Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘ESMO 2014 Immuno-Oncology’

Madrid – it’s Day 3 of ESMO 2014 (#ESMO14), the annual Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology, and the last day when we will be publishing a live blog from the meeting.

As predicted in our plenary preview, the highlight of the Congress is the overall survival data for the CLEOPATRA trial in HER2+ metastatic breast cancer where the addition of pertuzumab (Perjeta) to trastuzumab (Herceptin) and docetaxel chemotherapy resulted in an additional survival benefit of almost 16 months.

As Dr Sandra Swain noted in her presentation of the data in yesterday’s Presidential Symposium: “the 56.5 month median OS is unprecedented in this indication.”

Note that says MONTHS (almost 5 years) not weeks – it represents the new standard of care that all women with metastatic HER2+ breast cancer should now receive.

The prolonged applause at yesterday’s packed plenary session at ESMO 2014 summed up the feelings felt at hearing this practice changing data; the audience of medical oncologists live for moments like this! It’s truly the sort of stuff that makes you smile and go “Wow.”  We will be writing more about the commercial implications of the CLEOPATRA results and the breast cancer treatment landscape in our post-meeting coverage.

One thing that did capture my attention in the poster area at this year’s ESMO meeting was the bank of digital screens (the size of flat screen TVs) on which attendees could view digital copies of posters. What was even more bizarre was to see people taking pictures of an e-poster.

It will be interesting to see whether paper posters survive, or if they are now one of the last vestiges of the pre-digital era, destined to be phased out like paper cheques. I could see them becoming obsolete at scientific meetings in the not too distant future.

Instead we could have posters published online, with investigators interacting via chat or social media to answer questions from around the world during a dedicated interactive “poster viewing session.” I’ll let the social media gurus ponder that thought, but paperless and digital is the inexorable direction we appear to be going in.

My fervent wish is for conference organizers to ditch Flash-based apps that run on a USB key – these are pretty useless with a tablet – why not have a website with simple digital downloads for the PDFs?  Thankfully, quite a few of the posters achieved this via QR codes on their posters, making them more accessible and easier to read on the go while sparing trees.

 

So what’s happening today at ESMO 2014?

Subscribers can log-in to read which sessions we’ll be at and, wifi permitting, read our thoughts as to what catches our attention during the day. Do follow @MaverickNY on Twitter if you don’t already.

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Madrid – we’re here in Spain for the 2014 Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO). It’s proven to be a challenging and frustrating meeting on multiple levels so far, but hopefully it will redeem itself over the weekend as new data that changes the standard of care for cancer patients is presented.

At the end of the day it’s all about the data and making a difference to the lives of cancer patients.

The highlight of the meeting so far was yesterday’s Roche media briefing and the presentation by Dan Chen MD PhD on how the company is making advances in immunotherapy. We’ll be writing up the data he mentioned as it’s presented at the Congress. The quote he showed from Ira Mellman, PhD about the promise of Immunotherapy is one that resonates with us:

Roche Promise of Immunotherapy Quote

At prior ECCO/ESMO’s we’ve written about the industry satellite symposia that take place, many of which feature world-class experts talking about new drugs in development or the treatment landscape. It’s a big disappointment to be excluded from these events for the first time at #ESMO14, especially as many are educational in content or even organized by Continuing Medical Education (CME) companies.

That said, by dint of the fact ESMO can accept data several months after the ASCO abstracts have closed there is new data to talk about at this meeting and we have a very full schedule of sessions to attend today at the Congress.

If you would like to read more about which sessions we’ll be in and our initial impressions of data during the day, do log-in if you’re a subscriber to keep abreast as the data rolls out.

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