Big pharma joins President Obama’s cancer ‘moonshot’
pharmafile | January 13, 2016 | News story | Research and Development | Amgen, Cancer, Celgene, National Immunotherapy Coalition, President Barack Obama, US, moonshot
Celgene and Amgen are among the large biopharma companies that have agreed to join the National Immunotherapy Coalition (NIC), a ‘historic’ US alliance, “to accelerate the potential of combination immunotherapies as the next generation standard of care in patients with cancer.”
The pharma giants joined biotech firms including NantWorks, NantKwest, Etubics, Altor Bioscience, and Precision Biologics, as well as major academic cancer centres and oncology researchers. The companies have an agreement to contribute their novel immunotherapy molecules, including adenovirus vaccines, neoepitopes antibodies, and natural killer cells, to accelerate the development of next generation immunotherapy combination cancer therapies across all tumour types.
This collaboration will be able to access over 60 novel and approved agents, and will enable rapid testing of novel immunotherapy combination protocols, forming the basis of The Cancer MoonShot 2020 programme.
This is a commitment by the US Government to support the NIC to design, initiate and complete randomised Phase II clinical trials within three years, in as many as 20,000 patients with cancer at all stages of disease in up to 20 tumour types. The programme also aims to develop an effective vaccine-based immunotherapy to combat cancer by the year 2020.
And in the final State of the Union address of his eight-year stint as US President, Barack Obama spoke of his desire to finish the work his administration has started, “personalising medical treatments for patients.”
The President said: “Medical research is critical…. with a new moonshot, America can cure cancer. Last month, [Vice President Biden] worked with this Congress to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health the strongest resources they’ve had in over a decade. Tonight, I’m announcing a new national effort to get it done…. let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all.”
Robert Hugin, executive chairman at Celgene says: “We have learned that the research and development of breakthrough treatments for patients requires novel approaches, bold science and strong vision.
“To realise this vision, we are excited to participate in the Cancer MoonShot 2020 Program by applying our deep and diverse library of important molecules, both approved and in the development pipeline, to the trials, which we believe will play an important role in the rapid advancement of immuno-oncology for patients with life-threatening cancers.”
While Paul Seligman, Amgen’s chief of R&D policy, adds: “It is a time of unprecedented progress in our ability to understand how to harness the power of the immune system to treat tumours, and collaborative approaches represent a tremendous opportunity to combine the efforts of key stakeholders to accelerate progress.”
Other pharma companies signalled their potential interest in joining the coalition in future. Luciano Rossetti, executive vice president and head of global R&D at Merck, says: “We look forward to learning more about this initiative, as we share a common goal of improving patient outcomes through the combination of highly innovative novel-novel therapies in the field of immuno-oncology.”
Lilian Anekwe
Related Content
Sharp invests $100m in US and EU manufacturing and packaging facilities
Sharp Services, a pharmaceutical packaging and sterile manufacturing specialist, has announced investments totalling $100m across …
Central nervous system cancer metastases – the evolution of diagnostics and treatment
The current forms of immunotherapy, how T cell therapy works and what the future holds
BioMed X and Servier launch Europe’s first XSeed Labs to advance AI-powered antibody design
BioMed X and Servier have announced the launch of Europe’s first XSeed Labs research project, …
