There are 40 years of history behind the development of phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitors, Rebecca Dent told her audience at ESMO Breast Cancer 2022. And there have been success stories. There are five FDA-approved PI3K inhibitors in several cancer types, and in April, the FDA approved Vijoice (alpelisib; Novartis AG) for PIK3CA-related overgrowth spectrum, a rare disorder resulting from germline mutations of PIK3CA.

There are 40 years of history behind the development of phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitors, Rebecca Dent told her audience at ESMO Breast Cancer 2022. And there have been success stories. There are five FDA-approved PI3K inhibitors in several cancer types, and in April, the FDA approved Vijoice (alpelisib; Novartis AG) for PIK3CA-related overgrowth spectrum, a rare disorder resulting from germline mutations of PIK3CA.

“In 2015, when I started in this field…. people considered breast cancer a cold tumor,” Marleen Kok told the audience at the European Society of Medical Oncology’s 2022 Targeted Anticancer Therapy meeting (ESMO TAT). But the sensitivity of breast cancer to immunotherapy, or lack thereof, is “not a black and white phenomenon.”

Although targeted therapies are prescribed on the basis of a patient's molecular makeup, they do not work every time. And in those instances where they do work, they basically stop working every time. In response, researchers have developed a number of systems whose goal it is to predict which drugs will be effective for an individual patients.

Prophet, Oncohost Ltd.’s artificial intelligence-driven proteomics profiling platform, predicted response to immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy in non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) patients in a study presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology Virtual Congress 2021. While ICI can generate a significant positive response in some patients with advanced NSCLC, in others the therapy promotes tumor growth, making identification of likely responders prior to treatment critical.

Monoclonal antibodies are already a pillar of cancer therapy, and cancer makes up the largest indication of FDA-approved antibodies, with almost 40% of the total. At the 2021 European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress, Elena Garralda predicted that engineered versions of classical antibodies will soon join them on their pedestal.