Onco Actu du 8 septembre 2017

	2. Etiologie
Cancer, vitamin supplements, and unexpected consequences [Science-Based Medicine] Not only do B-vitamin supplements not protect you from lung cancer, they may significantly raise your risk of cancer.
	3.3 Prévention - Vaccins
Anti-HPV vaccine myths have fatal consequences [The Irish Times] Political and media support for false claims condemns young people to preventable deaths.
	3.7 Alcool
Drinks industry distorts alcohol cancer risk: scientists [Reuters] The alcohol industry uses denial, distortion and distraction to mislead people about the risks of developing cancer from drinking, often employing similar tactics to those of the tobacco industry, a study said on Thursday.
Drinks industry downplaying alcohol-cancer link – report [The Guardian] Alcohol firms and “responsible drinking” bodies they fund are denying that drink causes cancer and distorting the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, in information they provide to consumers, according to the British-led team of international experts behind the findings.
	5. Traitements
Multivitamins May Reduce Incidence of Neuropathy from Chemotherapy [Roswell Park Cancer Institute] This study, including more than 1,000 patients, was embedded in a clinical trial in a cohort of women with breast cancer who received the taxane drug paclitaxel, an agent that commonly results in CIPN.
	5.1 Traitements - Pré-clinique
Zika virus may be useful in treating brain tumours [NHS Choices] Results have been encouraging, but we don't know if the treatment would work in humans. And more work is needed to find out if the virus can be engineered so it's safe to use.
	5.12.1 Immunothérapies - partenariats
GSK exercises option on phase I/II NY-ESO T-cell therapy (GSK3377794) [GSK] Oncology is one of four Therapy Areas of focus for GSK’s R&D efforts, where the company believes there are significant opportunities for growth and innovation.
Ramping back up on oncology, GSK takes an option on Adaptimmune’s TCR cancer drug [EndPoints] GSK was persuaded to go all the way on this deal after looking over proof-of-concept data for synovial sarcoma.
Sanofi, Regeneron earn ‘breakthrough’ status for a fast-track drug out to prove PD-1 dominance [EndPoints] Can an experimental PD-1 drug still offer breakthrough potential? The FDA today said yes, handing out its breakthrough therapy designation for the newly dubbed cemiplimab (REGN2810) from Regeneron and its longtime Big Pharma partner Sanofi.
	5.12.3 Immunothérapies-combinaisons
Hammered by critics, NewLink strikes back with positive PhII indoximod data — and shares rocket up [EndPoints] It’s all data from a small Phase II data which the short crowd loves to criticize as often as they can, citing various design flaws and cherry picking. It’s also a long way from the pivotal melanoma study, which will recruit 600 patients for sometime in 2018, using both Keytruda and Opdivo.
Updated Data for Indoximod Plus KEYTRUDA® (pembrolizumab) Demonstrate Improvement of Response Rate for Patients with Advanced Melanoma [NewLink] Pivotal Trial of Indoximod in Advanced Melanoma to Include Both PD-1 Inhibitors, KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab) and OPDIVO® (nivolumab).
CheckMate -214 Study Evaluating Opdivo in Combination with Yervoy Stopped Early for Demonstrating Overall Survival Benefit in Patients with Previously Untreated Advanced or Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma [BMS] Based on a planned interim analysis, an independent Data Monitoring Committee (DMC) has recommended that the trial be stopped early.
	5.12.4 Immunothérapies - Essais
Celgene Provides Update on the Fusion™ Clinical Program [Celgene] The decision by the FDA was based on risks identified in other trials for an anti-PD-1 antibody, pembrolizumab, in patients with multiple myeloma in combination with immunomodulatory agents.
	5.12.5 Immunothérapies - Pharma
GSK bets on pioneering cancer therapy with Adaptimmune deal [Reuters] GSK said it would pay Adaptimmune up to 48 million pounds ($63 million) for the global license for the T-cell receptor therapy targeting the NY-ESO peptide, which is present across many cancer types.
	5.12.8 Immunothérapies - Economie
Google helps boost Gritstone’s neoantigen R&D gamble to $195M as researchers prep for first human study [EndPoints] You can find more than 300 mutations in a patient’s exome that can be relevant to the unique neoantigen profiling process for lung cancer, Gritstone CEO Andrew Allen tells me. But only 1% — or three of them — will actually have therapeutic value.
