2024-05-04 06:00:47
When the president of the United States, Joe Biden, proposed to suspend patents for covid-19 vaccines so that developing countries could produce their doses, spokespersons for the pharmaceutical industry called the idea useless. Technologically backward countries could not have the talent and infrastructure necessary to manufacture something so complex.
However, that was exactly what was being forged in those same years with another class of innovative drugs: CAR-T therapiestechniques that are revolutionizing the oncology. These treatments consist of extract cells from the immune system of a patient (T lymphocytes), modify them genetically, and reintroduce them into the patient, where the modified cells attack the cancer. This strategy has been successful in a number of previously untreatable cancers and leukemias – but it is very expensive (until 400.000 euros per treatment).
Barcelona has a fundamental role in the milestone of bringing it to India, at a price potentially ten times lower. This was said on Tuesday at the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist at Columbia University. The doctor presented his latest book there, ‘The harmony of cells’ (Debate)a volume in which he once again displays his narrative and metaphorical magic, which already earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 2011. Mukherjee’s visit was not just any stage of his tour. In Barcelona, the researcher has reunited with Manel Juanoncologist at Hospital Clínic, a fundamental ally in the milestone of bringing CAR-T to India.
A new way of making medicines
“The traditional way to discover drugs was to target specific proteins or reactions. Now we are seeing that the cell assembly, and its relationship with the rest of the body, is the site where healing occurs. By modifying the physiology of the cell we can modify that of the body,” explains Mukherjee.
This paradigm shift translates, in the case of CAR-T therapies, into a small genetic modification of cells of the immune system. Once they are reintroduced into the patient, their own immune system Take advantage of this modification to cure the patient, explains Juan.
The ideas behind this technique were developed in public universities. But the companies that have turned them into drugs have put them on the market with enormous prices. It is one more case of the exponential growth in the prices of innovative drugs that has been registered in recent years.
“The prices are absurd. They are expensive therapies to manufacture and companies have assumed investments and failures. But the feeling is that they are inflated,” observes Mukherjee. “So I thought we could manufacture the therapy ourselves, and do it in India at a price of up to a tenth or a twentieth“, Explain.
That is the goal of Immuneela company created by the doctor together with other partners and located in a oncology hospital in Bangalore. Mukherjee was born in India and lived there for a few years before going to study in the United States. This country is especially suitable for a project of this type, because it has the most powerful industry of generic drugs of the world.
From the outset, Mukherjee sought the complicity of the pharmaceutical industry. “They showed no interest. They were not interested in innovating the price of medicines and benefiting a larger population,” he explains.
The connection with Barcelona
That’s when they discovered that a hospital in Barcelona It was capable of manufacturing these therapies at home, in a public structure and without pharmaceutical companies involved. In October 2020, Immuneel signed an agreement with the clinicwhich gave him permission to develop the same technique in India.
At this point the knowledge transfer between Barcelona and Bangalore. “It happened in the middle of the pandemic, which limited visits. We even send you recorded videos with the mobile of the processes we do,” explains Juan. “They already had the tools and knowledge to do it. They asked us the details for greater peace of mind,” adds the doctor.
The refusal of the Global North to transfer knowledge about innovative medicines to developing countries is one of the hot topics of the pandemic treaty under negotiation at the WHO. “The difficulty of transfer knowledge”, opines Mukherjee.
Now, the CAR-T unit in Bangalore “looks very similar to the one in Barcelona,” says the oncologist. Medicines manufactured there have been supplied to some dozens of patients within the framework of a clinical trial which should lead to approval and commercialization at an affordable price. “Now we are developing our own therapies and the results we achieve will be devolvérselos and Barcelona”, affirms Mukherjee.
Recently, the European Union has studied a regulation change that could hinder hospital production of CAR-T therapies. As in the case of the pandemic treaty, Europe could align itself with the interests of the industry. “The industry failed to control the transplants and this hurt him. For this reason, he has achieved that advanced therapies have the status of a drug and not a treatment,” explains Juan.
But the doctor hopes that the potential of these therapies will not be wasted. “These treatments do not consist of giving you a miracle drug, but rather improve your body’s own capabilities. This opens up a real possibility. revolutionary”, concludes the doctor.
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