To work for Oncode Institute, you commute from Belgium, taking the train for many hours, back and forth. To that you add the work days, sometimes extended ones. What drives you to do that?

My drive is my strong desire for my work to make an impact. That is what has always been important to me. I lost my father to colon cancer and I also lost my best friend. And it is especially important to me for my work to make an impact for cancer patients. But the urgency of this is essentially everyone’s urgency, because everyone has someone they know, someone close, that either got ill or died from cancer. 

Besides this, the drive to make a difference truly extends to the entire team at Oncode Institute. It is our common denominator. And this like-mindedness and very strong sense of solidarity in wanting to make things happen, motivates me. It makes it easier to wake up at 5 in the morning to be at the office on time.

You are in charge of the Valorization Team and the valorization efforts within the Institute. What is valorization to you? 

Perhaps this is not the definition others would give, but I see valorization first and foremost as a duty. It is the duty to translate novel scientific insights into benefit for society. We receive government funding and money from donors, through the KWF. And that comes with the obligation to give back to society and to cancer patients in particular. That means doing something with the great discoveries our scientists make, translating their findings into solutions for cancer patients.

What does translating actually mean?

It means doing everything that needs to be done in the process of a new scientific discovery becoming a new product that can reach patients. To begin with, it is making sure the discovery is properly protected, and that all the steps that are needed are taken so to start the development cycle and turn it into a product. It means doing the work in that gap between research and a pharma or biotech party that will bring the product to the market.

It sounds like creating a product that will help cancer patients is actually a complex and multiple-party endeavor.

It is indeed, and it is definitely not something that just happens by itself. A research can be published and one may think – now everyone can read it and if a pharma company wants to work on it and develop it, it can. The truth is they won’t, not without the proper steps in between. 

Why is that?

First of all, that won’t happen if the discovery is not properly protected. You need to be able to grant a period of exclusivity in which the pharma party can work on the discovery, because it is a very lengthy and very costly process. If they can’t work on it with at least a period of exclusivity, they won’t. And to be able to grant exclusivity rights to a certain party, the discovery has to be properly protected. And then still the right party has to be found. And that is not that easy. 

So once the discovery is protected, a pharma partner needs to be found? 

Not immediately. Once a discovery  is properly protected and validated, and ready for partnering, we often don’t partner immediately with pharma because the finding is so innovative that it’s too risky for them. So we involve other parties in between. That often means finding a small biotech, and such a company is still much depending on VC financing and has limited financial capacity. But these small companies are really where innovation takes place. They can bring a concept or a certain product to the next important stage. Normally that is the first proof of concept in the clinic. And then a pharma party  either licenses from it or even acquires the biotech company. And then, for the late stage development, the development goes fully into the hands of pharma because they have much more resources, including financial means, and the commercial ability to make sure that the final product is distributed worldwide and is accessible to patients. That is how it happens. 

Could this process be streamlined?

No. It’s always tailor made. Each innovation is unique. Moreover, it requires setting up partnerships, creating trust. And a lot of thought is involved and a lot of opportunity checking. You have to think of where the innovation would fit, and look at it from different angles. Collaboration is very important. We don’t work just with scientists and industry in this process, but we also need the perspective of clinicians. How could this be incorporated in the current treatment paradigm? How would it change current clinical practice? What type of product should it be? What does the standard of care look like? Could it be used in combination with other available products? These are all questions we have to consider. 

Valorization is not about money, it is about impact.

And we also look from a patient perspective. If a product is effective, does it also mean it increases the quality of life for a patient? We want to understand what the patient wants and needs. Is it only living longer or are there other requirements? For example, if every week the patient has to go to the hospital for the treatment, would they actually prefer to stay at home and be able to do things instead?

Where does scientific research and the market meet?

There are many cancer patients so that means there is a lot of market potential. And there is still a very high unmet medical need and there is still a lot to be understood about cancer. Cancer is difficult to treat. If it wasn’t, it already wouldn’t be a problem anymore. But it is a disease that quickly changes, it develops resistance, not only in the primary tumor, but also develops into metastasis. There can also be recurrence, and that makes it very challenging. There is a lot of unmet need and by that, a lot of innovation and better understanding needed. 

Is cancer becoming a chronic disease?

Sometimes people say that. Yes, there is already a lot of progress, but there are still a lot of cases for which there is no solution at all. That is especially true for metastatic cancers or cancers that are recurrent and become resistant against treatments that were initially very effective. So this is why we are still continuing to invest in research, to better understand what  these mechanisms of resistance and of metastasis are, and how can we interfere with them.

What is something everyone should know about valorization?

Everyone should know that because there are many cancer patients, there is commercial opportunity in the field, but valorization is not about money, it is about impact.

When a scientist has a great new invention, valorizing that invention is not about making that scientist rich or making Oncode Institute rich. It is to really make sure that the invention can be turned into a product that is helpful to patients. The term valorization - which is mainly used in Europe, and not so much in the US - has this link to the word ‘value’. We definitely develop and add value, but that’s not about monetary value. That is a common misunderstanding. And we sometimes hear this from scientists - the fact that they don’t want to be part of a commercial system and have other parties make a lot of money. Indeed, there is money in the sector. There are many cancer patients, and where there is demand, there is commercial opportunity. But the primary purpose of valorization is for sick people to get treatment and get better. And that’s all it is about. It goes back to what our valorization work is: it is not a money generator, but a duty to really make sure to turn scientific insight into benefit for society and for cancer patients.