When Two Cancer Drugs Are Better Than One

Since 1998, when Roche Holding's Genentech won approval for the first of a new generation of personalized cancer medicines, drugmakers have rushed to develop compounds targeting specific genes and mutations responsible for cancer's growth. About two dozen targeted drugs have reached the market. An additional 800 medicines aimed at about 300 different genes are in development, says John Mendelsohn, president of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The methodology has produced some of the most costly pharmaceuticals ever: Erbitux, a colon cancer drug by Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) and Eli Lilly (LLY), for instance, costs $40,000 for a typical 16-week regimen. But recent research has shown that even targeted drugs often extend life only for a matter of months before cancers find ways to mutate beyond their reach.

So Big Pharma is embracing a new approach, using two experimental drugs that simultaneously attack cancers in different ways. This double-teaming keeps cancer cells off-balance, slowing their ability to adapt to drugs and hopefully impeding their ability to spread. Explains George Sledge Jr., an oncologist at Indiana University's cancer center: To keep cancer in check longer, doctors need "a magic shotgun loaded with pellets aimed at multiple targets in multiple pathways," not just a magic bullet. Besides the health advance, doubling up the use of these pricey treatments could be a real tonic for makers of cancer drugs, which at $56 billion in sales annually comprise the single biggest pharmaceutical segment.