Check­point com­bos for can­cer are all the rage as tri­al spon­sors line up hun­dreds of new stud­ies — re­port

Num­ber of An­ti-PD-1/PD-L1 MAb com­bi­na­tion stud­ies 2015 vs. 2017
Full Re­port: Eval­u­ate Ltd. May 2017


Over the last few months it hasn’t been un­usu­al to see new com­bi­na­tion stud­ies be­ing an­nounced on a dai­ly ba­sis, match­ing one of the 5 ap­proved PD-(L)1 check­point drugs with an­oth­er can­cer ther­a­py. Some morn­ings they come in pairs.

It’s not hard to see why. The check­points typ­i­cal­ly work as a monother­a­py — though there have been some nasty set­backs over the past 6 months. And some of the big play­ers are hap­py to con­tribute their drug to stud­ies spon­sored by oth­ers look­ing to ad­vance a pi­lot Phase I/II ex­plorato­ry study. There are al­so re­cent ex­am­ples of some big tie-ups be­tween Mer­ck (Keytru­da) and Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb (Op­di­vo) check­points with In­cyte in Phase III.

In­cyte has its own PD-1 in the clin­ic as it lines up these ag­nos­tic late-stage tri­als to po­si­tion its lead­ing IDO1 drug.

Now EP Van­tage has tal­lied the whole score on these com­bo tri­als, not co­in­ci­den­tal­ly just ahead of AS­CO, and found a stun­ning 765 com­bi­na­tion stud­ies list­ed on clin­i­cal­tri­als.gov. Keytru­da leads the pack, with 268 — up from 70 just 18 months ago. For Bris­tol-My­ers it’s 242, more than three times the num­ber EP Van­tage’s ed­i­to­r­i­al team found in 2015.

Any­one even mod­er­ate­ly in­ter­est­ed in this field will want to check it out di­rect­ly. There’s a lot of de­tail on what’s now in the clin­ic.

Don’t ex­pect the ris­ing trend lines to start to plateau any­time soon, ei­ther, as Pfiz­er/Mer­ck KGaA (Baven­cio) and As­traZeneca (Imfinzi) start to gain trac­tion on the com­bo front. Roche al­ready emerged as the num­ber three play­er in the field with Tecen­triq, though its re­cent Phase III fail­ure for its check­point may chill oth­er would-be part­ners.

Mean­while, new check­point play­ers like BeiGene and Lil­ly are mov­ing along, the re­port notes, while No­var­tis has been ad­vanc­ing its own in-house check­point pro­grams. The sec­ond wave of PD-(L)1 ther­a­pies will be large.

One of the key next steps in this field is in As­traZeneca’s hands. It has a com­bo of Imfinzi with an in-house CT­LA-4 check­point dubbed treme­li­mum­ab in the MYS­TIC study that will read out soon for lung can­cer. An­a­lysts are wait­ing ea­ger­ly to see if it can beat out the com­pe­ti­tion, or get side­lined by some well-known tox­i­c­i­ty con­cerns.

One thing is ab­solute­ly cer­tain. Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb start­ed as the dom­i­nant play­er in PD-(L)1, then got checked by a surg­ing Mer­ck when it made the wrong clin­i­cal move on non-small cell lung can­cer. As­traZeneca, the last of the big 5 to land an ap­proval, just days ago stunned vir­tu­al­ly every­one with pos­i­tive Phase III da­ta for Imfinzi in un­re­sectable lung can­cer, pro­vid­ing ear­ly dom­i­nance in a sig­nif­i­cant niche mar­ket.

The Big Phar­ma’s stock soared as an­a­lysts be­gan to cal­cu­late what that is worth.

Just at a time when check­points should start get­ting more pre­dictable, the field seems to be ripe for fresh sur­pris­es of all kinds. And that will con­tin­ue to at­tract fresh waves of com­bi­na­tion stud­ies tack­ling all kinds of can­cers.

Image courtesy of The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

Pro­tect­ing the glob­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem – what’s at stake?

We are living in a new era of healthcare that is rapidly advancing progress impacting patient outcomes and experiences. We’ve seen a remarkable pace of transformational innovation, applied research, and advanced clinical development over the last decade.

Despite this tremendous progress, there is much more work to be done, and patients are counting on us – now more than ever – to continue that momentum. At the heart of our industry is a focus on developing and delivering medicines for some of the world’s most challenging diseases, including those that have few or no effective treatments today.

Roger Perl­mut­ter lines up deals, fresh fund­ing at Eikon; Sec­ond RSV vac­cine ap­proved; Sev­er­al biotechs flash­ing red; and more

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As you come back to our website this weekend for ASCO news, don’t forget to check out our updated event lineup at BIO, which will cover everything from the current state of VC investing in biotech to top pharma R&D chiefs discussing how to make pipeline decisions.

