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Posts from the ‘Basic Research’ category

Overcoming drug resistance in lung cancer

By on April 17, 2013

On the final day of the annual 2013 meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Washington DC, Jeffrey Engelman (MGH) hosted an excellent plenary session on “Cancer Evolution and Resistance” with a series of superb talks not only from himself, but also Neal Rosen (MSKCC), Todd Golub (Broad Institute) and René Bernards (Netherlands CI).

If this session is included in the webcast, I would highly recommend watching the whole thing several times, as it was one of the meeting highlights for me. Despite being on the very last day, the large hall was pretty packed and well worth waiting for. You can check availability of the AACR 2013 webcast talks here.

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Overcoming resistance to vemurafenib in metastatic melanoma

By on April 15, 2013

One of the interesting themes for that emerged for me at AACR this year was the amount of effort that is being expended on strategies to overcome drug resistance. This was particularly noticeable in metastatic melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).  More on lung cancer in another post, as today I want to focus on melanoma.

In the advanced melanoma, vemurafenib is given to patients with the BRAFV600E mutation, which occurs in approximately 50% of patients. This oncogene drives activity of the tumour, but inhibition with vemurafenib (Zelboraf) has shown some remarkable effects, as the stunning before and after photos from Levi Garraway’s group demonstrate.

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AACR 2013 – some initial thoughts on the emerging trends

By on April 11, 2013

This year’s American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting grew by 8% to approximately 18,000 attendees with 25% from 75 foreign countries, it is truly becoming a more global event for cancer researchers.

Over the next few days I plan to cover some of my highlights (basic, translational and clinical) in depth here on the blog and also with additional notes for email subscribers.  If you haven’t signed up for the PSB email alerts, there’s still time before the AACR notes go out.

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Bromodomain Inhibitors – an exciting new target in cancer research?

By on March 11, 2013

One of the interesting things about basic cancer research is that new targets emerge all the time, offering fresh opportunities for developing novel therapeutics in the quest for clinical improvement. While you see many companies chasing the same well established targets, often generating me-toos, sometimes serendipity favours the bold and the brave, as we recently saw with Pfizer’s development of crizotinib for ALK+ lung cancer.

So what’s new on the R&D front?

Bromodomain inhibition is a novel cancer target and one that I am looking forward to learning more about at forthcoming annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Washington DC.

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ASH 2012 update on ARRY-520 in multiple myeloma

By on March 1, 2013

After highlighting the interesting biomarker program associated with AVEO’s tivozanib in renal cell and triple negative breast cancers in the last post, several people wrote in asking about other biomarker programs that have piqued my interest. Regular PSB readers will know that I’m not a fan of catch-all trials at all because the population being studied is too heterogeneous – use of biomarkers can help select which patients are more likely to respond to a particular drug and thus produce greater efficacy.

Another small biotech doing some interesting and compelling biomarker work is Array BioPharma, based in Boulder, Colorado.

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Will biomarkers revolutionalise treatment with tivozanib?

By on February 25, 2013

Following last weeks post on the phase III clinical data for tivozanib in advanced renal cell cancer (RCC), I thought it would be useful to provide an update on AVEO’s biomarker program.

I’m very excited about the work they are doing in this area and have been following them keenly since they first presented their initial work on myeloid cells in RCC at the AACR diagnostic conference back in 2010.  Since then, other companies have also published work in this field, including Regeneron, who also noticed the presence of myeloid cells in their work with aflibercept in glioblastoma.

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Update on KRAS in pancreatic cancer

By on October 12, 2012

Today, I’m heading off to The New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) for an afternoon of lectures on pancreatic cancer.  It’s free for members and only $40 for non-members.  Previous 1-day and half day meetings I’ve attended at NYAS have been packed with information and very enjoyable.

NYAS Pancreatic Cancer Update on KRAS in pancreatic cancer

Why am I interested in this meeting?

Well, aside from Icarus Consultants being one of the media partners for this worthy event, we like to support scientific causes that facilitate cancer research and the communication of the data.

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ASCO 2012 Update 2: Overcoming resistance in metastatic melanoma

By on June 29, 2012

ASCO 2012 Posters 300x225 ASCO 2012 Update 2: Overcoming resistance in metastatic melanomaFollowing on from my preview of the 2012 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting, I am now working through updates on some of the hot topics.

I’m delighted to announce The Chemical & Engineering News blog ‘The Haystack’, have published my second guest post on advances in metastatic melanoma.

This is a devastating disease that has seen very few advances over the last decade since the approval of dacarbazine (DTIC) until last year when the FDA approved two new therapies in vemurafenib (Zelboraf) for patients with the BRAFV600E mutation and ipilumumab (Yervoy), an immunotherapy that targets CTLA4.

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Interested in the PI3K-AKT-mTOR pathway in cancer research?

By on June 20, 2012

Here’s a quick update on the next conference I’m planning to attend in New York next week.  It’s hosted by the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) in their downtown New York headquarters by the World Trade Center, which has fantastic panoramic views of uptown Manhattan and Brooklyn from the 40th floor.  More importantantly though, judging by the last few meetings I’ve attended there on cancer metabolism and a most fascinating lecture on ink and tattoos from Carl Zimmer, it should be a very good event and well worth attending.

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Reflections of a Medical Oncologist on AACR 2012

By on May 18, 2012

While thoughts have already turned to the forthcoming ASCO 2012 meeting and today I am off to AUA 2012 in Atlanta, the annual meeting of the American Association Association for Cancer Research (AACR) last month continues to generate insights.

At AACR I was delighted to meet up with Philippe Aftimos, MD, a Clinical Research Fellow at the Jules Bordet Institute in Brussels, Belgium.   Philippe is medical coordinator of the Clinical Research Unit and someone who I met through social media (@aftimosp), so it was a pleasure to meet in person.

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