Chicago – the cancer immunotherapy poster session yesterday morning was “mobbed,” that is the only word to describe it. I have never seen such a crowded poster session at any medical meeting before. It speaks to the huge interest in this growing field.

It’s also a reflection that insights into the future direction of the field will be found in posters about preclinical and early work, rather than in oral presentations that reflect strategic decisions made a long time earlier.

We know checkpoint inhibitors work in many cancers, and a few more have been added to the list at this meeting. While that’s interesting, the real question is how do we increase the response rate and also get them to work in non-immunogenic tumors?

Yesterday in the poster session at ASCO, there was a poster that caught our attention on one approach that may achieve this. We briefly wrote about it in the ASCO Day 2 blog.

Also of note yesterday was that the new generic name for the PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor from Roche/Genentech. MPDL3280A is now atezolizumab. A few presenters stumbled over the pronunciation, it was so new…… and all the z’s add to the trickiness!

As to what Day 3 at ASCO holds, we’ll be updating this blog during the day as our schedule permits.

To learn more about our latest insights, subscribers can log-in or you can purchase access to BSB Premium Content. 

This content is restricted to subscribers

Posted by