ESMO at 40: thoughts on medical oncology
This article was originally published in Scrip
The European Society of Medical Oncology's congress at the end of September launched a year of quadragennial celebration. More than 18,000 people converged on Madrid for the event, something that was probably beyond the dreams of the organizers of the inaugural conference in Nice in 1975, when 100 people attended and the mission statement included working "on full recognition of medical oncology in Europe".
Life begins at 40 of course, and the increasing range, sophistication and diversity of new and pipeline cancer therapies indicate that ESMO's best years are probably still ahead of it. That certainly looks to be the case for the companies that make the drugs: From 2003-13, total oncology drug sales worldwide have more than tripled from $19bn to $66bn, and Datamonitor Healthcare analysts reckon that by 2018 they will have risen by a further $15bn, to around $81bn.
The early 1970s had seen some progress: in the US, President Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971, directing $100m to this end, and signing the National Cancer Act into law. Tamoxifen was approved for breast cancer in the UK in 1972, but not until 1977 in the US. It was still early days.
By the turn of the century though, Novartis's Glivec, a breakthrough in the targeted treatment of cancer at a cellular level, was on the verge of approval, as were new hormone therapies for breast cancer, the aromatase inhibitors Aromasin, Femara and Arimidex. Within 10 years, Roche's monoclonal antibody Herceptin had been approved as the first biologic targeted breast cancer therapy. In 2003, Herceptin sales were $1.3bn, and in 2013 they reached $6.3bn.
Roche has kept up the innovation, and last year launched the Herceptin-based antibody-drug conjugate Kadcyla.
This year, hot topics at ESMO included immunotherapy and the MAP kinase pathway. Scrip's reports on these topics include details of AstraZeneca's immunotherapy data presentations (scripintelligence.com, 1 October 2014), good news for Bristol-Myers Squibb on the FDA review of its melanoma drug Opdivo (scripintelligence.com, 30 September 2014), and our story on the face-off between Roche and GSK, both presenting data at ESMO on MAPK-targeting MEK/BRAF inhibitor drug combinations in melanoma (scripintelligence.com, 29 September 2014).