Biotech Strategy Blog

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

Posts tagged ‘STING’

Slicing the salami

It’s time to look at progress on the ADC front, something we sporadically cover where there are new phase 1 or 2 data of note.

Making waves in the ADC niche

Compared to the myriad of targeted small molecules and IO therapies out there, ADCs and related drug conjugates form a much smaller class of agents, although this is slowly changing as the technology develops on several fronts.

Yesterday’s first plenary session at the 2021 Targets/Triple meeting focused on new developments in tumour-targeted conjugates including a couple of early stage projects, which should be well worth watching out for and following over time.

It wasn’t all plain sailing, however, with plenty of important caveats and nuances to be aware of…

BSB subscribers can read up on our latest commentary and analysis from the cancer conference season on our TRIPLE meeting coverage – you can log-in or click to access our latest analysis.

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Hot Topics: What we learned from SITC20 about an emerging class of oncology agents

National Harbor – Missing the Fall colours!

As we get into the final swing of the Fall cancer conference season, at SITC this weekend there was much to think about in terms of early stage oncology drug development.

Still, it did feel rather surreal not to be in Maryland at the Gaylord National Centre in National Harbor for a live meeting this year, especially considering this particular specialist IO meeting tends to be held in a small jam-packed hall with nary an empty seat to be had!

I thought it would be fun to focus on an area which is slowly receiving more attention, with at least one sub category actually beginning to look quite promising indeed…

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Flying high in the DDR oncology niche

Recently, PARP inhibitors have been back in the news for several reasons, including the publication of the olaparib (AstraZenca/Merck) advanced mCRPC data in the New England Journal of Medicine from the phase 3 PROfound trial and the announcement regarding achievement of the key secondary endpoint of overall survival. As Dr José Baselga quite rightly noted, this is very good news indeed because:

“Overall survival in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer has remained extremely challenging to achieve.”

We’ve rather more trial misses in this disease setting than successes from various therapies over the last few years including ipilimumab, PROSTVAC, alisertib, and atezolizumab, to name a few off the top of my head.

Related to mCRPC, let’s also not forget the upcoming PDUFA date later this month for Clovis’s rucaparib in the very same indication.

Not to be outdone on the PARP front, just a few days GSK received FDA approval for niraparib as first-line monotherapy maintenance therapy for women with platinum-responsive advanced ovarian cancer – regardless of biomarker status – based on the phase 3 PRIMA study presented at ESMO last year and simultaneously published in the NEJM. Recall that the majority of women (51%) had homologous-recombination deficiency (HRD) and this subset saw the greatest benefit.

Flying high in the DDR space?

We have now seen clinical benefit in the PARP inhibitors in four tumour types driven by DNA damage repair (DDR) deficiencies, namely ovarian, breast, pancreatic, and prostate cancers.

How do we go about extending the concept of DDR in terms of the biology of other tumour types?

A number of related pathway targets have been investigated, including ATM/ATR, Chk1, Wee–1 and others, with mixed success.

It’s not the nature of oncology R&D to stand still, however; what if we could turn things on their head and think creatively about the problems still to be addressed?

One particular new company to the PARP space is doing just that… so what are they doing and what’s different about their approach?

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Unlocking novel IO targets and anti-cancer agents in early development

Time to unlock some novel IO targets?

Continuing our latest four part mini-series, this one is on novel targets and agents and we now turn our attention to immuno-oncology in the last two articles pertaining to this particular topic.

You can read the first two articles on targeted therapies here and here.

For the avoidance of any doubt, this latest review is not about T cells, far from it.

Instead we cover six different areas, most of which are related or integrated in some shape of form.

There’s a lot of promising new science now coming out to help us better understand the underlying biology and also think out of the box about ways to enhance or improve on existing research.

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Under the Radar

We get to chat with many leading oncologists and cancer researchers on Biotech Strategy Blog – it’s truly one of the perks of the job to meet experts and hear them discuss their early research.

Like a tutorial, we have the opportunity to ask questions and improve our own understanding, but where it becomes really interesting is when they talk about promising translational opportunities, because this is what we are about.

How do you translate basic research into oncology new products and figure out where are the viable opportunities?

In this post, we spoke with one of the world’s leading immunologists – someone we’ve never spoken to before – who a few weeks ago spun-out a company to commercialize one of their early research areas and while we were doing the interview told us about another commercial opportunity they had in mind. This was very much “under the radar” and in a relatively earlier stage of commercialization. Both targets have potential for synergy in our view, particularly in combination strategies and cancer immunotherapy regimens.

