Bristol Myers Squibb Gives $53M to Support Cancer Immunotherapies

February 10, 2021 - Bristol Myers Squibb recently announced it donated $53 million to Kyoto University to support its cancer immunotherapy research.

The funds will be used to finance the construction of the main building of the Center for Cancer Immunotherapy and Immunobiology, which will be called the Bristol Myers Building.

The building will function as the main facility for the center. This will allow faculty members and corporations to support early-career principal investigators and enhance industry-academia collaboration.

The Bristol Myers Building is scheduled to begin sometime this year.

"The donation we are receiving from BMS will help us build the Bristol Myers Squibb Building at the Center for Cancer Immunotherapy and Immunobiology in the Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine,” Tasuka Honjo, founding director of the center and professor at Kyoto University, said in the announcement. 

“The collaboration between academia and industry in drug development is more important than ever and it is a great pleasure to see the decades-long friendship between BMS and Kyoto University come to fruition in this way, lighting a beacon of hope for future cancer researchers,” Honjo continued. 

The Center for Cancer Immunotherapy and Immunobiology was established in April 2020 as a research institute within Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Medicine. The center is a hub for scholars from Japan and overseas researching next-generation cancer treatments. 

Honjo will lead the immunotherapy research. In 2018, Honjo won the Novel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of immune cell protein PD-1.

PD-1 became the catalyst for new therapies that have been proven effective against cancer. 

"I am excited about the opportunity to support the world's leading immuno-oncology research being undertaken at Kyoto University under Professor Honjo's leadership,” said Jean-Christophe Barland, president and CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb.

“BMS is dedicated to the fight against cancer in Japan and around the world. For BMS who has been a pioneer in immuno-oncology, this financial contribution is a testament to our focus on, and commitment to, the discovery, development and delivery of innovative cancer treatments,” Honjo continued. 

Immunotherapy has the ability to enhance the immune system’s ability to recognize, target, and eliminate cancer cells. Experts believe that this treatment has the potential to reshape cancer worldwide.

Bristol Myers Squibb has continuously focused its efforts on core therapeutic areas, including cancer immunotherapies. 

At the end of September, the company announced that its immunotherapy Opdivo, or nivolumab, improved disease-free survival versus a placebo for patients with high-risk, muscle-invasive bladder cancer in a Phase 3 clinical trial. 

The trial was the first and only Phase 3 trial in which immunotherapy reduced the risk of relapse in the adjuvant settings for patients. 

But a 2020 study from Oklahoma State University found that although over one-third of cancer patients are eligible for immunotherapy, even fewer are responding to the treatment. 

Researchers previously reported that 12.5 percent of cancer patients responded to immunotherapy. But in this study of US cancer patients, the estimated total responses to these drug scenarios was 11.4 percent and 10.9 percent, respectively. 

Additionally, nearly nine percent of people who were eligible for immunotherapies in 2018 were later deemed ineligible because of negative confirmatory trials. 

The disruption in numbers is largely due to increases in eligibility from other indications such as in triple-negative breast cancer (3.5 percent). Hepatocellular, urothelial, and gastric cancers had the largest negative differences at -4.9 percent, -2.3 percent, and -1.8 percent, respectively. 

So while cancer immunotherapies have gained popularity in recent years due to their ability to boost a person’s immune response against cancer cells, experts highlighted that with quick approval of potentially beneficial drugs comes a risk of approving drugs that are later found ineffective.