Treating Pediatric Cancer? How Lantern Pharma Hopes To Improve The Lives Of Pediatric Cancer Patients During Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

Every September organizations have worked to raise awareness for childhood cancer by participating in childhood cancer awareness month. 

Organizations such as the American Childhood Cancer Organization (ACCO), St. Judes Children’s Research Hospital, The Greehey Children’s Cancer Research Institute at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio, and Lantern Pharma Inc. LTRN are key players in the fight against pediatric cancer.

The ACCO is a non-profit organization that provides support, information, and advocacy to those who have been impacted by pediatric cancer. They work to speak for the needs of families and survivors in order to shape policy, research, and programs that affect the lives of families who have experienced childhood cancer. Every September the ACCO leads the way in raising awareness for childhood cancer through corporate partnerships, fundraisers, and events all centered around continuing to improve the lives of the patients and families cancer has impacted.

Today there is an 80% survival rate of at least five years for children diagnosed with pediatric cancer. While this is a massive improvement over the 20% survival rate in 1962, there is still much room for improvement in pediatric cancer treatments.

While survival rates have improved significantly, few children who relapse are cured. Furthermore, pediatric cancer survivors have a 70% chance of a chronic health condition developing and a 42% cumulative incidence of severe, disabling or life-threatening conditions. 

Cytotoxic chemotherapy is one of the primary treatments for pediatric cancer. Simply put, this form of treatment can result in many long-term health issues including cardiomyopathy, a heart disease that inhibits blood flow throughout the body, and secondary malignancies, new cancer caused by previous cancer treatments.

Why haven’t better treatments with fewer side effects been developed? There are many issues. One such issue is that bringing new drugs to market comes at a huge financial cost, and the smaller number of pediatric patients in comparison to adult patients makes it a less enticing area to invest in. Because of the high cost of developing new drugs, the majority of targeted therapies studied in pediatric cancer have been repurposed drugs that were originally developed for adult cancers. These repurposed forms of treatment have demonstrated very little efficacy in both low response rates and high rates of relapse.

Lantern Pharma is working to make a significant contribution toward improving treatment options for pediatric cancer therapies.  Panna Sharma, Lantern Pharma’s President and CEO, described the company as striving to transform the pace at which new therapies for pediatric and rare cancers are developed via the constant use of artificial intelligence (AI), data, advanced computational approaches and models, and the use of machine learning to potentially validate multiple new pediatric indications and generate insights that may ultimately lead to new therapies.

Lantern Pharma understands the importance of continuous research on better and more effective drugs to combat pediatric cancers and improve survival for children. They are currently conducting research on two drug candidates known as LP-184 and LP-284. In preclinical studies Lantern has shown that LP-184 can be effective in the rare and malignant childhood brain cancer, atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor, more commonly known as ATRT. The drug would be filling a gap in patient populations with high unmet clinical needs, like ATRT, which has no standard of care (SOC) therapy available. The demand for drugs like LP-184 cannot be understated as there are an estimated 600 living patients with ATRTs and approximately 60 new cases each year; currently, the 5-year survival rate is at 30%. It is the hope that LP-184 can turn the tides of this battle and increase the survival for patients with this devastating disease and potentially other pediatric cancers.

Another factor that is facilitating companies to develop drugs for pediatric cancers are the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Orphan Drug Designations (ODD) and a Rare Pediatric Disease (RPD) Designations. These designations were created by the FDA to incentivise companies and accelerate drug development for rare cancers that have unmet clinical needs. Lantern was granted both an ODD and RPD for LP-184 to treat ATRT and may give this drug a bright future to eventually reach ATRT patients.

Due to the promise of LP-184, Lantern Pharma announced earlier this year its collaboration with The Greehey Children's Cancer Research Institute (GCCRI) at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA). GCCRI is the second largest research institution in the US that focuses exclusively on pediatric cancer research and therapy development. The primary goal of this collaboration is to advance the research and development of Lantern’s novel drugs LP-184 and LP-284, which includes identifying pediatric cancers that will respond to Lantern’s drug candidates.

LP-184 and LP-284 are just two of the potential treatments being developed to improve pediatric cancer therapies. With organizations like Lantern Pharma, GCCRI, St. Judes, and the ACCO working to improve pediatric cancer survival, it appears that cancer researchers may have the resources and support needed to continue developing new and improved pediatric cancer treatments.

This post contains sponsored advertising content. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investing advice.

Featured photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash