Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘BMS’

What happens when an intractable target becomes druggable-ish

A fish eye view of the market

In the third of our Preview series from this year’s AACR meeting, we’re taking a look at an early, if rapidly evolving competitive landscape involving several different modalities – proving there’s often more than one way to skin a cat drug a particular target!

When we last covered this topic there were barely half a dozen developments to highlight, since then this niche has rapidly exploded with a variety of molecules and different companies to add to the mix.

Some key questions facing this field include how will we move on from dose escalation studies, what combinations will make sound sense, and which modalities might offer a wider therapeutic window in order to be combinable with other approaches?  People will always have favourites, so we took an unbiased look at the state of play.

It’s never as easy as it first appears…

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Dark side of the moon

Image credit: kevron2002

Every time a new class of agents emerges in oncology, I’m reminded of a partial solar eclipse where there’s just enough sunshine to offer some promise or hope, which needs to be balanced with the much larger area of darkness visible to the naked eye.

This darkness can take many forms from tolerability and a narrow therapeutic window to lack of clinical activity.

In the beginning it’s always hard to see the wood from the trees and often there is more conflicting information available than congruence, at least until things shake out more clearly.

There’s also the tricky matter of cross pathway interactions and how they can influence the broader picture in hidden and obvious ways.

As we head into AACR in a few weeks time, this is a good opportunity to take stock on the various landscape changes and put the situation into perspective.

In this review we look at ten key areas and break down what’s known, what’s not known, and how some of the future directions may take shape…

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Kicking ADCs up a notch

Orchid at Vizcaya Museum in Miami – always thought they looked like chemical structures showing us the gaps!

We highlighted a number of different types of antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) recently – yes, there’s much more to this category than simply dropping a chemo cargo on cancer cells!

In this review, we explore one of those flexible functionalities in more depth.

The cool thing about having an antibody base is creative chemists can bolt different things onto them, depending on what their goal is.

There are some really cool technology ideas being explored in research right now, which may improve not only what we can do with ADCs but also another modality.

If we think of the ADC as a modern day Trojan Horse to hide or mask the real payload in some way, the possibilities become limited only by our imagination.

The good news is there’s more than one example of this new genre to explore…

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Thinking outside the box

I’ve heard quite a few people frequently exclaim of late how “ADCs are hot!” Alrighty then, yet this is really only the end of the beginning because old hands know they have actually been around for quite a while.

If one was cynically minded then there’s an obvious reason – chemotherapies are usually generic these days, while ADCs bring in much higher ticket prices.

They won’t all succeed though – we’ve already seen a steadily growing graveyard of failures, which started out promising on paper then unfortunately flopped in the clinic.  Just because an area is suddenly declared hot (again) doesn’t guarantee success because these are complex molecules to design compared to small molecules with a lot of factors impinging on their performance.

What many observers have missed, however, is the deeper and broader opportunities offered beyond the often plain vanilla examples.

This is because the modality has greater flexibility than chemotherapies – you can design them such that other things can be bolted on or even hidden, Trojan horse style.

In other words, what we are seeing is an early trend with few enlightened companies starting to ‘think outside the box’ in this niche.

In the near to medium future we will see a greater volume of clinical data on these emerging approaches, which could lead to improved outcomes and longer lives for people living with cancer.

So what are these new fangled things, how do they work, and which companies are active in the futuristic ADC markets?

In this review we highlight half a dozen emerging areas around ADC technology with examples of products and companies active in these niches…

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Key oncology take aways and insights from Days 1 and 2 at JPM24

All aboard the San Francisco Milan Trolley!

With a number of oncology companies facing substantial loss of exclusivity (LOE) over the next five year strategic review period, we look at who’s at risk, how are they making up the gaps, how convincing are their arguments?  Will the flurry of acquisitions and collaborations announced over the last few months and even days make a difference?

In this series of quick reviews we offer our take aways and insights on what’s happening and whether or not they stand up to scrutiny.

Spoiler alert: some do, others do not!

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Seeing the wood from the trees at ASH23

Just a couple of years ago a particular hematologic target was all the rage with multiple companies, large and small, rushing a variety of early stage agents with different modalities and designs into the clinic.

Then silence ensued.

Some of them have inevitably gone by the wayside with time, while others are now showcasing their preclinical and clinical chops at the forthcoming annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in San Diego next month.

As with every oncology R&D niche there are winners and losers galore.

Here we identify ten key abstracts to watch out for, plus an additional one which could shed important light on some of the earlier findings…

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Scaling the ESMO23 ramparts

Scaling the ramparts in Real Madrido

In our last ESMO23 Preview ahead of the live meeting starting on Friday, we highlight another eight targets to watch out for where there will be intriguing data dropping out from Madrid over the weekend.

More than just the data though, is consideration for the implications of the findings and how they can impact a particular tumour landscape.

One thing to note is just because a company highlights what they consider to be positive data doesn’t always mean it is actually so when you look carefully at the small print.

Not surprisingly there are a few examples of this genre at the forthcoming conference…

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An unexpected renaissance

Rotterdam, Feb 2023

With so much focus on T cell fitness and exhaustion of late I wanted to highlight an area in the CAR-T cell space, which was all the rage a decade ago then quietly fizzled somewhat, leading many observers to wonder if it was great in theory, but not so much in practice.

This subniche is going through a renaissance of sorts as more research is conducted and we learn enough from the experiments and past mistakes to start moving forward again.

In this post, we’re gimng to focus exclusively on one of these aspects and see what’s new and where things might be headed because this isn’t an isolated incident…

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A novel molecule may lead to the Secret Garden

One of the joys of oncology research is that it’s data driven, which means companies can quite clearly see how others have fared, and where the gaps and opportunities lie for new product development.

There is always the potential to unlock the gates to the “secret garden,” whether it be targeting a tumour type previously considered intractable, treating an unmet medical need where there are few or no effective therapies, or in the case of immuno-oncology, manipulating the tumour microenvironment in a way that leads to an improvement in the long tail of survival we’re all looking for.

In addition to improved outcomes, you also need a safety profile with a favourable benefit/risk ratio, where there aren’t intolerable or life changing side effects or an increased risk of death. Who said it was easy?

Innovation takes many forms, and in this post we’re looking at how one biotech company may have unlocked the key to a secret garden through the optimised design of their molecule.  As always, it’s early days although it’s good to see companies looking to solve hard problems because the easy low hanging fruit wins in immuno-oncology went a long time ago.

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An exciting pipeline of early stage oncology agents from BMS

Over the last decade we have seen great strides taking place in the field of multiple myeloma as the disease has moved from an acute to a more chronic one with the advent of proteasome inhibitors and IMiDs. We’re still not curing many people, however.

The good news is there is now a raft of completely different agents with varying novel targets and modalities emerging at a rapid pace in early to near-term clinical development.

This raises some important strategic questions to think about for the future way beyond which ones look most promising because the bigger question is how will new regimens evolve to challenge the standard of care in each line of treatment?

CAR-T cell therapies are certainly in the mix here, but where will they be optimally used in the future, how do we go about figuring out which people should receive which particular option?

The issues at stake are much more complex than simply asking which BCMA directed therapy is going to be the ‘winner’ because myeloma doesn’t work like this given the preponderence of doublet and triplet regimens.

A better way of exploring new opportunities will be to consider who has what synergies with whom and how might they fit together in a more cogent and coherent fashion.

In order to explore the evolving multiple myeloma landscape, we decided to take a step back and explore the new options from a more strategic perspective. To accomplish this, we interviewed two companies who are active in this niche as well as some specialist thought leaders. It’s a highly relevant time to consider the issues given the broad discussions likely to emerge at JPM21 this week.

We kick off the latest mini-series with a look at the BMS pipeline opportunities in myeloma, who will be followed by J&J tomorrow, and finally discussion with a global expert on Wednesday – so without much ado, let’s roll!

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