UK boosts tropical disease fight

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21 January 2012 Last updated at 09:16 GMT River blindness is a tropical disease caused by parasitic worms and carried by black flies Foreign aid for efforts to eradicate parasitic diseases which kill and disfigure millions worldwide is to rise fivefold, say ministers.

A total of £245m will be spent fighting diseases such as river blindness and bilharzia.

Such donations, coupled with free drugs from pharmaceutical companies, could help wipe out some illnesses, they predict.

A UK expert said the aim was to offer a billion treatments worldwide a year.

So-called "neglected tropical diseases" receive a tiny fraction of the funding set aside for the fight against major killers such as HIV, TB and malaria.

However, campaigners say that even a relatively small investment could transform the lives of millions of people in poorer tropical countries.

The Department for International Development, announcing the aid package, said that over the next few years, the money would protect an estimated 140 million people from these parasitic infections.

Among the prime targets are elephantiasis, a mosquito-borne parasite which leads to abnormal enlargement of the limbs and genitals, and bilharzia, spread through contaminated water, which impairs child growth, damages internal organs and can lead to death or chronic ill-health.

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British support will take the 'neglected' out of 'neglected tropical diseases' and will not just save lives, but transform lives”

End Quote Stephen O'Brien International Development Minister River blindness, the third key disease, is spread by parasitic worms and cause severe discomfort and sight loss.

Finally, Guinea worm, another water-borne infection, can leave people bedridden for months before the parasitic worm, which can grow up to 3ft (91.4cm) long, emerges.

'Debilitating pain'

There are effective drugs to either prevent or treat all of these infections, and the decision by pharmaceutical companies to supply them free of charge in affected countries means it is possible to reach many millions of people.

International Development Minister Stephen O'Brien said: "These diseases thrive on poverty and have horrendous consequences for sufferers, especially children, leaving them in debilitating pain with severe disabilities.

"The world is increasingly coming together to build on the long-standing commitment of the pharmaceutical industry to rid the world of these terrible diseases.

"British support will take the 'neglected' out of 'neglected tropical diseases' and will not just save lives but transform lives."

Professor David Molyneux, from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, a long-standing campaigner for more international funding, said he was "delighted" by the announcement.

He said: "As far as the British taxpayer is concerned, this money will offer more health to more people than anything else - it really is the most effective use of the money.

"Currently we are treating approximately 800 million people a year, and we're aiming for a billion."

Save The Children head of health Simon Wright also welcomed the move. "This is a great start for the millions of children who can't get treatment for basic illnesses which are completely unknown in rich countries.

"The British public should be proud of their role in combating these awful diseases."

Source BBC

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Cancer study boosts hopes for Roche's armed antibody

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the logo of Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche is pictured on the company's headquarters in Basel February 4, 2009.

Credit: Reuters/Christian Hartmann

By Kate Kelland

STOCKHOLM | Sun Sep 25, 2011 11:39am EDT

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Women with an aggressive type of advanced breast cancer can live significantly longer without their disease getting worse if they are treated with an experimental "armed antibody" drug from Roche, researchers said on Sunday.

Data from a mid-stage clinical trial of the new combination drug, trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1), in HER2-positive breast cancer found patients given T-DM1 had a 41 percent improvement in the time without their breast cancer worsening compared with those given trastuzumab, or Herceptin, plus chemotherapy.

Side effects were also significantly reduced in the T-DM1 group, a factor that was "particularly important and very clinically meaningful," said the study's lead investigator Sara Hurvitz, since far fewer T-DM1 patients opted to stop treatment during the phase II trial.

The results are a boost for the medicine, which the Swiss drugmaker Roche has been developing with ImmunoGen as a successor to its blockbuster Herceptin. Herceptin had sales of more than $5 billion in 2010.

Tim Race, an analyst at Deutsche Bank in London said in a research note he thought Roche's franchise of Herceptin, T-DM1 and another experimental drug called pertuzumab now offers "more than $1 billion of incremental growth opportunity."

In the trial, which involved 137 patients who had not previously had chemotherapy or HER2-targeted therapy, those on T-DM1 had an average 14.2 months without the disease worsening versus 9.2 months for those given Herceptin plus chemotherapy.

The proportion of women who stopped treatment due to side-effects was 7.2 percent in the T-DM1 arm compared with 28.8 percent in the standard therapy arm of the study.

"These provocative Phase II data illustrate that first-line treatment with T-DM1 provides a longer time for patients to live without cancer progression and with fewer side effects than standard chemotherapy plus trastuzumab," said Hurvitz, director of the breast oncology program at University of California, Los Angeles, who presented her findings at the European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress (EMCC) in Stockholm.

"MAGIC LINK" IN ARMED ANTIBODY

T-DM1 is a new kind of so-called "armed antibody" drug that can carry a cell-killing payload into cancer cells.

It combines trastuzumab, an antibody and the active ingredient in Herceptin, with the agent DM1 -- a derivative of an extremely powerful type of chemotherapy called maytansine.

"Maytansine was a chemotherapy that was being developed in the 1980s, but it was so toxic that they shelved it," Hurvitz told reporters during an EMCC briefing.

"So what they've done now is to figure out how to link it to the trastuzumab" so that it is not activated until it reaches the cancer cell.

