Onco Actu du 20 avril 2017

	3.1 Tabac
De Blasio Backs Plan to Lift Base Price of Pack of Cigarettes to $13 [NY Times] Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged his support on Wednesday to a series of initiatives to cut tobacco use, proposing to raise the minimum price of a pack of cigarettes in New York City to $13 and vowing to sharply reduce, over time, the number of stores that may sell tobacco products.
	3.1.1 Tabac - e-cigs
Big Tobacco Attacks Sensible F.D.A. Rules on Vaping [NY Times] The tobacco lobby wants Republicans to amend a vital appropriations bill to exempt products that were introduced before May 2016 from F.D.A. review.
	3.6 Prévention - Activité physique
Cycling to work can cut cancer and heart disease, says study [BBC News] The biggest study into the issue linked using two wheels with a halving of the risk of cancer and heart disease.
	3.7 Alcool
Ad linking alcohol to cancer most effective at curbing drinking, study finds [The Guardian] A graphic Australian advertisement that highlights the link between alcohol and cancer has been nominated by drinkers as the most effective in leading them to reconsider their alcohol intake.
	4. Dépistage, diagnostic et pronostic
Noninvasive Imaging Test Shown Accurate in Ruling out Kidney Cancers [Johns Hopkins] Use of sestamibi SPECT/CT scan could spare patients with benign kidney tumors from unneeded surgery.
	4.2 Dép., diag. & prono. - Génome
Do patients and doctors understand breast cancer genetic testing results? [Reuters] “Results of genetic testing are increasingly complex and difficult for those without genetics expertise to interpret correctly.”
	5. Traitements
Taking advantage of cancers’ abnormal metabolism could lead to a new way to ‘starve’ tumours [Cancer Research UK] Using mice that were genetically engineered to develop lymphoma and were missing a protein that lowers ROS in cells, the researchers showed that the serine and glycine free diet had an even bigger impact on survival.
Billion-dollar project would synthesize hundreds of thousands of molecules in search of new medicines [Science] Molecular biologists have already automated the synthesis of short strands of DNA, proteins, and sugar chains, revolutionizing biomedicine. Burke argues that doing the same for natural products "could have major positive implications not just for chemistry, but for society."
Controlled amino acid diet 'could help cancer treatment' [BBC News] Researchers found that removing two non-essential amino acids, serine and glycine, from the diet of mice slowed the development of tumours. The diet could also make traditional cancer treatments more effective. But the report's authors warn against following a do-it-yourself diet.
	5.12.1 Immunothérapies - partenariats
Bristol-Myers preps second checkpoint/cancer vax combo study under its $1B Bavarian Nordic pact [EndPoints] Investigators will combine Prostvac with Yervoy and Opdivo in 10 patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer. Then they’ll push enrollment to 55 and divvy up the patients into three cohorts, studying T cell infiltration in tumors with one-on-one combos or the triple.
	5.12.5 Immunothérapies - Pharma
As AstraZeneca chases rivals, immuno-oncology gets complicated [Reuters] The market for medicines boosting the immune system's ability to fight tumors is increasingly competitive and the science is moving fast, raising questions as to whether AstraZeneca can produce a knock-out win.
	5.2 Pharma
AbbVie PARP inhibitor veliparib flunks two phase 3 trials [FierceBiotech] The 970-patient lung cancer trial assessed the effect of veliparib on overall survival in smokers. The 624-subject breast cancer study looked at the PAPR inhibitor’s impact on pathological complete response. Veliparib failed to move the needle in either case.
AbbVie grapples with another setback as 2 PhIII trials for its PARP veliparib flop [AbbVie] Up until now, PARP inhibitors have been blazing a broad, long trail of success in the clinic, with Lynparza, Rubraca and now Zejula hitting a busy and growing market for cancer patients. But AbbVie won’t be joining that crowd anytime soon.
AbbVie Announces Topline Results from Two Phase 3 Studies Investigating Veliparib in Combination with Chemotherapy for the Treatment of Patients with Advanced or Metastatic Squamous Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer and Early-Stage Triple-Negative Breast Cancer [AbbVie] "Unfortunately, these data do not support the use of veliparib in combination with chemotherapy in these patients."
AbbVie cancer drug fails two late-stage trials [Reuters] The trials evaluated the effect of veliparib, in combination with a chemotherapy regimen, on patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and triple-negative breast cancer.
