DelveInsight’s Oncology based Gene Therapy Reports

Gene Therapy: The “Cure” for Cancer!

About Gene Therapy

Gene Therapy involves using drugs that are aimed at specific genes or proteins that are only found in cancer cells or the tissue environment that contributes to cancer growth and survival. Put simply, it injects these genes into the tiny cells, with the help of a carrier, or a “vector”.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, basic science pushed the field of gene therapy to its first clinical trial in 1988. However in both cases the trials were unsuccessful and led many physicians and scientists to doubt the potential of this field. The major failure for Gene therapy field came in September 1999 with the widely publicized death of an eighteen-year-old man undergoing gene therapy for a liver disease at the University of Pennsylvania. Inspite of the significant setbacks and limited success that the field of gene therapy has experienced, it is one of the most promising and active research fields in medicine.

Gene Therapy: The Present Scenario

The potential for treating a patient using gene transfer has been realized in an exponential fashion, paralleling advances in molecular biology over the last four decades. Moreover the human clinical trials are majorly performed for the oncology indications as it offers a large window of opportunities for the treatment of multiple cancers. The therapy has been found to be able to target special tumor suppressor genes to an individual, which could prevent the growth of malignant tumors and reduce the metastatic disease.

The reasons for cancer to become a preferred area of application for gene therapy are the significant unmet medical needs in cancer therapy, coupled with the large size of its market. Additionally, the ethical acceptance of gene therapy as a therapeutic solution also contributed to the shift of focus from monogenetic diseases to cancer. However, there has been marginal success in developing completely curative therapeutic drugs due to risk involved with the use of genes as well as the regulatory approval of products. Inspite of this, Gene therapy’s potential to revolutionize medicine in the future is exciting.

Gene Therapy: The Market Scenario

Many companies have started investing in and researching on gene therapy due to its promising effects. A growing number of Big Pharma companies are partnering in drug development with innovation-rich biotech firms. Large Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology giants, such as Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi etc., are operating in the gene therapy domain. Moreover recent academic and industry partnerships for example between Celgene Corporation and Baylor College of Medicine, GSK and the Roswell Park Cancer Institute etc., are driving new gene therapy research.

The industry’s collective pipeline is brimming with 300+ therapies of which oncology collectively accounts for 29 % of gene therapies in pipeline. Despite of high cost involved recent years have seen many companies coming up with treatments for various types of cancers. The global market opportunities for gene therapy have risen drastically and continue to be great area of interest for many companies globally.

DelveInsight’s Gene Therapy Reports

DelveInsight’s Gene Therapy Reports cover the entire gene therapy market insights for oncology including technology assessments, licensing opportunities, collaborations, market trends, pipeline coverage and competitive landscape. The report essentially provides DelveInsight’s proprietary market and pipeline analytics which identifies the front runners in this therapeutic area. It also identifies the potential market movers and future regulatory landscape.