Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘lung cancer’

An in-depth look at Neon’s updated neoantigen vaccine data

Neon Therapeutics LogoAs we prepare for rolling out some additional expert interviews on a variety of topics together with another mini-series on a tricky target, I wanted to take a moment to explore the Neon Therapeutics data.

Most of the news reports yesterday seemed to be concentrated around a general theme of ’cancer vaccine assist beats immunotherapy drugs alone!’or ‘vaccine boosts Opdivo response in 3 cancers’ … but does the data live up to the breathless hype that ensued? What can we say about the latest clinical update?

As often is the case, the true story around the facts turns out to be much more nuanced and subtle in flavour than the garish headlines might have you believe…

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How understanding patient tumours can help us with future IO trials

In wave 3 of the immuno-oncology surge things have slowed down, partly due to a raft of combination trials yet to read out and partly because the reality has finally hit that tumour heterogeneity means there will be variable patient responses.

Just getting from room to room on time can be a real challenge with 40,000 other people present!

This complexity can come about in many forms… immunosuppression, alterations in gene functions, resistance and immune escape, to name a few.

If we want to help more people respond to these therapies then before we can rush headlong into another round of combination trials, we first have to go back to looking carefully at the underlying biology of the diseases and listen to what the patient’s tumours are telling us in order to fix things.

To accomplish this feat requires considerable time, energy, effort, and a lot of bioinformatics.

In this post we explore five key talks that highlight different aspects of biomarkers of response and mechanisms of resistance.  From there, we may see additional validation and prospective testing to determine how best to segment people so that they have the greatest chance of responding to the therapy administered.

One thing that most people don’t have these days is time, which is how we can help you because here’s a handy short cut to finding out more about five complex and diverse areas on biomarkers or IO resistance quickly and easily…

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Highlights from Plenary Sunday at ASCO19

Chicago: We’ve heard a lot of people say how they think this year’s annual meeting ASCO19 is not as good for data as previous years, and we’re going to have to respectfully disagree.

On Sunday at ASCO19 there was a wealth of data on display in multiple sessions with some noticeable “winners and losers” when it comes to drugs in development.

Dr Hedy Kindler presents phase III POLO trial in Plenary Session at ASCO19. Data simultaneously published in NEJM.

In this post, we’ve some top-line commentary on some of the Sunday sessions we covered, and what caught our attention. As always our detailed analysis comes after the meeting in the “post-game” show.

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Ten Underrated ASCO19 abstracts

Chinatown Chicago

One of the things we try to do on BSB is tread paths that aren’t well travelled.

It’s a bit like coming to Chicago and visiting areas such as Chinatown that are beyond the common tourist sights. It can take a bit of effort, but often delivers a memorable experience in the process.

In this final preview of #ASCO19 before the educational sessions start tomorrow, we’re offering up 10 abstracts that we think are underrated and noteworthy of closer attention.

Like any guide book our recommendations are subjective, but if you’d like to read more then subscribers can login or you can purchase access.

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Challenges of targeting KRAS G12C and why Amgen’s AMG 510 may not be a winner

Henry Moore sculpture – looks like a protein binding pocket!

Cambridge, UK – It’s somewhat ironic that we headed across town today to chat with one of the world’s leading cell biologists on MYC and RAS with a post on KRASG12C inhibitors almost ready in the bag. More on that interview in a future mini-series.

There are a number of nuances and subtleties involved in this niche, which have been somewhat lost in the frantic hype over hope melêe of late.

This review discussing KRAS and various other co-mutations such as LKB1/STK11 is a long and thorough one,, and perhaps rather contrarian in nature.

That said, I do feel that it is very important to highlight a lot of issues that are being ignored in the rush to declare the latest expected winners and losers or even potential blockbusters, if the breathless signals are to be believed.

If nothing else, there are certainly several key issues that could have a bearing on the clinical results in patients that are worthwhile highlighting for discussion and adding to the watch list because some of these factors may well take time to develop.

