Pfizer, AstraZeneca back a new strategy for cancer drug R&D

A pair of pharma giants has partnered with a prominent cancer research charity in the U.K. on an innovative new approach to testing targeted oncology therapies, building on the country's national program for tumor testing in a way that may help make it a global center of cancer R&D.

Pfizer ($PFE) and AstraZeneca ($AZN) have joined with Cancer Research UK on the new, $42 million initiative dubbed the "National Lung Matrix" trial. Doctors will look to match a range of treatments from each company with a genetically defined group of lung cancer patients--offering to accelerate the move to personalizing treatments to smaller and smaller patient populations. Researchers can then track their responses to the drugs to see which therapies perform best.

For the U.K., the innovative study design, which builds on new approaches to testing cancer therapies, highlights how the national health system is gathering a mass of genetic data that could play an important role in drug development. It also offers Pfizer and AstraZeneca--two pharma giants with a woeful track record in R&D--a way to possibly accelerate drug development, streamlining a process that now is built around a one-drug, one-trial approach that takes years to deliver conclusive data.

Reuters reports that Pfizer will use the new trial to test Xalkori along with its top pipeline prospect palbociclib. AstraZeneca will add a list of its experimental drugs to the mix, including a pair of onco-immunotherapeutics which have been gaining increased attention in recent months. And more drugs for different cancer types can be added later if this initial venture proves successful.

This isn't quite the kind of "revolutionary" new approach to cancer R&D that's being touted by the U.K. groups today. Friends of Cancer Research announced a similar multidrug study including Pfizer and AstraZeneca last fall. But the U.K., which has been working hard to foster R&D after years of retrenching by large biopharma organizations, feels that it's particularly well positioned to make this kind of research program more cost effective for developers.

Cancer Research UK CEO Harpal Kumar

"We know that every patient's cancer is unique, so we're now moving away from a 'one size fits all' approach and instead striving for more personalized treatment," says Harpal Kumar, CEO of Cancer Research U.K. "Critically, we are shifting the emphasis from designing a trial around a specific drug, to designing it around selecting from a range of drugs for a specific patient. This trial will be for lung cancer patients but we hope that in the future stratified medicine will lead to dramatic improvements for all cancer patients, with more treatment options and a better chance of beating the disease."

- here's the release