FT Article - The cost of cracking cancer_ what the $1tn race for a cure leaves behind

Series 6

For today, let's have a read on Financial Time Articles with the theme: Health

1. The cost of cracking cancer_ what the $1tn race for a cure leaves behind

People with aggressive forms of breast, lung and prostate cancer have been offered a lifeline in recent years as new treatments hit the market including AstraZeneca’s Enhertu, Merck’s Keytruda and Novartis’s Pluvicto.

But a new weapon to fight pancreatic cancer, the deadliest common form of the disease that kills seven out of eight patients within five years of diagnosis, has not emerged. Go-to treatment Folfirinox is a cocktail of four medicines, one of which was first approved in 1962.

“Almost all patients who come through the door are given a bunch of old drugs put together,” said Anirban Maitra, an oncologist researching pancreatic cancer at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. “It’s the weak link in the fight against cancer.”

Tackling the hardest-to-treat tumours will be essential to public health efforts to turn cancer into a more manageable disease — a challenge given added urgency by an uptick in the disease among younger people in developed countries.

The struggle to discover needle-moving treatments for pancreatic cancer, along with other types including colon and brain cancer, comes despite pharmaceutical groups spending almost $1tn over the past decade acquiring oncology drug developers, according to industry tracker Evaluate.