Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘ibrutinib’

Insights on an emerging competitor landscape

It’s Thanksgiving week in the US!

It’s a short week for us here on BSB because it’s Thanksgiving on Thursday followed by Black Friday the next day.

Now to be clear, we’re not having a sale on that day or even on Cyber Monday, but since it’s my birthday tomorrow, we do have a very rare offer (now live) for interested parties.

Check out our pricing page for more details!

Not all of the best drugs are born in the USA, however, as our latest landscape review and ASH23 Preview amply illustrates.

This emerging niche may have a few surprises hidden in it, and not necessarily from the expected quarters.

Here we highlight some abstracts to watch out for in San Diego in the context of recent developments in the space.

We also explain select ones we find intriguing, highlight emerging biotechs to watch out for (and why), plus identify those which could lead to some unexpected future dog drug heaven exits…

To continue reading our latest highlights on oncology new product development including commentary and analysis BSB subscribers can log-in or you can click to access the content.

This content is restricted to subscribers

Targeted Therapy Trials: Why some drug developers keep missing the mark

Post Banksy exhibition – Wellington has now gained an extra cone. It reminds me of what cell/compartment should we be targeting in oncology trials.

Some of the challenges with personalised medicine is we often see companies either treating a targeted therapy in an untargeted fashion thereby diluting the signal or enriching for one not yet conclusively and clinically established.

In both cases, the results are inevitably suboptimal.

Additionally, not all drugs within the same category are the same.  They often have dissimilar scaffolds or target different cells and compartments, all of which can have a positive or negative impact on clinical outcomes.

In our latest post, we explore and discuss emerging insights around strategies undertaken in clinial trials and how they may offer some clues for certain company readouts over the next quarter…

To continue reading our latest highlights on oncology new product development including commentary and analysis, BSB subscribers can log-in or you can click to access the content.

This content is restricted to subscribers

The evolution of blind spots in hematologic malignancies

What’s ahead – a smooth journey or a slow moving train wreck?

One thought struck me quite vividly at ASH – what is old is new again.

This certainly seems to be the case in the niche at the centre of today’s story where we explore new developments emerging in the context of both what’s happening now and also what might lie ahead.

Pharma and biotech companies are always seeking to claim their sparkly new anti-cancer agent is both novel and better than what’s available, meeting some unmet medical need and improving on prior performance etc, but is the truth a reflection of their claims or not?

Positioning, as Ries and Trout taught us all years ago, isn’t so much about what companies try to spin tell us about their product, but rather it’s how a product’s identity is perceived in the mind of potential customers – in this case oncologists – in contrast to other products in the niche.

The way the problem itself is framed also tells us much about how the company view the situation, especially when they conveniently ignore other factors in their story.

There’s a lot going on this particular example, with various types of agents, different mechanisms of action, not to mention a variety of resistance patterns emerging.

Here we explore the latest clinical and translational data and evaluate where the opportunities are going forward…

To continue reading our latest highlights on oncology new product development including commentary and analysis BSB subscribers can log-in or you can click to access the content.

This content is restricted to subscribers

New developments on the lymphoma horizon

Up in the air

Last week and this week have been a crazy time in the cancer conference schedule…

To see what I mean, we attended the AACR specialist meeting on aggressive lymphomas (DLBCL) on Thursday and Friday, then Monday and Tuesday heralded silly o’clock (5am) starts for the 3rd Annual Crick International Cancer Conference in London, now we’re dialed into another AACR specialist event on Tumour Immunology and Immunotherapy, not to mention the Targets/TRIPLE meeting coming up later this week as well.  There were also a couple of excellent lunch time lectures thrown in to the mix as well.

It’s all systems go, Thunderbirds!

Sometimes it’s as though we’re living in a modern Third Life during the pandemic where remote events allow one to easily ‘fly’ around the globe, eagerly dropping into intriguing meetings we likely wouldn’t otherwise be able to get to in person.

The good news is one gets to learn an incredible amount from the sessions and doesn’t accidentally switch into a giant skeletal Zombie avatar (yes I did that once, much to my embarrassment), the bad news is finding the time to actually sit down, think clearly, and write up one’s chicken scratch notes to share with readers.

Before I dash off again to listen to some cool keynotes from Drs Miriam Merad and Crystal Mackall, it’s take to take a deep breath and explore some of the learnings from the Lymphoma meeting as a kind of early ASH21 Preview because there will be important readouts coming out in December…

BSB subscribers can read up on our latest commentary and analysis from the cancer conference season – you can log-in or click to access our latest analysis.

This content is restricted to subscribers

ASH20 Preview – Part 1 on small molecule developments

Pathways to success with small molecule developments

It always amuses me when people describe the small molecule space in lymphomas as ‘neat and ordered’ when in reality, it is anything but…

After all, not all patients respond initially, some cannot tolerate the side effects, and additional mutations can be acquired in response to therapy inducing acquired resistance and sometimes more aggressive disease results.

How do we go about addressing all of these issues in order to improve outcomes further?

We can certainly get a few ideas from the early stage pipelines being evaluated, as well as from the kind of combination regimens currently being developed.  What do the results show?

Then there’s a raft of quite unrelated agents which might be competitive and could usurp existing approaches should they move earlier up in the treatment paradigm.  Plenty of Pharma execs have certainly been caught out in the past not keeping their eyes on the right eight ball.

In our latest ASH20 Preview we highlight a few intriguing abstracts to watch out for at the forthcoming meeting this weekend…

To learn more from our oncology analysis and get a heads up on the latest insights and commentary pertaining to the ASH meeting — including our latest preview of the 2020 abstracts, subscribers can log-in or you can click to gain access to BSB Premium Content.

