Industry Giants Say Covid-19 Offers A 'Significant Opportunity' To Fast-Track Cancer Eradication

The Bloomberg New Economic International Cancer Coalition aims to improve patient access to clinical trials worldwide and coordinate regulations that may accelerate cancer cures and post-pandemic prevention.

FREMONT, CA: Following the COVID-19 pandemic, 35 industry heavyweights from the oncology and biopharma industries, including Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, and others, have called for irreversible cancer treatment and delivery reforms. It comes from the Bloomberg New Economy International Cancer Coalition, which advocates "intentional implementation" of its proposals. Amgen, Bayer, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Genentech, Johnson & Johnson, Johns Hopkins, Novartis, and the FDA's Oncology Center of Excellence are among the members of the collaboration formed in spring 2021. The organization was founded with the ambitious goal of enhancing patient access to clinical trials around the world and coordinating legislation that may speed up cancer therapies and prevention in the aftermath of a pandemic.

Patients ceased signing up for trials, and clinic visits were canceled when the pandemic became a reality in 2020. Clinical trials, which are the lifeblood of every pharmaceutical or biotech company, have had to pivot or shut down. 

Before the pandemic, decentralized clinical trials were one of the few methods to keep the research going, with Novartis and J&J quickly moving to mailed medicines and home health visits, among other strategies described by large businesses.

The Bloomberg consortium now claims that telemedicine and remote technology can provide better cancer care for underprivileged communities more than two years after COVID-19 was released. The group claims that clinical trial flexibility during the pandemic offered new opportunities to improve patient experience and demonstrated the potential of technology and global collaboration to improve participant access and diversity in a consensus paper published in Nature Medicine. Patient identification and enrollment, treatment and monitoring, and regulatory harmonization across patient-centric clinical trials—studies that prioritize patient needs at all stages—were identified as the top priority to concentrate on by the alliance. The authors believe that patient-centric treatment can be achieved by removing barriers to trial participation, using technologies like telemedicine, remote monitoring, and liquid biopsy, and collaborating internationally, including regulatory harmonization.