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Posts from the ‘Conferences’ category

Social media at ECCO, ESMO, EMCC Stockholm 2011

By on September 22, 2011

Hopefully, by the time y’all read this we have arrived here we are in Stockholm after a nighmarish week with Continental and United messing up big time with flights booked six months ago. Sometimes big corporations really fail to understand the importance of communication and customer loyalty. Eventually, it is only when there is competition, they stop and wonder why many people used the Law of Two Feet and walked. Maybe that is a subconscious metaphor for Big Pharma 🙂

Anyway, enough of all that. Let’s take a look at some of the social media tools being used at the ECCO conference this week as it seems to be an increasing trend for conference organisers to incorporate social media into their event. They have taken several forms, including downloadable apps for the schedule, subscription to talks and webcasts on iTunes or encouraging open dialogue on Twitter and Facebook amongst participants.

Two excellent examples I’ve seen this year, in terms of well organised and integrated social media tools, have been the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and American Urological Association (AUA). While the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) inevitably gets the largest volume of tweets by dint of its sheer size, the smaller organisations have perhaps been more aggressive and creative in developing and utilising the tools more effectively for their members.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how things have progressed in Europe at the ECCO meeting, having had a very positive experience with planning most of my schedule on their new app. You can browse the sessions by day or type and add them easily to your calendar in local time in Stockholm. They appear in my calendar as ET but adjusted for the time zone. That’s a very nice touch many forget about and so the schedule goes wonky if you download it one time zone and attend the sessions in another! It looks like that will not be a problem with this app. Excellent!

Let’s take a look at what I could find in the ECCO program.

Social Media tools at ECCO

As mentioned yesterday, the official hashtag for Twitter is #emcc2011 and you can also follow the ECCO organisation on:

They also have some slick apps accessible by links or QR codes as preferred, to enable you to search and plan your schedule from the program:

Tweets will most likely gather steam on Friday with the corporate symposia kicking off, as Thursday was the travel day for many.

Meanwhile, for those interested in following the conversations, as usual, we’re curating all the conference tweets below.

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What’s hot at ECCO, ESMO, EMCC in Stockholm 2011?

By on September 21, 2011

After a wild day yesterday once we realised Continental had mysteriously and unaccountably changed our flights to Stockholm from Weds to Weds to Thurs to Tues, it seems that Cinderella will be going to the ball after all.

European Multidisciplinary Cancer Conference (EMCC) here we come, whew!

There are a couple of sessions I’m particularly looking forward to this year:

    1. Presidential Symposium on Sat 25th with talks from some of the leading lights in translational research:
      • Tak Mak (U Toronto) on metabolism and cancer
      • Jose Baselga (MGH) on the challenges of personalised medicine
      • Gordon Mills (MDACC) on the future of personalised medicine

 

    1. Various abstract highlights include:
      • Update on phase II ERIVANCE data for the Hedgehog inhibitor, vismodegib, in basal cell carcinoma (see phase I data from AACR)
      • Biomarkers, including VEGF-A in the bevacizumab trials and an update on KRAS
      • Phase II T-DM1 (trastuzumab emtansine) data in breast cancer
      • Reversing drug resistance in breast cancer (Mon 27th)
      • Updated data from the phase I and III (BRIM3) studies of vemurafenib (Zelboraf) in BRAF V600E-mutation positive metastatic melanoma (will be interesting to see how this compares to the ASCO data
      • Update on therapies in prostate cancer, including new phase III Alpharadin data (see Biotech Strategy Blog)

 

  1. Scientific symposia on PARP inhibitors and PI3K inhibitors (both on Tues 28th). I’m gutted these two important sessions clash, as they are both key events I’d love to attend 🙁

All in all, it promises to be a fun and interesting meeting. For those interested, here’s the link to the full details of the EMCC programme.

Social media comes to ECCO

 

The official Twitter hashtag of the meeting is #emcc2011, a bit long I know, and I would much rather have the shorter, more descriptive and well known #ECCO or #ESMO, but it is a three organisation event afterall, with ECCO, ESMO and ESTRO all involved. You can also follow the EMCC conference organisers on Twitter (@EuropeanCancer).