	5.2 Pharma
Kura Oncology Announces Positive Phase 2 Study for Tipifarnib in HRAS Mutant Head and Neck Cancer [Kura] Four of the first six HRAS mutant HNSCC patients enrolled on study achieve confirmed RECIST partial responses.
	5.2.3 Pharma - économie
Lilly Takes Steps to Streamline Business, Invest in New Medicines and Drive Growth [Lilly] A research and development office in Bridgewater, New Jersey, and the Lilly China Research and Development Center in Shanghai, China, will close as the company streamlines its pharmaceutical research and development activities.
Lilly will cut 3,500 jobs, or 8 percent of its global workforce, to revamp [STAT] It is also worth noting that the job cuts come as the pharmaceutical industry has been criticized by President Trump for moving operations and manufacturing personnel out of the U.S. Lilly chief executive David Ricks, in fact, was among several executives who met with Trump earlier this year and maintained the company was hiring manufacturing workers.
Personalized Cancer Vaccine Company Raises $93 Million [Forbes] Venture funds seeded by drug giant Eli Lilly and search behemoth Alphabet are giving $92.7 million to a startup that aims to use machine learning to create personalized treatments for lung and stomach cancer. The deal is further evidence of the rich pools of private money that are feeding innovation in the biotech sector.
Lilly to lay off 8 percent of employees in bid to cut costs [Reuters] The company said it has the potential to launch two new medicines by the end of 2018 - a breast cancer drug and a treatment for migraines. The FDA is currently reviewing abemaciclib to treat advanced breast cancer.
Merck just plowed millions into this start-up to help get drugs to market faster [CNBC] Antidote.me was founded by a group of European tech veterans. It builds tools for health organizations like JDRF and Lung Cancer Alliance. It raised funding this week from Merck's digital health fund.
	5.3 Traitements - FDA, EMA, NICE...
FDA’s plan to engage the public in the agency’s new effort to strengthen and modernize FDA’s regulatory framework [FDA Voice] This comprehensive review is a large undertaking given the breadth of our public health mission and the fact that FDA-regulated products account for about 20 cents of every dollar consumers spend each year.
Following up on Trump’s orders, the FDA wants to know: which regulations and paperwork requirements need to go? [EndPoints] As Anna Abram, FDA’s deputy commissioner for policy, planning, legislation and analysis, noted in a blog post on Thursday, there’s “a lot of ground to cover” as FDA’s regulations comprise more than 4,000 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations.
	5.6.13 ESMO - Prostate
ESMO 2017 Press Release: Patients with High Risk Prostate Cancer May Benefit “Equally” From Two New Treatments [ESMO] The analysis presented today uses prospectively collected data from the STAMPEDE trial to directly compare patients randomised to the docetaxel and abiraterone acetate plus prednisolone (AAP) research arms while both arms of the trial were recruiting.
	5.6.14 ESMO - Ovaire
Clovis Oncology Presents Comprehensive Datased from Successful Phase 3 ARIEL3 Maintenance Treatmeent Trial of Rucaparib in Advanced Ovarian Cancer at ESMO 2017 [Clovis] Rucaparib improved objective response rate vs. placebo among evaluable trial participants in all three study populations.
ESMO 2017 Press Release: Rucaparib Boosts Progression-free Survival in BRCA Mutant Recurrent Ovarian Cancer [ESMO] ARIEL3 included 564 patients with high grade ovarian cancer who had responded to platinum-based chemotherapy in the second or third line of treatment. Patients were randomised 2:1 to rucaparib maintenance therapy or placebo.
	5.6.16 ESMO - Appareil digestif
ESMO 2017 Press Release: Pembrolizumab: Promising Response Rate in Pretreated Metastatic Gastric Cancer [ESMO] After a median follow-up of six months, the investigators found an overall objective response rate of 12% with pembrolizumab alone in the pretreated patients (cohort one).
ESMO 2017 Press Release: New Data Confirms Superiority of Docetaxel Based Triplet Therapy in Gastric Cancer [ESMO] The phase III FLOT4 trial randomised 716 patients with resectable gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma to perioperative FLOT or ECF.
