AstraZeneca Annual Report and Form 20-F Information 2008

Discovery medicine

Discovery medicine (the collaboration between clinical medicine and basic science) helps us gain a better understanding of human diseases and the suitability of future medicines to treat those diseases, as well as identify and deploy biomarkers (a biological factor or measure that can be used to quantify the progress of a disease and/or the effects of a treatment) which can help us to make early decisions on the effectiveness and safety of our compounds in clinical development. All compounds nominated for development now have a biomarker strategy although it is not always easy to identify a marker for each molecule.