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Archive for the ‘Personalized and Precision Medicine & Genomic Research’ Category

Joe Biden Announced Science Team Nominations for the New Administration

Posted in and Bioethics, Biological Engineering, Evidence-based decision-making, Foundations for supporting Science and Education, Funding Opportunities for Cancer Research, Health Law & Patient Safety, Health Law Policy, HealthCare IT, Interviews with Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs), Leadership, Power, Social Interlocking Connections, National Academy of Sciences AWARDS, Nobel Prize WInners, Personalized and Precision Medicine & Genomic Research, Precision Cancer Medicine, Women in Life Sciences, women in science, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 17, 2021| Leave a Comment »


Joe Biden Announced Science Team Nominations for the New Administration

Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, PhD

 

UPDATED on 1/18/2021

As we move forward, we should all take pride in the continuation of UC Berkeley’s legacy of service and leadership to our political, economic and civic institutions. We congratulate alumni and faculty of the social sciences playing prominent roles in the incoming administration. Dr. Lisa D. Cook (‘04 Ph.D., Economics) is leading the economic transition team. Professor Emeritus Janet Yellen , (Berkeley Haas, Berkeley Economics) is the first woman nominated to serve as Secretary of  the Treasury; Wally Adeyemo (‘03 Political Economy) is the first African-American to serve as the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury; and Alejandro Mayorkas (‘81 History) is both the first Latino American and the first Jewish American nominated as Director of Homeland Security.  

SOURCE

From: Dean Raka Ray <socialsciences@berkeley.edu>

Reply-To: “socialsciences@berkeley.edu” <reply-fe841079776d017a72-101_HTML-19495415-7300855-42@our.berkeley.edu>

Date: Monday, January 18, 2021 at 11:01 AM

To: “Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN” <AvivaLev-Ari@alum.berkeley.edu>

Subject: A message from the Dean of Social Sciences

 

Biden Science Team Nominations

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris announced several members of their White House science team. Eric Lander is the nominee for director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, elevated to a Cabinet-level position. Mr. Biden also selected Alondra Nelson for deputy director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, and appointed Frances Arnold and Maria Zuber as co-chairs of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. 

 

 

In an announcement televised on C-Span, President Elect Joseph Biden announced his new Science Team to advise on science policy matters, as part of the White House Advisory Committee on Science and Technology. Below is a video clip and the transcript, also available at

https://www.c-span.org/video/?508044-1/president-elect-biden-introduces-white-house-science-team

The video link is

https://www.c-span.org/video/?508044-1/president-elect-biden-introduces-white-house-science-team

 

 

COMING UP TONIGHT ON C-SPAN, NEXT, PRESIDENT-ELECT JOE BIDEN AND VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT KAMALA HARRIS ANNOUNCE SEVERAL MEMBERS OF THEIR WHITE HOUSE SCIENCE TEAM. AND THEN SENATE MINORITY LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER TALKS ABOUT THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT TRUMP IN THE WEEKLY DEMOCRATIC ADDRESS. AND AFTER THAT, TODAY’S SPEECH BY VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE TO SAILORS AT NAVAL AIR STATION LAMORE IN CALIFORNIA. NEXT, PRESIDENT-ELECT JOE BIDEN AND VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT KAMALA HARRIS ANNOUNCE SEVERAL MEMBERS OF THEIR WHITE HOUSE SCIENCE TEAM. FROM WILMINGTON, DELAWARE, THIS IS ABOUT 40 MINUTES. PRESIDENT-ELECT BIDEN: GOOD AFTERNOON, FOLKS. I WAS TELLING THESE FOUR BRILLIANT SCIENTISTS AS I STOOD IN THE BACK, IN A WAY, THEY — THIS IS THE MOST EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT THAT I’VE GOTTEN TO MAKE IN THE ENTIRE CABINET RAISED TO A CABINET LEVEL POSITION IN ONE CASE. THESE ARE AMONG THE BRIGHTEST MOST DEDICATED PEOPLE NOT ONLY IN THE COUNTRY BUT THE WORLD. THEY’RE COMPOSED OF SOME OF THE MOST SCIENTIFIC BRILLIANT MINDS IN THE WORLD. WHEN I WAS VICE PRESIDENT AS — I I HAD INTENSE INTEREST IN EVERYTHING THEY WERE DOING AND I PAID ENORMOUS ATTENTION. AND I WOULD — LIKE A KID GOING BACK TO SCHOOL. SIT DOWN AND CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME AND THEY WERE — VERY PATIENT WITH ME. AND — BUT AS PRESIDENT, I WANTED YOU TO KNOW I’M GOING TO PAY A GREAT DEAL OF ATTENTION. WHEN I TRAVEL THE WORLD AS VICE PRESIDENT, I WAS OFTEN ASKED TO EXPLAIN TO WORLD LEADERS, THEY ASKED ME THINGS LIKE DEFINE AMERICA. TELL ME HOW CAN YOU DEFINE AMERICA? WHAT’S AMERICA? AND I WAS ON A TIBETAN PLATEAU WITH AT THE TIME WITH XI ZIN PING AND WE HAD AN INTERPRETER CAN I DEFINE AMERICA FOR HIM? I SAID YES, I CAN. IN ONE WORD. POSSIBILITIES. POSSIBILITIES. I THINK IT’S ONE OF THE REASONS WHY WE’VE OCCASIONALLY BEEN REFERRED TO AS UGLY AMERICANS. WE THINK ANYTHING’S POSSIBLE GIVEN THE CHANCE, WE CAN DO ANYTHING. AND THAT’S PART OF I THINK THE AMERICAN SPIRIT. AND WHAT THE PEOPLE ON THIS STAGE AND THE DEPARTMENTS THEY WILL LEAD REPRESENT ENORMOUS POSSIBILITIES. THEY’RE THE ONES ASKING THE MOST AMERICAN OF QUESTIONS, WHAT NEXT? WHAT NEXT? NEVER SATISFIED, WHAT’S NEXT? AND WHAT’S NEXT IS BIG AND BREATHTAKING. HOW CAN — HOW CAN WE MAKE THE IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE? AND THEY WERE JUST ASKING QUESTIONS FOR THE SAKE OF QUESTIONS, THEY’RE ASKING THESE QUESTIONS AS CALL TO ACTION. , TO INSPIRE, TO HELP US IMAGINE THE FUTURE AND FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE IT REAL AND IMPROVE THE LIVES OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD. THIS IS A TEAM THAT ASKED US TO IMAGINE EVERY HOME IN AMERICA BEING POWERED BY RENEWABLE ENERGY WITHIN THE NEXT 10 YEARS. OR 3-D IMAGE PRINTERS RESTORING TISSUE AFTER TRAUMATIC INJURIES AND HOSPITALS PRINTING ORGANS FOR ORGAN TRANSPLANTS. IMAGINE, IMAGINE. AND THEY REALLY — AND, YOU KNOW, THEN RALLY, THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY TO GO ABOUT DOING WHAT WE’RE IMAGINING. YOU NEED SCIENCE, DATA AND DISCOVERY WAS A GOVERNING PHILOSOPHY IN THE OBAMA-BIDEN ADMINISTRATION. AND EVERYTHING FROM THE ECONOMY TO THE ENVIRONMENT TO CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM AND TO NATIONAL SECURITY. AND ON HEALTH CARE. FOR EXAMPLE, A BELIEF IN SCIENCE LED OUR EFFORTS TO MAP THE HUMAN BRAIN AND TO DEVELOP MORE PRECISE INDIVIDUALIZED MEDICINES. IT LED TO OUR ONGOING MISSION TO END CANCER AS WE KNOW IT, SOMETHING THAT IS DEEPLY PERSONAL TO BOTH MY FAMILY AND KAMALA’S FAMILY AND COUNTLESS FAMILIES IN AMERICA. WHEN PRESIDENT OBAMA ASKED ME TO LEAD THE CANCER MOON SHOT, I KNEW WE HAD TO INJECT A SENSE OF URGENCY INTO THE FIGHT. WE BELIEVED WE COULD DOUBLE THE RATE OF PROGRESS AND DO IN FIVE YEARS WHAT OTHERWISE WOULD TAKE 10. MY WIFE, JILL, AND I TRAVELED AROUND THE COUNTRY AND THE WORLD MEETING WITH THOUSANDS OF CANCER PATIENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES, PHYSICIANS, RESEARCHERS, PHILANTHROPISTS, TECHNOLOGY LEADERS AND HEADS OF STATE. WE SOUGHT TO BETTER UNDERSTAND AND BREAK DOWN THE SILOS AND STOVE PIPES THAT PREVENT THE SHARING OF INFORMATION AND IMPEDE ADVANCES IN CANCER RESEARCH AND TREATMENT WHILE BUILDING A FOCUSED AND COORDINATED EFFORT HERE AT HOME AND ABROAD. WE MADE PROGRESS. BUT THERE’S SO MUCH MORE THAT WE CAN DO. WHEN I ANNOUNCED THAT I WOULD NOT RUN IN 2015 AT THE TIME, I SAID I ONLY HAD ONE REGRET IN THE ROSE GARDEN AND IF I HAD ANY REGRETS THAT I HAD WON, THAT I WOULDN’T GET TO BE THE PRESIDENT TO PRESIDE OVER CANCER AS WE KNOW IT. WELL, AS GOD WILLING, AND ON THE 20TH OF THIS MONTH IN A COUPLE OF DAYS AS PRESIDENT I’M GOING TO DO EVERYTHING I CAN TO GET THAT DONE. I’M GOING TO — GOING TO BE A PRIORITY FOR ME AND FOR KAMALA AND IT’S A SIGNATURE ISSUE FOR JILL AS FIRST LADY. WE KNOW THE SCIENCE IS DISCOVERY AND NOT FICTION. AND IT’S ALSO ABOUT HOPE. AND THAT’S AMERICA. IT’S IN THE D.N.A. OF THIS COUNTRY, HOPE. WE’RE ON THE CUSP OF SOME OF THE MOST REMARKABLE BREAKTHROUGHS THAT WILL FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE THE WAY OF LIFE FOR ALL LIFE ON THIS PLANET. WE CAN MAKE MORE PROGRESS IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS, I PREDICT, THAN WE’VE MADE IN THE LAST 50 YEARS. AND EXPONENTIAL MOVEMENT. WE CAN ALSO FACE SOME OF THE MOST DIRE CRISES IN A GENERATION WHERE SCIENCE IS CRITICAL TO WHETHER OR NOT WE MEET THE MOMENT OF PERIL AND PROMISE THAT WE KNOW IS WITHIN OUR REACH. IN 1944, FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT ASKED HIS SCIENCE ADVISOR HOW COULD THE UNITED STATES FURTHER ADVANCE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN THE CRITICAL YEARS FOLLOWING THE SECOND WORLD WAR? THE RESPONSE LED TO SOME OF THE MOST GROUND BREAKING DISCOVERIES IN THE LAST 75 YEARS. AND WE CAN DO THAT AGAIN. AND WE CAN DO MORE. SO TODAY, I’M PROUD TO ANNOUNCE A TEAM OF SOME OF THE COUNTRY’S MOST BRILLIANT AND ACCOMPLISHED SCIENTISTS TO LEAD THE WAY. AND I’M ASKING THEM TO FOCUS ON FIVE KEY AREAS. FIRST THE PANDEMIC AND WHAT WE CAN LEARN ABOUT WHAT IS POSSIBLE OR WHAT SHOULD BE POSSIBLE TO ADDRESS THE WIDEST RANGE OF PUBLIC HEALTH NEEDS. SECONDLY, THE ECONOMY, HOW CAN WE BUILD BACK BETTER TO ENSURE PROSPERITY IS FULLY SHARED ALL ACROSS AMERICA? AMONG ALL AMERICANS? AND THIRDLY, HOW SCIENCE HELPS US CONFRONT THIS CLIMATE CRISIS WE FACE IN AMERICA AND THE WORLD BUT IN AMERICA HOW IT HELPS US CONFRONT THE CLIMATE CRISIS WITH AMERICAN JOBS AND INGENUITY. AND FOURTH, HOW CAN WE ENSURE THE UNITED STATES LEADS THE WORLD IN TECHNOLOGIES AND THE INDUSTRIES THAT THE FUTURE THAT WILL BE CRITICAL FOR OUR ECONOMIC PROSPERITY AND NATIONAL SECURITY? ESPECIALLY WITH THE INTENSE INCREASED COMPETITION AROUND THE WORLD FROM CHINA ON? AND FIFTH, HOW CAN WE ASSURE THE LONG-TERM HEALTH AND TRUST IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN OUR NATION? YOU KNOW, THESE ARE EACH QUESTIONS THAT CALL FOR ACTION. AND I’M HONORED TO ANNOUNCE A TEAM THAT IS ANSWERING THE CALL TO SERVE. AS THE PRESIDENTIAL SCIENCE ADVISOR AND DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY, I NOMINATE ONE OF THE MOST BRILLIANT GUYS I KNOW, PERSONS I KNOW, DR. ERIC LANDER. AND THANK YOU, DOC, FOR COMING BACK. THE PIONEER — HE’S A PIONEER IN THE STIFFING COMMUNITY. PRINCIPAL LEADER IN THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT. AND NOT HYPERBOLE TO SUGGEST THAT DR. LANDER’S WORK HAS CHANGED THE COURSE OF HUMAN HISTORY. HIS ROLE IN HELPING US MAP THE GENOME PULLED BACK THE CURTAIN ON HUMAN DISEASE, ALLOWING SCIENTISTS, EVER SINCE, AND FOR GENERATIONS TO COME TO EXPLORE THE MOLECULAR BASIS FOR SOME OF THE MOST DEVASTATING ILLNESSES AFFECTING OUR WORLD. AND THE APPLICATION OF HIS PIONEERING WORK AS — ARE POISED TO LEAD TO INCREDIBLE CURES AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN THE YEARS TO COME. DR. LANDER NOW SERVES AS THE PRESIDENT AND FOUNDING DIRECTOR OF THE BRODE INSTITUTE AT M.I.T. AND HARVARD, THE WORLD’S FOREMOST NONPROFIT GENETIC RESEARCH ORGANIZATION. AND I CAME TO APPRECIATE DR. LANDER’S EXTRAORDINARY MIND WHEN HE SERVED AS THE CO-CHAIR OF THE PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL ON ADVISORS AND SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DURING THE OBAMA-BIDEN ADMINISTRATION. AND I’M GRATEFUL, I’M GRATEFUL THAT WE CAN WORK TOGETHER AGAIN. I’VE ALWAYS SAID THAT BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION WILL ALSO LEAD AND WE’RE GOING TO LEAD WITH SCIENCE AND TRUTH. WE BELIEVE IN BOTH. [LAUGHTER] GOD WILLING OVERCOME THE PANDEMIC AND BUILD OUR COUNTRY BETTER THAN IT WAS BEFORE. AND THAT’S WHY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY, I’M GOING TO BE ELEVATING THE PRESIDENTIAL SCIENCE ADVISOR TO A CABINET RANK BECAUSE WE THINK IT’S THAT IMPORTANT. AS DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY AND SCIENCE AND — SCIENCE AND SOCIETY, I APPOINT DR. NELSON. SHE’S A PROFESSOR AT THE INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED STUDIES AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY. THE PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL. AND ONE OF AMERICA’S LEADING SCHOLARS IN THE — AN AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR AND RESEARCHER AND EXPLORING THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN SCIENCE AND OUR SOCIETY. THE DAUGHTER OF A MILITARY FAMILY, HER DAD SERVED IN THE UNITED STATES NAVY AND HER MOM WAS AN ARMY CRIPPING TO RAFFER. DR. NELSON DEVELOPED A LOVE OF TECHNOLOGY AT A VERY YOUNG AGE PARTICULARLY WITH THE EARLY COMPUTER PRODUCTS. COMPUTING PRODUCTS AND CODE-BREAKING EQUIPMENT THAT EVERY KID HAS AROUND THEIR HOUSE. AND SHE GREW UP WITHIN HER HOME. WHEN I WROTE THAT DOWN, I THOUGHT TO MYSELF, I MEAN, HOW MANY KIDS — ANY WAY, THAT PASSION WAS A PASSION FORGED A LIFELONG CURIOSITY ABOUT THE INEQUITIES AND THE POWER DIAMONDICS THAT SIT BENEATH THE SURFACE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND THE TECHNOLOGY WE BUILD. DR. NELSON IS FOCUSED ON THOSE INSIGHTS. AND THE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY, LIKE FEW BEFORE HER EVER HAVE IN AMERICAN HISTORY. BREAKING NEW GROUND ON OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE ROLE SCIENCE PLAYS IN AMERICAN LIFE AND OPENING THE DOOR TO — TO A FUTURE WHICH SCIENCE BETTER SERVES ALL PEOPLE. AS CO-CHAIR OF THE PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL ON ADVISORS OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, I APPOINT DR. FRANCIS ARNOLD, DIRECTOR OF THE ROSE BIOENGINEERING CENTER AT CALTECH AND ONE OF THE WORLD’S LEADING EXPERTS IN PROTEIN ENGINEERING, A LIFE-LONG CHAMPION OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SOLUTIONS WHO HAS BEEN INDUCTED INTO THE NATIONAL INVENTORS’ HALL OF FAME. THAT AIN’T A BAD PLACE TO BE. NOT ONLY IS SHE THE FIRST WOMAN TO BE ELECTED TO ALL THREE NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCE, MEDICINE AND ENGINEERING AND ALSO THE FIRST WOMAN, AMERICAN WOMAN, TO WIN A NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY. A VERY SLOW LEARNER, SLOW STARTER, THE DAUGHTER OF PITTSBURGH, SHE WORKED AS A CAB DRIVER, A JAZZ CLUB SERVER, BEFORE MAKING HER WAY TO BERKELEY AND A CAREER ON THE LEADING EDGE OF HUMAN DISCOVERY. AND I WANT TO MAKE THAT POINT AGAIN. I WANT — IF ANY OF YOUR CHILDREN ARE WATCHING, LET THEM KNOW YOU CAN DO ANYTHING. THIS COUNTRY CAN DO ANYTHING. ANYTHING AT ALL. AND SO SHE SURVIVED BREAST CANCER, OVERCAME A TRAGIC LOSS IN HER FAMILY WHILE RISING TO THE TOP OF HER FIELD, STILL OVERWHELMINGLY DOMINATED BY MEN. HER PASSION HAS BEEN A STEADFAST COMMITMENT TO RENEWABLE ENERGY FOR THE BETTERMENT OF OUR PLANET AND HUMANKIND. SHE IS AN INSPIRING FIGURE TO SCIENTISTS ACROSS THE FIELD AND ACROSS NATIONS. AND I WANT TO THANK DR. ARNOLD FOR AGREEING TO CO-CHAIR A FIRST ALL WOMAN TEAM TO LEAD THE PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL OF ADVISORS ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY WHICH LEADS ME TO THE NEXT MEMBER OF THE TEAM. AS CO-CHAIR, THE PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL OF ADVISORS ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, I APPOINT DR. MARIE ZUBER. A TRAIL BLAZER BRAISING GEO PHYSICIST AND PLANETARY SCIENTIST A. FORMER CHAIR OF THE NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD. FIRST WOMAN TO LEAD THE SCIENCE DEPARTMENT AT M.I.T. AND THE FIRST WOMAN TO LEAD NASA’S ROBOTIC PLANETARY MISSION. GROWING UP IN COLE COUNTRY NOT FAR FROM HEAVEN, SCRANTON, PENNSYLVANIA, IN CARBON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA, ABOUT 50 MILES SOUTH OF WHERE I WAS A KID, SHE DREAMED OF EXPLORING OUTER SPACE. COULD HAVE TOLD HER SHE WOULD JUST GO TO GREEN REACH IN SCRANTON AND FIND WHERE IT WAS. AND I SHOULDN’T BE SO FLIPPANT. BUT I’M SO EXCITED ABOUT THESE FOLKS. YOU KNOW, READING EVERY BOOK SHE COULD FIND AND LISTENING TO HER MOM’S STORIES ABOUT WATCHING THE EARLIEST ROCKET LAUNCH ON TELEVISION, MARIE BECAME THE FIRST PERSON IN HER FAMILY TO GO TO COLLEGE AND NEVER LET GO OF HER DREAM. TODAY SHE OVERSEES THE LINCOLN LABORATORY AT M.I.T. AND LEADS THE INSTITUTION’S CLIMATE ACTION PLAN. GROWING UP IN COLD COUNTRY, NOT AND FINALLY, COULD NOT BE HERE TODAY, BUT I’M PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT I’VE HAD A LONG CONVERSATION WITH DR. FRANCIS COLLINS AND COULD NOT BE HERE TODAY. AND I’VE ASKED THEM TO STAY ON AS DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE OF HEALTH AND — AT THIS CRITICAL MOMENT. I’VE KNOWN DR. COLLINS FOR MANY YEARS. I WORKED WITH HIM CLOSELY. HE’S BRILLIANT. A PIONEER. A TRUE LEADER. AND ABOVE ALL, HE’S A MODEL OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND I’M HONORED TO BE WORKING WITH HIM AGAIN. AND IT IS — IN HIS ABSENCE I WANT TO THANK HIM AGAIN FOR BEING WILLING TO STAY ON. I KNOW THAT WASN’T HIS ORIGINAL PLAN. BUT WE WORKED AN AWFUL LOT ON THE MOON SHOT AND DEALING WITH CANCER AND I JUST WANT TO THANK HIM AGAIN. AND TO EACH OF YOU AND YOUR FAMILIES, AND I SAY YOUR FAMILIES, THANK YOU FOR THE WILLINGNESS TO SERVE. AND NOT THAT YOU HAVEN’T BEEN SERVING ALREADY BUT TO SERVE IN THE ADMINISTRATION. AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, TO ALL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, THIS IS A TEAM THAT’S GOING TO HELP RESTORE YOUR FAITH IN AMERICA’S PLACE IN THE FRONTIER OF SCIENCE AND DISCOVER AND HOPE. I’M NOW GOING TO TURN THIS OVER STARTING WITH DR. LANDER, TO EACH OF OUR NOMINEES AND THEN WITH — HEAR FROM THE VICE PRESIDENT. BUT AGAIN, JUST CAN’T THANK YOU ENOUGH AND I REALLY MEAN IT. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU FOR WILLING TO DO THIS. DOCTOR, IT’S ALL YOURS. I BETTER PUT MY MASK ON OR I’M GOING TO GET IN TROUBLE.

 

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Live Notes, Real Time Conference Coverage @AACR #AACR20: Tuesday June 23, 2020 3:00 PM-5:30 PM Educational Sessions

Posted in Artificial Intelligence - Breakthroughs in Theories and Technologies, Artificial Intelligence - General, Artificial Intelligence Applications in Health Care, Artificial Intelligence in CANCER, Artificial Intelligence in Health Care - Tools & Innovations, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine - Application for Diagnosis, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine - Applications in Therapeutics, Big Data, BioIT: BioInformatics, Biological Engineering, Biological Networks, Biological Networks, Gene Regulation and Evolution, Breast Cancer - impalpable breast lesions, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, Cancer Genomics, cancer metabolism, Deep Learning in Pathology, Genomic Expression, Glioblastoma, Inflammasome, Intelligent Information Systems, Personalized and Precision Medicine & Genomic Research, Prostate Cancer: Monitoring vs Treatment, REAL TIME Conference Coverage Twitter's Hashtags and Handles per Presentation/session, Single Cell Genomics, Single-cell sequencing, tumor microenvironment, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 24, 2020| Leave a Comment »


Live Notes, Real Time Conference Coverage AACR 2020: Tuesday June 23, 2020 3:00 PM-5:30 PM Educational Sessions

Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, PhD

Follow Live in Real Time using

#AACR20

@pharma_BI

@AACR

Register for FREE at https://www.aacr.org/

uesday, June 23

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM EDT

Virtual Educational Session
Tumor Biology, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology

The Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium: Resources and Data Dissemination

This session will provide information regarding methodologic and computational aspects of proteogenomic analysis of tumor samples, particularly in the context of clinical trials. Availability of comprehensive proteomic and matching genomic data for tumor samples characterized by the National Cancer Institute’s Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program will be described, including data access procedures and informatic tools under development. Recent advances on mass spectrometry-based targeted assays for inclusion in clinical trials will also be discussed.

Amanda G Paulovich, Shankha Satpathy, Meenakshi Anurag, Bing Zhang, Steven A Carr

Methods and tools for comprehensive proteogenomic characterization of bulk tumor to needle core biopsies

Shankha Satpathy
  • TCGA has 11,000 cancers with >20,000 somatic alterations but only 128 proteins as proteomics was still young field
  • CPTAC is NCI proteomic effort
  • Chemical labeling approach now method of choice for quantitative proteomics
  • Looked at ovarian and breast cancers: to measure PTM like phosphorylated the sample preparation is critical

 

Data access and informatics tools for proteogenomics analysis

Bing Zhang
  • Raw and processed data (raw MS data) with linked clinical data can be extracted in CPTAC
  • Python scripts are available for bioinformatic programming

 

Pathways to clinical translation of mass spectrometry-based assays

Meenakshi Anurag

·         Using kinase inhibitor pulldown (KIP) assay to identify unique kinome profiles

·         Found single strand break repair defects in endometrial luminal cases, especially with immune checkpoint prognostic tumors

·         Paper: JNCI 2019 analyzed 20,000 genes correlated with ET resistant in luminal B cases (selected for a list of 30 genes)

·         Validated in METABRIC dataset

·         KIP assay uses magnetic beads to pull out kinases to determine druggable kinases

·         Looked in xenografts and was able to pull out differential kinomes

·         Matched with PDX data so good clinical correlation

·         Were able to detect ESR1 fusion correlated with ER+ tumors

Tuesday, June 23

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM EDT

Virtual Educational Session
Survivorship

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning from Research to the Cancer Clinic

The adoption of omic technologies in the cancer clinic is giving rise to an increasing number of large-scale high-dimensional datasets recording multiple aspects of the disease. This creates the need for frameworks for translatable discovery and learning from such data. Like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for the cancer lab, methods for the clinic need to (i) compare and integrate different data types; (ii) scale with data sizes; (iii) prove interpretable in terms of the known biology and batch effects underlying the data; and (iv) predict previously unknown experimentally verifiable mechanisms. Methods for the clinic, beyond the lab, also need to (v) produce accurate actionable recommendations; (vi) prove relevant to patient populations based upon small cohorts; and (vii) be validated in clinical trials. In this educational session we will present recent studies that demonstrate AI and ML translated to the cancer clinic, from prognosis and diagnosis to therapy.
NOTE: Dr. Fish’s talk is not eligible for CME credit to permit the free flow of information of the commercial interest employee participating.

Ron C. Anafi, Rick L. Stevens, Orly Alter, Guy Fish

Overview of AI approaches in cancer research and patient care

Rick L. Stevens
  • Deep learning is less likely to saturate as data increases
  • Deep learning attempts to learn multiple layers of information
  • The ultimate goal is prediction but this will be the greatest challenge for ML
  • ML models can integrate data validation and cross database validation
  • What limits the performance of cross validation is the internal noise of data (reproducibility)
  • Learning curves: not the more data but more reproducible data is important
  • Neural networks can outperform classical methods
  • Important to measure validation accuracy in training set. Class weighting can assist in development of data set for training set especially for unbalanced data sets

Discovering genome-scale predictors of survival and response to treatment with multi-tensor decompositions

Orly Alter
  • Finding patterns using SVD component analysis. Gene and SVD patterns match 1:1
  • Comparative spectral decompositions can be used for global datasets
  • Validation of CNV data using this strategy
  • Found Ras, Shh and Notch pathways with altered CNV in glioblastoma which correlated with prognosis
  • These predictors was significantly better than independent prognostic indicator like age of diagnosis

 

Identifying targets for cancer chronotherapy with unsupervised machine learning

Ron C. Anafi
  • Many clinicians have noticed that some patients do better when chemo is given at certain times of the day and felt there may be a circadian rhythm or chronotherapeutic effect with respect to side effects or with outcomes
  • ML used to determine if there is indeed this chronotherapy effect or can we use unstructured data to determine molecular rhythms?
  • Found a circadian transcription in human lung
  • Most dataset in cancer from one clinical trial so there might need to be more trials conducted to take into consideration circadian rhythms

Stratifying patients by live-cell biomarkers with random-forest decision trees

Stratifying patients by live-cell biomarkers with random-forest decision trees

Guy Fish CEO Cellanyx Diagnostics

 

Tuesday, June 23

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM EDT

Virtual Educational Session
Tumor Biology, Molecular and Cellular Biology/Genetics, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Prevention Research

The Wound Healing that Never Heals: The Tumor Microenvironment (TME) in Cancer Progression

This educational session focuses on the chronic wound healing, fibrosis, and cancer “triad.” It emphasizes the similarities and differences seen in these conditions and attempts to clarify why sustained fibrosis commonly supports tumorigenesis. Importance will be placed on cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), vascularity, extracellular matrix (ECM), and chronic conditions like aging. Dr. Dvorak will provide an historical insight into the triad field focusing on the importance of vascular permeability. Dr. Stewart will explain how chronic inflammatory conditions, such as the aging tumor microenvironment (TME), drive cancer progression. The session will close with a review by Dr. Cukierman of the roles that CAFs and self-produced ECMs play in enabling the signaling reciprocity observed between fibrosis and cancer in solid epithelial cancers, such as pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

Harold F Dvorak, Sheila A Stewart, Edna Cukierman

 

The importance of vascular permeability in tumor stroma generation and wound healing

Harold F Dvorak

Aging in the driver’s seat: Tumor progression and beyond

Sheila A Stewart

Why won’t CAFs stay normal?

Edna Cukierman

 

Tuesday, June 23

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM EDT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other Articles on this Open Access  Online Journal on Cancer Conferences and Conference Coverage in Real Time Include

Press Coverage
Live Notes, Real Time Conference Coverage 2020 AACR Virtual Meeting April 28, 2020 Symposium: New Drugs on the Horizon Part 3 12:30-1:25 PM
Live Notes, Real Time Conference Coverage 2020 AACR Virtual Meeting April 28, 2020 Session on NCI Activities: COVID-19 and Cancer Research 5:20 PM
Live Notes, Real Time Conference Coverage 2020 AACR Virtual Meeting April 28, 2020 Session on Evaluating Cancer Genomics from Normal Tissues Through Metastatic Disease 3:50 PM
Live Notes, Real Time Conference Coverage 2020 AACR Virtual Meeting April 28, 2020 Session on Novel Targets and Therapies 2:35 PM

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The Wide Variability in Reported COVID-19 Epidemiologic Data May Suggest That Personalized Omic Testing May Be Needed to Identify At-Risk Populations

Posted in COVID-19, Evolution of Biology Through Culture, Genomic Testing: Methodology for Diagnosis, Health Care System by Country, number of asymptomatic infections, Personalized and Precision Medicine & Genomic Research, Population genetics, Population Health Management, Population Health Management, Genetics & Pharmaceutical, SARS-CoV-2, tagged , , , , , , , on June 9, 2020| Leave a Comment »


The Wide Variability in Reported COVID-19 Epidemiologic Data May Suggest That Personalized Omic Testing May Be Needed to Identify At-Risk Populations

Curator: Stephen J. Williams, PhD

I constantly check the Youtube uploads from Dr. John Campbell, who is a wonderful immunologist and gives daily reports on new findings on COVID-19 from the scientific literature.  His reporting is extremely insightful and easily understandable.  This is quite a feat as it seems the scientific field has been inundated with a plethora of papers, mostly reported clinical data from small retrospective studies, and many which are being put on preprint servers, and not peer reviewed.

It has become a challenge for many scientists, already inundated with expanding peer reviewed literature in their own fields, as well as the many requests to review papers, to keep up with all these COVID related literature.  Especially when it is up to the reader to do their own detailed peer review. So many thanks to people like Dr. Campbell who is an expert in his field for doing this.

However the other day he had posted a video which I found a bit disturbing, as a central theme of the video was that many expert committee could not find any reliable epidemiologic study concerning transmission or even incidence of the disease.  In all studies, as Dr. Campell alluded to, there is such a tremendous variability in the reported statistics, whether one is looking at percentage of people testing positive who are symptomatic, the percentage of asymptomatic which may be carriers, the transmission of the disease, and even the percentage of people who recover.

With all the studies being done it would appear that, even if a careful meta analysis were done using all available studies, and assuming their validity before peer review, that there would be a tighter consensus on some of these metrics of disease spread, incidence and prevalence.

Below is the video from Dr. Campbell and the topic is on percentage of asymptomatic carriers of the COVID-19 virus.  This was posted last week but later in this post there will be updated information and views by the WHO on this matter as well as other literature (which still shows to my point that this wide variability in reported data may be adding to the policy confusion with respect to asymptomatic versus symptomatic people and why genetic testing might be needed to further discriminate these cohorts of people.

 

Below is the video: 

From the Oxford Center for Evidence Based Medicine: COVID-19 Portal at https://www.cebm.net/oxford-covid-19-evidence-service/

“There is not a single reliable study to determine the number of asymptomatic infections”

And this is very troubling as this means there is no reliable testing resulting in any meaningful data.

As Dr. Campell says

” This is not good enough.  There needs to be some sort of coordinated research program it seems all ad hoc”

A few other notes from post and Oxford Center for Evidence Based Medicine:

  • Symptom based screening will miss a lot of asymptomatic and presymptomatic cases
  • Some asymptomatic cases will become symptomatic over next week (these people were technically presymptomatic but do we know the %?)
  • We need a population based antibody screening program
  • An Italian study of all 3,000 people in city of Vo’Euganeo revealed that 50-75% of those who tested positive were asymptomatic and authors concluded that asymptomatic represents “a formidable source of infection”; Dr. Campbell feels this was a reliable study
  • Another study from a Washington state nursing facility showed while 56% of positive cases were asymptomatic, 75% of these asymptomatic developed symptoms within a week. Symptom based screening missed half of cases.
  • Other studies do not follow-up on the positive cases to determine in presymptomatic
  • It also appears discrepancies between data from different agencies (like CDC, WHO) on who is shedding virus as different tests used (PCR vs antibody)

 

Recent Studies Conflict Concerning Asymptomatic, Presymtomatic and Viral Transmission

‘We don’t actually have that answer yet’: WHO clarifies comments on asymptomatic spread of Covid-19

From StatNews

A top World Health Organization official clarified on Tuesday that scientists have not determined yet how frequently people with asymptomatic cases of Covid-19 pass the disease on to others, a day after suggesting that such spread is “very rare.”

