Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘durvalumab’

The PD-1 Gorilla is Back!

At AACR last week we had the long awaited initial readouts for three key phase 3 studies in lung cancer, namely CheckMate–227, IMpower150, and KEYNOTE–189 in the same session on the same day.

This had me thinking about how it might end up being, “a killer and a chiller and a thriller when I get the (PD–1) gorilla in Manila,” with sincere apologies to Muhammed Ali and Dr Jean-Charles Soria for (mis)appropriating their past themes 😉

Chicago River Bridge at #AACR18

For those attending the event, you might well be forgiven for thinking from the first two adjectives that I’m referring to the weather, as it was certainly cold enough (!), or even the results this week from AstraZeneca’s unfortunately named ARCTIC study exploring the IO-IO combo of durvalumab plus tremelimumab in the third line setting with a miss in both PFS and OS endpoints.

In reality, we should be warmed and heartened to see three positive immunotheraopy trials appear at once and presented in the same session at the same meeting.  It isn’t always the case as regular attendees at ASCO well know.

When all is said and done, what do thought leaders specialising in lung cancer really think about the data that was presented in Chicago, and what were the convergence and discord on the various key issues under consideration?  There is, after all, a lot of subtlety and nuance to consider in 1L NSCLC.

To find out more, we interviewed not one, but four, lung cancer specialists in Chicago for their personal perspectives.  What they had to say as a group was both candid and absolutely fascinating, so it made sense to curate their insights around various key topics together into one detailed post for easy reading… 

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ASCO GI18 Preview

San Francisco

The first cancer conference of 2018 is now upon us and after enjoying last year’s event in San Francisco, I wanted to take some time to explore some key abstracts of interest at the ASCO GI meeting, which begins tomorrow.

This conference covers various updates on new developments in oesophageal, gastric, colon, pancreatic and colorectal cancers.

Are there any trials or new developments to get excited about at this year’s GI18 meeting?

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Tears Before Bedtime…

After writing about the 1L NSCLC landscape every quarter last year, I was thinking the other day that we were due another update and discussion on this riveting topic again soon and added it to the editorial calendar of topics to write about on BSB.

It was therefore no surprise to hear Merck’s announcement this morning that their phase 3 trial KEYNOTE-189 exploring pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy hit its co-primary endpoints and is now the second study to do so after Genentech/Roche’s announcement for atezolizumab plus chemo plus the VEGF inhibitor, bevacizumab was a success.

Are we at a crossroad for lung cancer?  With many more readouts yet to come competition in this space is certainly heating up dramatically!

Meanwhile, there are a few important implications to consider here, so we sat down and penned an update based on the emerging data and highlight some key insights to consider…

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ESMO17 Day 1 Highlights and Lowlights

It really doesn’t feel like a year since we were at ESMO in Copenhagen, in what was probably the most exciting meeting of the year in many ways.

Packed audience!

With the ASCO abstract deadline being in Jan/Feb, ESMO offers a great opportunity for companies to have another major slot in the calendar to present ground breaking data. In some ways, having positive data at a European meeting can actually amplify positive studies that might otherwise get lost in the noise at ASCO, which is almost becoming too big.

So what’s in store now that the meeting is upon us?

There are some large and small trials with important data on the first two days that bear thinking about and further discussion.

Here’s our take on the first batch of readouts, including some surprises…

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MYSTIC Interim Analysis July 2017 shows PFS Miss

There has been considerable focus on the impact of cancer immunotherapy and checkpoint blockade in particular in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) of late, with approval of several agents in the 1L and 2L metastatic setting, as well as positive results reported in stage 3 unresectable disease earlier this year.

To date, the approvals have focused on monotherapies in second-line (nivolumab, pembrolizumab and atezolizumab) allcomers, as well as in 1L in two cases i.e. for people who are PD-L1 High expressers (≥ 50%) for pembrolizumab or allcomers in combination with chemotherapy (pembrolizumab).

Today as part of their 2Q earnings call details, AstraZeneca ($AZN) announced that the MYSTIC trial exploring the combination of the anti-PD-L1 antibody, durvalumab (Imfinzi), plus anti-CTLA–4 antibody, tremelimumab, unfortunately missed the interim endpoint of progression-free survival (PFS).

This is the first dual IO-IO combo readout in this setting and while disappointing, the results aren’t entirely surprising, as regular readers will no doubt realise.

We are now awaiting several other trial readouts in 1L NSCLC, including Merck’s phase 3 confirmatory trial for pembrolizumab plus chemo and Genentech/Roche’s IMpower150 trial, which explores atezolizumab in combination with chemotherapy, with and without the anti-VEGF inhibitor, bevacizumab (Avastin).

For historical reference, we originally wrote up our perspectives on the 1L NSCLC landscape in January this year then followed that up with a provocative post outlining out predictions on what to expect earlier this month, including the projected miss in PFS for AstraZeneca’s IO combo.

So what does this latest data mean for AZN?

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A look at why we get mixed results with phase 3 checkpoint trials

Berlin: Checkpoint Charlie

With a series of inconsistent results involving phase 3 trials involving checkpoint antibody therapy, even in similar indications, it’s time to get down and dirty and look at some of the factors that might be influencing the outcomes since three of the five approved anti-PD(L)1 products have now been similarly affected.

It’s an interesting and intriguing conundrum, to be sure…

Instead of obeying traffic rules, with immune checkpoints maybe we need to consider following immunology rules instead 🙂

The potential hidden answers, however, might be surprising to some readers.

