Šarūnas Narbutas: CML AN had a strategic meeting with CEO of Novartis

Šarūnas Narbutas, Director of Resysten Global, shared on LinkedIn:

“Today as CML AN we had a strategic meeting with CEO of Novartis – Vas Narasimhan – to revisit company’s long-term commitment to CML (chronic myelogenous leukemia) and to build on the progress made since our last meeting in 2018.

For the less informed readers, CML is the indication where the breakthrough in cancer has started and paved the way to targeted therapies that transformed cancer care from being near death sentence to a largely chronic disease. Currently, life expectancy of CML patients is the same as of a healthy population. I am one of those patients for the past 18 years.

The tectonic shift happened in 2001 with imatinib, a medicine that Novartis developed, later supplemented with 2nd line therapy nilotinib and now asciminib (the latest CML medicine developed by Novartis) is entering the market as 3rd line therapy and likely 1st line therapy in the future.

In the previous decade we had BMS, Pfizer, Takeda (+ Incyte) involved in the CML field, now only Novartis retains an active clinical pipeline. Hopefully the next decade will see significant advances in basic research and the ‘path to cure’ – a vision of CML AN, will become reality.

The progress made in CML meant that throughout 23 years the global community of cancer survivors has grown, also forming thousands of patient advocates with real-life experience and expertise. Today CML Advocates Network stand strong with over 120 organisations in 93 countries, unique track record with authoring top-tier publications, leading ground breaking research and pushing frontiers, finding solutions for low-middle income countries and developed markets.

Great progress could not be achieved without the great team effort: Jan Geissler, Giora Sharf, Pat Garcia-Gonzalez, Rod Padua, Bahija Gouimi, Jana Pelouchova, Lisa Machado, Gerald Clements, Eunice OREKHA, Jelena Cugurovic, Felice Bombaci, Catherine Moura, PX Leader, Nigel Deekes, Ken Choy, Patricio Fabián Vaca Castro, Denis C., Kathy Redmond.”

Source: Šarūnas Narbutas/LinkedIn