Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts from the ‘Prostate Cancer’ category

Will Exelixis Cabozantinib COMET-1 prostate cancer trial be positive?

$EXEL Share Price Jan 6 2014The share price of Exelixis ($EXEL) is starting a run-up (after months in the doldrums) in advance of anticipated results from the COMET-1 phase 3 trial in metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) for cabozantinib (Cometriq, formerly XL184).

Cabozantinib is a small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor of c-Met and VEGFR2. It has been shown to significantly improve bone scans and decrease pain, but the $64,000 questions are will patients taking it live longer and feel better?

The answers will come from the COMET-1 trial that has a primary end point of overall survival (OS). It’s a placebo-controlled trial of 960 men with advanced prostate cancer randomly assigned to cabozantinib 60mg (n=640) or prednisone (5mg twice daily) (NCT01605227) who have disease progression after treatment with docetaxel chemotherapy and abiraterone (Zytiga) or enzalutamide (Xtandi).

We previously predicted this trial would be a miss, but did it turn out that way and why?

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ASCO GU 2014 Prostate Cancer Preview #GU14

As 2013 comes to an end, rather than look back as many are doing, I’m looking forward to 2014. January is a busy month for cancer meetings with the ASCO organized gastrointestinal cancers symposium (ASCO GI) and genitourinary cancers symposium (ASCO GU) both taking place in San Francisco a few weeks apart.

In fact, looking at the calendar of forthcomings meetings, 2014 looks to have a West Coast focus, with the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) taking place in San Diego in April, and the American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting also heading to San Francisco in December.

Transcontinental airfares are notoriously expensive at the last minute so if flying from the East Coast, do make travel plans early!

The ASCO GU symposium takes place at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis from Jan 20 – February 1, 2014. The abstracts for meeting go online at 5pm Eastern Time on Jan 28.

ASCO in a December 19 press release have already announced what will be highlighted on the January 28 press cast, and what many of the media can be anticipated to write about from the meeting.

Perhaps not surprisingly the Medivation PREVAIL trial data (LBA1) is top of the list; the abstract for this presentation has already been published online as Professor Tombal (@BertrandTOMBAL) kindly highlighted on Twitter.

This preview highlights some of the prostate cancer abstracts and presentations to watch out for at the meeting:

Drugs discussed in this post include: enzalutamide (Xtandi), abiraterone (Zytiga), ODM-201, ARN-509, ipilimumab (Yervoy).

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Dr Oliver Sartor shares his thoughts on Prostate Cancer data at ECCO 2013

Amsterdam – Earlier today, I had the great pleasure at the European Cancer Congress to interview Oliver Sartor, MD, the Piltz Professor of Cancer Research in the medicine and urology departments of Tulane School of Medicine in New Orleans, LA.

A recognized expert in prostate cancer, Dr Sartor was gracious enough to give me an impromptu interview in the poster hall at ECCO 2013 and share his thoughts about the prostate cancer clinical data presented in Amsterdam.

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Subscribers should see a SoundCloud below that they can click on to listen to the interview with Dr Sartor. If you don’t see it, send me an email and I will provide a private URL link that will take you direct to SoundCloud.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/113217676%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-Ka2sf” params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Orteronel (TAK-700) fails in Advanced Prostate Cancer

Takeda’s orteronel (formerly known as TAK-700) may be on its way to “dog drug heaven” after an interim analysis of the ECM-PC 5 phase 3 clinical trial showed that men with advanced prostate cancer taking the drug did not live significantly longer (HR 0.894, p=0.226) than those taking an inactive placebo.  Here’s a link to the Takeda press release.

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JNJ acquisition of Aragon ARN-509 deals a blow to Medivation

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) just announced the acquisition of privately-held Aragon Pharmaceuticals and the rights to ARN-509 a second-generation androgen receptor antagonist that will be a future competitor to Medivation’s Xtandi.