With one company in stealth mode and the other only incorporated a matter of weeks ago (at time of writing they don’t yet have a website), it’s exciting to see science translation in action.

This is one of the reasons why one of the many tribes that read BSB are those in business development and licensing (BD&L) or investment roles.

In this post we interviewed the delightful Prof. Akiko Iwasaki from Yale. We’ve also put together commentary on the opportunities and the science behind them, as well as some recent anecdotes gleaned from another expert in one of the fields discussed.

If you are part of a BD&L team then do consider purchasing a group or team license. We’d be happy to have our group sales department discuss this further with you.

To learn more from our oncology coverage and get a heads up on our latest analysis, commentary, and an expert interview with a leading immunologist, subscribers can log-in or you can click to gain access to BSB Premium Content.

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Highlights from Plenary Sunday at ASCO19

Chicago: We’ve heard a lot of people say how they think this year’s annual meeting ASCO19 is not as good for data as previous years, and we’re going to have to respectfully disagree.

On Sunday at ASCO19 there was a wealth of data on display in multiple sessions with some noticeable “winners and losers” when it comes to drugs in development.

Dr Hedy Kindler presents phase III POLO trial in Plenary Session at ASCO19. Data simultaneously published in NEJM.

In this post, we’ve some top-line commentary on some of the Sunday sessions we covered, and what caught our attention. As always our detailed analysis comes after the meeting in the “post-game” show.

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AACR19 Preview of Cancer Immunotherapy Sessions – Part 1

We’re starting our review of the program for the forthcoming 2019 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (Twitter hashtag to follow: #AACR19) with a look at the cancer immunotherapy program.

One of the challenges of a large meeting is that it’s like a smorgasbord or buffet in a hotel that’s resplendent in choices, but you can’t possibly eat it all.

Choices!

Some choose to follow a research area, others a target or tumor type. There’s a lot of ways to segment the program depending on your specific interests.

However, it’s a good idea to have a plan in place ahead of a large conference such as AACR, even if you modify it as you go to take into account evolving needs.

Seasoned conference goers will be familiar with the maxim known as “the law of two feet” – if a session you are in doesn’t live up to expectations or meet your needs and something else looks more to your taste from the tweets, then simply dash off to another!

In our latest conference preview, we’ve taken a careful look at the cancer immunotherapy track.

What are some of the key sessions to put on your calendar if you’re following this track or have an interest in this area?

In Part 1, we review the IO sessions from Friday to Sunday then tomorrow in Part 2, we’ll review the schedule from Monday to Wednesday.  Yes, it’s that intense this year! Just think, five years ago you had to search the program really quite hard indeed to even find much on immuno-oncology, as it was very much in its infancy then.

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New developments in tumour immunology and immunotherapy

This week I’ve been attending the excellent AACR Special Conference on Tumour Immunology and Immunotherapy here in Miami Beach. I must say that it’s really rather nice to have a local event literally less than 20 blocks away for once – it sure beats all the stress and hassle of long distance travel!

Were any of the early IO developments flying high in Miami Beach this week?

The meeting is designed to “integrate multidisciplinary facets of basic cancer immunology and immunotherapy to broaden the understanding of ways to harness the immune system to treat cancer.”

In this latest conference report, we cover some key highlights and insights learned, as well as review some early clinical data that was presented on several fronts including new companies and novel approaches to CAR-T cell therapy, as well as an important update on STING agonism.

We also identify some emerging trends that may teach us more about the future landscape developments in immuno-oncology.

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ESMO18 Live Blog Day 2

Early morning starts for #ESMO18

Munchen – If you haven’t checked out yesterday’s live blog post, which is packed with numerous updates and highlights from various sessions and embargoed data releases throughout the day, you can check it out here.

There’s much more in store today as the conference gets deeper into the swing of the program.

We have also been busy with expert interviews – more on those later – as well as digging out gems from the poster halls.

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ESMO18 Preview 4 Gems from the Poster Halls

ESMO18 is rapidly approaching with only a week to go before the conference kicks off in Munich this year.

Munich

So far in our Preview series we have highlighted what to watch out for in the late breakers, neoantigens, as well as the oral talks and poster discussions.

Now it’s time to turn our focus on the nuggets or gems that can be gleaned from the poster halls – there’s always a few pleasant surprises in store. There are small and large pharma/biotech companies included in this latest list on a wide range of therapeutics and tumour types.

There are also some interesting emerging trends, as well as hints of what might happen with some future phase 3 readouts that could catch a few people by surprise.

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