Few cancer breakthroughs at major meeting

By Deena Beasley

ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - This year's meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, a traditional showcase for advances in cancer treatment, has been disappointingly thin on major breakthroughs.

Much of the high-profile data at the meeting was from failed trials, with more promising research seen only in much earlier-stage studies.

"Studies that are well done and tell us how not to treat someone can at times be as important as the successful trials," said Dr. Eric Winer, chief of the women's cancer division at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. "It spares people the added burden of a treatment and we don't waste our time."

Much of the focus at the conference, which began Friday and will end Tuesday, has been on ways to focus care and eliminate unnecessary tests and treatments -- an ominous theme for pharmaceutical companies that rely on a free-spending healthcare system.

Although chemotherapy is still the standard of care for many cancers, scientists have focused in recent years on targeted therapies that interfere with specific molecules involved in tumor formation and growth.

Patients with cancers like non-Hodgkin's lymphoma are living much longer lives due to drugs like Rituxan, sold by Roche Holding AG and Biogen Idec Inc, which binds to a protein on the surface of malignant B-cells, marking them for immune system attack.

But nearly forty years after President Richard Nixon in 1971 declared a war on cancer, a cure is nowhere on the horizon.

"In 2003-2004 everybody was talking about combining new therapies and extending survival ... that strategy has so far failed," said Ben Weintraub, director of research at Wolters Kluwer Health.

LIMITED SURVIVAL BENEFIT

As evidenced by data discussed at the conference, even successful drug trials often demonstrate survival benefits of only a few months or even weeks.

Cancer death rates for men fell more than 19 percent from 1990 to 2005, and more than 11 percent for women, according to the latest statistics from the American Cancer Society. But the disease still kills about 600,000 Americans each year.

The downward trend in mortality is attributed to better prevention, increased use of early detection, and improved treatments.

"Cancer care is getting better and better every year, but having no breakthroughs is bad for the pharma companies," Weintraub said.

One promising cancer target discussed at this year's conference was a cell repair enzyme known as PARP. Both BiPar Inc., which is being acquired by Sanofi-Aventis SA, and AstraZeneca Plc have PARP blockers in mid-stage development, but they are years away from commercial products.

Progress was also reported in the treatment of advanced lung cancer with studies suggesting that continued use of drugs like Roche's Avastin and Tarceva as well as Eli Lilly & Co's Alimta could extend survival.

Such incremental advances contrast with previous conferences like 2003, which saw the practice-changing debut of Avastin, the blockbuster cancer drug developed by Roche's Genentech unit that cuts off blood supply to tumors.

This year's conference, held in Orlando, instead heard about Avastin's failure to prove effective as a treatment in earlier-stage colon cancer patients who have had their tumors removed by surgery.

"If anything, we failed to provide our patients with a novel intervention that would increase the cure rate," said Dr. Norman Wolmark, chairman of the Department of Human Oncology at Allegheny General Hospital and the study's lead author.

He said similar ongoing studies are also likely to fail since they too call for Avastin treatment of just one year.

Many investors had expected the Avastin trial to succeed since Roche seemed eager to lock up its March deal to acquire the portion of Genentech it did not already own before the study results were released.

Roche did announce at the conference over the weekend data showing that its breast cancer drug Herceptin added about 2.5 months to the lives of a subgroup of patients with stomach cancer.

The data "will quickly have an impact on the standard of care," said Dr. Richard Schilsky, a Chicago oncologist and president of ASCO.

But the high cost of such treatment was another big focus at the meeting, which had as its theme advances in personalized cancer medicine, aimed at avoiding therapy for patients who are never going to respond to a particular drug.

"We have to pay more attention to the cost of care ... if we don't police ourselves, then we are going to be told how to do it by external sources," Dr. Winer said.

From Wall Street's perspective most of the hot news from the conference surrounded risky early research from small biotech companies, many of which are seeking outside financing to stay afloat while the capital markets begin to stabilize.

Company's like OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals Inc, Celldex Therapeutics Inc and Poniard Pharmaceuticals Inc reported early-stage data that spurred investor interest in their shares.