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Ruth March, PhD, is Senior Vice-President of AstraZeneca’s Precision Medicine function.
As a member of the senior leadership team in AstraZeneca’s R&D Oncology group, I am accountable for delivering diagnostics across AstraZeneca’s R&D pipeline to match targeted medicines to those patients most likely to benefit.
I have led the development of AstraZeneca’s industry-leading capability in precision medicine, with 16 diagnostics launched linked to 4 AstraZeneca medicines since 2014. Precision medicine is now applied in >90% of AstraZeneca’s clinical pipeline across all main therapy areas - oncology, CVRM, and respiratory disease.
I have also led an innovative approach to diagnostics, developing technologies that best fit the patient’s care pathway. In addition, I have led over $185M investment with diagnostic partners, including molecular diagnostics, tissue diagnostics, next generation sequencing and point of care diagnostics.
With my team, I have pioneered many industry firsts:
- 1st drug label extension based on circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA), making targeted therapy available to up to 40% of patients with lung cancer who cannot provide a solid tumour tissue sample
- 1st laboratory based companion diagnostic (which detects thousands of mutations in BRCA genes classified through a diagnostic algorithm)
- 1st companion diagnostic based on both ctDNA and tissue in the resistance setting
- 1st point of care diagnostic approved in inflammation
- 1st prototype point of care diagnostic for eosinophilic asthma
I am a genomics specialist with over 50 patents and publications and I drew on my extensive academic research to lead the first genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism analysis of a safety biomarker to be submitted to the FDA.
Personalised medicine: transforming the way we use medicine
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LATEST PROJECT
WORLD LEADING GENOMICS STRATEGY
FIRST CIRCULATING TUMOUR DNA APPROVAL
Featured publications
I believe personalised healthcare is the future of medicine; it allows us to use the latest diagnostic science to target medicines to patients most likely to benefit.
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Precision medicine – targeting the right medicine to the right patient at the right time – is now a critical part of our approach to drug discovery.
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