Cancer cures will depend on profitability

Seattle Genetics' Experimental Drug Shrinks Hodgkin's Tumors, Study Shows - Bloomberg
Overall, 94 percent of 102 patients had their tumors shrink by at least a quarter, an “unheard-of” level of improvement in people who had failed other treatments, said study leader Robert Chen, an assistant professor at City of Hope, a nonprofit cancer center in Duarte, California. He presented the study today at the American Society of Hematology meeting in Orlando, Florida.Results for the drug, SGN-35, drew mixed responses from analysts about the therapy’s potential for hard-to-treat Hodgkin’s lymphoma and pushed shares down as much as 6.6 percent. While the data should support approval, the drug may have a “limited market opportunity,” George Farmer, an analyst with Canaccord Genuity in New York, said today in a note to investors.“We believe shares are overvalued,” Farmer wrote. The 34 percent complete response rate fell short of what was hoped for by some investors, he said.Seattle Genetics fell 64 cents, or 4 percent, to $15.23 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading.‘Widely Adopted’“Some investors are concerned that the size of the market for SGN-35 is small,” said Jason Kantor, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets in San Francisco, in an e-mail. “I believe that a targeted agent with this level of efficacy and tolerability will be widely adopted in Hodgkin’s lymphoma and anaplastic large cell lymphoma, and there are other market opportunities.”Seattle Genetics may have annual worldwide revenue from SGN-35 of $425 million in 2015, Kantor said.The treatment uses an antibody to target and bind with a protein on the surface of lymphoma cells, then blasts them with a cancer-killing chemical. This keeps the drug out of the bloodstream and away from healthy tissue, avoiding the side effects of standard chemotherapy, Chen said.The drug’s effectiveness “met our expectations,” said Bret Holley, an analyst for Oppenheimer & Co., in an analyst note released today. The low rate of side effects “likely exceeded expectations,” Holley wrote.
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The drug may have a “limited market opportunity, and some investors are concerned about profits, and this is why millions are still dying with cancer. For the dying and their families the cure of cancer is somewhere or nowhere , depending on profitability.