Posts tagged ‘PCI-32765’
ASH 2011 Poster Session
Two Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase (BTK) inhibitors in clinical development (PCI-32765 & AVL-292) generated a lot of interest at the recent American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting in San Diego.
Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog has been following BTK as a novel drug development target, and saw its potential in early data presented at ASH 2010 and ASCO 2011.
Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase is a critical kinase for lymphoma cell survival and proliferation. It plays an important role in B-lymphocyte development, differentiation and signaling. As Sally noted on Pharma Strategy Blog:
“It is a critical part of the BCL pathway that leads to cell proliferation, so targeting it leads to cell death or apoptosis.”
Sally’s insightful blog post goes into more detail on the Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase clinical data presented at ASH by Dr Susan O’Brien (MD Anderson Cancer Center).
A number of companies are now taking an interest in BTK inhibition. Johnson & Johnson announced a $1B licensing deal for PCI-32765 just prior to the meeting. Sally’s analysis of this was:
“Based on the data seen over the last two years, I thought they got a steal”
BTK inhibition looks to be a promising target for B-cell malignancies such as non-hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) & chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). This is good news for patients.
BTK inhibitors are a new class of targeted therapies that we can expect to hear more about in the future.
The 2011 American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting recently took place in San Diego.
What was hot at ASH in 2011?
In her pre-conference post, Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog outlined what she thought would be hot news and interesting data at ASH in 2011.
Amongst the topics she selected were:
- CML: updated phase II PACE trial results for ponatinib
- Myelofibrosis: updated phase III data from COMFORT-1 trial of ruxolitinib
- Myeloma: 5 year data from VISTA trial that compares the combination of Velcade, melphalan and prednisone (VMP) with melphalan and prednisone (MP) alone
- Lymphoma: the CD20 antibody obinutuzumab (GA101).
Sally also mentioned in her pre-conference post a few other compounds likely to be interesting in lymphomas such as the Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor PCI-32765 (Pharmacyclics) and the aurora kinase A inhibitor, alisertib (Seattle Genetics).
What were your predictions pre-ASH 2011?
It’s not easy to analyze a conference program that contains over 4000+ posters and predict what is going to be a hot topic, and commit to this in public in advance!
To do so requires an understanding of new products in development, mechanisms of action, prior clinical trial results and the impact positive or negative data may have on the standard of care.
If you went to ASH 2011 – how do you think Sally’s predictions stacked up? Sally will be writing her own retrospective assessment in due course.
Although the San Diego weather was much wetter and cooler than expected, there was a lot of interesting data presented at ASH this year that more than made up for it.
Review #ASH11 Twitter Coverage
If you want to read what others thought was hot during the meeting, the #ASH11 tweets have been aggregated on Pharma Strategy Blog.