The deal, valued at $1billion, with $650M upfront and $350M based on contingent milestone payments, is a blow to Medivation who have been locked in litigation with Aragon and the University of California over ownership of the rights to ARN-509.  Both ARN-509 and Xtandi were developed in the laboratories of Charles Sawyers and Michael Jung at UCLA.

The Aragon acquisition is a sound strategic decision for JNJ, offering them the ability to develop their prostate cancer franchise after Zytiga goes off patent and more importantly, offer a product that at the very least is equivalent to Xtandi, and potentially, may be superior.  ARN-509 will also allow JNJ to compete in earlier stages of prostate cancer with a drug that does not require use of steroids, something that has always been a major problem for Zytiga in the chemotherapy-naïve setting.

JNJ now have a corporate strategy for life post-Zytiga. They have the resources and expertise to fund large phase III clinical trials for ARN-509, not only in prostate cancer, but potentially also in breast cancer.  Aragon being bought out by a big Pharma with deep pockets is a blow to Medivation/Astellas.

What this acquisition also tells us is that Johnson and Johnson lawyers consider the Medivation appeal over intellectual property rights to be weak.  They will no doubt have done considerable due diligence on Medivation’s claims and consider the risk to be low or manageable.

My personal view was that cash-rich Medivation should have acquired Aragon themselves and neutralized the competitive threat rather than pursue a scorched-earth litigation strategy.

The JNJ acquisition of Aragon also suggests that ARN-509 may be perceived as the best in class of the second-generation androgen receptor inhibitors in development. There are others that JNJ could have sought to acquire or licence, including ODM-201 (Orion).  The fact that JNJ chose ARN-509 or a better version of Xtandi is not good news for other companies with AR antagonists in early-stage development.

Medivation are unlikely to feel the competitive threat from ARN-509 in the prostate cancer market for a few years, because registration trials against the current standard of care are needed to show that the drug offers an equivalent or better survival benefit.  ARN-509 will most likely be compared against Zytiga, offering yet another benefit of the deal – the ability to provide free comparator drug in the clinical trials.

The JNJ acquisition is good news for men with advanced prostate cancer who may in 5 years see another new treatment option become available.  It is, however, a blow to Medivation and Astellas who now have a serious competitor to deal with in the future in a space where they may have thought they had a major competitive advantage.

AZD3514 Fails to Live up to Preclinical Promise in CRPC at ASCO 2013

AZD3514 is a novel Selective Androgen Receptor Down-Regulating Drug (SARD) that showed early preclinical promise for the treatment of Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer (CRPC).

However the development of this drug in advanced prostate cancer has been terminated by AstraZeneca according to Dr Aurelius Omlin, a Clinical Research Fellow at The Royal Marsden Hospital who presented clinical data on AZD3514 at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago.

I previously wrote about the promising preclinical data for AZD3514 presented by Sarah Loddick at the 2012 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and sometimes drugs when they transition to the clinic just don’t live up to their promise.

That’s what happened here, and it reminds us that testing of drugs on human volunteers remains a key part of drug development despite the inherent risks. (See my post on the TLS deaths on the AbbVie/Genentech ABT-199 CLL dose finding trial)

AZD3514 ASCO 2013 PresentationThe results from a first-in-human clinical trial with in men with CRPC were presented by Dr Omlin at ASCO 2013 (abstract 4511). In his oral presentation, he first noted that:

“AZD3514 is a first-in-class, non-steroidal small molecule androgen receptor (AR) down-regulator that inhibits nuclear AR translocation and results in proteasomal AR protein degradation.”

The phase 1 clinical trial to assess safety and tolerability explored doses ranging from 100mg once daily (OD) to 1000mg OD in capsule formulation, and from 1000mg OD to 2000mg taken twice daily (BID) in tablet formulation. A pretty comprehensive range, but……

“Tolerability of AZD3514 was problematic,” said Omlin. “80% of patients had Grade 1-2 Nausea (n=39 out of 49) and 49% Grade 1-2 Vomiting (n=24 out of 49).”  Additionally, grade 1-2 thrombocytopenia was seen in 33% of patients.  There was no dose limiting toxicity reported.

