Letters from the field
By Olivier Van de Steen
Drug development is technical work. But it is never only technical. Behind every program is a set of harder questions: about how decisions get made under uncertainty, about what it means to act with rigour when the stakes are human, about the kind of thinking that separates programs that reach patients from those that don’t.
These letters are where I think through those questions. Not from a distance, but from inside the work. They are personal, multidisciplinary, and written for people who take the craft of drug development seriously.
No marketing content. No product updates. A letter, when I have something worth saying.
Receive the next letter.
Apex Letters is a personal essay series by Olivier Van de Steen. No marketing content. No product updates. Reflections on drug development, science, leadership, and the broader questions this work raises.
Personal. Multidisciplinary.
Grounded in the work.
The letters draw on drug development, science, philosophy, leadership, and anything else that helps think more clearly about the decisions that matter. They are written as essays: long enough to develop a thought, short enough to be read in one sitting.
Some will focus on a specific moment in drug development: a regulatory decision, a study design choice, a crossroads that is easy to miss until it has already passed. Others will step back from the science to examine the thinking behind it: the mental models, the failure modes, the questions that rarely get asked aloud.
Each letter is signed by Olivier Van de Steen. They represent his thinking, not a firm position.