The Golden Age in Cancer Medtech Investing

Short of investing in the kinds of products that must demonstrate five-year survival rates, the field of cancer offers many near term investment opportunities, and large markets to support them. As noted in US Disease Incidence and Prevalence, a report recently published by the Medtech Insight division of FDC-Windhover, like many diseases, the incidence of cancer increases with age. More than 10.8 million people in the US have a history of cancer; and in 2008, at least 1.4 million more people will be diagnosed. According to the Medtech Insight report, breast cancer has the highest prevalence rate, followed by prostate and colorectal cancers.

In the past few years, the market for cancer therapies and technologies has come a long way. Not so long ago, cancer posed many obstacles to investors including long development time lines to validate new science, prolonged regulatory pathways to demonstrate survival, and small, niche markets for drugs with limited efficacy in narrow patient populations. But all that is changing. There have been several heartening success stories in the field—the colorectal cancer drug cetuximab (Erbitux), for example, caused its developer, ImClone Systems Inc. to become the object of a bidding war, won in October 2008 by Eli Lilly & Co. The winning bid was $6.5 billion. [See Deal] (See "Eli Lilly’s Oncology Focus," IN VIVO, October 2008 Also see "Eli Lilly's Oncology Focus" - In Vivo, 1 October, 2008..)

Cancer is replacing cardiovascular disease as the large, underserved disease of aging (and an enormous, underserved market), judging by the actions of some of the largest companies in health care....

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