Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘Melanoma’

ESMO17 Day 4 Highlights and Lowlights

Greetings from continental Europe!

ESMO Madrid Conference Center

We have a LOT of data to discuss today from ESMO and have also included an interview with one expert that was conducted under embargo on an important topic.

Of course, the usual in-depth analyses on new targets and early compounds in development will duly follow in the post-meeting output, but there’s plenty of practice changing data to consider and also some results that may trigger alternative thinking from where we are now.

We also received questions from BSB readers on certain trials and some of these are answered in today’s update on the road…

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AACR 2017 Preview 1

In the first of our 2017 AACR annual meeting previews, we are taking a look at a particular theme that we expect to hear much more about over the coming months.

Washington DC cherry blossoms

In order to make something better than what it is, we first need to step back and understand the various factors that underpin it. To do otherwise is akin to the proverbial throwing of mud at the wall and hoping something sticks.

Trying things out just because they seem like a good idea or that’s all you have in your pipeline doesn’t really inspire the greatest of confidence in a clinical trial’s success.

This is also where several factors including tumour biology, cancer genomics, biomarkers, and acquired resistance can intersect to produce some intriguing results.

Please note that our Conference Preview series are never random.  When looking at the abstracts as a whole, we try to organise them around a particular scientific theme or a tumour type. The idea here is that it makes it much easier for our readers to see and grasp emerging concepts and trends. It’s also a deeper dive into the whys; things happen for a reason – why is that?  What can we learn from the process?

These are also not random selections from say, publicly traded or private companies, big or small caps.

It does take more time to roll thematic articles out, but the advantage is that over the course of the next two weeks readers will be better equipped to get a grip on the meeting ahead of the event.

Indeed, a couple of subscribers even told us last year they learned more from our in-depth previews than they did from the meeting itself because it’s easy to miss the important things or become ‘bigly overwhelmed’ as one bio fund manager explained to me.

Strategically, we’ve taken one specific theme today and explored what we can expect based on what we have learned to date, and looked at how that will potentially impact a few things going forward.

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ESMO16 Preview 1 Novel Target Data Offers Potential to Overcome Barriers to Cancer Drug Resistance

September 1st… as the hot summer floats away from London town and cooler autumn days draw in, it’s time to think about the upcoming fall cancer conference season – it’s quite a busy one this year!

In the coming weeks, I will be rolling out our series on the ESMO 2016 Previews (Twitter #ESMO16) and taking a more in-depth look at various topics of interest. The Copenhagen meeting is later than usual and also more compressed, with numerous sessions now held simultaneously. It used to be that you could take a break between key sessions, but not any more – there’s a lot going on this year.

View of Thames BarrierOne of the things that jumped out to me from a preliminary review of this year’s hectic ESMO program is an interesting novel target that had some early preclinical data at AACR, but that sadly got lost in the tsunami of data there.

It is good to have that reminder and be able to return to it in the context of broader data because overcoming barriers to drug resistance with targeted therapies is still an important issue that is worth researching.

You likely won’t see it in many analyst reports or previews, however, although it’s a hidden gem of great interest and well worth exploring in terms of what we know so far. This means that readers will be both prepared and intrigued – don’t be surprised to hear about some BD&L deals in this niche in the future.

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Did the epacadostat combo data disappoint at SITC?

SITC Day 3 Highlights

There were a couple of late breakers presented in the oral session yesterday that are worth discussing for several reasons, not least the controversy surrounding the stock action afterwards.

Dr Tara Gangadhar (U Penn) presented epacadostat, Incyte’s IDO1 inhibitor, in combination with pembrolizumab, Merck’s anti-PD1 inhibitor in a phase 1/2 trial with selected solid tumours.

Will combining these agents lead to better responses and outcomes than with pembrolizumab alone?

Dr Naiyer Rizvi (Moffitt) presented the combination data of AstraZeneca’s anti-PDL1 (durvalumab) plus anti-CTLA4 (tremelimumab) in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Neither of these agents have yet been approved in any indication, so the only relative comparators we have here are nivolumab and pembrolizumab as single agents in NSCLC and ipilimumab plus nivolumab in metastatic melanoma. There are no data approved for the BMS combo in lung cancer.

This review looks at both trials, in terms of the controversial data presented, and also in a broader context of the ever-changing landscape.

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ECC Vienna Preview 2 Oral Presentations

Beyond the late breaking abstracts and plenary sessions at the European Cancer Conference being held in Vienna, Austria later this month, what other important topics can we expect to hear about?

ECCO 2015 Vienna

We covered the former in the last article on Biotech Strategy Blog, today we turn our attention to the proffered (oral) sessions and what we can learn from those sessions and the expected data that is due to be presented.

There are a number of interesting topics and new data slated for presentation that are worthy of review and highlighting in a What To Watch out For (W2W4) format.

Here’s our take on the potential highlights at the meeting.

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Adoptive Cell Therapy: An Interview with Dr Steven Rosenberg

At the recent American Association of Immunology (AAI) and American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) meetings in New Orleans, we had the good fortune to interview a number of leading cancer immunologists about their work. Some of these have already been published either here on Biotech Strategy Blog, or on the Novel Targets podcast.

In the meantime, the huge tsunami of data from the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) hit and we have been a bit backlogged! Time to address that and focus on some more thoughtful reflections about where the cancer immunotherapy field is going.

