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Targeted radiation will be the next sensational breakthrough in the fight against cancer
Drug makers are betting that the next big breakthrough in cancer treatment will be delivering radioactive substances directly to tumors.
Leading pharmaceutical companies have spent about $10 billion on deals to acquire radiopharmaceuticals or to partner with manufacturers of such drugs. They have swallowed up smaller newcomers to get control of a technology that, despite being in its infancy, can treat many types of cancer.
“Any large company that is involved in oncology or for whom oncology is an important therapeutic category is interested in developing this field in one way or another,” says Michael Schmidt, an analyst at Guggenheim Securities.
Two radiopharmaceuticals from Novartis are already available on the market. Several dozen more drugs are in development, according to Schmidt. It is difficult to estimate the total market size, he believes, because there are many possible types of cancer that these drugs could cure.
По прогнозам, доход в этой категории может составить от 5 миллиардов долларов, если технология будет ограничена лечением нескольких видов рака, таких как рак предстательной железы и нейроэндокринные опухоли, до десятков миллиардов, если будет доказана ее эффективность при других видах рака.
The drugs work by attaching a radioactive material to a target molecule. Once administered into the body, this molecule seeks out a specific marker on cancer cells and attaches to it. The challenge is to identify markers that are present on malignant cells but absent on healthy cells. This will allow the radioactive substance to be accurately delivered to the cancer cells and spare healthy parts of the body from the harmful effects that many anti-tumor drugs have.
It took time to prove that the technology could work both scientifically and financially. The first radiopharmaceuticals were approved in the early 2000s. But interest in them from large pharmaceutical companies has only recently emerged.
The production of such drugs requires a complex technological process and complicated organization of logistics, which are also two important problems. The radioactive material degrades quickly, so patients need to be treated within a few days after the drug is manufactured.
Pharmaceutical companies have proven that they can manage complex, time-sensitive drugs, such as CAR-T for blood cancers or gene therapy for rare diseases. And pharma companies have realized that these strategies can be applied to radiopharmaceuticals as well.
However, it may take years to realize the true potential of this technology, as many experimental drugs are still in the early stages of development. According to analysts, one of the outstanding issues is to determine how safe and tolerable different types of radiopharmaceuticals are.
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