Marker Therapeutics Inc (MRKR)

[Ignutz]

Read the March 22 edition of Fortune Magazine - Clifton Leaf's article is tailor made for Genemax.

Genemaxs' technology focuses on metastasis (the thing that kills people) .... Its competitive advantages include efficacy against metastasis, no restrictions on the genetics of the tumors or individuals, non-toxicity to normal cells, and being complementary and synergistic with other therapeutics.

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America losing the war against cancer

By CHEAH UI-HOON


THE percentage of Americans dying from cancer is about the same as it was in 1970, reports Hodgkin's disease survivor Clifton Leaf, also Fortune magazine executive editor.

In a special groundbreaking investigative report by the magazine which will appear on the March 22 issue (on news stands on March 15) Fortune reveals systemic problems that makes cancer so difficult to defeat and recommends that it's time to overhaul the battle plan as America is losing the war on cancer.

Americans have spent - through taxes, donations, and private R&D - about US$200 billion to fight cancer since the war on cancer began in 1971. Yet, cancer's annual death toll has risen 73 per cent - over one and half times the growth of the US population. In contrast, deaths from heart disease and stroke have slowed dramatically.

In the last three decades researchers and scientists have amassed an enormous amount of knowledge essential to the war on cancer. But after three months of intensive meetings with leading cancer specialists and top officials throughout the country, Leaf reports that a dysfunctional 'cancer culture' has made the search for knowledge 'an end unto itself rather than a means to an end.'

The result is a research and grant culture focused on finding the tiniest improvements to treatment rather than genuine breakthroughs.

The most revealing example of this system-wide failure is cancer research's focus on shrinking tumours in fatally ill patients. The bulk of research money and energy is spent on this goal and not on understanding and arresting the process of metastasis - which kills an incredible 90 per cent of patients.

In fact, according to a Fortune examination of National Cancer Institute grants going back to 1972, less than 0.5 per cent of study proposals focused on metastasis. Of nearly 8,900 NCI grant proposals awarded last year, 92 per cent didn't even mention metastasis.

Consequently, Leaf reports, 'Pharma companies don't concentrate on solving the problem of metastasis (the thing that kills people); they focus on devising new drugs that shrink tumours (the things that don't).'

Leaf also points to the pre-clinical model for drug testing and development, which depends on lab mice, as another major flaw in the war on cancer. According to scientists, these models have very little predictive power for the treatment of human disease.

All these failures come to a head, says Leaf, in the clinical trial - a rigidly controlled, three-phase system for testing new drugs and other procedures in humans. 'The process remains the only way to get from research to drug approval - and yet it is hard to find anyone in the cancer community who isn't maddeningly frustrated by it,' he reports.

The Fortune report concludes with a proposal to transform the way the NCI funds research, a consolidation of the federal war chest into one bureaucracy, from five; and an overhaul of the FDA drug-testing and approval process.

'Science now has the knowledge and the tools; we need to act,' concludes Leaf.

http://business-times.asia1.com.sg/story/0,4567,110715,00.html

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GeneMax Cancer Therapy Patent Allowed.

http://www.library.ubc.ca/patscan/news/fall2001news.html