Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘immunotherapy’

AACR18 Preview 5: is TGFβ an emerging cancer target?

Finding patterns in the mosaic of cancer biology

In our fifth AACR preview of the annual meeting of 2018, we switch directions from a tumour type to explore a novel and emerging pathway of interest.

Each year we pick a different target to explore; this year it’s the turn of TGFβ.

There’s a lot going on here, both preclinically and clinically that should interest BSB readers who are keen to see new developments in the IO landscape.

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AACR18 Preview 4: a look at new developments in a key tumour type

As part of our annual AACR Preview series, we usually explore new developments in at least one tumour type and one new target of interest.

Bladder cancer cells infected with BCG Source: Dr M Glickman, MSK

This year is no different and there were plenty of opportunities to discuss.

We have already covered lung cancer given the intensive interest in the phase 3 trials being presented in the 1L setting, but I also wanted to cover another key tumour type that is generating a lot of keen interest in clinical development for numerous reasons.

Tomorrow we will be exploring a cancer target in detail, but there is much to cover in terms of new preclinical and clinical developments in certain carcinomas.

Without much ado about nothing since there is plenty of important things to discuss, so here’s a look at our second tumour type to watch out for given the sheer numbers of trials, including a variety of different targets to think about.

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Can we predict early treatment discontinuation on immune checkpoint therapy?

One of the many challenges we have seen with cancer immunotherapy and immune checkpoint blockade in particular is the thorny issue of how long should patients be treated for?

To be fair there are some studies testing a limited time period, but most are open ended in that patients are treated until progression or severe toxicities prevent continuation, whichever comes first.

Ovarian cancer TME Source: NCI

Is this the optimal approach though, especially if people receive the benefit and any more is superfluous, thereby increasing the twin burdens of clinical and financial toxicity.

Are there indicators that predict early discontinuation?

After all, if oncologists were aware of those factors then careful monitoring will be helpful in looking out for the warning signs.

Without a doubt, this is going to be a long road ahead and the path may be paved with different indicators depending on the tumour type involved. It could also become more complex as we move from monotherapy to doublets to regimens, which also increases the risk of clinical and financial toxicities.

We have to start somewhere and I’m delighted to say that I came across some elegant research that explored this issue and came up with some prediction factors of relevance. As a bonus, they actually make sound and intuitive sense too.

Here we describe the important study and look at the prediction factors that emerge…

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New Horizons in Pancreatic Cancer

MD Anderson Cancer Center

Houston, Texas – Advanced pancreatic cancer is a very tough disease to treat, so it is not surprising that by 2030 it will be the No. 2 cancer killer in the United States, according to one of the speakers at the recent 1st Annual Symposium on Pancreatic Cancer held at the MD Anderson Cancer Center earlier this week.

There’s also high unmet medical need for new effective therapies for pancreatic cancer, which is why events that promote collaboration and cross-fertilization among leading experts are important.

I found out about the event from Twitter thanks to tweets by Dr Anirban Maitra (@aiims1742) who shares a lot of information. Do follow him if you don’t already.

Thank you to everyone at MD Anderson for putting on a panel of excellent speakers. The meeting was well worth attending and I hope it will become an annual event.

In this post I’ve captured some of the key take-homes that I took from the symposium.

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ESMO Day 3 Highlights and Lowlights

Sunday is usually a good day at ESMO congresses and 2017 was no different in that respect.

It does feel weird, however, to be seeing tweets about data from some studies hours before they are presented in that day’s Presidential Symposium, something oncologists attending have started to notice too:

Yesterday we had encouraging readouts from PACIFIC and FLAURA trials to discuss, so what’s in store for today? Are they mostly highights or lowlights?

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Can we use immunotherapy to treat or delay Alzheimers Disease?

Berlin Wall Museum

Preserved section of the Berlin Wall

I have a personal interest in Alzheimers Disease, my mother Audrey died from it three years ago back in 2014.

Since then, I’ve watched with fascination and excitement the progress made in using the body’s own immune system against cancer. There’s still a long way to go, but a revolution in treating cancer is underway, as we’ve been documenting on this blog and the Novel Targets Podcast.

In recent years in the United States we’ve also seen grand initiatives targeting cancer such as Vice President Biden’s Moonshot, as well as large philanthropic support e.g. the creation of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

Sadly, we’ve not seen the same level of interest in targeting dementia or funding research into new treatments for Alzheimers disease.

In the United States, the media doesn’t talk much about Alzheimers (compared to cancer), unlike for example, in the United Kingdom where any promising data is heralded with headlines that frequently deliver “hype over hope.”

Alzheimers is an insidious disease that removes the ability of the person to advocate and care for themselves, instead placing the burden on families and caregivers, often for extended periods of time. Ultimately many people end up in supported living or nursing homes.