This inevitably creates branding issues given it seems everyone in the industry has been seemingly asking me over the last two weeks if I’m going to ECCO or ESMO in equal measures! None outside of Twitter have mentioned EMCC at all. Ah well.

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New developments in the biology pancreatic cancer

By on September 16, 2011

At the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Second Frontiers in Basic Cancer Research Conference this week, two interesting presentations on pancreatic cancer caught my eye. It has long been my belief that we will see no major breakthroughs for this devastating disease until our understanding of the biology advances.

Here’s a quick snapshot of each one:

EGFR Essential for the Development of Pancreatic Cancer

Barbara M. Gruener, a researcher at the Technical University in Munich, Germany stated that,1

“Originally, we wanted to characterize the known role of EGFR in pancreatic cancer to a higher extent so that EGFR targeted therapy could be more individualized.”

However, sometimes serendipity intervenes and some useful, unexpected, nuggets are revealed. In this case, she presented compelling evidence that demonstrated that:

  • Despite KRAS, lack of EGFR blocks pancreatic cancer development
  • EGFR plays an “unappreciated” central role early in the carcinogenic process

Now, while we know the mutation of the KRAS gene is an important factor in the development of many cancers, including pancreatic cancer, Gruener’s results suggests that despite the presence of KRAS, the development of preneoplastic precursor lesions and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is blocked without the EGF receptor:

“EGFR seems to be involved in the early transdifferentiation processes of the pancreas in vivo and in vitro.”

What does this research mean in practice?

Firstly, these results were a surprise:

“With oncogenic active KRAS, you would expect that the lack of a receptor that is upstream of the KRAS signaling pathway does not impair the carcinogenic effects of KRAS almost completely.”

To me, the data strongly suggests that EGFR therapy might be a logical approach for early pancreatic cancer treatment than is currently undertaken, i.e. for advanced metastatic disease, when the tumor burden is much higher. Obviously, some clinical data will be needed to support and validate the preclinical findings, but this at least offers some pointers where we might start.

Virus Shows Promise for Imaging and Treating Pancreatic Cancer

The second abstract that really appealed to me was from Dana Haddad (MSKCC), who talked about the potential for an oncoloytic virus in pancreatic cancer 2

I confess that my first reaction was a little sceptical, as vaccines and viruses have yet to show dramatic activity in solid tumours, never mind a difficult to treat one such as pancreatic cancer. That said, let’s take a look at Dr Haddad’s research in detail.

First of all, she specified what an oncolytic virus actually is and what it does:

“Defined as viruses that selectively replicate in cancer cells with consequent direct destruction via cell lysis.
Leaves non-cancerous tissue unharmed.”

So a targeted approach, rather than a broad non-specific effect (I’m warming up already!)

One of the challenges though, is that biopsy is currently the gold standard for monitoring viral therapy in clinical trials, but these repeated biopsies are invasive and often difficult. There is therefore a need for new and improved methods for:

  • non-invasive monitoring
  • real time assessment of response to therapy
  • monitoring of potential viral toxicity

Haddad et al., looked at the feasibility of systemic virotherapy, together with monitoring radiotherapeutic response of pancreatic cancer xenografts treated with a vaccinia virus encoding the human sodium iodide symporter (hNIS), GLV-1h153.

hNIS is a cell surface protein that mediates transport of iodine mainly in thyroid gland. The value of this approach is that it has:

  1. imaging potential by using several carrier free radionuclide probes
  2. therapeutic potential by combining radioiodine with viral therapy

GLV-1h153 was injected systemically or intratumorally into pancreatic cancer xenografts in nude mice and 124I-positron emissions tomography (PET) was used image tumors.

The results clearly showed that:

  • PET signal intensity correlated with antitumor response
  • Colonization of tumors with GLV-1h153 facilitated uptake of radioiodine at potentially therapeutic doses
  • Combining GLV-1h153 with 131I led to enhanced tumor kill compared to either treatment alone

What do these findings mean in practice?

Dr Haddad summarized this nicely:

“It has been shown, for the first time, that vaccinia virus construct GLV-1h153 facilitates:
non-invasive long-term deep tissue monitoring of viral therapy, monitoring of tumor therapeutic response,
potential for targeted radiotherapy.”

