Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘Pancreatic Cancer’

National Harbor, MD

With the abstract drop from the 2019 Society for the Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) meeting now available, what can we learn from some of the research slated for formal oral presentation this year?

Here in part one (posters will be reviewed tomorrow) we take a look at a mix of preclinical and early clinical studies that grabbed our initial interest from the oral presentations – they include the good, bad, and intriguing – to see exactly what can be learned from this year’s mix of abstracts?

The short answer is quite a lot.

Every year the what to watch out for preview is a popular one.  This year there are some surprises in store as well as some particularly important findings that BSB readers may well be keen to find out more about ahead of the conference later this week in order to maximise their thinking and avoid the inevitable brain-fry and fatigue that sets in on Saturday afternoon…

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Chicago – here we are with highlights and insights from Day 4 of #ASCO19 and time is running down on this meeting with just half a day to go – whew!

One of the highlights of medical and scientific meetings we go to is meeting early career researchers, especially those who are doing translational research.

On Monday at ASCO19 we particularly enjoyed talking with Dr Wungi Park (@W_Park_MD) from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who presented a poster on homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) as a biomarker in pancreatic cancer (abstract 4132).

We look forward to hearing more from him and colleagues as data is generated from the clinical trial they plan to start later in this year to investigate this further. Translational research in action!

What were some of our other highlights of Manic Monday at ASCO19? We’ve shared a few in the post below for BSB subs.

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We’re continuing our series following the development of novel cutting edge strategies targeting gamma delta (𝞬𝝳) T cells, with a look at the two approaches Puretech Health are pursuing based on the research of Dr George Miller (NYU Langone).

Data was presented at #AACR19 for a first-in-class immunotherapy targeting immune-suppressive delta 1 containing 𝞬𝝳 T cells and one targeting Galectin–9.

Drs Panchenko and Filipovic at their AACR19 poster

We recently spoke with Dr Aleksandra Filipovic, therapeutic lead for oncology at Puretech Health, she’s pictured right with Dr Tatyana Panchenko from NYU Langone at their AACR poster.

Dr Filiopovic told BSB that Puretech are looking for the next big IO breakthrough:

“We looked at this landscape and the massive amount of trials going on. We said ok, if we’re going to go into the space of immuno-oncology, what is it that we need to do differently in order to, upfront, try and ensure that we’re going after targets which could be the next PD–1. Our thinking went along the lines that we would really need to identify those next checkpoints, those next foundational modulators of the immune system.”

This is the first of two interviews from #AACR19 on novel strategies to target 𝞬𝝳 T cells, an emerging area that companies are looking at with both antibody and adoptive cellular therapy approaches. Do check out our previous mini-series if you missed it.

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Packed sessions at AACR19

Atlanta – We’ve had a few requests to discuss the Apexigen anti-CD40 data presented by Dr Robert Vonderheide (Penn) presented at AACR19 on Sunday.

That’s a request we happy to oblige.

There seems to be quite a difference in reactions between researchers and investors on this issue, so it’s a nice opportunity to put the data in appropriate context.

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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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MD Anderson, Houston

Houston, Texas – At the First Annual Symposium on Pancreatic Cancer organized by Ronald DePinho MD and colleagues at the MD Anderson Cancer Center on Monday, one of the presentations that caught my attention was on exosomes.

Raghu Kalluri MD PhD (@KalluriLab) gave an excellent talk on, Exploiting the Biology of Exosomes for Diagnosis and Therapy of Pancreatic Cancer.”

What were some of the key take homes from his presentation?

He kindly spoke to BSB in Houston and talked about the direction he is going in this rapidly evolving field of research.

Here’s a short snippet from the interview where he talks about one aspect of this approach and how it might be useful (the others are covered in more detail below):

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At the recent ASCO 2018 Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium (GI18), Steven. D Leach MD (Dartmouth) gave an excellent Keynote Lecture on “Mapping the Immune Landscape in Pancreatic Cancer.”

Pancreatic cancer has very poor outcomes, with a one-year relative survival rate (across all stages of the disease of 20%) and five-survival rate of 7% according to the American Cancer Society.  In addition, stage IV exocrine pancreatic cancer has a 5 year survival of about 1%, which is utterly dismal to say the least.

When it comes to cancer immunotherapy, so far we’ve not seen the success in pancreatic cancer that we’ve seen in other tumours, there are no FDA approved cancer immunotherapies for this disease.

Which raises a critical question of what is happening in the immune landscape of pancreatic cancer patients, and how will cancer immunotherapy be effective?

In this post, we discuss some of the key points that Dr Leach made in excellent presentation and look at some new developments on the horizon in PDAC.

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San Francisco

The first cancer conference of 2018 is now upon us and after enjoying last year’s event in San Francisco, I wanted to take some time to explore some key abstracts of interest at the ASCO GI meeting, which begins tomorrow.

This conference covers various updates on new developments in oesophageal, gastric, colon, pancreatic and colorectal cancers.

Are there any trials or new developments to get excited about at this year’s GI18 meeting?

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Sometimes initial phase 1/1b readouts at cancer conferences produce quite different reactions from a live and remote audience while at other meetings, the Developmental Therapeutics talks produce little or no interest at all. It’s often hard to guage which way they will go.

At SITC this weekend, several talks generated some contentious, and at times quite heated, debate and intense interest.

One of these was an oral presentation by Dr Zev Wainberg on the first-in-man data with the anti-CSF1R and anti-PD1 inhibitors, cabiralizumab and nivolumab, from Five Prime and BMS respectively, in an advanced pancreatic cohort.

Dr Zev Wainberg at SITC 2017

There was a surprising amount of confusion surrounding the initial results and other issues last week, with Five Prime’s stock dropping before we’d even got to Dr Wainberg’s talk.

What became increasingly obvious over the weekend was a clear difference in investors perceptions versus what the scientific community actually thought.

Here we take a look at the data and explain what to watch out for and why…

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National Harbor, MD – Day 2 of #SITC17 brought some interesting highlights on a number of fronts, not all of which may be apparent at present, but there are a few readouts that will have a broader impact going forward.

SITC 2017 Stars?

As we move into an era where we see more combinations evolve in immuno-onology, things are likely to get more confusing rather than less so and it could well be another 3-5 years before things truly settle down and more concrete trends emerge.

Here, we reviewed 10 different areas of interest with a strong clinical relevance and explored the topics further.

Please note that some of these will also have follow-on posts with thought leader interviews and related poster reviews.

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