tracking the approval status of Takeda Pharmaceutical’s metastatic colorectal cancer drug. Full cherry blossomIt is the first new chemotherapy-free treatment approved in the U.S. in more than a decade, regardless of biomarker status.
“We saw them leverage that and be able to launch quickly after getting approval,” Morrow said. “We saw that this company was agile enough to advocate for the needs of patients.”
Soon after, Morrow took over Takeda’s oncology therapeutic area division, where over the past few months she has been honing and evolving its strategy to focus on three diseases: thoracic tumors, gastrointestinal cancers, and certain hematologic malignancies such as chronic myeloid leukemia. The company also plans to focus on four therapeutic areas: antibody-drug conjugates, biospecifics, small molecules, and cell therapies. “We have to adapt to the evolving disease landscape,” she said.
Shortly after Morrow took office, Takeda Exclude multiple cancer candidatesThis includes drugs being removed from Phase 2 programs for relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma, as part of a shift by drug companies away from myeloma to prioritize other areas.
“This is a strategic decision based on several factors, including the existing data set, the rapidly evolving multiple myeloma treatment landscape and the long development timeline,” said Andrew Plump, Takeda’s president of research and development. Financial results being announced Earlier this year.
“Cancer is so aggressive that we can’t let a day go by without moving forward with these programs.”
Dr. PK Morrow
Head of Oncology Therapeutic Area Unit, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company
Morrow brings experience not only from his history with CRISPR Therapeutics, but also from his experience as a physician at MD Anderson Cancer Center and later at Amgen, where he helped develop CRISPR Therapeutics. Lung Cancer Treatment Lumaclastargets KRAS G12C, a mutation that has been considered “untreatable” for decades.
“When I joined Takeda, I knew how to successfully develop therapies that fill unmet needs,” she said. “It also takes courage of conviction to know which therapies you really want to accelerate in development.”
Here, we spoke with Morrow about her areas of focus at Takeda and the company’s revamped oncology strategy.
This interview has been edited for clarity and style.
PHARMAVOICE: How are you reimagining Takeda’s oncology strategy?
Dr. PK Morrow: We’ve made some strategic shifts. I joined Takeda inspired by our heritage in multiple myeloma, where we had great therapies that we developed, like VELCADE and NINLARO. Now, the landscape has changed dramatically, with multiple therapies approved. We recognized that we needed to pivot and address the evolving disease landscape. We needed to address diseases with the greatest unmet need.
For example, we decided to pivot from developing drugs for myeloma to developing drugs for leukemia in hematology, and we are now moving into acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Ponatinib is under development.
Also, Options Contracts We worked with Ascentage (Pharma) to explore the possibility of developing a treatment called olverenmatinib. We noticed that patients with chronic myeloid leukemia were developing the T315I eye mutation as their disease progressed when they were being treated for CML with first- and second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors. That got us thinking, where can we address the greatest unmet need?
What will this new strategy look like?
We want to focus on unmet need and will be focused on three disease states: thoracic tumors, gastrointestinal cancers and certain hematological malignancies. We want to leverage our expertise and existing platform and will be focused on four therapeutic areas: ADCs (antibody drug conjugates), biospecifics, small molecules and cell therapies.
Are we opportunistic? Absolutely. If we find an amazing and exciting technology that will benefit patients in the short to mid-term, we will seriously consider it. But we first wanted to establish a strong 3 x 4 paradigm that would allow us to consider our business development opportunities and internal pipeline in a robust scientific and strategic framework.
What are your long term goals?
The mid-term and long-term goal is to have a truly global impact in terms of getting effective treatments to patients as quickly as possible. This is why I came here. I know from my experience at MD Anderson that patients are waiting. Cancer is so aggressive that we cannot go a day without moving forward with these programs. Hopefully (in a year), we can say that we are truly delivering this “four modalities, three disease states” strategy to patients.
