Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘NSCLC PD1 PDL1’

The Science of PD1 PDL1 Cancer Immunotherapy

Nature Cover Checkpoint InhibitorsIn a landmark publication today, the prestigious journal Nature includes five “Letters” regarding checkpoint blockade of the programmed death-1 (PD-1) receptor and its ligand PD-L1. It confirms the promise and potential of the emerging field of immuno-oncology to provide durable and long lasting responses in many cancers.

Readers of the blog will already have read about the stunning early data presented at ASCO this year for the engineered humanized antibody MPDL3280A (Genentech/Roche) in urothelial bladder cancer (UBC). In his Nature Letter, Thomas Powles (Barts) and colleagues sum of the significance of this data in the opening sentence:

“There have been no major advances for the treatment of metastatic urothelial bladder cancer (UBC) in the last 30 years.”

On the basis of this data, MPDL3280A received Breaththrough Therapy Designation from the FDA earlier this year.

Roy Herbst (Yale) and colleagues in their Nature Letter write about biomakers of PD-L1 inhibition and how their data “suggest that MPDL3280A is most effective in patients in which pre-existing immunity is suppressed by PD-L1, and is reinvigorated on antibody treatment.”

At the recent annual meeting of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC), Dr Herbst gave one of the best presentations of the meeting, in which he discussed “Personalized Immunotherapy for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.”  His top ten lessons learned kept the audience’s attention throughout.

Tomorrow is the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, so this will be the only post this week. Thanksgiving is a good time to take a moment out of the hectic life we all live to “smell the roses” and express gratitude for all the positive things around us.

Next week sees the start of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting in San Francisco. The cancer conference circuit seems to roll quickly from one meeting to the next at the moment. There’s a lot of promising data, and while we can’t discuss the data before the meeting due to ASH embargo restrictions, next week we will be highlighting some of the presentations we are particularly looking forward to.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Subscribers can login to read more detail about all five Nature Letters, and their implications for the emerging field of immuno-oncology.

 

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SITC 2014 Cancer Immunotherapy Day 1

National Harbor, MD – The 2014 Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) annual meeting officially kicked off today, with a record-breaking 1,500 attendees. The organization has grown by 33% over the past year highlighting the explosive progress in the field, and the growing importance of SITC!

There was a lot of thought provoking science on display as researchers and translational scientists came from all around the world to share results and talk about the future.

What struck me at the meeting today was the collegiality and friendliness of all who are here. It’s exciting times in immunotherapy and immuno-oncology and everyone at the meeting is bound by a common goal of making a difference to the lives of cancer patients.

The President of SITC, Francesco Marincola (Sidra) quoted Winston Churchill in his introductory address:

“Now this is not the end.

It is not even the beginning of the end.

But, perhaps it is the end of the beginning.”

Dr Marincola’s choice of quote seemed to strike the right balance of where we are at today: there’s still a long way to go to optimize cancer immunotherapy treatments, but equally there’s been tremendous progress to reach the point we are at where there are durable long-term responses in many patients who would otherwise not be alive today.

What was the highlight of Day 1 of SITC 2014?

For me, this morning, it was the presentation by Marcel van den Brink (MSKCC) on the influence of the microbiome on graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) for which there’s been no effective new treatment for over 25 years:

In the afternoon, it was the presentation by Roy Herbst (Yale) on the top ten lessons learned about immunotherapy for NSCLC.

It’s unfair to single out two presenters when there were multiple presentations and posters of note, but they stood out for me. If you’d like to read our more detailed notes from the road after Day 1 of SITC 2014, do log-in if you are already a subscriber.

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