Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘DLL3’

Is there a silver lining in SCLC?

Last October I posted two updates on small cell lung cancer (SCLC). One explored the broad SCLC landscape, while the second was a detailed analysis highlighting the red and green flags to watch out for in the Rova-T TRINITY study.

My sombre conclusion or prediction, if you will, was not particularly well received at that time:

“My sense is that the median PFS and OS in the allcomer ITT population will remain modest and in line with what we might expect from historical chemos in 3L SCLC.”

Dismal happenings are to be expected…

This morning AbbVie announced that they will not be filing for accelerated approval of Rova-T in 3L SCLC based on the interim analysis.  In other words my expectations for this trial were met, although there are many who will be very disappointed at the results.

What matters though is not just how disappointing topline results might be per se, but why they occurred, what we can do about it, and most importantly, where we go next.  There’s a lot more to this than might initially be obvious from the press release.

That’s what this new post is all about… first a post mortem, then the obstacles to be addressed, and finally, what we can look forward to in SCLC…

On a happier note: there may be some surprises ahead!

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SCLC – An in-depth look at ROVA-T and TRINITY

Yesterday in part 1 (Link) of our latest mini-series, we looked at the SCLC landscape and some of the key background issues to think about.

This time around in part 2 we drill down focus more specifically on Rova-T, including physician and patient sentiments and in particular, what to watch out for with the upcoming phase 2 TRINITY readout.   There’s a lot to consider here so we’ve broken the analysis down to five key areas.

Mystic Meg is also back with her canny predictions – what does the crystal ball portend for Rova-T and the TRINITY trial?  Caveat: she’s been on a tear of late; this situation will not continue forever.

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A look at the SCLC Landscape and Rova-T

Many of the questions we received from BSB readers this month was a plea from several folks to answer numerous queries about small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and the anti-DLL3 ADC, Rova-T, in particular.

Of course I’m happy to oblige, but this was way too big a topic for inclusion in Friday’s mailbag.

Cornish Tin Mine

What makes a lot more sense here is a short two-part mini series where we look at the dismal landscape of the disease and then consider the red and green flags that arise from the Rova-T development.

With the interim results expected from the phase 2 TRINITY trial in 2H17, this is a timely moment to sit down and reflect on what to expect.

In the first part of the series, we walk through SCLC as a disease, including what is known and what to consider when contemplating a new therapy here.

In the second part tomorrow we will focus more specifically on Rova-T and what to watch out for.

So let’s rock and roll with a look at the SCLC landscape…

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Targeting Breast Cancer Stem Cells

Dr Max Wicha is the 2016 recipient of the AACR Distinguished Lectureship in Breast Cancer Research. At the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS16) he gave his award lecture, “Targeting Breast Cancer Stem Cells: Challenges and Opportunities.”

SABC16 Dr Max Wicha Award Lecture

As the AACR press release notes, “This lectureship recognizes an outstanding scientist whose work has inspired or has the potential to inspire new perspectives on the etiology, diagnosis, treatment or prevention of breast cancer.”

Dr Wicha is a pioneer in the field of cancer stem cells, and is Director Emeritus of the University of Michigan Comprenhensive Cancer Center and a co-founder of OncoMed Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: OMED).

Targeting cancer stem cells is an area I expect we will hear a lot more about, particularly in breast cancer. Dr Wicha kindly spoke to BSB after his award lecture, which was one of my highlights of SABCS16.

In case you missed it, do check out the post from the 2016 EORTC-NCI-AACR Molecular Targets Symposium in Munich that featured Dr Mina Bisell (Berkeley), who was a previous recipient of the AACR Distinguished Lectureship in Breast Cancer Research award in 2012 (Link.)

This is the fifth in our series of expert interviews from the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

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New oncology targets emerge from ECC 2015 – Part 1

At the European Cancer Conference (ECC 2015) held in Vienna recently, a number of promising targets emerged along with new drugs in development in several different tumour types.  Not all of them were from big Pharma – some were from up and coming young biotechs that will be worth watching out for.

Austria SchnappsIn this first part of our ‘New Drugs on the Horizon’ mini series, we chose four interesting and largely positive studies to highlight and discuss in-depth.

In the past, there were many negative trials to pick over and ponder why they didn’t quite pan out.  After all, it’s relatively easy to be an armchair critic and hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Picking only four from the many promising choices of trials presented this year available turned out to be quite hard given there were many that caught our attention – a bit like choosing only one of four out of the many schnaps to sample locally!

Today’s review looks at four very different drugs and approaches in early development from Pfizer, Stemcentrx and Ignyta – they include encouraging early data on both small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), as well as antibody drug conjugates (ADCs).

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ECC Vienna Preview 1 Late Breaking Abstracts

A decade or so ago, the annual conferences for the European Congress of Clinical Oncologists (ECCO) and European Society of Medical Oncologists (ESMO) were considered convenient dumping grounds for negative or failed trials. This was largely because they received much less attention than their big brother, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).

In the last few years, this trend has shifted with excellent clincial and scientific data being presented at both meetings – they alternate as hosts each year – under the European Cancer Congress (ECC) umbrella.

Just to confuse a global audience long used to referring to the meetings as ESMO and ECCO, while the logical Twitter hashtag might appear to be #ESMO14 and #ECCO15, respectively, based on the standard nomenclature of conference acronym followed by the year, the vagaries of European politics mean we end up with… #ECC2015.

It will be interesting to see how they compete for attention because this hashtag signal will be dirty (more than one usage) and noisy (many disparate voices) with the European Curling Championship, a European Cheerleader Convention and another on e-cigarettes and vaping, all seemingly using the same moniker!

ECCO 2015 Vienna

Still, what many readers are really eager to learn though, is this a great, middling, or poor year for exciting new data in the field of cancer research and what can we expect to hear about in Vienna later this month?

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