Gazyva and ABT-199 in CLL & NHL – an interview with Genentech’s Deepak Sampath
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved Roche/Genentech’s obinutuzumab (Gazyva), also known as GA101, for untreated Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) in combination with the chemotherapy chlorambucil. Updated CLL11 trial data will be presented at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (twitter #ASH13) in New Orleans from December 7-10. Gazyva is the first drug with a Breakthrough Therapy Designation to be approved by the FDA.
Blog readers who attended the Roche analyst event in Chicago during the ASCO annual meeting in June will have noted that Roche’s long-term corporate strategy is focused on combining cancer drugs to improve treatment outcomes; a theme echoed by Charles Sawyers, President of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) during his ASCO Science of Oncology award lecture on “Overcoming Resistance to Cancer Drug Therapy“.
An abstract on the preclinical data for this combination will be presented at the ASH annual meeting in New Orleans. A phase 1 clinical trial in CLL with this combination is currently underway and recruiting patients (NCT01685892).
I had the great pleasure at the recent AACR-NCI-EORTC Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics meeting in Boston to talk with Deepak Sampath, PhD the leader of Genentech’s Bcl-2 preclinical research about the rational for the obinutuzumab plus GDC-0199 combination.
What he said during the interview makes for interesting reading, and suggests this combo could have blockbuster potential!
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