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Posts tagged ‘cabozantinib prostate’

This is part 2 of my interview with Dr Maha Hussain, Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Michigan.  You can read part 1 about cabozantinib and pain here.

At the 2011 ASCO annual meeting, Dr Hussain presented data from a non-randomized phase 2 trial with cabozantinib that showed dramatic improvements in bone scans before and after treatment.

Bones are living tissues that are constantly being remade, a dynamic process that involves formation of new bone and taking up of old bone, a process known as bone resorption.  Cancer cells can interfere with bone remodeling, resulting in increased new bone formation (osteoblastic response) or excessive bone resorption (osteoclastic response).

Bone scans involve the injection of radioactive tracers such as technetium-99m-MDP. In simple terms, the radioactive material detects bone turnover and areas of high bone metabolism.  These show up as darker “hot spots” where the tracers accumulate.

Bone scans have poor specificity because tumors, fractures and infection all lead to hot spots. Also, not all tumors or lesions are detected by a bone scan.  Bone scans have a sensitivity of around 62-89%.

At the 2011 Society for Translational Oncology Prostate Cancer Symposium, Professor Johann de Bono (The Institute for Cancer Research) noted that bone scans do not accurately reflect the activity of the disease in men with prostate cancer.

This raises the question as to what we should conclude from the bone scans seen with cabozantinib.  I put this question to Professor Hussain.

BSB: What is the significance of the bone scans that we see and what should we interpret from them given that bone scans don’t accurately reflect the disease?

Dr Hussain: I will refer you back to my presentation at ASCO originally and my recent AACR presentation.

I have specifically put a slide (together) to address, is what we are seeing a fluke, a function of a technique issue because you are targeting the osteoblasts?  Consequently if you inhibit osteoblastic function, you are not going to see much changes on the scan, or is there more too it?

 

The specific slide actually puts in columns the (percentage of) patients who had a partial or a complete resolution on the bone scan, versus those who had stable or progressive disease, and then matches it with other evidence of an anti-tumor effect as in target lesion regressions, progression free survival at I think the 6 month mark if I recall correctly, as in the pain improvement, narcotic use.

Recognizing that by the way the pain and narcotic use, both of these were post-hoc assessments that were done.  Once we saw the observation, the sponsor went back and began asking all the investigators to record these things.  Clearly, the ALK phosph going down, the bone turnover markers going down.

Dr Hussain’s conclusion is interesting from a marketing strategy perspective.  She does not position cabozantinib as a bone targeted drug such as Xgeva or a bone targeted radiopharmaceutical such as Alpharadin.  Instead, her view is that cabozantinib should be developed as a “prostate cancer specific drug that does have the added advantage of significant anti-tumor effect in the bone” ie an anti-cancer tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI).

This is at odds with how Exelixis appear to be positioning it.  The corporate presentation at the Cowen Annual Healthcare Conference on March 6, 2012 had a strong focus on bone metastases: “Cabozantinib demonstrates unique ability to resolve bone metastases and decrease bone pain in CRPC,” one slide said.

If Dr Hussain is correct and we should consider cabozantinib as a prostate cancer specific drug, then it will need to compete on endpoints with other drugs that have shown an impact on overall survival.

Cabozantinib will likely not obtain regulatory approval on the basis of the bone scans, whatever they may show.

Without demonstrating a significant effect on overall survival, it’s hard to believe that cabozantinib will be able to compete effectively in what is fast becoming a very competitive prostate cancer market.

The final installment of the Biotech Strategy Blog interview with Dr Hussain will cover her perspective on the mechanism of action of cabozantinb, and where the drug, theoretically, might be expected to have most impact in prostate cancer.

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Maha Hussain MB ChB is Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Michigan.  She is an international expert into genitourinary malignancies with a focus on clinical research into prostate and bladder cancer.

Cabozantinib is a new drug in development by Exelixis for multiple indications.  It captured a lot of attention at the ASCO 2011 annual meeting last year, when Dr Hussain presented data from a phase 2 prostate cancer trial that showed a dramatic improvement in bone scans and pain reduction in those men receiving it.

Unlike other new prostate cancer drugs such as abiraterone (Zytiga) or MDV3100 that target the androgen receptor, cabozantinib is a multi-kinase inhibitor of MET and VEGFR.  It has both an anti-tumor effect and an effect on bone metabolism.

