Connecting with patients

Understanding how diseases such as epilepsy, rheumatoid arthritis, or Parkinson’s disease affect people both physically and socially is key to developing transformational, personalised therapies.

To gain these insights, UCB is creating a patient-centric culture that involves working closely with patients, as well as their carers and physicians.

One of the characteristics of severe diseases is that they have significant social impacts, as well as physiological effects. Someone with Crohn’s disease, for example, has to plan their life around the availability of toilet facilities or a patient with epilepsy not allowed driving due to his seizures.

At UCB, we involve patients at the earliest stages of drug discovery in order to understand the full impact of the disease on their lives, physically and socially, including their individual reactions to the condition. This approach enables us to identify the most appropriate clinical profile of candidate molecules, strengthening the relevance of the drugs in our pipeline and allowing us to develop equally appropriate clinical plans and clinical trial protocols. By taking into account patients’ individual characteristics and lifestyles, such as their age, diet, family history and genetic profile, we are moving closer to providing personalised therapies.