Cancer cure – can we afford it?

The biomedical community has a lot to be excited about as the “cure” for cancer gets closer than ever.  It may now be in sight, with just a bit more testing, fine tuning, and approvals required.  The new treatments are achieving cure rates above 80%, and achieving it with patients who have not responded to more traditional treatments, like chemotherapy.  The concept of a “cure” in this case includes the use of modified cells working inside the body to actively hunt down and destroy cells they recognize as “not normal”.  These “not normal” cells are cancer cells.  Unlike chemotherapy, which destroys good and bad cells, these new treatments attack only the bad cells – the cancer cells.

Earlier treatment methods used synthetic antibodies, as they have the ability to flag bad cells, like cancer, and trigger the immune system to destroy them.  Antibodies are quite versatile and can be developed to bind to almost any target in the body, even crossing the blood-brain barrier to bind to targets in the brain.  Moving forward from synthetic antibody treatments, researchers are now using CRISPR cell editing technology to edit a patient’s white blood cells (T-cells) outside the body, grow millions of the edited T-cells, and then infuse them back into the patient’s body.  As the newly modified cells circulate in the body, they attack and destroy any cancer cells they run into.  This new immunotherapy is called “Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy, or, more simply, “CAR T-Cell Therapy”.  This therapy is expensive, as it is complex and highly personalized.  It also has some harsh side effects, and researchers are working hard to increase safety and reduce all risks.

The early test results are very promising, however, the cost of such complex and individualized treatments can be close to $.5 Million each, making us question if such an effective therapy can be brought into the realm of general affordability, thus making it the true breakthrough we have all been looking for.  There are several initiatives that could move us closer to the goal, such as:

• developing a universal donor CAR T-Cell, allowing for the treatment of multiple patients using the same modified T-cells manufactured in bulk
• increasing the survival rate and activity rate of CAR T-cells, and enhancing their ability to call in other cells to help with the destruction of cancer cells
• improving CRISPR technology to introduce more precise cell edits and accomplish multiple edits at once.

Given that progress will be made on these and other cost saving initiatives, the time may be very near when we can say that cancer has been conquered.  The ability to empower our own good cells, modified a touch, to do battle with our own bad cells is a huge step forward.  It certainly appears that we have the knowledge to finally implement an effective “cure” for cancer. The affordability issues are being worked on, and the future looks bright.

It is a big challenge for all the bio-tech firms involved, and they are competing hard to reach the finish line. These earthshaking improvements in cancer treatment are disruptive in nature and should present solid investment opportunities.

TREND DISRUPTORS is monitoring these developments and identifies investment opportunities that will lead to success for the well informed investor.

Stay tuned!