Onco Actu du 19 juillet 2017

	1. Biologie
Most of Human Genome Nonfunctional: Study [The Scientist] The estimate, generated by looking at fertility rates and the expected frequency of deleterious mutations, contradicts a 2012 claim from a large international group called ENCODE, which estimated that 80 percent of the genome is functional.
A physicist clueless about cancer lectures cancer biologists on…cancer! [Respectful Insolence] Because Davies doesn’t have a background in cancer, after finding this shiny new (to him) toy he became utterly fascinated with it and couldn’t understand why cancer biologists don’t find it as fascinating as he did. The reason, of course, is because it’s a 100 year old idea that was found long ago not to be consistent with the data.
	3.1 Tabac
England 'on track' to stamp out smoking [BBC News] The government has set out an ambitious plan to make England, in effect, smoke-free in the next few decades.
	4. Dépistage, diagnostic et pronostic
Microscopy technique could enable more informative biopsies [MIT News] Expanding tissue samples before imaging offers detailed information about disease.
New tools help surgeons find liver tumors, not nick blood vessels [Vanderbilt] Used in a blinded, randomized 20-patient bystander study over the past two years at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, surgeons said the new technology improved the registration in more than 70 percent of cases.
New diagnostic tests: more harm than good [BMJ] Although new diagnostics may advance the time of diagnoses in selected patients, they will increase the frequency of false alarms, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment in others. Bjorn Hofmann and H. Gilbert Welch explain how to minimise harm.
	4.2 Dép., diag. & prono. - Génome
Emiliano De Cristofaro: Genome data can never be fully anonymised [BMJ] Overall, I believe that patients should not be automatically enrolled in sequencing programmes. Even if they are given an option to later withdraw, once the data are out there it is impossible to delete all copies of them.
AURAGEN, genome-sequencing platform at very high speed [HCL] AURAGEN is the very high speed sequencing platform project, a health-based project built by the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region within the plan France Médecine Génomique 2025. It will allow entering the era of genomic medicine with to a more personalized diagnostic and therapeutic care, thanks to the routine sequencing of individual genomes.
	5.12.1 Immunothérapies - partenariats
Kleo taps PeptiDream for help with immuno-oncology programs [FierceBiotech] Kleo focuses on two drug discovery platforms, Antibody-Recruiting Molecule (ARM) and Synthetic Antibody Mimic (SyAM), which endeavor to engineer small-molecule drugs that can mimic the effects of antibodies but are much easier to manufacture, easier to deliver to patients and potentially safer as they are less likely to cause immune reactions.
	5.12.2 Immunothérapies - CAR-T
CAR T-cell therapy for leukemia leads to remissions in clinical trial [Fred Hutch] Researchers found that 17 out of 24 (71 percent) of patients saw their tumors shrink or disappear following CAR T-cell therapy using the standard measure of lymph node size by CT scans four weeks after treatment.
	5.2.1 Pharma - Partenariats
Abzena licenses PSMA antibodies to Telix to create cancer-targeting radioactive drugs [FierceBiotech] Attaching the PSMA-targeting antibodies to a radioactive payload such as lutetium-177 could enable Telix to deliver therapeutic doses to the prostate without affecting healthy tissues.
	5.2.3 Pharma - économie
Takeda relocates hundreds of R&D, vaccine jobs and cuts 480 in sales: report [FiercePharma] Takeda has separately cut 480 primary care sales employees around the U.S., spokesman Jim Schwartz told FiercePharma. The sales cuts were part of a push at the drugmaker to focus more resources on oncology, Modern Healthcare reports.
King cancer: The top 10 therapeutic areas in biopharma R&D [EndPoints] It is amazing to see exactly how much oncology dominates the industry as never before.
	5.3 Traitements - FDA, EMA, NICE...
Big data’s big bias: bringing noise and conflicts to US drug regulation [BMJ] A little known private foundation to support FDA’s “regulatory science” takes money out of the FDA’s coffers to support analyses using levels of evidence recommended by industry; many of the foundation’s directors have financial links to the drug and device makers that the FDA regulates.
	5.3.4 Traitements - AMM (FDA, EMA)
Puma's Nerlynx unleashed to fight HER2+ breast cancer with 'best case' label [FierceBiotech] Schmidt pegs sales at $1.3 billion at their peak—a market he called “relatively conservative—while analysts at Evaluate Pharma expect sales of $1.25 billion in 2022. Puma hasn’t released pricing information or a launch date.
Two-Drug Combination Approved for Lung Cancers with BRAF Mutations [NCI] To recruit the 59 participants in the combination trial, the researchers screened about 6,000 patients with lung cancer. This represents a “major achievement that underlies the difficulties in completing such a trial,” noted the authors of an editorial accompanying the study.
	6. Lutte contre les cancers
Pioneering leukaemia and evolution researcher – Professor Mel Greaves – wins prestigious Royal Society award [Institute of Cancer Research] By studying identical twins with leukaemia and archived blood samples from new-born babies, in the 1990s, Professor Greaves’ lab at the ICR uncovered the mutational changes that trigger childhood leukaemia in utero.
	6.6 Publications
Science journal flags cancer paper under investigation for image manipulation [Retraction Watch] The 2016 paper — which found that a specific protein fuels tumor growth in prostate cancer — has been cited two times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.
	6.7.1 Bioinformatique
Deep Learning in Drug Discovery and Diagnostics, 2017 - 2035 [PR Newswire] One of the key objectives of this study was to identify the various deep learning solutions that are currently available / being developed to cater to unmet medical needs, and also evaluate the future prospects of deep learning within the healthcare industry.
	6.8 Communication
New tools to improve end-of-life communication available [Stanford Medicine] This new model, which was created and has been tested at Stanford, is now being shared online by two national physician’s organizations for others to follow.
	6.9 Controverses
Leukaemia patient whose sister had UK visa refused for stem cell transplant dies [Independent] Her death follows the Home Office U-turn that allowed the stem cell transplant to take place in January.