Kotzin ED:13sept
8/4/09
14:43
Page 92
BIOMARKERS
Leaping ahead in translational medicine Brian Kotzin, Vice President of Medical Sciences at Amgen, tells Marie Shields how biomarkers help translate basic science into medicine.
B
rian Kotzin is the first to admit that his background is a little unusual compared to that of his senior colleagues at Amgen. “I was at the University of Colorado, at The National Jewish Centre for Immunology, now called the National Jewish Medical and Research Centre,” he explains. “I was a physician scientist and did the usual things they do in academic medicine. I’m a clinician, a rheumatologist, so I saw patients within the internal medicine and rheumatology setting. I also ran a laboratory, and I did a lot of teaching.” Kotzin’s appointments were in medicine, immunology and genetics. Over 25 years, he headed clinical immunology and rheumatology groups, as well as a centre of excellence devoted to autoimmune diseases. As this research developed, he realised the next step would be to develop it into a therapeutic, which can be hard to do in an academic setting.
92
www.ngpharma.eu.com
Much of the work that Kotzin and his team carry out in medical sciences is related to biomarkers. “Our group is composed of combined groups from research and clinical development,” he points out. “For example, we have a molecular sciences group that’s devoted to molecular biomarkers, we have an imaging sciences group that’s devoted to advanced imaging biomarkers, we have a clinical immunology group that includes a group focused on cellular biomarkers, and we have the development group. It’s a very biomarker-oriented function here in medical sciences.” The goal of Kotzin’s studies is to maximise the information he gets from early clinical trials. Because the therapeutics are being introduced into a small number of people, it’s important to get as much information as possible, which is accomplished by dividing biomarkers up into different categories. “One of our biomarker-directed questions is, when we introduce a therapeutic into people, did we hit the target? Did we do what we really