Cancer Therapeutics: Impact on Medical Device Innovation?

Cancer Therapeutics: Impact on Medical Device Innovation?

Maria Shepherd • Data Decision Group

Cancer is a complex disease with multiple causes. Its impact is felt in almost every specialty that the medtech community serves. The pathogenesis of cancer is multifactorial. Among the top three causes are genetics, abnormal protein production, and environment. The death rates of other medical conditions such as heart disease and stroke, while still unacceptably high, have dropped in the last 50 years, while the global death rates for cancer have remained relatively unchanged in the last half century.¹

Why It’s Important
Cancer is a disease state that affects almost every medical specialty to a varying degree, and innovation in medical product design can contribute to improved outcomes and better patient quality of life. There are more than one hundred types of cancer. Think of the potential for combination products and the impact on cancer outcomes. Medical specialties that treat a high number of cancer patients are
presented in Tables 1 and 2.

The Good News
Cancer death rates are declining in the United States, but not fast enough. The graph below shows that U.S. cancer death rates peaked in 1990 and then began to decline, but the disease remains highly prevalent and deadly. The decline is due to improvements in medical and surgical management, but the fight has not yet been won.

Cancer Therapy
The global market for cancer therapeutics was estimated at $54 billion in 2010. In the past, there were four primary treatments used in cancer therapy: chemotherapy, surgery, palliative therapies and radiation treatment. It is still common to combine treatments such as surgery with radiation therapy or chemotherapy.⁵ The global market for cancer therapeutics has grown at a 12.8 percent compound annual growth rate since 2005, primarily due to the introduction of biotherapeutic products, which increased to 61 percent of share of market, or approximately $33 billion.

Biotherapeutic treatment is the rising star of cancer therapy. Biotherapeutics are defined as any type of biological drug such as monoclonal antibodies, interleukins or interferon, antisense oligonucleotides, etc. When you think the evolution of combination products, such as drug eluting stents or balloons, think of how drug delivery devices could be applied to cancer treatment and the enormous opportunity in this disease state to dramatically improve outcomes.



Combination Products: Opportunity to Innovate
Combination products occur when smart people in medtech reach out to biotech or pharma, or vice versa. The need is great; globally, cancer is diagnosed for 11 million to 12 million people each year.⁶ This number is rising, and is expected to increase to 15 million newly diagnosed patients per year by 2020. Approximately 24 million patients live with cancer and almost 8 million people die from cancer every year. This disease kills approximately 50 percent of patients in developed countries; in underdeveloped countries the number of deaths jumps to 80 percent.

One of the solutions, of course, is for companies to continue innovating. Cancer treatment combination products could become a new blockbuster for the medical device industry.

References:

1. http://thepathogenesisofcancer.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/What-Is-Cancer.pdf
2. www.cdc.gov/Features/CancerStatistics/
3. www.cdc.gov/Features/CancerStatistics/
4. U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group. United States Cancer Statistics: 1999–2007 Incidence and Mortality Web-based Report. Atlanta: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Cancer Institute; 2010. Available at: www.cdc.gov/uscs.
5. Kalorama research, Cancer Therapeutics, 2011
6. Ibid.

Editor’s note: Readers are invited to submit market data and trend questions to Maria Shepherd. Periodically, selected questions will be presented in this column, with answers from Maria. Send your questions to the email in her bio (below).

Maria Shepherd, founder of Data Decision Group, has 20 years of leadership experience in medical device and life-sciences marketing. Her firm quantitatively and qualitatively sizes opportunities, evaluates new technologies, and assesses prospective acquisitions for medtech companies. She can be reached at (617) 548-9892 and [email protected].