She also went on to suggest that:

“GLV-1h153 can be directly translated to human clinical trials:
parent virus already in phase I clinical trials,
radiotracers and imaging modalities FDA approved.”

I think that we will see more clinical research evolve on GLV-1h153, since it appears to be a promising oncolytic agent, based on the data thus far. That’s good news for the San Diego biotech company, Genelux Corporation, who were involved with this oncolytic research. It’s still very early days, but the data looks promising enough to pursue clinical trials in humans further.  A phase I trial has recently been completed by the Royal Marsden Cancer Centre in the UK, with preliminary data presented at ASCO earlier this year.

  1. Press release – Gruener source ↩
  2. Press release – Haddad source  ↩
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ASCO Breast Cancer Symposium 2011

By on September 8, 2011

Today brings us the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) breast cancer symposium from San Francisco.

ASCO Breast Cancer Symposium 2011Sadly I’m not attending due to other commitments, but there will likely be a number of people there who will be tweeting the event. The official hashtag #BCS11 so it seemed a great opportunity to keep track of them for everyone interested in easily reading them all in one place.

You can click on the conference widget below at any time and follow the conversation from attendees and those remote from San Francisco:

I’m not expecting any earth shattering or breaking news on the therapy and new product development pipeline front (based only on the presentation titles), although some interesting discussions may evolve on more immediate and practical aspects from the program, such as:

For those interested, the breast cancer symposium abstracts are now available and searchable online.

Fall Conference season: European Multidisciplinary Cancer Conference

By on September 6, 2011

Labor Day heralds the end of summer, not just calendar-wise, but also metaphorically in terms of the tsunami of emails and meetings that appeared out of nowhere that many grudgingly return to.

The autumn conference season will soon be in full swing, with a number of key meetings coming up in the next month or two.

Photo Credit: Jimmy Harris

September will see us at several meetings, big and small, including the ECCO/ESMO/ESTRO conference now known as the European Multidisciplinary Cancer Conference (EMCC) from 23-27th.  No doubt industry people will take a while to switch from the well known ECCO and ESMO monikers that alternate each year.

There was some confusion over the hashtag, first it was #stockholm2011, which is not helpful in what the meeting was about and now #EMCC2011, which is better but still rather long.  Personally, I would have preferred #ECCO11 or #EMCC11 as the extra two characters make a huge difference when you only have 140 characters (or less if you include your handle and want Retweets), not to mention the speed of typing in a live session. #EMCC would have been even better, being both short and descriptive – Twitter only saves tweets that last 8 days or so, thus including the year is superfluous and a waste of precious characters.  Never mind, perhaps it will be #ESMO next year for simplicity and clarity 🙂

I plan on posting the usual tweet tracker before the event for those interested in following the conversations remotely.  We will be in Stockholm checking out what’s going on in oncology this year, so will tweet interesting snippets as they happen.

Currently, I’m reviewing the EMCC schedule and will post a pre-conference video highlights soon, discussing what I think will be hot topics from the meeting.  We also plan another highlights video from the meeting once data has been presented and will also post daily updates here on the blog where possible.

Having never been to Stockholm before, I’m really looking forward to it, but am under no illusions that we will actually see much of the place, beautiful though it may be!  It sounds an exotic locale compared to the grime of the NY metro area, but seriously, I rarely get to sightsee at these events, being far too busy running around from session to session to catch all the pipeline data and key presentations for our conference coverage.

If anyone else is going to ECCO, oops EMCC, and would like to meet up, please do let me know (you can email me by clicking on the beige Mail icon in the top right column) or say hello at the event.  It’s always nice to meet readers.

In the meantime, if you have any questions about the program, do feel fire away in the Comments section below and I will do my best to answer them either now or from the meeting.

Photo Credit: Jimmy Harris via Flickr

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iPad apps for science and medicine

By on August 30, 2011

One of the nicest things about about going to scientific meetings is that you get to meet interesting people.  Instead of swapping cards and going about your way, in the modern world social media allows you to stay in touch more frequently personally while sharing cancer and scientific information over time. The discussions can be very insightful and enriching.

