Cancer is a disease characterized by runaway cell division and multiplicationway
The human body contains tens of trillions of cells, which continuously divide and multiply in order to maintain a healthy condition. Due to genetic mutation and other causes, however, cells can lose control over this process of dividing and multiplying. A tumor is a group of cells that comes into being through abnormal cellular multiplication. If the tumor is simply growing, then it is noncancerous, or “benign.” On the other hand, some tumors can spread to nearby tissues in a process called “infiltration,” or travel through the blood to entirely different organs in a process called “metastasis.” Such tumors are cancerous, or “malignant.”
According to the World Health Organization, in 2018 some 18 million people around the world were diagnosed with cancer and some 9.6 million died of the disease (http://gco.iarc.fr/today/fact-sheets-cancers). Cancers of the lungs, digestive organs (stomach, colorectal, and liver) are more common, affecting both men and women, while breast and cervical cancer are naturally prevalent among women.
In the vast majority of cases, cancer will spread throughout the entire body if left untreated. For this reason, rapid detection and treatment of cancer is essential. Although cancer can stubbornly recur even if a timely intervention succeeds, it should never be a disease that is untreatable. Today, the mainstream approach to cancer treatment is multidisciplinary, combining multiple therapies to create a more effective approach.
Continuous research and development leads to evolving treatment options
One main type of cancer treatment is local therapy, which is applied only to the original tumor and metastases. It includes surgical treatment, in which cancerous areas are excised (removed), and radiation therapy, in which cancer cells are killed with X-rays. The other main type of cancer therapy is systemic therapy, including chemotherapy, in which anticancer agents are introduced to the body orally, through injection, or by IV. Since these agents travel throughout the body via the blood, they can reach tiny pockets of metastatic cancer which are impossible to eliminate through surgery.
Since chemotherapy also affects healthy cells, however, it can impede kidney and liver function and cause unpleasant side effects, such as hair loss, nausea, and fatigue. In recent years and to minimize the burden on patients caused by adverse reactions, researchers have been focusing on the development of molecularly targeted agents, which impact cancer cells only.
Among molecularly targeted therapies, antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) are attracting increased attention. While conventional molecularly targeted therapies have tended to have fewer side effects, they have also not been as effective overall. In contrast, an ADC leverages the antibody segment’s ability to bind to receptors on the surface of cancerous cells with the cytotoxic drug segment’s ability to permeate and kill the cancerous cell.
A passion for innovative drug development opening a new horizon in cancer therapy
The greatest mission of pharmaceutical companies is to develop effective therapies for unmet medical needs. Since there are still many types of cancer for which sufficiently effective drugs do not exist, developing anticancer agents is an important way to fulfill this crucial mission.
Daiichi Sankyo was formed in Japan in 2007 from the merger of two pharmaceutical companies that each had over 100 years of experience developing a wide range of innovative drugs. Now, as an innovative pharmaceutical company, we consider our biggest and most important challenge to be the development of drugs to defeat every type of cancer, from which a large and increasing number of people are suffering around the world.
For this reason, we established our 2025 Vision of becoming a “Global Pharma Innovator with Competitive Advantage in Oncology,” and our entire company is dedicated to developing current and “next generation” ADCs as well as other leading-edge anticancer pharmaceuticals.
Daiichi Sankyo began researching and developing our own original ADC technology many years ago, and the first result to come from those efforts is the HER2-directed ADC, an ADC targeting breast, stomach, colorectal, and other cancers. Having been first demonstrated effective against breast cancer through clinical trials, its comprehensive development program underway globally with six pivotal trials evaluating the efficacy and safety of its monotherapy across multiple HER2 targetable cancers, including breast, gastric and lung cancers, has already had a major impact on anticancer research inside and outside of Japan.
Building on the success of HER2-directed ADC, we at Daiichi Sankyo are continuing to engage in world-class pharmaceutical R&D that puts first the health and wellbeing of people suffering from cancer and their families.