Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

Experimental approach to cancer treatment borrows a tenet from insect refuges used with genetically-modified seeds:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-new-approach-to-cancer-treatment-draws-lessons-from-darwin-11578414469

Traditional cancer treatment—continuously bombarding cancer cells with drugs—can encourage drug-resistant cells to multiply, eventually creating an untreatable tumor. Adaptive therapy doesn’t try to eradicate the entire cancer. Instead, it seeks to reduce the treatable cells, stop treatment, and wait for those cells to grow back before treating them again. The presence of the treatable cells keeps the resistant cells at bay, as they compete against each other for resources. The idea, for now, is to keep the size of the tumor in check, and manage the cancer as a chronic condition.

Robert Gatenby, the co-founder of Florida-based Moffitt Cancer Center’s new Center of Excellence for Evolutionary Therapy, is a pioneer in the field and driving the bulk of the work in the U.S. on adaptive therapy. He is also a co-author on a small, pilot study, with initial results published in 2017 in Nature Communications, that showed that patients lasted at least 27 months on average without their tumors growing, compared with the usual 16.5 months, while receiving less of the same drug.

Dr. Gatenby…often points to pest control to describe therapy, and others in the field have picked up the analogy as well. In pest management, managers often don’t try to eliminate all of the insects but instead reduce their numbers, keeping the spray-sensitive bugs around to compete against the resistant bugs. Pest management developed the technique after overusing insecticides, which eliminated most of the insects. But some resistant bugs came crawling back.

“I think pest managers are about 30 years ahead of the oncologists,” said Carlo Maley, …director of the new Arizona Cancer Evolution Center [great soundbite].