Two recent PhDs from MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC), Drs Angela Alexander and Jeannine Garnett are two of those research scientists I met while at cancer meetings and now keep in touch with – congratulations on your well earned doctorates this summer, ladies!

Angela recently started a nice blog The Cancer Geek and posted an extensive review of how she uses her iPad during the day, including a summary of some of her favourite apps. Check it out, it’s well worth reading!

Funnily enough, I use many of the same apps and a few different ones too.  Not surprisingly, our workflow is a little different, given the diversity of things we’re both involved with.  Since there’s no active bench research here at Icarus, there’s no need to order supplies.  However, I thought for fun it would be a idea to take a leaf out of Angela’s book and take look at what’s on my iPad and how I use it. Here’s my home screen:

iPad Home Screen

After much trial and error, I decided to keep the top most used apps on the main screen (they do change over time with usage and circumstances eg the ESPN Fantasy Football app disappears when the season is over) and organise all the other less used ones into folders in a library screen. On the other two screens I dragged and dropped things into folders such as tools, productivity, books, audio etc and use Search on the home screen to find things quickly like this:

iPad Library Screen

This is much more productive than scrolling through looking for the app you need in a multitude of folders.  The app usually comes up in the list after 2-3 letters are typed. Some basic caveats – at home or in the office the iPad is mainly used as a consumption devise to browse (on Safari or Atomic), read (iBooks, Goodreader, AACR Journals), check RSS and blog feeds (BW RSS, Feedly, Reeder), see what hot in Twitter (Echofon and Flipboard) or listen (iPod or Spotify for music, Science podcasts, AACR Webcasts app, Instacast for podcasts such as one of my favourites, MacPowerUsers).

The reason for focus on consumption over creation is that the desktop and laptop are much more powerful and heavy duty for content creation. However, there are some cool tools for capturing drawings and scribbles such as Penultimate and Listary, which is excellent for syncing a quick To-Do list between the iPad and iPhone.

On the road though, the iPad becomes a very nifty and efficient creation tool that fits my workflow at scientific congresses nicely.  Yes, I have taken just the iPad to conferences and left the laptop behind without much difficulty.  That was liberating!

There are some nifty productivity To Do apps out there such as Things and OmniFocus (I prefer the latter) in addition to password security, which I highly recommend in case your iPad goes missing – 1Password is my personal favourite.

One important point to note – I truly detest the shackles of Microsoft Office and have never been a big fan of the bloatware it has become.  Years ago, while doing my PhD, the Physiology unit started migrating from WordPerfect, with its fast keyboard shortcuts and better graphic integration tools, to Word.  The constant fiddling with autochanges to formatting, size and scaling drove me potty then and I still scowl if I have to use any of the apps with the exception of Excel, although the simplicity of Lotus 1-2-3 and its macros and keyboard slashkeys is a happy memory to this day.

PC and Windows users are very much stuck in the world of files organised into folders, but many Mac tools and the iPad in particular don’t work this way, so the thinking behind it is rather different.  Think cloud apps and sync through Dropbox or searching for things based on Tagging, much in the same way that other apps such as Gmail, various text editors and Evernote work.  This is the way of the future for many and is a much more efficient way to find and store data.

With this in mind, most of my writing (and I do a lot of it as a consultant and blogger) is done in plain text – simple, elegant and infinitely more useful.  It took me a while to settle down with one system, but now I’m very happy with Simplenote on the iPad, iPhone or desktop and Notational Velocity Alt (nvALT) on the desktop.  They sync beautifully together once you enter your username/password.  This guarantees a natural backup will always be there. Some of the data is also synced to Dropbox.

Surprisingly, I now have thousands of blog posts, snippets, text and notes accrued in this handy text sync system. While walking around at cancer meetings, I take quick notes of interesting things from the posters or add quotes from chats with presenters straight into Simplenote on the iPad. For oral presentations, these go much faster than my typing skills allow, so I write long hand in my Moleskine and add notes manually in a quiet moment later so that they become searchable and re-usable.

