How quest for a cancer cure can boost your Isa
ONE in two of us will get cancer at some stage in our lifetimes. Nearly every family will see a loved one battle the dreadful disease, where the chances of surviving for at least ten years are 50:50 on average.
That’s why medical researchers, drugs companies and technology firms are ploughing billions of pounds into the quest to beat cancer.
Some are trying to develop cures, while others are working on drugs to improve quality of life or technology that can help doctors spot signs of the illness before it turns malicious.
Because there are hundreds of different types of cancer, these efforts require enormous investment.
Savers who put their cash behind the firms leading the charge can aid these efforts — and get a boost for their pension or Isa.
Loxo Oncology is one of the companies attracting interest from stock market investors.
One of its newest drugs is called larotrectinib, which is designed to treat patients with specific gene defects that cause cancerous cells to grow faster.
A recent trial on 50 patients with various different types of advanced cancers revealed startling results: more than three- quarters saw their tumours shrink significantly, while more than a tenth went into remission.
Loxo is still waiting for the drug to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. regulator.
Ryan Hughes, of stockbroker AJ Bell, suggests investors interested in Loxo back Axa Framlington Biotech. The fund’s manager, Linden Thomson, has turned £10,000 into £28,860 in five years.
Prostate cancer kills more than 11,000 men in Britain each year, second only to lung cancer.
One in eight men will suffer from the illness in their lifetime, according to Cancer Research UK, although the charity says, these days, 84 pc of sufferers survive for at least ten years after diagnosis.
Part of the reason for the higher survival rate is major advances in detecting the disease.
Blue Earth Diagnostics, for example, has developed an injectable substance called Axumin, which is used to identify malignant cells in men who have already suffered from prostate cancer.
In May, the European Medicines Agency approved the sale of Axumin in all EU states, as well as Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein.
For investors keen to back Blue Earth Diagnostics with their money, Jason Hollands, of broker Bestinvest, recommends a fund called Syncona, which invests in a number of companies developing new cancer treatments.
It invests £12.50 in every £100 of savers’ cash in Blue Earth and has turned £ 10,000 into more than £19,000 since it launched at the end of 2012. As well as investing in firms that battle cancer, it also donates 0.3 pc of the fund’s cash every year to cancer and medical research charities such as The Institute of Cancer Research and Cancer Research UK.
It also invests in a firm called Autolus, which is developing treatments for blood and other cancers that make use of the body’s immune system.
Working with doctors, the firm extracts T-cells, a type of white blood cell, from patients and genetically engineers them to target and kill cancer cells when they are injected back into the body.
In September, Autolus received £59 million of funding from a number of investors, including Syncona, to develop the next generation of T-cell therapies.
Another firm working on new ways to detect cancer is San Francisco-based Grail, which this year raised close to $1 billion (£750 million) to build a screening test that can detect the disease early.
This is vital because the earlier you can spot cancer, the better the chances of survival.
Grail uses so- called gene sequencing technology by a firm called Illumina, which maps human DNA to identify the genetic causes of cancer. Darius McDermott, of broker Chelsea Financial Services, recommends Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, which invests £ 5.70 in every £100 of savers’ money in Illumina and 90p in Grail. It has turned £ 10,000 into £34,080 in five years. AstraZeneca — one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical firms — spends nearly half of its £4.5 billion research budget every year developing anti-cancer drugs. In the summer, negative results from a lung cancer trial wiped more than £10 billion off the company’s value. But it has been buoyed by positive trial results for its drug Tagrisso, which was found to halve the risk of death or progression of certain types of lung cancer in patients.
It has been awarded so-called breakthrough status by the U.S. drug’s regulator, meaning it could be approved faster.
Over the past five years, AstraZeneca’s share price has risen 75.1 pc to 5,169p.
Ben Yearsley, of adviser Shore Financial Planning, tips Woodford Equity Income, managed by Neil Woodford, Britain’s best- known fund manager, for savers who want to invest in the Cambridgebased firm.
The fund invests £8.63 in every £ 100 of savers’ cash in AstraZeneca, making it the fund’s biggest stock pick.
While Mr Woodford’s fund has struggled over the past year, it has turned £10,000 into £12,893 since it launched in June 2014.