Tim Behrens Senior Director: Immunology Diagnostics & Biomarkers Profile | Education/Background | Top Scientific Papers | Awards & Honors

"I moved to Genentech in 2006 following 20 years in academia, where my laboratory focused on three major themes: 1) the development of B lymphocytes; 2) the primary genetics of human autoimmune diseases, especially systemic lupus erythematosus; and 3) the identification of biomarkers for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Over the last few years, I have been particularly intrigued by the problem of applying cutting-edge genetic and proteomic technologies into the clinic to answer important questions like 'How active is the disease in this patient?', and 'How likely is this patient to respond to a particular drug?' I came to Genentech to build a group that can begin to answer these types of questions.

Genentech's B-cell depletion therapy for rheumatoid arthritis and perhaps other autoimmune diseases, and anti-IgE therapy for allergic asthma are two very important breakthrough treatments for patients with immunologic diseases. Both also provide unique opportunities to identify responder and non-responder subsets of patients, using samples collected from clinical trials. Since the rate-limiting step for most biomarker work is the quality and depth of the clinical data and samples, we are in a unique position at Genentech to make significant progress in this area."

Collaborations "The group we are building is taking a disease-focused approach to the identification of biomarkers that identify subsets of patients within a given disease, markers for disease activity, and biomarkers for responders/nonresponders. Genentech has an incredible depth of talent across all the groups we interact with, which include bench scientists, clinical scientists, physicians, pharmacologists, and a variety of individuals in the clinical operations, regulatory, business development, and commercial groups. Although the work to identify biomarkers in diseases affecting the immune system takes time, we are hopeful that these efforts will translate eventually into better medical care of patients."

Inspiration/Vision "Our group is dreaming big, and we hope to drive science forward that will ultimately change the way physicians do differential diagnosis and make treatment decisions. Time will tell, but we are hopeful that in the not-too-distant future, patients with autoimmune, allergic and inflammatory diseases will be treated with therapies that are customized for specific patient groups. We also hope to be able to guide therapy earlier in the disease course where the chance of inducing long-term remissions may be increased. Finally, we are excited about the deep pipeline of new therapies for immunologic diseases at Genentech, and we will be working hard to help direct these novel therapies to the patients most likely to benefit."