This content is restricted to subscribers

Pillars of future strategies in tackling aggressive lymphomas

Are new pillars emerging in DLBCL?

It’s time to take a short break from the immunometabolism mini-series and turn our attention to aggressive lymphomas such as diffuse large B cell lymphomas (DLBCL).

This week heralded the latest AACR virtual meeting on Advances in Lymphoma in conjunction with iCML.  There were plenty of science focused talks to listen to and learn from, including new developments in oncogenic targeting.

What if we can learn from what the patients underlying biology can teach us in terms of more rationally designed clinical trials?

We know these are diverse and heterogeneous tumours, but this doesn’t mean we can’t take a more precision medicine approach to treating patients.  What can we learn from early trial readouts and genetic analyses?

It turns out, the answer is quite a bit and more information might be available at the forthcoming ASH meeting, so let’s look at what we can piece together from the available data now…

To learn more from our oncology analysis and get a heads up on insights and commentary emerging on aggressive lymphomas, subscribers can log-in or you can click to gain access to BSB Premium Content.

This content is restricted to subscribers

Lining up new developments in the treatment of GVHD

January is inevitably a month where several worlds collide for us.

There might be initial data from SITC and solid data from ASH that bears the advantage of showcasing in the context of corporate presentations at JPM or company announcements of competitor trial progress.

That’s very much the case today.

Earlier this month, Incyte announced the phase 3 trial miss for their JAK1 inhibitor in acute graft versus host disease (GVHD), perhaps coming as a surprise to a few observers familiar with the positive ruxolitinib result, but not so much to clinicians.

In the latter case, one transplanter in the itacitinib study told me at ASCO that he hadn’t noticed any difference between the steroid only and steroid plus itacitinib arms in his SCT patients. Although admittedly that was a small sample of the whole, it did make me wonder if the trend was repeated then it wouldn’t augur well for the overall readout expected year end. Come January, his observation turned out to be rather prescient.

Incyte are presenting on the JPM20 slate in San Francisco today and we’ll be keen to learn if they have anything to add beyond the terse Jan 2nd announcement on the itacitinib miss.

More importantly though, there are still plenty of other agents in development are being investigated for the treatment of acute GVHD, one of which from Alpine Immune Sciences in Seattle we are particularly enthused about following discussions at the recent ASH meeting last month.

In our latest expert interview, we learn more about that development and explore the context for the evolution of a novel molecule likely not on many people’s radar. If the results turn out to be encouraging that situation could well change in the future.

To learn more from our oncology coverage and get a heads up on our latest insights from the ASH and JPM annual meeting, subscribers can log-in or you can click to gain access to BSB Premium Content.

This content is restricted to subscribers

Novel agents and targets – Part 1

Gems from the poster halls yielded some fascinating novel approaches and new twists on old targets

In this latest post ASH review, we explore some intriguing early developments from several small and large companies alike, explain why they matter and why we should be interested in them.

Sometimes the wisdom of the crowds isn’t always the best indicator of what’s coming down the pike in terms of oncology pipelines.

Part of our cunning plan this year involved going to ‘off Broadway’ sessions where we thought others would skip in favour of a more obviously popular session (the ones in the big halls) and merrily tweet them so you could easily follow along in parallel while the smaller rooms rapidly filled up and quietly closed to those desperately trying to get in late.

Our selections here include several gems from the poster halls (imagine trying to just pick a few highlights out of 4,000 poster options?!), as well as a couple of oral presentations that were missed by many – not surprising given how jam-packed the schedule was with double and even triple choices of selections in parallel to choose from!

Curious to find out more about our latest coverage and get a heads up on additional insights from our post ASH analysis and commentary?Subscribers can log-in or you can click to gain access to BSB Premium Content.

This content is restricted to subscribers

10 early phase ASH19 abstracts with a difference

ASH19 Targeted Therapies Preview: This year’s ASH in Orlando is very much dominated by new developments on the immunotherapy front in terms of both T and NK cell therapies, with some passing interest in BTK inhibitors as well.

It’s not always sunny in Florida…

What about targeted therapies and the science behind those developments?

It was not that long ago that these were the main lifeblood of the meeting across many, if not most, hematologic malignancies. How times have changed!

That said, outside of the CARs (T and NK cells), as well as bispecific immunotherapies, and BTK inhibitors there are still some gems to be found amongst the rest of the ASH19 abstracts.

Here we highlight an additional 10 abstracts involving early pipeline areas that encompass some novel targets, new combination approaches, or emerging science.

Please note that the novel targets can take the form of classic targets or IO ones since they didn’t fit in the prior ASH Preview topics already reviewed under separate cover…

Curious to find out more about these intriguing selections and get a heads up on additional insights from our ASH19 commentary? Subscribers can log-in or you can click to gain access to BSB Premium Content.

This content is restricted to subscribers

New developments in targeting the B cell receptor pathway

Orlando bound for ASH!

What is old is new again…

I have that distinct feeling of deja vu with the ASH asbtract drop yesterday on several fronts. It’s quite a few years now since we wrote about the runners and riders in the BTK/PI3K race to market in CLL and by weird coincidence a topic I was covering by interview yesterday on the RAS pathway came up in one of the first ASH asbtracts I was reading, which was rather spooky. Clearly Halloween came slightly late to Florida this year!

So how do all these disparate topics hang together and why are we excited about a small cap biotech company that is largely under many people’s radar?

They have some unexpected unifying threads…

To learn more from our oncology coverage and get a heads up on insights from the first of first ASH19 Previews, subscribers can log-in or you can click to gain access to BSB Premium Content.

This content is restricted to subscribers

error: Content is protected !!