Invention: Targeted anti-cancer drugs
American chemical engineer Robert Langer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has pioneered a new therapeutic approach to fighting cancer by encapsulating anti-cancer drugs within biodegradable plastics. The technique has proven to be the perfect weapon against aggressive cancers and other ailments.
Approved for clinical use in 1996, Robert Langer's ingenious
method relies on a class of drugs known to inhibit the process of "angiogenesis",
which is the formation of new blood vessels feeding cancerous tumours. As angiogenesis
inhibitors lose their efficacy when injected into the blood stream, Langer took
a different approach. He coated the drugs with wafer-shaped "bio plastics",
implanted at the actual tumour site, ensuring the drugs release their payload
with maximum impact.
Langer achieved his breakthrough by developing biologically tolerable polymers into building blocks that can be shaped into capsules for drug delivery, into cardiovascular stents or even into support structures for growing new body tissue.
Societal benefit
The brain cancer known as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common and aggressive cancer of the primary central nervous system, with a median survival rate of only 15 months. According to the National Cancer Institute, 22 850 adults in the US were diagnosed with brain or other nervous system cancers in 2015, and 15 320 of these diagnoses resulted in death. Particularly difficult to treat due its proximity to healthy tissue, GBM accounts for 52% of all primary brain tumours.
Approved for the treatment of glioblastoma in 1996, Langer's targeted drug delivery system has greatly improved outcomes in clinical practice: Patients achieved a survival rate of 63% in clinical trials, compared with 19% in the control group. To date, over 20 million patients worldwide have been treated with angiogenesis-inhibiting substances, and therapies derived from Langer's bioplastics, including drug-coated cardiovascular stents, have benefited more than one million.
Economic benefit
Marketed under the drug name Gliadel to treat GBM, Langer's invention generated sales of around EUR 32.5 million (USD 35.8 million) in 2006 for drug company Eisai, which divested rights to the technology in 2012 to the US-based Arbor Pharmaceuticals. Langer's inventions jumpstarted a new class of treatments for prostate cancers, endometriosis, and mental illnesses with considerable market success: The bioplastics-encapsulated drug Zeneca Zoladex (prostate cancer) netted around EUR 905 million in 2013, and Risperdal Consta (schizophrenia) EUR 1.4 billion in 2014.
An advocate of bridging the gap between research and the marketplace, Langer leads the world's largest biomedical engineering lab with over USD 10 million in annual grants and over 100 researchers. The GBM treatment market - including the Langer-designed drug Gliadel - is poised to grow from about EUR 273 million (USD 301 million) in 2013 to EUR 566 million (USD 623 million) by 2020, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.9% (GBI Research).
