RE: Evening7 Aug 2018 20:52
Thanks Ivy
A few statements from this article:
"For companies, the incentive to find immunotherapies to combine with checkpoint inhibitors was clear: The two approved PD-1 inhibitors, Keytruda (pembrolizumab) and Opdivo (nivolumab), are expensive. Selling for upward of $150,000 per year, they have amassed billions of dollars in sales for their manufacturers, Merck & Co. and Bristol-Myers Squibb, respectively."
"Meanwhile, biotech firms with just minimal evidence that their immunotherapies could enhance the effectiveness of checkpoint inhibitors have seen stock prices soar. Some small immuno-oncology companies have been acquired for sizable amounts despite offering little data to back up their work."
“There’s a lot of talk about these” immunotherapy combinations, says Roy Baynes, head of global clinical development at Merck, “but I’m not aware of any trial that has convincingly shown that the combination is better than PD-1 alone.”
"The problem is that laboratory models for immunotherapies “have at this point almost unknown predictive value,” says Jeffrey Engelman, global head of oncology at Novartis. “We pretty much go into the clinic based on conceptual ideas and hypotheses.” As a consequence, he adds, “we’ve seen a lot of failures, and I think we’re going to see a lot more.”"
"Even as companies grapple with how to make smart, fast decisions about immunotherapies, they acknowledge that drug development isn’t going to get easier. Each clinical advance raises the bar for the hundreds of other therapies in the pipeline. For example, the recent data showing the impressive effect of combining Keytruda and chemotherapy to treat lung cancer—adding immunotherapy halved the risk of dying—will make it tough for other drugs to carve out territory."
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