Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘renal cell carcinoma’

It’s that time of the year again already… the ASCO GU Preview series!  The good news is that there is a bumper crop of intriguing data to discuss this year.

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

With the ASCO embargo on the GU Symposium in San Francisco lifting at 5pm, there’s a lot to consider not merely in terms of the data itself, but more importantly, in terms of a broader context and the landscapes involved in prostate, renal and urothelial cancers.

Here we take a look at some of the key highlights to watch out for and what they mean in context.

A separate post on the phase 3 PROSPER data for enzalutamide in prostate cancer with a discussion on the ongoing enzalutamide/abiraterone/ADT/chemotherapy debate as part of the GU18 coverage is also available.

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At the inaugural event in Orlando last year, one of the highlights for me was learning how important CD38 might turn out to be as another immune checkpoint target in combination with other approaches.

This year the meeting moved to the west coast and was held in San Francisco, making it the third one this month after JPM18 and GI18. Indeed, the fourth such event is also rapidly coming up with ASCO GU next month!

So what did we learn this time around? Quite a lot it would seem.

While much of the clinical data of late associated with immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) has been in metastatic melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), two other tumour types that have received increasing attention in the IO space have been clear cell renal carcinoma (ccRCC) and prostate cancer.

There were a few interesting new things we can learn here…

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There’s been another disturbance in the force – as luck would have it, after mentioning renal cell carcinoma (RCC) in yesterday’s post, BMS subsequently put out a press release on the CheckMate–214 study exploring the combination of nivolumab plus ipilimumab in the previously untreated metastatic setting.

The results to date were mixed, so what does this mean and what’s impacted by the findings?

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The latest company immunotherapy announcement is from Lilly and Nektar Therapeutics, for a strategic collaboration to co-develop NKTR–358, which targets the IL–2 receptor complex, thereby impacting regulatory T cells (Tregs). It is thought that this target may have particular relevance to autoimmune disorders and other chronic inflammatory conditions. This agreement involves an initial payment of $150 million, with the potential for up to $250 million in additional development and regulatory milestones.

Source: Nektar Therapeutics

Preclinical data on this novel compound was recently presented on July 10th at the World Congress of Inflammation.

We first spoke to Nektar at SITC in November, including an interview with one of their leading scientists (Dr Jonathan Zalevsky) together with the academic PI (Dr Adi Diab), and I’m delighted to say that the dynamic duo graciously agreed to a follow-up discussion at ASCO last month on the emerging IO pipeline.

In our current analysis and commentary on the IO pipeline, we also look briefly at the Lilly deal with NKTR–358 in autoimmune disease.

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Today for the second AACR 2017 Preview, I wanted to switch things up a bit and turn from looking at an important trend to a specific tumour type. One of the reasons for this is that we received questions from readers about recent data presented at medical meetings in this sphere.

It’s also not something that we have covered extensively here on BSB, so looking at something in a different light is often a good idea since insights and intelligence can sometimes jump out afresh.

Given that there are also some important clinical trial results emerging here, this is something we can expect to return to in Washington DC when the data is presented at AACR next month. What can we learn ahead of the event though? It turns out the answer is quite a lot.

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There were so many posters worthy of further analysis and discussion at ASCO this year that we may well need to write a longer series than usual on some of these hidden gems!

ASCO 2016 Posters 6If you’re anything like me, just getting round the massive poster hall melée each day in one piece to nab the QR codes and chat to some KOLs felt like an achievement in itself, never mind having the time to read and digest them properly.  This is why it’s nice to sit down and process some of the findings afterwards because there was actually quite a lot to learn on the nuances with later reflection.

So what’s on deck in the hot seat today?

Here, we focus on the importance of the tumour microenvironment and how that can be manipulated so that subsequent therapy can be more effective.

Fortunately, there are a number of different approaches that can potentially achieve this lofty goal, at least preclinically, but what happens in the real world when these concepts are actually tested in people with cancer?

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A decade or so ago, the annual conferences for the European Congress of Clinical Oncologists (ECCO) and European Society of Medical Oncologists (ESMO) were considered convenient dumping grounds for negative or failed trials. This was largely because they received much less attention than their big brother, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).

In the last few years, this trend has shifted with excellent clincial and scientific data being presented at both meetings – they alternate as hosts each year – under the European Cancer Congress (ECC) umbrella.

Just to confuse a global audience long used to referring to the meetings as ESMO and ECCO, while the logical Twitter hashtag might appear to be #ESMO14 and #ECCO15, respectively, based on the standard nomenclature of conference acronym followed by the year, the vagaries of European politics mean we end up with… #ECC2015.

