Twenty years ago, the most a cancer patient could expect
in treatment would have been sessions of radiation, followed
by chemotherapy and some pervasive drug therapy. Saad and
her company are changing that. In a long-reaching effort,
IMPATH has set up numerous data collection centers across
hospitals in the U.S., where cancer patient data are collected.

These vast data pipes are then analyzed at the back-end of
IMPATH’s facilities, where each patient’s data forms a
platform to develop a unique treatment plan. Today,
IMPATH has nearly a million data profiles. In another datacentric
plan, IMPATH also tracks over 2.3 million patients in
various treatment stages to measure drug and treatment
efficiency.

“Our GeneBank is a unique marriage of dry and wet
data,” says Saad. “We are not simply throwing computing at
numbers. Every tissue, biopsy, blood and bone marrow
sample is a story in itself and with the 915,000 patient
profiles we have today, IMPATH can create effective, unique
treatment plans to help physicians deliver better treatment
outcomes.” With over 800 samples coming into IMPATH
everyday, Saad should know. “We have interfaced our tissue
bank with our outcome databank and this has helped us take
analysis to a new platform.While we help physicians on one
end, we also work closely with cancer drug development
companies in monitoring treatment profiles, plans and
effectiveness,” says Saad.

Anu Saad holds a Ph.D. in developmental biology from
the University of Chicago. She went on to complete her
post-doctoral training at Cornell University Medical
College. She stayed on as faculty at the Cornell University
Medical College—New York Hospital in the department of
cell biology and anatomy. Saad claims that she had always
wanted to be a scientist and was fascinated by the biological
sciences from a very young age. “I remained true to my goal
for a long time, but realized after a while that research
tended to narrow focus. It was around this time that the
chairman of my department passed on a recruiter’s enquiry
for a job at IMPATH. I was also noticing several of my
friends—intelligent people—leave academia and venture
into biotech companies. What interested me in IMPATH’s
business was the fact that research methods and minds being
used to help solve real-life problems. I thought it would be
fulfilling to use my knowledge and research skills to help
develop solutions that would have an impact on society,” says
the CEO.

Saad joined IMPATH as a scientific director in 1990.
IMPATH at that time was a small team of a dozen scientists
and businessmen.The young company was having trouble in
diversifying its products and losses were high. Finally in
1993, the incumbent CEO resigned. At 37, Saad became the
acting CEO and the board set about searching for a
replacement. It returned almost a year later with no suitable
find and Saad became CEO. In just a year, she turned the
company around and took it public in 1996. “We moved
away from experimenting with various business models to
focus on our core strengths: technology, research, and
analysis to deliver solution plans for cancer. The desperate
need for better knowledge and the ability to make informed
judgments in this typically lethal disease was our driving
force.This information pipe is something many clients don’t
even know they need, and that became our market,” explains
Saad.

Saad and her team work with physicians and hospitals
right from the diagnosis stage. “It is now never a simple
‘colon cancer.’ The hospital and the doctor want to know
what type of colon cancer it is, at what stage it is at, what is
its growth rate and a host of other biological markers, before
they even contemplate a diagnosis.This is where we come in.
We take back samples of tumors and try to fit it into one of
the numerous types that exist in our GeneBank. Usually we
respond within 48 hours,” says Saad. An accurate diagnosis
being vital for successful management, IMPATH’s services
have become critical to the oncology sciences.

Saad also spun off IMPATH’s association with physicians
and patients into a business entity: IMPATH Clinical Trials
Network. This business helps physicians monitor drug and
therapy treatment efficacy and development, by profiling
and recruiting patients, establishing treatments and
generating outcome data which would finally influence the
management of the disease.Aren’t they stepping into patient
confidentiality issues? No, says Saad. “The GeneBank data
and the outcome data pipes are normally blinded. Physicians
or drug clients only want to know if a certain treatment
plan—which would include issues like dosage, timing, stage
and so on—worked and to what extent it worked.The data
itself is blind.We are extremely careful about this.” Recently,
IMPATH acquired Tamtron Corporation, which had
developed a front-end data collection software. IMPATH’s
Tumor Registry is a tracking platform that keeps tabs on 85
to 90% of cancer patients in the U.S. “In clinical trials, the
biggest challenge is identifying the right patients for trial.
With the 800-plus cases that come into IMPATH everyday,

we are possibly the only company capable of matching any
patient profile need of a company or physician,” says a proud
Saad. Despite these successes, analysts are sniffing at
IMPATH’s numbers. Some have queried the business model,
while others doubt the consistency of revenue generation.

Which brings us to the next question. Isn’t what Saad is
offering biting out of the treatment cost for a patient? “The
same third party payers who cover the treatment plan are our
source of revenue too. As the belts
tighten, we too are affected. But that
doesn’t stop us from delivering
solutions. At the end of it, we know
that it is a cancer patient, a desperate
human being capable of precious life,
who is awaiting some help,” says Saad.
In the same vein, Saad’s work will help
drug companies reorient their
development programs. “Instead of
spending billions on a blockbuster
drug, we can help drug companies
develop personalized medication or
treatment platforms that would work
on specific patient profiles. This would
definitely help reduce the cost of
getting a drug out of the door,”
underlines Saad.

The next big hurdle, Saad says, is to
help drug companies, genomics
companies, and pharma companies
cross the discovery phase into actual
development. This is a platform that
may well be IMPATH’s evolution. “We
are looking at possibilities of
developing and delivering discoveries.
But that is definitely in the future. Our
challenge in the next few years will be
to bring more medication at much
lower costs to patients and to increase
the survival rate in cancer
management,” replies Saad.

The IMPATH chairman is a unique
lady.With no business background, she
has managed to turn a floundering
company around, take it public and is
quietly chalking plans to expand her
company’s service offers. “Oh! My
secret knowledge base is my husband,
whose background in economics has
helped me glean good ideas,” laughs off
Saad.

Her response to the entrepreneur
possibilities is frank. “To be in
bioinformatics is easy. To throw highspeed
computing at data is easy. But to build a team that can
understand the fabric of the data and set up tools that will
deliver usable information from the data is quite expensive.
Our growth has been good, but not easy,” warns Saad.

Despite analysts’ sniffs and market turmoil Saad is
steering IMPATH with a firm hand, in its crusade against
cancer.