Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘ABT-199 NHL’

Previously, we discussed the role of new agents being developed for aggressive non-Hodgkins lymphoma (NHL) with Dr Nancy Valente of Genentech, particularly how their antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) could have a potential role to play in revolutionizing treatment for patients with an otherwise poor prognosis.

The second half of the interview from ASCO 2014 focuses on more indolent disease, namely chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and the role of their novel therapeutics obinutuzumab (Gazyva) and ABT–199/GDC–0199.

We’ve heard a lot of positive data about the anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody, obinutuzumab, but the Bcl2 inhibitor undergoing co-development with AbbVie has had a bit of a chequered history to date. There is no doubt that ABT–199/GDC-0199 is highly potent, while lacking the severe myelosuppressive effects (thrombocytopenia) of its predecessor, navitoclax — which can be both a blessing and a curse — as the phase I single agent investigators discovered recently when severe tumour lysis lead to two sudden patient deaths.

It is important to address these issues expeditiously in a safe and rational way to ensure patient safety for those who enroll in both current and future trials. This is a critical issue we discussed at length with Dr Valente and how the company has been handling it.

At the AACR Molecular Targets meeting last November, many readers will remember that we learned about Genentech’s research plans for combinations with GDC–0199 in CLL and NHL in an interview with one of the scientists for that program, Dr Deepak Sampath.

Today, it’s time to look at where and how this exciting agent might impact CLL. Obviously, both CLL and NHL have commonalties and overlap, since they are both B cell disorders, so often what works in one disease often works well in the other too, as rituximab has clearly demonstrated.

To learn more about these insights and how ABT–199/GDC–0199 could impact the future CLL landscape, log-in to access the article.

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Following a death due to tumor lysis syndrome, AbbVie ($ABBV) have suspended the ABT-199 clinical trial program.  ABT-199 is a promising new drug in development for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) that was about to enter phase 3 drug development by the company.

The company has issued no press release, but the clinicaltrials.gov web site shows that that clinical trials are suspended, information confirmed at the BIO CEO 2013 meeting in New York earlier this week. Here’s a quick snapshot taken on Feb 14, 2013 of what the clinicaltrials.gov site shows:

Clinicaltrials.gov snapshot Feb 14, 2013

I first wrote about ABT-199 last year at the 2012 AACR annual meeting where Steven Elmore from Abbott (the predecessor of AbbVie) presented data showing it to be a new Bcl-2 inhibitor that overcame the side effects seen with navitoclax (ABT-263), which led to dose-dependent thrombocytopenia.

At the 2012 annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology in December, Matthew Davids, MD presented the results from the first-in-human phase 1 multicenter trial in patients with relapsed or refractory CLL and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

Dr Davids declined to offer any comment on the suspension of the ABT-199 clinical trial program. By email he wrote, “I’m not able to discuss any data from the ABT-199 study that has not yet been publically presented.” 

I thought this was a rather weak response given the fact the trial suspension is public knowledge. There’s more to being a thought leader than just being a company trial spokesperson who presents company prepared slides at scientific meetings.

It was also disappointing given the expertise at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute with BCL-2 antagonists, as evidenced by a recent publication on ABT-199 in the journal Cell by Dr Davids and Dr Letai earlier this week.  Dr Letai previously wrote in the journal “Blood” that the “antagonizing function of Bcl-2 is an attractive goal in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and other lymphoid malignancies.”

According to a reliable source, the ABT-199 clinical trial program has been suspended due to the trial participant dying from tumor lysis syndrome.

Tumor lysis syndrome (TLS) is a life-threatening cancer treatment complication where large number of cells die and deposit their contents into the blood stream. The kidneys and liver are overwhelmed trying to process and excrete the dumped intracellular contents.  Acute renal failure may result.  TLS is most common in fast growing cancers such as acute leukemias and less common in indolent disease such as lymphomas and CLL.

This last factor makes the issue for AbbVie and those medically supervising the trial more challenging in deciding whether the event was a one-off fluke or whether the TLS was drug related i.e. there is something in the way ABT-199 acts that poses a risk of TLS in the same way navitoclax caused dose-dependent thrombocytopenia.  It could be related to dose-scheduling, for example, or the compound structure itself.

A patient death is something to be taken seriously, particularly in early stage development. Far better to find out you have a problem soon before spending multi-million dollars on a phase 3 drug development trial as AbbVie were poised to do.

Hematology industry expert Sally Church, PhD who writes Pharma Strategy Blog tells me that she thinks the ABT-199 clinical trials program will re-start, and sees this as a temporary setback once the dose-scheduling has been modified.  Her view is that:

“There are risks associated with any new drug in development largely because so much is unknown.  We don’t know what dose the patient was taking or for how long, but it’s possible that the agent is very effective and caused a much more rapid effect than expected at a high dose.  They may need to be more cautious about the dosing going forward.”

ABT-199 if it makes it to market will compete against other promising new compounds in development for CLL such as ibrutinib, which received breakthrough designation from the FDA earlier this week.

Update Feb 15, 2013 AbbVie says they expect ABT-199 trials to continue but advise there are 2 patient deaths!

Thanks to Derek Lowe on “In the Pipeline” for picking up on the ABT-199 story this morning and for providing additional commentary and insight on tumor lysis syndrome.

His updated post this afternoon now includes a response from AbbVie, in which the company spokesperson confirms the voluntary suspension of the trials, that the problem is indeed tumor lysis syndrome and they expect dose escalation to control it.

They go on to say in their email that “we have every expectation that the clinical trials will come off hold and that we will be able to initiate Phase 3 trials as planned.”  I encourage you to read Derek’s post if you have not already done so.

Fierce Biotech in their updated piece report that AbbVie have confirmed there are in fact 2 patient deaths.

The fact there are 2 patient deaths from tumor lysis syndrome (I was only aware of one when I wrote this piece) now raises the question of whether the cause of this may indeed be related to the chemical structure of ABT-199. It’s clearly a serious matter that will at the very least delay AbbVie’s phase 3 drug development program for ABT-199.

Update Feb 18, 2013 Tumor Lysis Syndrome explained

Sally Church, PhD has published a post on Pharma Strategy Blog that is well worth reading: “Tumor Lysis Syndrome – what it is and why it is important in cancer research.”

In addition to commenting on ABT-199, Church discusses the potential for delayed Tumor lysis syndrome (TLS) seen with CTL019, the novel Novartis chimeric antigen receptor therapy (CART) in early stage development.

Update May 29, 2013 Clinical data on ABT-199 at ASCO 2013

In my pre-ASCO 2013 post on Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) that I published on May 28, 2013, I included commentary on ABT-199. Here’s the relevant excerpt:

At ASCO 2013 there will be updated phase 1 results for ABT-199 (GDC-0199) in CLL, and the main topic of discussion will be two clinical trial deaths that occurred due to tumor lysis syndrome.

At the recent 2013 AACR annual meeting, Rod Humerickhouse, MD, PhD from AbbVie Global Pharma R&D, said the company plans to start an ABT-199 phase 2 single agent study and a phase 3 combination study in CLL later in 2013/early 2014.

He told the AACR audience that Tumor Lysis Syndrome (TLS) adverse events occurred in 9 out of the 74 patients enrolled in three ABT-199 CLL clinical trials.

Two CLL trial participants died from TLS, and one had acute renal failure.

Notwithstanding the early promise of ABT-199 that I wrote about from the AACR 2012 and ASH 2012 annual meetings, these deaths have in my mind placed a substantial question mark over the safety of ABT-199, especially if other less-toxic therapies are available by the time it potentially comes to market. TLS is a sign of a highly effective drug, but whether dose modification can make it safe while maintaining efficacy remains to be seen. We don’t yet have the data to show this, and even assuming this data is forthcoming at the very least the development of ABT-199 has been set back in terms of time to market.

Whether the tragic deaths should have been avoided we may never know, there remain unanswered questions as to whether the dose escalation was too aggressive, whether the risk of TLS was known, and if so whether patients were properly monitored.

Relatives of both patients who died have sent in comments to the blog, highlighting the personal tragedy of losing a father or husband in this way. I can appreciate that after 33 years of marriage suddenly losing a husband at age 56 is pretty devastating, especially when the AbbVie company response appears to have fallen short in compassion and empathy:

“All I got was a quick phone call, after I left a message that he dropped dead in my bathroom, to thank me for letting them know of his passing and a condolence card.”

Although the development of ABT-199 looks set to continue, in my view it is no longer a front runner in the race to market in CLL. You can read more about the companies in the race to market in CLL in my pre-ASCO 2013 post.

