Pfizer Along With Johnson and Johnson Invest in Cancer Medical Device - Novo-Cure Stopping Growth of Tumor and Potential Reversal

49 Patients in Clinical Trials in the US are wearing this device that slows down or reverses the growth of cancer. It has a battery pack and weighs around 6-7 pounds. Watch the video to see someone in a trial wearing the unit and how it goes with him all day.

It looks to be a bit of an inconvenience, but not so when you consider what the alternative is by all means, the patients are still alive and carrying on a somewhat normal life, just a bit of baggage to keep the cancer from growing and potentially even reducing the size of the tumors.

With both Pfizer and J and & showing an interest with investing, along with favorable trial numbers, it must be working. This is the first type of device like this I have run across on the web. As technology grows with the device perhaps it will eventually evolve into a smaller unit in time, as it seems everything with technology goes in that direction, smaller and more powerful. This has to be a blessing to those who are currently enrolled and using the device with the type of cancer they have by all means. BD

Schering-Plough Corp. CEO Fred Hassan isn't too keen on the idea of pharmaceutical companies moving back into the medical device business. The retiring CEO, in a wide-ranging talk last month at our Pharmaceutical Strategic Alliances conference in New York, warned pharma folks against straying too far afield and acquiring or incorporating drug and diagnostic companies into their main business. Such entities are best left separate or in a decentralized structure, he said. (See "What Fred Said: Schering-Plough's Hassan on Life in Big Pharma," The Pink Sheet, September 28, 2009.)

To some, his warning serves as another signal that pharmaceutical companies have renewed interest in investing in and possibly acquiring medical device companies after many shed themselves of device-oriented businesses a decade or more ago. At least one pharmaceutical company "kicked the tires" when Ardian Inc., maker of a catheter treatment for hypertension, raised a $47 million Series C round. Perhaps the recent investment in a low-profile company, NovoCure Ltd., by Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnson Development Corp. is the first indication that there's truth to those whispers.

From the Website:

The NovoTTF-100A device is currently being tested in an FDA approved Pivotal (Phase III) clinical trial for newly diagnosed GBM patients. The device is also being tested in a 236 patient FDA approved Pivotal (Phase III) clinical trial for recurrent GBM patients that has concluded enrollment but is ongoing and no results have been reported to date. The device has previously been tested in two European pilot trials. The data from these small pilot trials suggest the NovoTTF-100A may increase the length of time before disease progression and increase median overall survival of GBM patients.