Science and industry join forces to optimize cancer treatment

Roche, the world’s leading supplier of innovative cancer medicines, will be collaborating even more closely in future with Heidelberg’s NCT, DKFZ and University Hospital and Medical Faculty. In particular, the partners will be stepping collaboration in the area of personalized cancer care, starting with two projects already underway. The declared aim is to get new research and early development projects off the ground rapidly and with a minimum of red tape, thus helping steadily improve cancer diagnosis and treatment. It is important that research insights find their way to patients as fast as possible.

The necessary clinical trials will be conducted at the NCT and by the relevant departments at Heidelberg University Hospital. The NCT employs over 200 physicians, bioscientists and other research staff. In 2011 it saw approximately 12,500 newly diagnosed patients and delivered some 17,000 cancer treatments. Over 300 diagnostic, therapeutic and preventive clinical studies are currently being developed and conducted under the NCT umbrella. In addition, extensive clinical expertise is available in the University Hospital’s oncology departments.

Working together to create a strong science and industry cluster in Germany
“The health industry needs robust networks and strategic partnerships with science so that we can continue to hold our own here in the competitive world of smart research”, says Dr Hagen Pfundner, CEO Roche Germany, commenting on the importance of collaborating with academic institutions. “More to the point: it will enable us continue playing a leading role inside and outside Germany with our achievements in medical research. Heidelberg is proof of the region’s strength and excellence. This collaboration should also be seen as a clear commitment by Roche to intensifying early development work at centers of scientific excellence in Germany.”

“Ultimately we would like to be able to offer every patient a treatment tailored to their individual cancer”, adds Prof Otmar D. Wiestler, head of the German Cancer Research Center. “Getting there will require strategic alliances between science and industry. Our collaborative agreement teams up some of the strongest actors in cancer research, cancer medicine and the drug industry. Roche is an ideal partner for us in personalized cancer care.” Prof Guido Adler, Chief Medical Director of Heidelberg University Hospital, says: “As the clinical partners, we have a strong interest in our patients benefiting from innovations in drug therapy. This framework agreement continues the intensive collaboration we’ve had with Roche in recent years on the clinical and research fronts and ensures that new drugs can be promptly tested under uniform conditions.”

“The mission we all share is the development of better and above all more targeted cancer treatments”, says Prof Christof von Kalle, speaking on behalf of the executive board of the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) in Heidelberg. “The partnership with Roche is an enormous help to us in more rapidly translating what can be the game-changing achievements of molecular cancer research into relevant projects and insights that benefit patients. The NCT offers researchers from industry, Heidelberg University Hospital and the DKFZ a future-proof platform for this collaborative enterprise.”

Personalized healthcare as a focus for research: how tumors change their fingerprints
In the first of the two projects now underway the partners are focusing on the molecular properties of tumors. Led by Prof Peter Schirmacher, Medical Director of Heidelberg University’s Institute of Pathology, Prof Wilko Weichert, Senior Physician at the Institute, and Dr Marlene Thomas, a Roche biomarker expert, are studying how some molecular biomarkers in tumors change during the course of the disease. The scientists anticipate that the results obtained in this project will one day help tailor cancer treatments more effectively to a patient’s disease stage.

What is personalized healthcare and what can it achieve?
Personalized or stratified healthcare sprang from the observation that patients with the same diagnoses may respond differently to treatment with the same drugs. Individual characteristics – some disease-related, others not – influence the ways in which drugs work. Depending on the drug and disease, current treatment response rates range from 20 to 75 percent. The aim of personalized healthcare is to offer patients better treatment by increasing these response rates using diagnostic tests and targeted therapies. The world is clearly moving away from “one size fits all” medicines to treatments pinpointing specific disease properties in particular patient populations. The trend is harnessing the latest insights from molecular biology into how diseases develop. At the same time, this “scientific complexity” is the biggest challenge to the search for personalized solutions. Predicting which patient groups will derive optimal benefit from a treatment will help to avoid ineffective therapies, thereby saving unnecessary treatment costs, decreasing the potential for side effects and treating patients more safely and effectively.