MaverickNY | Pharma Strategy Blog

Using Flipboard to keep up with science and cancer research

By MaverickNY on May 24, 2011

A lot of people have asked me over the last year how I keep up with so much information in cancer research. I thought it would be a nice idea to illustrate one way I consume information on a daily basis.

Since getting an iPad2, my life has changed for the better. There are a number of really useful apps that let you browse information in a more user-friendly way. Four of these include:

Flipboard
Zite
Reeder
Feedly

After trying them all over time, I found that for me, the one that resonated most for me was Flipboard.

What you get starts out like this:

Oh dear, that wasn’t welcome news this morning, bearing in mind I’m flying to ASCO in Chicago and then to London for the European Hematology Association meeting back to back in a few weeks. The return of #ashcloud tweets on Twitter looks imminent!

Here’s how Flipboard works…

Select your Twitter lists
Other people’s curated Twitter lists you follow
RSS feeds for blogs, journals, pubmed searches, etc

And the inside of the magazine becomes organised into recognisable categories:

You can then flip through the categories and see what’s interesting to you for further reading. It also enables you to see broad trends much more easily.

Here’s an example from my journal and Pubmed feeds, since I have searches for all the key pathways that are associated with cancer. Some are more active than others, but over time, you get a mix of new articles whenever you browse them.

This is much easier to browse than reading lists and lists of things in Google Reader – Flipboard brings them life:

Now you can sort the chaff from the wheat – we know that the BRAF V600E mutation is important in melanoma, but not colon cancer for example, but I sure didn’t know it might have a role to play in thyroid cancer!

Reading the abstracts this way is much more impactful and user-friendly.

Another thing that is useful is browsing one’s Twitter lists on topics such as Cancer, Medicine etc. In the latter, I spotted an interesting tweet about how an app could be used to record your ECG on an iPhone – how cool is that?

You can see the play button for the video on the iPad (it obviously won’t work on the photo though, in case you just clicked on it ;)) – you just click and listen while travelling or sitting in the comfort of your office.

The way technology has evolved over the last couple of years is simply amazing, but best of all, it makes processing information you have selected as relevant to your personal interests much more user-friendly and digestible.

That’s a big win for busy people on the go!

What apps do you like? Do share them in the comments below.

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AstraZeneca’s PARP inhibitor olaparib prolonged remission in serous ovarian cancer

By MaverickNY on May 23, 2011

Last week the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) held a press briefing to highlight some of the studies at the forthcoming annual meeting in Chicago next month.

ASCO Annual Meeting 2011 Patients, Progress, Pathways ASCO president, Dr George Sledge of Indiana, announced that the meeting theme for this year is “Patients, Pathways, Progress” to reflect the growing focus on molecular targets to identify and treat patients more effectively.

Traditionally, ASCO has organised their meeting around tumour types such as breast, lung, prostate and colon cancers, for example, but this year I was delighted to see that the Developmental Therapeutics section is getting more attention with a greater focus on the molecular targets that are now emerging:

ASCO 2011 Annual Meeting Pathways

Of the abstracts covered in the briefing, two in particular really stood out for me. One was on Exelixis’ cabozantinib (XL184) in bone metastases, which my colleague wrote about on Biotech Strategy Blog and the other was the data for AstraZeneca’s PARP inhibitor, olaparib, in serous ovarian cancer.

Many of you will know that I’ve been covering PARP inhibitors on this blog since 2006 – although they have had somewhat of a chequered history to date. After the recent failure of Sanofi’s iniparib in triple negative breast cancer and AstraZeneca deciding to put a phase III breast cancer trial on hold while they reformulate the drug from capsules to a tablet to make it easier for people to take, many weren’t sure what was happening with the PARP class of compounds.

Would they be consigned to the drug dustbin or would they come back from the dead?

Dr Jonathan Ledermann (University College London) presented an overview of the phase II results in serous ovarian cancer. These were women both with, and without, the BRCA gene. It has previously been shown by Audeh et al., (2010) that ~30% of inherited BRCA mutated tumours respond to PARP inhibitors, particularly those that have ‘platinum-sensitive’ disease.

Here is the phase II study design in serous ovarian cancer:

Olaparib serous ovarian cancer phase II trial design

What was in interesting in this study was that, overall, Dr Ledermann noted that they found that women in the olaparib arm lived for 8.4 months before progression, compared to 4.8 months on placebo. This 3.6 month improvement in PFS was statistically significant.

We will know more about the details of this study on Saturday 4th June at ASCO, but for now, two things stand out:

This is the first study to demonstrate a statistically significant benefit of maintenance treatment for ‘platinum-sensitive’ relapsed serous ovarian cancer
50% of olaparib and 16% of placebo patients were still on treatment at the time of the analysis

These results seem pretty compelling and important to me.

If you’re around at ASCO on Saturday, the ovarian cancer session is on from 3-6pm in room E354a – check it out!

For those interested, there are also some new data being presented on Abbott’s PARP inhibitor, ABT-888 (veliparib) combined with temozolomide in refractory colorectal cancer. This is also on Saturday afternoon from 4.30-6pm in the Clinical Science Symposium in Hall D1.

No doubt many of us will be running around up and down the escalators on the very first day, some Segways with hooters might help! Still, I dream/long for the future when ASCO follows AACR’s lead and organises sessions around molecular targets and pathways instead of tumour types… maybe that won’t be too far into the future after all 🙂

References:

Audeh, M., Carmichael, J., Penson, R., Friedlander, M., Powell, B., Bell-McGuinn, K., Scott, C., Weitzel, J., Oaknin, A., Loman, N., Lu, K., Schmutzler, R., Matulonis, U., Wickens, M., & Tutt, A. (2010). Oral poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitor olaparib in patients with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations and recurrent ovarian cancer: a proof-of-concept trial The Lancet, 376 (9737), 245-251 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)60893-8

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Managing bone metastases with denosumab in prostate cancer: an interview with Dr Neal Shore

By MaverickNY on May 19, 2011

At the annual American Urological Association (AUA) meeting this week in Washington DC, Dr Matthew Smith from Mass General Hospital presented updated data from the phase III 147 trial comparing denosumab to placebo in managing skeletal related events (SREs) and bone metastases-free survival. Skeletal complications are a major cause of prostate cancer morbidity.

The results were somewhat controversial, however, because while surrogate measures such as delaying time to SREs clearly show a benefit in favour of denosumab, no difference in overall survival was seen over placebo.

To find out whether these measures are clinically meaningful or not, I chatted with Dr Neal Shore, a urologist who is the Medical Director of the Carolina Urologic Research Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina as part of the ongoing Making a Difference series of interviews.

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Update on denosumab and SRE’s: data from the 147 trial

By MaverickNY on May 17, 2011

A little over ten years ago, I lost my Father to metastatic prostate cancer, a brave fight that lasted only a few years since he was diagnosed with stage IV disease. In many ways though, it was a bittersweet moment because while it’s always heartbreaking to lose a parent, it was also a blessing that he was spared of any further pain. In those days, the only bisphosphonates available in the UK were pamidronate (Aredia) and the awful clodronate. The urologist managing my Father had no clue about either, so he suffered in silence instead.

I tell this story because, while difficult to discuss, sometimes we forget the importance of supportive care and pain management in improving the quality of life for patients with advanced cancer.

AUA 2011 DMAB SRE

Based on my family’s experience, I can tell you that it makes a huge difference, not just to the patient, but also for other family members. There is nothing more distressing to see someone in considerable pain from bone destruction and the doctors not doing anything about it because ‘it’s normal for the condition’ or they are considered ‘too old over 65’. In the end, I suspect many give up the fight because the pain becomes unbearable.

Since my Father’s passing, clinical advances in managing skeletal related events (SREs) and bone pain have thankfully moved on with the approval of another more potent bisphosphonate, zoledronic acid (Zometa) and a RANK-L inhibitor, denosumab (Xgeva). Both of these therapies increase the time to SREs associated with metastases compared to placebo, but what about bone metastases and survival – do they make any difference?

New clinical data now available

This morning at the AUA annual meeting, data was presented by Dr Matthew Smith (Mass General) on the much awaited update on the 147 phase III trial in the late breaking plenary session. The study compared denosumab (120 mg subcutaneously taken monthly) to placebo.

AUA DMAB 147 symptomatic metastases

Overall, in terms of efficacy, denosumab significantly:

– Increased bone metastasis-free survival by a median of 4.2 months compared with placebo ie 29.5 and 25.2 months, respectively (hazard ratio [HR] 0.85; 95% CI: 0.73, 0.98; P=0.028; risk reduction of 15%)

– Delayed time to first bone metastasis compared with placebo (HR 0.84; 95% CI: 0.71, 0.98; P=0.032; risk reduction of 16%)

– Delayed time to symptomatic bone metastasis (HR 0.67; 95% CI: 0.49, 0.92; P=0.01).

However, it wasn’t all good news on the efficacy front though.

Median overall survival was similar between groups (HR 1.01; 95% CI: 0.85, 1.20; P=0.91).

In other words, patients did not live longer when given denosumab therapy compared to placebo.

Comparison of side effects

Overall, rates of adverse events (AEs) and serious AEs were generally similar between groups, with two exceptions, namely:

– Yearly cumulative incidence of osteonecrosis of jaw was similar to rates previously reported for monthly denosumab 120 mg (year 1: 1.1%, year 2: 2.9%, year 3: 4.2%), although the overall cumulative rate was 4.6% (n=33).

– Hypocalcemia occurred in 1.7% (n=12) denosumab and 0.3% (n=2) placebo patients.

To put this in context, in the zoledronic acid versus placebo trial, both ONJ and hypocalcemia were lower than that seen in the denosumab study. According to Medscape Reference, this is not a side effect to be trifled with, since it can cause stroke and cardiopulmonary effects:

“Depending on the cause, unrecognized or poorly treated hypocalcemic emergencies can lead to significant morbidity or death.”

Clearly, some of the effects can be mitigated with calcium and vitamin D supplementation, although some patients, especially though with co-morbidities, may be challenging with adherence and compliance.

A critical question is are surrogate measurements clinically meaningful?

Dr Oliver Sartor raised this issue recently in a Nature publication, essentially challenging whether SRE was clinically meaningful or not, and arguing that better measurements would be a reduction in pain or improvement in the patient’s quality life when considering whether a therapy had an impact or not.

You can find out more about Dr Sartor’s insights in a recent blog post my colleague, Pieter Droppert, posted on Biotech Strategy Blog in the run-up to the AUA meeting.

In order to get to the bottom of this dilemma, I interviewed Dr Neal Shore, a urologist at the Carolina Urologic Research Center, and asked him what he thought of the significance of the data:

“This is a huge milestone in our understanding of the bone microenvironment”

On managing the adverse events versus the improved time to bone-free metastasis, Dr Shore replied,

“I think the risk benefit of preventing a skeletal metastasis versus the small, but albeit statistically real risk of ONJ, far outweighs that risk.”

The interview with Dr Shore will post tomorrow morning as a podcast as part of the Ongoing Making a Difference series – do check back to hear his insights on the 147 trial.

References:

Sartor, O. (2011). Denosumab in bone-metastatic prostate cancer: known effects on skeletal-related events but unknown effects on quality of life Asian Journal of Andrology DOI: 10.1038/aja.2011.33

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A vlog update on advanced prostate cancer from the AUA 2011 meeting

By MaverickNY on May 16, 2011

After attending numerous basic research and clinical updates at the American Urologic Association (AUA) annual meeting in Washington DC, it is clear that the new and emerging therapies are not going to stop at the three grand crus from 2010.

Recently, abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) was approved, but there are a number of critical issues that need to considered, including:

Sequencing
Combinations
Cost
Patient selection

As we learn more about the molecular mechanisms behind resistance to androgen receptor signaling (up and downstream) and new targets emerge, so it may be possible to improve patient outcomes in castration-resitant prostate cancer.

Here’s a short video update of what I thought was interesting here at the conference:

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How AUA have embraced social media in 2011

By MaverickNY on May 16, 2011

One of the recent trends at cancer conferences that I have noticed has been the creative use of social media by some cancer and urology Society organizations such as AACR, ASCO, AUA and ASH to promote their events and communicate with attendees before, during and after conferences. It’s not all American organisations either, with some European societies also becoming increasingly digitally aware, including ESMO, EAU and EHA all gradually building an online presence beyond their websites.

With SoMe, we have also seen an uptick in digitally savvy attendees using tools such as Twitter to tweet snippets from different conference sessions, drive traffic to their posters, meet up with others at different sessions and generally engage in scientific or clinical discussions around various hot topics.

Last year, the American Urological Association (AUA) started nicely with baby steps, setting up Twitter and YouTube accounts and a fledgling Facebook page, although only the Twitter account was really active at the 2010 annual meeting.

