Pharma Strategy Blog

Commentary on Pharma & Biotech Oncology / Hematology New Product Development

Posts tagged ‘R&D’

Time to rethink cancer clinical trials strategy?

By on November 27, 2012

Recently, I’ve been pondering clinical trial design and wondering whether there is better way to do things, since much of the current concepts were based on cytotoxics that often had a very narrow therapeutic window.  With the advent of oral tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), the model seems, well, a bit old and tired and doesn’t always help us develop the optimum outcome.

In phase I oncology clinical trials, for example, we seek to find the MTD, as explained by Drs Rubenstein and Simon (PDF download) at the NCI:

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Highlights of AACR 2012 – Part 2

By on April 18, 2012

Yesterday, I mentioned that some of the best bits of this year’s American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting were the numerous gems in the poster sessions.

Reuben Sierra AACR e1334766105891 224x300 Highlights of AACR 2012 Part 2

Reuben Sierra, Ming Tsao's Lab (with permission)

One of the coolest such posters I came across was from Ming Tsao’s group.

Specifically, Rafael Sierra (see photo right) was hosting an excellent piece of research entitled: “Overcoming resistance to EGFR-tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy in non-small cell lung cancer.”

This is an area of much needed research and breakthroughs.

Why?

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Highlights of AACR 2012 – Part 1

By on April 17, 2012

The 2012 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting in Chicago was interesting for several reasons.  While there were no truly ground breaking data such as in previous years as with, for example:

  • vemurafenib in BRAFV600E melanoma
  • vismodegib in basal cell carcinoma (BCC)
  • crizotinib in ALK+ lung cancer

there were a lot of encouraging signs for the future.

What made the meeting exciting for me was the sheer number of new compounds emerging from late preclinical to early phase I – clearly companies are looking to restock their pipelines with the threat of major patent cliffs imminent.  Not everyone is chasing new compounds to license in!  The sheer breadth and depth of the pathways targeted by the new compounds took me a little by surprise.

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Some thoughts on cancer research and the pipeline cliff…

By on June 28, 2011

502411.1 Some thoughts on cancer research and the pipeline cliff...This morning I was pondering a triangulation of several random thoughts that appeared in my Twitter stream, many from BIO, about various topics:

  1. Discussing the patent cliffs and lack of revenue generation some companies such as Lilly will no doubt be facing with John Carroll (Fierce Biotech) and Matt Herper (Forbes Health)
  2. Christiane True (PharmaLive) at the annual BIO meeting quoted a speaker as saying “doing more with less” which seems pretty much de rigeur these days
  3. Ron Leuty tweeted a quote from Chris Viehbacher’s (Sanofi) presentation at BIO, “Not doing more with less, but doing different things.”
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On the future of cancer treatment and research

By on June 27, 2011

This week I’m preparing an in depth mini series on the molecular target landscape associated with prostate cancer, which will be scheduled for next week, so do check back if that is a topic of interest to you.

In the meantime, I came across this video from MD Anderson, where the new President-elect Dr Ronald DePinho talks about the near term future of cancer research and where he thinks we will be going.

It’s less than four minutes long, easily understandable and well worth watching:

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Accelerated approval and cancer drugs

By on March 24, 2011

There is a provocative article in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine asking whether the accelerated approval process should be used for more cancer drugs:

“The striking results of recent phase 1 trials of targeted cancer drugs have provoked serious discussion about shortening the road to drug approval.”

The main thrust of the argument was that it takes on average seven years from entering human trials to approval if phase III trials are included in the oncology drug development process.

“Of the 23 oncologic drugs given accelerated approval between 1993 and 2008, two were ultimately withdrawn from the U.S. market — gemtuzumab because of toxicity and gefitinib because of lack of efficacy.”

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On cricket and cancer research…

By on March 9, 2011

“How the mighty have fallen so quickly.  England were national heroes after winning the Ashes.  Now they are national chumps after this shocking and embarrassing defeat.”

Geoffrey Boycott, on England’s surprise defeat by Ireland in Cricket World Cup.

england vs ireland cricket world cup kevin 100 On cricket and cancer research...

England v Ireland in the Cricket World Cup

Some of you readers will be aware that I’m a big sports fan, of cricket and football in particular, so my cheerful mood earlier this morning was somewhat muted after learning that the motherland, England, somehow managed to lose to lowly Ireland.  In cricket!

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Sisyphus, oncology R&D and Pharma

By on September 15, 2010

Loved this cartoon from Hugh Macleod at Gaping Void that just arrived in my mail box:

Sisyphus, oncology R&D and Pharma
Source: Gaping Void

In many ways, this is what drug development can look like on a day to day basis. Scientists repeating experiments, project teams holding endless meetings etc, that sometimes it's hard to see which in a portfolio of agents might actually make it through to market and which will fail along the journey.

Still, eventually, some of those small rocks reach enough critical mass (data) and actually do tip over the edge to be successfully commercialised.  

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Life is an adventure

By on August 24, 2010

Regular readers will know that I'm a big fan of Gaping Void cartoons by Hugh Macleod.

This one really resonated:

Life is an adventure

Source: Hugh Macleod, Gaping Void

If you think about it, Pharma R&D is also a bit of an adventure (or even a roller coaster sometimes); you never know quite whether you're on a winner or a loser with company pipelines and portfolios.

Attitude also comes into it – do you live by paycheck or project, or do you truly love what you do?

 

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Why do some cancer drugs work and others don't?

By on August 12, 2010

The news yesterday from Amgen that panitumumab (Vectibix) failed in Head and Neck cancer got me thinking.  Why did it fail where cetuximab (Erbitux) succeeded? They're both monoclonal antibodies to EGFR, so that makes it rather interesting.

Many of you will remember that bevacizumab (Avastin) and Erbitux were both approved within a month of each other for colorectal cancer, both monoclonals, to VEGF and EGFR respectively.  That was after a long string of failures for anti-angiogenesis compounds.  Subsequently, vatalanib (PTK787), a small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) of VEGF from Novartis failed in the same indication and did not achieve statistical significance in survival.

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