Earning the Trust of Patient Communities to Drive Research and Address Disparities with Lauren Walrath and Susan Thiele Kyowa Kirin

Lauren Walrath is Vice President of Public Affairs in North America, and Susan Thiele is Director of Advocacy and Brand Communications at Kyowa Kirin, a Japan-based global specialty pharmaceutical company known for its cutting-edge scientific discoveries in four therapeutic areas including neurology, nephrology, hematological cancers, and immunology. Lauren explains their approach to patient-centric discovery, "In advocacy, we're really trying to find where the gaps are and how we can best work with partners to make long-term and sustainable improvements for patients. So that can be in the form of starting new research, funding new grants, addressing disparities, working on developing new education programs. Generally, we're looking for meaningful opportunities to help patients and their families on their journey from diagnosis to treatment. We work closely with the advocates, and we bring all of that understanding back to our teams here at Kyowa Kirin so that we really can engage our cross-functional partners in doing more to help the patients we serve." Susan elaborates, "And then there is Jim and Jeffrey who have Sézary syndrome, which is a more serious form of CTCL that affects less than 5% of the patients. What we've done is we've captured their journeys in their own voice, the journey to diagnosis, their experience on treatment, and ultimately what they've learned along the way, what really keeps them motivated to not give up. And people can now hear those stories by going to POTELIGEO.com." #KyowaKirin #KKNA #DrugDevelopment #RareDiseases #Antibodies #immunology #Cancer #CTCL #Neurology #ParkinsonsDisease #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #Nephrology #HematologicalCancers #SezarySyndrome KyowaKirin.com Download the transcript here