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MSC Nordics

May 9, 2019
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Team profile: Elisabeth Håkansson

By | Communication, Company update | No Comments

With a life-long passion for writing and a business mindset, our Communication Account Associate Elisabeth is also often close to laughing and is always curious, which may actually be the reason why she’s figured out how to draw 3D unicorns in PowerPoint. She has now nearly completed her first year as part of the MSC family and is a great addition to our communication team. We asked her to introduce herself here in our a team profile series.

My name is Elisabeth and since June last year, I work as a Communication Account Associate (CAA) at MSC. From an early age, I’ve had a passion for writing and communication, which is why I chose the social science program Journalism and Authorship in high school and continued on with a B.Sc. in Marketing at Handelshögskolan in Gothenburg. While the high school years enabled me to develop my writing skills, the bachelor’s degree helped me develop a business mindset, analytical thinking and strategic decision-making skills. What truly caught my interest in marketing was the psychological aspect, especially how individuals’ behavior can be predicted or influenced through different marketing efforts. My bachelor’s thesis, thus, came to focus on behavioral finance, which is a stream of research concerned with how psychology-based theories might explain stock market anomalies such as sudden rises or falls in stock price.

In my work as a CAA, behavioral finance becomes very present and that is one of the things that I love about my role. Seeing how my wording in a press release or in an article can influence retail investor behavior and, in turn, sometimes have a direct impact on the share price is both powerful and exciting but also a great responsibility. At the same time, the wait for that response can be quite tense. I am, therefore, extremely grateful to be surrounded by such knowledgeable and supportive colleagues who are always there to triple check the messages, facts and give advice on how to word delicate sentences.

“Seeing how my wording in a press release or in an article can influence retail investor behavior and, in turn, sometimes have a direct impact on the share price is both powerful and exciting but also a great responsibility.”

After finishing my B.Sc. in Marketing, I continued on with a M.Sc. in Innovation and Industrial Management. When discussing the complexity of innovation, the drug development process was often brought up as a prime example of how innovation may take time but result in something extremely valuable. This was actually what first kindled my interest in the life science industry. When I later saw MSC’s job ad for a CAA I jumped at the opportunity to work with innovation, behavioral psychology and communication – all at once.

Now nearly a year later, I could not be happier with my choice to challenge myself and venture into an entirely new field. In addition to being extremely challenging and developing, both professionally and personally, being part of MSC also means being part of something bigger. More than once, I’ve read up on a client’s technology and suddenly realized that if this drug works, if this drug reaches the market, it will have the ability to change millions of lives for the better. The feeling of being able to make a small contribution towards that development is absolutely amazing.

Best regards,
Elisabeth

April 29, 2019
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Parkinson’s disease dementia: the overlooked neurological disorder

By | What's the deal | No Comments

Every year, 1% of the population over 60 years of age are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and it is estimated that more than 6.2 million people are living with the condition worldwide. During April each year, the Parkinson’s Foundation and similar organizations around the world work hard to highlight the disease and raise awareness of how life can be improved for Parkinson’s patients. While the condition itself is a source of disability and hardship, people who progress to develop Parkinson’s disease dementia experience a significantly lower quality of life, as well as a much higher morbidity than other patients. The need for treatment is urgent, so we took a look at the status quo and asked: what’s the deal with Parkinson’s disease dementia?

Neurological disorders – diseases of the brain, spine and the nerves, are now the leading cause of disability in the world. Of these disorders, Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the fastest growing with an estimated population of 14.2 million patients in 2040. In PD, as well as other neurodegenerative diseases, the degeneration of nerve cells eventually affects the cerebral cortex. When this happens, the transmission of information between neurons (neurotransmission) is impaired, resulting in a number of motor, cognitive and psychiatric symptoms. One of the most debilitating comorbidities in is dementia and over time, a staggering 78.2% of these patients will develop Parkinson’s disease dementia (PD-D).

Diagnosing PD-D

While cognitive symptoms are affected early in PD, it is first when these symptoms become severe enough to affect normal functioning that PD-D can be diagnosed. Typically, PD-D primarily affects the patient’s ability to maintain attention, his or her memory, executive functions and visuo-spatial orientation. For the patient and caregiver alike, these cognitive impairments are often perceived as extremely stressful. Over time, as the condition progress, the patient may no longer be able to initiate tasks, maintain conversations or remember friends and family. In addition to the primary symptoms, the patient may also experience hallucinations and strong emotional changes. Often, PD-D has a larger negative impact on both the caregiver’s and patient’s quality of life than the physical symptoms of .

Current treatment for PD-D is symptomatic, modest, and only transiently effective.

Currently available treatments

In 2011, Caviness et al. concluded that the current treatment for PD-D is “…symptomatic, modest, and only transiently effective. There is a wide agreement that more effective treatment is needed”. Since then, little has happened. In January 2019, a group of researchers provided an update on treatments for non-motor symptoms of PD and found that rivastigmine is the only clinically validated treatment for the disease. Unfortunately, rivastigmine only offers a modest benefit to the patient due to the combination of a modest long-term efficacy and cholinergic adverse effects. In addition to rivastigmine, some Alzheimer’s disease treatments such as donepezil and galantamine have shown potential in treating PD-D but lacks the clinical evidence to prove their efficacy. The 2019 study thus deemed donepezil and galantamine “possibly useful”, awaiting further clinical research.

The future of the field

Today, only a handful of companies are conducting clinical research within PD-D. Instead, the industry trend is to develop drug candidates the bigger markets dementia and/or Alzheimer’s disease and later evaluate these candidates for PD-D as well. The reason behind this approach is that both Alzheimer’s disease and PD-D are associated with marked cholinergic deficits. However, increasing the scope of a candidate to include PD-D in addition to Alzheimer’s isn’t entirely smooth as the deficiency is greater in PD-D.

In summary, the need of continued research into new and better treatments tailored for PD is high. This specifically regard treatments that can address key disease mechanisms or has the potential to prevent or delay PD patients from progressing to PD-D. This need will only grow bigger over time in our ageing society.