Oncology: cancer checkpoint

The emergence of immunotherapy - unleashing a patient's immune system to fight cancer - is the most exciting development in oncology for decades. Dozens of drug companies, big and small, are racing to find ways to remove the biological brakes that tumour cells usually put on the immune system, stopping it recognising and destroying them.

Some immuno-oncology products are achieving spectacular clinical results but almost all of them are big biological molecules - mainly antibodies - which carry certain disadvantages. One is cost: antibodies are extremely expensive to produce. Another is that their large molecular size means they cannot be taken by mouth but have to be injected.

One biotechnology company taking a different approach is Curis, based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Its researchers are developing immunotherapy chemicals that could be taken in oral formulations.

"We are one of the first companies to try to address this with small molecules," says Ali Fattaey, Curis chief executive, "at a cost low enough to combine several products." The "financial toxicity" of high-price antibodies could make cocktails unaffordable, he says. Yet all the evidence suggests that combinations are more likely to beat cancer than individual drugs.

The strategy focuses on "immune checkpoints" - biological brakes that prevent the immune system attacking healthy cells. Cancer cells (such as those from prostate cancer) take advantage of these checkpoints, which have strange names, such as programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), to escape detection.

Immuno-oncology drugs, whether antibodies or small molecules, target and inactivate checkpoint inhibitors, so that cancer cells can no longer use them to avoid the attentions of the patient's immune system.

As with all experimental treatments in early development, those from Curis stand a significant chance of failure. But they are an interesting option in a pharmaceutical field analysts say could eventually be worth more than $30bn a year.

Photograph: Dreamstime

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation