Having a validated drug discovery platform is the first and most important criterion for defining a good platform company. The platform is typically comprised of a combination of technology, experienced personnel and intellectual property that can generate a stream of drug candidates. Most importantly, investing should be done only after a product of the platform demonstrates activity in clinical trials. Having a clinically validated product is not a guarantee for future success of the platform nor does it mean that the specific agent will reach the market, but it does imply that one or more of the platform’s products stand a reasonable chance of becoming a commercial drug. A validated platform may increase overall success rates, yet the odds of a particular drug candidate to make it all the way to approval are still low.

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Exelixis is active in the ever growing market of kinase inhibitors (KIs) for the treatment of cancer, that is, drugs that block the activity of kinases in cancer cells. Cancer cells are often described as cells that are out of control: They proliferate quickly, ignore death signals, invade nearby tissues and eventually metastasize to distant organs. These disease onset and advancement are associated with processes such as cell growth, motility and blood-vessel formation, which are governed by a complex network made of kinases. Thus, blocking these processes by inhibiting the relevant kinases has emerged as one of the most attractive approaches to fighting cancer.

Together with monoclonal antibodies, kinase inhibitors represent a paradigm shift in cancer treatment from cytotoxic agents to targeted therapies, a trend that is constantly growing. Like antibodies for cancer, kinase inhibitors target tumors while sparing healthy cells and consequently lead to better activity with fewer side effects. Kinase inhibitors, however, possess several advantages over antibodies. The most evident advantage is that KIs can hit targets inside the cell while antibodies can only bind targets presented on the cell surface, so internal targets are approachable only by KIs. Another advantage is the fact that KIs can be given orally, which is a major factor in terms of patient convenience, especially given the typical long treatment duration associated with targeted therapies. Another advantage, which will be later discussed in the article, is the ability to produce KIs that hit several targets at once.

ScienceLogic: Mike, what’s your background working with network and management system tools?

Mike Lawson: Before joining Apptis, I worked for the Air Force, mainly in satellite communications for almost nine years. I’m probably most familiar with HP OpenView and BMC Remedy. I managed a team that used them but wasn’t involved in tool selection; like many other federal IT workers, we didn’t have a choice of tools because there were existing enterprise licenses and maintenance contracts.

I also saw a large systems integrator do a full Remedy/Crystal Systems/OpenView installation. It took 6 weeks to stand up and customize to meet just the basic monitoring requirements, and it cost something like half a million dollars. At the time, I thought that wasn’t bad and was a pretty typical experience.

ScienceLogic: Coming from where you did, what’s your take on EM7?

Mike Lawson: Honestly, I didn’t believe that EM7 could really do all that it claimed. In many ways, it was the complete opposite of what I had seen first-hand with other monitoring solutions. Could it really cover that much functionality? At relatively much lower cost to the customer and without the licensing nightmare?

That quickly changed when I needed to understand the system enough to run it at a customer’s site. I went back over the training docs I received during my initial training class and jumped in; now, 6 months later, I’m the EM7 expert and can tell you that it delivers on all those promises. (But I still need to show people to get them to believe it too)

I preach the “EM7 gospel” and when anyone wants to talk monitoring, I ask about the universal pain points: cost, maintenance contracts and licensing, and then I explain EM7. The cost difference is real; the solution is based on capacity, so there’s no licensing and it’s easy to use. They are shocked to learn that they can buy multiple EM7 appliances and years of maintenance for what they paid for most other tools.

ScienceLogic: Apptis won the contract for monitoring aboard the USNS Mercy. We love that you’re using EM7 for one of the Navy’s hospital ships. Can you tell us more?

Mike Lawson: The USNS Mercy is a Military Sealift Command hospital ship. Some stats:

• 849 feet long (nearly the size of a football field)
• 12 fully-equipped operating rooms, a 1,000 bed hospital facility, digital radiological services, a diagnostic and clinical laboratory, a pharmacy, an optometry lab, a CAT scan and two oxygen producing plants
• Crew: 61 civilian mariners, 956 Naval medical staff, and 259 Naval support staff

The USNS recently departed on a five-month humanitarian mission in the Western Pacific and Southeast Asia in support of Pacific Partnership 2008. The partnership provides international medical, dental and engineering teams this summer to provide humanitarian support and conduct joint, combined, and cooperative Civil-Military Operations in order to improve regional stability and build partner capacity to respond to natural disasters and pandemic.

For the most part, the ship’s network is self-contained, but can also use a landline when docked. The network covers 400 devices, including Windows/Exchange servers and VMware for server virtualization. Prior to using EM7, none of the monitoring was integrated; each system was independently monitored through individual vendor-specific consoles.

Out of the box, EM7 provided integrated systems, application and network management for all network gear, applications and virtual machines in one solution. We didn’t have to do a lot of customization – EM7 includes best-practice based thresholds, event and monitoring templates and this covered what USNS Mercy needed to monitor.

ScienceLogic: You’re a systems integrator with a very useful “customer point of view” when it comes to looking at tools. From that perspective, can you share what you think are the biggest benefits that EM7 provides?

Mike Lawson: First of all, EM7 stands up right away. We’re talking days, not weeks. In contrast to the lengthy installation of OpenView and Remedy I witnessed during my military career, I was able to configure, customize, and implement the EM7 solution for the USNS Mercy in three days.

