Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘Checkpoint Blockade’

New developments in Genitourinary cancers

San Francisco!

San Francisco – It’s time to switch horses for some the latest conference coverage and explore some important new findings emerging from the genitourinary world of bladder, prostate, and renal cell cancers at the ASCOGU specialist meeting held late last week.

Not that many years ago, much of this niche was dominated by numerous updates in prostate cancer, with little good cheer to write about on the other two cancers – how things have changed in such a short time!

This year there’s plenty going on in all three categories, I’m pleased to say.

Here we focus on several important trials or targets and explain why they matter and what’s significant about the findings…

Some of the agents or trials selected here are likely to receive more attention going forward as more data become available, so it behooves us to set the scene now.

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Key Highlights from Day 1 at SITC19

Welcome to SITC19!

National Harbor: It’s time for the first of our daily highlights and review of key data that was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC).

The first day is usually taken up by some longer review sessions on key topics, intermingled with some rapid fire oral talks on emerging areas where we get to hear some young investigators talk about their ongoing projects.

This results in some broad updates, as well as some specific areas of early R&D in the IO space that often end up as key areas to watch out for over time. This year is no different in that respect…

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Controversies in triple negative breast cancer at ESMO19

One of the expected highlights of the forthcoming European Society for Medical Oncology (Twitter #ESMO19) will be data for breast cancer immunotherapy.

In the first of our pre-ESMO19 previews we are taking a closer look at three breast cancer immunotherapy presentations that we think are noteworthy.

As a reminder, the abstracts are not yet available, so we’re not writing about data that’s not yet been presented, but instead are looking at why the presentations may be of scientific/medical interest, and what the questions we hope they will answer. In cancer biology as we heard from Professor Gerard Evan in a recent expert interview, it’s not about “what” happened, but “why”?

We have “boots on the ground” in Barcelona from Sept 27th to October 1st providing daily posts for BSB subscribers with our unique blend of data, analysis and commentary.

Do download the ESMO19 app if you want to check out what already looks like it will be a busy, informative and interesting congress in Barcelona. Hopefully the rain that struck the recent World Lung meeting in Barcelona will have gone away, leaving us with a sunny and dry spell one normally associates with Spain!

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Preview of CICON18 – Part 1

4th CRI-CIMT-EATI-AACR meeting in NYC

The next conference we plan on attending will be the 4th CRI-CIMT-EATI-AACR meeting in New York starting on Sun 30th Sept.

Having been to the 3rd annual event in Mainz meeting last Fall, I have to say it was absolutely fantastic and well organised, with plenty of researchers giving some excellent science based talks.  There was also a heavy focus on neoantigens and neoepitopes in the poster halls, making it a good place to learn from up and coming young European researchers keen to share and discuss their work.

To find out what’s in store this time around on US soil, we took a look at the program and came up with the first of our previews exploring some interesting topics…

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Under the hood – a look at important new cancer research

One of the challenges of the short whirlwind period between AACR and ASCO is that many new research papers get published and largely missed or forgotten about in the data tsunami that drops as people eagerly (and almost exclusively) focus on the new abstracts that are available.

This is a real shame since there were many really good pieces of research that were rich in knowledge that were published around then.  My reading pile heading into AACR was much larger than usual, and after wading through it all, it built up rapidly again heading into ASCO, never mind over 20,000 abstracts to consider between those two meetings!

Contemplating new data…

With this in mind, it’s time for a new Journal Club post – these are surprisingly popular on BSB, although on reflection the selections have tended to highlight either new targets and areas of therapeutic potential or offer explanations for some of the phenomena that we are seeing.

New developments often (but not aways) allow us to step back and see results from clinical trials with greater clarity.

With this in mind, here are our latest selections for the BSB Journal Club, all of which should prove to be a useful read…

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Can we predict early treatment discontinuation on immune checkpoint therapy?

One of the many challenges we have seen with cancer immunotherapy and immune checkpoint blockade in particular is the thorny issue of how long should patients be treated for?

To be fair there are some studies testing a limited time period, but most are open ended in that patients are treated until progression or severe toxicities prevent continuation, whichever comes first.

Ovarian cancer TME Source: NCI

Is this the optimal approach though, especially if people receive the benefit and any more is superfluous, thereby increasing the twin burdens of clinical and financial toxicity.

Are there indicators that predict early discontinuation?

After all, if oncologists were aware of those factors then careful monitoring will be helpful in looking out for the warning signs.

Without a doubt, this is going to be a long road ahead and the path may be paved with different indicators depending on the tumour type involved. It could also become more complex as we move from monotherapy to doublets to regimens, which also increases the risk of clinical and financial toxicities.

We have to start somewhere and I’m delighted to say that I came across some elegant research that explored this issue and came up with some prediction factors of relevance. As a bonus, they actually make sound and intuitive sense too.

Here we describe the important study and look at the prediction factors that emerge…

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All that you leave behind

SITC2017 Poster Halls

National Harbor, MD: It’s time for the first of our Gems from the Poster Halls following the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) annual meeting over the weekend.

It’s time for a look at biomarkers of response and some novel approaches in development. In the past we have covered circulating tumour cells (CTCs), cell free DNA (cfDNA), circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) and even exosomes.

As Monthy Python would say — now for something really different…

What about a more integrated approach?

Yes, it’s possible and no, I’m not talking about the classical nonogram either.

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SITC17 DAY 1 Highlights and Lowlights

SITC 2017 at the Gaylord Hotel, MD

It’s that time of year already and it has come around so fast in 2017… yes it’s the annual meeting for the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (aka SITC).

This year there are several eagerly anticipated presentations, one of which is Juno’s ill-fated ROCKET trial in adult ALL using their JCAR015 CAR T cell therapy.

While Novartis and Kite both successfully made it to market recently in pediatric ALL and aggressive lumphomas, respectively, Juno were left languishing in a poor third place after a series of lethal cerebral oedemas scuppered the program.  In the meantime, Novartis are relentless chasing Kite with their JULIET trial in DLBCL and could well have the third CAR T cell therapy indication.

Finally, we heard for the first time today what the company learned from the recent analysis of the deaths, which they shared with the field this morning.  BSB was on the spot to hear more about what the CMO, Dr Mark Gilbert had to say and we also have some thought leader sentiments on their perspective of the findings.

That’s not all though, as there was also new data on checkpoint blockade and other immunotherapies that are in early development as well as developments on the biomarker front.

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SCLC – An in-depth look at ROVA-T and TRINITY

Yesterday in part 1 (Link) of our latest mini-series, we looked at the SCLC landscape and some of the key background issues to think about.

This time around in part 2 we drill down focus more specifically on Rova-T, including physician and patient sentiments and in particular, what to watch out for with the upcoming phase 2 TRINITY readout.   There’s a lot to consider here so we’ve broken the analysis down to five key areas.

Mystic Meg is also back with her canny predictions – what does the crystal ball portend for Rova-T and the TRINITY trial?  Caveat: she’s been on a tear of late; this situation will not continue forever.

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Red and green flags in 1L NSCLC trials

Periodically, we post an analysis and look at a particular landscape and the leading competitors within. One area of rather intense interest that we have been following is the progress (or march might be more precise) of checkpoint blockade in previously untreated metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (1L NSCLC).

Our extensive reviews and discussions in this area have included a look at:

In addition, I last posted my recent predictions on this space in July this year and already quite a bit has happened since then!

With a bunch of other phase 3 trial readouts coming up over the next couple of months, it’s now time for another update on what to watch out for, what to expect and why some studies can be handicapped differently.

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