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MedNess: bite-size biopharma and medtech news

19th January, 2022

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MedNess This Week
HIGHLIGHTS
 
Drug Approvals
European Commission Approves Lumykras® (Sotorasib) For Patients With KRAS G12C-mutated Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer
"The approval of LUMYKRAS, the first and only targeted therapy for KRAS G12C-mutated NSCLC with proven efficacy, has the potential to transform treatment outcomes for people in the European Union living with this notoriously difficult-to-treat cancer," said David M. Reese, M.D., executive vice president of Research and Development at Amgen. "Amgen's landmark scientific discovery allowed investigators to advance the first KRASG12C inhibitor into the clinic, and we look forward to bringing this critical innovation to more patients across the globe."
Regulatory News

NERLYNX® Included in Two Important NCCN Clinical Practice Guideline Updates for the Treatment of Breast Cancer
Joyce O’Shaughnessy, M.D., Baylor University Medical Center, Texas Oncology, US Oncology, Dallas Texas, said, “Oncologists should be aware of an important recent update to the NCCN guidelines that now include adjuvant neratinib to be used in certain circumstances, i.e., high-risk HR+, HER2+ early-stage breast cancer patients. These high-risk patients need access to every available treatment option proven to decrease their risk of recurrence, and the new NCCN guidelines update supports neratinib in this context.”

Trial Results
KEYTRUDA® (pembrolizumab) Showed Statistically Significant Improvement in DFS vs Placebo as Adjuvant Treatment for Patients With Stage IB-IIIA NSCLC Regardless of PD-L1 Expression
“KEYTRUDA has become foundational in the treatment of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer and we continue to advance research to explore its potential to help fight cancer earlier,” said Dr. Roy Baynes, senior vice president and head of global clinical development, chief medical officer, Merck Research Laboratories. “We are encouraged by these results supporting the potential role of KEYTRUDA in stage IB-IIIA non-small cell lung cancer. We thank the patients, investigators and our partners at EORTC and ETOP for their important contributions to this study and look forward to sharing these results with the medical community as soon as possible.”
Updated Clinical Data from Ongoing Ph 1/2 Trial of ADXS-503 in NSCLC and Upcoming Milestones Presented
“NSCLC patients resistant to PD-1/-L1 checkpoint inhibitors (CPIs) have limited treatment options. Current treatment guidelines allow for CPI re-challenge but the overall response rate (ORR) seen with this approach is below 10% and disease control rate (DCR) of up to 45%. Thus, it is encouraging to report that in Part B of the study, the documented ORR has now increased to 15.4 % and DCR has reached 46% in the first 13 evaluable patients treated with ADXS-503 as an add-on therapy at progression with pembrolizumab,” said Dr. Jonathan W. Goldman, Associate Professor of UCLA Hematology and Oncology, Associate Director of Drug Development and Director of Clinical Trials in Thoracic Oncology at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, California. “These results now include a second additional patient with a partial response and 4 patients with stable disease. The durable nature of disease control is also encouraging and includes two patients with ongoing partial responses for 702 and 189 days, and three patients with stable disease sustained for 448, 175 and 117 days.”
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Trial/Program Status
“Building on the success of our GRANITE program, which continues to demonstrate extended survival in multiple end-stage colorectal cancer patients, we are excited to launch this randomized, open-label Phase 2/3 trial to evaluate earlier use of GRANITE as a maintenance treatment in newly diagnosed patients with metastatic, microsatellite-stable colorectal cancer,” said Andrew Allen, M.D., Ph.D., Co-founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Gritstone. “We are pleased with the degree of clinical benefit seen with GRANITE to date in hard-to-treat, late-line CRC patients, and are optimistic we will see greater benefit from neoantigen immunotherapy in earlier lines of treatment where immune responses are likely stronger and tumor genomic complexity is lower. We expect to report initial Phase 2 data from the GRANITE-CRC-1L trial in mid-2023.”
 

