Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts from the ‘Cancer’ category

CICON18 Day 1 Highlights

Heading Downtown for #CICON18

New York – It’s always good to see cancer researchers receive a Nobel prize.

I don’t think anyone at #CICON18 was surprised to see Dr Jim Allison as a recipient.  I’m delighted to see Prof Honjo was also recognised too, as he discovered the PD-1 checkpoint target:

Moving on it’s time for some highlights of the first day of the meeting – a couple of interesting findings emerged from the proceedings…

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ESMO18 Preview 1 Late Breakers What To Watch Out For

The 2018 European Society for Medical Oncology (#ESMO18) Congress will take place in Munich from October 19 to 23 and it’s a meeting we’re looking forward to covering on Biotech Strategy Blog.

We’ll have “boots on the ground” in Munich.

ESMO 2018 Banner

One of the highlights of the ESMO Congress are the late-breaking abstracts, for which ESMO keeps open multiple slots in their program. As a result, the meeting provides an opportunity to hear some of the latest data.

The titles and times for most of the late-breakers have now been published in the on line program, so what can we look forward to at ESMO18?

In our first Preview we’ve highlighted several to watch out for, why we think they are noteworthy and in many cases, what the potential significance might be in a broader context.

Please note that the abstracts for late breakers aren’t typically available until the start of the congress session in which they will be presented or if they’re in the press program, until after the press briefing, so we’re not discussing any data in this post.

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WCLC2018 Roundup of key lung cancer data

Toronto Skyline for WCLC

There’s a lot going on in lung cancer of late, especially with the World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) taking place in Toronto this week.

Following on from our recent preview, it’s time to take a look at the actual data presented and make an assessment on progress with both targeted and immunotherapies.

Here we offer some thoughts and insights on 16 key trials that were presented…

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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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What was old in cancer research is new again

While cancer immunotherapies are definitely becoming more de rigeur these days, that doesn’t mean that good old fashioned targeted therapies have been universally abandoned or forgotten, far from it.

Making strategic choices about how to differentiate targeted therapies is never easy

At recent meetings this year, my attention was caught by one target in particular, and despite its chequered history it seems to be making a comeback of sorts thanks to a more focused and tailored approach to therapy.

There is unlikely to be one panacea for everything, but what about going back to basics and matching patients to appropriate therapy based on the underlying biology and what the patiemt’s tumour is telling us? We should have more success doing that theoretically – is that actually the case in practice?

To illustrate this, we have a few examples to share from one particular niche in oncology that readers may find interesting and useful…

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Preview of WCLC 2018 – what’s new in lung cancer?

Picking out gems from the weeds

It’s time for a pre-meeting preview as we head into the busy Fall cancer conference season.

First up is the IASLC organised World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) being held in Toronto later this month.

We provide a review of some of the key abstracts and highlight some of the interesting topics to watch out for.

Updates will follow later once the data is presented as many of the abstracts are embargoed until the day of presentation.

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New targets and indications in oncology R&D

Will there be a whirlwind of new targets emerging?

It’s time to get back to basics – and also our roots – with a look at potential new targets and approaches that could emerge in the future.

Successful oncology new product development isn’t about the latest shiny new thing that’s in fashion, or everyone is following now, but is much more about the long term game of understanding the biology of disease, finding the gaps (opportunities) and developing new compounds faster than everyone else.

If truly we want to create blue ocean strategies then it begins with the science and builds out from there.

On the slate today we have four areas of interest that could yield new products or indications in the future.

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Learnings from IO combinations and where we’re headed

The twin effects of rapid development and increasing complexity in cancer research can be seen as both a good and a bad thing because while both negative and positive results might be a helpful window into where current research might be (or should be currently headed), it also means that for industry project teams, clinical development plans are much more challenging to put together.

Rising or setting of key targets and molecules?

This is also a reflection of the current state of research in immuno-oncology – things are much more complicated than many people realised even just a decade ago – as we slowly peel off the layers of the onion to reveal yet more layers and unknowns.

In short, we still don’t know what we don’t know on many key issues, never mind how various cells might interact and communicate in both health and disease.

With this in mind, I wanted to take a moment and offer a top-line review of six key areas to watch out for as we head towards the Fall conference season…

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Targeting immunosuppression and other stories – are we ready for prime time yet?

View from Stars and Stripes life guard hut on Miami Beach

Our latest article is part Journal Club entry for August, part look back at some data from AACR and ASCO plus a part look at a relatively new target from an obscure biotech that caught my attention recently.

To do this, we pose three critical questions and attempt to answer them.

The targets and markers chosen for review here may well surprise a few people.

If we want to understand how to help more people respond to cancer immunotherapy then we need o understand the underlying biology and the tumour microenvironment in greater depth than we currently do.

Gradually, we are getting more clarity on a few areas as new data is being published…

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Picking PARP inhibitors apart

Picking a PARPi – what can the biology tell us?

One of the really interesting questions I recently received from a BSB subscriber related to PARP inhibitors – they asked whether the therapies are all the same and can be considered interchangeable as a class?

Around the same time, another reader wrote in asking if there was any new information on what’s happening with PARPi combinations in breast or ovarian cancers?

This got me thinking as there has actually been some useful preclinical and clinical studies reported on both fronts that at least begin to open our eyes to new information based on research that has been reported in several places.

Thus I thought it would be useful to summarise the data and take a look at what we learned in the process.

Fair warning – some of the findings turned out to be a little bit more surprising than you might normally expect to see…

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