Biotech Strategy Blog

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

About MaverickNY

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Posts by MaverickNY

Sticking it to MYC addicted cancers and other targets

Two people can look at a mountain and see it differently

We have written quite a bit about protein degradation and molecular glues over the last two years, including sharing our findings, analysis and discussions with various company and academic expert interviews.

This time around it’s time to look at another biotech active in this space, albeit with completely different targets and approaches than what we have covered in detail previously.

We also look at what makes a great target from their perspective and how a deep understanding of certain elements may give them an advantage.

One of the beauties of this niche for me is not everyone is doing the exact same thing and there’s plenty of room for novel ideas to flourish and be investigated in both discovery and clinical phases.

So what’s unique about this company and why should you pay attention to what they are doing?

BSB subscribers can read more on our latest discussion around some novel early stage pipeline targets plus a company interview – you can log-in or click to access our latest content.

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A novel target to explore in prostate cancer

Source: AlphaFold

Our latest post discusses key topics around the novel target shown on the right – brownie points to anyone who can guess which one it is!

Aside from having a lot of fun exploring protein targets with DeepMind’s AlphaFold tool, they also help illustrate something important, which is the degree of confidence around the various aspects from dark blue for high confidence and yellow for very low confidence predictions.

Tau, if you haven’t yet seen it, is truly a hot mess compared to today’s choice!

While there is always the concern about whether a particular protein is a marker or a valid oncogene target, we have to start somewhere and see where the clinical trials take us because some modalities might turn out to be much better ways of approaching the problem of ‘druggability’ than others.

I went into this foray with an open mind and some degree of hope because let’s face it, we need more new agents against novel targets than we do of yet more me-toos against old targets…

BSB subscribers can read more on our latest update regarding a novel early stage pipeline target – you can log-in or click to access our latest content.

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A bridge to a broad and deep oncology pipeline

A decade ago Novartis and Genentech/Roche were all the rage in oncology with their small molecule, CAR-T cell therapies, and a myriad of antibody programs seemingly in the news every month then things went quiet as agents either successfully made it to market, or were dutifully dispatched to dog drug heaven.

In the meantime, other companies and various novel targets came to the fore such as various next generation agents in lung cancer, bispecific T cell engagers, KRAS inhibitors, and such like, while different companies and targets took on a new focus.

This doesn’t mean the big two aren’t active, more that they are replenishing and moving earlier compounds along and these can take a while to move through discovery and preclinical to phase 1 trials.  The bridge across the two is always kept busy in large pharmas, in both directions.

With this in mind, I was keen to catch up with Novartis to discuss their new early stage pipeline.  It’s both broad and deep, as you might expect, but what stands out and what’s something new to watch out for?

BSB subscribers can read more on our latest update regarding SHP2 and RAS addicted cancers as well as other early stage pipeline targets – you can log-in or click to access our latest expert interview.

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An authentic and novel approach to designing novel anti-cancer drugs

A couple of years ago I was listening to an early stage drug hunter expert talk about how they were going to do things differently in building their oncology pipeline.

Simulations galore!

At the time, they had no official targets announced and much of the noise and attention was on the filling of seats on the Board or leading positions in the company, so very early days indeed.

The following year heralded an IPO, dosing of the initial patient in their inaugural clinical trial and just a few months later, their very first licensing deal and collaboration with a large Pharma company, so clearly a young biotech company going places.

What’s happened since and what so different or special about their approach to cancer drug development?

It turns out there were some surprises in store and some very cool science behind it…

BSB subscribers can learn more about our latest interview in the AI/deep learning niche – you can read all about it by logging in or click to access our ongoing oncology coverage.

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Gritting it out

It’s time to switch gears and talk about neoantigens again… we’ve been covering this niche since 2015, as you can see from the relevant magazine page.

Aside from today’s expert interview, there will be an important update coming at ESMO in the Fall so this is a good time to set the scene ahead of time.