The clarification comes after the WHO’s original comments incited strong pushback from outside public health experts, who suggested the agency had erred, or at least miscommunicated, when it said people who didn’t show symptoms were unlikely to spread the virus.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on the Covid-19 pandemic, made it very clear Tuesday that the actual rates of asymptomatic transmission aren’t yet known.

Some of the confusion boiled down to the details of what an asymptomatic infection actually is, and the different ways the term is used. While some cases of Covid-19 are fully asymptomatic, sometimes the word is also used to describe people who haven’t started showing symptoms yet, when they are presymptomatic. Research has shown that people become infectious before they start feeling sick, during that presymptomatic period.

At one of the WHO’s thrice-weekly press briefings Monday, Van Kerkhove noted that when health officials review cases that are initially reported to be asymptomatic, “we find out that many have really mild disease.” There are some infected people who are “truly asymptomatic,” she said, but countries that are doing detailed contact tracing are “not finding secondary transmission onward” from those cases. “It’s very rare,” she said.

Source: https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/09/who-comments-asymptomatic-spread-covid-19/

 

Therefore the problems have been in coordinating the testing results, which types of tests conducted, and the symptomology results.  As Dr. Campbell previously stated it appears more ‘ad hoc’ than coordinated research program.  In addition, defining the presymptomatic and measuring this group have been challenging.

However, an alternative explanation to the wide variability in the data may be we need to redefine the cohorts of patients we are evaluating and the retrospective data we are collecting.  It is feasible that sub groups, potentially defined by genetic background may be identified and data re-evaluated based on personalized omic data, in essence creating new cohorts based on biomarker data.

From a Perspective in The Lancet about a worldwide proteomic effort (COVID-19 MS Coalition) to discover biomarkers related to COVID19 infection risk, by identifying COVID-related antigens.

The COVID-19 MS Coalition is a collective mass spectrometry effort that will provide molecular level information on SARS-CoV-2 in the human host and reveal pathophysiological and structural information to treat and minimise COVID-19 infection. Collaboration with colleagues at pace involves sharing of optimised methods for sample collection and data generation, processing and formatting for maximal information gain. Open datasets will enable ready access to this valuable information by the computational community to help understand antigen response mechanisms, inform vaccine development, and enable antiviral drug design. As countries across the world increase widespread testing to confirm SARS-CoV-2 exposure and assess immunity, mass spectrometry has a significant role in fighting the disease. Through collaborative actions, and the collective efforts of the COVID-19 MS Coalition, a molecular level quantitative understanding of SARS-CoV-2 and its effect will benefit all.

 

In an ACS Perspective below, Morteza Mahmoudi suggests a few possible nanobased technologies (i.e., protein corona sensor array and magnetic levitation) that could discriminate COVID-19-infected people at high risk of death while still in the early stages of infection.

Emerging Biomolecular Testing to Assess the Risk of Mortality from COVID-19 Infection

Morteza Mahmoudi*

Publication Date:May 7, 2020

 

Please see other articles on COVID-19 on our Coronavirus Portal at

An Epidemiological Approach Stephen J. Williams, PhD and Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN Lead Curators – e–mail Contacts: sjwilliamspa@comcast.net and avivalev-ari@alum.berkeley.edu

https://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/coronavirus-portal/an-epidemiological-approach-stephen-j-williams-phd-and-aviva-lev-ari-phd-rn-lead-curators-e-mail-contacts-sjwilliamspacomcast-net-and-avivalev-arialum-berkeley-edu/

and

https://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/coronavirus-portal/

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The Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) Partnership on May 18, 2020

Posted in Coronavirus Gene Expression, COVID-19, Drug Development Process, Drug Discovery Chemistry, drug repurposing, Personal Health Applications: Tech Innovations serves HealhCare, Personalized and Precision Medicine & Genomic Research, Pharmaceutical Discovery, Pharmaceutical Drug Discovery, Pharmaceutical Industry Competitive Intelligence, Pharmaceutical R&D Informatics, Pharmaceutical R&D Investment, Pharmacogenomics, Pharmacovigilance, Population Health Management, Population Health Management, Genetics & Pharmaceutical, SARS-CoV-2, Serology tests for coronavirus antibodies, Vaccinology, Virus Infective Acute Respiratory Syndrome: SARS-CoV on May 18, 2020| 1 Comment »


The Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) Partnership on May 18, 2020: Leadership of AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eisai, Eli Lilly, Evotec, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, KSQ Therapeutics, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, Takeda, and Vir. We also thank multiple NIH institutes (especially NIAID), the FDA, BARDA, CDC, the European Medicines Agency, the Department of Defense, the VA, and the Foundation for NIH

Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

May 18, 2020

Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) An Unprecedented Partnership for Unprecedented Times

Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD1; Paul Stoffels, MD2
Article Information
JAMA. Published online May 18, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.8920
Author Affiliations

  • 1Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland
  • 2Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, New Jersey

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It has been more than a century since the world has encountered a pandemic like coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and the rate of spread of COVID-19 around the globe and the associated morbidity and mortality have been staggering.1 To address what may be the greatest public health crisis of this generation, it is imperative that all sectors of society work together in unprecedented ways, with unprecedented speed. In this Viewpoint, we describe such a partnership.

First reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, COVID-19 is caused by a highly transmissible novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2). By March 2020, as COVID-19 moved rapidly throughout Europe and the US, most researchers and regulators from around the world agreed that it would be necessary to go beyond “business as usual” to contain this formidable infectious agent. The biomedical research enterprise was more than willing to respond to the challenge of COVID-19, but it soon became apparent that much-needed coordination among important constituencies was lacking.

Clinical trials of investigational vaccines began as early as January, but with the earliest possible distribution predicted to be 12 to 18 months away. Clinical trials of experimental therapies had also been initiated, but most, except for a trial testing the antiviral drug remdesivir,2 were small and not randomized. In the US, there was no true overarching national process in either the public or private sector to prioritize candidate therapeutic agents or vaccines, and no efforts were underway to develop a clear inventory of clinical trial capacity that could be brought to bear on this public health emergency. Many key factors had to change if COVID-19 was to be addressed effectively in a relatively short time frame.

On April 3, leaders of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with coordination by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), met with multiple leaders of research and development from biopharmaceutical firms, along with leaders of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and academic experts. Participants sought urgently to identify research gaps and to discuss opportunities to collaborate in an accelerated fashion to address the complex challenges of COVID-19.

These critical discussions culminated in a decision to form a public-private partnership to focus on speeding the development and deployment of therapeutics and vaccines for COVID-19. The group assembled 4 working groups to focus on preclinical therapeutics, clinical therapeutics, clinical trial capacity, and vaccines (Figure). In addition to the founding members, the working groups’ membership consisted of senior scientists from each company or agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the Department of Defense.

Figure.

Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines

ACTIV’s 4 working groups, each with one cochair from NIH and one from industry, have made rapid progress in establishing goals, setting timetables, and forming subgroups focused on specific issues (Figure). The goals of the working group, along with a few examples of their accomplishments to date, include the following.

 

The Preclinical Working Group was charged to standardize and share preclinical evaluation resources and methods and accelerate testing of candidate therapies and vaccines to support entry into clinical trials. The aim is to increase access to validated animal models and to enhance comparison of approaches to identify informative assays. For example, through the ACTIV partnership, this group aims to extend preclinical researchers’ access to high-throughput screening systems, especially those located in the Biosafety Level 3 (BSL3) facilities currently required for many SARS-CoV-2 studies. This group also is defining a prioritization approach for animal use, assay selection and staging of testing, as well as completing an inventory of animal models, assays, and BSL 3/4 facilities.

 

The Therapeutics Clinical Working Group has been charged to prioritize and accelerate clinical evaluation of a long list of therapeutic candidates for COVID-19 with near-term potential. The goals have been to prioritize and test potential therapeutic agents for COVID-19 that have already been in human clinical trials. These may include agents with either direct-acting or host-directed antiviral activity, including immunomodulators, severe symptom modulators, neutralizing antibodies, or vaccines. To help achieve these goals, the group has established a steering committee with relevant expertise and objectivity to set criteria for evaluating and ranking potential candidate therapies submitted by industry partners. Following a rigorous scientific review, the prioritization subgroup has developed a complete inventory of approximately 170 already identified therapeutic candidates that have acceptable safety profiles and different mechanisms of action. On May 6, the group presented its first list of repurposed agents recommended for inclusion in ACTIV’s master protocol for adaptive clinical trials. Of the 39 agents that underwent final prioritization review, the group identified 6 agents—including immunomodulators and supportive therapies—that it proposes to move forward into the master protocol clinical trial(s) expected to begin later in May.

 

The Clinical Trial Capacity Working Group is charged with assembling and coordinating existing networks of clinical trials to increase efficiency and build capacity. This will include developing an inventory of clinical trial networks supported by NIH and other funders in the public and private sectors, including contract research organizations. For each network, the working group seeks to identify their specialization in different populations and disease stages to leverage infrastructure and expertise from across multiple networks, and establish a coordination mechanism across networks to expedite trials, track incidence across sites, and project future capacity. The clinical trials inventory subgroup has already identified 44 networks, with access to adult populations and within domestic reach, for potential inclusion in COVID-19 trials. Meanwhile, the survey subgroup has developed 2 survey instruments to assess the capabilities and capacities of those networks, and its innovation subgroup has developed a matrix to guide deployment of innovative solutions throughout the trial life cycle.

 

The Vaccines Working Group has been charged to accelerate evaluation of vaccine candidates to enable rapid authorization or approval.4 This includes development of a harmonized master protocol for adaptive trials of multiple vaccines, as well as development of a trial network that could enroll as many as 100 000 volunteers in areas where COVID-19 is actively circulating. The group also aims to identify biomarkers to speed authorization or approval and to provide evidence to address cross-cutting safety concerns, such as immune enhancement. Multiple vaccine candidates will be evaluated, and the most promising will move to a phase 2/3 adaptive trial platform utilizing large geographic networks in the US and globally.5 Because time is of the essence, ACTIV will aim to have the next vaccine candidates ready to enter clinical trials by July 1, 2020.

References

1.

Desai  A .  Twentieth-century lessons for a modern coronavirus pandemic.   JAMA. Published online April 27, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.4165
ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar

2.

NIH clinical trial shows remdesivir accelerates recovery from advanced COVID-19. National Institutes of Health. Published April 29, 2020. Accessed May 7, 2020. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-clinical-trial-shows-remdesivir-accelerates-recovery-advanced-covid-19

3.

NIH to launch public-private partnership to speed COVID-19 vaccine and treatment options. National Institutes of Health. Published April 17, 2020. Accessed May 7, 2020. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launch-public-private-partnership-speed-covid-19-vaccine-treatment-options

4.

Corey  L , Mascola  JR , Fauci  AS , Collins  FS .  A strategic approach to COVID-19 vaccine R&D.   Science. Published online May 11, 2020. doi:10.1126/science.abc5312PubMedGoogle Scholar

5.

Angus  DC .  Optimizing the trade-off between learning and doing in a pandemic.   JAMA. Published online March 30, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.4984
ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar

6.

Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) portal. National Institutes of Health. Accessed May 15, 2020. https://www.nih.gov/ACTIV

7.

Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP). National Institutes of Health. Published February 4, 2014. Accessed May 7, 2020. https://www.nih.gov/research-training/accelerating-medicines-partnership-amp
SOURCE

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Live Notes, Real Time Conference Coverage 2020 AACR Virtual Meeting April 28, 2020 Symposium: New Drugs on the Horizon Part 3 12:30-1:25 PM

Posted in BioSimilars, BioTechnology - Venture Creation, Breast Cancer - impalpable breast lesions, Cancer - General, Cancer and Current Therapeutics, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, Cancer Genomics, Cancer Vaccines: Targeting Cancer Genes for Immunotherapy, Cancer-Immune Interactions, CAR-T, Circulating Tumor Cells (CTC), combination immunotherapies., Conference Coverage with Social Media, Drug Development Process, drug repurposing, Immuno-Oncology & Genomics, Immunotherapy, interventional oncology, Liquid Biopsy Chip detects an array of metastatic cancer cell markers in blood, LPBI Group, e-Scientific Media, DFP, R&D-M3DP, R&D-Drug Discovery, US Patents: SOPs and Team Management, Modulating Macrophages in Cancer Immunotherapy, Oncolytic virus & OncoViro-Therapy, Pharmaceutical Analytics, Pharmaceutical Discovery, Precision Cancer Medicine, Prostate Cancer: Monitoring vs Treatment, Scientific & Biotech Conferences: Press Coverage, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »


Live Notes, Real Time Conference Coverage 2020 AACR Virtual Meeting April 28, 2020 Symposium: New Drugs on the Horizon Part 3 12:30-1:25 PM

Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, PhD

New Drugs on the Horizon: Part 3
Introduction

Andrew J. Phillips, C4 Therapeutics

  • symposium brought by AACR CICR and had about 30 proposals for talks and chose three talks
  • unfortunately the networking event is not possible but hope to see you soon in good health

ABBV-184: A novel survivin specific T cell receptor/CD3 bispecific therapeutic that targets both solid tumor and hematological malignancies

Edward B Reilly
AbbVie Inc. @abbvie

  • T-cell receptors (TCR) can recognize the intracellular targets whereas antibodies only recognize the 25% of potential extracellular targets
  • survivin is expressed in multiple cancers and correlates with poor survival and prognosis
  • CD3 bispecific TCR to survivn (Ab to CD3 on T- cells and TCR to survivin on cancer cells presented in MHC Class A3)
  • ABBV184  effective in vivo in lung cancer models as single agent;
  • in humanized mouse tumor models CD3/survivin bispecific can recruit T cells into solid tumors; multiple immune cells CD4 and CD8 positive T cells were found to infiltrate into tumor
  • therapeutic window as measured by cytokine release assays in tumor vs. normal cells very wide (>25 fold)
  • ABBV184 does not bind platelets and has good in vivo safety profile
  • First- in human dose determination trial: used in vitro cancer cell assays to determine 1st human dose
  • looking at AML and lung cancer indications
  • phase 1 trial is underway for safety and efficacy and determine phase 2 dose
  • survivin has very few mutations so they are not worried about a changing epitope of their target TCR peptide of choice

The discovery of TNO155: A first in class SHP2 inhibitor

Matthew J. LaMarche
Novartis @Novartis

  • SHP2 is an intracellular phosphatase that is upstream of MEK ERK pathway; has an SH2 domain and PTP domain
  • knockdown of SHP2 inhibits tumor growth and colony formation in soft agar
  • 55 TKIs there are very little phosphatase inhibitors; difficult to target the active catalytic site; inhibitors can be oxidized at the active site; so they tried to target the two domains and developed an allosteric inhibitor at binding site where three domains come together and stabilize it
  • they produced a number of chemical scaffolds that would bind and stabilize this allosteric site
  • block the redox reaction by blocking the cysteine in the binding site
  • lead compound had phototoxicity; used SAR analysis to improve affinity and reduce phototox effects
  • was very difficult to balance efficacy, binding properties, and tox by adjusting stuctures
  • TNO155 is their lead into trials
  • SHP2 expressed in T cells and they find good combo with I/O with uptick of CD8 cells
  • TNO155 is very selective no SHP1 inhibition; SHP2 can autoinhibit itself when three domains come together and stabilize; no cross reactivity with other phosphatases
  • they screened 1.5 million compounds and got low hit rate so that is why they needed to chemically engineer and improve on the classes they found as near hits

Closing Remarks

 

Xiaojing Wang
Genentech, Inc. @genentech

Follow on Twitter at:

@pharma_BI

@AACR

@CureCancerNow

@pharmanews

@BiotechWorld

@HopkinsMedicine

#AACR20

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Live Notes, Real Time Conference Coverage 2020 AACR Virtual Meeting April 27, 2020 Minisymposium on Signaling in Cancer 11:45am-1:30 pm

Posted in Cancer - General, Cancer and Current Therapeutics, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, Cancer Prevention: Research & Programs, Cancer Screening, Cell Biology, Cell Biology, Signaling & Cell Circuits, Conference Coverage with Social Media, Curation, Open Access Journals, Precision Cancer Medicine, REAL TIME Conference Coverage Twitter's Hashtags and Handles per Presentation/session, Scientific & Biotech Conferences: Press Coverage, Scientific Publishing, Signaling, tagged , , , , , , on April 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »


Live Notes, Real Time Conference Coverage 2020 AACR Virtual Meeting April 27, 2020 Minisymposium on Signaling in Cancer 11:45am-1:30 pm

Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, PhD.

SESSION VMS.MCB01.01 – Emerging Signaling Vulnerabilities in Cancer
April 27, 2020, 11:45 AM – 1:30 PM
Virtual Meeting: All Session Times Are U.S. EDT
DESCRIPTION

All session times are U.S. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). Access to AACR Virtual Annual Meeting I sessions are free with registration. Register now at http://www.aacr.org/virtualam2020

Session Type

Virtual Minisymposium

Track(s)

Molecular and Cellular Biology/Genetics

16 Presentations
11:45 AM – 1:30 PM
– Chairperson

J. Silvio Gutkind. UCSD Moores Cancer Center, La Jolla, CA

11:45 AM – 1:30 PM
– Chairperson

  • in 80’s and 90’s signaling focused on defects and also oncogene addiction.  Now the field is switching to finding vulnerabilities in signaling cascades in cancer

Adrienne D. Cox. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC

11:45 AM – 11:55 AM
– Introduction

J. Silvio Gutkind. UCSD Moores Cancer Center, La Jolla, CA

11:55 AM – 12:05 PM
1085 – Interrogating the RAS interactome identifies EFR3A as a novel enhancer of RAS oncogenesis

Hema Adhikari, Walaa Kattan, John F. Hancock, Christopher M. Counter. Duke University, Durham, NC, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX

Abstract: Activating mutations in one of the three RAS genes (HRAS, NRAS, and KRAS) are detected in as much as a third of all human cancers. As oncogenic RAS mediates it tumorigenic signaling through protein-protein interactions primarily at the plasma membrane, we sought to document the protein networks engaged by each RAS isoform to identify new vulnerabilities for future therapeutic development. To this end, we determined interactomes of oncogenic HRAS, NRAS, and KRAS by BirA-mediated proximity labeling. This analysis identified roughly ** proteins shared among multiple interactomes, as well as a smaller subset unique to a single RAS oncoprotein. To identify those interactome components promoting RAS oncogenesis, we created and screened sgRNA library targeting the interactomes for genes modifying oncogenic HRAS-, NRAS-, or KRAS-mediated transformation. This analysis identified the protein EFR3A as not only a common component of all three RAS interactomes, but when inactivated, uniformly reduced the growth of cells transformed by any of the three RAS isoforms. EFR3A recruits a complex containing the druggable phosphatidylinositol (Ptdlns) 4 kinase alpha (PI4KA) to the plasma membrane to generate the Ptdlns species PI4P. We show that EFR3A sgRNA reduced multiple RAS effector signaling pathways, suggesting that EFR3A acts at the level of the oncoprotein itself. As lipids play a critical role in the membrane localization of RAS, we tested and found that EFR3A sgRNA reduced not only the occupancy of RAS at the plasma membrane, but also the nanoclustering necessary for signaling. Furthermore, the loss of oncogenic RAS signaling induced by EFR3A sgRNA was rescued by targeting PI4K to the plasma membrane. Taken together, these data support a model whereby EFR3A recruits PI4K to oncogenic RAS to promote plasma membrane localization and nonclustering, and in turn, signaling and transformation. To investigate the therapeutic potential of this new RAS enhancer, we show that EFR3A sgRNA reduced oncogenic KRAS signaling and transformed growth in a panel of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) cell lines. Encouraged by these results we are exploring whether genetically inactivating the kinase activity of PI4KA inhibits oncogenic signaling and transformation in PDAC cell lines. If true, pharmacologically targeting PI4K may hold promise as a way to enhance the anti-neoplastic activity of drugs targeting oncogenic RAS or its effectors.

@DukeU

@DukeMedSchool

@MDAndersonNews

  • different isoforms of ras mutations exist differentially in various tumor types e.g. nras vs kras
  • the C terminal end serve as hotspots of mutations and probably isoform specific functions
  • they determined the interactomes of nras and kras and determined how many candidates are ras specific
  • they overlayed results from proteomic and CRSPR screen; EFR3a was a potential target that stuck out
  • using TCGA patients with higher EFR3a had poorer prognosis
  • EFR3a promotes Ras signaling; and required for RAS driven tumor growth (in RAS addicted tumors?)
  • EGFR3a promotes clustering of oncogenic RAS at plasma membrane

 

12:05 PM – 12:10 PM
– Discussion

12:10 PM – 12:20 PM
1086 – Downstream kinase signaling is dictated by specific KRAS mutations; Konstantin Budagyan, Jonathan Chernoff. Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA @FoxChaseCancer

Abstract: Oncogenic KRAS mutations are common in colorectal cancer (CRC), found in ~50% of tumors, and are associated with poor prognosis and resistance to therapy. There is substantial diversity of KRAS alleles observed in CRC. Importantly, emerging clinical and experimental analysis of relatively common KRAS mutations at amino acids G12, G13, A146, and Q61 suggest that each mutation differently influences the clinical properties of a disease and response to therapy. For example, KRAS G12 mutations confer resistance to EGFR-targeted therapy, while G13D mutations do not. Although there is clinical evidence to suggest biological differences between mutant KRAS alleles, it is not yet known what drives these differences and whether they can be exploited for allele-specific therapy. We hypothesized that different KRAS mutants elicit variable alterations in downstream signaling pathways. To investigate this hypothesis, we created a novel system by which we can model KRAS mutants in isogenic mouse colon epithelial cell lines. To generate the cell lines, we developed an assay using fluorescent co-selection for CRISPR-driven genome editing. This assay involves simultaneous introduction of single-guide RNAs (sgRNAs) to two different endogenous loci resulting in double-editing events. We first introduced Cas9 and blue fluorescent protein (BFP) into mouse colon epithelial cell line containing heterozygous KRAS G12D mutation. We then used sgRNAs targeting BFP and the mutant G12D KRAS allele along with homology-directed repair (HDR) templates for a GFP gene and a KRAS mutant allele of our choice. Cells that successfully undergo HDR are GFP-positive and contain the desired KRAS mutation. Therefore, selection for GFP-positive cells allows us to identify those with phenotypically silent KRAS edits. Ultimately, this method allows us to toggle between different mutant alleles while preserving the wild-type allele, all in an isogenic background. Using this method, we have generated cell lines with endogenous heterozygous KRAS mutations commonly seen in CRC (G12D, G12V, G12C, G12R, G13D). In order to elucidate cellular signaling pathway differences between the KRAS mutants, we screened the mutated cell lines using a small-molecule library of ~160 protein kinase inhibitors. We found that there are mutation-specific differences in drug sensitivity profiles. These observations suggest that KRAS mutants drive specific cellular signaling pathways, and that further exploration of these pathways may prove to be valuable for identification of novel therapeutic opportunities in CRC.

