Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘ESMO 2014 Madrid’

ESMO 2014 Cancer Congress Day 1 Live Blog

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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ESMO 2014 Takes Off with Release of Oral Abstracts #ESMO14

The 2014 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress starts this weekend in Madrid, and it finally feels like it is starting to take off with the release today at lunch-time in Europe of the oral abstracts (with the exception of late breakers) to be presented at the meeting.

This blog post is a preview of some of the oral abstracts that caught my attention in a quick preview this afternoon while in Paris en-route to Madrid.

Following its success at ASCO (one subscriber told us it helped him schedule which sessions to attend, another that it enabled him to question his team on what was really hot at the meeting), we’ll be writing a daily blog on Saturday, Sunday and Monday from ESMO.

It’s going to be a live blog in the sense that we plan to regularly update it during the day, and it will include details of which sessions we are in and our initial impressions of data that catches our interest.

More in-depth posts will follow later.

Back to the oral abstracts, subscribers can login below to read about some of the abstracts that have caught my attention. If you are not yet a subscriber, we do hope you will consider joining what is an exclusive club.

You’re in for a treat as in addition to ESMO we will be covering in person two other major medical meetings this fall, including ASH in San Francisco, and (for now) you still get to read all our previous coverage!!

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What’s hot in Melanoma at ESMO 2014 Cancer Congress? #ESMO14

Yesterday’s biotech and pharmaceutical industry news was dominated by the FDA approval of PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) from Merck for the treatment of advanced or unresectable melanoma in patients who no longer respond to other drugs (FDA announcement). Approval was widely expected after the compelling data presented at ASCO 2014 for both pembrolizumab, and another PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor, nivolumab (Opdivo), which was was approved in July in Japan for sale by Ono Pharmaceuticals, a partner of Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS).

It was amusing to see some of the Academic thought leader reactions to the branding of these drugs:

Not sure if Master Yoda would approve of the names, but no one can doubt that the companies in this space are executing and getting it done expeditiously!   We’ve written extensively about the potential of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors from quite a few meeting over the last couple of years so it is good to see them market it market. Melanoma is certainly an area where there is a lot happening in immuno-oncology, and the standard of care will likely be changed by these new agents as they gain approval earlier in the disease and optimal combination strategies are developed that shift the survival curves not only to the right, but also upwards.

BMS recently announced that they had stopped their phase 3 clinical trial of nivolumab first-line clinical trial in untreated BRAF wild type melanoma early in June (press release).  It’s good news for patients with advanced melanoma that there are now new treatment options that will help them live considerably longer.  Skin cancer rates are going up unfortunately, with a third more hospital admissions in the UK over the past five years, which experts believe is down to foreign holidays and the use of sunbeds in tanning salons (BBC Health story).

I expect we’ll hear a lot of excitement at the forthcoming European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) meeting in Madrid about what’s happening in immuno-oncology, along with concerns about how countries will afford these new life-saving medicines.

Subscribers can login below to read the next in our ESMO 2014 preview series on what’s hot in melanoma? If you don’t already have access to Premium Content (available only to subscribers) you can purchase access by clicking on the blue button below. Not only does your purchase give you access to future content for the time period selected, but also (at the moment) the back library of all the posts we’ve written to date, so if you missed the data at ASCO 2014, there’s still time to catch up.

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What’s hot in prostate cancer at ESMO 2014? #ESMO14

We continue our “pre-game” coverage of the 2014 ESMO Cancer Congress in Madrid with a look at what’s hot (or not) in prostate cancer at ESMO.

The treatment of advanced prostate cancer has been revolutionized in the recent years with the approval of new treatment options such as abiraterone acetate (Zytiga), enzalutamide (Xtandi) and radium-223 dichloride (Xofigo).  We’ve also seen some expensive flops in late stage development such as: dasatinib (Sprycel), TAK-700 (Orteronel), custirsen (OGX-011), lenalidomide (Revlimid) and cabozantinib (Cometriq) – all failed to show a significant overall survival benefit in large phase III trials.  In addition, sipuleucel-T (Provenge) although an approved new treatment, is considered by many to be a commercial failure, which highlights that it’s not just about obtaining regulatory approval as a key success factor.

The results of the accrued phase III trial with ipilimumab (Yervoy) in the pre-chemotherapy setting (recall that the ipilimumab post-docetaxel phase III trial was a failure) is eagerly awaited.

Next up in the pipeline we have next-generation androgen receptor (AR) inhibitors such as ODM-201 (Bayer/Orion) and ARN-509 (JNJ/Aragon). Phase III trials with these new AR inhibitors are recruiting for the treatment of non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC).

Other novel compounds of note earlier in development include galeterone for which a phase III trial is planned, and bromodomain inhibitors.

So what’s hot at ESMO 2014 in prostate cancer?

In the second of our preview series we take a critical look at some of the oral presentations in the preliminary ESMO program: what’s a rehash of ASCO 2014, and what new data are worth looking out for when the abstracts are published?

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