Cancer research in ‘golden era’, says charity chief

Harpal Kumar believes ‘explosion’ in understanding of the disease could revolutionise treatment and reduce cost of drugs The head of the UK’s leading cancer charity has said understanding of the disease is advancing “exponentially”, as potentially groundbreaking trials to genetically test tumours of 9,000 newly diagnosed patients begin. Describing a “golden era” of research, Harpal Kumar, the chief executive of Cancer Research UK , said there has been “an explosion in our understanding of what cancer is, why it happens, why it doesn’t happen in some people and why it moves around the body”. The trials backed by the Department of Health and Cancer Research are being launched next month in seven hospitals across Britain. Scientists believe the results could revolutionise cancer treatments. They will aim to find out which existing drugs the cancers are susceptible to. They will also potentially pave the way for discoveries of new medicines that are personalised or targeted to the genetic makeup of an individual’s cancer and therefore far more effective. The two-year project is intended to lead to a full roll-out of genetic testing of tumours across the NHS. The government has given its backing to increased genetic testing as part of the national cancer plan, which Cancer Research believes will bring about a significant change in the way cancers are treated. Kumar said: “I’m not trying to present a utopian view that we know everything, because we don’t. But our knowledge is growing exponentially. We are learning vast amounts more as months go by. “It is not hyperbolic to say that this is the future of treatment. This is the future of medicine. This will not just be true in cancer but across medicine more generally.” Most medicines work in some people but not others. In some diseases, such as cancer, they work in only a relatively small proportion of patients. “People have known for years that we give treatment and it is only going to work for 20% of people and we are now on the cusp of finding out what is going on,” said Kumar. Just as each individual’s DNA is different, so is that of cancer tumours. In the trial beginning next month, tumour samples from patients with one of the commonest cancers – breast, bowel, lung, prostate, melanoma and ovarian – will be subjected to a series of tests. Some of these tests – for instance, the test for the HER2 enzyme in breast cancer which indicates that anti-tumour drug Herceptin will work – are already in regular use, but others are not. The trial will test the feasibility of introducing a low-cost panel of genetic tests for all cancer patients. But it will also accumulate an important database for researchers, by following what happens to the patients. The genetic makeup of the cancer influences not only which drugs will work, but how effective surgery and radiotherapy will be. It is also possible, says Kumar, that researchers will find that old or discarded drugs will work on certain patients, long after they were shelved because they had little impact on large populations. “The likelihood is that we have many of the tools already but we don’t know how to use them properly,” Kumar said. “We have lots of great drugs and know they work with lots of people, but not with other people. “There are also lots of drugs undoubtedly that have never made it to market because we couldn’t figure out which patients to use them for.” If pharmaceutical companies would not investigate them, he said, academics would. “Patents expire and molecules become available to everyone,” Kumar added. “This also applies to radiotherapy. It works for some people and not others. The real future will be figuring out which.” New cancer drugs come with huge price tags and can be rejected from the NHS by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) as too expensive for the benefit they offer. But targeting drugs to specific sub-groups, Kumar said, could bring the price down. “The problem at the moment is that it takes $1bn [£600m] to get a drug to market and 15 years or more. That is the justification for the pharmaceutical industry charging high prices. “If on the other hand by the time you get to phase 2 you know exactly which patients it is going to work on, you only put those patients through and instead of 10% you get an 80% response rate. “You get a licence on the basis of the data and don’t have to go to phase 3 [a trial involving thousands of people]. That saves vast sums of money and years of development. What that does to the business model is it means you can justify charging lower prices because it cost a lot less in the first place. “If we get this right, it changes the entire dynamics of the business model of the pharmaceutical industry.” Cancer Drugs Cancer NHS Health Sarah Boseley guardian.co.uk

Posted by on August 22, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.