This is one of those ‘Ground Control to Major Tom – take your protein pills and put your helmet on’ moments… Actually, I may well be needing the helmet as protection if the analysis and commentary turn out to be unpopular!!

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The Future of Cancer Immunotherapy Biomarkers

Continuing our in-depth oncology pathology interview with Dr David Rimm (Yale), we take a look at some of the new data his lab presented in Atlanta, where we are now with TMB as a biomarker, and what the future may hold for cancer immunotherapy biomarkers.

Early morning in Atlanta en route to the GWCC and AACR19

In an engaging discussion, Dr Rimm discussed many of the details behind PD-L1 and TMB in terms of what really matters when thinking about these tests and their practical applications. He also shared his candid thoughts on the lung cancer blood TMB data presented at AACR by Prof Solange Peters.

If you missed the first part of the interview with Dr David Rimm, a leading oncology pathologist at Yale, on the various challenges associated with PD-L1 as a biomarker on tumour and immune cells in triple negative breast cancer than you can catch up and read it here.

The second half of the interview with Dr Rimm focuses on TMB, with some more details on the challenges of reading PD-L1 on immune cells and why that is the case…

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TKIs are still alive and kicking!

While much of the attention and news flow seems to be on the big companies at the JP Morgan Healthcare conference, I also wanted to take time to explore some early oncology developments coming out of small biotech companies.

Next Gen TKIs pointing the way?

TKIs are very much still alive and kicking in many pipelines and no, not everything is all about immuno-oncology, checkpoint blockade or CAR T cell therapies.

We still have to tackle the three horsemen of apocalyse, namely MYC, RAS and TP53, and find ways of making the undruggable finally druggable if we want to succeed in tumours where these driver mutations confer unrelenting oncogenic addiction.

With that in mind, here’s an interview with Dr Charles Baum of Mirati Therapeutics and what they are doing to address some of these challenging issues…

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Iraj Ali leads the way at Achilles Therapeutics

There is a lot of interest of late in targeting neoantigens in cancer therapeutically.

At the recent European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) meeting, we heard Dr Patrick Ott from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute present the latest clinical data for Neon’s cancer vaccine approach (See: interview with Dr Ott).

If you have an interest in neoantigen based cancer treatments, however, then a company on the horizon that we’re excited about is Achilles Therapeutics.

It’s an early stage private UK company, in what is very much still a developing and emerging field. Founded just over two years ago, it has a strong academic pedigree. The scientific co-founders are Professors Karl Peggs, Mark Lowdell, Charles Swanton and Sergio Quezada.

BSB readers will recall our prior interviews with Prof Charlie Swanton FRS (See: here and here), where he talked about the groundbreaking TRACERx study he’s leading, some of the insights it is generating regarding neoantigens, and their importance in cancer evolution.

Achilles Therapeutics was established to commercialise the intellectual property being generated from the TRACERx program.

While in London en-route to ESMO18, the CEO of Achilles Therapeutics, Dr Iraj Ali kindly spoke to BSB about where the company is, and some of its future plans.

From what we heard, it’s definitely a company we can expect to hear a lot more about in the cancer immunotherapy space. Check it out!

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WCLC2018 Roundup of key lung cancer data

Toronto Skyline for WCLC

There’s a lot going on in lung cancer of late, especially with the World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) taking place in Toronto this week.

Following on from our recent preview, it’s time to take a look at the actual data presented and make an assessment on progress with both targeted and immunotherapies.

Here we offer some thoughts and insights on 16 key trials that were presented…

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Preview of WCLC 2018 – what’s new in lung cancer?

Picking out gems from the weeds

It’s time for a pre-meeting preview as we head into the busy Fall cancer conference season.

First up is the IASLC organised World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) being held in Toronto later this month.

We provide a review of some of the key abstracts and highlight some of the interesting topics to watch out for.

Updates will follow later once the data is presented as many of the abstracts are embargoed until the day of presentation.

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