At the beginning of the 21st century, society is challenged with new epidemics caused by chronic diseases like cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, diabetes, and cancer. Comparatively few risk factors have been identified as the cause of many of these chronic conditions, namely smoking, alcohol abuse, obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Cytos Biotechnology is investigating a new class of medicines based on a vaccine approach that hold promise for the treatment both of the risk factors and of their associated chronic diseases. You may choose the links below for more information.
Chronic diseases – a new challenge in an ageing society
The population of the world is ageing. According to a United Nations report, there are 600 million individuals worldwide aged 60 years and over at the beginning of the 21st century. This number is predicted to increase more than threefold over the next 50 years. The increase in age presents society with a new global challenge, namely epidemics caused by non-communicable, chronic diseases like cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, diabetes, and cancer. The World Health Organization estimates that these chronic disorders now account for an estimated 35 million or 60% of all deaths annually and contribute to almost half of the global burden of illness.
The above mentioned risk factors, namely smoking, alcohol abuse, obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure, have been identified as causally linked to death and illness from such chronic diseases. These risk factors are associated with an enforced or elected lifestyle or accompany the natural process of ageing. It seems logical that, once identified, the majority of these chronic disease risks should be easy to eradicate by just practicing a healthy lifestyle with regular physical exercise, a healthy diet, and the avoidance of tobacco and alcohol abuse. In practice, however, this is scarcely possible because in some cases personal habit and choice may speak against healthy living, whereas for a significant number of people economic, educational or social constraints leave no opportunity for attaining a healthier lifestyle.
For successful management of chronic disease epidemics and prevention of a huge toll they take in terms of death and disability, intervention at the early stage of disease, or even before symptoms appear, is crucial. There are two approaches for achieving this: through the correction of defective biological processes early in the disease process, or through the removal of the major risk factors that cause the disorder.
Today’s treatment options for chronic diseases
Chronic diseases often take years or decades to become fully established and require a long-term and systematic approach to treatment. The degenerative process leading to Alzheimer’s disease, for example, continues for years before disease symptoms appear – by which time vital body functions have already been lost. If individual well-being is to be maintained, treatment should therefore start as early as possible in the disease process and should address disease progression rather than just the symptoms of disease. A glance at the arsenal of available treatment options reveals two major issues in chronic disease management today: poor patient compliance (i.e. the poor adherence of patients to a prescribed treatment schedule) and the lack of disease-modifying drugs for many chronic indications.
Most of today’s available medications for some chronic disorders are small molecules or monoclonal antibodies. Monoclonal antibodies constitute a passive immunization of the patient. They have proved commercially successful and effective for conditions like cancer or inflammation. However, they have to be administered quite frequently (up to once a week) and in substantial antibody quantities. This entails high treatment costs and may prevent access to therapy by a significant number of patients due to economic constraints.
Small molecule drugs, on the other hand, generally require daily dosing, which translates into a daily reminder of disease and a diminished quality of life for the affected individual. As evidenced for the treatment of hypertension, the majority of hypertensive patients seem reluctant to comply with daily therapy. Antihypertensives on the market have proven effective, have few side effects, and are commercially available for the majority of people in developed countries. Nevertheless, more than the half of hypertensive patients do not take their medication as prescribed or discontinue therapy within as little as one year. This poor patient compliance leaves about three out of four hypertensive patients with an uncontrolled blood pressure. Avoidable disease and high healthcare costs are the result. New treatment modalities for long-term treatment of chronic disease are therefore urgently needed.
Cytos Biotechnology’s Immunodrugs™ – novel therapeutic vaccines to tackle the challenge of chronic disease
A glance back at the history of medicine shows that, as a means of preventing infectious disease, vaccination has been one of the most successful and cost-effective medical interventions. It has saved and continues to save millions of lives every year. Given the outstanding success of traditional vaccines in dealing with the risks of infection caused by pathogens such as smallpox or polio virus, it seems a logical extension to use the same modality for the management of today’s risk factors and chronic disease epidemics.
Since active immunization induces a long-lasting effect on the patient’s immune system, a limited number of annual treatments should suffice to control or prevent a given disease, even over decades. The major advantage over the medications currently available for treating chronic disease (e.g. small molecule drugs) is obvious: patients would no longer be burdened with daily self-medication, so that patient compliance and convenience could be clearly enhanced.
The Immunodrugs™, also classified as therapeutic vaccines, represent an active immunization of the patient with the goal of inducing a long-lasting effect. The vaccines instruct the immune system to produce the desired therapeutic antibody or T cell responses aimed at modulating or interfering with a given chronic disease process. The Immunodrug™ technology combines two medically important and validated principles: vaccination and antibody-based mode of action. Immunodrugs™ are designed as disease-modifying therapies that are able to modulate or intervene in a given disease process. The first steps in clinical development have been successful, and proof-of-concept in humans has been achieved for vaccine candidates in nicotine addiction, hypertension and allergy.
