For new drug classes, there’s often the easiest way and the best way. The former often wins in the short term, but the best way will end up being superior – as long as technology can overcome the obstacles.
SAN DIEGO – Feng Zhang, along with Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, were awarded the Tang Prize in 2016 for their work in the discovery and development of CRISPR/Cas9, but Zhang used most of his time giving the Tang Prize Award Lecture at the Experimental Biology 2018 conference to highlight the diversity of the CRISPR/Cas family and how his lab has exploited the gene editing system.
CHICAGO – About two years after the formation of the $471 million UBS Oncology Impact Fund (OIF), which is managed by MPM Capital, the fund is living up to its namesake, making an impact by doling out $1.25 million to a new AACR-MPM Transformative Cancer Research Grants Program and another $1.25 million to the UBS Optimus Foundation.
CHICAGO – Attendees of the American Association for Cancer Research that stayed toward the end of the last full day of the meeting were handsomely rewarded with initial data from Grail Inc., which is still enrolling patients in its 15,000-participant Circulating Cell-Free Genome Atlas. Early results showed that by combining signals from cancer patients using cell-free DNA samples processed with whole genome sequencing, a targeted 507 gene panel assay and a whole genome bisulfite assay, it was possible to develop a test with greater than 99 percent specificity.
CHICAGO – With blocking the PD-1 pathway working so well in so many tumor types, a seemingly never-ending number of companies are taking an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach, adding their therapies to anti-PD-1/PD-L1 drugs.
CHICAGO – Following last year’s Checkmate-238 data showing that PD-1 inhibitor Opdivo (nivolumab, Bristol Myers Squibb Co.) was better at improving relapse-free survival (RFS) than CTLA-4 inhibitor Yervoy (ipilimumab, BMS) in melanoma patients after surgery, Kenilworth, N.J.-based Merck & Co. Inc. presented data for its own PD-1 inhibitor, Keytruda (pembrolizumab), in the melanoma adjuvant setting at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018. (See BioWorld, Sept. 12, 2017.)
CHICAGO – PD-1 drugs in lung cancer took over the second day of the American Association for Cancer Research meeting with a trio of presentations of clinical trials in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which were all concurrently published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
CHICAGO – Despite all the focus on immuno-oncology, targeted therapy is still alive and well, albeit with a focus on small populations of patients. During a session at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting, principal investigators testing precision medicine therapies highlighted the drugs’ ability to hone in on patients in most need of additional treatments.
