Daiichi Sankyo: a bold ambition to deliver transformational outcomes in cancer

*Sponsored content

“We need to make sure that cancer care gets back on top of the priority list for societies. Cancer is a disease that every second person will face,1 and many people still die of. It deserves our full attention. It needs to be back on the political agenda so that, collaboratively, we can change that trajectory.”

When Professor Markus Kosch (pictured above) joined Daiichi Sankyo (TYO: 4568) in September of last year to head up its Oncology Business Division in Europe, he had a clear vision – to transform outcomes for cancer patients.

Markus has worked in oncology for his entire career. Oncology has always been his preferred field in medicine, ever since those early days as a medical student, but Markus also has a highly personal reason for wanting to make a difference —his father died of colon cancer when he was just 21 years old. This has always given him extra motivation, whether when treating individual cancer patients as a physician or when trying to bring them improved outcomes on a broader scale in the pharmaceutical industry.

“That’s why I joined the industry after nine years in the hospital, and this is what I am still trying to accomplish—having an impact, introducing new therapies, better therapies, improving treatment standards,” Markus told The Pharma Letter. “Daiichi Sankyo clearly has the same vision and mission.”

This company-wide ambition stems from a strategy to put a clear focus onto R&D. This is now paying off with the firm’s burgeoning pipeline.

“It’s a good match — my personal ambitions meet the company ambition of being a leader in oncology very nicely, of focusing investment and R&D on oncology assets,” Markus said.

At the forefront of breast cancer treatment

Right now, the company’s vision is being realized most impactfully in breast cancer, an area of huge unmet medical need. It is the world’s most common type of cancer and one of the leading causes of cancer-related death.2  Over two million cases were diagnosed globally in 2020, with almost 700,000 women dying from the disease.3

So many people are affected or know someone who is; yet stopping the disease has proved very challenging.

“We have high awareness of breast cancer and there’s a lot of patient advocacy and policy support, which is great; however, sometimes people do not realise that a lot of women still progress to metastatic disease,” Markus said.

“Another very acute medical need due to two years of the pandemic and the effects this had on society, such as women who could not go for breast cancer screenings, we are now seeing women being diagnosed with more advanced stages of breast cancer. I have heard this from colleagues working in the field.”

“This increases the medical need, which is already very high. It’s super important, not only for us at Daiichi Sankyo, but also for society, to focus on the impact coronavirus has had on cancer care — on screening programs, on therapy compliance — we need to keep this in mind and to mitigate it as much as possible in the next few years.”

HER2 positive patients have worse survival rates

Biologic challenges also present a formidable adversary when tackling breast cancer which, of course, is not a single disease defined by the organ alone. Some patients are harder to treat than others.

“The presence or absence of hormone receptors — and whether the cancer is human epidermal growth factor receptor two (HER2) positive or negative — are key in defining individual risk.”4, 5, 6, 7 Survival rates for patients with HER2 positive metastatic cancer are worse than for the overall population.iv Those that are previously treated may have a five-year survival rate of less than 30%,iv this is something that “we cannot accept”, Markus said.

Women who inherit harmful BRCA variants are another sub-population particularly at risk.8 So, as well as patients being diagnosed late, certain genetic or phenotypic features make treating breast cancer more challenging.9

Giving valuable time back is a top priority

When patients do have limited life expectancy, a priority for Daiichi Sankyo is to give them the best quality of life possible.

“We measure that, we focus on that,” Markus said. “Progression-free survival, that is the key treatment goal. Giving people time at good quality to be with their loved ones — this makes a huge difference.”

As well as seeing improved rates of progression-free survival in data sets, Markus has seen it in the lives of patients that he has known, including a mother of two teenage boys from Israel.

“Although she eventually died, unfortunately, she was, for five-plus years, full of energy with good quality of life, under different therapies,” he said. “These five years seeing her boys grow up, graduate, finish school, work, were extremely important.”

These stories are why Daiichi Sankyo is focusing on increased quality of life for people affected by cancer.

Combining scientific innovation and business acumen to bring treatments to patients faster

No company can bring industry-leading technology to patients across the globe by itself. Daiichi Sankyo looks for collaborations to maximize pooled expertise and strengths. These have been formed with academia, oncologists, thought leaders, other drugmakers and more.

“For two of our lead compounds, we are collaborating with AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) to accelerate the speed that these innovations are brought to patients,” Markus said.

“From our first patient in one of our development programs which commenced in 2015, to approval of this, first in the US and later in Europe, took a little more than four years. This is a benchmark for the industry, it’s extremely fast.”

Becoming the fastest-growing oncology company

“Another reason to believe Daiichi Sankyo is set up for success in the long-term is the strategic focus: this decision to highly focus on developing cancer therapies and it’s great to see the success of this approach. So, whilst we’re not the biggest yet, I believe we can become the fastest-growing oncology company.”

Part of the reason for this optimism is the fact that Daiichi Sankyo is seeking to improve outcomes in several different cancers.

“There’s a number of other promising surface markers of tumor cells that we are tackling with the same approach,” Markus added. “We have additional clinical programs running and there is more to come.”

Markus is confident that breakthroughs will continue to change the trajectory for patients, not only monotherapies but also combinations of treatments.

Checkpoint inhibitors, the immuno-oncology drugs that enable the immune system to recognize and treat tumors, are of particular interest “We have multiple trials up and running,” he said. “I believe that the combination with immuno-oncology assets will be another milestone and open up new levels of sustained tumor responses.”

Keep patients at the forefront of all decisions

But while moving quickly with the clinical development program is important, Daiichi Sankyo has vowed to keep patients at the forefront of all its decisions, bringing in their voices in trial design, for example, as well as the focus on minimizing side effects and maximizing quality of life.

“These things reflect the patient centricity that we live,” Markus said. “Every cancer journey is a unique and personal experience for patients and very complex to be fully understood. We know that every cancer patient may also be a mother or father who want to see their children smile. A partner, a friend, a daughter, a son who long to kiss and hug their loved ones. It is with this knowledge that we conduct our science and cancer research to see another warm embrace, another smile or touch – we know how much they matter.”

References:

1 Cancer Research UK. BMJ 2015; 350 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h614.
2 WHO. Cancer. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-
sheets/detail/cancer#:~:text=Cancer%20is%20a%20leading%20cause,and%20rectum%20and%20pro
state%20cancers. [Last accessed: May 2022].
3 WHO. Breast Cancer. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/breast-cancer. [Last accessed: May 2022].
4 Patel, A et al. Cancers (Basel). 2020 Aug; 12(8): 2081.
5 Pillai R, N, et al. Cancer. 2017;123(21):4099-4105.
6 Martin V, et al. Br J Cancer. 2013;108(3):668-675.
7 de Melo Gagliato D., et al. Oncotarget. 2016 Sep 27;7(39)…64446.
8 American Cancer Society. Breast Cancer Risk Factors You Cannot Change.
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/breast-cancer/risk-and-prevention/breast-cancer-risk-factors-you-
cannot-change.html. [Last accessed: May 2022]
9 Lima, Z, et al. J Hematol Oncol 12, 38 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13045-019-0725-6.