Category Archives: Pipeline

Video Report from 2012 European Association of Urology Congress in Paris

Posted on by
Reply

Amazingly, it’s been a year since I started doing conference highlight videos, with the first one rolling out at EAU meeting in Vienna last March. They’ve proven to be much more popular than expected! The good news is that the video recording, production and presentation skills have improved along the way.

Unlike last year, the 2012 EAU Congress wasn’t lit up with excitement about new data (abiraterone and MDV3100 dominated last year).  Instead, there were more reflective discussions about how to consider sequencing and combinations in a more crowded castrate resistant prostate cancer market going forward as well as some mention of new up and coming targets outside the androgen receptor (AR) such as ERG and Src.

This is a preview of Video Report from 2012 European Association of Urology Congress in Paris. Read the full post

The challenge of prostate cancer drug approval versus reimbursement

Posted on by
Reply
IMG 7619 300x224 The challenge of prostate cancer drug approval versus reimbursement

Scenes from EAU - Arc de Triomphe

Here at the European Association of Urology (EAU) congress in Paris, there are some interesting debates amongst delegates attending the meeting regarding new therapies either recently – or about to be approved – for castrate-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC).

For example:

  1. How should abiraterone and MDV3100 be sequenced pre or post chemotherapy?
  2. Would combining the two drugs post chemo be a better strategy that leads to superior outcomes?
  3. Where does chemotherapy fit into this emerging paradigm?  Do we need chemotherapy in an new era of oral therapies?  If yes, which patients should be considered eligible?
This is a preview of The challenge of prostate cancer drug approval versus reimbursement. Read the full post

Will combining custirsen and MDV3100 reduce resistance in advanced prostate cancer?

Posted on by
2
EAU 2012 View of Eiffel Tower 224x300 Will combining custirsen and MDV3100 reduce resistance in advanced prostate cancer?

Sights of 2012 EAU Congress

Greetings from the European Association of Urology (EAU) congress in Paris. Despite the grey drizzle typical of Europe in winter, this is actually quite an interesting meeting with lots of poster presentations.

One poster that caught my eye yesterday was from Martin Gleave’s group on clusterin knockdown synergising MDV3100 activity. Previously, we discussed on this blog how inhibiting clusterin with custirsen (OGX-011) potentiated docetaxel. At the AUA meeting last year, the issue of whether the same would happen with MDV3100 was suggested, as you can see in the short video blog.

This is a preview of Will combining custirsen and MDV3100 reduce resistance in advanced prostate cancer?. Read the full post

Combined VEGF and MET inhibition in some cancers may be better than either alone

Posted on by
2

A couple of recent controversies in the field of angiogenesis have fascinated scientists and clinicians alike, namely:

  • Does VEGF inhibition lead to more aggressive tumours?
  • What drives metastases and invasion?
  • What is the role of tumour hypoxia in this process?

Data was originally presented in glioblastoma by Rubenstein et al., (2000), showing that anti-VEGF antibody treatment prolonged survival, but resulted in increased vascularity caused quite a stir.  Several other groups subsequently demonstrated in preclinical models that VEGF signaling shrinks tumours, but also results in increased invasion and metastases (see Casanovas et al., (2005), Ebos et al., (2009), Paez-Ribes et al., (2009), for examples).

This is a preview of Combined VEGF and MET inhibition in some cancers may be better than either alone. Read the full post

Cancer Clinical Trials: Companion Diagnostics or Gene Sequencing?

Posted on by
9

Last year saw some interesting developments from MD Anderson Cancer Center in early phase clinical trials that may have a far-reaching impact on the future of cancer research as we know it:

  1. At ASCO in June, Dr Tsimberidou presented the initial results from a phase I study run by the MD Anderson Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics group. Instead of testing patients with a given cancer (eg lung) for individual mutations eg ALK or EGFR and then offering patients a targted drug as we normally do, they ran a broad diagnostic panel across a multitude of patients with different cancers to determine what the tumour was telling them about the aberrations and selected appropriate targeted therapies. While the study was small in size, the results were better than random selection.
This is a preview of Cancer Clinical Trials: Companion Diagnostics or Gene Sequencing?. Read the full post

Raised platelets reduce survival in ovarian cancer

Posted on by
Reply

During my years in Pharmaland, I often sat in waiting rooms waiting to see the Principal Investigator (PI) for one of the studies we were doing.  I would generally see them at the end of the clinic, preferring to arrive early and chat with some of the patients to learn of their experiences, the trials and tribulations of cancer therapy.  This keeps your feet on the ground – drug development is not an academic exercise, there are real people involved after all.

This is a preview of Raised platelets reduce survival in ovarian cancer. Read the full post

The role of the Androgen Receptor in breast cancer

Posted on by
4

This week I have been in Orlando for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Special Conference on prostate cancer chaired by Drs Arul Chinnaiyan (U. of Michigan) and Charles Sawyers (MSKCC).  It was a superb meeting, probably one of the best I’ve attended since the PI3K meeting that AACR hosted in February last year.  I wrote nearly half a Moleskine of notes that vaguely resemble chicken scratch – there were so many good talks that stimulated new ideas and explained a few scientific things I also didn’t know too well.  Learning is a continuous lifetime experience, after all.

This is a preview of The role of the Androgen Receptor in breast cancer. Read the full post

Update on Medivation’s MDV3100 in advanced prostate cancer

Posted on by
6

This weekend heralds the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Genitourinary (GU) meeting in San Francisco, although ASCO held their press briefing today to provide an update on some of the key topics.

For those of you interested in Alpharadin (radium-225) in castrate-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), check out the update of Dr Oliver Sartor’s presentation, which is covered on Biotech Strategy Blog.

The key topic that most interested me though, was Dr Howard Scher’s update on Medivation’s Androgen Receptor antagonist, MDV3100, in CRPC.  Previously, Medivation announced that the data showed an improvement in median overall survival (OS) of 4.8 months and this is still solid (Note: J&J’s abiraterone was approved by the FDA based on an OS of 3.9 months in the same population and must be taken with prednisone).

This is a preview of Update on Medivation’s MDV3100 in advanced prostate cancer. Read the full post

A new opportunity for vemurafenib in BRAFV600E colon cancer

Posted on by
1

There’s been quite a flurry of commercial news on the Pharma front this morning, with Amgen buying Micromet (whose leading product is blinatumumab in ALL) and Celgene announcing their acquisition of Avila Therapeutics who have a Bruton Kinase Inhibitor (BTK) AVL-292 in phase IB development for lymphomas, which was all the rage at the recent American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting last month.

The big news for me today, though, wasn’t the commercial acquisitions but a gem of a paper relating to science and its significance for future cancer treatment.

This is a preview of A new opportunity for vemurafenib in BRAFV600E colon cancer. Read the full post

Gene mutation and resistance to chemotherapy in colorectal cancer

Posted on by
Reply

This week’s New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) contained a fascinating article on how a specific gene mutation known as Transcription factor AP-2 epsilon, TFAP2E–DKK4, appears to be responsible for inducing at least some of the resistance to chemotherapy that occurs during treatment of colon cancer.

At first sight, I wasn’t sure from the abstract if they were referring to either adaptive resistance to therapy or whether genetic changes already present limited the effectivenes of the treatment.

Further reading of the full article more specifically pointed to the latter:

This is a preview of Gene mutation and resistance to chemotherapy in colorectal cancer. Read the full post