Novartis signals growing ambitions for cancer therapies

London

NOVARTIS AG is pushing ahead with one of its most ambitious cancer therapies, a treatment that the Swiss drugmaker says has blockbuster potential as it extends that technology to a wider pool of tumour-ridden patients.

Europe's second-biggest drugmaker is planning to test its CAR-T treatments - which involve extracting immune cells and genetically engineering them to hunt and kill cancer cells before returning them into the patient's body - on lethal cancers of the brain, pancreas, colon, ovary and lung. The company has also doubled its investment in manufacturing for these treatments.

The efforts put Novartis in a race with Juno Therapeutics Inc, Kite Pharma Inc and Bluebird Bio Inc to master the technology, part of a class of therapies that harness the body's defence system to attack tumours. Novartis's initial target is an acute form of leukaemia in children, and it expects to seek approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) early t…