Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘iNKT cells’

What’s Being Lost in Translation?

Expected the unexpected: if it can snow in Florida, there’s hope for GI cancers yet!

The surge in ADC licensing deals from China has created a crowded development landscape where careful phase 1 evaluation risks being sacrificed for speed.

While the temptation to treat ADC development like traditional chemotherapy trials is strong, this approach overlooks crucial differences in therapeutic window optimisation, target expression validation, and resistance mechanisms. The recent flurry of ADCs (plain vanilla or Frankenstein versions) particularly highlights this challenge with multiple candidates racing through development, some with limited understanding of optimal dosing, target expression cutoffs, or sequencing strategies.

The following analysis examines five emerging new agents across ADCs, antibodies, and cell therapies where success may depend less on deal timing and more on thoughtful early phase development, particularly around patient selection and therapeutic index characterisation.

The historical pattern of failures in late stage oncology trials often traces back to inadequate phase 1/2 groundwork rather than target biology per se, making this distinction crucial for the field.

In this article it’s time to frame some specific examples, while highlighting the broader industry context and common development pitfalls…

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Emerging biotechs and novel IO concepts to watch out for

There are plenty of innovative and creative ideas coming to the fore in oncology R&D of late, many of which are quite different twists on what we currently have available.

Early oncology development is rarely plain sailing – some fly like the wind, others fall over

As Dr Dan Chen of Engenuity noted in his talk in the SITC22 preconference session on lessons learned from IO combinations, if we want to cut to the chase when looking at emerging agents then we need to ask ourselves whether any of the concepts are seeking to address the limitations of the current products, particularly those associated with either primary or secondary immune escape.

After all, repeating the same old, same old is probably not going to move the needle in any meaningful way.

In thinking about which biotechs to pick for the annual SITC review, I also asked myself a couple of additional provocative questions – how are they distinguished from the competition, and in what way are they particularly compelling?

We’ll discuss these as we go through the selections, which includes both some solid developments as well as others we ought to be much more wary of offering too much hype over hope…

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What to watch at AACR22 on NK cells

I confess in the days when I watched TV if I was short on inspiration then I’d check out the TV guide in a newspaper to see what they recommended for the evening’s viewing.

Such guides are by definition, the eclectic, subjective choice of the reviewer and they are designed to showcase programs catching their interest and, in the process, persuade you to see something you might otherwise not have watched.

This post is written in the same spirit.

For the past several years now we’ve been writing about the potential of harnessing the unique properties of Natural Killer (NK) cells for cancer immunotherapy and even produced a podcast episode on it back in 2018!

Since the publication of a landmark NEJM paper on CAR modified NK cells in 2020, we’ve seen even more interest flourish in the field.

This year’s annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) has something for everyone involved in cancer research. It’s a veritable smorgasbord and just like watching TV there are multiple channels simultaneously going on over several days.

In this post we’ve taken a look at some of the NK cell presentations at AACR22 which caught our attention and why. You can find all of our ongoing AACR22 coverage here.

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The Future of Cell and Gene Therapies

Who’s going to be flying high in the cell and gene therapy niche and why?

It’s time to switch horses and start thinking about cell therapies again…

Essentially what we have on deck today is a bakers dozen i.e. thirteen different categories exploring the future of gene therapy and cell therapy approaches and how they might make an impact in the medium term future.

There will likely be many others coming along too – something we plan to write about from the upcoming ASGCT meeting next month.

If we take stock there’s plenty of cool or innovative ideas already being explored or about to make a splash, including one company many BSB readers may not have heard about plus a new biotech company coming out of stealth mode… who are they and what are they all about?

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Novel approaches to cell therapies – Part 1

In the first of a two part series on chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) cells, we take a look at some novel developments, not all of which are T cell based.

Can switchable CARs make a lasting impact?

Increasingly researchers are exploring the potential for novel approaches with other immune cells, as well as ways to potentially make cell therapies safer for patients using switchable technology.

What’s the skinny on these approaches and do they have some legs for the long term?

Here we take a look at some innovative ideas which caught our attention – not all of which may have a long term future…

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5 early developments to watch out for at AACR21

In our latest AACR21 Preview — you can check out the whole series here — we turn to some intriguing new product developments coming along the pike.

For many scientists, the lure of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting isn’t about the glossy phase 1 or 2 clinical readouts, but rather about the early science.

We can think about questions such as are there any new competitors coming along in a particular niche, are there novel targets of interest which can be drugged, what’s rising in the cell therapy space, are there other cells which are seeing interest, and so on.

We cover all of these and more in this review…

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Alternative cell therapy approaches to tackling cancer

In the fourth part of our mini-series in novel targets and agents in development we turn to novel cell therapy approaches that are perhaps under the radar for many observers.

While these might seem bleak times during a pandemic, there’s always a silver lining somewhere

While much attention has been focused on antigen loss or downregulation of the target wih adoptive cell therapies, research continues to evaluate various solutions to the problem.

One obvious way is to develop dual CARs or target multiple antigen targets of relevance to the tumour type being investigated.

There are other potential solutions being looked at, both in preclinical animal models and in translational work using cells from people treated with HSCT or CAR T cell therapies.

Here, we look at an alternative immunotherapy approach, which with time may have utility in both hematologic malignancies, as well as solid tumours…

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9 up and coming non-T cell based immunotherapy approaches

Orlando

Yesterday we looked at ten innovative approaches centred around T cell-based developments emerging from the American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting that is taking place in Orlando next month.

Let’s not forget, however, that there are also other immune cells, including NK cells and quite a few others, which can be manipulated into cancer therapeutics for the treatment of hematologic malignancies.

Some of these are intriguing early preclinical research that may form next generation technologies in the future, while others take the form of up and coming early clinical data that readers may be interested to learn more about.

Here we highlight nine emerging immunotherapy approaches to consider that don’t involve T cells…

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CICON18 Day 1 Highlights

Heading Downtown for #CICON18

New York – It’s always good to see cancer researchers receive a Nobel prize.

I don’t think anyone at #CICON18 was surprised to see Dr Jim Allison as a recipient.  I’m delighted to see Prof Honjo was also recognised too, as he discovered the PD-1 checkpoint target:

Moving on it’s time for some highlights of the first day of the meeting – a couple of interesting findings emerged from the proceedings…

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Preview of CICON18 – Part 2

Increasingly we are seeing more research on the inflammatory status of the tumour microenvironment (TME) in recent years, not to mention the impact of cytokine and chemokine signalling pathways, and how they can be manipulated therapeutically.

There’s also a much wider range of novel immunotherapy approaches being evaluated such as checkpoints, CARs and vaccines with respect to both T and NK cell therapies. There are also a few other immune cells being targeted for developmental therapeutics.

As part of the ongoing CICON18 Preview series, we take a look at what’s in store and why the latest ten we’ve highlighted matter in the broader context of the evolving landscape…

For those who missed it, Part 1 can be found here.

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