As we debate healthcare insurance in the United States, who is going to pay for the cost of dementia care as the population grows older? Caring for dementia is arguably the greatest public health challenge that the western world faces.

Which is why I was excited to talk with a researcher who is thinking outside of the box and leading the way in how we could use our immune system against Alzheimers.

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Things we need to think about ahead of ASCO17

We are finally at the end of our AACR 2017 post meeting analysis and coverage with the final interview from Washington DC on deck. Timely wise, it’s actually quite a relevant one given the news last week on mixed results with clinical trials involving checkpoint blockade.

Dr Jeff Engelman AACR17

Just as we learned that immunotherapy agents can stop working over time, as well as the majority of patients don’t respond at all to begin with, there are concerted research efforts ongoing by both academia and industry to explore mechanisms of immune escape, resistance and modulating the tumour microenvironment.

Here we explore the intersection of targeted therapy-IO combinations, resistance and immune escape, transcription factors and other interesting new areas of development.

Also included is commentary from a leading KOL, which is NOT available on the recent Novel Targets podcast episode on overcoming immunotherapy resistance – readers should check that out first before reading this article, as this is more advanced.

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Reflections on Saturday at AACR17

Waiting in line for the White House Tour

The 2017 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Washington DC (Twitter #AACR17) officially starts tomorrow, but today was a day full of educational sessions and workshops.

After a day of rain yesterday, it was good to have a dry day for the start of the world’s leading cancer science meeting.

In this post we offer some top-line commentary on those educational sessions we attended; the choice reflects personal interests or current fetishes.

By definition, there is far more excellent research at AACR than we can possibly cover on the blog; so we encourage you to check out the AACR webcasts if you have a specific interest or want to check out a particular session.

We’d also like to congratulate AACR for moving with the times and allowing personal photography and the sharing of content on social media, except where a slide or presentation says “Do Not Post.”

The few slides that I saw today that had “Do Not Post” showed unpublished data. Our longstanding unwritten policy has been not to tweet or share on social media data that clearly states it is unpublished, so this was not an unreasonable request and one we heartily concur with in principle.

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HalioDX CEO Vincent Fert outlines commercial strategy for Immunoscore in US and Europe

Marseille – When it comes to biotech clusters for immunotherapy, Marseille, the second city of France, has to be right up there along with Boston, San Francisco in the United States and the “Golden Triangle” of Oxford, Cambridge and London in the UK.

ciml40I’m here in Marseille thanks to an invitation from Professor Eric Vivier to attend the 2-day scientific conference that the Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy (CIML) have organized as part of their fortieth anniversary celebrations (1976-2016). It starts today (Twitter #CIML40).

Surrounding CIML in the picturesque national park (Parc National des Calanques), just outside the city, are innovative biotech companies focused on immunology and cancer immunotherapy. The combination of companies, research institutes and academic hospitals in the region has created the Marseille Immunopôle (@Immunopole). The area should already be on your radar if you are following the field.

haliodx

Yesterday, I visited HalioDx (@HalioDx), a start-up company a stone’s throw from CIML. It was founded in 2015 to commercialize Immunoscore, a novel biomarker in colon cancer that can be used to stage patients based on their immune response.

Vincent Fert CEO HalioDx

Vincent Fert, CEO of HalioDx

We’ve been following the work of Dr Jérôme Galon on the blog for some time (see posts from European Cancer Congress 2015 and ASCO 2016), so it was a pleasure to talk to Vincent Fert, CEO (pictured right) and co-founder of HalioDx, about his plans to commercialize Immunoscore in Europe and the United States.

If you want to know more about the science behind Immunoscore, do listen to the recent Novel Targets Podcast (@TargetsPodcast) interview with Dr Galon, where he talks about the data he presented at ASCO 2016.

The field of cancer immunotherapy is making rapid progress. It is already reaching the point where — in order to optimize the chance of a durable response — doctors need to know what a patient’s underlying immune response to cancer is, in order to direct therapy.

Vincent Fert and HalioDx are leading the way with the commercialization of a new diagnostic approach for colon cancer based on a patient’s immune profile. He kindly spoke with BSB about his plans for the company and making Immunoscore available in the US and Europe.

haliodx-marseille-luminy

This is the first post in a mini-series from the Marseille Immunopôle.

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Biotech Strategy Blog Mailbag Monday

Lindt Gold BunnyWhat questions are BSB readers sending in to us this month?

I wanted to take a moment out of AACR Previews and catch up on some recent news that is intriguing or perplexing subscribers. All questions are anonymous and in many cases, the same questions were actually sent in by multiple people, a testament to what’s top of mind in oncology lately.

Today, we cover a Q&A on a variety of topics on Kite Pharma (the Genentech collaboration and their TCR in solid tumours), a discussion about EGVRvIII in glioblastoma, and Gilead’s woes with idelalisib and an IO pipeline.

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