Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘FS118’

The Forgotten Checkpoints

Time to shine the light on alternative checkpoint targets

The annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) is always a great place to find hidden gems or off the radar molecules.

This year we’re going to highlight progress on two closely related IO targets to illustrate how perceptions may change from the pummelling several of them received at SITC a couple of years ago.

There’s always a danger in writing off initial very early and immature data based on a limited number of allcomers in relapsed/refractory solid tumour trials, where the focus is more on dose finding and safety signals before proceeding to more clearly defined tumour types in expansion cohorts.

Three or four years on, how are these hidden niches doing and what can we learn from the data to be presented?

To find out, we took a dive unto the breach…

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A twist in the IO tail

This year’s ASCO meeting promises to be an interesting one, to say the least.

In this preview we take a look at the anti-LAG-3 – it’s half a decade on from when we first wrote about this target so how is the competitive landscape doing now?  In addition, the first phase 3 trial has finally read out so there is much to discuss on this front as well.

There’s also — and this is the key part — there’s a not so obvious twist in the long tail with a look at a future pathway to success in terms of how we might continue to improve performance of IO-IO therapies.

The potential answer may well turn out to be a surprising one to many who haven’t been following the field closely…

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How F-star are optimising bispecific antibodies for cancer treatment

Mononclonal and bispecific antibodies in the immuno-oncology space have certainly had a bit of a roller coaster ride over the last couple of years with various safety concerns including cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and even fatalities coming to the fore following clinical holds on various compounds across several quite different compounds.

Barbara Hepworth sculpture at Downing College, Cambridge

As companies work their way through those issues with FDA and other Health Authorities, can we also learn from our previous experiences with checkpoint blockade, immune agonists and other IO targets in order to develop safer products?

One thing has become clear and that’s how important particular aspects of the engineered molecules can make an impact in terms of both safety and efficacy. There are, after all, quite a few factors that can be manipulated or changed to impact performance, much as the design arrangement and composition of various components into a unified whole is crucial to Formula Once racing cars.

In our second part of the bispecific mini-series, we head over to Europe and interview the CSO of a leading company in the IO bispecific space to learn more about these design features and the potential benefits they might induce.

It makes for rather interesting reading when we consider the next wave of IO clinical trials…

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Where’s the next exciting IO target coming from?

Following the success of anti-CTLA4 and PD(L)1 therapies over the last five years or so, there is much time and attention being focused on addressing a key question, namely – what’s the next viable checkpoint target?

There are quite a few possibilities emerging, although to be fair, some of them will no doubt go by the wayside over the next year or two.  There has already been quite a bit of attrition since 2015/16.  Figuring out which ones will be a target versus being a useful marker is also an important aspect of new product development.

Competition is a fine thing – as long as they’re going in the direction you want to go.

For most of our ASCO coverage over the last few years we have tended to include a variety of approaches in the pre-conference Preview series that can run from a tumour type, a up and coming modality, an emerging target, and various other ways of looking at or making sense of the sea of data.

Here, we take a look at an IO target that is receiving much interest and explore what we know and where this might be headed… and ask whether the early promise is living up to the billing in practice?

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