AMAZING NEWS, which I hope will pan out:

DALLAS – An experimental vaccine wiped out lung cancer in some patients and slowed its spread in others in a small but promising study, researchers say.

Three patients injected with the vaccine, GVAX, had no recurrence of lung cancer for more than three years afterward, according to the study of 43 people with the most common form of the disease, non-small cell lung cancer. . . .

The cancer disappeared in three of the advanced-stage patients. Two of those patients previously had chemotherapy, which failed. In the rest of the advanced-stage patients, the disease remained stable and did not spread for almost five months to more than two years.

A close friend of mine (actually, a former girlfriend) died of lung cancer at the age of 33, despite never having smoked. I’d like to see that sort of death become as obsolete as death from bubonic plague. And when people like me seem to be in a hurry to see science and medicine progress, it’s because we understand that people are dying now who don’t have to be, and who won’t be once cures are developed. (Via Donald Sensing).

UPDATE: Reader David Horwich emails:

Some of my practice is helping pharma (including biotechnology) companies raise the capital necessary to get through the three phases that must be done before a drug is approved for sale. The last credible figure I saw was that a pharma company would spend north of $100 million to get a drug approved; it takes 10 years to do this. Now think about the funnel that the company has to sift through to get there. Phase I is testing safety and a little bit of efficacy. If the compound makes it through to Phase II, it tests efficacy and determines the appropriate dosage to try to make it work. Phase III is for all the marbles, when
the company does a double-blinded, placebo test, in multiple clinics throughout the country, once it has located and enrolled the patients.

Then, if the data pans out, the company prepares a report of its findings and goes to the FDA and waits nearly 18 months to find out whether or not it will then have the luxury of spending tens of millions of dollars on marketing and selling the drug. All before one dollar of revenue.

And a significant percentage of drugs that get into Phase I don’t make it to Phase II. And a lot of Phase II drugs don’t make it to Phase III. And a large number of Phase III drugs fail the test. The cost above does not include these failures. The next time anyone complains about the high cost of prescription drugs should understand this. The reason Canada or EC countries get innovative drugs much cheaper is because they don’t have to go through this system of bringing a drug to market. Think Thalidomide and you can understand why this occurs.

Having said all that, there are some truly amazing technologies in the pipeline that I know about. The entrepreneurial spirit and the compassion and passion that executives at these startups and nascent companies have is astonishing to be part of and makes my job all that much more satisfying. Genomics is going to make their job much, much easier and has already begun to do so.

Bring it on, I say.