Personalized Treatment And Immunotherapy Are Pharma's Newest Weapons Against Cancer

On Sunday, The Guardian issued an article that spoke of a UK study that could transform how cancer is treated. The large-scale clinical project assessed how personalized cancer therapies could revolutionize cancer treatment, joining in the global trend as pharmaceutical companies across the world turn to oncology for economic growth and opportunity to make history. As they continue to chase slices of covid vaccine revenue, Pfizer PFE and Moderna Inc MRNA have already turned to the pursuit of revolutionizing cancer therapies in order to create their new growth chapter in the post-COVID era. Therefore, mRNA technology, personalization of treatments and immunotherapy promise to fuel science to finally advance in the cancer battle. 

More about UK's £9 million project that focuses on ways of using immunotherapy to fight cancer. 

The partnership between the Francis Crick Institute, five NHS trusts, charities and bioscience companies will take place over the course of four years, examining the effectiveness of new immunotherapy treatments along with exploring new ways of cancer detection. The project is part of a £118 million incentive to create five new hubs across the UK to develop new health technologies that includes AI cancer diagnostics. Named as The Manifest project, the Crick Institute will lead the way in examining tumours and blood samples from 3,000 patients who have suffered from cancer in an effort to find which biomarkers – such as genes, proteins or molecules could indicate undetected cancer as well as the possibility of a relapse. Hopefully, the study will pave the way for the development of further immunotherapy treatment that would help the patients’ bodies to fight cancer as oppposed to aggressive treatments used nowadays which sometimes cause more harm than good.

Immunotherapy has already proven its effectiveness in cancer treatment. 

Merck & Co Inc MRK has already made its mark in immunotherapy with its Keytruda treatment. It also integrated it within a combined treatment for melanoma, together with the experimental mRNA vaccine it developed with Moderna. During summer, Moderna and Merck revealed encouraging data in patients who suffered with this deadly form of cancer. Moderna and Merck reported the combination of their experimental vaccine improved survival rates with almost 75% of patients being cancer-free during the two-and-a-half-year timeframe. The overall survival rate of patients that underwent the combined therapy that Moderna and Merck developed was as high as 96% during that same time frame.

A German company has already revolutionized early cancer detection

Molecular genetics diagnostic company specializing in the early detection of cancer, Mainz Biomed N.V. MYNZ, released a non-invasive test for one of the most common cancers in July this year. Allowing for early detection of colorectal cancer, ColoAlert is currently being commercialized across Europe and in select international markets while Mainz Biomed paves the way to the U.S. market with FDA evaluating its ReconAAsense clinical study. Today, Mainz Biomed revealed that there is increasing demand from both existing and prospective laboratory partners for its enhanced version of the ColoAlert that is set to become the standard offering to which existing partners will transition to. By integrating the Fecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) with proprietary mRNA biomarkers, an advanced AI and machine learning algorithm, studies showed that ColoAlert detects colorectal cancer with 97% sensitivity while also detecting a pre-cancerous condition called advanced adenomas with 88% sensitivity, with specify of 93%. Therefore, Mainz Biomed even tackled the area of cancer prevention and with a non-invasive test that can be taken easily by all those who are dreading getting a colonoscopy.

At the very least, the above innovations provide hope to all those suffering from this dreadful condition. While saving lives, pharmaceutical companies who succeed to revolutionize cancer treatment will also bring their domestic economies massive opportunities for growth, securing their status as a medical powerhouse as cancer is the one battle that science and technology has been failing to win for way too long.

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