Following on from that successful experiment, this year they are much more active on Twitter and Facebook, announcing events, press briefings, running competitions and responding promptly to attendees queries.

A bunch of us at a satellite society at the Grand Hyatt found ourselves without heat or wifi on Saturday, so we tweeted under the conference hashtag to alert the organisers over at the convention center. I personally was delighted that the temperature improved in the afternoon of the Society for Basic Urological Research (SBUR) meeting, as the frozen Tundra-temperatures shed an icy pall over the excellent morning presentations from Dr. Charles Sawyers and others. Tweeting polite feedback does bring results!

Here’s the AUA Facebook page, which is actively managed, with photos, news, links and other interesting snippets:

There are also light booths around the convention centre advertising the Facebook page:

Another first was a training course over the weekend for physicians on how to use social media to market their urology practices was held for interested attendees. I thought this was a great idea and this is one area I expect to see grow as more urologists get involved with social media and incorporate the tools into their business marketing – engagement with people and potential patients can pay off in the long run.

Eventually, I think we will see more social media develop for learning opportunities especially in the CME environment or incorporated into more skills training, for example, to YouTube videos to explain surgical techniques and aftercare for patients. The start is a good one, but we’re only just seeing the tip of the iceberg begin to emerge.

Meanwhile, thanks to Wendy and Dana at AUA for a job well done on social media at the 2011 annual meeting in DC!

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Aggregating the American Urology Association AUA2011 tweets

By MaverickNY on May 13, 2011

Today it’s Friday 13th and we’re heading off on the road again, this time to Washington DC for the much anticipated annual meeting of the American Urology Association (AUA).

We’ll be covering the hot topics on urologic cancers, including bladder and prostate cancers and renal cell carcinoma (RCC). I’m particularly interested in castrate resistant prostate cancer and updates on the abiraterone (Zytiga) data following the recent approval post chemotherapy in the US, and also the long term data for Medivation/Astellas’ MDV3100 from their phase I/II trial. It’s always important to know how patients in the early trials are doing.

We will post various updates here on Pharma Strategy Blog over the weekend including blog posts, podcasts and of course, video highlights. Do check back daily for news and snippets about what’s hot here at AUA.

In the meantime, you can also follow the aggregated tweets from the attendees – if you have a question, please don’t hesitate to ask me on Twitter (@maverickny) using the offical conference hashtag #aua2011 or in the blog comments below:

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Roche files vemurafenib for metastatic melanoma in Europe and US

By MaverickNY on May 12, 2011

Yesterday, Roche/Genentech announced that they have submitted the New Drug Application (NDA) filing for PLX4032 (vemurafenib) in BRAF V600E mutation-positive metastatic melanoma, based on BRIM2 and BRIM3 trials to both the FDA and EMA.

I’ve posted quite a bit on BRAF inhibitors such as vemurafenib on this blog – check out the related posts feature at the bottom if you want to learn more about the history of this class of drugs.

Interestingly, Roche have also submitted the companion diagnostic, cobas 4800 BRAF V600 Mutation Test, which means that oncologists in the community will be able to more easily test patients for the mutation, since these patients are more likely to respond to therapy with BRAF inhibitors such as vemurafenib.

Source: wikipedia

Although melanoma is treatable in the early stages, unfortunately once it becomes metastatic, it becomes more difficult to contain.

Roche have conducted two large-scale clinical trials (BRIM3 and BRIM2) to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of vemurafenib in mestatatic melanoma patients who have the V600E mutation. According to the Company:

“BRIM3 is a global, randomised, open-label, controlled, multicentre, Phase III study that compared vemurafenib to dacarbazine chemotherapy, a current standard of care, in 675 patients with previously untreated BRAF V600 mutation-positive, unresected or locally advanced metastatic melanoma.

The study met its two co-primary endpoints and showed that participants who received vemurafenib lived longer (overall survival) and also lived longer without their disease getting worse (progression-free survival) compared to those who received dacarbazine chemotherapy.

The safety profile was consistent with previous vemurafenib studies.”

The BRIM2 study also formed part of the global filing:

“BRIM2 is a global, single-arm, multicentre, open-label Phase II study that enrolled 132 patients with previously treated BRAF V600 mutation-positive metastatic melanoma. The primary endpoint of the study was overall response rate as assessed by an independent review committee.

