How often do you think about the people who are counting on you, those in your team, your patients?
Our industry needs teams and organisations that are built to face the challenges and failures we will inevitably encounter on the rocky road of advanced therapies development. It requires resilience, perseverance and grit; how equipped are your people?
Dwayne tells the story of Dendreon’s historical highs and lows but also of its recovery. Dendreon experienced a lot of firsts but not all of them positive. Yes, it was the first to develop and commercialise an immunotherapy from a patient’s own cells (Provenge, of course) but it was also first to watch its stock drop to pennies on the dollar and, possibly, to go bankrupt. However, in terms of its rebound, Dendreon isn’t just surviving, it’s thriving and, Dwayne says, will continue to do so because of the company’s belief in the product and what it is fighting for.
Patients.
The discussion moves onto goes onto the fine line between success and failure, examining the stories of Apollo 13, Thomas Edison and Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat. Pray. Love. Dwayne explores failure and its negative connotations. Failure provides an opportunity to learn and to display passion to others, it’s an iteration on the road to success. In the immortal words of the great Thomas Edison…
Every experiment is a good experiment, even if it’s a failure.
