CUBA-US: Alliance Against Cancer

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jul 15 2004 (IPS) - Cuba’s Centre for Molecular Immunology (CIM) and a U.S. biotech company will work together to complete the clinical development of three experimental cancer drugs, the Cuban research institute announced Thursday.

CIMAB S.A., which markets the drugs produced by CIM, said in a communique that the agreement will bring funding for the research, manufacturing and commercialisation of ”cancer vaccines”, which use the body’s immune system to combat tumours, being developed in Cuba.

Before it was able to sign the deal, the California-based CancerVax Corporation waited since last December for a special licence from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces the more than 40-year-old U.S. trade sanctions on Cuba.

CIMAB and CancerVax plan to put a drug being developed against lung cancer into phase two trials, said the statement.

CIM spokespersons announced at an international biotechnology congress early this year in Havana that the institute was working on therapeutic ”vaccines” against lung, colon, breast and prostate cancer.

According to World Health Organisation (WHO) reports, some 6.2 million people die every year of cancer, the disease that has been most heavily researched over the past 50 years.

An estimated 5.3 million men and 4.7 million women developed malignant tumours in 2000, and the total number of cases is expected to climb to 15 million by 2020. Lung cancer claims the greatest number of victims, followed by stomach and liver cancer.

While cancer rates vary geographically in Latin America, the disease is the second cause of death in most countries in the region, including Cuba.

CIM was created in 1994, as part of Havana’s complex of scientific research institutions, to develop and produce new drugs to prevent and treat cancer and other non-transmissible diseases.

It was announced early this year that a CIM research team had developed the Theracim h-R3 (trade name Cima-her) monoclonal antibody, which has been demonstrated to kill cancer cells.

CIM is involved in more than 20 clinical trials on a number of cancer drugs. A possible treatment against breast cancer is being tested in hospitals in Cuba, Argentina and Spain.

CIM Director-General Agustín Lage Dávila said the start of cooperation with ”one of the leading companies in the area of vaccines against cancer” opens up a new path for the institution.

The agreement is also focused on bringing together the experience and technologies of CIM, CancerVax and its subsidiaries Tarcanta Inc. and Tarcanta, Ltd in Ireland in the development of new therapeutic treatments for lung cancer.

A second accord for developing medicines against two other kinds of cancer was signed by CIMAB S.A. with the participation of the two subsidiaries and Canada’s YM BioSciences Inc.

The products we are going to develop together have the potential to help patients around the world, and to generate significant revenues for CIMAB and CancerVax, said the president and CEO of the U.S. corporation, David F. Hale.

A communique issued by CancerVax states that the agreement gives the company the exclusive right to ”the commercialisation of successful product candidates within the U.S., Western Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico.”

A U.S. State Department spokesman cited Thursday by the New York Times said the approval of the licence did not represent an easing of the country’s trade embargo against Cuba.

The U.S. administration of George W. Bush made the exception because of the ”life-saving potential of the experimental Cuban drugs,” said the source.

A similar exception was made in 1999, when pharmaceutical company SmithKline Beecham (now known as GlaxoSmithKline), obtained a licence to carry out clinical trials in the United States for a vaccine against meningitis B, with a view to eventually introducing it into the country.