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Bris­tol My­er­s' Op­di­vo keeps can­cer at bay in more lym­phoma pa­tients than Seagen's Ad­cetris in PhI­II: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — In a study pitting Seagen’s Adcetris against Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo in newly diagnosed patients with advanced classic Hodgkin lymphoma, a greater proportion of those who received Opdivo saw no cancer growth at one year compared to those who got Adcetris.

In addition, patients in the Opdivo arm of the Phase III trial reported reduced toxicities, according to lead investigator Alex Herrera, a hematologist-oncologist at City of Hope’s cancer cancer in Duarte, CA. Notably, the trial included more than 200 children across both arms. Generally, more than half of children with advanced Hodgkin lymphoma receive radiation therapy, but in this trial, dubbed SWOG S1826, only a handful of patients in the two arms received radiotherapy, sparing many children from long-term side effects of radiation.

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Full TIG­IT da­ta from Gilead, Ar­cus show low­er PFS rates than De­cem­ber read­out: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — Gilead and Arcus unveiled a fuller snapshot of a Phase II study testing their experimental cancer immunotherapy combo that showed lower progression-free survival rates than its previous update, results that are likely to spark further debate over the closely-watched clinical trial.

Last December, the anti-TIGIT/anti-PD-L1 combo, positioned as a first-line treatment for non-small cell lung cancer, recorded data that drew mixed reactions. The latest analysis, presented Saturday afternoon at ASCO, included only a handful more patients than the previous update, but PFS rates fell — in one cohort by nearly three months.

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Servi­er’s vo­rasi­denib stalls pro­gres­sion of brain can­cer by 61% in piv­otal PhI­II IN­DI­GO study: #AS­CO23

An experimental pill from Servier Pharmaceuticals showed potentially practice-changing results in a narrow group of brain cancer patients, cutting the risk of their cancers progressing by 61%, according to a late-stage clinical trial.

The drug, vorasidenib, is a precision medicine that only works in certain people whose cancer carries mutations in one of two genes called IDH1/2. Doctors hope that the therapy will delay the need for chemotherapy or radiation, which are often used to combat relapses in patients who’ve previously undergone surgery to remove brain tumors.

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As­traZeneca tri­al shows mod­est ben­e­fit in ovar­i­an can­cer, but doc­tors say it's hard to ap­ply find­ings: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — Adding AstraZeneca’s Imfinzi and Lynparza to the treatment regimen for patients with advanced ovarian cancer and no BRCA mutation extended progression-free survival (PFS) by five months, according to interim data released at the ASCO annual meeting Saturday morning.

However, the design of the Phase III study obscures how much Imfinzi is contributing to the PFS extension, doctors said, making it difficult to apply the findings to clinical practice.

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Keytru­da be­fore and af­ter lung can­cer surgery cuts re­lapse risk by 42%, but doesn’t im­prove sur­vival: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — Merck has found partial success with its latest effort to more aggressively treat earlier stages of lung cancer.

On Saturday the pharma giant announced results from a large trial in which patients received Merck’s immunotherapy Keytruda plus chemotherapy before surgeons removed their tumors, followed by another course of Keytruda afterward.

The Phase III study, called KEYNOTE-671, enrolled 800 people with the early stages of the most common kind of lung cancer: non-small cell lung cancer, or NSCLC. Everyone got chemo before surgery, and half also got Keytruda before and after. At two years, 62.4% of those who got Keytruda kept their cancer at bay, compared to 40.6% who got a placebo.

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Grail’s blood test charts path for di­ag­nos­ing pa­tients sus­pect­ed of hav­ing can­cer in large study: #AS­CO23

Grail’s vision is simple but bold. The blood testing company has long held that people are often diagnosed with cancer too late. If seemingly healthy people were screened for early signs of the disease before symptoms appear, they may be able to get more effective treatments that nip cancer in the bud.

That premise is the basis of Grail’s commercial blood test, Galleri, which searches for the genetic fingerprints of cancer in the blood. The test, launched in 2021, reaped $55 million in sales last year, but now the company is setting its sights on a new market: patients suspected of having cancer due to symptoms such as abdominal pain, rectal bleeding or unexplained weight loss. Rather than administering expensive scans or conducting invasive biopsies right away, Grail hopes doctors will consider a simple blood test.

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GSK pro­motes rou­tine im­mu­niza­tions for adults amid post-pan­dem­ic vac­cine back­slide

GSK launched a new initiative on Thursday and committed up to $1 million in grant funding to improve adult routine vaccination rates.

While the pandemic spotlight was trained on the race for novel Covid-19 vaccines, other routine vaccination rates plummeted, raising concerns that missed doses may put children and even some adults at risk of preventable diseases such as measles or shingles. The World Health Organization last year reported the largest drop in childhood vaccinations in roughly three decades.

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