New research demonstrates the link between inflammation and early development of colon cancer

Posted on January 23, 2012 by MaverickNY

Recently, epigenetics has been very much to the forefront with promising new human data in lung and breast cancers.

homecover New research demonstrates the link between inflammation and early development of colon cancer

Nature Medicine

This morning I was therefore thrilled to see some exciting work just published in Nature Medicine Online First from Ray DuBois’s lab at MD Anderson Cancer Center, on the potential role of inflammation and silencing of tumour suppressor genes in early colorectal cancer. Previously, the group looked at the role of COX-2 in intestinal inflammation and colorectal cancer and observed that:

“A large body of evidence indicates that genetic mutations, epigenetic changes, chronic inflammation, diet and lifestyle are the risk factors for CRC.”

This is a preview of New research demonstrates the link between inflammation and early development of colon cancer. Read the full post

miRNA as a potential biomarker for early breast cancer

Posted on January 16, 2012 by MaverickNY

One way to potentially improve long term cancer statistics is earlier detection, and in high risk patients, appropriate initiation of earlier treatment, since it is well known that the survival in stage II or III breast cancer is noticeably better than that for stage IV metastatic disease.

A critical question then, is how do we improve earlier detection?

There are a number of ways to achieve this:

Imaging techniques
Prognostication
Diagnostics
Biomarkers

This is a preview of miRNA as a potential biomarker for early breast cancer. Read the full post

Gene mutation and resistance to chemotherapy in colorectal cancer

Posted on January 5, 2012 by MaverickNY

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

ASH 2011 Update #3 – Multiple Myeloma

Posted on January 4, 2012 by MaverickNY

Most new developments in cancer research tend to occur in increments, thus we see a fair number of improvements in survival (whether PFS or OS) in the 1-4 month range over the existing standard of care. However, as we saw recently at European Conference for Clinical Oncology (ECCO) in September and the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) last month with the BOLERO-2 nad CLEOPATRA trials, every once in a while something comes along that shifts the efficacy curve by six or seven months and people rightly get very excited about this.

This is a preview of ASH 2011 Update #3 – Multiple Myeloma. Read the full post

AVEO announces front-line data in renal cell cancer for tivozanib

Posted on January 3, 2012 by MaverickNY

A very happy New Year everyone! After shaking off the dust of an extended break over the last two weeks, this morning brought plenty of news to kick start 2012.

The most interesting news was AVEO-Astellas’ announcement regarding their VEGF inhibitor, tivozanib, in advanced renal cell cancer (RCC):

“Tivozanib demonstrated superiority over sorafenib in the primary endpoint of progression-free survival (PFS) in TIVO-1, a global, randomized Phase 3 clinical trial evaluating the efficacy and safety of investigational drug tivozanib compared to sorafenib in 517 patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC).”

This is a preview of AVEO announces front-line data in renal cell cancer for tivozanib. Read the full post

ASH 2011 Update #2 – Non Hodgkins Lymphoma

Posted on December 21, 2011 by MaverickNY

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:

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

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

Posted on December 15, 2011 by MaverickNY

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

This is a preview of ASH 2011 Update 1: Bruton's Kinase Inhibitors (BTK). Read the full post

What’s hot at SABCS – Update 2 – advanced breast cancer

Posted on December 10, 2011 by MaverickNY

After a number of basic research and science sessions over the last two days (see the Update 1 post on the science that intrigued me for more details), but the last two days heralded some excellent clinical sessions, in both oral and poster forms. These included the presentation of the much anticipated update to the BOLERO-2 trial, which was also published in the New England Journal of Medicine online and the CLEOPATRA study, also published in the same journal. One of the more impressive posters that caught my eye was the ENCORE 301 study, which provided an update to the entinostat data in ER/PR+ HER2- advanced breast cancer.

This is a preview of What’s hot at SABCS – Update 2 – advanced breast cancer. Read the full post

Follow the American Society of Hematology ASH conversations!

Posted on December 10, 2011 by MaverickNY

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:

This is a preview of Follow the American Society of Hematology ASH conversations!. Read the full post

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

Posted on December 9, 2011 by MaverickNY

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: