AN INTERACTIVE tool to understand the current drug landscape to treat glioblastoma multiforme (GBM)
Below this chart, you can find an explanation of the terms used within the chart. You can also find a short guide on how to use this if you are a biotech company, a patient (or caregiver) or an investor.
Data gathered from the Open Targets Platform.
The top half of the tool is related to the Drug. The bottom half is related to the Disease.
On the Drug
Type of Drug: Small molecule, antibody or protein.
Phase of Drug: The more advanced the phase the sooner the drug can be approved for use by a patient.
Total Number of Drugs: Based on your filters, this number will change to reflect the available options
Mechanism of Action: In a few words, how this drug works to attack the disease. Below this is a tree-map that further categorizes these mechanism of actions into the following categories:
Inhibitor
Agonist
Antagonist
Stabiliser
Disrupting Agent
Binding Agent
Negative allosteric modulator
Blocker
Modulator
Other
On the Disease
Target: This is usually a gene, protein, channel, enzyme - basically the final target of the disease that the drug aims to act on. This could be related to the tumor cell or its microenvironment. Below this is a tree-map that further categorizes these targets into:
Negative Modulator
Positive Modulator
Other
Target Class: Groups the above targets into broader categories.
If you are a patient (or caregiver) suffering from GBM:
The unfiltered list shows the number of drugs available across different clinical trials to treat GBM. The number keeps increasing. Don’t lose hope, there’s a lot of smart scientists working to solve this problem. We’re a lot closer to the cure than we’ve ever been before
If you are looking to find drugs outside of “standard-of-care" that might help select “phase iv” under phase-of-drug. This should show you a few more options that could be available to you (ideally in the same region where you are but you may need to travel for these treatments). You can also go one-step further and look at “phase iii” drugs - these are usually being tested in large-scale clinical trials and if the patient is eligible then these are the drugs you might be able to access (since efficacy and safety have already been proven in earlier trials) Phase iii trials are designed to understand "Is the drug better than what’s already available?"
If you are a biotech company (or a researcher):
You are probably at an earlier stage of the drug-discovery process. You could select all drugs in “phase 0”. This should help you find “competitors" who are working on the same angle as you. Dig deeper and you might realize that since it’s so early in the process, perhaps you could collaborate with these teams instead of competing with them?
Identify if there are others working on the same “target class” as you. Maybe what’s unique about your approach is that noone else is targeting this target class. This is something that you would want to bring to the attention of your investors to help them understand why they should invest in you, especially if you have the science to back your target.
If you are an investor:
Select drugs within “phase ii”. These drugs have already proven that the treatment is safe in phase i. Now they need money to test if the drug would work. You can look at the “mechanism of the drug” in combination with the “target class” to understand if the biotech has potentially uncovered a novel approach to treat this disease.
Look at the type-of-drug. You’ll notice that there are many more small molecules than anti-bodies and fewer proteins than anti-bodies. Broadly-speaking, antibodies are usually more specific and therefore less toxic (less side-effects) than small molecules. Proteins are complex molecules and hard to manufacture but centers like the Institute for Protein Design are doing a great job at pushing the boundaries. If there’s a biotech creating either an antibody or a protein drug, they are using sophisticated tools and newer scientific approaches. Perhaps they are closer to the “cure”?