CHICAGO – Attendees are accustomed to hearing results from phase III trials of investigational agents at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). And at the 2016 meeting, which ran from June 3-7, there were some of those presentations. But the denizens of McCormick Place found themselves contending with somewhat atypical fare this year, with less than the usual buzz around such trials.
CHICAGO – "In cancer pharmacology," Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's Charles Rudin told the audience at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, "it's all about the therapeutic window" – the dose range at which a drug will kill tumor cells without poisoning the patient taking them.
CHICAGO – Detailed data from the IMvigor 210 study that led to the accelerated approval of Tecentriq (atezolizumab, Genentech Inc./ Roche AG), presented over the weekend, showed impressive benefits of the drug. The case for the complementary diagnostic approved along with it, however, was decidedly more mixed.
Stimulating the G protein-coupled receptor GPR171 increased food intake in rodents, and mice lacking the receptor in the hypothalamus were less sensitive to the effects of a GPR171-stimulating small molecule.
CHICAGO – Tumor evolution is a bane of targeted therapies. But Charles Swanton said he thinks that with a better understanding of the tumor evolutionary rulebook, it could be turned into a boon for their rational deployment.
A combination of retroviral gene therapy and chemotherapy administered as a prodrug significantly increased survival times of patients with recurrent high-grade glioma in a phase I trial.
With last Friday's approval of Strimvelis (GSK2696273, Glaxosmithkline plc) for treatment of patients with severe combined immunodeficiency due to adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA-SCID) by the European Commission, the number of approved gene therapies has doubled to two in Europe.