First Patient Dosed in the VITALIZE Ph 2B Clinical Study of MVP-S in Combination with KEYTRUDA® (pembrolizumab) in Patients with R/R DLBCL
“The VITALIZE study represents a critical step in advancing MVP-S toward registration,” said Jeremy Graff, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at IMV. “We believe this study should help affirm and extend our understanding of the clinical benefit previously seen in r/r DLBCL patients in the SPiReL trial and may support the use of PD-L1 as a biomarker for MVP-S in combination with KEYTRUDA. Importantly, this is an open label study, so we expect to review early data in the summer 2022.”

Click here for more Trial/Program Statuses
Collated by: Richa Tewari, PhD 
Genes and Therapy
First patient dosed with novel chimeric cell therapy for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
Dystrogen Therapeutics dosed the first patient, a 6-year-old boy, in its Phase 1 Human Pilot Clinical Study of DT-DEC01, Dystrophin Expressing Chimeric cells, or DEC, for the treatment of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). This is a non-randomized trial enrolling boys between the ages of 5 and 18. The trial investigates the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of DT-DEC01. DT-DEC01 is a chimeric cell therapy that has yielded positive functional responses in preclinical studies. The DEC cells produce clinically significant levels of dystrophin, do not trigger immune response, and do not involve genetic manipulations, thereby reducing risk of off target mutations.
Fabry Disease gene therapy trial to be discontinued
Avrobio will discontinue recruiting more patients to its gene therapy trial for Fabry Disease. This is after the Phase II trial results showed variable engraftment and declining levels of the alpha galactosidase A enzyme, for which the gene therapy was performed with AVR-RD-01. The Phase I trials had shown positive favourable outcomes. Avrobio will now prioritize its focus on lysosomal disorder pipeline.
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MedNess HealthIT
AI gains the capability of suggesting treatment doses in aggressive cancer
Using one of the most aggressive tumor type, head and neck cancer (which happens to be the sixth leading cause of cancer-related deaths), researchers at Case Western University used Artificial intelligence tools to fine-tune the intensity of treatment in patients, including radiation therapy and chemotherapy. The team suspected that even the patients requiring an aggressive dose of treatment (HPV led Head and Neck cancer) were receiving too much radiation doses and sought to find out if this is necessary to achieve a positive outcome, and therefore, make a difference in the quality of life of the patients. Anant Madabhushi, the professor and director at Center for Computational Imaging and Personal Diagnostics (CCIPD) admits: “We have been overtreating many patients with chemotherapy and radiation that they do not need because we didn’t have a way to find out which patients would benefit from de-escalation.” The study utilized the information gathered from a decade-long effort at CCPID to develop a digital tool for deep learning multinucleation index (MuNI), that aided in risk stratification and outcome prediction in Head and Neck cancer. The AI tool analyzed tissue samples taken from 438 patients with a type of head and neck cancer, known as HPV-associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPCSCC) from six hospital systems, and identified a sub-population who could have responded to a lower dose of radiation therapy. The next step for the researchers is to explore the realm of clinical trials for more data points and accuracy.
DNA damage studies get a boost through machine learning
Massachusetts General Hospital and the National Cancer Research Centre have devised a tool to repair genetic damage to prevent DNA mutations. According to the statement of Bárbara Martínez, a team member in the research group, “Until now, one limiting factor in tracking DNA repair kinetics was the inability to process and analyze the amount of data generated from images taken by the microscope”. In this project, the authors visually monitored an array of 300 proteins after generating genetic damage by adopting a classic DNA micro-irradiation technique. “We saw that many proteins adhered to damaged DNA, and others did just the opposite: they moved away from the DNA lesions. The fact that they either bind to or remove themselves from damaged DNA, to allow the recruitment of repair proteins to the lesion, is a common feature of DNA repair proteins. Both phenomena are relevant,” according to Martínez. One such protein to be moved away from repair site, being essential for irradiation-mediated damage repair was identified to be PHF20. Utilizing high-throughput microscopy allowing for the acquisition of thousands of pictures of cells after genetic damage, and analyzing them through the machine learning tools have made this discovery possible, paving way to future ways of studying DNA damage.
Collated by: Debarati Banik
MedNess Business
Onco-News

