Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘enzalutamide’

Today’s post highlights the lessons learned as part of the trial and tribulations associated with oncology R&D, including a large dash from vibe of the famous British sitcom, “The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.”

Madrid city centre at dusk

No matter what industry outsiders think, drug development very rarely goes in a straight line from A-Z since there are often many expected – and even unexpected – twists along the way.

The company we’re focusing on is Essa Pharma, and boy, do they have some challenges and unexpected plot twists as part of their corporate DNA!

I often hear from artistic friends paraphrasing Ursula Le Guin that it’s all about the journey, not the destination.

Except in business and especially in Pharmaland, however, it is entirely about the destination and how you get there doesn’t matter so much. After all, if a small biotech doesn’t get a product in development over the finish line (aka approval) and become a commercial success then it’s game over for everyone involved.

This is one of those kind of stories.

A tale of belief, tension, tenacity, re-tooling, and finally, renewed hope…

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With two oncology data drops running this week in the ASCO Plenary session plus the GU sympoisum, it’s time to switch our attention from cell therapy novelties to new developments in targeted therapies.

In this discussion, we take a look at an important phase 3 trial readout being presented this week in metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).

For far too long the GU oncologist’s choices were pretty much limited to androgen receptor (AR) antagonists such as enzalutamide and abiraterone and chemotherapy (docetaxel and cabazitaxel).

Then along came PARP inhibitors such as olaparib, rucaparib, and more recently niraparib, largely limited to men with homologous recombination repair deficiencies who had received prior therapy, with the first two receiving full or accelerated approval in first half of 2020 on the basis of the PROfound and TRITON2 studies, respectively.

The third PARPi is further behind the others, finally just publishing their phase 2 monotherapy data from GALAHAD earlier this month.

Now there’s a new phase 3 data readout to explore and consider in the context of earlier in the disease setting…

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We’ve heard much about the role of PARP inhibitors in ovarian and breast cancers where there is sensitivity to these agents in women with DNA damage repair defects, but what about advanced prostate cancer?

Following the publication of the phase 2 trial TOPARP in the NEJM in 2015, we’ve been eagerly awaiting the outcome of a series of phase 3 studies with these agents in metastatic prostate cancer in multiple different lines of therapy.

Dr Oliver Sartor at ESMO19

Following on from our daily coverage from ESMO in Barcelona last week where we looked at some of the pros and cons as they appeared during the presentation by Dr Maha Hussain (Chicago) from the PROfound trial, it’s time to share some expert opinions.

The study she presented evaluated the PARP inhibitor, olaparib, versus next generation AR anatgonists abiraterone or enzalutamide in refractory metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).  Interestingly, it soon became rapidly clear that many casual observers missed some important nuances from the myriad of top-line news articles and summaries.

The devil, as always, is in the details.

To further our readers education on this important topic, BSB interviewed a prostate cancer thought leader, Dr Oliver Sartor (right) for his personal perspectives and look at the take homes from the lens of an experienced triallist in this niche.

Let’s see what he had to say about PARP inhibitors in advanced prostate cancer, as well as the PROfound and TRITON studies…

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At one point not too distant in the past, all the big news seemed to flow out of advanced prostate cancer with abiraterone and enzalutamide vying for attention, followed by occasional news on ARN–509, ODM–201, galeterone (remember that one from Tokai with all the AR-V7 kerfuffle?), radium Ra–223 dichloride, cabazitaxel, denosumab, ipilumumab, PROSTVAC, brachyury, and a few others. Predictably, not all were successful, and the count is still out on some.

San Francisco

In our latest conference coverage, we take a look at what we can learn from riding the prostate cancer train at ASCO GU ahead of the presentations in San Francisco tomorrow.

We will be updating this review as more data become available with the presentations, so do grab a cup of joe and settle down for some interesting reading ahead of time… this should get you all up to speed on the journey there!

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San Francisco

San Francisco – Yesterday at the ASCO Genitourinary Symposium, Dr Kim Chi noted that emerging data suggests that ctDNA appears to give better picture of tumour mutations than biopsy and can also monitor tumour load. This is an encouraging development that may facilitate increased use of the diagnostic as a helpful biomarker of response in clinical trials with immune checkpoint blockade.

We also know that prostate cancer sits firmly in the middle of the now famous Alexandrov and colleagues tumour mutation burden (TMB) analysis, but what factors are important in our understanding of the underlying biology of the disease?

There are many inhibitory factors exerted on the tumour microenvironment and thase may vary not only by tumour type e.g. renal cell carcinoma may have a greater influence from VEGF than prostate cancer, but also in individual patients.

With this in mind, I wanted to explore some new combination data being presented at the meeting, as well as look aspirationally to some potential combinations currently in development that may have escaped many people’s attention.

