The early success of a new class of cancer drugs, revealed in test results released here over the last several days, has raised hope among the world’s top cancer specialists that they may be on the verge of an important milestone in the fight against the disease.
The excitement has spread to Wall Street. Shares of Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which are developing such drugs, rose more than 3 percent on Monday after data from their studies was presented over the weekend at the meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
The drugs, still generally in early testing, work in an entirely new way, by unleashing the immune system to attack cancer cells much as it attacks bacteria. That could be an alternative to often-debilitating chemotherapy.
Finding ways to use the body’s own defenses has been a goal since the late 1800s, when a New York surgeon named William B. Coley noticed that cancer disappeared in a patient who had a severe bacterial infection.
He then began injecting bacteria into cancer patients to rev up their immune systems. His claims of success were disputed and most attempts since then to harness the immune system have not worked.
The new drugs work by disabling a brake on the immune system called the programmed death 1 receptor, or PD-1. And although the data presented at the meeting was from the earliest stage of testing only, the drugs were the center of attention here, with some doctors predicting that cancer treatment was about to shift.
“If you look five years out, most of this meeting will be about immunotherapy,” said Dr. Mario Sznol, a professor of medical oncology at Yale.
Analysts, who predict billions of dollars in sales, are trying to determine which of the three front-runners — Merck, Bristol-Myers and Roche — have the best drug and how soon the drugs could reach the market. Some think it could be as early as a year and a half from now.
“I think all of you recognize this is a very special moment in oncology,” Dr. Roger M. Perlmutter, head of research and development at Merck, told analysts Sunday at a standing-room-only meeting.
Harnessing the immune system is appealing for several reasons. It might be applicable to many different types of cancer. It might produce longer lasting remissions than can be achieved by chemotherapy or the newer targeted drugs. And it seems somehow more natural and holistic.
“It seems the right thing to do to stimulate our body’s defense rather than take some kind of poison,” said Therese Bocklage, a cancer patient and pathologist from Albuquerque.
The excitement has spread to Wall Street. Shares of Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which are developing such drugs, rose more than 3 percent on Monday after data from their studies was presented over the weekend at the meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.The drugs, still generally in early testing, work in an entirely new way, by unleashing the immune system to attack cancer cells much as it attacks bacteria. That could be an alternative to often-debilitating chemotherapy.
Finding ways to use the body’s own defenses has been a goal since the late 1800s, when a New York surgeon named William B. Coley noticed that cancer disappeared in a patient who had a severe bacterial infection.
He then began injecting bacteria into cancer patients to rev up their immune systems. His claims of success were disputed and most attempts since then to harness the immune system have not worked.
The new drugs work by disabling a brake on the immune system called the programmed death 1 receptor, or PD-1. And although the data presented at the meeting was from the earliest stage of testing only, the drugs were the center of attention here, with some doctors predicting that cancer treatment was about to shift.
“If you look five years out, most of this meeting will be about immunotherapy,” said Dr. Mario Sznol, a professor of medical oncology at Yale.
Analysts, who predict billions of dollars in sales, are trying to determine which of the three front-runners — Merck, Bristol-Myers and Roche — have the best drug and how soon the drugs could reach the market. Some think it could be as early as a year and a half from now.
“I think all of you recognize this is a very special moment in oncology,” Dr. Roger M. Perlmutter, head of research and development at Merck, told analysts Sunday at a standing-room-only meeting.
Harnessing the immune system is appealing for several reasons. It might be applicable to many different types of cancer. It might produce longer lasting remissions than can be achieved by chemotherapy or the newer targeted drugs. And it seems somehow more natural and holistic.
“It seems the right thing to do to stimulate our body’s defense rather than take some kind of poison,” said Therese Bocklage, a cancer patient and pathologist from Albuquerque.
by Andrew Pollack, NY Times | Read more:
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