	5.6.2 ESMO - Divers
ESMO 2017 Press Release: DNA Sequencing Could Open Up New Drug Indications for Patients with Rare Cancers [ESMO] The Centre for Personalised Cancer Treatment (CPCT), a network of more than 40 hospitals in the Netherlands, systematically collects biopsies from metastatic cancer patients, which are then analysed by Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) in order to create a database that now comprises about 2,000 individuals treated for all types of cancer.
	5.6.4 ESMO - Poumon
Two Pivotal Opdivo (nivolumab) Trials Show Three-Year Survival Benefit in Patients with Previously Treated Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer [BMS] Results represent the longest Phase 3 follow-up data reported for a PD-1 inhibitor in second-line non-small cell lung cancer.
	5.6.6 ESMO - Sein
ESMO 2017 Press Release: LORELEI: Taselisib Boosts Breast Tumor Shrinkage [ESMO] LORELEI is the first randomized study to demonstrate a significant increase in objective response rate (ORR) upon treatment with a PI3K selective inhibitor in this population of patients, noted the authors of the study, which was conducted in 85 sites across the world.
	5.6.7 ESMO - Immunothérapies
Roche announces progress in biomarker science in cancer immunotherapy at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress [Roche] Two prospective studies underway to assess the potential of tumour mutational burden to predict response to certain cancer immunotherapies.
ESMO Roundup: Immune Design rolls out its first data on a combo I/O approach with Genentech’s Tecentriq [EndPoints] In a study that divided 88 patients with NY-ESO-1/positive soft tissue sarcoma between the combo and Tecentriq alone, researchers teased out a few interim data points that show some trends in their direction.
Merck's immunotherapy, chemo mix shows extended lung cancer gains [Reuters] People in the 123-patient trial who got Keytruda plus chemotherapy survived 19 months on average before their disease worsened, against 8.9 months for those on chemo alone, data from a scientific abstract at the meeting showed.
Roche blood test could help 'personalize' cancer immunotherapy [Reuters] The biomarker data being presented at ESMO was gathered using nearly 800 plasma samples from patients in Roche’s studies of its drug Tecentriq for treating lung cancer.
	6.10 Politiques
The secret to Germany’s scientific excellence [Nature] With a national election this month, Germany proves that foresight and stability can power research.
	6.11 Patients
Faced with life-threatening diseases, patients take over [San Diego Union Tribune] Their message is that patients with life-threatening diseases need to take charge of their treatment; not necessarily to oppose their doctors, but to participate as equals. And as patients who have benefited from precision medicine tell their stories, they say, other patients are going to follow suit.
	6.6 Publications
UCSF, VA investigations find “clear evidence” of misconduct in cancer papers [Retraction Watch] The retraction for the Clinical Cancer Research paper is the second for last author Rajvir Dahiya, director of the Urology Research Center at UCSF with a joint appointment at the VA, and co-author Yuichiro Tanaka, also a professor at UCSF.
A Confusion of Journals — What Is PubMed Now? [The Scholarly Kitchen] PubMed is found to contain predatory journals and publishers, likely reflecting a long-term and broader problem, which only adds to the confusion about what exactly PubMed represents at this point.
	6.7 DMP, Big Data & applis
Facebook just held a breakfast to promote its 'clinical trials strategy' to drug marketers [CNBC] Facebook is already widely used by clinical trial recruiters, and it's a massive revenue opportunity for the company. Research firm eMarketer estimates that pharma and health care marketers will spend $3.1 billion on digital advertising by 2020, up from $1.9 billion last year.
Don't let IBM's blunders in health care blind you to the huge benefits of technology in medicine [CNBC] The key is to understand the needs of a health system, rather than throwing sexy tech at the problem.
	6.9 Controverses
Allow Me to Peruse Your Grant [In the Pipeline] I see no problem in looking at these applications to figure out what the good ones look like, of course. Using them for competitive intelligence, though, is a much tougher call, but it’s important to remember that a funded grant application is a document of the federal government, and that other US citizens are entitled to see it unless it falls into one of the exemption categories.
Dr. Vinay Prasad, OHSU's iconoclastic oncologist, calls out shoddy medicine [The Oregonian] Prasad is part of a small but influential group of researchers who are creating ripples in the medical establishment by taking a hard look at their profession, often to the dismay of fellow doctors. Now he's at it again.