The Difference Between Surviving and Living With Cancer

There are very few cures for cancers that have already spread. So what does a good outcome actually look like?

In this clip from our episode “How Targeted Radiotherapy Is Changing Cancer Care”, host David E. Williams and John Babich, Founder, President, and Chief Scientific Officer of Ratio Therapeutics, break down what extending life with quality really means in cancer care, and why giving someone eight more months where they can still live their life is the philosophy driving the work at Ratio Therapeutics.

Listen to the full episode here

🎙️⚕️ABOUT JOHN BABICH
John W. Babich, a native of New York City, holds a BS in pharmaceutical sciences from St. John’s University and a PhD in radiopharmaceutical chemistry from The Institute of Cancer Research in London. He began his career at Brookhaven National Laboratory and later NASA, focusing on cardiovascular imaging. Babich co-founded Molecular Insight Pharmaceuticals in 1998, where he developed several radiopharmaceuticals, including a PSMA inhibitor for prostate cancer now in Phase 3 trials. In 2017, he founded Noria Therapeutics, which was sold to Bayer in 2021, leading to the creation of Ratio Therapeutics.

🎙️⚕️ABOUT HEALTH BIZ PODCAST
HealthBiz is a CareTalk podcast that delivers in-depth interviews on healthcare business, technology, and policy with entrepreneurs and CEOs. Host David E. Williams — president of the healthcare strategy consulting boutique Health Business Group — is also a board member, investor in private healthcare companies, and author of the Health Business Blog. Known for his strategic insights and sharp humor, David offers a refreshing break from the usual healthcare industry BS.

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For over 20 years, Health Business Group has helped healthcare software companies, tech-enabled services businesses, life sciences companies, and payers make smarter strategic decisions. Led by podcast host David Williams, the firm advises clients on sharpening AI positioning, entering new segments, and building commercial strategies for value-based care. See examples of our work at healthbusinessgroup.com/

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Transcript

David: 0:07

So as we wrap things up, I, I wanna ask you to look ahead. You, you could pick your timeframe maybe 10 years or, or something like that. You started off talking about, you know, the three main things people do are s- you know, surgery, chemo, external beam radiation. Now, depending on who I'm talking to, sometimes people say, "Well, the fourth one is immunotherapy," you kind of put that in with chemotherapy. Now we're talking about, uh, radiopharmaceuticals. What do things look like in a decade? What's the relative role of these different pieces? How does radiopharmaceuticals in particular change, uh, the overall equation?

John: 0:38

Yeah. So I-- So that's a great question, right? And so I'll, I'll, I'll take, uh, let's say, artistic license here. Um, I, I see the field… First of all, I think everything I've mentioned about the therapeutic index, you know, we're just starting to understand the limitations and what we need to do to make these drugs safer and more effective, right? We, we, we see benefits, but we'd love to improve upon those benefits, right? You like to drive towards a cure, and right now there are very few cures in the world for, you know, um, cancers that have spread. And so if, if you think about it that way, I think we can have the ability to have a improve the therapeutic index, and that, that allows you to do a couple of things, right? You can use the drug more frequently. We, we talked about the lack of side effects, so you have a better quality of life while you're extending life, and that's a big, that's a big, you know, philosophy of ours. We want to extend life with quality. So, you know, if I can give you eight more months, I'd like to give you eight more months where you can go out and run around with your kids or, you know, take a trip you wanted to go on or at least be functional and not be, you know, housebound and, or bedbound. I think the other thing is you're gonna see the combination of radioligand therapies with other therapies. And I think when we th- we think about… You know, there's one thing that we're very excited about. Our FAP therapeutic, while we're in sarcoma now, where FAP is on the sarcoma cancer cells as well as the stromal piece FAP is also on-- in the stroma of many other cancers, such as breast cancer, such as non-small cell lung cancer, pancreatic cancer. And the stroma is a bad actor. It basically clogs up the system for drugs to get access to it, and it also gives off biochemical messaging that basically stops the immune system from recognizing what's going on in this gemish. And so we believe that the opportunity, the one big opportunity here is modulate the stroma while you bring in orthogonal therapies, whether that's immune checkpoint, whether that's chemotherapy. There's some nice data, you know, that's being generated now in preclinical models and clinical, uh, ex-- trials where priming the ther-- you know, priming with a radioligand therapy might be very beneficial to other therapies coming in, whether they're immune checkpoint or chemotherapy. So I think we're gonna see combinations, and I think we're gonna see, you know, the other point about what does it look like. I think there'll be-- they will-- there will be private therapeutic clinics, uh, in the community, which, you know, it started off as hospital-based therapies. I think it's gonna wind up in, you know, there'll be community theranostics or nuclear medicine specialties that'll, you know, this will not be, um, you know, only the big medical centers have it. This will be in the community, and it'll be, uh, something that people will seek out because of the, the, the lack of side effects and the extension of life. So I think this is where we're headed