Ever-growing number of I-O therapies in development

The number of immuno-oncology (I-O) therapies in clinical development and volume of clinical investigations testing these therapies for the treatment of cancer patients continue to grow, and will undoubtedly fulfill unmet needs in both hematological cancers and solid tumors over the next five to ten years.

Leveraging data from analytics firm GlobalData’s Pharma Intelligence platform, an Immuno-oncology Landscape update from the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) [ Yu et al. Immuno-oncology drug development goes global. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, September 2019], highlights the rapid growth and diversity in the preclinical and clinical landscape of I-O therapies with 91% growth as compared to the data published in 2017. The largest increase is observed in the development of cellular therapies in the past two years.

Both the degree of granularity and breadth of I-O data from GlobalData with analysis by CRI revealed that although CD19, PD-1, and PD-L1 are the top three targets for I-O therapies, the agents targeting CD19 has shown the fastest growth in the past two years.

Revati Tatake, global director of databases and analytics at GlobalData, commented: “GlobalData believes that the largest increase in new targets of T cell immunomodulators, other immunomodulators and cell therapies besides CD19 is indicative of continuous innovation in developing novel I-O therapies.”