John Gruber’s awesome Markdown syntax (discussed in Daring Fireball) and Fletcher Penny’s Multimarkdown are tools I make use of a lot, especially as conversion tools allows me to preview the text and then convert it to html for cutting and pasting into WordPress, the platform used for this blog. Text Expander Touch on the iPad uses the same master shortcut file as the desktop/laptop versions and makes repetitive typing of various tumour types, for example, so much faster!

Text or RTF files created in apps on the iPad can be synced via Dropbox for later use and aggregation in various desktop apps. I save Markdown notes and snippets as text files in Simplenote or Elements and once on a laptop, drag them to Marked, a cocoa desktop app from Brett Terpestra to preview and convert into html for blog posts or text for reports.

Scrivener is my Word Processor of choice these days, not Word, because it is simply superb for technical research and writing.  I can’t wait for the makers to come out with an iPad app! For now, I use different creating tools on the iPad since Scrivener supports a host of different inputs from TXT or RTF files that have been created on the iPad, whether from Simplenote, Index Cards (great for creating an outline), iThoughtsHD (a mind map tool) or Evernote, where I clip and store interesting websites.

Creating short and long form articles, posts and reports is really easy and much faster in Scrivener when you are focusing on the content and not the formatting.  Since the export function is very versatile, you can also create different documents formatted as PDFs, LaTeX or epub format (for the Kindle), whichever you choose to apply. Overall, I have found this tool to be extremely versatile and saves me a lot of time.

Other iPad apps I enjoy using include iKinase, which provides a handy tool for finding protein and chemical structures for small molecules and Molecules, which shows 3D molecular structures that you can manipulate with your fingers – very cool.

When travelling, I love the TripIt app for keeping me straight on flight and hotel details, which it picks up from emails sent to my business account and creates itineraries automatically.  On the road, though, I tend to use the iPhone more than the iPad for viewing the details as it is smaller and more mobile while waiting at a taxi line.  The maps produced from the destination are useful for finding your way around or telling the cab driver where to go!

Another app I have on both my iPhone and iPad are QR code readers but the reality is that it’s much easier to get the code from an iPhone, especially if the code is awkwardly placed on a poster.

Need an app for curating your expenses on the road?  iXpenseIt is useful for tracking cash receipts rather than losing or forgetting about them.  Many banks also now have iPhone and iPad apps that are worth checking out for scanning checks and checking expenses.

Wondering what one of my favourite apps is?  Try the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) quarterly bulletin – a truly beautiful combination of art and science that is a pleasure to read.  Reading medical journals on the iPad is also a delight – I read Nature, NEJM and AACR journals regularly on the iPad and download articles as PDFs for easy reading offline while travelling in iBooks.

Overall, I love my iPad as a consumption tool and travel with it regularly to cancer conferences along with my Moleskine and also a laptop for more heavy duty work.  There is something about the iPad that makes it hard to put down.

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Update on PSB

By on August 16, 2011

Folks, here’s a quick update on kaizen (continuous improvement) for Pharma Strategy Blog.  Following several reader requests, I’ve been doing some improvements on the blog as follows:

  1. Google Translate widget added to enable easy reading in other languages – click the buttons in the right hand column to do this –>
  2. Sharing posts to LinkedIn – added a more user-friendly sharing tool at the top of each post to enable sharing and liking of posts with others to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+.  If you enjoy reading any of the posts, please feel free to share them with others.
  3. Added a Google Search tool in the top right hand column for those interested in searching for information more easily in the archives.

In addition, the terms of use have been updated.  If you are providing services to pharma or biotech companies and want to share our information or insights, please do so with attribution. It isn’t cool to claim other people’s stuff as your own, and yes, they do notice!

The conference schedule has been updated. For those interested, PSB will be off to European CanCer Organisation (ECCO) meeting being held in Stockholm next month.  It looks like it will be an interesting event this year – ECCO and ESMO alternate in different years and I very much enjoyed the ESMO meeting in Milano last year.

For those wishing to meet up in person or need help with oncology-related consulting projects, please do feel free to contact me using the email icon at the top of the right hand column.

Once the ECCO abstracts are available, we will be doing a new vlog of what-to-watch-for (W2W4) in terms of likely highlights, so watch this space for updates!

