Big Think

Question: Have you take a drug all the way from trial to market?

Chudy Nduaka:  Very few people have actually in this industry. You could work for a big pharmaceutical industry for 20 years and may not actually get to see a drug in its final stages or come to market. And that's very, very common. So because-- you know, of all the drugs we develop or all the drugs that come off the pipeline, very, very few make it out. So the successes that you see are very, very few, you know, there are just a few candidates that have made it from a thousand that started the journey. And it takes sometimes up to 15 years, so for most cases you'd almost have to start with a project 15 years prior and see it come to fruition, and very few people do that. But you tend to see the drug in different stages and I have been involved with several candidates in different stages of the development process. The drug candidate that I'm now working with now is in its final stage and it's exciting because not very many people have actually been able to be part of a team that will say they've seen the last stage, you know, this is the filing stage of submitting a new drug application to the FDA. So it's the final stage and not very many people can actually say they've seen that. So for me it's exciting and it's a huge achievement.

Recorded on: 6/25/08