  • Flourescent coselection of KRAS edits by CRSPR screen in a colorectal cancer line; a cell that is competent to undergo HR can undergo combination multiple KRAS
  • target only mutant allele while leaving wild type intact;
  • it was KRAS editing event in APC  +/- mouse cell line
  • this enabled a screen for kinase inhibitors that decreased tumor growth in isogenic cell lines; PKC alpha and beta 1 inhibitors, also CDK4 inhibitors inhibited cell growth
  • questions about heterogeneity in KRAS clones; they looked at off target guides and looked at effects in screens; then they used top two clones that did not have off target;  questions about 3D culture- they have not done that; Question ? dependency on AKT activity? perhaps the G12E has different downstream effectors

 

12:20 PM – 12:25 PM
– Discussion

12:25 PM – 12:35 PM
1087 – NF1 regulates the RAS-related GTPases, RRAS and RRAS2, independent of RAS activity; Jillian M. Silva, Lizzeth Canche, Frank McCormick. University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA @UCSFMedicine

@UCSFCancer\
Abstract: Neurofibromin, which is encoded by the neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) gene, is a tumor suppressor that acts as a RAS-GTPase activating protein (RAS-GAP) to stimulate the intrinsic GTPase activity of RAS as well as the closely related RAS subfamily members, RRAS, RRAS2, and MRAS. This results in the conversion of the active GTP-bound form of RAS into the inactive GDP-bound state leading to the downregulation of several RAS downstream effector pathways, most notably MAPK signaling. While the region of NF1 that regulates RAS activity represents only a small fraction of the entire protein, a large extent of the NF1 structural domains and their corresponding mechanistic functions remain uncharacterized despite the fact there is a high frequency of NF1 mutations in several different types of cancer. Thus, we wanted to elucidate the underlying biochemical and signaling functions of NF1 that are unrelated to the regulation of RAS and how loss of these functions contributes to the pathogenesis of cancer. To accomplish this objective, we used CRISPR-Cas9 methods to knockout NF1 in an isogenic “RASless” MEF model system, which is devoid of the major oncogenic RAS isoforms (HRAS, KRAS, and NRAS) and reconstituted with the KRAS4b wild-type or mutant KRASG12C or KRASG12D isoform. Loss of NF1 led to elevated RAS-GTP levels, however, this increase was not as profound as the levels in KRAS-mutated cells or provided a proliferative advantage. Although ablation of NF1 resulted in sustained activation of MAPK signaling, it also unexpectedly, resulted in a robust increase in AKT phosphorylation compared to KRAS-mutated cells. Surprisingly, loss of NF1 in KRAS4b wild-type and KRAS-mutated cells potently suppressed the RAS-related GTPases, RRAS and RRAS2, with modest effects on MRAS, at both the transcript and protein levels. A Clariom™D transcriptome microarray analysis revealed a significant downregulation in the NF-κB target genes, insulin-like growth factor binding protein 2 (IGFBP2), argininosuccinate synthetase 1 (ASS1), and DUSP1, in both the NF1 knockout KRAS4b wild-type and KRAS-mutated cells. Moreover, NF1Null melanoma cells also displayed a potent suppression of RRAS and RRAS2 as well as these NF-κB transcription factors. Since RRAS and RRAS2 both contain the same NF-κB transcription factor binding sites, we hypothesize that IGFBP2, ASS1, and/or DUSP1 may contribute to the NF1-mediated regulation of these RAS-related GTPases. More importantly, this study provides the first evidence of at least one novel RAS-independent function of NF1 to regulate the RAS-related subfamily members, RRAS and RRAS2, in a manner exclusive of its RAS-GTPase activity and this may provide insight into new potential biomarkers and molecular targets for treating patients with mutations in NF1.
  • NF1 and SPRED work together to signal from RTK cKIT through RAS
  • NF1 knockout cells had higher KRAS and had increased cell proliferation
  • NF1 -/-  or SPRED loss had increased ERK phosphorylation and some increase in AKT activity compared to parental cells
  • they used isogenic cell lines devoid of all RAS isoforms and then reconstituted with specific RAS WT or mutants
  • NF1 and SPRED KO both reduce RRAS expression; in an AKT independent mannner
  • NF1 SPRED KO cells have almost no IGFBP2 protein expression and SNAIL so maybe affecting EMT?
  • this effect is independent of its RAS GTPAse activity (noncanonical)

12:35 PM – 12:40 PM
– Discussion

12:40 PM – 12:50 PM
1088 – Elucidating the regulation of delayed-early gene targets of sustained MAPK signaling; Kali J. Dale, Martin McMahon. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, Huntsman Cancer Institute, Salt Lake City, UT

Abstract: RAS and its downstream effector, BRAF, are commonly mutated proto-oncogenes in many types of human cancer. Mutationally activated RAS or BRAF signal through the MEK→ERK MAP kinase (MAPK) pathway to regulate key cancer cell hallmarks such as cell division cycle progression, reduced programmed cell death, and enhanced cell motility. Amongst the list of RAS/RAF-regulated genes are those encoding integrins, alpha-beta heterodimeric transmembrane proteins that regulate cell adhesion to the extracellular matrix. Altered integrin expression has been linked to the acquisition of more aggressive behavior by melanoma, lung, and breast cancer cells leading to diminished survival of cancer patients. We have previously documented the ability of the RAS-activated MAPK pathway to induce the expression of ITGB3 encoding integrin β3 in several different cell types. RAS/RAF-mediated induction of ITGB3 mRNA requires sustained, high-level activation of RAF→MEK→ERK signaling mediated by oncogene activation and is classified as “delayed-early”, in that it is sensitive to the protein synthesis inhibitor cycloheximide. However, to date, the regulatory mechanisms that allow for induced ITGB3 downstream of sustained, high-level activation of MAPK signaling remains obscure. We have identified over 300 DEGs, including those expressing additional cell surface proteins, that display similar regulatory characteristics as ITGB3. We use integrin β3 as a model to test our hypothesis that there is a different mechanism of regulation for delayed-early genes (DEG) compared to the canonical regulation of Immediate-Early genes. There are three regions in the chromatin upstream of the ITGB3 that become more accessible during RAF activation. We are relating the chromatin changes seen during RAF activation to active enhancer histone marks. To elucidate the essential genes of this regulation process, we are employing the use of a genome-wide CRISPR knockout screen. The work presented from this abstract will help elucidate the regulatory properties of oncogenic progression in BRAF mutated cancers that could lead to the identification of biomarkers.

12:50 PM – 12:55 PM
– Discussion

12:55 PM – 1:05 PM
1090 – Regulation of PTEN translation by PI3K signaling maintains pathway homeostasis

Radha Mukherjee, Kiran Gireesan Vanaja, Jacob A. Boyer, Juan Qiu, Xiaoping Chen, Elisa De Stanchina, Sarat Chandarlapaty, Andre Levchenko, Neal Rosen. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, Yale University, West Haven, CT, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY @sloan_kettering

Abstract: The PI3K pathway is a key regulator of metabolism, cell proliferation and migration and some of its components (e.g. PIK3CA and PTEN) are frequently altered in cancer by genetic events that deregulate its output. However, PI3K signaling is not usually the primary driver of these tumors and inhibitors of components of the pathway have only modest antitumor effects. We now show that both physiologic and oncogenic activation of the PI3K signaling by growth factors and an activating hotspot PIK3CA mutation respectively, cause an increase in the expression of the lipid phosphatase PTEN, thus limiting the duration of the signal and the output of the pathway in tumors. Pharmacologic and physiologic inhibition of the pathway by HER2/PI3K/AKT/mTOR inhibitors and nutrient starvation respectively reduce PTEN, thus buffering the effects of inhibition and contributing to the rebound in pathway activity that occurs in tumors. This regulation is found to be a feature of multiple types of cancer, non-cancer cell line and PDX models thereby highlighting its role as a key conserved feedback loop within the PI3K signaling network, both in vitro and in vivo. Regulation of expression is due to mTOR/4EBP1 dependent control of PTEN translation and is lost when 4EBP1 is knocked out. Translational regulation of PTEN is therefore a major homeostatic regulator of physiologic PI3K signaling and plays a role in reducing the output of oncogenic mutants that deregulate the pathway and the antitumor activity of PI3K pathway inhibitors.

  • mTOR can be a potent regulator of PTEN and therefore a major issue when developing PI3K inhibitors

1:05 PM – 1:10 PM
– Discussion

1:10 PM – 1:20 PM
1091 – BI-3406 and BI 1701963: Potent and selective SOS1::KRAS inhibitors induce regressions in combination with MEK inhibitors or irinotecan

Daniel Gerlach, Michael Gmachl, Juergen Ramharter, Jessica Teh, Szu-Chin Fu, Francesca Trapani, Dirk Kessler, Klaus Rumpel, Dana-Adriana Botesteanu, Peter Ettmayer, Heribert Arnhof, Thomas Gerstberger, Christiane Kofink, Tobias Wunberg, Christopher P. Vellano, Timothy P. Heffernan, Joseph R. Marszalek, Mark Pearson, Darryl B. McConnell, Norbert Kraut, Marco H. Hofmann. Boehringer Ingelheim RCV GmbH & Co KG, Vienna, Austria, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, Boehringer Ingelheim RCV GmbH & Co KG, Vienna, Austria

  • there is rational for developing an SOS1 inhibitor (GEF); BI3406 shows better PK and PD as a candidate
  • most sensitive cell lines to inhibitor carry KRAS mutation; NRAS or BRAF mutations are not sensititve
  • KRAS mutation defines sensitivity so they created KRAS mut isogenic cell lines
  • found best to co inhibit SOS and MEK as observed plasticity with only SOS
  • dual combination in lung NSCLC pancreatic showed enhanced efficacy compared to monotherapy
  • SOS1 inhibition plus irinotecan enhances DNA double strand breaks; no increased DNA damage in normal stroma but preferentially in tumor cells
  • these SOS1 had broad activity against KRAS mutant models;
  • phase 1 started in 2019;

@Boehringer

1:20 PM – 1:25 PM
– Discussion

1:25 PM – 1:30 PM
– Closing Remarks

Adrienne D. Cox. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC

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Live Notes, Real Time Conference Coverage 2020 AACR Virtual Meeting April 27, 2020 Opening Remarks 9 am

Posted in Cancer - General, Cancer and Current Therapeutics, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, Cancer Prevention: Research & Programs, Cancer Screening, Conference Coverage with Social Media, interventional oncology, Personalized and Precision Medicine & Genomic Research, REAL TIME Conference Coverage Twitter's Hashtags and Handles per Presentation/session, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »


Live Notes, Real Time Conference Coverage 2020 AACR Virtual Meeting April 27, 2020 Opening Remarks and Clinical Session 9 am

Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, PhD.

9:00 AM Opening Session

9:00 AM – 9:05 AM
– Opening Video

9:05 AM – 9:15 AM
– AACR President: Opening Remarks Elaine R. Mardis. Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, OH

 

Dr. Mardis is the Robert E. and Louise F. Dunn Distinguished Professor of Medicine @GenomeInstitute at Washington University of St. Louis School of Medicine.

Opening remarks:  Dr. Mardis gave her welcome from her office.  She expressed many thanks to healthcare workers and the hard work of scientists and researchers.  She also expressed some regret for the many scientists who had wonderful research to present and how hard it was to make the decision to go virtual however she feels there now more than ever still needs a venue to discuss scientific and clinical findings.  Some of the initiatives that she has had the opportunity to engage in the areas of groundbreaking discoveries and clinical trials.  606,000 lives will be lost in US this year from cancer.  AACR is being vigilant as also an advocacy platform and public policy platform in Congress and Washington.  The AACR has been at the front of public policy on electronic cigarettes.  Blood Cancer Discovery is their newest journal.  They are going to host joint conferences with engineers, mathematicians and physicists to discuss how they can help to transform oncology.  Cancer Health Disparity Annual Conference is one of the fastest growing conferences.  They will release a report later this year about the scope of the problem and policy steps needed to alleviate these disparities.  Lack of racial and ethnic minorities in cancer research had been identified an issue and the AACR is actively working to reduce the disparities within the ranks of cancer researchers.   Special thanks to Dr. Margaret Foti for making the AACR the amazing organization it is.