Highlights from the European Hematology Association EHA 2011 meeting

By on June 15, 2011

This weekend heralded the sixteenth annual meeting of the European Hematology Association (EHA) conference at the ExCel centre in the London Docklands. Completing back to back ASCO and EHA conferences across two continents will test any delegates stamina!

Like ASCO, this year was a relatively quiet one at EHA, with most of the data already known or presented elsewhere.   There were some gems in the program though.

In the latest video highlights I discuss three things that caught my attention:

  1. Is high dose cytarabine (ara-C) really necessary in AML?
  2. Brentuximab vedotin in anaplastic large cell lymphomas (ALCL)
  3. Adherence with chronic TKI therapy in CML

We have previously covered the excellent data for brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) in Hodgkin Lymphoma, but the new data presented in ALCL in the poster session was, in ways, even more dramatic as you can see from the before and after pictures included.

You can see from the video, shot on location, that the damp windy weather and rundown surroundings created a rather industrial ambience – not quite the image many may have of the Docklands and Canary Wharf, which is a couple of stops earlier on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR).

Of course, there are unplanned escapades, such as nearly missing the 8am session on Sunday morning after the Jubilee line didn’t begin until 7.20am (first train at 7.35am), then the DLR had a “system failure” at Canning Town. A quick dash down to the adjacent bus station, a frantic climb over a fence in glad rags and a rare taxi was thankfully secured for the mad dash to the ExCel centre!

Still, there is something rather edgy about hosting convention centres in marginal areas in the middle of nowhere-land, quite a trek on the Tube and DLR from the Central London:

All in all, I enjoyed the meeting in my hometown and the more relaxed academic atmosphere after the frenetic pace of ASCO, but by the end of ten days on the road it was nice to return home. It’s not all work and no play though, as you can see from this post about some of the pomp and circumstance that inevitably goes with being in London.

{UPDATE:  The day after this posted, Seattle Genetics announced they have an ODAC scheduled for July 14th.   The PDUFA date is August 30th, so with any luck, we may see this drug approved by the FDA sooner rather than later – great news for patients in the US!}

European Hematology Association meeting 2011

By on June 8, 2011

Well, after just getting back from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago, I’m heading off to Europe for the European Hematology Association (EHA) meeting – no rest for the wicked!

ASCO was a rather flat meeting this year – the stars were undoubtedly the imatinib 36 vs 12 month data in adjuvant GIST (clearly superior) and Roche/Plexxikon/Daiichi Sankyo’s vemurafenib in BRAF V600E metastatic melanoma. The ipilimumab data was strangely disappointing in the upfront setting – only 2 months improvement in survival when added to DTIC.

On the Sarcoma front, the catch-all nature of the study came back to haunt Merck with an improvement in PFS but no overall survival benefit for ridaforolimus as maintenance therapy after 1-3 cycles of chemotherapy. That filing will likely result in a highly charged ODAC meeting debating the merits of some awkward results.

Ovarian cancer data was a mixed bag – olaparib continues to look promising in this setting, although the Avastin OCEANS data caught a few people by surprise – yet another PFS endpoint met but no overall benefit in survival and the expected incidence in bowel perforations. I think this will likely be reserved for high risk women, if used.

There was a lot of interesting/promising data in phase II, which are too numerous to mention right now – check back as I will be adding some notes on some of the emerging compounds that I liked.

Meanwhile, I’m aggregating the tweets from the hematology meeting using the #EHA11 hashtag – you can track them in the widget below if interested in following along remotely. Most of the tweets from me will likely be on leukemias, lymphomas and multiple myeloma.

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Aggregating the ASCO 2011 tweets

By on June 3, 2011

It’s that time of year again and boy, does the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) come round all too quickly! It’s almost like Battime, Batplace…

As usual, I’ll be aggregating the conference tweets using the official #asco11 hashtag, so that all of you not going to the event can follow along remotely – do feel free to join in the conversation and ask questions or post comments using #asco11 on Twitter:

 

 

This widget will run for the duration of ASCO until close of play on Wednesday, so do check back regularly for new tweets and conversation!

Next Thursday, I’ll be at the European Hematology Association (EHA) meeting in London, so a new tweet aggregator will be added then.

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