It will be interesting to see how they compete for attention because this hashtag signal will be dirty (more than one usage) and noisy (many disparate voices) with the European Curling Championship, a European Cheerleader Convention and another on e-cigarettes and vaping, all seemingly using the same moniker!

ECCO 2015 Vienna

Still, what many readers are really eager to learn though, is this a great, middling, or poor year for exciting new data in the field of cancer research and what can we expect to hear about in Vienna later this month?

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New developments in renal cell carcinoma

Continuing our focus on genitourinary (GU) cancers this week, today we turn our focus from prostate cancer to renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

There were two important announcments on Monday this week relating to renal carcinoma.

Firstly, Exelixis announced positive top line data from a phase 3 pivotal trial of cabozantinib versus everolimus in relapsed metastatic renal cell carcinoma (METEOR).  The study met the primary endpoint (i.e. significantly improved progression free survival) and the company revealed the following data:

  • Cabozantinib reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 42%; Hazard Ratio = 0.58, (p < 0.0001) compared to everolimus
  • Interim Analysis of OS demonstrated a trend in favour of cabozantinib; Hazard Ratio = 0.67, (p = 0.005) compared to everolimus
  • Exelixis to complete US and EU regulatory filings in early 2016

Secondly, a press release from BMS highlighted the phase 3 CHECKMATE–025 trial comparing nivolumab to everolimus, also in relapsed metastatic RCC, where the independent Data Monitoring Committee recommended early stoppage on the basis of the primary endpoint (OS) being met. The company likely be seeking discussions with Health Authorities with a view to filing the data with the FDA and EMA.

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At the last count, the renal cell carcinoma (RCC) space is quite competitive with five VEGF inhibitors (sunitinib, sorafenib, axitinib, pazopanib and bevacizumab), two mTOR blockers (temsirolimus and everolimus) and not forgetting IL–2, all approved by the FDA for the treatment of advanced disease.

Much of the recent focus has been on sequencing, exploring combinations (generally too toxic with little added benefit), and evaluating the potential for novel immunotherapies in development such as checkpoint inhibitors. Biomarkers are few and far between, making it hard to rationally decide which therapy each patient should get and in which sequence.

The key question is, why is this tumour type so challenging from a clinical and scientific perspective?

Screenshot 2015-03-23 12.44.32Recently, new data has begun to emerge that may help inform or enable us to switch to new approaches.  While the urologists are eagerly watching the live surgery on the EAU cam, we highlight research data presented at the European Association of Urology (EAU) in Madrid and take a look at how the underlying biology of RCC can elevate our knowledge about where the potential future strategies and blueprint might lie, if we want to facilitate exciting new developments in this field.

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In her ASCO Gastrointestinal Cancer symposium (ASCO GI) keynote presentation earlier this year, Elizabeth M. Jaffee MD described the future of immunotherapy as being in combinations.

Overcoming or delaying resistance mechanisms or hitting multiple targets to greater effect will be achieved through combinations of drugs rather than single agent therapy. Combination strategies are the accepted future, whether drug companies like it or not.

In her keynote, Dr Jaffee also likened the revolution in immunotherapy to the same excitement the Beatles brought to music or the same magnitude of technology advances made by Apple. We agree completely.

Thought leaders at ASCO expressed similar sentiments. Steven O’Day (UCLA) said,

This is truly a brave new world of immunotherapy. I think the message is that the revolution is here, it’s ongoing, and it’s bursting out of melanoma into solid tumors.”

Interestingly, no immunotherapy data was considered to be of worthy of presentation in the plenary session at ASCO this year for the second year running, a decision that may reflect either an unwillingness to showcase early data, however good it may appear to be, or the influence of politics on the selection committee.

One potential combination is to target more than one checkpoint pathway to see if you can obtain a synergistic response. This is the rational for combining the monoclonal antibody ipilimumab and nivolumab. Ipilimumab (Yervoy) targets the CTLA-4 checkpoint protein that prevents dendritic cells from priming T cells to recognize tumors while nivolumab targets the PD-1 checkpoint protein that prevents T cells from attacking cancer cells. Yervoy is an FDA approved therapy for the treatment of metastatic melanoma.

Data published last year in The New England Journal of Medicine by Wolchok et al, showed that combining ‘ipi’ with ‘nivo’ gave more frequent and deeper responses in melanoma, but at the expense of much greater toxicity. Some 53% of patients receiving concurrent treatment had a grade 3-4 adverse event (see Table S-1B in the article).

Does it make sense to combine two immune pathway modulating agents? Does the enormous potential for synergy outweigh the additional toxicity? 

To learn more about these insights, log-in for our analysis of the data on nivolumab in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) presented at ASCO 2014.

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