Second, it’s easy to train people on and the support is outstanding. This judgment is from first-hand experience. Right before the USNS Mercy departed on its latest voyage, the system administrator I had trained on EM7 left, so I had all of a day to train some new EM7 admins. I prepared a seven-page “cheat sheet” and over a 3-hour conference call, we walked through the entire EM7 solution; I haven’t gotten a support call since.

And when a problem did crop up with a device being discovered incorrectly, ScienceLogic was very responsive. We contacted ScienceLogic support on a Saturday and they created and emailed us a video to help troubleshoot the same day. Within 30 seconds of watching the video, the problem was resolved.

Finally, EM7 helps us be good stewards of the government’s money. This is very important to me personally and to Apptis as a company. Because EM7 is cheaper and deploys so quickly and easily, you might think that it’s just the opposite of what a system integrator would want to use. But that’s short-term thinking. We believe in deliver the most value for customers every time. It’s what creates trust and long-term relationships with our customers. Instead of that half million spent on standing up the solution and basic setup, I’d much rather (and I know the customer would rather) spend that on fine-tuning or extending the solution to do much, much more.

As a former government employee, I know what it’s like to use a tool that doesn’t fit my needs. EM7 proves that the best solution can totally break the old model of costly, lengthy installations. EM7 has the right model: the right solution and the right price delivered as an appliance that is easy to deploy, train on and use.

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This is an old problem. In 1996, when I was advising the BMA on clinical system safety and privacy, we trained the staff at one health authority to detect false-pretext phone calls, and they found 30 a week. We reported this to the Department of Health, hoping they’d introduce some operational security measures nationwide; instead the Department got furious at us for treading on their turf and ordered the HA to stop cooperating (the story’s told in my book). More recently I confronted the NHS chief executive, David Nicholson, and patient tsar Harry Cayton, with the issue at a conference early last year; they claimed there wasn’t a problem nowadays now that people have all these computers.

What will it take to get the Department of Health to care about patient privacy? Lack of confidentiality already costs lives, albeit indirectly. Will it require a really high-profile fatality?

Minneapolis suffers the heartbreak of leafage: Leaves are popping in Minneapolis, and Star-Tribune columnist Steve Alexander writes that residents are seeing some Wi-Fi reception problems on that city's Wi-Fi network. This is the only big-city network that can be currently described "successful," even though its long-term success has to be proven out. The firm responsible, USI Wireless, told Alexander they're working on adjusting about 5 percent of antennas to cope with the pesky greenery.

St. Louis Park sues ARINC over Wi-Fi network: The Minnesota town says the network never worked, and had earlier discussed a lawsuit. The city wants the value of the contract ($1.7m) plus a very modest amount in damages and fees ($50,000). The city plans to start removing gear if ARINC doesn't sometime in June. But they have to deal with 490 poles erected to hold the nodes and solar-charging gear--sunk into concrete. More recent testing showed that the network worked well in some areas, but the majority of the network did not, according to the Star Tribune.

Verizon builds out fiber in AT&T territory: Interesting sign of competition in otherwise monopoly-per-provider-type world. Verizon is using AT&T's hard-won statewide video franchising rules in Texas to build competitive fiber in Dallas suburbs. They're apparently not bringing telecom; they're acting like a cable TV firm with data. Verizon owns chunks of territory all over due to it encompassing GTE in a deal years ago. GTE serves suburbs west of Portland, Ore., and east of Seattle, for instance, while Qwest serves most of the rest of each state.

Foster City Wi-Fi dies on June 20: MetroFi is unlighting its cities, and Foster City opted not to spend the nearly $200,000 asking price MetroFi put on its equipment. MetroFi might still find a buyer, but June 20 is the network's current final day. Naperville, Ill., also expects a June 20 shutdown. They, too, were offered the network hardware for 200 grand.

Chehalis lights up: A small city in southern Washington votes to put in Wi-Fi hotzones. The cost is about $53,000 and annual fees $15,000. Funds will come from existing tax and grant sources. The city chose to install service to make sure they're not missing a checkbox on the amenities list for visitors and businesses rather than for a particular, measurable goal.

Nearby Centralia pulls its Wi-Fi: A pilot project in the larger city of Centralia, Wash., a bit north of Chehalis, is shut down when poles used to mount Wi-Fi radios are removed as electrical wires are buried. (The reporter here confuses broadband over powerlines (BPL) with broadband wireless.) The system might be restarted later.

Craig Settles writes up Pennsylvania's Cambria County wireless success: This is a network built for particular municipal purposes, part of Settles's long-time drumbeat about having applications first and then networks built for those networks second. He notes that Cambria built a 700 sq mi network that sounds nearly cost neutral through efficiency and cost conservation--it's cheaper to get much more service with this network than it was for a smaller array of services with incumbent-provided networks.

Santa Fe residents oppose Wi-Fi in the library on health grounds: You know what I have to say about how provable this has turned out to be in clinical studies. I am, however, as always, concerned about these people's health, even if I don't believe that Wi-Fi (or EMF) causes their problems. The group opposed to library-Fi is citing the ADA in this case, uniquely I believe. Six libraries suggested that EMF triggers seizures in epileptics, something I've never heard cited before; maybe CRTs (flickering), but EMF? Wired is substantially less kind than I am, pointing out that EMF other than Wi-Fi produces vastly higher signal strength. (They're sort of ignoring signal strength at a given point where an individual stands in relation to a transmitter, however.)