Doctors confirm the exciting promise of ‘Personalised Healthcare’

Collaboration between Roche Thailand and Roche Diagnostics (Thailand), two leaders in pharmaceutical and diagnostics industries, play a key role in driving this new global healthcare paradigm Leading Thai doctors from Chulalongkorn and Siriraj Hospitals have confirmed the exciting potential of Personalised Healthcare to significantly increase the effectiveness of treating diseases and reducing drug wastage with the potential to optimize the use of healthcare budgets. Made possible due to recent scientific advances, personalised healthcare solutions are becoming increasingly prevalent and in Thailand they are already being used to treat Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C and some types of cancer. “Personalised Healthcare practices have the potential to generate huge benefits to the Thai healthcare system by helping reduce wastage of treatments and ensuring that patients only receive medicines when they will really benefit from them,” said Associate Professor Narin Voravud, M.D. Medical Oncology Unit, Department of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University Hospital “Recent advances in Personalised Healthcare have created new opportunities for treating Thai cancer patients in a more effective and efficient way.” Based on the knowledge that different patients with the same clinical diagnosis may respond to the same treatment in different ways, Personalised Healthcare seeks to ensure patients receive the most suitable treatments for their given genetic makeup and the specific condition and type of disease they are suffering from. A personalised therapy which is already available in Thailand is the use of targeted therapy to treat breast cancer. The drug is only effective in certain types of breast cancer which exhibit a specific “biomarker”, a distinctive biological indicator of a defined condition. If a patient is diagnosed as having a tumour with the specific biomarker they can then be considered for treatment with the drug. This process ensures that the drug is only provided to individuals who are most likely to benefit from it. Treatment of Hepatitis C (HCV), which affects an estimated 1 % of population, or more than 600,000 people in Thailand, has a two stage diagnosis process to identify suitable patients and the recommended duration for treatment. Patients are first diagnosed to identify which genotypes of the virus they are infected with since different genotypes have a different chance of being successfully treated. Furthermore, doctors also diagnose patients’ HCV RNA viral load (the amount of virus detected in their body) and modify the treatment (short or extend treatment duration) based on these results. The two stage diagnosis process followed by corresponding treatment and monitoring of treatment success allows the efficacy to be optimized. “Personalised Healthcare is a new way of thinking about treating patients and provides great benefits to all key parties in the healthcare industry,” said Associate Professor Tawesak Tanwandee, M.D. Division of Gastroenterology, Department of medicine, Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University “Patients receive the most suitable kinds of treatments and are not subjected to what are sometimes risky procedures, while doctors are in the best position to understand if a particular treatment will work for a given patient helping save time and allowing them to save treatments for patients who will really benefit from them.” Driving the availability of ‘Personalised Healthcare’ solutions for patients is the close collaboration between the pharmaceutical and diagnostic divisions of Roche. As a pioneer in the field, Roche considers ‘Personalised Healthcare’ as a key strategy and focus of its R&D efforts. “Roche is one of the first pharmaceutical companies to concentrate its R&D efforts on the search for Personalised Healthcare solutions. Personalised Healthcare is and will definitely continue to be a focus of our business.,” said Dr Rolf Ammelburg General Manager of Roche Thailand Ltd. “With the expertise that we have built up over the years in both diagnostics and pharmaceuticals, we are in a unique position to offer more and more tailored healthcare solutions for the benefit of the patients.” The Managing Director of Roche Diagnostics (Thailand) Ltd., Khun Pichetpong Srisuwankul remarked, “Diagnostics plays a critical role in enabling Personalised Healthcare. Without diagnostics, it would be impossible for a doctor to tell whether the treatment he or she is providing is having any effect on the patient. It would be like having a school with no examinations. Diagnostics provides doctors with the tools to know what is the best treatment approach for a particular patient and the more advanced these tools become, the more personalised the treatment for the patient can be.” Additional disease areas in which Personalised Healthcare solutions are being developed by Roche include a treatment for a specific form of skin cancer which results from a genetic mutation that occurs in approximately 50% of patients with the disease. Another example is a sophisticated test to identify women with infections of strains of human papilloma virus (HPV) that have the potential to develop into cervical cancer. Dr Rolf Ammelburg General Manager of Roche Thailand Ltd. Associate Professor Tawesak Tanwandee, M.D. Division of Gastroenterology, Department of medicine, Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University Associate Professor Narin Voravud, M.D. Medical Oncology Unit, Department of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University Hospital About Roche Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is a leader in research-focused healthcare with combined strengths in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Roche is the world’s largest biotech company with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, virology, inflammation, metabolism and CNS. Roche is also the world leader in in-vitro diagnostics, tissue-based cancer diagnostics and a pioneer in diabetes management. Roche’s personalised healthcare strategy aims at providing medicines and diagnostic tools that enable tangible improvements in the health, quality of life and survival of patients. In 2010, Roche had over 80,000 employees worldwide and invested over 9 billion Swiss francs in R&D. The Group posted sales of 47.5 billion Swiss francs. Genentech, United States, is a wholly owned member of the Roche Group. Roche has a majority stake in Chugai Pharmaceutical, Japan. For more information: www.roche.com. Media contact Jamie Rowland-Jones Hill & Knowlton Thailand Tel +66 02 6273501 ext 206 E-mail: [email protected] Click for photo release at www.thaipr.net

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