How to Rebuild Pharma Operating Model for an AI Era

In the early 2000s, AstraZeneca’s gefitinib program in lung cancer was widely viewed as disappointing based on overall trial results. Yet buried within the data was a striking signal: a subgroup of patients experienced dramatic tumor responses—patients later shown to carry EGFR mutations. The finding became a landmark in biomarker-driven oncology, proving that the right therapy can look ineffective in the average patient while being transformative for the right subgroup.