Pharma Strategy Blog

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.

Clusterin is also known as testosterone-repressed prostate message-2 or TRMP-2, and has been shown by Miyake et al., (2000) to be important in advanced prostate cancer. This is because the treatment of choice in hormone-sensitive disease, androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), can lead to clusterin upregulation, thereby causing castrate resistance.

The group’s latest study at EAU looked at whether clusterin knockdown sensitised MDV3100 activity and evaluated potential mechanisms for how this might work.

The results showed that:

1. Neither MDV3100 or custirsen alone affected AR levels, but in combination, the AR protein levels were reduced.
2. The combination synergistically suppressed LNCaP (human prostate cancer cell lines) in vitro and in vivo compared to monotherapy with either alone.
3. Inhibition of the AR has been shown to activate the PI3K-Akt pathway, but the combination prevented this from occurring.
4. Dual treatment also increased AR instability via decreased levels of the AR chaperone, FKBP52.
5. AR degradation occurred with combination therapy via the proteasome, leading to synergistic repression of AR transcription.

While these data offer a very nice and logical preclinical rationale for considering a combination of MDV3100 and custirsen to overcome castrate resistance in advanced disease, we also need to see clinical evidence in advanced prostate cancer before getting too excited. I like the idea scientifically but Oncogenex, the manufacturers of custirsen, have not exactly been swift at moving their previous trials along, as Luke Timmerman noted his Xconomy article last year.

Ultimately, the proof is always in the (clinical) pudding.

References:

Miyake H, Nelson C, Rennie PS, & Gleave ME (2000). Testosterone-repressed prostate message-2 is an antiapoptotic gene involved in progression to androgen independence in prostate cancer. Cancer research, 60 (1), 170-6 PMID: 10646870