Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘Cancer Immunotherapy’

Immunotherapy Possibilities in Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is a tough disease to deal with given that it is portends poor clinical outcomes, aggressive tumour biology, and early metastatic spread. Not surprisingly, we have seen very little improvements in terms of clinical outcomes with anti-cancer therapeutics. Surgery (for early stage disease) and intense chemotherapy (for metastatic disease) remain the bedrocks of treatment to this day.

From an immunotherapy perspective, there are also additional barriers and hurdles to overcome including, for example, lack of high mutational load, a complex inhibitory tumour microenvironment, and even a physical barrier in the form of the stromal layer.

Not surprisingly, all of these factors combine to make companies reluctant to rush into clinical trials with immune checkpoint blockade, accepting that we really need to understand the underlying tumour biology better before attempting such an endeavour.

At a recent cancer conference we heard an uplifting talk from a research group who are attempting to tackle this issue and offer some pointers on where there may be some near-term opportunities that are worthy of discussion.

Before we can even consider what delivery system or adjuvant to use, we first have to do the scientific investigations into what’s special about exceptional responders and characterize those.

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The Future of Cancer Vaccines Part 5 – An Interview with Prof George Coukos

Mainz – At the recent CRI-CIMT-EATI-AACR international cancer immunotherapy conference in Germany, one of the underlying themes of the conference that attracted considerable attention from speakers and poster presenters was neoantigens, and how to generate cancer vaccines directed against them.

One of the European leaders in the field is Professor George Coukos who is Director of the Department of Oncology at the University of Lausanne Hospital and Director of the Lausanne branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research.

Lausanne is an exciting place for innovative translational oncology work with the Swiss Cancer Center, that Coukos also directs, creating synergy between partner institutions co-located in the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV).

Mainz, Germany

We last spoke to Prof Coukos 18 months ago and much has happened since then. In Mainz, he kindly agreed to speak to BSB again and provide an update on progress.

This time we talked about the cancer vaccine research that he and collaborators such as Dr Lana Kandalaft are pioneering in Lausanne, and how this could best be applied in ovarian cancer.  It was exciting to hear him discuss his vision and some of the ambitious goals he hopes will be possible within the field.

Here’s a short excerpt from the interview – he has an interesting story to tell:

This expert interview is part 5 of our onging mini-series on the Future of Cancer Vaccines.

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August 2017 BSB Journal Club on Breast Cancer

Recently there has been a glut of encouraging new research published on the topic of breast cancer that is well worth perusing as a group, since new combination studies may emerge from these kind of data.

In this month’s Journal Club edition, we explore five such articles plus some related research in support of the main themes.

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ESMO17 Preview 1 – The IO 5

It’s that time of the year again – time to highlight key events and talks at the upcoming European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) meeting held in Madrid next month.

Over the next two days, we’re going to take a look at five key IO trials (today) and five targeted therapy studies (tomorrow) that are being presented at ESMO.

In short, what should readers know about these oral presentations for greater context, why are they important, and what should you be looking for?

We will cover the hidden gems from the poster halls to watch out for in a separate future post.

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Exploring pre-existing immunity in cancer immunotherapy trials

One of the intriguing themes that emerged recently at ASCO from several cancer immunotherapy trials centred around whether any elicited immune responses actually correlated with outcomes and if so, why and how?

Gems from the ASCO17 poster hall

It sounds easy in practice, yet in reality the topic has been quite a controversial one that has been hotly debated for a while.

With a wealth of new cancer immunotherapy trials now undwerway and initial results trickling out, how do we start to make sense of the information and what do we learn that might be useful going forward for future trials and the field as a whole?

With the help of a renowned cancer immunologist, we explored this concept in more detail to determine what can be gleaned from the data available.

Today, we look at part one of our latest mini-series, with the second part to follow later this week.

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Can epigenetic therapy boost cancer immunotherapy?

In our latest thought leader interview we explore the intersection between epigenetic therapy and immunotherapy.

Gems from the ASCO17 poster hall

Much of the IO focus to date has been on monotherapies rather than combos, although that situation is slowly changing.

What we can also expect to see are the emergence of regimens, long the bedrock of traditional cancer therapy approaches.

As we learn how to bucket more discrete populations based on the underlying biology of the tumour microenvironment, so we will see a more IFTTT (If this then that) approach evolve in order to fix or improve a situation before or after attempting the core therapy. It might require a focus on changing the immunosuppressive or inhibitory factors, for example, or addressing factors that induce primary resistance upfront. The possibilities are endless.

Obviously, there are a number of ways to do this from chemotherapy and radiotherapy to epigenetic agents to targeted therapies – these traditional treatments are not going to go away, but I can see a future where we see more integration based on a patient’s underlying immune status. It won’t be the zero sum game many analysts seem to think it might be.

