Health: new collaborations and approvals of treatments against cancer

Busy week in the field of oncology between new collaborations and approvals of treatments.

Laboratories competitors Pfizer and Merck KGaA will collaborate on the development of a new treatment against cancer.

The first clinical trials of this treatment show "first results [...] impressive" according to Mikael Doldten, head of global research for Pfizer.

MSB0010718C the molecule is an innovative treatment initially studied by Merck KGaA. US Pfizer will pay $ 850 million to input its German rival rights and could pay him up to an additional $ 2 billion on this molecule reached its objectives.

The agreement between the two laboratories indicates that they fund equally development costs of this treatment and will share any revenue for each half.

This molecule belongs to a new class of antibodies, called "anti PD-L1", which could be effective against several cancers. She is currently in the early phase I clinical trials, except for a rare form of skin cancer, carcinoma Merkel cell, where a phase II study is ongoing.

Collaboration between the two laboratories will allow to initiate new programs in 2015 twenty research phases II and III for a form of lung cancer and ovarian cancer.

Two new treatments approved in the United States

In the treatment of ovarian cancer precisely, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved Avastin in the United States as a form of ovarian cancer particularly difficult to treat. This medication is administered laboratory Roche plus chemotherapy for recurrent ovarian cancer resistant to platinum-based chemotherapy.

This drug has also been approved by the European Union last August.

According to a Swiss analyst, the American approval should allow the treatment exceed the 5 billion euro turnovers.

A phase III study demonstrated that treatment reduces by 62% the risk of the disease getting worse.

Ovarian cancer is gynecological cancer has the highest mortality rate. Each year worldwide 230,000 cases of ovarian cancer are diagnosed; 150,000 women die.

The FDA has also approved last Friday a treatment against multiple sclerosis relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. However Lemtrada laboratories Sanofi is "reserved, generally, patients who had an inadequate response to two or more drugs indicated for the treatment" of the disease, says the laboratory because it has serious and sometimes fatal effects side. It can cause severe autoimmune disorders and may increase the risk of developing other cancers.

However, it is approved in more than 40 countries including the European Union for more than a year.

With AFP