What killed it for AZD3514 was the fact that according to Omlin,

“Nausea and vomiting were characteristic from the very first dose level starting about 30-60 minutes after dosing and lasting for several hours thereafter.”

However, the drug did show activity in CRPC patients with several patients showing PSA declines including one patient with prior abiraterone exposure.  Two patients with soft tissue disease had confirmed responses according to Recist 1.1. There was also evidence of clinical activity from changes in the number of circulating tumor cells.

Industry analyst, David Miller (@BiotechStockRsr) commented on Twitter, while watching the presentation, that he thought it hard to see the drug progressing in development, and he turned out to be correct:

Dr Omlin concluded his presentation by stating that, “the development of this compound by AstraZeneca as a selective androgen receptor down-regulator in mCRPC has been terminated.”

Sometimes promising preclinical data just doesn’t hold up when it moves into human clinical trials. Another AstraZeneca drug with preclinical promise has gone to what Sally Church, PhD (@MaverickNY) refers to as “dog drug heaven.”

ASCO 2013: Cancer Drug Combinations are The Future

Chicago – At the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago, Charles L Sawyers, MD, President of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and one of the United States leading cancer researchers, told the 30,000 meeting attendees in the plenary session that we need to get to combination therapy faster in order to overcome cancer drug resistance.

Charles L. Sawyers, MD gives 2013 Science of Oncology Award Lecture at ASCO annual meeting

In his Science of Oncology Award lecture entitled “Overcoming Resistance to Cancer Drug Therapy,” he told the audience that drug resistance is universal. It represents one of the key challenges in cancer treatment. A patient may obtain a dramatic response on a new treatment, but as the cancer finds escape routes among the network of cellular signaling pathways, resistance to the drug is acquired and the cancer reappears.

You can read a previous interview with Dr Sawyers on Pharma Strategy Blog.

Daniel O’Day, COO of Roche Pharmaceuticals, referred to Dr Sawyers’ ASCO lecture at a corporate event in Chicago. He told analysts that a key future strategy for Roche will be improving cancer treatment with combinations. The ability to bring effective combinations to market faster will favor large companies such as Roche who have a robust pipeline of cancer drugs in development. You can see Genentech’s perspective on this via a well thought out post from their VP of Clinical Development, Chris Bowden.

The other advantage of a broad robust pipeline for large Pharma is the ability to leverage this strategically and globally as the reimbursement landscape changes. In the HER2 arena, for example, Roche could hold the price of Perjeta while offering discounts to Herceptin, thereby offering a lower price for the combination that might be attractive to purchasers. In Europe, this kind of creative bargaining is becoming more common in the approval process as Health Authorities seek to reduce costs and find more affordable options before giving approval for new drugs in their market.

Dr Sawyers talk was one of the highlights of ASCO 2013 for me.  I captured the essence of his presentation from the many tweets that took place as it was presented. Here’s a link to the Storify.

 

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AACR 2013 Posters offer Insights into Biotech Drug Development

In my final post from the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), I wanted to share some more reflections from my time in the poster sessions. It’s certainly not all mice, and test tubes, and there were some interesting data from biotechnology companies to consider.

Sometimes the data presented is completely new, other times if you are following a product or company you can see the next stage of development and track progress. AACR posters are often not available if you don’t attend the meeting.

Additionally companies use AACR to showcase potential early licensing opportunities and new targets, so like Bitcoins a few nuggets can be mined from the meeting.  Here are a few examples of what the AACR poster sessions had to offer from a biotech perspective.