The study showed that vemurafenib shrank tumours in 52 percent of trial participants. People who participated in the trial lived a median of 6.2 months without their disease getting worse (median PFS).”

Like many of us, I’ve known family and friends or friends of friends who have been lost to this devastating disease. Six months doesn’t sound very long, but when you look at many of the oncologic filings over the last decade, very few have actually shown six months improvement in overall survival. In that context, this represents a dramatic advance for patients.

Of course, we can still do better, and as we learn more about the biology of the disease, so we can develop smarter therapeutic strategies for overcoming malignant melanoma. This could take the form of new combinations or other BRAF inhibitors that do not target CRAF as well as BRAF, for example:

“The most frequent Grade 3 adverse event observed in clinical trials of vemurafenib was cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, a common skin cancer treated by local excision (minor surgery done in a physician’s office).

The most common adverse events were rash, photosensitivity, joint pain, hair loss and fatigue.”

It has been shown that activating CRAF, for example, is most likely responsible for the squamous cell proliferation on the skin in some patients. It appears to be reversible once treatment is stopped. However, that said, this is still a huge advance and should be applauded as such.

More BRAF and RAF inhibitors are on the way

BRAF inhibitors

Interestingly, Bayer also announced yesterday that their multi-kinase RAF/VEGF/Tie2/RET/KIT inhibitor, regorafenib, was granted Fast Track designation by the FDA for the treatment of patients with metastatic and/or unresectable gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) whose disease has progressed despite at least imatinib and sunitinib as prior treatments. This is an incredibly small population so I don’t expect the trial to accrue speedily. GIST is largely KIT or PDGF rather than RAF driven. The trial began enrolling in January this year and accrual is still open – in all, Bayer plan to enroll 170 patients.

I will be interested to see whether regorafenib also activates CRAF as well as RAF – if so, we can expect some squamous cell proliferation in the adverse events – while multi-kinase inhibitors can be effective, we also have seen some off-kinase side effects, as shown with sorafenib and sunitinib.

What does this data mean?

The vemurafenib filing is excellent news for patients based on the data and pictures I have seen of responses in various conference presentations to date. It’s a great success story of finding an aberrant mutation, developing a diagnostic to enable widespread testing for it and matching the patient to the treatment.

What I also like is the fervour with which the melanoma scientist-physician community is researching the methods of resistance and looking at new combinations with BRAF inhibitors almost as soon as they detect them – a great showcase for what to do.

We can also expect update on the BRIM2 and 3 trials at the forthcoming annual meeting at ASCO next month – I can’t wait to see how the data is maturing!

Assuming that vemurafenib is approved, it will also be interesting to see what happens post-approval, since Daiichi Sankyo bought Plexikkon, complicating the potential marketing and sales roll-out considerably. One can wonder at the old adage that two’s company, but three becomes a crowd to manage.

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Mobile health and the impact for Pharma

By MaverickNY on May 11, 2011

“In God we trust, all others must bring data.”

W. Edwards Deming

The beauty of following many people on social media sites such as Twitter is that people in various communities, ie science, cancer, market research, PR and communications, etc all share links daily. Occasionally, one catches my eye and reveals a hidden gem.

This morning was one of those days.

Take a look at this quick but useful (12 pages) slide deck on mobile health from Susannah Fox of Pew Internet:

Fox Mobile Health 2011

View more presentations from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

Social media is changing the way we interact and do a lot of things

Mobile and access to wifi is very much part of facilitating that change. Go out on a busy street at lunchtime and notice how many people are using their iPhone, iPad or Android PDA to access data or do something. Wifi access is included in this category – can you remember the last time you connected your laptop or desktop to an ethernet cable – I can’t. Everything is now wireless, even printing.

The consequence of this trend is that many people are now searching for health information online, via their mobile or wifi (6 in 10 according to the Pew Research).

Does this trend have an impact on Pharma?

Absolutely it does. This social change actually has many useful implications for Pharma and their agencies:

Are your brand or unbranded sites optimised for mobile?
Are your sites Flash heavy?
Is it easy to access health or disease information you generate through apps?
Is your site optimised for languages such as Spanish?

It always amuses me (not) how many Agencies have flash heavy sites when a client calls and desires a recommendation for a new vendor, which actually happens quite often. PR and Communications agencies are notoriously bad at this. If I’m trying to send a link to your site to someone on an iPhone and they can’t read it, I’m not going to refer you. Fixing this glitch and dragging your agency into the digital age will improve your image enormously – image matters.

