Publications

Read Now

September 2017 (Revised July 2023)
Case

Adaptive Platform Trials: The Clinical Trial of the Future?

By: Ariel D. Stern and Sarah Mehta

In July 2017, Dr. Brian M. Alexander, president and CEO of the AGILE Research Foundation, was preparing to launch a new type of clinical trial—an adaptive platform trial—to study potential therapies for glioblastoma (GBM), an aggressive form of brain cancer.... View Details

Keywords: Clinical Trials; Cancer; Adaptive Platform Trials; Platform Trials; Adaptive Trials; Glioblastoma; Health; Health Care and Treatment; Health Testing and Trials; Business Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Health Industry; United States

March 2018
Teaching Note

Adaptive Platform Trials: The Clinical Trial of the Future?

By: Ariel D. Stern and Sarah Mehta

This teaching note provides guidance and recommendations for teaching HBS Case No. 618-025, entitled “Adaptive Platform Trials: The Clinical Trial of the Future?” View Details

Keywords: Clinical Trials; Drug Trials; Drug Testing; Cancer Trials; Glioblastoma; Platform Trials; Adaptive Trials; Adaptive Platform Trials; Health Testing and Trials; Health Care and Treatment; Business Strategy; Health Industry; United States

July 2021
Supplement

Adaptive Platform Trials: The Clinical Trial of the Future? (C)

By: Ariel D. Stern and Sarah Mehta

This (C) case provides an update on the work of the Global Coalition for Adaptive Research (GCAR) and also illustrates how adaptive platform trials can nimbly respond to a global pandemic. View Details

Keywords: Clinical Trials; Drug Trials; Drug Testing; Cancer Trials; Glioblastoma; Platform Trials; Adaptive Trials; Adaptive Platform Trials; Health Testing and Trials; Health Care and Treatment; Business Strategy; Health Industry; United States

September 2019
Supplement

Adaptive Platform Trials: The Clinical Trial of the Future? (B)

By: Ariel D. Stern and Sarah Mehta

This case provides an update to the (A) case, which introduces students to adaptive platform trials, an ambitious, more efficient type of clinical trial that increases access to therapies. The (A) case centers on Dr. Brian Alexander’s efforts to launch an adaptive... View Details

Keywords: Clinical Trials; Drug Trials; Drug Testing; Cancer Trials; Glioblastoma; Platform Trials; Adaptive Trials; Adaptive Platform Trials; Health Testing and Trials; Health Care and Treatment; Financing and Loans; Business Strategy; Health Industry; United States

September 2020
Case

Minerva 2020: Clinical Trials

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In March 2020, Dr. Cynthia Bamdad, founder and CEO of Minerva Biotechnologies Inc. (Minerva), was reviewing the first results of human clinical trials for the company’s novel CAR-T drug therapeutic, one of the first ever to target solid cancer tumors. The results... View Details

Keywords: Biotechnology; Strategic Decision Making; Entrepreneurship; Health Testing and Trials; Decision Choices and Conditions; Strategy

22 Feb 2024
News

Combat-Tested Cancer Coaching

Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe on Spotify More Skydeck episodes Hi, this is Dan Morrell, host of Skydeck. When Kathy Giusti (MBA 1985) was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 1996, she was overwhelmed. It was the pre-Internet era, with limited available information, but... View Details

08 Mar 2018
News

Could a New Business Model Make Clinical Drug Trials More Accessible to Patients?

15 Jan 2018
News

A Better Business Model for Fighting Cancer

Keywords: Scientific Research and Development Services

July 2011 (Revised September 2012)
Case

Intraoperative Radiotherapy for Breast Cancer (A)

By: Willy Shih

"This trial is going to take longer." Those were words that Michael Kaschke, CEO of Carl Zeiss AG, was not surprised to hear as he nurtured the intraoperative radiotherapy business inside his company's microsurgery unit. But he also didn't expect it to take 13 years to... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Business History; Disruptive Innovation; Emerging Markets; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Research and Development; Safety

12 Dec 2022
Research & Ideas

Buy-In from Black Patients Suffers When Drug Trials Don’t Include Them

example that could inform change is in the successful representation of minorities in tests for novel HIV/AIDS drugs. Black patients make up roughly 30 percent of the patients taking part in clinical trials for these medicines, compared... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis; Pharmaceutical; Health

23 Feb 2017
News

The power — and the fear — of knowing your cancer genome

Article

Decisions about Medication Use and Cancer Screening across Age Groups in the United States

By: Kathleen M. Fairfield, Bethany S. Gerstein, Carrie A. Levin, Vickie Stringfellow, Heidi Wierman and Mary McNaughton-Collins

Objective
To describe decision process and quality for common cancer screening and medication decisions by age group.

Methods
We included 2941 respondents to a national Internet survey who made at least one decision about colorectal, breast,... View Details

Keywords: Screening; Decision Making; Health Care and Treatment; Health Testing and Trials

Find at Harvard

24 Apr 2014
News

Finding a cure for cancer became a personal mission

Thai Lee (MBA 1985), president and CEO of SHI International, talks about how a family crisis led her to funding cancer research. (Published April 2014) View Details

24 Apr 2014
News

Giving hope and inspiration to cancer patients around the globe

data and share it globally. The organization also spearheads a clinical network of 16 research centers to conduct early-phase clinical trials faster and more efficiently. By applying business principles to the scientific field, Giusti has... View Details

November 2018
Case

David Hysong and SHEPHERD Therapeutics

By: Ananth Raman, John Masko and Aldo Sesia

In 2016, David Hysong, at age 27, found out he had a rare, incurable cancer. Rather than wait around to die, Hysong, a recent graduate of Harvard Divinity School, decided to launch a biotechnology company called Shepherd Therapeutics to development treatments for his... View Details

Keywords: Cancer; Therapeutics; Drugs; Health Care and Treatment; Business Startups; Product Development; Financing and Loans; Growth and Development Strategy; Problems and Challenges

July 2021 (Revised July 2022)
Case

Brigham & Women's Hospital: Using Patient Reported Outcomes to Improve Breast Cancer Care

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Navraj S. Nagra and Syed S. Shehab

Dr. Andrea Pusic, breast cancer reconstruction surgeon, wants to extend outcomes measurement beyond traditional surgical metrics of infections, complications, and survival rates. The case describes her development of a new mobile phone app, which collects patients’... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Outcome or Result; Cost Management; Activity Based Costing and Management; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Health Testing and Trials; Surveys; Health Industry; Boston

16 Jul 2019
News

The Making of a Movement

cancers.” Hundreds of millions of dollars later, there is no doubt that strategy has worked. Most important, those donations have had a tangible impact. “One hundred percent of the money funds rare cancer research and clinical View Details

Keywords: Greg Forbes Siegman; cancer

June 2014 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Kathy Giusti and the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation

By: Richard G. Hamermesh, Joshua D. Margolis and Matthew G. Preble

What do you do when your rising professional career is cut short by an unexpected cancer diagnosis? Kathy Giusti shifted careers, built a new organization that transformed how cancer research is done, and now faces the challenge of sustaining the organization and its... View Details

October 2013
Case

FasterCures: Removing Barriers to Treatments

By: Richard G. Hamermesh and James Weber

In mid-2013, as FasterCures celebrated its 10th anniversary as a center of the Milken Institute, Executive Director Margaret Anderson thought about what the organization should do to ensure it had even more impact in its next 10 years. FasterCures was a non-profit... View Details