 

The “Hallmarks of Cancer” paper by Douglas Hanahan and Robert Weinberg is a classic, and a must read (allow plenty of time) for anyone interested in cancer drug development.

The original 2000 paper, updated in 2011, identified six hallmarks of cancer, “distinctive and complementary capabilities that enable tumour growth and metastatic dissemination:”

  • Sustaining Proliferative Signaling
  • Evading Growth Suppressors
  • Activating Invasion and Metastasis
  • Enabling Replicative Immortality
  • Inducing Angiogenesis
  • Resisting Cell Death

Apoptosis or programmed cell death according to Hanahan and Weinberg is “a natural barrier to cancer development.” One of the ways cancer cells survive is by resisting cell death and disrupting the apoptosis signaling pathway; in other words the normal signals that trigger cell death don’t get through.

Researchers have shown that apoptosis is controlled at the cellular level, in the mitochondrion, by the Bcl-2 family of regulatory proteins (BCL-2, BCL-XL). Targeting BCL-2 (a protein that prevents apoptosis) could induce cell death and be a potentially successful anti-cancer strategy.

The result of our increased understanding of cancer biology has been the development of novel targeted drugs such as ABT-199, a potent and selective BCL-2 inhibitor. This is in early clinical development by AbbVie ($ABBV), a new biopharmaceutical company spun off from Abbott Laboratores ($ABT) last week.

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I previously wrote about the potential for ABT-199 in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) following Steven Elmore’s presentation at the April, 2012 annual meeting of American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).

The data presented at AACR has now been published in Nature Medicine, online ahead of print (AOP) on 6 January 2013: ABT-199, a potent and selective BCL-2 inhibitor, achieves antitumor activity while sparing platelets.”

Andrew Souers and colleagues from AbbVie and other institutions discuss how they re-engineered the since-discontinued navitoclax (ABT-263) to create a different and less toxic BCL-2 inhibitor. This new compound, unlike navitoclax, does not cause the thrombocytopenia associated with BCL-2-like1 (BCL-XL) inhibition.  It’s a compelling story of science-based cancer drug development.

At the December 2012 annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in Atlanta interim data was available from the phase 1 clinical trial of ABT-199 in Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (abstract #304).

Matthew S. Davids, MD, Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School & attending physician at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, presented the results from the first-in-human phase 1, open-label, dose escalation, multicenter international trial in patients with relapsed or refractory Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) and Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL).

Of the 30 NHL patients enrolled, Dr Davids told the audience that 20 remained active, with a median time on study of 80 days (range 7 to 413).

ABT-199 particularly active in CLL & MCL

In 7 patients who had mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) in the 30 subject NHL trial, all seven (100%) obtained a partial remission.  A 72 year old man with stage IV MCL obtained complete clinical resolution of auxiliary node clinically and 2 x 1 cm neck nodes by day 8.

ABT-199 is also active in CLL. Dr Davids briefly shared data previously presented at the 2012 Congress of the European Hematology Association (EHA) last year.  The waterfall plot was quite impressive, unfortunately I could not obtain permission to share an iPhone photograph here.  However, by my eye, the plot appeared to show that 30 of the 37 evaluable patients had a greater than 50% reduction in nodal size!

Dr Davids shared by email some additional commentary on the potential of ABT-199 in CLL:

“ABT-199 appears to be very active in patients with relapsed refractory CLL irrespective of high risk features such as del(17p).

Given its distinct mechanism of action from the BCR pathway antagonists, it has the potential to become an important additional treatment option in the armamentarium of CLL therapies.

Whether ABT-199 will be most useful as a signal agent, in combination with chemotherapy, or in combination with other novel agents will be an important question moving forward.”

ABT-199 has an acceptable safety profile

ABT-199 related grade 3 / 4 neutropenia was experienced in 3 of the 30 NHL phase 1 trial participants (10%).  Dr Davids noted there were:

  • No discontinuations due to adverse events
  • No dose limiting toxicities observed in NHL patients
  • No evidence of dose-dependent thrombocytopenia

He concluded that ABT-199 had an acceptable safety profile and further research is ongoing in NHL, both as a single agent and in combination with bendamustine/rituximab.  The lack of severe thrombocytopenia is a definite improvement on its predecessor navitoclax.

Overall, ABT-199 is an exciting new agent in development with potential as a new treatment option for CLL & MCL.  I look forward to hearing more about it at future scientific meetings.

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