"The magic is in the link," she said. "The whole thing is internalized within the cell. It's actually quite unique."

The fact the drug delivers its toxic payload directly into cells is also thought to be key to why it causes fewer side effects like hair loss and low white blood cell counts.

Trial data showed that only 4 percent of patients in the T-DM1 treatment group suffered hair loss, compared with 67 percent of those in the standard treatment group.

As well as having fewer unpleasant side effects, Roche believes its new drug also offers greater convenience, since it is one drug and eliminates the need to administer chemotherapy.

Commercially, it could help protect Roche's breast cancer franchise, since Herceptin could be exposed to so-called "biosimilar" generic competition in Europe from around 2015.

Consensus forecasts from Thomson Reuters Pharma show analysts see T-DM1 generating sales of $694 million by 2016.

The new drug also keeps Roche in the breast cancer innovation race in the face of newer medicines that aim to rival Herceptin, like GlaxoSmithKline's Tykerb.

Oncology experts described Hurvitz's study as important and said the results were promising but would need to built upon by further late-stage studies.

Roche is conducting several Phase III trials of T-DM1 and Hurvitz said the results from one of these -- looking at T-DM1 versus GSK's Tykerb plus Xeloda, another type of chemotherapy also made by Roche -- are expected in the first half of 2012.

Hurvitz said that if those data are positive, Roche will then apply to U.S. drug regulators for a license for T-DM1.

(Editing John Stonestreet, Greg Mahlich)

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Cancer study boosts hopes for Roche's armed antibody

AppId is over the quota
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the logo of Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche is pictured on the company's headquarters in Basel February 4, 2009.

Credit: Reuters/Christian Hartmann

By Kate Kelland

STOCKHOLM | Sat Sep 24, 2011 6:29pm EDT

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Women with an aggressive type of advanced breast cancer can live significantly longer without their disease getting worse if they are treated with an experimental "armed antibody" drug from Roche, researchers said on Sunday.

Data from a mid-stage clinical trial of the new combination drug, trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1), in HER2-positive breast cancer found patients given T-DM1 had a 41 percent improvement in the time without their breast cancer worsening compared with those given trastuzumab, or Herceptin, plus chemotherapy.

Side effects were also significantly reduced in the T-DM1 group, a factor that was "particularly important and very clinically meaningful," said the study's lead investigator Sara Hurvitz, since far fewer T-DM1 patients opted to stop treatment during the phase II trial.

The results are a boost for the medicine, which the Swiss drugmaker Roche has been developing with ImmunoGen as a successor to its blockbuster Herceptin. Herceptin had sales of more than $5 billion in 2010.

"These provocative Phase II data illustrate that first-line treatment with T-DM1 provides a longer time for patients to live without cancer progression and with fewer side effects than standard chemotherapy plus trastuzumab," said Hurvitz, director of the breast oncology program at University of California, Los Angeles, who presented her findings at the European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress (EMCC) in Stockholm.

In the trial, which involved 137 patients who had not previously had chemotherapy or HER2-targeted therapy, those on T-DM1 had an average 14.2 months without the disease worsening versus 9.2 months for those given Herceptin plus chemotherapy.

The proportion of women who stopped treatment due to side-effects was 7.2 percent in the T-DM1 arm compared with 28.8 percent in the standard therapy arm of the study.

"MAGIC LINK" IN ARMED ANTIBODY

T-DM1 is a new kind of so-called "armed antibody" drug that can carry a cell-killing payload into cancer cells.

It combines trastuzumab, an antibody and the active ingredient in Herceptin, with the agent DM1 -- a derivative of an extremely powerful type of chemotherapy called maytansine.

"Maytansine was a chemotherapy that was being developed in the 1980s, but it was so toxic that they shelved it," Hurvitz told reporters during an EMCC briefing. "So what they've done now is to figure out how to link it to the trastuzumab" -- so that it is not activated until it reaches the cancer cell.

"The magic is in the link," she said. "The whole thing is internalized within the cell. It's actually quite unique."

The fact the drug delivers its toxic payload directly into cells is also thought to be key to why it causes fewer side effects like hair loss and low white blood cell counts.

Trial data showed that only 4 percent of patients in the T-DM1 treatment group suffered hair loss, compared with 67 percent of those in the standard treatment group.

As well as having fewer unpleasant side effects, Roche believes its new drug also offers greater convenience, since it is one drug and eliminates the need to administer chemotherapy.

Commercially, it should help protect Roche's breast cancer franchise, since Herceptin could be exposed to so-called "biosimilar" generic competition in Europe from around 2015.

Consensus forecasts from Thomson Reuters Pharma show analysts see T-DM1 generating sales of $694 million by 2016.

It also keeps Roche in the breast cancer innovation race in the face of newer medicines that aim to rival Herceptin, like British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline's Tykerb.

Oncology experts described Hurvitz's study as important and said the results were promising but would need to built upon by further late-stage studies.

Roche is conducting several Phase III trials of T-DM1 and Hurvitz said the results from one of these -- looking at T-DM1 versus GSK's Tykerb plus Xeloda, another type of chemotherapy also made by Roche -- are expected in the first half of 2012.

Hurvitz said that if those data are positive, Roche will then apply to U.S. drug regulators for a license for T-DM1.

(Editing by Dan Lalor and John Stonestreet)

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