Author: [AUTHOR] Published on 9/1/2018 8:00:00 AM

Richard W. Peck, MD, Global Head Clinical Pharmacology, F. Hoffman La Roche, Ltd., Basel, Switzerland
 
Dr. Peck has been working in Switzerland for almost three years, but he recognizes that Basel has a strong heritage in both academic and industrial clinical pharmacology. Moving to Europe changed his perception of geography. He explains that “in our single countries we can be limited in our thinking.” Dr. Peck currently lives in France and crosses two international boundaries during his hour and a half commute between his home and his office. At F. Hoffman LaRoche, a Swiss company, Dr. Peck's department has 16 different nationalities represented, the largest of which is French. He has learned that country boundaries do not seem as important in his current place as it did when he lived and worked in the United Kingdom. He also wants to reinforce that there are sick people in need of better treatments all over the world.

At the University of Cambridge, Dr. Peck trained in pharmacology and subsequently medicine. He spent a few years in the British equivalent of intern/residency training in the United Kingdom before deciding to pursue a career as a clinical pharmacologist in the pharmaceutical industry. He has never regretted his choice to pursue a career in industry, though sometimes he does think that he would have pursued an academic career if he had correctly predicted the rise of pharmacogenomics.

Dr. Peck began working in industry at the Wellcome Foundation, which became part of GlaxoWellcome, which became GSK. He has experienced his share of industry mergers. He left GSK for Lilly to take on his first department head role. About ten years ago, he began working for F. Hoffman La Roche as the Global Head of Clinical Pharmacology, seven of those years were spent in the UK before moving to corporate HQ in Basel.

Dr. Peck's work is in developing new treatments and new indications for existing treatments. His department works across the Roche portfolio includes oncology, neurology, psychiatry, ophthalmology, infectious diseases in immunology, and more recently treatments for rare diseases. He finds it tremendously powerful when one of the drugs that he and his team have worked on gets to the market and becomes available to impact the lives of patients around the world. In 2017, Dr. Peck's team received US approval for a new multiple sclerosis treatment (ocrelizumab), which played a major role in the switch of rituximab from IV to SC which will make lives easier for patients. His team also submitted the NDA filing for alectinib as a first line treatment for ALK positive non‐small cell lung cancer. Dr. Peck's department played a leading role in the accelerated filing and approval by developing a PKPD bridging strategy that allowed filing with data in Japan despite the fact that patients had been treated with only half the dose used in the US, EU, and the rest of the world. Accelerating the filing by a year had a huge impact on the lives of patients who can now receive this drug much earlier than they might have otherwise. To put this in to perspective, this accelerated approval means that many patients have been treated successfully who would otherwise have died.

Clinical pharmacology is about dose and understanding why different patients respond differently to the same dose. It is important to recognize that some patients may need different doses in order to respond optimally. Dr. Peck believes that clinical pharmacologists helps define the dose for most of the population and then work to determine when and how to give different patients different doses. This information can form up to half of the drug label that tells prescribers how to use drugs. Dr. Peck explains: “when we do our job right, many more patients can gain benefit and/or avoid adverse effects from their treatments. Yet there is still much room to improve and much response variability unexplained.” His passion is for precision medicine, called personalized health care at Roche. Roche's commitment to personalized healthcare was what led him to accept his current position there. Dr. Peck believes that clinical pharmacology is pivotal to enabling precision medicine, to finding “the right dose for every patient,” which is the vision statement for his department. Dr. Peck's goal for the rest of his career is to help advance precision medicine, especially precision dosing. He wants to bring more new drugs to patients and also wants them to be used even more effectively. He believes that individualized or precision dosing will improve the clinical utility of many drugs and the pharmaceutical industry has a role to play here along with regulators, prescribers, payers, academics, and patients.

Dr. Peck observes that ASCPT promotes the discipline of clinical pharmacology both in the US and internationally. The Society helps to explain what clinical pharmacologists do and how to do it better. He recognizes that ASCPT promotes high quality science and provides a forum for its communication especially through the Annual Meeting, the journals, and the Networks and Communities. The most important aspect is that ASCPT brings together the various groups that need to work together to advance new medicines, including academia, the pharmaceutical industry, and regulators, so that they can all work together to use science for the benefit of patients and society. In addition, mentoring and the development of the future generations of clinical pharmacologists are a tremendous part of ASCPT.

Dr. Peck joined ASCPT later in his career, but he realizes he should have joined earlier because his membership has brought him additional connections. He has also learned new things and been able to contribute to the Society due to his experience. He encourages others in the field not to wait as long as he did to join, even if they are based outside the US. He goes on to urge younger members to participate in the Networks and Communities and to take advantage of the mentoring opportunities, and opportunities to present their research. He cautions that many students and trainees may feel they are not yet ready, but that they will likely find that they are and grow from the opportunity.

Dr. Peck became a member of ASCPT in 2016.