Novartis pays out for US biotech
pharmafile | February 17, 2014 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Cancer, Novartis, Vaccine, costim pharmaceuticals
Novartis is looking to shore up its cancer immunotherapy pipeline with the purchase of oncology specialist CoStim Pharmaceuticals.
The Cambridge, MA-based, privately held biotech company focusses its treatments on harnessing the immune system to eliminate immune-blocking signals from cancer.
Novartis said in a statement that there is ‘increasing evidence’ pointing to the role of the immune system in controlling cancer.
There are also opportunities for creating effective oncology therapies for cancer patients by stimulating a targeted immune response, the company adds.
Novartis has already ventured into this area with its investigative chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) technology, which is being developed in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania.
It has as yet, however, to market any new cancer vaccines, unlike its revivals Bristol-Myers Squibb or Dendreon who have both had approvals for cancer immunotherapies in melanoma and prostate cancer respectively.
But with this latest acquisition, Novartis says it is adding late discovery stage immunotherapy programmes directed to several targets, including programmed cell death or PD-1.
These types of treatments could benefit patients by circumventing cancer’s ability to develop resistance against current single drugs – a major problem in current oncology research and potentially lucrative market for those companies that can develop a treatment to get around it.
Dr Mark Fishman, president of the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, said: “Therapy for many types of cancers is expected to increasingly rely upon rational combinations of agents.
“Immunotherapy agents provide additional arrows in our quiver for such combinations. They complement our extensive portfolio of drugs that hit genetically-defined cancer-causing pathways, and also may be relevant to expansion of CAR therapies.”
Financial terms of the deal have yet to be disclosed by either firm.
Ben Adams
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