Gilead $GILD – Following a new combination

At the 2012 American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting in Atlanta last year, Russell Burke and colleagues from the Knight Cancer Institute at OHSU (Brian Druker’s lab) presented a poster (abstract 3876) on the rational for Combining idelalisib (GS-1101/CAL-101), a PI3 kinase delta (PI3Kδ) inhibitor and a novel highly selective Spleen tyrosine kinase (Syk) inhibitor, GS-9973. In their abstract they noted that,

“Simultaneous inhibition of multiple pathways downstream of the BCR [B-cell receptor] has the potential to result in a synergistic response that may overcome the resistance observed with single compound use” 

Furthermore, they also demonstrated that,

“both PI3Kδ and Syk inhibition reduces CLL survival” and that “combination therapy targeting both PI3Kd and Syk may provide a novel treatment approach, especially in patients with poor risk disease that may not respond optimally to single agents.”

This year at the AACR annual meeting, a Gilead poster (abstract  26) evaluated the safety, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of this combination in female healthy subjects.  The poster concluded:

  • Co-administration of GS-9973 with idelalisib displayed markedly higher PD effect vs. either agent alone.
  • Overall, GS-9973 and idelalisib were well tolerated when administered in combination or alone.
  • Phase 2 studies in B cell hematologic malignancies evaluating GS-9973 + idelalisib are ongoing.

We will most likely have to wait to ASH meeting later this year in New Orleans to see what the clinical benefit of this combination is, but you can see how you can follow progress from a poster at ASH, to a poster at AACR and then a phase II or III clinical trial presentation at ASH or ASCO in the future.

Ariad $ARIA – a new potential target for ponatinib?

Ponatinib (Iclusig) is a multi-targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) of several targets including Bcr-Abl, FGFR, ALK and RET.  Several posters were presented at AACR last week.  In one that caught my attention (abstract 2084), Ariad researchers showed it is a highly potent inhibitor of activated variants of RET Kinase, which is often dysregulated in medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Vandetanib ($AZN) and cabozantinib ($EXEL) are other multi-kinase inhibitors that received FDA approval in the last year or two for MTC, albeit in different lines of therapy, so the activity of other TKI’s in MTC should not come as a surprise.

The Ariad poster demonstrated the preclinical activity of ponatinib over other TKI’s in variants of RET in MTC and NSCLC.  The poster concluded:

“These results provide strong support for the clinical evaluation of ponatinib in patients with RET-driven cancers.”

From a scientific rational the above statement makes sense, but from a commercial perspective it’s more questionable if this were the lead indication.  However, it could make strategic sense to add on small niche indications for a compound that is generating its primary revenue elsewhere.

The challenge is that the medullary thyroid cancer market is not large especially in the relapse setting, as Exelisis have found, plus the tumour is a slow growing one.  While NSCLC sounds promising, the number of NSCLC patients with RET is small (~1%).

This means it will most likely require the screening hundreds of patients to find one patient with RET into a clinical trial, assuming they are willing and meet the inclusion criteria.  This is likely to be an expensive and time-consuming process, so the commercial rational will need to be carefully considered.

BioMarin $BMRN – a prostate cancer licensing opportunity or a “dead donkey”?

Companies also use posters at AACR to showcase potential licensing opportunities and one example I came across was BioMarin’s poster (abstract 2049) for BMN860 a novel CYP17 inhibitor.  Based on some limited preclinical data that showed BMN860 to be more potent than abiraterone acetate (Zytiga), the company are seeking to license out their compound.

Interestingly, the BioMarin poster showed no data comparing BMN860 to other second-generation CYP17 inhibitors such as TAK-700 (orteronel), and the presenter admitted they had no plans to do further preclinical work on it themselves.

Given the costs of bringing a new prostate cancer drug to market and the uncertainty of the market opportunity in the face of generic abiraterone and competition from other CYP17 inhibitors far head in development, it’s hard to see the commercial opportunity for BMN860.

