Immune Therapy’s Cancer Promise Creates Research Rush.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-29/immune-therapy-s-cancer-promise-creates-research-rush.html

A new class of medicines that help the body’s own immune cells fight tumors could target a wide set of cancers, opening a $35 billion market for Merck (MRK) & Co.,Bristol-Myers (BMY) Squibb Co., AstraZeneca Plc and Roche Holding AG.

The drugmakers will use the world’s largest meeting of cancer doctors, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, to stake their claim on the new technology, which aims to interrupt cancer’s ability to switch off immune system cells that might otherwise attack it.

For years, the idea was only seen as useable against a handful of uncommon tumors. Now, new evidence the drugs may work in a wider range of malignancies, advanced in just the last two years, has spurred Merck, Bristol-Myers, AstraZeneca and Roche to begin at least 78 clinical trials. While the research, with more than 19,000 patients, could cost the four companies as much as $1.3 billion, the payoff would be the creation of a new market that Citigroup Inc. (C) analysts have predicted could reach $35 billion a year.

One reason for the excitement is that the body’s response to immune therapy tends be long lasting, said Jill O’Donnell-Tormey, chief executive officer of the nonprofit Cancer Research Institute in New York. The belief is that once the immune system is properly activated against an invading cancer, it will remember what a tumor cell looks like, she said.

The idea that cancer can be tamed without brutal chemotherapy or heavy-duty radiation is enticing.

Off Switch

The theory behind the therapies is fairly simple. Under normal circumstances, a protein called PD-1 acts as a switch to shut off the action of attack cells within the immune system that respond when the body is attacked by a foreign invader. It turns out that some cancer cells get around that with a unique ability to flick the off switch.

The drugs being developed work by either binding to the PD-1 protein to protect it from manipulation by tumor cells, or by hitting a related protein called PD-L1 that some tumor cells deploy to trigger the PD-1 switch.

The cost of early-phase testing in cancer generally ranges from $25,000 to $40,000 per patient, with mid-stage trials running $60,000 to $80,000, said Greg Dombal, chief operating officer for Boston-based Halloran Consulting Group. A final-phase trial can cost at least $100,000 a patient for recruitment, genetic tests, establishing new databases and monitoring progress with scanning equipment.