If it proves successful, a new approach to treating cancer could substantially boost sales and profitability of several members of the pharmaceutical industry. And according to Jean-Pierre Issa, an oncologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, every major drug company has a program in epigenetics.
These new treatments being studied exploit the epigenome, the molecular machinery that cells use to turn genes on and off, telling them when to produce proteins that carry out most functions of life. It is believed that reprogramming DNA could stop the nucleic acid from turning cells cancerous in the first place. This is the line of attack being studied by members of Big Pharma, including GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK), Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) and Novartis (NYSE:NVS).
This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky approach, either. It already has proved successful. Look no further than Celgene (NASDAQ:CELG), which in 2010 generated $534 million in sales on its epigenetic compound Vidaza, which adds months of life for patients with a leukemia-type disorder. Three other epigenetic blood cancer drugs have been approved, from Japan’s Eisai, Merck (NYSE:MRK) and Celgene.
Of course, bigger paydays will accrue to those companies that develop epigenetic drugs that treat the millions of people who develop the most common forms of cancer — those of the lungs, breast and prostate. That’s the focus of the work being done by Glaxo, Lilly and Novartis. In fact, earlier this year, Glaxo agreed to a deal worth up to $650 million with Epizyme to search for epigenetics drugs for cancer. The latter was co-founded by Nobel laureate H. Robert Horvitz.
Scientists really aren’t sure just how epigenetic medicines work. It appears one thing they do is reactivate so-called tumor suppressor genes that keep cells from growing out of control. Essentially, they revert the DNA bar codes back to normal, somewhat like fixing a computer software glitch.
Scientists see no reason why epigenetic drugs shouldn’t work as well on solid tumors as they have on blood cancers. The next two to three years should reveal the role of faulty bar codes in the disease, says Robert Weinberg, a researcher at MIT’s Whitehead Institute.
One target of drug makers is an enzyme called EZH2 that is overactive in breast cancer, prostate cancer and other tumors. Constellation Pharmaceuticals and Epizyme both have compounds against the enzyme, while Glaxo plans human trials of its EZH2 blocker this year.
Currently, most cancer treatments try to kill tumors with toxic chemotherapy or by blocking mutated genes that feed a tumor’s growth. Epigenics appears to have the potential to be the third major method of attack, and if this approach works as well as hoped against solid tumors, the companies mentioned here could garner a healthy share of the worldwide market for cancer drugs, which is expected to approach $80 billion next year.