At the AACR Advances in Prostate Cancer Research conference last month, chaired by Charles Sawyers (MSKCC) and Arul Chinnayan (Michigan), Dr Hussain gave a presentation on “Cabozantinib (XL-184) and prostate cancer: preclinical and clinical profile of a novel agent.”

I was privileged to have the opportunity to interview Dr Hussain by phone recently and obtain her insight into cabozantinib as a potential new treatment for prostate cancer.

We covered a lot of ground, too much for one blog post, so I’ve broken down the interview into segments that I will be posting separately.

Cabozantinib & Pain

As many readers will be aware, one of the dramatic results presented at ASCO last year, was the impact that cabozantinib had on pain.

At the AACR Molecular Targets meeting in San Francisco last November, further pain data was presented by Howard Scher’s group at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. They showed in a non-randomized phase 2 trial that:

Cabozantinib treatment resulted in high rates of pain improvement and analgesic reduction or discontinuation in patients with moderate to severe pain at baseline

–  Rapid and durable pain relief

–  Pain relief observed regardless of prior lines of therapy

–  Improvement in pain accompanied by reduced interference with sleep and daily activity

Exelixis has since moved forward with clinical trials focusing on prostate cancer pain.

Pain response is the primary outcome in the phase III trial (COMET-2) of cabozantinib (XL184) Versus Mitoxantrone Plus Prednisone in Men With Previously Treated Symptomatic Castration-resistant Prostate Cancer (COMET-2 trial formerly known as XL184-306). Overall survival is a secondary endpoint.

The challenge with using pain as a primary endpoint is that all the advanced prostate cancer drugs that have recently been approved by the FDA such as cabazitaxel (Jevtana), abiraterone (Zytiga), and those for whom approval is expected, such as MDV3100 and radium-223 (Alpharadin), have all shown an improvement in overall survival.

I was, therefore, interested to hear Dr Hussain’s perspective on cabozantinib and its effect on pain in prostate cancer.

BSB: Can pain be a surrogate for survival that regulatory agencies might accept?

Dr Hussain: Honestly, I am not the expert on what the regulatory agencies will do. I know what they have done and I would say that pain has been an indication for regulatory approval of prostate cancer. That’s a long story, it’s an old story. Mitoxantrone was approved based on pain, so I don’t think that is going to be an issue.

Whether it is a surrogate for survival remains to be seen, and to be honest with you, I think that it may not be if you are really using it in far advanced cancer. As we have seen with mitoxantrone, it didn’t seem to make an impact on survival and it is really more about disease progression and pain and quality of life type issues. 

I am not aware of a trial that has been done with a primary endpoint being pain, and another key primary endpoint or a secondary endpoint being survival, that has been positive.  Having said that, I think in my view, it is a mistake to just focus on the pain. 

Pain, as far as I can tell from our experience and others, it’s very late in the setting of the disease by a nowadays standard. I would argue that using this drug as a pain only type drug, you could do it cheaper and less toxic with other agents, with morphine for example. 

My point here is, I go back and say to focus it on pain only, my average patient is interested in living longer, not just in controlling their pain. 

Dr Hussain: My point is in a perfect world if the drug delivers, the importance is going to be a totality of effect, that is prolonging life and improving quality of life overall.

BSB: Thank you

The next installment of the Biotech Strategy Blog interview with Dr Hussain will focus on the clinical significance of the dramatic bone scans seen with cabozantinib.

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The recent AACR-NCI-EORTC Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics international conference in San Francisco was an informative meeting.

What I particularly liked was the strategic overview that took place in many of the plenary sessions.

As an example, Johann de Bono, Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine at The Institute of Cancer Research/The Royal Marsden in London highlighted the potential drug development targets based on prostate cancer biology:

  • Androgen Receptor (AR)
  • Heat Shock Proteins (Hsp)
  • Signaling: HER3, MET, IGF-1R, CCL2, IL-6, Src
  • PI3K/AKT/TOR signaling
  • PARP and BRCAness
  • Estrogen receptor (ER)
  • c-MYC & CHK1

His presentation discussed the possible therapeutic approaches, and complexity involved in developing novel targeted therapies for prostate cancer.

This is something that I expect we will hear more of at the AACR special conference on Advances in Prostate Cancer Research early next year.

