There’s new hope for cancer patients reports Elizabeth Lopatto from Bloomberg:
Eli Lilly & Co. plans to test as many as eight drugs from its $6.5 billion ImClone Systems Inc. acquisition in humans this year, three of them in final-stage clinical trials.
Experimental ImClone drugs entering the final round of tests required for regulatory approval include IMC-1121B, which is being evaluated as a treatment for advanced stomach cancer and breast cancer, and IMC-11F8, a successor to Erbitux, which treats colon, head and neck tumors. A third drug, IMC-A12, may also enter final testing this year, Indianapolis-based Lilly said today in a statement.
Lilly bought ImClone last November to expand in the $48.2 billion market for cancer medicines, adding Erbitux, which generated sales of $749 million last year, and six experimental compounds. Lilly needs new products to offset generic competition to its best-seller, the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa, in 2011, according to a July 13 research note from Les Funtleyder, an analyst for Miller Tabak & Co.
“If two or more of these ImClone medicines cross the finish line, then this was a smart business deal,” said Steven Paul, Lilly’s executive vice president of science and technology in an interview yesterday. “ImClone is really complimentary because it gives us cancer antibodies we didn’t have.”
Top-Selling Treatments
Cancer drugs were the biggest therapeutic class globally in 2008, with $48.2 billion in sales, according to IMS Health Inc, a Norwalk, Connecticut-based market research firm.
“Cancer therapies will be increasingly targeted and tailored,” Lilly’s Chief Executive Officer John Lechleiter said today in an interview. Erbitux, an ImClone drug already on the market, provides a blueprint, he said. The drug works best in patients who don’t have a mutation on a gene called K-Ras.
Two more cancer compounds from the ImClone purchase may enter human testing by the end of this year, John Johnson, the head of the ImClone subsidiary, said today in an interview.
Lilly has seven drugs in phase 3 testing, the last stage typically required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before the agency will consider the drug for marketing approval. Another 19 compounds are in phase 2 testing.
One of those drugs in phase 2 testing, IMC-A12, has been expanded into colorectal, neuroendocrine and lung cancers.
‘Serious Work’
IMC-11F8, the successor to Erbitux, will begin trials in lung cancer in 2009, with colorectal cancer to follow, said Christine Van Marter, a spokeswoman for Lilly, in an e-mail.
“They’ve got serious work cut out for them,” said Seamus Fernandez, an analyst with Leerink Swann, in a telephone interview today. “They need major positive surprises. Zyprexa is the start of their patent expirations but it’s not the end.”
Lilly faces patent expirations for its antidepressant Cymbalta, the company’s second-biggest seller, and the osteoporosis medicine Evista. These drugs, along with Zyprexa, generated $8.47 billion worldwide last year, or 43 percent of Lilly’s revenue.
Lilly bought ImClone in part because of its work with monoclonal antibodies, laboratory-produced versions of the body’s immune proteins, Lilly’s Paul said. They are less likely to fall out of the development pipeline because of side-effects occurring in places the drug doesn’t target, Paul said.
“We like the science, and we think there’s a lot of unmet medical need,” Paul said. As the population ages, more people will have cancer, he said.
Science Park
Lilly also said today its ImClone group, based in New York, will move to the East River Science Park, slated to open in 2010. The building is adjacent to the New York University Medical Center and north of Bellevue Hospital Center. The location will allow Lilly’s ImClone unit to work more closely with academic partners, the company said in the statement.
“There’s tremendous talent in New York and it’s second only to Boston in National Institutes of Health grants,” Paul said. “We hope to serve as a magnet for the kind of translational research that produces new medicine.”
About 215,000 jobs in New York were in the biopharmaceutical industry in 2006, according to Lilly’s statement.
Experimental ImClone drugs entering the final round of tests required for regulatory approval include IMC-1121B, which is being evaluated as a treatment for advanced stomach cancer and breast cancer, and IMC-11F8, a successor to Erbitux, which treats colon, head and neck tumors. A third drug, IMC-A12, may also enter final testing this year, Indianapolis-based Lilly said today in a statement.
Lilly bought ImClone last November to expand in the $48.2 billion market for cancer medicines, adding Erbitux, which generated sales of $749 million last year, and six experimental compounds. Lilly needs new products to offset generic competition to its best-seller, the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa, in 2011, according to a July 13 research note from Les Funtleyder, an analyst for Miller Tabak & Co.
“If two or more of these ImClone medicines cross the finish line, then this was a smart business deal,” said Steven Paul, Lilly’s executive vice president of science and technology in an interview yesterday. “ImClone is really complimentary because it gives us cancer antibodies we didn’t have.”
Top-Selling Treatments
Cancer drugs were the biggest therapeutic class globally in 2008, with $48.2 billion in sales, according to IMS Health Inc, a Norwalk, Connecticut-based market research firm.
“Cancer therapies will be increasingly targeted and tailored,” Lilly’s Chief Executive Officer John Lechleiter said today in an interview. Erbitux, an ImClone drug already on the market, provides a blueprint, he said. The drug works best in patients who don’t have a mutation on a gene called K-Ras.
Two more cancer compounds from the ImClone purchase may enter human testing by the end of this year, John Johnson, the head of the ImClone subsidiary, said today in an interview.
Lilly has seven drugs in phase 3 testing, the last stage typically required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before the agency will consider the drug for marketing approval. Another 19 compounds are in phase 2 testing.
One of those drugs in phase 2 testing, IMC-A12, has been expanded into colorectal, neuroendocrine and lung cancers.
‘Serious Work’
IMC-11F8, the successor to Erbitux, will begin trials in lung cancer in 2009, with colorectal cancer to follow, said Christine Van Marter, a spokeswoman for Lilly, in an e-mail.
“They’ve got serious work cut out for them,” said Seamus Fernandez, an analyst with Leerink Swann, in a telephone interview today. “They need major positive surprises. Zyprexa is the start of their patent expirations but it’s not the end.”
Lilly faces patent expirations for its antidepressant Cymbalta, the company’s second-biggest seller, and the osteoporosis medicine Evista. These drugs, along with Zyprexa, generated $8.47 billion worldwide last year, or 43 percent of Lilly’s revenue.
Lilly bought ImClone in part because of its work with monoclonal antibodies, laboratory-produced versions of the body’s immune proteins, Lilly’s Paul said. They are less likely to fall out of the development pipeline because of side-effects occurring in places the drug doesn’t target, Paul said.
“We like the science, and we think there’s a lot of unmet medical need,” Paul said. As the population ages, more people will have cancer, he said.
Science Park
Lilly also said today its ImClone group, based in New York, will move to the East River Science Park, slated to open in 2010. The building is adjacent to the New York University Medical Center and north of Bellevue Hospital Center. The location will allow Lilly’s ImClone unit to work more closely with academic partners, the company said in the statement.
“There’s tremendous talent in New York and it’s second only to Boston in National Institutes of Health grants,” Paul said. “We hope to serve as a magnet for the kind of translational research that produces new medicine.”
About 215,000 jobs in New York were in the biopharmaceutical industry in 2006, according to Lilly’s statement.
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