You Might Also Like: Unseen Upside: Investments Beyond Their Returns

Hillary Roboto (0:05)

This story starts in a hospital room. A man with a blood cancer has been under the same doctor's care for four years, and his doctor has run out of things to try.

Elizabeth O'Donnell (0:14)

He had gone through all of the available therapies, and he had been in the hospital with high calcium, which is something that happens in multiple myeloma.

Hillary Roboto (0:23)

His doctor is Elizabeth O'Donnell, or Betsy to those who know her, and she's a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She specializes in this type of cancer, and for most of her career, it's been one she could treat but couldn't cure.

Elizabeth O'Donnell (0:40)

It was really hard to control. We get a lot of infections too.

Hillary Roboto (0:44)

He'd relapsed and spent most of the last month in the hospital.

Elizabeth O'Donnell (0:48)

Had built a home outside of the country. He had made all these plans at some place he had visited annually, and it was his life dream to retire and to be able to go to this for the cold months of the year.

And had just finished construction at the time that he was diagnosed. And so couldn't go to this home and couldn't live the life that he had imagined and wanted.

Hillary Roboto (1:10)

For patients like him with no options left, that usually meant about one year to live.

But in this case, a clinical trial opened up for a brand new CAR T cell therapy. That's a treatment that reprograms a patient's own immune cells to combat cancer.

Elizabeth O'Donnell (1:28)

We're introducing a new drug as a Hail Mary.

It was really our only option. And no one had been put on this drug. It was he was the first person in the world to receive this CAR T cell.

Hillary Roboto (1:39)

For Betsy, it wasn't an easy choice.

Elizabeth O'Donnell (1:42)

You know, it takes a lot of trust on him and me and my judgment, and then it's a lot of nerve wracking on my part, giving a novel therapy to someone who trusts you.

Hillary Roboto (1:52)

That was six years ago.

Elizabeth O'Donnell (1:53)

In this case, it was a total home run. He's able to go to that home and he is disease free and off all therapies and really just living an incredible quality of life.

Hillary Roboto (2:06)

Today, he's living the life he thought he had lost. And that's all thanks to a treatment that arrived just in time.

His CAR T therapy was developed by an American company. But the idea behind CAR T goes back to Israel, where researchers first developed it in the late 1980s. Other CAR T therapies come from different places. One that's now approved in the US was developed by a company with roots in China and headquarters in New Jersey. Another was made by a team at a public hospital in Barcelona and tested on patients in Spain. Bringing treatments like these to patients takes years of research, testing, and investment. And that's often across borders.

But a drug from another country doesn't get a free pass.

Elizabeth O'Donnell (2:57)

Those were very promising data out of China, but we need to see it in our own population.

Hillary Roboto (3:02)

So the science gets tested again by new teams in new places.

John Oyler (3:07)

As we look at and talk to doctors and patients, you start to realize that the experience, the knowledge, the super capable people, they're all over the world and they're everywhere.

Hillary Roboto (3:31)

So how does the science in one country become a better drug in another? And why are more and more investors looking past their own borders for new opportunities?

This is Unseen Upside by Cambridge Associates, where we explore investments beyond their returns. I'm Hilary Roboto.

John Oyler (4:03)

Cancer is brutal. It kills 10 million people a year, and it leaves a huge hole when someone's not around.

Hillary Roboto (4:16)

John Oyler co-founded BeOne Medicines.

It started with offices in Philadelphia and Beijing. Now, it has a legal home in Basel, Switzerland, with a manufacturing plant in New Jersey, in teams on six continents. Today, it develops cancer drugs all around the world.

John Oyler (4:36)

When someone's dealing with it, it creates a lot of stress and a lot of disruption in family life and everything. I think our goal was, let's fight that and let's fight it as broadly as we can.

Jamie Topper (4:50)

It's worth reminding everybody that cancer is not a single disease. It is literally thousands of diseases, and each one is its own challenge.

Hillary Roboto (5:01)

Jamie Topper is a physician and scientist turned investor.