Updated June 15th, 2026

Hopeful, Deeply Dedicated, & Investing In Hard-to-Treat Cancers: The View From Drugmaker Astellas’ Moitreyee Chatterjee-Kishore

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Moving From Legacy Wins to New Frontiers in Cancer Care

In Chicago for the annual gathering of leading oncologists, SurvivorNet sat down with Moitreyee Chatterjee‑Kishore, the Head of Oncology Development at Astellas, the global pharmaceutical giant that is investing heavily in next-generation cancer treatments.
Moitreyee Chatterjee‑Kishore tells SurvivorNet the company is intentionally targeting areas of cancer drug development where patients urgently need better options.
The company’s long history in bladder and prostate cancer makes its expert insights especially meaningful for patients, as Astellas continues to expand its impact across multiple hard‑to‑treat diseases.
If you need extra help between appointments on your treatment journey, just ask SurvivorNet’s My Health Questions, which offers doctor-supported information to move forward.

Patients and caregivers in the SurvivorNet community often tell us that they’re interested in how and why the next generation of medicines gets developed, and most importantly how to make these treatments available sooner. At the world‘s largest cancer conference, we put this question to the Head of Oncology Development at Astellas, one of the world’s leading pharmaceuticals companies, headquartered in Tokyo.

At the American Society for Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, the largest gathering of clinical oncologists and researchers, SurvivorNet sat down with Moitreyee Chatterjee‑Kishore, the company’s Head of Oncology Development, to discuss the promising treatments on the horizon and their potential impact for patients.

At SurvivorNet, we bring patients insights from leading experts, and for those facing bladder or prostate cancer, Astellas’ well‑known treatments make the perspectives of these experts especially valuable.

Chatterjee‑Kishore says Astellas is deliberately concentrating its research on cancers where patients urgently need better options.

“Some of the hardest to treat cancers, and some of the most novel modalities that we can bring to differentiated therapies for these cancers,” Chatterjee-Kishore said, highlighting the goal of changing survival outcomes.

The Expansion Beyond Its Legacy Strengths

Astellas already has a strong track record in prostate and urothelial cancers. The 20-year-old company’s portfolio includes:

Xtandi (enzalutamide), which treats prostate cancer
Padcev (enfortumab vedotin), which treats metastatic urothelial (bladder) cancer
Vyloy (zolbetuximab), which treats gastric cancer
Xospata (gilteritinib), which treats relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with the FLT3 mutation.

However, the pharmaceutical company says it is now pushing into new territory.

The expansion into gastrointestinal (GI) oncology, including:

Gastric cancer
Pancreatic cancer
Other difficult‑to‑treat GI tumors

Astellas “is developing into GI oncology… with our now approved assets… and our development‑stage assets such as a KRAS G12D protein degrader and our portfolio of CLDN18.2‑directed assets including ASP-2138, a T‑cell engager,” Chatterjee-Kishore said.

Astellas has more than a dozen active trials studying the efficacy of various cancer treatments.

Why This Matters for Patients

By investing in:

Novel modalities (like protein degraders and T‑cell engagers)
Targets with high unmet need (KRAS, CLDN18.2)
Cancers with historically poor outcomes

Chatterjee-Kishore says the company is positioning itself to deliver treatments that could offer patients more effective options, better tolerability, and new hope where few therapies exist today.

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Kavontae Smalls is a writer and reporter for SurvivorNet. Read More