	5.2.1 Pharma - Partenariats
Lion Biotechnologies teams up with MD Anderson Cancer Center on TIL tech [FierceBiotech] Lion Biotechnologies has signed a long-running pact with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center for trials testing its tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy in ovarian cancer, various sarcomas and pancreatic cancer.
	5.2.3 Pharma - économie
Meet the lawyer trying to pry drug pricing secrets out of Big Pharma [STAT] He has a private jet, a pedigree of winning billion-dollar settlements, and the (sometimes grudging) respect of his adversaries. Now, he wants to become pharma’s latest headache.
	5.3 Traitements - FDA, EMA, NICE...
EU crushes U.K. hopes of retaining EMA after Brexit [FierceBiotech] Officials in Brussels see things differently. Their take is that the U.K. cannot keep EMA while severing its other ties to the EU, and that the U.K. will have no say in the new location of the agency. That is a decision for the remaining 27 member states. The only role the U.K. has is to ease the transition.
	5.4 Traitements - Economie
TESARO Announces Availability of Zejula™ (Niraparib) for Patients With Recurrent Ovarian Cancer in the U.S. [Tesaro] The Wholesale Acquisition Cost (WAC) of ZEJULA is $9,833 for a one-month supply of ZEJULA at a dose of 200 milligrams once per day, the most commonly administered dose over the course of the Phase 3 NOVA clinical trial. The approved starting dose of ZEJULA is 300 milligrams once per day.
Tesaro Resorts to PR Razzle Dazzle to Make Ovarian Cancer Drug Appear Cheaply Priced [The Street] "We specified the 200 mg dose because that was the most commonly administered dose in the NOVA trial," said a Tesaro spokesperson, when asked to explain the dose/price discrepancy. It also makes the drug look cheaper than its competitor when it's actually more expensive.
Is Tesaro playing a pricing game with Zejula? Not at all, says the CEO. And here’s why [EndPoints] $9,833 for a one-month supply of Zejula at a dose of 200 milligrams once per day. Why did they pick 200 mg? Because, they said, that’s what the most commonly used dose was in Phase III. But hold on. The approved starting dose of the drug is 300 mg a day.
	6.1 Observation
In the news race to report CDC’s numbers on HPV infection rates, some important context was missing [HealthNewsReview] Journalists were notified of a “data sheet” published by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics and offered interviews with the lead author. On its own, the document didn’t do a great job of pointing journalists to the most relevant data.
	6.6 Publications
Want to Fix Science’s Replication Crisis? Then Replicate [Wired] Science advances thanks both to exploration and to replication and follow-up. However, since replication studies receive less funding and fanfare from the media and scientific communities, there seems to be little incentive to conduct them.
	6.7 DMP, Big Data & applis
Verily’s Baseline: Homemade Wearable and Limited Data Sharing [Xconomy] Verily will use only one of its homegrown devices in Baseline: a wrist device called the “Study Watch” that collects a volunteer’s blood pressure, heart rate, pulse rate, and electrocardiogram readings, says Gambhir. After years of journalists getting peeks and previews, Verily unveiled it last week in a blog post.
Verily kicks off Baseline study, which seeks to define ‘health’ [FierceBiotech] Although experts have questioned the utility of Baseline—the main concern is that “trivial” or “false” trends will be seen in the data—it is less lofty a goal than the other ambitious projects Alphabet touted when it first entered life sciences in 2012.
Verily Says “We Grew Up”. We’ll See. [In the Pipeline] It’s going to be interesting to see if Conrad himself (and those who think along the same lines) has actually been humbled by his Verily experience, or if he’s saving up for another round of big declarations once things start to work a little.
Google Offshoot Starts A 10,000-Person Study To Plumb Human Biology [Forbes] The tech may be fast. But biology is still slow.
Alphabet seeks 10,000 volunteers — and their health data — for a massive medical study [The Verge] This style of study isn’t unprecedented; in fact, it’s been a feature of medical discovery for quite some time. The most famous example is the Framingham Heart Study, which began in 1948 with about 5,000 patients.
Google’s Massive Health Study Seeks 10,000 Volunteers to Give Up Their Medical Secrets [MIT Technology Review] Google knows all about your habits and interests online. Now the search company’s health spinout, Verily, is asking 10,000 Americans for intimate knowledge of their bodies.
Google’s Health Moonshot Comes Back to Earth [Bloomberg] “At times, Silicon Valley people are very naive about the complexity of health care,” Califf says. “It’s going to be a lot harder than they think.”