In this post, we take a look at current and future implications that keen observers should be watching out for…

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Red Bull Air Race NYC

San Francisco: Today at the 2018 American Society for Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancer Symposium, commonly known as ASCO GU (Twitter #GU18), Dr Eric Small (UCSF) will present the results of the SPARTAN phase 3 trial (Link to abstract):

SPARTAN, a phase 3 double-blind, randomized study of apalutamide (APA) versus placebo (PBO) in patients with nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (nmCRPC).

Despite the fact this is a positive trial and apalutumide will most likely gain regulatory approval for this indication in the United States, the data presented at ASCO GU is not a winner when viewed in the broader context of the prostate cancer landscape.

BSB subscribers can login to understand why, and also gain the perspective of a global thought leader familiar with both the SPARTAN and PROSPER trial data.

On a day when J&J have just announced that abiraterone (in combination with prednisone) provides a new treatment option for patients with metastatic high-risk castration-sensitive prostate cancer based on the results from the randomised phase 3 LATITUDE study, everyone’s attention is focused on the battle between SPARTAN (apalutamide) and PROSPER (enzalutamide) in M0 disease.

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The abstract has just been published for the phase 3 PROSPER trial to be presented later this week at ASCO GU in San Francisco (#GU18).

@Daniel_J_George

PROSPER: A phase 3, randomized, double-blind, placebo (PBO)- controlled study of enzalutamide (ENZA) in men with nonmetastatic castration resistant prostate cancer (M0 CRPC).

Earlier today Dr Daniel George (pictured), one of the investigators, kindly spoke to BSB about how he interprets the trial data and what it may mean for the treatment of prostate cancer.

Dr George (@Daniel_J_George) is Professor of Medicine and Surgery, and Director of Genitourinary Oncology at the Duke Cancer Institute.

Should men with non-metastatic CRPC receive enzalutamide in order to PROSPER?

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Dr James Gulley is Chief of the Genito-Urinary malignancies branch and Director of the Medical Oncology service at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the National Institutes of Health. He’s a world-leading GU cancer expert and at the forefront of pioneering research to make cancer immunotherapy work in prostate cancer.

We last spoke to him at ASCO 2015 (See post: The future of prostate cancer immunotherapy).

Almost two years on, and new research by Dr Gulley and colleagues from the NCI shows that the STING pathway may have an important role to play in prostate cancer immunotherapy. Activation of this pathway through a novel mechanism could turn a cold non-inflamed tumor into a more inflamed or hotter one in men with advanced prostate cancer. How cool is that?!

At the 2017 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) that was recently held in Washington DC, Dr Gulley graciously spoke to BSB about some of the novel trials that are underway at the NCI, with the aim of making cancer immunotherapy work in men with advanced prostate cancer.

Dr Jim Gulley, NCI at AACR17

This is the seventh expert interviews in our series from AACR17 where we explore the conundrum:

How does Dr Gulley plan to light the immune camp fire in prostate cancer?

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After an entertaining morning yesterday – two interviews completed and wrong conference centre visited (yes really, there’s always a first for everything!) by lunchtime, things thankfully settled down.

Friday, for the uninitiated, is company symposia day – the equivalent of ASCO’s Super Friday. I rarely attend these in Europe, as they are more about corporate messages than what I call “proper CME”, meaning scientific or clinical fair balance and independence. This is one area where Europe still has a-ways to catch up the US on.

Before anyone gives me a hard time on this, I’ll never forget a vendor telling me a couple of years ago that I would love a particular symposia as he had personally ‘supervised and written’ the slides for the event, thus ‘ensuring’ it would be excellent while persuading me to attend against my better judgment. Naturally, I hated it – too many company messages or perspectives, and not ones I agreed with either – and left early, sadly disappointed.

We did attend the first ECC Press Briefing Friday afternoon with Drs Sant, Chouieri and Sharma. The last two authors presented on the metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) data after initial therapy, which is being presented in the Presidential Symposium on Saturday morning. It was quite an eye opener in many ways, with some subtleties well worth exploring in additional analysis and discussion.

Beyond the obvious highlights of the day for Saturday (nivolumab and cabozantinib data in mRCC), the first official day here is pretty jam packed with lots of other data to ruminate over.  Throughout the day, we’ll be adding additional notes, commentary and insights as the data emerges – and wifi permits.

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In today’s post, it’s time to address a bunch of questions we’ve received over the last few weeks from subscribers about the latest and – not so greatest – in cancer research.

Chicago City View

ASCO 2015 Chicago

Sometimes these queries are fairly straightforward to answer, other times requires some sleuthing and hunting down thought leaders for some additional context and insights… For obvious reasons, these folks are best caught in person at cancer conferences such as AACR and ASCO.  The feedback isn’t always sparkly and positive though, it can also be gloom and doom, just like the inclement weather!

So here goes, questions on the following are covered in the article below:

  • Neratinib
  • Bavituximab
  • Gilead
  • Enzalutamide
  • MDSCs

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