Imagine what the experience would be for patients trying to find out health information on the go and they can’t access anything because it’s coded in ugly Flash? They will quickly go elsewhere for health information.

Scaling a website from a desktop or laptop to a mobile device is very different, both in the look and feel. This blog, for example, looks very different on a mobile device than on a PC screen – check it out for yourselves. The optimisation makes it much easier to read a blog post.

If I have a horrid time trying to find the incredibly tiny Prescribing Information or Reimbursement link on your brand site on a laptop, it’s going to be very difficult for a patient or caregiver to find it on a mobile device. That’s something that is very easy to fix and will improve things for patients immediately.

Optimise it with big clickable, easy to see and read buttons! Make the text large, navigation and UI a breeze to read and use. Easy to use sites will ensure repeat visits, increased customer loyalty and sharing of the content. Hard to use sites will not.

The Pew Report highlighted two key trends in online health discussions that I think are really important to Pharma, which they defined as:

The Mobile difference
The Diagnosis difference

Where the Diagnosis difference is helping people find, read and share information about a disease or diagnosis. This could be a patient or caregiver, but interestingly, 1 in 4 adults use apps on their Smart phones.

WebMD is a still a main destination site for people seeking independent health information, but apps are becoming increasingly important. That one area where Pharma companies can make an impact in a thoughtful, rather than promotional way. My big assumption here though, is that patients themselves are consulted for ideas through focus groups and involved in the development of tools for monitoring their condition that are useful to them.

The end result? People are more likely to share links or apps virally and blog about them to others, thereby helping to increase awareness, adoption and hopefully, longevity if the site or app is really useful and fills an unmet need.

Overall, this is an interesting area where Pharma can get easily involved in Web 2.0 – what are your thoughts or comments?

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Update on PARP inhibitors including iniparib, olaparib and veliparib

By MaverickNY on May 10, 2011

A PSB reader wrote in asking whether an update on the PARP inhibitors and the clinical trials would be possible. Following on from the last update in January that covered Sanofi’s negative iniparib phase III data in triple negative breast cancer and AstraZeneca’s decision in February not to pursue olaparib in hereditary BRCA1 and 2 positive breast cancers, it would be a good idea to see what’s left of this once highly promising class of compounds.

I first wrote about PARP inhibitors way back in 2006 and like many, I’m rather disappointed with the results we’ve seen so far. However, all is not lost. Abbott’s veliparib is going strong, while Pfizer (PF-01367338) and Cephalon (CEP-9722) are just getting started with their programs.

Iniparib was probably the weakest inhibitor of the class and perhaps not potent enough, since there was no increase in toxicities in the TNBC study (that can be a good and a bad thing), while olaparib has proven to be potent but challenging to combine with chemotherapy. It doesn’t mean that a different compound or clinical approach will be unsuccessful.

The saddest thing about the iniparib trial is the lack of BRCA1 and 2 testing, given the heterogeneous nature of triple negative breast cancer. We will likely never know which different subsets responded and why from that trial, it probably could have been better designed and included more rigorous biopsies for biomarker analysis, but once done it is too late. This is one of the dangers of applying old-style chemotherapy trial designs to targeted therapies – first know your molecular targets – or potential targets – and evaluate the biomarkers over time in response to therapy. Otherwise, it’s a bit like blindfolding an archer and asking him to hit a target s/he can’t even see.

I don’t think all is lost with AstraZeneca’s olaparib yet, but we will have to wait and see what the current ongoing studies bring in terms of answers. Certainly, both AstraZeneca and Abbott have a broad range of clinical trials that may yield some interesting results. We shall see.

I took a quick look at the clinical trials database and sifted through the available data for PARP inhibitors. This is what we have so far:

Parp Inhibitors

One trial I’m eagerly awaiting the results of is the ISPY2 trial in neoadjuvant breast cancer, which included veliparib as one of the treatment options in a molecular based approac,h much in the same way the BATTLE trial worked in lung cancer. For those interested in the background to this approach in breast cancer, you can find the details in an interview with Sue Desmond-Hellmann (UCSF), when the trial was first announced. It will be a while before we know the results, but one that is very eagerly awaited in the breast cancer community.

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