Originally from our sister publication, CanadianHealthcareNetwork.ca.
In the ongoing battle against cancer, the medical community is looking to promising multi-targeted therapies for more effective and enduring treatments, says a report by pharmaceutical industry observer GBI Research.
According to the report, there is a wave of combination therapies in late-stage development having the potential to revolutionize long-term oncological treatment by addressing the complexities of cancer growth.
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.
GBI Research’s report shows lung cancer treatments represent the greatest share of the Phase III combination therapy development pool at 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, at 13.4% and 8.5%, respectively.
There are, however, regulatory problems regarding the co-development of novel drugs, notes GBI.
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 U.S. Food and Drug Administration has drafted guidance and recommendations on how combination therapies should be processed, GBI advises.
These include 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.