In the past, we have covered chemotherapy, radiotherapy and targeted therapies and looked at how they might be employed with immunotherapies in various guises. In this latest thought leader interview, we look at a different approach, epigenetic therapy and other novel immunotherapies.

Here, we combine two popular types of posts – Gems from the Poster Halls with an Expert Interview  – for detailed look at one particular area of research that is beginning to look quite intriguing.

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Gems from the ASCO17 Poster Hall Part 1

One of my favourite pastimes at cancer conferences is discussions with up and coming young researchers about their current experiments and what they learn from them.

The poster hall rugby scrum at #ASCO17

In the spotlight today is one of the gems from the poster halls at ASCO this month…

Here we explore how liver mets, which is a common site of metastases from a number of primary cancers can influence the response of cancer immunotherapy.

The findings from this research highlight some intriguing biology as well as offer some hints about where to go next.

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New developments in sarcoma

Sarcomas are a heterogeneous type of cancer that develop from certain tissues like bone or soft tissues such fat, muscle, nerves, fibrous tissues, blood vessels, or deep skin tissues.

Over the last two years, much has happened in this space so it’s an excellent time to revisit the niche and learn more about what experts think of the latest data that is emerging here.

We put a sarcoma expert in the spotlight and learned what their perspectives are on some of the emerging data in this niche as well as which ones offer hints of promise.

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What do we know about Resistance to Checkpoints in Lung Cancer?

At the AACR 2017 annual meeting, there was a surprising amount of early clinical data on offer, particularly in the field of cancer immunotherapy.

A shortage of reliable preclinical models that predict human response to cancer immunotherapy has led to a mad rush to the clinic to do trials in man – thee are now over 800 combination trials – if anyone wants to try and follow them all!

If you missed it do listen to the “Of Mice and Men” episode of the Novel Targets Podcast recorded at AACR 2016 that features experts such as Dr Bernard Fox (@BernardAFox) and Professor Cornelius “Kees” Melief (Leiden) who discuss the challenges of mouse models.

Several thought leaders at this year’s AACR annual meting described it as “mini ASCO” given the focus on clinical data, with several plenary sessions devoted to the results of early trials.

Dr Julie Brahmer at AACR17 in Washington DC

At AACR17, Dr Julie Brahmer, a leading lung cancer expert and an Associate Professor of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Kimmel Institute presented long-term survival data for nivolumab in second-line non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

The 5-year survival rate of 16% with a single agent checkpoint inhibitor, while better than historical data with chemotherapy (~4%), is far from being a home-run, illustrating what a dismal disease this is to treat.

One of the challenges that we are starting to see with checkpoint inhibitor cancer immunotherapy is immune escape or acquired resistance in some patients. They may have an objective or partial response, and then relapse and progress (acquired resistance), or they may not respond at all (primary resistance).

From our experience with targeted therapies, it should perhaps come as no surprise that cancers may evolve, adapt and seek to evade immune detection. There are also many inhibitory factors in the tumour microenvironment to overcome in order to enable an immune response.

At AACR17, Dr Brahmer kindly spoke to BSB about what researchers at Johns Hopkins have learnt about checkpoint inhibitor resistance in lung cancer so far. Her insights are both insightful and very useful when we consider what to watch out for at the forthcoming ASCO meeting.

This post is part of our on-going series of expert interviews from AACR17.

In the additional commentary, now that the ASCO17 abstract titles are publicly available, we’ve also highlighted a few that caught our attention.  This is the first in our series of previews of ASCO17. We’ll be rolling out more hybrid posts as we segue our coverage from AACR17 to ASCO17.

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Corvus CPI-444 Data Disappoints at AACR 2017

Washington DC – this is our final daily post from the 2017 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).

Starting on Monday we’ll be writing up expert interviews and providing commentary and analysis around some of the sessions we went to and the data we heard.

Tuesday at AACR17 was a day when the Corvus Pharmaceuticals stock dropped 50% following presentation of preliminary clinical data for their A2A receptor antagonist CPI-444.

It’s hard not to be disappointed when you see the waterfall plots skewed to the left and above the X axis, but we really don’t have enough data yet to determine whether CPI-444 on it’s own or in combination with atezolizumab may offer benefit to some cancer patients and if so, which ones.

The company have expanded the renal (RCC) and lung cohorts (NSCLC) in their initial trial, and they’ve told us to expect more data at ASCO17 in a few weeks time. Small cap biotech stocks can be a roller coaster when it comes to data presentations at major medical/scientific meetings.

What else caught our attention in the sessions we attended on Tuesday at #AACR17?

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