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Predictions in 1L NSCLC trials

Back in January this year, we posted an early look on what to expect from the evolving 1L NSCLC landscape following the controversial FDA submission of Merck’s pembrolizumab with chemotherapy. This lead to subsequent approval in May.

Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin July 2017

At that time, quite a few people were shocked and surprised that the phase 2 KEYNOTE–021 Cohort G data presented ESMO was neatly parlayed into accelerated approval in the US.

Since then, a lot has happened and now many readers are on tenterhooks as we await the next round of lung cancer trial results in the upfront setting.

First up is AstraZeneca’s MYSTIC trial exploring an IO-IO combination with durvalumab plus tremelimumab. Merck’s confirmatory trial for pembrolizumab plus chemo is also expected in the fall – will it support the accelarated approval – or not? Meanwhile, we also await Roche/Genentech’s IMpower150 study evaluating their checkpoint inhibitor, atezolizumab, in combination with chemotherapy by the year end.

These are quite different strategies with diverse endpoints so following them closely will be key to understanding what happens next.  Based on what we’ve seen in lung cancer to date, the roller coaster looks set to continue.  The C-suite shenanigans have only added to the intrigue and mystique – do they mean anything?  Who knows, but we’re focusing on the hard data i.e. science and the clinical clues that are available.

It’s all to play for and many readers wrote in asking for an update on the landscape and what to expect now that we’re much nearer to the shoes actually dropping.

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Going beyond PARP monotherapies

It amuses me to realise that I’ve been writing about and following PARP inhibition since 2006 or so, when the field was in that twilight zone of early drug development between preclinical and clinical, thus just beginning to hit some sort of consciousness and broader interest in cancer research.

The AACR Molecular Targets meeting in 2009 was the first scientific meeting I covered as a science writer on the old Pharma Strategy Blog, which focused on early drug development from preclinical to phase 2 – after that I would rapidly lose interest and move on to the next new shiny scientific lure to research and discuss. No doubt this eager new writer ran about like an overenthusiastic little puppy in the poster halls chatting to scientists about their research, much to the amusement of the more staid press room, who at that time probably never ventured out of the darkened basement gloom.

In one of the press briefings there, I met an engaging and thoughtful scientist who was presenting his poster on PARP and synthetic lethality. He kindly took the time to explain in plain English a commonsense analogy that was most helpful for grasping complex concepts. Having sat through several long talks from luminaries in the field such as Drs Hillary Calvert and Alan Ashworth that covered double strand breaks and DNA repair mechanisms, it was a most welcome respite in the hurly burly of the conference!

Imagine his imagery…

You have a four legged coffee table or wooden chair and one of the legs breaks off or is damaged. The table remains standing, albeit less stable than before. Now a second leg breaks, and inevitably, the table is so unstable that it falls over.

Once you grasp that simple analogy for synthetic lethality, you have the basic idea of DNA double strand breaks and how inefficient repair can lead to vulnerabilities in the tumour that can be exploited.

The scientist I spoke to in Boston back in 2009 was Dr Mark O’Connor.

He was involved in DNA damage response research at a little known private company in Cambridge, UK called KuDos, who were subsequently acquired by AstraZeneca. Nearly a decade on and Dr O’Connor is still at the company; he now heads up their DNA damage response area.

Dr Mark O’Connor, AZN

With olaparib (Lynparza) since approved by the FDA in ovarian cancer and slated for the ASCO 2017 plenary session for HER2- breast cancer, things have certainly changed a lot since those early heady days of KuDos and the R&D journey has not been without its notable ups and downs along the way.

In Chicago earlier this month, I had the pleasure of catching up again with Dr O’Connor to learn more about the journey, and importantly, where things are going next.  It’s quite an interesting roller coaster ride, to be sure!

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Can AstraZeneca leapfrog the competition in lung cancer AGAIN?

Until recently, we followed the race to market in EGFR T790M lung cancer with Clovis’s rociletinib and AstraZeneca’s osimertinib (Tagrisso).  In phase 2, AstraZeneca caused quite a stir when they came from behind and leapfrogged their biotech rival with a large global randomized controlled trial seemingly out of nowhere.  They never looked back.

Can they do the same thing with durvalumab (Imfinzi), one of their IO therapies that targets PD-L1?

If there’s one thing that many astute observers of the IO space have learned this week it’s that irrational exuberance and the hopeful sentiment that ‘everything’ will just tweak the immune system and work positively no matter what has thankfully come to an end.

We’ve seen several highs and lows already with Merck’s pembrolizumab gaining accelerated approval in 1L NSCLC in allcomers when combined with chemotherapy and AstraZeneca reporting positive phase 3 data for durvalumab in unresectable (stage 3) NSCLC based on meeting the study endpoint (PFS).

There is much to be learned because the nivolumab disaster in 1L NSCLC last year was not a singular aberration given that durvalumab has seen some missteps in the past and even atezolizumab had some unexpected news with urothelial cancer this week (Check out our insights), as compared to chemo in the second line setting. Just like mutations, there will be many more to come, perhaps even some additional ones before the year is out.

What about today’s news from AstraZeneca in unresectable NSCLC?

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On Kite’s cerebral edema and Genentech’s IMvigor211 miss

We’re overdue a roundup and discussion on various key topics of interest to BSB readers, so here goes…

Today’s topics include an in-depth look at the impact of some negative events:

  • Kite and the cerebral oedema death with axi-cel
  • Genentech’s atezolizumab OS miss in urothelial cancer

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