Source: Medical Progress Today 12/14/12 http://bit.ly/1sPO1WU
In our September 16, 2014 article on this blog, we announced the publication by Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s (CHI’s) Insight Pharma Reports of a new book-length report, Cancer Immunotherapy: Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors, Cancer Vaccines, and Adoptive T-cell Therapies, by Allan B. Haberman, Ph.D.
As we said in that blog article, “cancer immunotherapy is a ‘hot’, fast-moving field”. Thus—inevitably—in the short time since the publication of our report, a great deal of late-breaking news has come in.
This article is a discussion of several key late-breaking news items, which were not published in the report.
Pricing of checkpoint inhibitor agents
As discussed in the report, two PD-1 inhibitors have been recently approved. Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS)/Ono’s nivolumab was approved in Japan (where it is know by the brand name Opdivo) in July 2014 for treatment of unresectable melanoma. Pembrolizumab (Merck’s Keytruda) was approved in the U.S. for treatment of advanced melanoma on September 5, 2014. The very first checkpoint inhibitor to reach the market, the CTLA-4 inhibitor ipilimumab (Medarex/BMS’s Yervoy), was approved in the U.S. in 2011.
At the same time as the news of the approval of the PD-1 inhibitors nivolumab and pembrolizumab came out, information on the pricing of these agents also became available. However, because of the need to complete the report for publication, there was no time to discuss the issue of pricing adequately.
As discussed in a September 4, 2014 article in FiercePharma, the cost of nivolumab in Japan (according to the Wall Street Journal) is $143,000. According to the FierceBiotech article, this was greater than the introductory price for any other cancer drug, especially in Japan, where prices tend to be somewhat lower than in the U.S.
Meanwhile, as reported in a September 4, 2014 article in FierceBiotech, the cost of pembrolizumab in the U.S. will be $12,500 a month, or $150,000 a year.
For comparison, the launch price of BMS’ ipilimumab was $120,000. As we discussed in the report, the PD-1 inhibitors nivolumab and pembrolizumab—as seen in early clinical trials—appear to be more efficacious and have fewer adverse effects in treatment of melanoma.
As discussed in our report, checkpoint inhibitors such as ipilimumab, nivolumab and pembrolizumab are eventually likely to be used in combination with other drugs, including other immuno-oncology drugs, targeted therapies, and others. The price per month or per year of these potentially life-saving and at least in some cases curative combination therapies may thus be expected to go still higher. However, if cancers are pushed into long-term remission or even cure, then it might be possible to discontinue treatment with these expensive drug combinations. In such cases, the cost of treatment may even be less than current therapeutic regimens.
There are no analyses of the costs of specific immunotherapy drugs or cellular therapies in our report. However, we do discuss the issue of drug costs in the survey and interviews that are part of the report.
The issue of the costs of expensive drugs for life-threatening cancers is under discussion in the cancer community. For example, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has initiated an effort to rate oncology drugs not only on their efficacy and adverse effects, but also on their prices. ASCO’s concern is that pricing be related to the therapeutic value of drugs. And commentators such as Peter Bach, MD, MAPP (the Director of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Center for Health Policy and Outcomes) have been weighing in with their analyses. As additional immunotherapy drugs and cellular therapies reach the market, these discussions will certainly continue.
The Bristol-Myers Squibb-Merck lawsuit over PD-1 inhibitors
Another late-breaking news item that came out at the time of the publication of our report is the lawsuit between BMS and Merck over PD-1 inhibitors. Specifically, as soon as Merck gained FDA approval for pembrolizumab, BMS and its Japanese partner Ono sued Merck for patent infringement.
The patent in question is U.S. patent number 8,728,474. It was filed on December 2, 2010, granted to Ono on May 20, 2014, and licensed to BMS. The patent covers the use of anti-PD-1 antibodies to treat cancer. According to BMS and Ono’s claims, Merck started developing pembrolizumab after BMS and Ono had already filed their patent and were putting it into practice by developing their own PD-1 inhibitor, nivolumab.
