Posts tagged ‘abiraterone’
The prostate cancer market is dynamic, with a lot of news happening. One of the many new treatments in development worth watching is custirsen (OGX-011).
Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog recently wrote about Custirsen from OncoGeneX. This drug inhibits the production of clusterin, a protein associated with the development of treatment resistance. As Sally notes it is in essence a “chemo enhancer.”
Photo: OncoGeneX
Phase 3 trials with custirsen are currently underway in castrate resistant prostate cancer patients receiving docetaxel in the first and second line setting.
The potential to improve the efficacy of docetaxel may be of commercial interest as more generic versions become available. According to IMS Health, sales of generic and branded docetaxel were approximately $1.1 billion for the year from June 2010 to June 2011.
This week Sandoz entered the market with their announcement of the FDA approval and launch of their generic version of Taxotere®.
It will be interesting to see whether use of custirsen with docetaxel increases overall survival (OS) in the phase III CRPC trials, and if it does how this compares to other recently approved CRPC treatments such as Zytiga™ (abiraterone acetate).
As Sally noted in her video blog post from the annual meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA), there is also preliminary scientific data to suggest that custirsen may improve the efficacy of androgen receptor antagonists such as MDV3100 from Medivation/Astellas.
We expect there will be new data on prostate cancer new products in development at the ESMO/ECCO European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress in Stockholm in late September. The possibility of new treatment options is good news for prostate cancer patients. It is a market definitely worth watching.
This Friday sees the start of the 2011 annual meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA) in Washington, DC. The meeting runs from May 14-19.
We expect the recent FDA approval of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga®) from Ortho Biotech (JNJ) to be hot news at the meeting as urologists seek to learn more about it’s use.
Icarus Consultants will be in our Nation’s Capital for AUA, so should you be interested in meeting up, please contact us.
Sally Church’s interview with Dr Charles Sawyers rated a “must read” by Forbes Health
May 5th, 2011
Daedalus
Sally Church invests a lot of her personal time in writing for Pharma Strategy Blog. With a focus on the science of new products and treatments in cancer and hematology, Sally willingly shares her passion, knowledge and expertise.
It is always a pleasure to receive endorsement from others. Matthew Herper from Forbes Health kindly highlighted Sally’s interview with Dr Charles Sawyers as a “must read.”
We agree. Dr Sawyers is one of the leading translational scientists in the United States who along with Dr Brian Druker and Dr Nick Lydon received the prestigious Lasker award for their work on imatinib (Gleevec/Glivec) in CML. Dr Sawyers is now working on prostate cancer, and in his interview with Sally, describes his latest work developing MDV3100 and ARN-509.
We unequivocally recommend reading Sally’s post on Pharma Strategy Blog, “Making a difference to the lives of cancer patients: An interview with Dr Charles Sawyers.”
Zytiga (abiraterone acetate) price will impact the Prostate Cancer market following FDA approval
April 29th, 2011
Daedalus
Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog has written about the FDA approval yesterday of Ortho Biotech’s ($JNJ) abiraterone acetate, brand name Zytiga for the treatment of castration resistant prostate cancer in patients who have received prior chemotherapy with docetaxel.
The final data showed a 4.6 month increase in overall survival (OS) in these very sick patients in late stage disease. It is to be expected that the response will be significantly better in patients treated earlier.
As Sally states in her post, “it is good to see new treatment options emerge for the treatment of castrate resistant prostate cancer.”
Abiraterone treatment has been priced competitively by JNJ, with a treatment price of around $40K ($5,000 per month for a median treatment cycle of 8 months). As Sally notes “this is very fair.”
The commercial impact for sanofi-aventis is likely to be huge. It’s hard not to see elderly or frail patients preferring 4 pills a day compared to chemotherapy with a side-effect profile that is far from optimal. The price of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) is lower than cabazitaxel (Jevtana), which was approved early last year. The market opportunity for Jevtana looks less promising now that it has competition.
Sally, in her insightful post on Pharma Strategy Blog, also notes a possible impact on sipuleucel-T (Provenge) from Dendreon, which is $93K for three infusions. It’s hard not to see some off-label usage from urologists given that phase III trials for use of abiraterone in the pre-chemotherapy setting are already enrolled.
The prostate cancer market is currently a very dynamic and competitive one. With more new drugs on the horizon that may potentially be improvements on abiraterone acetate e.g. MDV3100 and ARN-509, it’s an exciting market to watch.
Sally Church has a number of posts on Pharma Strategy Blog that discuss the science and pharma marketing strategy for prostate cancer new products.
As many of you know, Sally Church attended the recent European Association of Urology Congress in Vienna.
In the first video blog post that she’s ever done on Pharma Strategy Blog, she shares her impressions of the meeting and the changing landscape in advanced prostate cancer. One of the key new product approvals expected this year is for abiraterone.
We love the “BBC News” style graphics of her video blog, and look forward to hearing from Sally throughout the course of the year as she attends other conferences.
You can now watch Sally on her own YouTube channel. Will we see “Sally Church reporting live for Pharma Strategy Blog”?
Many European doctors enjoy a glass of good wine, so Bertrand Tombal’s metaphor that 2010 was a great year for advanced prostate cancer drugs was well received at the recent European Association of Urology Congress in Vienna.
Sally Church attended the meeting, and shared her thoughts on “the changing face of advanced prostate cancer” in a post on Pharma Strategy Blog.
According to Sally, one of the highlights of the meeting was the plenary presentation by Professor Johann de Bono of the Royal Marsden in the UK who discussed the new products that now exist or will soon be available for advanced prostate cancer.
Professor de Bono described how we now know more about Prostate Cancer and the fact that androgen receptor signaling remains active in advanced prostate cancer. Hormone therapy now works after chemotherapy, so the use of the term metastatic hormone refractory mHRPC is no longer valid.
He predicted that the we can expect the prostate cancer field to change in the next few years as we learn more about the molecular aspects of the disease and are better able to stratify patients.
With new products such as abiraterone, MDV3100 on the horizon and recent approvals for cabazitaxel, sipuleucel-T, multiple lines of treatment will be available to patients. The challenge according to Professor de Bono will be how to sequence them.
Further news on new product development in prostate cancer can be expected at AUA, ASCO and ESMO. With approval for abiraterone expected later this year, 2011 may be a Grand Cru year too! You can keep track of the latest developments in this market on Pharma Strategy Blog.
Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog will be providing live coverage of the annual European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress that starts in Vienna this weekend.
If you can’t join Sally at the meeting for a slice of schwarzwälder kirschtorte, then you can experience the meeting virtually as Sally aggregates all the live tweets, and contributes her own.
There are a lot of new products in the prostate cancer market. With new treatment options such as Dendreon’s sipuleucel-T, sanofi-aventis’ cabizatexel and JNJ’s abiraterone expected in the not too distant future, the meeting is bound to be interesting. We can also expect the latest news about new product development in bladder and renal cancer.
The Cover it Live widget on Sally’s blog will be aggregating all the tweets that use the conference hashtag #EAU11, so if you are unable to be in Vienna, you can follow what’s happening by clicking here.
Published by Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog
Published by Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog