How Biopharmaceuticals Advance the Treatment of Cancer

Better Health

Feb 04, 2022 | 4 min read

Sartorius Is Part of the Solution

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Every year, more than 19 million people are diagnosed with cancer. Bioparmaceuticals are the great hope of patients worldwide. But the development of innovative therapies and manufacture of new medications is a major challenge. To realize the promises of biologics, Sartorius supports scienctists and engineers, making their work easier - so that new therapies can reach patients faster. Learn more about new approaches to treating cancer in this article.

With 10 million cases per year, cancer is one of the leading causes of death in adults worldwide. Why is it so hard to battle? Cancer comes in many different forms, as each of the more than 200 cell types in our body can mutate and turn cancerous. And they do it all the time. Luckily, our body is usually quite good at identifying and destroying abnormal cells. But when they hide from the immune system, they grow in an uncontrolled manner and can spread into other parts of the body.

New hope through innovative biopharmaceuticals

The good news is: Progress in early detection, screening and treatment of cancer has been substantial. Cancer genes have been discovered, viruses have been identified as disease triggers, and new active ingredients have been tested in clinical trials. While surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy or hormone therapy are among the more “traditional” ways of treating the disease, some breakthroughs have been achieved with the help of innovative biopharmaceutical therapies, such as monoclonal antibodies or CAR-T cells. Both are immunotherapies that help the immune system to better act against cancer cells.

Three biopharmaceutical solutions

Monoclonal antibodies: Making cancer a target

Monoclonal antibodies are designed to bind to specific molecules on the surface of cancer cells.

By doing so, they can expose them to the body’s immune system - which can then fight back, stop cancer cells from growing, starve them of the hormones it needs to grow or even deliver cell-killing substances to cancer cells. These so called antibody-drug conjugates (ADC) release their toxic payload only after binding to the target cell, thus limiting the exposure of healthy tissue to the agent compared to conventional systemic therapies.

CAR-T cell therapy: Using the body’s own weapons

T cells are white blood cells which are part of the adaptive immune systems. While they have the power to destroy, they are not good in identifying cancer cells. Researchers have found a way to teach them: To develop a CAR-T cell therapy, T cells are taken from the patient and genetically modified in the lab.

As a result, they start to produce a specific type of protein known as CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) which they present on their surface. Equipped with this new feature, the cells are grown and given back to the patient. CARs allow the T cells to bind to proteins on the surface of cancer cells, comparable to lock-and-key-principle, improving their ability to destroy them.

As CAR-T cells are living cells, they continue to grow in the body, protecting the patient also going forward. The therapy has already been used successfully for certain forms of blood or lymph node cancers. The challenge: As it is based on the patient´s own cells, each batch is unique, making it laborious and expensive to produce.

Therapeutic mRNA vaccines

In the field of prevention, inactivated vaccines are already being used that can prevent diseases caused by human papillomaviruses (HPV), such as cervical cancer.

In addition to that, researchers are working on therapeutic vaccines for people who are already suffering from cancer. A promising approach is mRNA vaccines, which were first used on a large scale against Covid-19 and whose mode of action is now well known: mRNA molecules provide cells with the information they need to produce proteins situated on the surface of cancer cells. This triggers an immune response that is subsequently also directed against the cancer cells themselves. Just like CAR-T cell therapies, these vaccines can also be tailored very individually to patients and their particular type of cancer.

Setting the Standard in Cell and Gene Therapy, Together

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Making patient-specific medicine accessible

The challenge of the future will be to make these new, promising forms of therapy usable and affordable on a large scale, as they change the pharmaceutical industry's business models and processes: instead of large batches for millions of patients, smallest quantities for just a few might be necessary.

Instead of production in own plants or by specialized contract partners, decentralized production in local laboratories and hospitals. Where economies of scale are eliminated, costs rise. At the same time, no compromises must be made on the safety, purity, and efficacy of the drugs, regardless of who produces them or where.

With robust and reliable technologies and bioanalytical instruments, Sartorius is helping to overcome these challenges in every step of the development and production of biopharmaceuticals.

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