Posts tagged ‘Drug Development Targets’
The annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), held in Chicago earlier this month, is one of the most important meetings of the year for cancer scientists, pharma/biotech drug development and new products professionals.
Bill Sellers, in the AACR plenary session, described how Novartis are using the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE) in conjunction with the Broad Institute to identify promising new compounds.
As Sally Church, PhD noted on Pharma Strategy Blog in her post on the highlights of AACR 2012:
“What made the meeting exciting for me was the sheer number of new compounds emerging from late preclinical to early phase 1.”
Two of the many promising new drugs in early stages of development were highlighted on Biotech Strategy Blog:
AZD3514 (AstraZeneca), a selective androgen receptor down regulator (SARD) in phase 1 clinical trials for castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC).
ABT-199 (Abbott), a new Bcl-2 inhibitor (that improves on navitoclax), in phase 1 drug development for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).
There were many noteworthy posters presented at AACR particularly from young researchers
e.g. “Overcoming resistance to EGFR-tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy in non-small cell lung cancer” was a poster that suggested the prospect of future drug development targets.
During the high quality poster and oral sessions, we met numerous people including CEOs of baby biotechs, young researchers and clinicians with an interest in translational research, including Laura Strong, Ph.D President & COO of Quintessence Biosciences (@scientre), David Woessner who was presenting his PhD research (@pinfoto) and Philippe Aftimos, MD from Belgium (@aftimosp), all of whom were actively sharing their observations during numerous sessions via Twitter during the conference.
The annual meeting is not just about basic science though, but also drug development strategy and emerging research trends, such as the automation of preclinical drug discovery, as well as the collaboration between academia and Pharma/Biotech in combination clinical trials using two novel compounds from different companies. This last trend, I am pleased to say, has already begun and will hopefully continue apace in the future.
If you were not able to attend AACR, then Sally Church aggregated all the #AACR tweets from the meeting on Pharma Strategy Blog. AACR also have webcasts of some of the sessions available, including some with free access.
We’re already looking forward to AACR 2013 in Washington, DC and the timing of the meeting means it should take place when the renowned Cherry Blossom are in full bloom. Hopefully, this will provide a great opportunity for another Pharma Strategy Blog video!
Deserted River Walk due to San Antonio cold weather
If you are interested in news from the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) then Sally Church, PhD has a number of reports on Pharma Strategy Blog that are worth reading.
SABCS Video Preview
In her preview of the SABCS meeting (that you can also watch below), Sally reviews some of the BOLERO-2, CLEOPATRA and NEOSPHERE clinical trials, and what impact positive data may have on breast cancer patients. It is well worth watching.
SABCS Twitter Coverage
Although there is no wifi in the meeting rooms at SABCS, a few scientists, patients advocates and physicians are tweeting from the meeting including @drsteventucker and @teamoncology. You can easily follow the twitter conversation and check-out what’s been said through the #SABCS aggregator on Pharma Strategy Blog. As Sally would say, “check it out!”
As an example of how effective social media can be to share information, Pieter Droppert (@3NT) used storify to share some of the insights posted on twitter during the SABCS plenary lecture he attended on potential of macrophages as breast cancer drug development targets.
Breast Cancer and the Environment
Pieter also commented on the recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on “Breast Cancer and the Environment” which was somewhat disappointing to those hoping that it would highlight causal links.
Hot news at SABCS
This year the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium had a lot of exciting new data. Two papers on the BOLERO-2 and CLEOPATRA trial data was published during the meeting.
Some of the interesting early data presented at the meeting included work on Notch inhibition to reduce aromatase inhibitor resistance, HER2 mutants and targeting HER3. You can read more updates from Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog.
Overall, this was one of the most interesting SABCS meetings of recent years with a good balance of science and clinical data.
Hopefully next year, there will be more discussants to put the data in context, as this would have made it an even better meeting.