Immuno-oncology drug development and personalized medicine

Immuno-oncol­o­gy (I‑O) drug devel­op­ment will remain at the fore­front of the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try in 2019, says Glob­al­Da­ta, a data and ana­lyt­ics company.

The company’s lat­est annu­al out­look report, ‘The State of the Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Indus­try – 2019’, reveals that 31% of glob­al indus­try respon­dents believe that immuno-oncol­o­gy will have the great­est impact on the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor in 2019 among a range of indus­try trends.

“Immuno-oncol­o­gy ther­a­peu­tics have already been proven effec­tive in the treat­ment of a range of can­cers, includ­ing melanoma, kid­ney can­cer, lym­phoma, and oth­er malig­nan­cies. The pace of immuno-oncol­o­gy R&D remains rapid and its scope has expand­ed to include com­bi­na­tion treat­ment. More and more, this ther­a­peu­tic approach is regard­ed as a poten­tial game-chang­er. Despite some tri­al dis­ap­point­ments in 2018, in 2019 we will see more devel­op­ment, more approvals, and more uptake for I‑O drugs.”

Claire Her­man, Glob­al Direc­tor of Ther­a­py Analy­sis and Epi­demi­ol­o­gy at GlobalData

The relat­ed field of per­son­al­ized med­i­cine is like­wise expect­ed to play a piv­otal role in the indus­try dur­ing the com­ing year, with 19% of sur­vey respon­dents iden­ti­fy­ing it as the most impact­ful antic­i­pat­ed trend. Per­son­al­ized med­i­cine spans dis­ease areas and stands to trans­form not just can­cer ther­a­py, but the treat­ment par­a­digm across mul­ti­ple diseases.

Her­man con­tin­ues, “Per­son­al­ized med­i­cine is rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing dis­ease treat­ment and patient out­comes. In recent years, as the direc­tion of drug devel­op­ment has shift­ed from a one-size-fits-all block­buster mod­el to a more fine­ly tar­get­ed approach that aims to devel­op drugs with high­er effi­ca­cy in spe­cif­ic patient sub­pop­u­la­tions, new tar­get­ed drugs have begun reach­ing the mar­ket across mul­ti­ple indi­ca­tions. These new drugs are over­haul­ing the treat­ment paradigm.”

“While suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion of a per­son­al­ized med­i­cine-dri­ven strat­e­gy requires a fun­da­men­tal shift in the com­mer­cial mod­el for most Phar­ma com­pa­nies, the invest­ment is worth­while. In fact, over time, it is like­ly that tar­get­ed ther­a­pies will be the stan­dard of care in a wide range of diseases.”

The fact that, tak­en togeth­er, more than half of sur­vey respon­dents iden­ti­fied I‑O or per­son­al­ized med­i­cine as the trend expect­ed to have the great­est impact on the indus­try in 2019 is an indi­ca­tor of the opti­mism sur­round­ing these new direc­tions. Oth­er trends, includ­ing real-world evi­dence, remote patient mon­i­tor­ing, and biosim­i­lar uptake, were also high­ly rat­ed. But ulti­mate­ly, indus­try stake­hold­ers believe that trends clos­er to the clin­ic will have the most trans­for­ma­tive short-term effect.