Harold Keer once imagined becoming the classic academic “triple threat”: treating patients, teaching students, and running a research laboratory. Industry ultimately offered another route – one capable of scaling individual discoveries into medicines for patients. For Keer, now Chief Medical Officer at Taiho Oncology, this represents “the ultimate translational medicine.”
Much has changed during his career. Cytotoxic chemotherapy has been joined by targeted therapies, monoclonal antibodies, immunotherapies, bispecific antibodies, and antibody-drug conjugates. Formerly “undruggable” targets such as RAS are now fiercely competitive areas of development. Yet the fundamental challenge remains: destroying malignant cells while sparing healthy tissue.
Keer explores why compelling cancer programs still fail, the promise – and possible “irrational exuberance” – surrounding emerging modalities, and the importance of keeping patients at the center of clinical development. He also reflects on his own unfinished business: helping Taiho’s newly acquired ADC technology reach the clinic and, perhaps one day, earn a standing ovation at ASCO.
Watch the interview below.
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