Targeted medicines against cancer fail. Even cancer specilists are convinced!

Everybody who follows my blog already knows my position to targeted approach, personalized medicine and R&D strategies of Big Pharma. And today we have an article from The Guardian as an fine illustration of my point of view.

Progress against cancer is stalling, with the latest targeted cancer drugs failing to live up to expectations and priced so high that treatment is becoming unaffordable even in rich countries, according to experts at a meeting of nearly 100 eminent cancer specialists from around the world.

Only a few years ago, many cancer experts thought the arrival of targeted medicines, designed to attack the genetic makeup of the tumour, would make dramatic inroads into cancer deaths. That has not happened. Instead, these therapies have only bought a few extra months of life. If the question was whether the world was winning the war on cancer, said Douglas Hanahan of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research, who outlined the latest state of drug research, "in general, for most forms of human cancer, the answer is clearly no".

The excitement generated by targeted drugs, which interfere with specific molecules involved in tumour growth and suppression, has been short-lived.

Doctors reported apparently miraculous results from the use of the BRAF-inhibitor vemurafenib in advanced malignant melanoma, a usually fatal form of skin cancer. Within two weeks, the tumours had melted away.

"But six months later, [the cancer] is back with a vengeance," he said.

Other drugs working in a similar way – including erlotinib (Tarceva) for a form of lung cancer, bevacizumab (Avastin) for breast, colorectal and other cancers, and sunitinib (Sutent) for renal cell carcinoma and gastrointestinal sarcoma – have also not done so well, said Hanahan. Resistance to the drugs builds up, sometimes very quickly. "All came on line with great expectations. The reality check is they are all working in the important first step, but we have a long way to go in terms of winning the war."

The future is probably using these drugs together or in combination with other, older types of drugs, but the price is likely to be prohibitive.

A year's treatment with vemurafenib alone would cost £91,000. Even though the manufacturer, Roche, has offered an undisclosed discount to the Department of Health, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said in June it was too much for the NHS to pay. No health service will be able to afford to put a patient on two or three such drugs at the same time.

Well, once again, can you see a conflict of interests here? Big Pharma is out there to make profits – not to cure cancer. The best scenario for Big Pharma is a launching of novel extremely expensive (and profitable for Big Pharma) medicines for treatment of cancer which is only a little bit more efficient that former medicines – this approach generates profits without decreasing the market size. Smart? Definitively! Sad? Yes, but true...