The lawsuit asks for damages, and for a ruling that Merck is infringing the BMS/Ono PD-1 patent. Such a ruling may mean that BMS and Ono are owed royalties on sales of all rival PD-1 drugs, not just Merck’s. BMS/Ono and Merck are involved in parallel litigation in Europe.
Merck acknowledges Ono’s method patent, but says that it is invalid. Merck also said the lawsuit will not interfere with the U.S. launch of pembrolizumab.
We shall have to watch the proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware to see the outcome of this case. Although this lawsuit was not discussed in our report, the report does include a discussion of the fierce race between PD-1 inhibitor developers Merck and BMS to be the first to market, and to gain the largest market share. The lawsuit is clearly one element in this race.
Merck Serono discontinues development of the cancer vaccine tecemotide
On September 18, 2014, Merck KGaA (Darmstadt, Germany; also known as Merck Serono and EMD Serono) announced that it has discontinued development of the cancer vaccine tecemotide. Tecemotide is a peptide vaccine that was formerly known as Stimuvax. It was originally developed by Oncothyreon (Seattle, WA) and licensed to Merck Serono in 2007.
We covered tecemotide in our report, both as an example of a cancer vaccine that had failed in Phase 3 clinical trials, and as an example of a vaccine that was nevertheless still under development. As discussed in our report, in a Phase 3 trial known as START in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, researchers found no significant difference in overall survival between administration of tecemotide or placebo. However, a subsequent analysis suggested that there was a statistically significant survival advantage for tecemotide compared with placebo in a pre-defined subset of patients. Based on these results, Merck Serono began a second Phase 3 trial in that subset.
However, as the result of a failure in a Phase 3 trial in Japan sponsored by Oncothyreon (reported on August 19, 2014), Merck Serono decided to discontinue development.
As stated by Merck Serono’s Executive Vice President and Global Head of R&D Luciano Rossetti, “While the data from the exploratory subgroup analysis in the START trial generated a reasonable hypothesis to warrant additional study, the results of the recent trial in Japanese patients decreased the probability of current studies to reach their goals.”
As we discussed in our report, the cancer vaccine field has been rife with clinical failures—from its beginnings in the 1990s to the present day. This has especially included late-stage failures, not only that of Merck Serono’s tecemotide, but also, for example, GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSKs) MAGE-A3 vaccine. Only one anticancer vaccine—sipuleucel-T (Dendreon’s Provenge) for treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer—has ever reached the market, and its therapeutic effects appear to be minimal.
Despite these poor results, researchers and companies persist in their efforts to develop cancer vaccines. Our report discusses why cancer vaccine R&D continues despite the overwhelming history of failure, the hypothesized reasons for these failures, and what researchers and companies can do and are doing to attempt to obtain better results.
Conclusions
As a fast-moving, important field, cancer immunotherapy will continue to generate scientific, medical, and market news. There will continue to be periodic meetings, such as the 2014 European Society for Medical Oncology (EMSO) meeting (September 26-30, Madrid, Spain), in which positive results of small, early-stage trials of several checkpoint inhibitors were presented. Our report—an in-depth discussion of cancer immunotherapy—can enable you to understand such future developments, as well as current ones. It is also designed to inform the decisions of leaders in companies and in academia that are involved in cancer R&D and treatment.
For more information on Cancer Immunotherapy: Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors, Cancer Vaccines, and Adoptive T-cell Therapies, or to order it, see the Insight Pharma Reports website.
As the producers of this blog, and as consultants to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, Haberman Associates would like to hear from you. If you are in a biotech or pharmaceutical company, and would like a 15-20-minute, no-obligation telephone discussion of issues raised by this or other blog articles, or of other issues that are important to your company, please contact us by phone or e-mail. We also welcome your comments on this or any other article on this blog.