Already, we are seeing another round of new collaborations and deals hit the newswires with AstraZeneca announcing two collaborations, one with Inovio on the INO–3112 HPV cancer vaccine and another with Heptares, where they acquired the exclusive global rights to develop, manufacture and commercialise the adenosine A2A receptor antagonist, HTL–1071. The first involves a cancer vaccine and the second immune escape mechanisms.  Not to be outdone, their rivals Clovis also announced a collaboration with Genentech to explore rociletinib (EGFR T790M) with atezoliumab (anti-PD-L1) in EGFR mutation-positive lung cancer.

Cancer vaccines have not, however, been a very successful or fertile area of R&D for Pharmaland to date, with only one such therapy approved by the FDA (sipuleucel-T or Provenge) and literally hundreds of other such compounds consigned to dog drug heaven. This illustrates the sheer enormity of the task we need to undertake in stimulating the body’s immune system to successfully attack the cancer in a sustained and robust way.

Dr Rosenberg, NCI

Dr Rosenberg, NCI

Despite this setback, there is still notable interest in exploring the innate immune system and finding effective ways to target and stimulate the T cells or T lymphocytes to attack the cancer.

One man who has accomplished an incredible body of work over the last two to three decades is Dr Steven Rosenberg from the NCI’s Surgery Branch (right).

No one who attended any of the cancer conferences where he spoke at over the last year is ever going to forget the dramatic before and after slides of remarkable transformation in his patient case history examples using Tumour Infiltrating Lymphocytes (TILs) as this example illustrates:

 

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Is this the end of ipilimumab in melanoma?

With the news hot off the press at the 2015 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) that Merck’s pembrolizumab (Keytruda) beat out BMS’s ipilimumab (Yervoy) in advanced melanoma, quite a few readers wrote in asking whether this signals the end for ipilimumab?

The short answer is no, and here’s why…

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Promising new targeted cancer agents emerge at AACR 2014

To round off our series of post AACR reviews this week (there will be more coming next week as well, don’t worry), I wanted to look at some interesting non-immunotherapeutic agents that I found compelling and worth watching out for in the future.

A couple of things to remember or understand is that AACR is a very different conference from ASH and ASCO, aside from the presence of noticeably more science:

a) Much of the data presented at this meeting is either preclinical or phase I-II cinical data
b) Most of these studies are usually exploratory or preliminary in nature

Phase I trials are usually designed to evaluate dose finding in either a single agent or with an untested and untried combination. Investigators are interested in a number of key things here, which might include:

  • Maximum tolerated dose (MTD)
  • Dose limiting toxicities (DLT)
  • A recomemmended phase II dose (RP2D)
  • PK and PD
  • General tolerability assessment.

Sometimes a different formulation is tested, in which case bioavailabity is also important. To be expressly clear though – any efficacy signals seen are a bonus. That’s the main purpose of phase II trials.

That said, one of the things I most like about AACR is the early phase I data in new targets or data that explains why resistance develops as an adaptive response to therapy.  With these in mind, here are three excellent examples from well put together research from the meeting that we can learn a lot from.

To read more about our analysis of up and coming compounds including:

DEDN6526A, a novel ADC in melanoma; AG–221 in IDH2 mutant AML and MDS; a PI3K-α isomer-specific inhitor, BYL719, and the impact of PTEN alterations

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AACR 2014 Preview: Novel targets and approaches

For the third part of the series on the AACR Previews, I wanted to switch directions and take a broad look at five completely different approaches in cancer research that we haven’t discussed on Biotech Strategy before and look at how they are doing and which ones might be promising going forward. Some of these scientific developments could potentially impact existing compounds in development.

Companies mentioned: Exelixis, Roche/Genentech, GSK, Clovis, AstraZeneca, Oncoethix

Compounds discussed: cobimetinib, DEDN6526A, ipatasertib, dabrafenib, trametinib, OTX015, JQ1, CO–1686, AZD9291

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Update on overcoming resistance in metastatic melanoma

Every year at AACR meetings there seems to be a new update on how researchers are doing with their work on overcoming resistance in metastatic melanoma. We’ve seen some stunning photos where targeting the BRAF V600E mutation with a specific kinase inhibitor such as vemurafenib (Zelboraf) or dabrafenib (Tafinlar) results in dramatic reduction, and sometimes even complete disappearance of the lesions, only for resistance to set in and the melanoma sadly comes back with a vengeance. Adding a MEK inhibitor such as trametinib (Mekinist) was originally thought to be a rather promising strategy, until it became clear that this only gave a few extra months with exactly the same result.

Over on Pharma Strategy Blog, I’ve written a lot about the fascinating research on various mechanisms of resistance in this disease. They range from specific mutations emerging to activation of COT or MEK and others in response to therapy. There are a number of questions we can ask that need to be addressed:

  • Do we need a better/more potent BRAF inhibitor?
  • Do we need a better/more potent MEK inhibitor?
  • What other combinations and targets can be explored?
  • Is timing and dosing important? (e.g. continuous vs. intermittent dosing)
  • And many others…

Bill Sellers VP Global Head Oncology Novartis Institutes for BioMedical ResearchAt the recent AACR Molecular Targets meeting in Boston I chatted with Dr Bill Sellers, who is the Global Head of Oncology Research at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) and oversees the drug discovery efforts in this space for Novartis.

Yesterday we highlighted NIBR’s work with CDK4/6 inhibition in breast cancer, but this compound may have surprising utility in metastatic melanoma.

Novartis also have several other melanoma agents in their pipeline in the clinic, including a BRAF inhibitor (LGX818), a MEK inhibitor (MEK162) and more recently, an Mdm2 inhibitor (CGM097) in preclinical development.

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