The vision of Life Science Leader is to help facilitate connections and foster collaborations in pharma and med device development to get more life-saving and life-improving therapies to market in an efficient manner. Connect, Collaborate, Contribute
Issue link: https://lifescienceleadermag.epubxp.com/i/338429
REPORT EXCLUSIVE LIFE SCIENCE FEATURE 16 LIFESCIENCELEADER.COM JULY 2014 CMO SUPPLEMENT AN UPDATE ON THE BUZZ AROUND ONCOLOGY By K. Hammeke The heightened interest in developing cancer treatments, combined with the R&D; efforts put forth over the past decade, contributed to the emergence of a class of "smart bombs" first reported as one of their most hopeful developments at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting in June of 2012. These medicines use antibodies that bond to specific cancer cells to deliver a very toxic drug directly to the cancerous cell, leaving healthy tissue alone. K A T E H A M M E K E Contributing Editor n February of 2013, the FDA approved the first "smart bombs" to treat breast cancer, commer- cially known as Kadcyla and developed by Roche's Genentech. The second major development report- ed at the time was some degree of suc- cess in using the body's own immune system to fight cancer, an idea that has been around for a century, but train- ing the immune system to recognize the cancer cells as an "enemy" to attack had previously met with limited success. At present, there are still no FDA-approved drugs on the market that work using immunotherapy, but evidence from clini- cal trials testing PD-1 (a protein) block- ing drugs have shown a "quantum leap" of progress. These potentially new kinds of therapies, combined with progress in diagnostic tests that help predict which medicines will work for which patients, are important tools in reducing cancer deaths and carry huge potential for the developers who bring them to market. Eighteen oncology drugs were approved in 2012 (of 50 new drug approv- als, including new molecular entities [NMEs] and biologic license applications [BLAs]), 12 in 2013 (of 41) and one so far in 2014. This success rate has remained steady for the past few years, where oncology drugs comprise roughly one- third of the new drugs approved, with 36 percent in 2012 and 29 percent in 2013. The large number of medicines being developed for oncology is no surprise, as cancer is still a leading cause of death in the United States, second only to heart disease. The vast market for cancer medicines has secured its position as a therapeutic area of focus for the drug development pipelines of 38 percent of all pharmaceutical and biotechnology businesses — up five percentage points in the past three years. In looking at the various sponsor seg- ments, the data shows that 53 percent of Big Pharma companies have oncology drugs in their development pipeline, up from 45 percent in 2012. Biotech fol- lows with 37 percent, a slight drop from 40 percent in 2012. Specialty pharma and emerging biotechs have ramped up oncology drug development, with a six-percentage-point increase over 2012, both rising from 29 percent to 35 percent. Emerging Pharma companies An Update On The Buzz Around Oncology had the smallest increase in developing oncology drugs, with a three-percentage- point increase from 18 to 21 percent. SIGNIFICANT EXPENDITURE AND HEAVY OUTSOURCING MEAN MARKET INFLUENCE The results from the Nice Insight phar- maceutical and biotechnology outsourc- ing survey show that sponsors whose pipeline includes oncology medicines have broadened the base and are looking to outsource projects across an average of 3.5 different therapeutic areas of focus, up from 2.25 in 2012. These respondents were identified as heavy outsourcers in 2012, averaging 6.9 different services, as compared to the overall average of 5.3. This continues to be true and has shown solid gains, with an average of 8.5 differ- ent services outsourced as compared to the overall average of 6.4. This heavy outsourcing is still accom- panied by substantial outsourcing expenditure; however, spending is not quite as high as it was in 2012 when 41% of businesses whose therapeutic area of focus is oncology diseases indicated they would spend more than $50M, as compared to 26 percent of the overall I 0 7 1 4 _ R e s e a r c h _ R e p o r t s _ O I _ O n c o l o g y 2 . i n d d 6 0714_Research_Reports_OI_Oncology2.indd 6 6 / 2 3 / 2 0 1 4 2 : 3 1 : 4 4 P M 6/23/2014 2:31:44 PM