Greetings from Vienna, Austria! Fresh off a red eye… we’re en route to one European cancer conference in Germany, while writing about another one in Madrid.
This latest preview looks at some of the key IO studies that are either intriguing or have potentially interesting results that BSB readers have written in asking us about.
There are some targeted therapies thrown in too for good measure too, as there are some IO-targeted combos to look at, as well as IO-IO approaches.
What I want to accomplish in this latest preview is point out some elements of what we call ‘interestingness’ where people should be watch or wary of either jumping to conclusions or making comparisons across trials and arriving at assumptions that may not turn out to be valid. My best advice here is to always be sceptical and assume there’s no concordance and that way you won’t be caught unawares. It’s easier said than done, though.
Indeed there were so many questions about ESMO that we needed two preview posts to cover many of the questions we received.
Part 2 should roll out tomorrow, wifi on the road permitting – stay tuned for more on ESMO17.
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So, rather than do another AACR 2017 Preview (more coming next week!), it seemed timely to take a look at some of the interesting questions we’ve received from subscribers.
Five questions have been selected for answer in this week’s BSB reader Q&A. We don’t award prizes if your question is selected, nor do we name who asked the question, but everyone benefits when interesting questions are asked and we can all learn from each other.
As author Thomas Berger aptly said:
“The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.”
What differentiates many world class cancer researchers is frequently the scientific questions they ask in their work. The same holds true if you are a C level executive or a journalist. The quality of the answer you obtain is often dependent on the quality of the question you ask.
We hope that being better informed about the issues and topics we write about on BSB will enable subscribers to ask better questions, and in the process make better decisions.
Subscribers can login to read more (and see if your question was answered)
The huge pile of interesting scientific papers yet to be read seems to breed overnight and one constantly feels like they’re 2,000 articles behind, even with spending Friday mornings attacking them with gusto.
This was as true in my PhD days as it is now. For a scientist, these represent a lifeline and an important necessity, rather than a luxury.
In the last journal club posting we covered some hot topics in cancer immunotherapy, so this one covers a very different topic, namely targeted therapies.
It’s a good time for a new journal club post, where we tackle some of the recent published literature in oncology and highlight some important new findings that could have an impact on cancer research and development.
We’ve had a couple of requests come in for a revival of the old conference series… ‘Gems from the poster halls’ because quite a few folks are interested in the up and coming data from small to medium biotechs.
A bunch of my Post Doc chums in this field were at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) meeting and gleefully highlighted mobbed posters or areas where they thought the data looked potentially interesting.
From these, we selected a few for review in today’s look at the nuggets that can be gleaned from cool and intriguing trials or preclinical research that may influence future trials.
Companies covered in this article include Seattle Genetics, Jounce, Immunomedics, Syndax and MedImmune.
The Oncologist Journal of the Society for Translational Oncology (STO) has published a video recording on prostate cancer that is well worth watching for those with an interest in this area.
At their Sept 8, 2011 CME symposium held in Belfast, a roundtable was held entitled “Prostate Cancer: Progress & Promise.”
Moderated by Bruce A. Chabner (Mass General/Harvard), the panelists were Joe O’Sullivan (Queen’s University, Belfast), Johann De Bono (The Institute for Cancer Research) and David Waugh (Queen’s University, Belfast).
Professor de Bono in the video comments that”
“with regards to our dream of eventually treating men with prostate cancer without castrating them, which must be our ultimate goal and curing them of cancer. I think we will have to focus on for example drugs targeting ERG or ERG signaling.”
Chabner then asks the good question of whether ERG is a druggable target?
In the STO video, De Bono discusses why he would like to replace bone scans in prostate cancer with another imaging modality that more accurately reflects the activity of the disease. Future possibilities include use of diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging and novel PET tracers.
There’s also a good discussion about Alpharadin for those interested in some anecdotal commentary on experiences with it.
Another notable comment by De Bono is his belief that “taxanes work in prostate cancer primarily by targeting androgen receptor signaling.” Taxanes have typically been thought to target mitosis.
De Bono goes on to say that clinical trial data being submitted for publication shows that patients who are refractory to abiraterone, are also refractory to docetaxel when they progress on it. The suggestion is that there may be cross resistance between abiraterone and taxanes with a subgroup of patients who just don’t do well on androgen receptor (AR) targeting drugs. The reason for this isn’t yet clear.
A new phase 2 clinical trial is starting soon that will look at the sequencing of abiraterone and cabazitaxel. One group will receive abiraterone followed by cabazitaxel, the other cabazitaxel followed by abiraterone.
The Belfast STO symposium was the second in a three part series. The next one will be held during ASCO GU in San Francisco next year.