Biotech Strategy Blog

Commentary on Science, Innovation & New Products with a focus on Oncology, Hematology & Cancer Immunotherapy

Posts from the ‘Immunotherapy’ category

An in-depth look at Neon’s updated neoantigen vaccine data

Neon Therapeutics LogoAs we prepare for rolling out some additional expert interviews on a variety of topics together with another mini-series on a tricky target, I wanted to take a moment to explore the Neon Therapeutics data.

Most of the news reports yesterday seemed to be concentrated around a general theme of ’cancer vaccine assist beats immunotherapy drugs alone!’or ‘vaccine boosts Opdivo response in 3 cancers’ … but does the data live up to the breathless hype that ensued? What can we say about the latest clinical update?

As often is the case, the true story around the facts turns out to be much more nuanced and subtle in flavour than the garish headlines might have you believe…

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Will innate bispecifics make a difference in hematologic malignancies and solid tumours?

After yesterday’s look at a biotech company (F-star) who are focused on adaptive approaches with bispecific antibodies using checkpoint and immune agonist targets, we now shift direction within Europe to a completely different concept, although both are tetramer-based.

Oncology R&D can be a stop-start journey that is highly unpredictable and uncertain!

In the third part of our latest mini-series on bispecific antibodies, we now take a look a company who are evaluating this modality as a way to activate NK cells and stimulate the innate immune system. With all the fuss and attention on the adaptive immune system and checkpoint blockade, is there a role for innate immunotherapies?

Rather than look at this aspect as competitive, smart companies are seeking ways to complement existing backbones to determine if the outcomes can be boosted by targeting both innate and adaptive systems in a more coordinated manner.

To find out more about these developments, we talked to Dr Adi Hoess, CEO of Affimed, a German biotech company who are developing innate immunotherapies.

They have certainly been on a roller coaster ride of late, with clinical hold and abandonment of a leading program balanced by encouraging initial data with other projects, so what gives?

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mRNA – the language of life

It’s time for an extended update on the neoantigen space now that we have new clinical data to look at and discuss. There are a variety of approaches being evaluated in the clinic now, from adenoviral vectors to cell therapies to vaccines.

Indeed, we haven’t covered Moderna Therapeutics before as they were rather quiet in preclinical mode, but now they have some initial clinical data in cancer patients, we thought it would be nice to explore the company’s progress, as well as look at where they’re headed with their mRNA platform.

In the hotseat today, we take a look at the latest developments in the neoantigen vaccine field in terms of oncology settings and have an engaging company interview in the spotlight as well.

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Gamma delta T cell cancer immunotherapy in China

Chinese Pagoda in Hoxton

Yesterday on BSB we looked at the emerging landscape in western countries for cancer immunotherapies that target gamma delta T cells. Today we’re turning our attention to China.

There’s a lot of interest in cell therapies in China. Anyone who has seen one of Dr Carl June’s recent presentations will no doubt recall the slide he shows of how many CAR T trials are underway there.

What’s happening with gamma delta T cells in China, and in particular CAR γδ T cell therapies? Do the Chinese have a competitive advantage in this emerging field and what can we learn from some of the results that have been reported?

This is the fourth post in our mini-series on the potential of gamma delta T cells for cancer immunotherapy.

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A tale of two cities – a look at two small immunotherapy biotechs

Cancer cells Source: Dr. Cecil Fox, NCI

As part of our ongoing mini-series on small emerging companies to watch out for, we have two quite different biotechs focusing on different aspects of immunotherapy on deck today.

We look at what we know, what we recently learned and where things are likely headed in the near to medium term future.

As always, there’s good and bad news along the way, so what are the pitfalls and what’s to be cheerful or encouraged about?

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A novel approach to cell therapy

We’ve written extensively about various cellular therapy approaches in hematologic malignancies involving T cells and natural killer (NK) cells over the last few years, but if we are to see significant lasting success in solid tumours then we may need to consider the involvement of other immune cells.

Indeed, if they can be engineered in some way to enhance the anti-tumour response then they might turn out to rather useful in combination with existing established approaches such as checkpoint blockade as a way to generate more responses.

