Ideas Matter: the importance of IP in the fight against cancer

On May 14, in time for Cancer Prevention Week, healthcare experts met in London to share and discuss developments in cancer detection, prevention, treatment and maintenance, and how IP protection and management are vital in attracting investment.

The roundtable was hosted by Ideas Matter, an initiative formed of various enterprises and multinationals to promote the benefits of IP.

Ideas Matter director Allen Dixon opened the day with the latest figures from the European Patent Office, which reported more than 15,000 patent filings related to cancer prevention since the year 2000, and 600 patents for new drugs filed yearly.

Seventy percent of inventors were European, he said, with small and medium enterprises as well as individual inventors “well represented” among patent filings. The BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are also emerging forces in the oncology patent arena.

The first of the talks was given by Dr Kairbaan Hodivala-Dilke, professor of angiogenesis at the centre for tumour biology in Barts Cancer Institute. Hodivala-Dilke studies the blood vessels that feed cancer, and showed how cancer’s complexity makes it so difficult to treat. There are hundreds of diseases we call cancer, she said.

Because it can take so long to present itself, lung cancer is a particularly serious form of cancer that less than 30 percent of patients will survive a year after diagnosis.

Medical device company Anaxsys is concerned with identifying cancers early. It has developed the respiR8, a continuous respiratory rate counter that by measuring a patient’s rate of breathing and moisture profiles in breath can help diagnose lung cancer, and can report to medical staff whether the patient is about to have a heart attack or asthma attack.

Deryk Williams, managing director at Anaxsys, said IP is essential for attracting large investments.

As a company, you have to be very focused on what you’re trying to achieve, he said. Be specific when patenting your innovations, and companies will be more likely to invest, he added.

Gerardo Gonzalez, a researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge, demonstrated how the Xbox Kinect games console’s touchless technology can be used by surgeons performing keyhole and vascular surgery.

In the sterile environment of the operating theatre, where using a keyboard or mouse is not ideal, and giving commands for another person to enter into a computer can take valuable time, the Kinect allows surgeons to view and manipulate 3D detailed medical images and mark them on the fly using a series of gestures and vocal commands.

The technology is currently being trialled with vascular patients at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, to give the research team an idea of how doctors will want to use it.

IP brings together medical teams and scientists with the same goal, Gonzalez said.

Multinational pharmaceutical company Amgen works on developing personalised medicines for cancer by improving diagnosis using biomarkers.

Virginia Acha, Amgen’s director of regulatory affairs in R&D policy, said: “Scientific and technological innovation underpin advances in personalised medicine,” and that the healthcare system needs to evolve with advances in technology and research.

“Science moves much faster than clinical trials,” she said.