AstraZeneca's Iressa Problem

In May of this year, two major scientific journals published papers correlating response to Iressa, AstraZeneca's targeted therapy for refractory non-small cell lung cancer, to a series of mutations clustered in a section of the EGFR gene. These widely publicized findings are fueling discussions that are bound to have consequences not only for AstraZeneca, patients and clinicians, but also for many pharmaceutical companies working on targeted therapies.