Selecting anticancer drugs through genetic analysis to develop "private-made" anti-cancer methods

According to "Nikkei Business News" reported on October 7, in the field of cancer treatment, Japanese companies have opened up a "customized" road that provides the best method for each patient. At the earliest 2018, Chugai Pharmaceutical will launch a service to select anticancer drugs through genetic analysis. In addition, Konica Minolta will set up a new company to analyze the risk of disease in October. IT companies such as Google and Softbank Group in the United States will also be able to say that the analysis of the ultimate personal information is positioned as a growth area. Big data is changing the common sense of difficult disease treatment and new drug development.

The service that Chugai Pharmaceutical will provide is called “Cancer Genomic Profile Detection”, which detects a large number of cancer-related genes at one time. Cancer sometimes develops due to genetic variation, such as lung cancer, and the effective drugs vary depending on the type of gene that is mutated. The company's services will investigate about 320 genetic variants through the patient's cancer organization and inform the doctor about the best drug information.

The analytical method was developed by Foundation Medicine, another subsidiary of the parent company's Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche. Genetic analysis will be commissioned by the company. The company obtained the first license for the genome (all genetic information) analysis service from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2017. More than 200,000 people have been served.

Helping new drug development

In Japan, Sino-foreign Pharmaceuticals filed an application in March and is expected to be approved within 2018. The University Hospital of Japan and the National Cancer Research Center have begun to use genomic profiling in free medical treatment (not applicable to public medical insurance), and the new service of Sino-foreign Pharmaceuticals is expected to be the first to apply insurance. Some analysts believe that the patient's personal burden will be reduced from 470,000 yen (about RMB 28,400) to tens of thousands of yen from the National Cancer Research Center. "The patient-centered medical treatment can be achieved with the choice of anticancer drugs suitable for everyone," said Tsang Taro, president of Chinese and foreign pharmaceuticals.

Trends in the use of genes for medical treatment have also emerged in other fields. Konica Minolta will begin operations for new companies that promote customized medicine through genetic and protein analysis. The company will use the technology of the acquired US company to launch a service that predicts the risk of cancer that parents have inherited to their children, and is involved in the development of new drugs with data-assisted pharmaceutical companies. Yishangxian, the president of the new company, said with enthusiasm, "I hope to help improve the success rate of new drug development."

Cancer patients in Japan continue to increase. According to the National Cancer Research Center, the number of new cancer patients in 2018 reached a record high of 1.013 million, an increase of 16% over the actual number in 2014. The market size of medical drugs in Japan has reached approximately 10 trillion yen, of which anti-cancer drugs have exceeded 1 trillion yen.

In the past, the choice of anticancer drugs was judged by doctors according to the guidelines established by the society. There were cases where drugs were tried first and drugs were replaced if they were invalid. If the most appropriate drug can be selected according to the gene, the accuracy and safety of the treatment will be improved for the patient. In addition, it can help reduce medical expenses because it can reduce unnecessary medication.

Japan's research firm Seed Planning estimates that the global market for genetic analysis for cancer treatment will reach $3.88 billion by 2025, 3.4 times that of 2017 ($1.14 billion).

The background to the use of genetic information to expand is the continuous evolution of genetic analysis instruments. The "new-generation sequencer" for high-speed detection of gene sequences developed by companies such as Illumina in the United States has been popularized since the second half of the 2000s. This makes it possible to perform genetic analysis that is relatively inexpensive and can be completed in a short time.

The rapid spread of genetic analysis services for the general public in the last five years or so has benefited from this. In Japan, companies such as Genesis Healthcare and DeNA subsidiary DeNA Life Sciences are large companies in this field. These companies provide services that inform users about their physical fitness and lifestyle risks, such as alcohol metabolism, at a cost of tens of thousands of yen.

Large IT companies are also involved

Analysis and preservation of huge genetic information is inseparable from cutting-edge technologies such as cloud and artificial intelligence (AI). In order to generate added value for the collected data, large IT companies are also involved in the genetic business. Google in the United States has invested in 23andMe, the largest genetic testing service provider in the United States, and GRAIL, Inc., which develops blood genetic testing for cancer technology. Google has also become a platform provider in the field of genetic information, striving to apply genetic information to drug development and advertising.

The Softbank Group also invested 40 billion yen in 2017 in the US Guardant Health, which uses the blood test for cancer genes. The company uses AI to identify genetic variants and study which genes are involved in which cancer. Softbank President Sun Zhengyi said, "The company provides solutions for diseases that humans cannot overcome."

Although the genetic testing business has received much attention, there is uncertainty as to whether genetic information as the ultimate personal information can be properly used. In addition, there is another risk that genetic information is concentrated in overseas companies that master technology, and Japanese companies are lagging behind in competition.