If you are a Pharma BDL professional looking to in-license a novel CYP17 inhibitor, then BioMarin do have one on offer.  However, for those used to British vernacular, it struck me as a “dead donkey” being too little too late to really capitalise on the market opportunity.

This is the end of my coverage of AACR 2013.  I am looking forward to the AACR-EORTC-NCI Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics meeting in Boston later this year.  Given the focus of Boston biotech on cancer drug development, I expect this to be a high quality meeting.

If you are interested in more coverage from AACR 2013, I encourage you to check out Pharma Strategy Blog, which will have some in-depth pieces in the coming days.

What is the potential for galeterone in advanced prostate cancer?

Galeterone (Tokai Pharmaceuticals) is a new prostate cancer drug in development that has an interesting triple mechanism of action in that like abiraterone (Zytiga) it acts as a CYP17 lyase inhibitor, but it also acts as an androgen receptor (AR) inhibitor and is an AR degrading drug that decreases AR levels.

How effective it is compared to AR antagonists on the market such as enzalutamide (Medivation) or second-generation AR antagonists in development such as ARN-509 (Aragon Pharmaceuticals) or ODM-201 (Orion Pharma) is one of the many unanswered questions with this drug.

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The poster (abstract #184) from Tokai scientists presented at the recent 2013 American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in Orlando (ASCO GU) showed preclinical laboratory work using cell lines whereby galeterone was a potent CYP17 lyase inhibitor. It may offer an advantage over abiraterone in not requiring concomitant administration of steroids.

Despite being a clinically focused meeting, no patient data using the new formulation of the drug was presented at ASCO GU; this was disappointing given the potential safety concerns that were raised with the original formulation.

AACR 2012 data showed drug-related rhabdomyolysis & acute renal failure, both Grade 4

Last year at the 2012 AACR annual meeting, Mary Ellen Taplin, MD presented data from the ARMOR1 clinical trial of galeterone in chemotherapy-naïve castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC).

Of particular concern was the one serious adverse event of drug-related Grade 4 rhabdomyolysis and acute renal failure she reported. Some commentators have dismissed this as a “fluke” but it was clearly taken seriously by the company in the AACR presentation I saw with several slides discussing this and liver safety considerations.

Dr Taplin concluded her AACR presentation by stating that further work was planned to optimize the formulation of galeterone, and that a new phase 2 study with a better formulation was planned for later in 2012.

Critical clinical questions remain unanswered

As Professor Johann de Bono, who was the discussant at AACR 2012 noted, a future trial with galeterone has a number of critical questions to answer:

  • Can galeterone achieve sufficient exposure?
  • Can galeterone block CYP17? AR? Degrade AR?
  • Can galeterone reverse MDV/abiraterone resistance?

So why haven’t I written much about galeterone, as one blog reader recently wrote in to ask?  It’s largely because I don’t think there is enough data to make any conclusions yet and both the liver toxicity and rhabdomyolysis issues will overshadow its development until Tokai address this convincingly.

I certainly haven’t seen any pharmacokinetic data on the new formulation to show that safety and efficacy are acceptable, nor any data to show that it has a definite effect on disease progression over and above abiraterone or enzalutamide.

Tokai announced on December 13, 2012 that they had treated the first patient in the Phase 2 ARMOR2 trial, which will evaluate the safety and efficacy of the new formulation.

Hopefully, the clinical data from ARMOR2 will show no repeat of the drug-related grade 4 rhabdomyolysis and acute renal failure seen in the ARMOR1 trial.  Only then will we know whether this was a “fluke” or not as some commentators have suggested.

The company has shown a proof of concept but until we see more data, I don’t think we really can assess what potential galeterone may have in the treatment of advanced prostate cancer.

For those interested in the data on galeterone presented at ASCO GU, here’s a link to a PDF of the poster available on the Tokai Pharmaceuticals website.