Takeda to Acquire Adaptate Biotherapeutics to Develop Novel Gamma Delta (γδ) T Cell Engager Therapies Targeting Solid Tumors
“Partnering with early-stage innovators to access cutting-edge platforms in the fight against cancer is at the center of our R&D strategy,” said Christopher Arendt, Ph.D., Head of Oncology Cell Therapy and Therapeutic Area Unit of Takeda. “Adaptate’s γδ T cell engager platform and the team’s deep understanding of γδ T cell biology gives us an opportunity to develop a new class of therapeutics that tap into powerful innate immune mechanisms. The planned acquisition will strengthen our immuno-oncology R&D efforts as part of our ongoing pursuit of life-transforming medicines for patients with cancer.”

BridgeBio and Amgen to Study BBP-398 in Combination with LUMAKRAS® (sotorasib) in Advanced Solid Tumors with the KRAS G12C Mutation
“Overactivity of the MAPK pathway is a significant cause of many types of difficult-to-treat cancers and by combining these two agents, we aim to reduce the oncogenic potential of tumor cells,” said Frank McCormick, Ph.D., chairman of oncology at BridgeBio. “Building on our collaborations with Bristol Myers Squibb and LianBio, we are excited to be working with Amgen on this new collaboration. By harnessing the power of BBP-398 as a potentially best-in-class SHP2 inhibitor with LUMAKRAS, we are hopeful that we will be able able to provide substantial relief for cancer patients in need. We will continue to pursue additional collaborations that we believe hold promise for patients.”


BioPharma and MedTech

AstraZeneca and BenevolentAI boost up their AI-drive drug discovery collaboration, now expanding to heart failure and Lupus
Following a successful collaboration of 3 years since 2019 to identify multiple novel targets in chronic kidney disease (CKD) and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), the two companies have decided to expand further to other disorders. The Chief Science Officer at BenevolentAI, Anne Phelan, said, “Our collaboration with AstraZeneca represents the future of drug discovery. It brings together traditional biology with innovative AI-driven technologies to integrate and analyze vast amounts of scientific data from diverse sources.” BenevolentAI will receive an upfront payment, research funding to start off the three-year expansion followed by milestone payments and future royalties.

Acadia Pharmaceuticals and Stoke Therapeutics reach a research pact to develop drugs for rare neurodevelopmental disorders
The two companies announced at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference that they have entered a research collaboration to develop RNA-based medicines for SYNGAP1 syndrome, Rett syndrome (MECP2), and an undisclosed neurodevelopmental target of mutual interest. Stoke will receive $60 million upfront to lead the research and pre-clinical activities whereas Acadia will focus on the clinical development and commercialization of the drugs. According to Steve Davis, Chief Executive Officer of Acadia Pharmaceuticals, “Combining Stoke’s capabilities with Acadia’s extensive expertise in neuroscience drug development and commercialization enables us to push harder and faster in exploring some of the new frontiers in rare central nervous system disorders.”
Click here for more on mergers, acquisition and business news
Editors' Desk
Richa Tewari, PhD
Oncology News
Debarati Banik
HealthIT
Darpan Chakraborty
Social Media Manager
IP & BioPharma News
Sohini Dutta
BioPharma News
MedNess Plus
Rinki Saha
BioPharma News
Managing Editor
Shalini Roy Choudhury
Genes and Therapy
Managing Editor
Nisha Peter, PhD
Consulting Editor
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Content Editors: Richa Tewari , Esha SehanobishRinki Saha ,  Shilpa Rawal, PhD ,  Debarati Banik  , Divyaanka Iyer , Arundithi Ananthanarayanan and Abhinav Dey 
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