It's all about market shares and shifting competitionA bit of perspective to understand how CAR-T cell therapies, though efficient in oncology, are not a threat.
Look at this context and also see how big pharmas are doing everything to shift competition, for increased market shares. In the case below, Roche is moving away from CAR-T technology. One day, a big pharma will favor PDT/PDC over immunotherapy if our efficacy % are superior.
Now, translate this blood disorder market into solid tumors market and you'll understand that if TLT has the good, in terms of efficacy %, then one of them will make an offer to dominate the bladder cancer. No doubt as this represents B$$$ in revenues. And big pharmas management have stock options.
June 8, 2022
Roche's bispecific blood cancer drug Lunsumio treads on CAR-T's turf with first global approval After Rituxan’s fall off the patent cliff, Roche is looking to new assets to replenish its blood cancer arsenal. With a first-in-class nod, the Swiss pharma is introducing a novel bispecific lymphoma drug that will first compete with powerful CAR-T therapies.
Roche has won a conditional European Commission approval for Lunsumio, or mosunetuzumab, to treat follicular lymphoma patients who’ve received at least two prior therapies. The go-ahead makes Lunsumio the first CD20xCD3 bispecific antibody approved anywhere. Roche submitted the drug to the FDA in December.
“Lunsumio is an off-the-shelf therapy that is readily available, so people do not have to wait to start treatment,” Roche pointed out Wednesday. That statement seems to be a direct shot at a class of efficacious but less convenient drugs: CAR-T cell therapies.
Before Lunsumio, European regulators last month approved Novartis’ CD19-directed CAR-T therapy Kymriah for the exact same third-line follicular lymphoma (FL) indication. With a positive opinion from the European Medicines Agency, Gilead Sciences’ rival CAR-T drug Yescarta is awaiting a formal expansion into FL after at least three prior lines of therapy.
Also in Europe, Bristol Myers Squibb’s Breyanzi has a third-line nod for an aggressive form of FL known as grade 3B, which is often treated as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL).
But those tailored CAR-T therapies involve complex manufacturing processes that typically take more than two weeks for the final product to be returned to the patient for infusion. And patients currently have to go to designated large treatment centers to get CAR-T treatment.
Now, Roche is touting Lunsumio’s convenience edge. And the drug’s efficacy looks competitive as well.