Respiratory medicine is one frontier of the global healthcare landscape which has undergone significant transformations in recent years.
AstraZeneca, a longstanding pioneer of innovation in this field, continues to push boundaries and redefine patient care.
In this enlightening interview, we sit down with Prof. Maria Belvisi, Senior Vice President and Head of Research and Early Development, Respiratory & Immunology, BioPharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca. Belvisi offers unique insights into the company’s ambitious goals and scientific strategies in respiratory research.
From disease modification and potential cures to addressing unmet needs in severe asthma and COPD, AstraZeneca is leveraging cutting-edge technologies and multi-modal approaches. Belvisi delves into how the company is harnessing AI and digital health solutions to develop next-generation therapeutics and improve clinical trial methodologies.
The conversation also touches on AstraZeneca’s commitment to early disease identification, intervention and global access to treatments. Belvisi’s passion for collaboration across academia, governments, healthcare providers and patient advocacy groups shines through as she discusses the company’s holistic approach to improving patient outcomes.
Tune in to discover how AstraZeneca is shaping the future of respiratory care and why there is reason to be hopeful for patients worldwide.
Zohaib Sheikh: Hi, I’m Zohaib Sheikh, head of content at Fierce Pharma, and today I’m excited to be speaking with Maria Belvisi, senior vice president and head of research and early development, respiratory and immunology, biopharmaceuticals R& D at AstraZeneca. Welcome.
Maria Belvisi: Hi, great to be talking to you today.
Zohaib Sheikh: Before we begin, can you please introduce yourself and tell us about your role at AstraZeneca?
Maria Belvisi: So, as you said, my name is Maria Belvisi, and I’m responsible for respiratory and immunology, R& D, and clinical. And that means, early in this context, means from the first idea right the way through to the Phase III clinical trials.
Zohaib Sheikh: As a global leader in respiratory medicine, AstraZeneca has a long history of treating several respiratory diseases. Please tell us more about where the company is heading with its respiratory research and pipeline.
Maria Belvisi: So, as you said, we’ve spent many years developing a standard of care inhaled therapy for patients with asthma and COPD. But in the last years, we’ve wanted to go further. We’ve moved forward already with our biologics portfolio in asthma to treat the more severe end of the spectrum. But now really, we’re thinking about a few things. One is to move to disease modification and cure, so going beyond the treatment of disease. The other is to look at the patients that are still uncontrolled on standard of care but are not eligible or don’t have access to systemic biologics. And for them, we’re looking at prebiologic options, either in an inhaled format or an oral tablet format. And in addition to really using our expertise to look for medicines for asthma and COPD patients, we’re also using our expertise to go further to look at other diseases with high unmet needs like non cystic fibrosis, bronchiectasis, and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
Zohaib Sheikh: Can you please tell us more about AstraZeneca’s goals as it pertains to the future of respiratory research?
Maria Belvisi: So, again, really trying to understand the biological drivers of disease that are at play for those patients that are uncontrolled on standard of care and who maybe don’t respond to the current biologic treatments. So, it’s really looking mechanistically at the biology and the disease relevant pathways to uncover new options for these patients.
Zohaib Sheikh: What is the company’s scientific strategy for achieving these goals in respiratory care?
Maria Belvisi: So, if we take it from the top, we start now by identifying novel targets to address the unmet need in these diseases from patient samples and from patient data. When we get that information, we now have access to multi-modality treatments so we can pretty much drug anything that we identify as a new target. Also, and in addition to this, we want to identify the right patient at the start. Our diseases in focus are very heterogeneous and there are many disease drivers. So, we have to identify and match the right patient to the right medicine. And we have a view of that really from the start. Moving forward to the clinic, we need to innovate in the measurement of clinical endpoints. We need to learn more about our patient’s disease, not just the lung function, but also what’s happening inside the lung, with the structure of the lung. And we can do that by employing imaging techniques. And finally, we want to work together to identify diseases earlier, diagnosis and intervention earlier, and really collaborate broadly with healthcare providers, governments, patient advocacy groups, to really push the agenda for our patients.
Zohaib Sheikh: How’s the company using AI and digital health solutions to develop the next generation of therapeutics?
Maria Belvisi: I mean, I’ll give a couple of examples, but one thing that we know we have to do is that in addition to developing new interventions and new medicines for patients, we also have to innovate on how we conduct our clinical trials. And this is important and what we measure from patients. What’s the information we get from patients? And this is important because one of our goals is to go beyond symptomatic relief to disease modification and cure. But to do that, we need to go beyond measuring the normal, the usual regulatory end points, which for example in asthma and COPD will be the measurement of lung function and exacerbations of disease. So, in order to get more granularity on have you fixed the lung, or have you stopped it degenerating, what we need to do is be able to visualize the lung. So, we’re doing a lot of imaging studies at the moment, and this is where the AI comes into play. In collaboration with some state-of-the-art companies here, we’ve been looking at CT images, for example, in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis patients, and using AI algorithms to help us understand what’s happening to the actual structure of the lung, what’s happening to the fibrosis, what’s happening to lung volume, and this can actually help us assess the value of, or the impact of our intervention, but also if we’re really instituting disease modification. By that, I mean trying to restore the function of the lung or trying to stop this decline in the lung function and structure that you see in disease. So, we’re using AI there, and we’re also using digital solutions, for example, for monitoring lung function of patients at home. This enables us to take measurements more regularly and take it in a patient centric way, take the measurements from a patient at home so they don’t have to come into the clinic for measurements. So, it’s good for sustainability, not many visits to hospital or not as many, and it’s great for the patient to be able to have their measurements done in the comfort of their own environment and not in having to travel into hospital to have this done. So, lots of innovation in the clinical space to really support the new medicines we’re bringing forward.
Zohaib Sheikh: Finally, in addition to taking a precision-based medicine approach and leveraging digital technology, what else is AstraZeneca doing to improve outcomes for people living with respiratory diseases?
Maria Belvisi: Really, I guess on a more global level and beyond the science, we’re working with healthcare providers, with governments, with patient advocacy groups to really look at how we can bring more to our patients. How do we identify disease earlier? How can we intervene earlier? Because then a patient has more chance of recovery, and also finally, really working out how we can get patients globally more access to the treatment that is going to address the unmet need in their disease.
Zohaib Sheikh: As a leader in respiratory immunology research, what makes you hopeful for the future?
Maria Belvisi: I think leading on from the last question, I’m hopeful because we now have a lot of tools at our disposal. I’ve said already, you know, new modality treatments, I’ve said AI solutions to really monitor clinical endpoints, but also, I think even more importantly, the sense that we’re now collaborating more than ever as a community across academia, across governments, across healthcare providers, across patient advocacy groups. We’re now banding together and really working together to improve the lives of our patients.
Zohaib Sheikh: Well, thank you for speaking with me today, I appreciate you sharing your insights.
Maria Belvisi: Thank you.
Veeva ID: Z4-68859
Date of preparation September 2024
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