Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘immunosuppression’

Exploring unexpected targets in brain tumours

Marooned or heading off somewhere exciting?

As we head into the long August Bank Holiday and Labor Day celebrations, I wanted to offer some stimulating, yet thought provoking topics for readers to consider.

Make no mistake the food for thought ideas described are not lightweight per se, but may offer some useful insights on glioblastoma with implications for exploring future research angles.

There are also two bonuses included: first up is some commentary on TIGIT and lastly, we highlight an impressive new tool that’s available to interested and enlightened companies, which may be of particular interest to our Pharma readers who gather market sentiments.

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Tackling a hostile tumour microenvironment on multiple fronts

It’s time to talk about new developments in immunosuppression and some of the different ways in which companies are tackling the hostile tumour microenvironment.

Obviously there are many potential culprits from neutrophils, macrophages, myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), adenosine, Siglec–15, and TGFβ to mention a few. There are others to consider as well, as we discuss with our latest experts in the hotseat.

Over the next couple of posts we will be highlighting different pipeline agents, along with in-depth expert interviews to explore some intriguing early or emerging approaches. Some are in preclinical getting ready to enter the clinic, while others are already being evaluated in phase 1/2 studies.

In this example of the genre, we had fun catching up on a biotech we first talked to a couple of years ago about their fledgling pipeline. How is doing now and what are they up to?

BSB subscribers can read more on our latest look at a clinical stage biotech company active in the cancer immunosuppression space – you can log-in or click to access our ongoing oncology coverage.

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ESMO19 Preview 3 – Tackling immune suppression

It has to be said that this is one of the most jam-packed ESMO schedules that I’ve seen in a while!

Usually one has a few sessions they are interested in and lots of ‘free’ time to conduct interviews. That is definitely not the case this year with even parallel sessions at the same time as the Presidential (plenary) symposia, making for some very hard choices that need to be made.

Barcelona

Immune suppression can take the form of many targets – just taking out one of them may not be enough

As we start to see a renewed focus evolve on how to make immunotherapy work in or help more patients, there has been much attention on what we can learn from the addition of chemotherapy, additional checkpoint targets, immune agonists, various innate targets from KIR and NK cell checkpoints to TLRs and STING, neoantigen and dendritic cell vaccines, a telephone directory of cytokines, oncolytic viruses, etc etc to name a few, all with varying degrees of success.

What about exploring the inhibitory factors that induce immune suppression?  If we can reduce the cloaking and hostile tumour microenvironment, would that lead to more effectiveness with checkpoint blockade?  Maybe, maybe not.

In principle, it’s a sound idea yet these factors are both broad and incredibly varied in scope as a topic as to seem overwhelming at first.  The good news is that there are some emerging targets and hints of activity to come that are slowly beginning to emerge, making ESMO a good place from which to take stock of some new early stage developments.

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Are 𝞬𝝳 T cells immuno-suppressive and should we delete them?

We’re continuing our series following the development of novel cutting edge strategies targeting gamma delta (𝞬𝝳) T cells, with a look at the two approaches Puretech Health are pursuing based on the research of Dr George Miller (NYU Langone).

Data was presented at #AACR19 for a first-in-class immunotherapy targeting immune-suppressive delta 1 containing 𝞬𝝳 T cells and one targeting Galectin–9.

Drs Panchenko and Filipovic at their AACR19 poster

We recently spoke with Dr Aleksandra Filipovic, therapeutic lead for oncology at Puretech Health, she’s pictured right with Dr Tatyana Panchenko from NYU Langone at their AACR poster.

Dr Filiopovic told BSB that Puretech are looking for the next big IO breakthrough:

“We looked at this landscape and the massive amount of trials going on. We said ok, if we’re going to go into the space of immuno-oncology, what is it that we need to do differently in order to, upfront, try and ensure that we’re going after targets which could be the next PD–1. Our thinking went along the lines that we would really need to identify those next checkpoints, those next foundational modulators of the immune system.”

This is the first of two interviews from #AACR19 on novel strategies to target 𝞬𝝳 T cells, an emerging area that companies are looking at with both antibody and adoptive cellular therapy approaches. Do check out our previous mini-series if you missed it.

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Five early emerging trends to note from AACR19

Atlanta: There is no shortage of innovative and potentially ground-breaking science on display at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) that’s currently taking place in Atlanta.

AACR19 Poster Hall melee yesterday afternoon

What is noticeable this year is the large number of scheduling conflicts, i.e. interesting sessions or symposia all going on in parallel and that’s not including the poster sessions, where much of the early work is presented – you could spend much of the meeting in the poster hall alone!

It’s impossible for any outlet to do the meeting justice, so our selection of topics is subjective in nature.

We’ll be posting interviews and more in-depth pieces later, but in this post we take a look at what stood out for us in the Friday/Saturday education sessions we attended and in Sunday oral symposia.

As Frank Sinatra famously sang, “The best is yet to come,” with a tsunami of presentations and posters slated to be heard over the next few days.

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Targeting immunosuppression and other stories – are we ready for prime time yet?

View from Stars and Stripes life guard hut on Miami Beach

Our latest article is part Journal Club entry for August, part look back at some data from AACR and ASCO plus a part look at a relatively new target from an obscure biotech that caught my attention recently.

To do this, we pose three critical questions and attempt to answer them.

The targets and markers chosen for review here may well surprise a few people.

If we want to understand how to help more people respond to cancer immunotherapy then we need o understand the underlying biology and the tumour microenvironment in greater depth than we currently do.

Gradually, we are getting more clarity on a few areas as new data is being published…

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