"Everyone has been looking for the second-generation checkpoint inhibitors because the first-generation are incredibly effective but only in a certain subset of cancers and only in a certain subset of patients. But the risk of second-generation checkpoint trials is that a lot of the decision-making has been based on single-arm trial data with PD-1 plus XYZ. The risk of that approach is that it's very, very difficult to make comparisons of combination data without a comparative controlled trial."
Christiana Bardon, managing partner of the UBS Oncology Impact Fund managed by MPM Capital and founder and managing member of Burrage Capital, commenting on the pivotal phase III ECHO-301/KEYNOTE-252 study evaluating Incyte's epacadostat in combination with Merck's Keytruda (pembrolizumab) in individuals with unresectable or metastatic melanoma, which failed a review by the external data monitoring committee

"One has to bear in mind that some of these NHLs, particularly CLL and FL, are diseases that target the elderly and the patients are all over the country, not just Boston and New York and Chicago. The goal is to maintain the patients on drug in a chronic setting where they don't have to go to the doctor's office too often. Quality of life is really important, especially when the patients are undergoing other therapies for separate conditions. You've got to think about all of those things."
Robert Forrester, CEO, Verastem Inc., commenting on the FDA accepting their NDA for duvelisib and assigning priority review. The company is seeking full approval of the oral, first-in-class PI3K-delta and PI3K-gamma inhibitor for the treatment of relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphoma and accelerated approval for relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma. U.S. regulators have set an Oct. 5 PDUFA date

"We believe combining standard-of-care nucleosides with the Cpam, targeting multiple points of attack on this virus, can increase cure rates. We believe we have developed one of the strongest portfolios of potent, chemically distinct Cpams."
Derek Small, co-founder, president and CEO, Assembly Biosciences Inc., who presented interim results from the phase Ia and ongoing phase Ib study of ABI-H0731, an antiviral directed at chronic hepatitis B virus infection,
in a late-breaking poster at the International Liver Congress meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver

"Our patent system is at a crossroads. For more than just a few years, our system has been pushed and pulled, poked and prodded. The cumulative result is a system in which the patent grant is less reliable today than it should be."
Andrei Iancu, new director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Patent Policy Conference