 

9:15 AM – 9:30 AM- AACR Annual Meeting Program Chair: Review of Program for AACR Virtual Annual Meeting Antoni Ribas. UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA

Antoni Ribas, MD PhD is Professor, Medicine, Surgery, Molecular and Medical Pharmacology; Director, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy Center at UCLA; Director, UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center Tumor Immunology Program aribas@mednet.ucla.edu

The AACR felt it was important to keep the discourse in the cancer research field as the Annual AACR meeting is the major way scientists and clinicians discuss the latest and most pertinent results.  A three day virtual meeting June 22-24 will focus more on the translational and basic research while this meeting is more focused on clinical trials.  There will be educational programs during the June virtual meeting.  The COVID in Cancer part of this virtual meeting was put in specially for this meeting and there will be a special meeting on this in July.  They have created an AACR COVID task force.  The AACR has just asked Congress and NIH to extend the grants due to the COVID induced shutdown of many labs.

9:30  Open Clinical Plenary Session (there are 17 sessions today but will only cover a few of these)

9:30 AM – 9:31 AM
– Chairperson Nilofer S. Azad. Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comp. Cancer Center, Baltimore, MD @noza512

9:30 AM – 9:31 AM
– Chairperson Manuel Hidalgo. Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY

9:30 AM – 9:35 AM
– Introduction Nilofer S. Azad. Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comp. Cancer Center, Baltimore, MD

9:35 AM – 9:45 AM
CT011 – Evaluation of durvalumab in combination with olaparib and paclitaxel in high-risk HER2 negative stage II/III breast cancer: Results from the I-SPY 2 TRIAL Lajos Pusztai, et al

see https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/9045/presentation/10593

AbstractBackground: I-SPY2 is a multicenter, phase 2 trial using response-adaptive randomization within molecular subtypes defined by receptor status and MammaPrint risk to evaluate novel agents as neoadjuvant therapy for breast cancer. The primary endpoint is pathologic complete response (pCR, ypT0/is ypN0)). DNA repair deficiency in cancer cells can lead to immunogenic neoantigens, activation of the STING pathway, and PARP inhibition can also upregulate PD-L1 expression. Based on these rationales we tested the combination of durvalumab (anti-PDL1), olaparib (PARP inhibitor) and paclitaxel in I-SPY2.
Methods: Women with tumors ≥ 2.5 cm were eligible for screening. Only HER2 negative (HER2-) patients were eligible for this treatment, hormone receptor positive (HR+) patients had to have MammaPrint high molecular profile. Treatment included durvalumab 1500 mg every 4 weeks x 3, olaparib 100 mg twice daily through weeks 1-11 concurrent with paclitaxel 80 mg/m2 weekly x 12 (DOP) followed by doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide (AC) x 4. The control arm was weekly paclitaxel x 12 followed by AC x 4. All patients undergo serial MRI imaging and imaging response at 3 & 12 weeks combined with accumulating pCR data are used to estimate, and continuously update, predicted pCR rate for the trial arm. Regimens “graduation with success” when the Bayesian predictive probability of success in a 300-patient phase 3 neoadjuvant trial in the appropriate biomarker groups reaches > 85%.
Results: A total of 73 patients received DOP treatment including 21 HR- tumors (i.e. triple-negative breast cancer, TNBC) and 52 HR+ tumors between May 2018 – June 2019. The control group included 299 patients with HER2- tumors. The DOP arm graduated in June 2019, 13 months after enrollment had started, for all HER2- negative and the HR+/HER2- cohorts with > 0.85% predictive probabilities of success. 72 patient completed surgery and evaluable for pCR, the final predicted probabilities of success in a future phase III trial to demonstrate higher pCR rate with DOP compared to control are 81% for all HER2- cancers (estimated pCR rate 37%), 80% for TNBC (estimated pCR rate 47%) and 74.5% for HR+/HER2- patients (estimated pCR rate 28%). Association between pCR and germline BRCA status and immune gene expression including PDL1 will be presented at the meeting. No unexpected toxicities were seen, but 10 patients (14%) had possibly immune or olaparib related grade 2/3 AEs (3 pneumonitis, 2 adrenal insufficiency, 1 colitis, 1 pancreatitis, 2 elevated LFT, 1 skin toxicity, 2 hypothyroidism, 1 hyperthyroidism, 1 esophagitis).
Conclusion: I-SPY2 demonstrated a significant improvement in pCR with durvalumab and olaparib included with paclitaxel compared to chemotherapy alone in women with stage II/III high-risk, HER2-negative breast cancer, improvement was seen in both the HR+ and TNBC subsets.

  • This combination of durvalumab and olaparib is safe in triple negative breast cancer
  • expected synergy between PARP inhibitors and PDL1 inhibitors as olaparib inhibits DNA repair and would increase the mutational burden, which is in lung cancer shown to be a biomarker for efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors such as Opdivio
  • three subsets of breast cancers were studied: her2 negative, triple negative and ER+ tumors
  • MRI imaging tumor size was used as response
  • olaparib arm had elevation of liver enzymes and there was a pancreatitis
  • however paclitaxel was used within the combination as well as a chemo arm but the immuno arm alone may not be better than chemo alone but experimental arm with all combo definitely better than chemo alone
  • they did not look at BRCA1/2 status, followup talk showed that this is a select group that may see enhanced benefit; PARP inhibitors were seen to be effective only in BRCA1/2 mutant ovarian cancer previously

 

10:10 AM – 10:20 AM
CT012 – Evaluation of atezolizumab (A), cobimetinib (C), and vemurafenib (V) in previously untreated patients with BRAFV600 mutation-positive advanced melanoma: Primary results from the phase 3 IMspire150 trial Grant A. McArthur,

for abstract please see https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/9045/presentation/10594

AbstractBackground: Approved systemic treatments for advanced melanoma include immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy (CIT) and targeted therapy with BRAF plus MEK inhibitors for BRAFV600E/K mutant melanoma. Response rates with CITs are typically lower than those observed with targeted therapy, but CIT responses are more durable. Preclinical and clinical data suggest a potential for synergy between CIT and BRAF plus MEK inhibitors. We therefore evaluated whether combining CIT with targeted therapy could improve efficacy vs targeted therapy alone. Methods: Treatment-naive patients with unresectable stage IIIc/IV melanoma (AJCC 7th ed), measurable disease by RECIST 1.1, and BRAFV600 mutations in their tumors were randomized to the anti­-programmed death-ligand 1 antibody A + C + V or placebo (Pbo) + C + V. A or Pbo were given on days 1 and 15 of each 28-day cycle. Treatment was continued until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. The primary outcome was investigator-assessed progression-free survival (PFS). Results: 514 patients were enrolled (A + C + V = 256; Pbo + C + V = 258) and followed for a median of 18.9 months. Investigator-assessed PFS was significantly prolonged with A + C + V vs Pbo + C + V (15.1 vs 10.6 months, respectively; hazard ratio: 0.78; 95% confidence interval: 0.63-0.97; P=0.025), an effect seen in all prognostic subgroups. While objective response rates were similar in the A + C + V and Pbo + C + V groups, median duration of response was prolonged with A + C + V (21.0 months) vs Pbo + C + V (12.6 months). Overall survival data were not mature at the time of analysis. Common treatment-related adverse events (AEs; >30%) in the A + C + V and Pbo + C + V groups were blood creatinine phosphokinase (CPK) increase (51.3% vs 44.8%), diarrhea (42.2% vs 46.6%), rash (40.9% in both arms), arthralgia (39.1% vs 28.1%), pyrexia (38.7% vs 26.0%), alanine aminotransferase (ALT) increase (33.9% vs 22.8%), and lipase increase (32.2% vs 27.4%). Common treatment-related grade 3/4 AEs (>10%) that occurred in the A + C + V and Pbo + C + V groups were lipase increase (20.4% vs 20.6%), blood CPK increase (20.0% vs 14.9%), ALT increase (13.0% vs 8.9%), and maculopapular rash (12.6% vs 9.6%). The incidence of treatment-related serious AEs was similar between the A + C + V (33.5%) and Pbo + C + V (28.8%) groups. 12.6% of patients in the A + C + V group and 15.7% in the Pbo + C + V group stopped all treatment because of AEs. The safety profile of the A + C + V regimen was generally consistent with the known profiles of the individual components. Conclusion: Combination therapy with A + C + V was tolerable and manageable, produced durable responses, and significantly increased PFS vs Pbo + C + V. Thus, A + C + V represents a viable treatment option for BRAFV600 mutation-positive advanced melanoma. ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02908672

 

 

10:25 AM – 10:35 AM
CT013 – SWOG S1320: Improved progression-free survival with continuous compared to intermittent dosing with dabrafenib and trametinib in patients with BRAF mutated melanoma Alain Algazi,

for abstract and more author information please see https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/9045/presentation/10595

AbstractBackground: BRAF and MEK inhibitors yield objective responses in the majority of BRAFV600E/K mutant melanoma patients, but acquired resistance limits response durations. Preclinical data suggests that intermittent dosing of these agents may delay acquired resistance by deselecting tumor cells that grow optimally in the presence of these agents. S1320 is a randomized phase 2 clinical trial designed to determine whether intermittent versus continuous dosing of dabrafenib and trametinib improves progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with advanced BRAFV600E/K melanoma.
Methods: All patients received continuous dabrafenib and trametinib for 8-weeks after which non-progressing patients were randomized to receive either continuous treatment or intermittent dosing of both drugs on a 3-week-off, 5-week-on schedule. Unscheduled treatment interruptions of both drugs for > 14 days were not permitted. Responses were assessed using RECIST v1.1 at 8-week intervals scheduled to coincide with on-treatment periods for patients on the intermittent dosing arm. Adverse events were assessed using CTCAE v4 monthly. The design assumed exponential PFS with a median of 9.4 months using continuous dosing, 206 eligible patients and 156 PFS events. It had 90% power with a two-sided α = 0.2 to detect a change to a median with an a priori hypothesis that intermittent dosing would improve the median PFS to 14.1 months using a Cox model stratified by the randomization stratification factors.
Results: 242 patients were treated and 206 patients without disease progression after 8 weeks were randomized, 105 to continuous and 101 to intermittent treatment. 70% of patients had not previously received immune checkpoint inhibitors. There were no significant differences between groups in terms of baseline patient characteristics. The median PFS was statistically significantly longer, 9.0 months from randomization, with continuous dosing vs. 5.5 months from randomization with intermittent dosing (p = 0.064). There was no difference in overall survival between groups (median OS = 29.2 months in both arms p = 0.93) at a median follow up of 2 years. 77% of patient treated continuously discontinued treatment due to disease progression vs. 84% treated intermittently (p = 0.34).
Conclusions: Continuous dosing with the BRAF and MEK inhibitors dabrafenib and trametinib yields superior PFS compared with intermittent dosing.

  • combo of MEK and BRAF inhibitors can attract immune cells like TREGs so PDL1 inhibitor might help improve outcome
  • PFS was outcome endpoint
  • LDH was elevated in three patients (why are they seeing liver tox?  curious like previous study); are seeing these tox with the PDL1 inhibitors
  • there was marked survival over placebo group and PFS was statistically  with continuous dosing however intermittent dosing shows no improvement

Dr. Wafik el Diery gave a nice insight as follows

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Live Notes and Conference Coverage in Real Time. COVID19 And The Impact on Cancer Patients Town Hall with Leading Oncologists; April 4, 2020 

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Live Notes and Conference Coverage in Real Time. COVID19 And The Impact on Cancer Patients Town Hall with Leading Oncologists; April 4, 2020

Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, PhD 

@StephenJWillia2

UPDATED 5/11/2020 see below

This update is the video from the COVID-19 Series 4.

