Two Stones to Kill One Bird? Combination Therapies Could be the Future of Cancer Treatment

Monday 16 July 2012, Amsterdam

In the ongoing battle against cancer, the medical community is looking to promising multi-targeted therapies for more effective and enduring treatments, says the new Multi-Targeted Therapies - New Wave of Combination Therapies in Late Stage Development for Lung Cancer Offer Promise report.

According to the report, there is a wave of combination therapies in late stage development that have the potential to revolutionize long-term oncological treatment by addressing the complexities of cancer growth.

In Silico methods (the use of computer simulations) have been instrumental in the generation of biological and chemical data on ligands and targets. These same methods are now being employed to identify and design multi-target compounds, facilitated by the wealth of bioactivity information advanced computer simulations provide.

The report shows that lung cancer treatments represent the greatest share of the Phase III combination therapy development pool with 16%. This relatively high percentage is not surprising considering the disease’s growing prevalence around the world due to an increase in tobacco consumption in emerging economies such as China. The second and third most populous combination therapies in Phase III were breast cancer and colorectal cancer, with 13.4% and 8.5%, respectively.

There are, however, regulatory problems regarding the co-development of novel drugs. The primary concern is that this process will inevitably provide less information about the safety and effectiveness of these agents than if they were developed and tested individually.

The FDA has drafted guidance and recommendations on how combination therapies should be processed, including a proposal that drugs should only be developed in combination when there is a compelling biological rationale for the use of the combination, or where the drugs cannot be developed individually (if this were lead to drug resistance, for example).

Combinations also need to be shown in preliminary clinical studies to provide greater-than-additive activity or a more durable response compared to using the agents alone.

This report provides an overview of the discovery and development of therapeutic drug combinations and multi-target drugs for oncology.

This report was built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, primary and secondary research, and in-house analysis conducted by a team of industry experts.