In our latest discussion, we cover some of the AI/deep learning aspects of the technological developments with a view to how they connect with the clinical challenges and progress since they don’t obviously exist in isolation.

As always there are important lessons and learnings along the way, such is the roller coaster of R&D, especially in oncology…

BSB subscribers can learn more about our latest interview on how deep learning can be applied to the neoantigen niche – you can read all about it by logging in or click to access our ongoing oncology coverage.

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Digging deep with RNA therapeutics

As we continue our journey to learn more about how companies are exploiting cool new technologies around artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning, this time we explore some concepts around RNA therapies and find out how a biotech is making strides in this niche.

Imagine being able to analyse massive biological datasets to derive novel targets and therapeutics?

The open star cluster NGC 330 Source: NASA

Perhaps one of the more refreshing aspects which has struck me from the AI/ML niche so far is how eager, dynamic, and enthusiastic the CEOs have been to talk about what they are doing, why it’s exciting, what challenges need to be addressed, and where they are planning to go.

Today’s CEO interview is another great example of this genre.

While their current pipeline examples are non-oncology focused, if there are improvements in delivery technology then they may have future applications in cancer research for them too…

BSB subscribers can learn more about our latest interview in the AI/deep learning niche – you can read all about it by logging in or click to access our ongoing oncology coverage.

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The interface of science, innovation, and imagination

What do Smarties and machine learning have in common?

It’s a dull, wet, and gloomy day here in the south east, as if the Gods have decided to channel a typical English summer across the pond, so rather than talk about shadows in the rain there’s a much more cheerful and colourful topic to discuss.

In our latest expert interview on the topic of AI and deep learning, we turn to a dynamic CEO with a different approach and a clear vision.

Much of this space has focused on the issues around training and validation sets as well as the inherent challenge with bias being projected where is isn’t wanted or needed.

What if… we could ask a machine to tell us what it sees instead?

A word of warning – this has absolutely nothing to do with IBM Watson – and everything to do with biology and drug development!

BSB subscribers can learn more about our latest interview in the AI/deep learning niche – you can read all about it by logging in or click to access our ongoing oncology analysis.

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New developments on the T cell engager front

It’s time to switch horses and take another look at the evolving bispecific antibody niche with a look at a particularly promising T cell engager in early clinical development, which might offer a few surprises.

We have seen these agents evolve in both hematologic malignancies as well as solid tumours, with a common challenge being CRS events.

What if this side effect could be made more manageable, enabling the agent to do its job on a dual front, namely reinvigorating T cells and reducing some of the hostile immunosuppression dampening down the immune responses?

How about as a potential partner for CAR-T cells to help improve expansion kinetics or in combination with checkpoint blockade so they could work more effectively?

It turns out all this can be done, perhaps in an unconventional and creative fashion…

BSB subscribers can learn more about our latest look at the T cell engager niche – you can log-in or click to access our ongoing oncology coverage.

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Looking east at a now familiar horizon

Source: TripAdvisor

Over the last couple of years it has taken us until the end of July to rollout all of our coverage of AACR and ASCO, since data often co-mingles across the two key conferences… and this year is no exception to the rule.

Here we digest an early allcomers trial and point out some red and green flags to watch out for as we review some of the highlights in terms of what can be learned and what’s missing, but would be useful to know.

The short answer is there is quite a bit to discuss on both fronts…

 

BSB subscribers can learn more about our latest look at the TIGIT niche – you can log-in or click to access our ongoing oncology coverage.

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New developments in the protein degradation niche

Degron (red)  Credit: Dmeyer314 via wikipedia

One of the emerging hot areas in cancer research these days is the field of protein degradation, which finally seems to have come of age.

This also means plenty of opportunities to discuss new developments as they evolve.

So what’s new and why are the latest updates important?

BSB subscribers can read more on our latest look at targeted protein degradation related topics – you can log-in or click to access our ongoing oncology coverage.

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