Biotech Strategy Blog

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

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Posts by MaverickNY

Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution

Chicago!

Sometimes innovation and revolution can happen in a quiet or stealthy fashion such that one may not notice until they’re in the middle of things.

Oncology R&D doesn’t stand still, it continually evolves as new and practical ideas or solutions to problems emerge, then are tested and finally (hopefully) implemented in the clinic.

The attrition rate is high, as what I call the cone of shame attests to this.

Over the ASCO weekend we saw two such examples of how change in the design of novel agents or cell therapy products can make an impact, in very different ways.

This latest post highlights one of them with two extended expert interviews and some commentary to boot…

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Trials and Tribulations

Lifting the bridge in downtown Chicago

It’s time to talk turkey about CAR-T cell therapies!

No this isn’t a story about a certain biotech in Maryland, but rather a look at progress in solid tumours, an area where CAR-T cell therapies have struggled with persistence and durability while their IO antibody counterparts have largely excelled.

Can it be done?

What kind of challenges need to be tackled and how is progress being made?

To find out more, check out our commentary from ASCO below…

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ASCO22 Highlights from Day 1

Graffiti in Adams Morgan, Chicago

After weeks of waiting ASCO has finally arrived!

There are a surprising number of intriguing presentations at this meeting for those prepared to hunt off the radar, with some interesting implications to be considered in a broader context.

There were several to be found even on the very first day of action – they don’t all have to be massive phase 3 studies to make an impact.

Here we look at some of the highlights we heard about in between doing expert interviews for colour commentary and context.  One such example is included here where it turned out there were some strategic commercial considerations involved as well…

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Five key areas to watch out for at ASCO22

Star of the show?

In our latest ASCO Preview this year we highlight five key areas to watch out for, why they have been selected for attention, and also offer some broader competitive context.

In short, it’s time to talk about some of the key abstracts I’m excited about at ASCO this year.

Please note this particular selection excludes immunotherapy and cell therapy products since they will be covered separately…

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The Forgotten Checkpoints

Time to shine the light on alternative checkpoint targets

The annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) is always a great place to find hidden gems or off the radar molecules.

This year we’re going to highlight progress on two closely related IO targets to illustrate how perceptions may change from the pummelling several of them received at SITC a couple of years ago.

There’s always a danger in writing off initial very early and immature data based on a limited number of allcomers in relapsed/refractory solid tumour trials, where the focus is more on dose finding and safety signals before proceeding to more clearly defined tumour types in expansion cohorts.

Three or four years on, how are these hidden niches doing and what can we learn from the data to be presented?

To find out, we took a dive unto the breach…

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Up and coming cell therapy companies to watch out for

Is the early stage cell therapy landscape bleak or promising these days?  Perhaps it depends on which angle you look at the question.

Originally, I had planned to cover five preclinical cell therapy companies we hadn’t covered before, although this ended up as six with five intriguing ones, one I’m not a fan of, plus some additional really intriguing academic research in preclinical development, which may have some broader clinical applications many may have not realised yet.

We also highlight some emerging trends in this niche as early stage companies learn from what has gone before and begin to adapt their pipelines to address the challenges rather than merely be yet another me-too CD19 CAR whatever.

This inevitably means the emergence of new targets, modalities, technologies, and approaches…

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A high level view of the latest Target Protein Degradation data

One of the hot areas in oncology new product development is targeted protein degradation (TPD). It offers a lot of clinical and commercial potential, but is scientifically much more complex than inhibitors or antagonists. Perhaps that’s why it’s a topic we enjoy writing about at BSB.

We’re continuing our coverage of the field with a high level view on some of the recent data presented at AACR22 and what to watch out for at ASCO22.

As an added bonus for BSB readers, we have a candid expert interview with Dr Stew Fisher, CSO of C4 Therapeutics, who kindly spoke to BSB about the culmination of several years of research presented at AACR22.

They say the best way to predict the future is to invent it, which is definitely what we expect to happen in the targeted protein degradation space going forward…

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The spectre of MetMAB rises again!

A long and lonely road to nowhere ahead for TIGIT?

This morning Genentech/Roche dropped a press release providing the dreaded ‘update on’ the much anticipated interim results from SKYSCRAPER–01 phase 3 trial.

When you see language such as this, you know before you open the release the outcome will more than likely be a negative one.

Unfortunately, 2022 has already been a long year of doom and gloom for oncology trial readouts and we’re still only in May.

In our latest in-depth review we discuss what can we learn from the latest findings and how might this result impact the broader TIGIT niche?

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Watch to watch out for at ASCO22

Hot or not? A saucy look at some oncology products in early development

One of the most common questions we receive heading into ASCO is what’s hot in in Developmental Therapeutics?

This is a really hard question to answer in any concrete fashion bearing in mind we have only titles and no data to speak of at this stage.

What we can do is highlight some intriguing topics, targets, or molecules we have been following and put their potential in the context of recently published data or announcements.

While it’s easy to over react to skimpy top line announcements from companies, sometimes the early warning signs (positive or negative) were visible a couple of years ago because the devil, as always is in the finer details.

Here we take another five new product developments and put them through their paces with some discussion on the broader context from either BSB or experts we have interviewed on the various topics…

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Take the high road

We’re at the point in time in the cancer conference calendar where we are rolling out AACR analyses and interviews while also highlighting relevant ASCO abstracts to watch out for.

As a result, I always tend to think of May as the ‘mish mash’ month, to put things in Brit speak.

This isn’t necessarily a negative connotation, by the by, rather it’s a great opportunity to highlight some developments in different niches which tended to be overlooked.

Sometimes new data allows us to put a more coherent picture together or set boundaries around the corporate messaging.

To kick start our ASCO coverage, we’ve taken five phase 1 trials and looked at the pros and cons of each in the context of the underlying science – some come out strongly or understated, others much less so.  It’s important to understand the underpinnings in order to avoid being sucked into the inevitable hype machine accompanying abstracts at this event…

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