Pharma Strategy Blog

Commentary on Pharma & Biotech Oncology / Hematology New Product Development

Posts from the ‘Lymphoma’ category

Tumor Lysis Syndrome – what is it and why is it important in cancer research?

By on February 18, 2013

After the hullabaloo on Friday regarding AbbVie’s suspension of the ABT-199 trials following not one, but two, unexpected deaths from tumor lysis syndrome (TLS), a few people asked what is this condition and what causes it?

In simple terms, lysis is a medical word used to describe the break up or breakdown of cells – whether through decomposition, destruction, or dissolving. Thus, we have hemolysis, which is the destruction of red blood cells with the release of hemoglobin.

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A surfeit of riches in CLL and NHL: on bruton kinase and PI3K delta inhibitors

By on June 27, 2012

View from The New York Academy of Sciences 300x182 A surfeit of riches in CLL and NHL: on bruton kinase and PI3K delta inhibitorsThis week I’m attending an interesting 2-day conference on PI3K at the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS).

It brings together a broad faculty of researchers in the field looking at novel aspects of the PI3K-Akt-mTOR pathway in depth.

One aspect that has become clear with these compounds is that there’s probably more that we don’t know than we do – it’s a highly complex network of nodes and cause-effect that needs to be unravelled.

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ASH 2011 Update #2 – Non Hodgkins Lymphoma

By on December 21, 2011

I’ve been busy with other things offline since the last blog update from the American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting in San Diego, but will be catching up on my notes from the conference over the next few days.

In addition, my colleague Pieter Droppert has already posted his topline impressions of the meeting on the companion Biotech Strategy Blog, which readers may be interested in:

  1. Ponatinib in CML
  2. Update on new advances AML and FLT3
  3. Interesting posters – BTK and PI3K

Meanwhile, I thought it would be a good idea to look at the pipeline developments in non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas (NHL) that I particulalry liked at ASH:

This is a preview of ASH 2011 Update #2 – Non Hodgkins Lymphoma. Read the full post

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ASH 2011 Update 1: Bruton's Kinase Inhibitors (BTK)

By on December 15, 2011

This year’s American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting heralded a wealth of new information on pipeline compounds in early development. Although a lot of people were excited about myelofibrosis and the battle between Incyte’s ruxolitinib and YM Bioscience’s CYT387 (more on these in a separate update), the area that intrigued me most was the Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase (BTK) inhibitors in B-cell lymphomas.

Background on the science behind the BTK pathway:

I’ve been following these novel agents for a while and was fascinated by two abstracts from the ASCO and ASH meetings last year. It became clear that BTK is a valid target in B-cell lymphomas after Advani et al., (2010) demonstrated at ASCO the effect of BTK inhibitor PCI-32765 monotherapy on responses in patients with relapsed aggressive NHL.1

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Follow the American Society of Hematology ASH conversations!

By on December 10, 2011

It doesn’t seem a full year since the last American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting took place, time has certainly flown by!

For those interested, I posted a review what I think will be hot topics at this meeting

In the meantime, to enable easy reading of the tweets and discussions here in San Diego for those both attending and following remotely, I’m aggregating the tweets around the official hashtag, #ASH11.

You can follow the conversations over the weekend through Tuesday in the widget below:

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What’s hot at the American Society of Hematology 2011?

By on December 9, 2011

photo 300x224 What’s hot at the American Society of Hematology 2011?

Greetings from the annual American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting in San Diego!

The palm trees and warm sunshine here were a most pleasant welcome after the bitter chill in Texas.

Having just arrived here from the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, I thought it would be a nice idea to do a quick preview of some of the new and interesting data that I’m interested in at this conference and share some of the hot topics that I’ll will be following over the weekend:

  • Ponatinib in refractory CML
  • In myelofibrosis, rixuluximib and CYT-387
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A year in the life of Pharma Strategy Blog

By on October 31, 2011

Last week brought the first anniversary of this blog since moving to WordPress as a platform, but as luck would have it, I was snowed under with more work than usual.

Several people have asked about the stats here recently, so it seems a good time as any to do an annual review. Although this blog has been up and running since 2006, it only started on WP on October 24th 2010.

In the last twelve months, PSB has seen the following activity:

  • 614K reads, with around 50-60K reads per month
  • 337K visitors, approx. 30K visitors per month
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Update on ADCs and immunotoxins in hematologic malignancies

By on October 18, 2011

The Cancer Research journal has an interesting review of ADC and immunotoxin technology and their potential role in hematologic malignancies that is well worth reading (see references below).

Fitzgerald et al., (2011) observe that:

Immunotoxins and ADCs are assembled in a number of different ways. Antibody fragments or whole antibodies are combined with either protein toxins or low-molecular-weight toxic drugs. Linkage options include gene fusions (peptide bonds), disulfide bonds, and thioether bonds.

Design goals dictate that immunotoxins and ADCs remain intact while in systemic circulation but disassemble inside the target cell, releasing the toxic payload.

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Upcoming Fall cancer meetings

By on October 11, 2011

November always brings two of my favourite smaller meetings on the oncology calendar, so here’s a quick snapshot of what’s coming soon.

First up is the NY Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium Foundation, also known by many as the Greenspan Meeting, in honour of the late Ezra Greenspan who founded the event. This year, it will be at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan from November 8-12th. For those interested, here is the 2011 program.

2011Signiture Upcoming Fall cancer meetingsThe annual Greenspan Memorial lecture is usually held at lunchtime on the Thursday of the event and the talks are usually both informative and entertaining. The last two presenters have included experts such as Norman Wolmark on colorectal cancer and Larry Norton on cancer cell seeding.

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Seattle Genetics announce fast track approval of Adcetris

By on August 22, 2011

This morning, Seattle Genetics announced that the expected fast track approval from the FDA has been forthcoming for brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) following the recent unanimous ODAC voting in both refractory Hodgkin Lymphoma (HL) and Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma (ALCL).  Clearly, the company and the agency have come to agreement on the confirmatory trials as part of the condition of accelerated review.  The final prescribing information (PI) can be found on the Adcetris website.

For those of you looking for more information on Adcetris, please check out the related posts section below for previous reports on this novel ADC therapy.

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