Want to eliminate lung cancer as a cause of death: AstraZeneca India MD

The British drug major is developing next-generation vaccines that have the potential to generate potent and long-lasting immune responses

AstraZeneca is working on several cancer projects in India. The British drug major is also developing next-generation vaccines that have the potential to generate potent and long-lasting immune responses. In an email interview with Sohini Das, AstraZeneca Pharma India Managing Director and Country President Sanjeev Panchal talks about the firm’s plans. Edited excerpts.

What are your projects in lung cancer research? Any project that is undergoing trial in India?

We are focusing on the unmet needs in India and addressing those. To improve outcomes, we are prioritising increasing early screening and diagnosis and addressing the significant unmet need for treatment at every stage of the disease continuum.

Lung cancer is one of our key priorities and we have several clinical trials in immuno-oncology (IO), antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), small molecules and in combination with different chemotherapeutic agents. We have an aspiration to eliminate lung cancer as a cause of death in India and hence have strategically designed our approach to bring medicines that can augment treatment in stage 1, 2 and so on, which, as you can imagine, can reduce mortality significantly. In India as of now, we have 11 active studies where we have completed recruitment for eight and the rest are enrolling patients into the study.

We recently shared positive results from a late-stage study, evaluating Osimertinib in combination with chemotherapy for certain lung-cancer patients. The results were presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer 2023 World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC).

Do you include India in your global clinical trials? If so, for which therapy areas?

We have been in India for more than four decades and have collaborated with several health organisations here to ensure that our medicines are effective. Today, regulatory authorities have a comprehensive method to assess every aspect, including local and regional clinical trial-based efficacy data. We comply with the prerequisites of every approval.

At AstraZeneca, India is part of the majority of our late phase clinical trials worldwide in all therapy areas we are present in, especially biopharma and oncology. In oncology specifically, we are conducting studies in lung, breast, prostate, cervical, HCC, and ovarian cancer, etc. Apart from our investment in late-phase clinical trials, to generate the safety data of our molecule in the Indian patient population to fulfil the condition of marketing authorisation, we conduct Phase 4 studies as well. For example, we have conducted phase IV studies on Osimertinib, Olaparib, and Durvalumab (as well as Benralizumabfrom biopharmaceutical portfolio). At present, we also plan to conduct a phase IV study on Trastuzumab Deruxtecan (TDxd) in Her 2 positive breast cancer patients as well as on our triple inhalation product in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease from our biopharmaceutical portfolio in the coming year once products are marketed in India.

What are your priority areas for the Indian market in terms of therapy focus?

Through our work in biopharmaceuticals, we want to transform health care, change the lives of billions of people for the better, and address some of the biggest health care challenges facing humankind. There remains a huge unmet need in treating people with chronic diseases. Our ambition is to stop the progress of these often degenerative, debilitating, and life-threatening conditions and achieve remission.

We entered the rare-disease therapy area this year and there is a huge unmet need here. Around 400 million people worldwide live with a rare disease, of which 50 per cent are children. Of around 7,000 rare diseases, only 5 per cent have approved treatments.

Your vaccine, co-developed with Oxford and manufactured by the Serum Institute, was given to most Indians. Are there any plans to bring in any new vaccine from your parent company to India in the coming years?

We are committed to bringing all therapies we are into globally to India once we are ready and have all required in-country approvals. We are making progress across our vaccine and immune therapies portfolio and our ambition to deliver long-lasting immunity and protection against infectious diseases that affect millions of people around the world. We are engineering next-generation vaccines that have the potential to generate potent and long-lasting immune responses. For those who cannot mount an immune response to vaccines, AstraZeneca has been pioneering novel approaches to develop highly targeted, long-acting antibodies optimised with our half-life extension technology, which have the potential to play an increasing role in reducing the burden of disease caused by flu, Covid-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), in addition to other diseases such as cancer and respiratory ailments.