How do we go about achieving this state?

There are some very intriguing and different approaches in early development that we plan to follow over time. Here, we explore this potential and the possibilities through our latest in-depth expert interview…

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Pinning down potential new opportunities for IL–8 and 4–1BB

The keynote address at the 2018 CRI CIMT EATI AACR International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference in New York last month was given by Ignacio Melero (Pamplona). Professor Melero gave an engaging and informative presentation entitled, “The immunotherapy faces of Interleukin–8 and CD137.” He also had a related talk on “4–1BB and Metabolism” at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) meeting this weekend.

Pinning down new opportunities in IL-8 and 4-1BB

The late and sadly missed, Dr Holbrook Kohrt (Stanford), worked closely with Prof Melero on targeting CD137 or 4–1BB, as it’s more commonly known.

Regular readers may recall our interview wth Dr Kohrt back at Immunology 2015 in New Orleans (Link).

Professor Melero kindly spoke to BSB at SITC 2018 and shared his thoughts on where we are three years on and where his research is currently focused in relation to cytokines, and in particular, IL–8.

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Can CytomX’s Probody checkpoint beat the competition?

Autumn leaves in Munich

We have increasingly seen how oncologists like the efficacy associated with the immune checkpoint combination of ipilimumab plus nivolumab, but are leery of the increase in side effects, including immune related events.

Are there practical ways to reduce this phenomenon, other than dose reductions?

CytomX are one company who are focused on engineering a different concept with their monoclonal antibodies, bispecifics and ADCs to try and mask the effects, thereby reducing the treatment emergent toxicities.  Their main idea is that the therapeutic window can be widened, thereby improving the tolerability profile.

It’s a nice idea, but what happens in practice?

To find out, we took a look at the recent early clinical data and interviewed executives from the company…

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Iraj Ali leads the way at Achilles Therapeutics

There is a lot of interest of late in targeting neoantigens in cancer therapeutically.

At the recent European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) meeting, we heard Dr Patrick Ott from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute present the latest clinical data for Neon’s cancer vaccine approach (See: interview with Dr Ott).

If you have an interest in neoantigen based cancer treatments, however, then a company on the horizon that we’re excited about is Achilles Therapeutics.

It’s an early stage private UK company, in what is very much still a developing and emerging field. Founded just over two years ago, it has a strong academic pedigree. The scientific co-founders are Professors Karl Peggs, Mark Lowdell, Charles Swanton and Sergio Quezada.

BSB readers will recall our prior interviews with Prof Charlie Swanton FRS (See: here and here), where he talked about the groundbreaking TRACERx study he’s leading, some of the insights it is generating regarding neoantigens, and their importance in cancer evolution.

Achilles Therapeutics was established to commercialise the intellectual property being generated from the TRACERx program.

While in London en-route to ESMO18, the CEO of Achilles Therapeutics, Dr Iraj Ali kindly spoke to BSB about where the company is, and some of its future plans.

From what we heard, it’s definitely a company we can expect to hear a lot more about in the cancer immunotherapy space. Check it out!

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What did we learn from Neon at ESMO18?

There’s a lot of excitement in the field of personalised neoantigen based vaccines and cellular therapies. One of the companies leading the way in this niche is Cambridge, MA based Neon Therapeutics.

Neon Therapeutics – Open for business

At the recent European Society of Medical Oncology Congress (ESMO18) in Munich, one of the much anticipated presentations was the preliminary clinical data for Neon’s personalised neoantigen cancer vaccine (NEO-PV-1).

This was the first data for Neon’s product, as opposed to the work done by Prof Cathy Wu and colleagues that used an academic version of the cancer vaccine (NeoVax).

We heard the initial results for the NT-001 trial that began in November 2016 to explore the combination of nivolumab plus NEO-PV-1 in people with certain metastatic cancers.

In this post, we take a closer look at what the trial told us, why the data failed to impress some, and asked was their commentary fair or should we look at the results differently?

The data was presented by Dr Patrick Ott, who is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Clinical Director of the Melanoma Center and the Center for Immuno-Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He kindly spoke to BSB and offered his candid perspectives on the data presented in Munich.

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