Galeterone Commercialization Challenges

Some of the challenges that Tokai may face in bringing galeterone to market include:

1. Need for a new formulation has delayed drug development

There are multiple new prostate cancer products in development in what will before long be a much more competitive market than it is today.  Although galeterone received a fast track designation from the FDA , I can’t help but think that the company has lost a year as a result of the need to develop a new formulation. Given the market dynamics, this delay could impact Tokai and the potential market opportunity for galeterone.

2. Abiraterone patent expiration is on the horizon

The short patent life for abiraterone and prospect of the availability of a generic version in a few years, could negate some of the advantages of having a CYP17 “combination product”. Galeterone may not require the concomitant administration of steroids, but this benefit may not be sufficiently attractive on its own to justify a premium price when a generic version of abiraterone becomes available.

3. How good an AR antagonist is galeterone?

We don’t yet know how effective an AR antagonist the new formulation of galeterone is. At the scientific meetings I have attended, I have only seen one slide on the mechanism of action, and it’s unclear to me what effect galeterone may have (if any) on AR splice variants. Other questions that come to mind are:

  • Is galeterone a more complete antagonist of AR like enzalutamide or does it have antagonist and agonist properties like bicalutamide?
  • Will galeterone offer benefits over using an AR antagonist such as enzalutamide in combination with abiraterone?
  • Are the AR antagonist effects of galeterone better than second-generation AR antagonists in development such as ARN-509, ODM-201?

4. Randomized registration trials will need to be done against the standard of care

If your registration trial is not already underway, the days of placebo controlled trials in advanced prostate cancer are over. It would be unethical to give men an inactive placebo when effective new therapies are already available, especially in the post chemotherapy setting. Tokai will most likely have to do a randomized registration trial of galaterone against abiraterone. Will it be superior or only equivalent in efficacy and tolerabilty?

5. To charge a premium price, Tokai will need to show men live longer

The competitive landscape is moving fast, and I predict as the cumulative cost of prostate cancer treatment increases, the market will become more price sensitive as new drugs are approved. If Tokai desire to charge a premium price, then they will need to show that galeterone is superior to the standard of care i.e. men live longer when taking it compared to taking abiraterone or enzalutamide.

Abiraterone had the first mover advantage as the first drug to seek approval in the pre-chemotherapy CRPC setting. Johnson and Johnson obtained FDA approval based on the totality of the COU-AA-302 trial data, which included the absence of a significant overall survival advantage, although this would most likely have been reached had the trial not been stopped early. In future, I can’t see other companies being equally blessed. Medivation will most likely run their PREVAIL trial until a significant overall survival advantage is obtained, and in the process raise the bar for future competitors such as galeterone.

Other combinations may offer more benefit than galeterone

It is good news for men with advanced prostate cancer that new treatment combinations are on the horizon.  While I remain sceptical about galeterone, at least until they show compelling clinical data, I am excited about new treatment options such as radium-223 (Alpharadin) that will soon be approved by the FDA.

Professor Bertrand Tombal in his recent ASCO GU interview with Sally Church, PhD said the trial he’d most like to do is radium-223 + enzalutamide. I share his enthusiasm for this. If you haven’t already read the interview, here’s a link to it on Pharma Strategy Blog.

While I didn’t think galeterone was worth writing about from AACR 2012 given that it was headed back to the lab for a new formulation, a novel prostate cancer treatment that did catch my attention was AZD3514 from AstraZeneca. Here’s the link to my AACR 2012 post in case you missed it. This is one that I am watching, and I hope there will be phase 1 clinical trial data for AZD3514 at the ASCO annual meeting later this year.

My Conclusion

In my view, Tokai Pharmaceuticals have yet to show the new formulation of galeterone is safe and effective or that men with advanced prostate cancer live longer when taking the drug compared to taking abiraterone or enzalutamide either sequentially, or in combination. While galeterone may offer an innovative mechanism of action, it is too early to say whether this will translate into any meaningful clinical benefit in the treatment of advanced prostate cancer or whether it’s just another me-too drug in development.

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