BY: Salma Khalik , HEALTH CORRESPONDENT

LUNG cancer patients might soon be able to avoid a relapse after surgery - by getting vaccinated.

Similar vaccines will be developed for about a dozen different cancers, including colon and bladder, if an ongoing trial by drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is successful.

Its lung cancer vaccine is undergoing phase three trial in Europe - the last hurdle before the drug is approved for commercial use.

'We've got very good results so far. So, fingers crossed, it could be out by 2012,' said GSK's chief executive officer Andrew Witty.

Unlike most vaccines which are used to prevent a disease before it strikes, therapeutic cancer vaccines are meant to treat patients already stricken with cancer.

They also adopt the more targeted approach in dealing with cancer, moving away from the 'carpet-bomb' strategy of current radiation and chemotherapy treatments.

These kill off cancerous and healthy cells indiscriminately, don't work for everyone, and make the patient very sick.

The vaccine, which comes in the form of injections, allows the body to home in on tumours by training the immune system to recognise unique signals produced by cancerous cells.

After the patient's surgery to remove the tumour - the gold standard in treatment - the vaccine prevents it from recurring.

The ongoing trial in Europe involves both patients who have been given chemotherapy as well as those who have only had their tumours removed with no other follow-up treatment.

There are several forms of lung cancer, which kills 1.3 million people a year, including 940 in Singapore.

Early results from the GSK trials show that its vaccine works on a major sub-type accounting for up to half of all lung cancers.

Mr Witty, who was in Singapore earlier this week, told The Straits Times that eventually, the vaccines will be developed to target more than one cancer signal. This will allow them for protection against more types of cancer. 'If it works, it's going to be very big,' he said.

Recognising their potential, drug companies and labs have been racing to produce therapeutic cancer vaccines.

There is none on the market yet, but several, like GSK's and Merck Serono's lung cancer vaccines, are undergoing late-stage testing.

If the vaccines prove effective in preventing a relapse, they could one day be used to prevent cancer even before it strikes, just like GSK's cervical cancer vaccine.

The company recently won a contract worth an estimated &pound100 million (S$263 million) to vaccinate all young girls in Britain against the disease.

Vaccines are a strong area of growth for GSK, the world's second-largest pharmaceutical company and the leader in vaccines.

It currently caters for a quarter of the world's needs: According to its website, 35 people get one of its vaccines every second.

Mr Witty said demand for vaccines will remain robust, with 100 million babies born every year. He said: 'Other than washing your hands, it's the most cost-effective health-care intervention that exists in the world.

'A few doses, or even just one dose, can protect babies, adolescents and adults from a lifetime of risk against some of the most dangerous diseases.'

"Not acceptable" for patients to bear cost of research failures

DRUG companies should not be passing on the cost of their failures to patients, said Mr Andrew Witty, chief executive officer of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

'It's not acceptable to say to people this drug is going to cost you the earth because we failed 50 times.'

The solution, he said, was to fail less.

Mr Witty, who took charge of the pharmaceutical giant in May, has been ruthlessly killing off developmental drugs that seem unlikely to make the grade.

Because of this, GSK has managed to cut losses early. And the US$6 billion (S$8.5 billion) a year it spends on research is putting more drugs up for sale.

In the past 18 months, it had five new drugs approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration. A remarkable number, given that only 28 new drugs were approved in that period.

It also has 33 drugs in phase-3 trials, the last stage before applying for commercial approval.

What GSK has done, he said, is to ask itself two simple questions - whether there is an unmet need, and how likely it is that GSK could discover something in that field.

This is why it dropped high-blood pressure from its list of diseases, he explained, as there was already an abundance of medication in this area.

The pragmatic 44-year-old said he was not looking for a blockbuster drug that could rake in billions in sales every year, but wants a steady stream of medicine. 'It was a reality check. Let's not dream that we will be Nobel prize winners. Let's do our research where there is a probability of success,' he said.

Turning to Singapore, Mr Witty said that the country was 'absolutely rigorously punching all the right buttons' in its biomedical research efforts.

It is now a matter of building 'a bedrock of people - layers of scientists developing their own culture in their own environment, and that's going to take time', said Mr Witty.

All it takes is one major breakthrough.

The top 50 best-selling drugs in the history of the pharmaceutical industry were discovered by no more than 10 to 15 people, he added, calling it 'an absolute concentration of discovery skill'.

'That's why when you find somebody who has discovered a drug, you want to keep him, because he's probably going to find another one.

'That's because drug discovery isn't a process. It's a blend of art, intuition, serendipity, science and God knows what.

'It's just something that happens, when all these things blend together.'

GSK was built on such foundations. Two of its researchers came out with new medicines for leukaemia, transplants, herpes, gout and Aids as well as antibiotic and anti-malarial drugs.

He believes similar work could come out of Singapore, which is why GSK has set up a laboratory here with more than 30 scientists working at the Biopolis.

Urging Singapore to push ahead in the face of competition from regional giants like China, he said: 'It's not about being the biggest. It's about being the best.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times on August 23, 2008.