In particular, de Bono discussed drug development strategies to target androgen receptor signaling, and some of the future challenges including:

  • Proving to the regulatory authorities that circulating tumor cell (CTC) count falls are a robust immediate endpoint of overall survival
  • Developing improved imaging for bone metastases

As a side note, there were several posters for cabozantinib (XL184) at the meeting (available on the Exelixis website), including preliminary research on computer-aided quantitative bone scan assessment.

However, as de Bono mentioned in his presentation, “diffusion weighted MRI shows hot spots not detected by bone scans.”

2010 and 2011 were good years for prostate cancer drugs, and with new approvals for MDV3100 and radium-223 (Alpharadin) expected, 2012 is set to be another “grand cru” year, to paraphase Bertrand Tombal.

If you were not able to make it to San Francisco for the Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics conference, webcasts of many sessions will be available on the AACR site.

 

The phase 3 ALSYMPCA prostate cancer trial results for radium-223 chloride (Alpharadin) were presented at the recent ECCO ESMO ESTRO 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress in Stockholm. This was the highlight of the meeting for me.

There was also exciting data in Breast Cancer (BOLERO-2) that you can read more about on Pharma Strategy Blog.

Alpharadin from Norwegian company, Algeta, is the first new treatment for advanced prostate cancer that not only prolongs overall survival (OS) but delays time to first skeletal related event (SRE) in metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer patients.

Leading physicians at the meeting believe that it will be “practice changing.

The Alpharadin data may also have an impact on other bone targeted agents in development for prostate cancer such as cabozantinib (XL184).

Sally Church, PhD (who writes the Pharma Strategy Blog) is quoted by “The Street” as saying that “Alpharadin raises the bar for Exelixis. They have to produce overall survival data now.” Overall Survival (OS) remains the primary regulatory endpoint in prostate cancer drug development.

Prostate cancer experts Johann de Bono and Cora Sternberg also mentioned, in presentations at the Stockholm meeting, that in the future it will be increasingly difficult to do placebo controlled trials in Prostate Cancer given the new treatment options available.

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Launch of Zytiga (abiraterone acetate) at 2011 annual meeting of American Urological Association (AUA) in Washington DCThe market for prostate cancer therapies is set to expand from $1 billion currently to $5 billion by 2015, according to analysts reported by this morning’s Washington Post/Bloomberg news.  This is perhaps no surprise given the recent approval of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga®) from Ortho Biotech (JNJ).

New clinical data on prostate cancer clinical trial results is expected at the 2011 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago this weekend from many of the prostate cancer therapies in development such as MDV3100, TAK700, ARN-509, cabozantinib (XL184), ipilimumab, custirsen (OGX-11), BPX-101, alpharadin, denosumab (Xgeva®) and Prostvac-VF.

Indeed, one could argue that prostate cancer is becoming a competitive marketplace.  Any emerging biotechnology company that is not already developing a prostate cancer drug is likely to find it a hard market in which to create a blockbuster.  By the time any drug comes to market, there will be incumbents with effective products who have captured market share.

Prostate cancer is an exciting market to watch from a marketing strategy and patient perspective, as several companies potentially bring new products to market over the next few years.

However, the bottom line is that patients will live longer as a result of all the innovation that is taking place.  Not only that but physician education and awareness of how to treat this disease is also likely to improve as they seek out knowledge on new therapies and treatments.  This to many will make a major difference.  At the recent American Urological Association (AUA) annual meeting, the sessions on treatment of prostate cancer were standing room only.  There is clearly a demand for knowledge out there as the treatment paradigms change.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is also innovation taking place in terms of improved diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer.  Whether we should screen all men for PSA remains a controversial topic, although use of risk calculators do appear to offer less false positives.  Indeed, calculating risk is going to be one of the key areas that primary care physicians and urologists need to focus on, particularly in the light of the PIVOT trial data that was presented at AUA, showing radical prostatectomy (with risks including incontinence and erectile dysfunction) was not better than watchful waiting in low-risk, early stage disease.

However, a presentation I am looking forward to at ASCO 2011 is on circulating tumor cells (CTC) and whether these can be a prognostic or even a predictive biomarker.   Both the phase III MDV3100 and abiraterone acetate clinical trials captured CTC data.  It will be exciting news at ASCO 2011 if circulating tumor cells that require only a blood sample offer an improvement over PSA not only for detection of prostate cancer, but in monitoring the disease over time.

I will be at ASCO 2011 this weekend, and look forward to writing more on prostate cancer from the conference!

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