The Backstory Behind The Companion Diagnostics 101 Article In Life Science Leader

By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @RfwrightLSL

When Life Science Leader magazine was invited to attend The Economist’s War On Cancer healthcare forum in Boston, Sept. 28, 2016, I wasn’t sure who I would meet. But one of the speakers whose name caught my attention was Dr. Alan Wright, and not just because we happen to share the same last name.

Alan Wright, M.D., is the chief medical officer for Roche Diagnostics Corporation in Indianapolis, and we just happened to be sitting at the same table during the event. We began talking about some of the challenges faced by companies launching products in today’s market, relaying some old war stories involving diagnostics. For example, back when I worked for Mead Johnson Nutritionals, one of the products we helped launch was the Thin Prep Pap Test — a diagnostic that promised to revolutionize the OB/Gyn market. Traditional pap tests had a host of problems that made them difficult to read, and often resulted in a high percentage of false positives, as well as false negatives. The Thin Prep, however, used a liquid technology that allowed for a randomized sampling of a patient’s cells, which were placed on a slide in a much easier-to-read monolayer (a single layer of cells). When showing the difference between a traditional pap test and the Thin Prep to physicians, there was no question as to which product was superior. But that did not make adoption of the technology any easier.