UPDATED 4/08/2020 see below

The Second in a Series of Virtual Town Halls with Leading Oncologist on Cancer Patient Care during COVID-19 Pandemic: What you need to know

The second virtual Town Hall with Leading International Oncologist, discussing the impact that the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak has on cancer care and patient care issues will be held this Saturday April 4, 2020.  This Town Hall Series is led by Dr. Roy Herbst and Dr. Hossain Borghaei who will present a panel of experts to discuss issues pertaining to oncology practice as well as addressing physicians and patients concerns surrounding the risk COVID-19 presents to cancer care.  Some speakers on the panel represent oncologist from France and Italy, and will give their views of the situation in these countries.

 

Speakers include:

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, Ensign Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology) and Professor of Pharmacology; Chief of Medical Oncology, Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital; Associate Cancer Center Director for Translational Research, Yale Cancer Center

Hossain Borghaei, DO, MS , Chief of Thoracic Medical Oncology and Director of Lung Cancer Risk Assessment, Fox Chase Cancer Center

Giuseppe Curigliano, MD, PhD, University of Milan and Head of Phase I Division at IEO, European Institute of Oncology

Paolo Ascierto, MD National Tumor Institute Fondazione G. Pascale, Medical oncologist from National Cancer Institute of Naples, Italy

Fabrice Barlesi, MD, PhD, Thoracic oncologist Cofounder Marseille Immunopole Coordinator #ThePioneeRproject, Institut Gustave Roussy

Jack West, MD, Department of Medical Oncology & Therapeutics Research, City of Hope California

Rohit Kumar, MD Department of Medicine, Section of Pulmonary Medicine, Fox Chase Cancer Center

Christopher Manley, MD Director, Interventional Pulmonology Fox Chase Cancer Center

Hope Rugo, MD FASCO Division of Hematology and Oncology, University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center

Harriet Kluger, MD Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology); Director, Yale SPORE in Skin Cancer, Yale Cancer Center

Marianne J. Davies, DNP, MSN, RN, APRN, CNS-BC, ACNP-BC, AOCNP Assistant Professor of Nursing, Yale University

Barbara Burtness, MD Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology);  Head and Neck Cancers Program, Yale University

 

@pharma_BI and @StephenJWillia2 will be Tweeting out live notes using #CancerCareandCOVID19

Live Notes

Part I: Practice Management

Dr. Jack West from City of Hope talked about telemedicine:  Coordination of the patient experience, which used to be face to face now moved to a telemedicine alternative.  For example a patient doing well on personalized therapy, many patients are well suited for a telemedicine experience.  A benefit for both patient and physician.

Dr. Rohit Kumar: In small cancer hospitals, can be a bit difficult to determine which patient needs to come in and which do not.  For outpatients testing for COVID is becoming very pertinent as these tests need to come back faster than it is currently.  For inpatients the issue is personal protection equipment.  They are starting to reuse masks after sterilization with dry heat.   Best to restructure the system of seeing patients and scheduling procedures.

Dr. Christopher Manley: hypoxia was an issue for COVID19 patients but seeing GI symptoms in 5% of patients.  Nebulizers have potential to aerosolize.  For patients in surgery prep room surgical masks are fine.  Ventilating these patients are a challenge as hypoxia a problem.  Myocarditis is a problem in some patients.  Diffuse encephalopathy and kidney problems are being seen. So Interleukin 6 (IL6) inhibitors are being used to reduce the cytokine storm presented in patients suffering from COVID19.

Dr. Hope Rugo from UCSF: Breast cancer treatment during this pandemic has been challenging, even though they don’t use too much immuno-suppressive drugs.  How we decide on timing of therapy and future visits is crucial.  For early stage breast cancer, neoadjuvant therapy is being used to delay surgeries.  Endocrine therapy is more often being used. In patients that need chemotherapy, they are using growth factor therapy according to current guidelines.  Although that growth factor therapy might antagonize some lung problems, there is less need for multiple visits.

For metastatic breast cancer,  high risk ER positive are receiving endocrine therapy and using telemedicine for followups.  For chemotherapy they are trying to reduce the schedules or frequency it is given. Clinical trials have been put on hold, mostly pharmokinetic studies are hard to carry out unless patients can come in, so as they are limiting patient visits they are putting these type of clinical studies on hold.

Dr. Harriet Kluger:  Melanoma community of oncologists gathered together two weeks ago to discuss guidelines and best practices during this pandemic.   The discussed that there is a lack of data on immunotherapy long term benefit and don’t know the effectiveness of neoadjuvant therapy.  She noted that many patients on BRAF inhibitors like Taflinar (dabrafenib)   or Zelboraf (vemurafenib) might get fevers as a side effect from these inhibitors and telling them to just monitor themselves and get tested if they want. Yale has also instituted a practice that, if a patient tests positive for COVID19, Yale wants 24 hours between the next patient visit to limit spread and decontaminate.

Marianne Davies:  Blood work is now being done at satellite sites to limit number of in person visits to Yale.  Usually they did biopsies to determine resistance to therapy but now relying on liquid biopsies (if insurance isn’t covering it they are working with patient to assist).  For mesothelioma they are dropping chemotherapy that is very immunosuppressive and going with maintenance pembrolizumab (Keytruda).  It is challenging in that COPD mimics the symptoms of COVID and patients are finding it difficult to get nebulizers at the pharmacy because of shortages; these patients that develop COPD are also worried they will not get the respirators they need because of rationing.

Dr. Barbara Burtness: Head and neck cancer.  Dr. Burtness stresses to patients that the survival rate now for HPV positive head and neck is much better and leaves patients with extra information on their individual cancers.  She also noted a registry or database that is being formed to track data on COVID in patients undergoing surgery  and can be found here at https://globalsurg.org/covidsurg/

About CovidSurg

  • There is an urgent need to understand the outcomes of COVID-19 infected patients who undergo surgery.
  • Capturing real-world data and sharing international experience will inform the management of this complex group of patients who undergo surgery throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, improving their clinical care.
  • CovidSurg has been designed by an international collaborating group of surgeons and anesthetists, with representation from Canada, China, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Korea, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Dr. Burtness had noted that healthcare care workers are at high risk of COVID exposure during ear nose and throat (ENT) procedures as the coronavirus resides in the upper respiratory tract.  As for therapy for head and neck cancers, they are staying away from high dose cisplatin because of the nephrotoxicity seen with high dose cisplatin.  An alternative is carboplatin which generally you do not see nephrotoxicity as an adverse event (a weekly carboplatin).  Changing or increasing dose schedule (like 6 weeks Keytruda) helps reduce immunologic problems related to immunosupression and patients do not have to come in as often.

Italy and France

Dr. Paolo Ascierto:   with braf inhibitors, using in tablet form so patients can take from home.  Also they are moving chemo schedules for inpatients so longer dosing schedules.  Fever still a side effect from braf inhibitors and they require a swab to be performed to ascertain patient is COVID19 negative.  Also seeing pneumonitis as this is an adverse event from checkpoint inhibitors so looking at CT scans and nasal swab to determine if just side effect of I/O drugs or a COVID19 case.  He mentioned that their area is now doing okay with resources.

Dr. Guiseppe Curigliano mentioned about the redesign of the Italian health system with spokes and hubs of health care.  Spokes are generalized medicine while the hubs represent more specialized centers like CV hubs or cancer hubs.  So for instance, if a melanoma patient in a spoke area with COVID cases they will be referred to a hub.  He says they are doing better in his area

In the question and answer period, Dr. West mentioned that they are relaxing many HIPAA regulations concerning telemedicine.  There is a website on the Centers for Connective Health Policy that shows state by state policy on conducting telemedicine.   On immuno oncology therapy, many in the panel had many questions concerning the long term risk to COVID associated with this type of therapy.  Fabrice mentioned they try to postpone use of I/O and although Dr. Kluger said there was an idea floating around that PD1/PDL1 inhibitors could be used as a prophylactic agent more data was needed.

Please revisit this page as the recording of this Town Hall will be made available next week.

UPDATED 4/08/2020

Below find the LIVE RECORDING and TAKEAWAYS by the speakers

 

 
Town Hall Takeaways
 

Utilize Telehealth to Its Fullest Benefit

 

·       Patients doing well on targeted therapy or routine surveillance are well suited to telemedicine

·       Most patients are amenable to this, as it is more convenient for them and minimizes their exposure

·       A patient can speak to multiple specialists with an ease that was not previously possible

·       CMS has relaxed some rules to accommodate telehealth, though private insurers have not moved as quickly, and the Center for Connected Health Policy maintains a repository of current state-by-state regulations:  https://www.cchpca.org/

 

Practice Management Strategies

 

·       In the face of PPE shortages, N95 masks can be decontaminated using UV light, hydrogen peroxide, or autoclaving with dry heat; the masks can be returned to the original user until the masks are no longer suitable for use

·       For blood work or scans, the use of external satellite facilities should be explored

·       Keep pumps outside of the room so nurses can attend to them quickly

·       Limit the use of nebulizers, CPAPs, and BiPAPs due to risk of aerosolization

 

Pool Our Knowledge for Care of COVID Patients

 

·       There is now a global registry for tracking surgeries in COVID-positive cancer patients:  https://globalsurg.org/cancercovidsurg/

·       Caution is urged in the presence of cardiac complications, as ventilated patients may appear to improve, only to suffer severe myocarditis and cardiac arrest following extubation

·       When the decision is made to intubate, intubate quickly, as less invasive methods result in aerosolization and increased risks to staff

 

Study the Lessons of Europe

 

·       The health care system in Italy has been reorganized into “spokes” and “hubs,” with a number of cancer hubs; if there is a cancer patient in a spoke hospital with many COVID patients, this patient may be referred to a hub hospital

·       Postpone adjuvant treatments whenever possible

·       Oral therapies, which can be managed at home, are preferred over therapies that must be administered in a healthcare setting

·       Pneumonitis patients without fevers may be treated with steroids, but nasal swab testing is needed in the presence of concomitant fever

·       Any staff who are not needed on site should be working from home, and rotating schedules can be used to keep people healthy

·       Devise an annual epidemic control plan now that we have new lessons from COVID

 

We Must Be Advocates for Our Cancer Patients

 

·       Be proactive with other healthcare providers on behalf of patients with a good prognosis

·       Consider writing letters for cancer patients for inclusion into their chart, or addendums on notes, then encourage patients to print these out, or give it to them during their visit

·       The potential exists for a patient to be physiologically stable on a ventilator, but intolerant of decannulation; early discussions are necessary to determine reasonable expectations of care

·       Be sure to anticipate a second wave of patients, comprised of cancer patients for whom treatments and surgery have been delayed!

 

Tumor-Specific Learnings

 

Ø  Strategies in Breast Cancer:

·       In patients with early-stage disease, promote the use of neoadjuvant therapy where possible to delay the need for surgery

·       For patients with metastatic disease in the palliative setting, transition to less frequent chemotherapy dosing if possible

·       While growth factors may pose a risk in interstitial lung disease, new guidelines are emerging

 

Ø  Strategies in Melanoma:

·       The melanoma community has released specific recommendations for treatment during the pandemic:  https://www.nccn.org/covid-19/pdf/Melanoma.pdf

·       The use of BRAF/MEK inhibitors can cause fevers that are drug-related, and access to an alternate clinic where patients can be assessed is a useful resource

 

Ø  Strategies in Lung Cancer:

·       For patients who are stable on an oral, targeted therapy, telehealth check-in is a good option

·       For patients who progress on targeted therapies, increased use of liquid biopsies when appropriate can minimize use of bronchoscopy suites and other resources

·       For patients on pembrolizumab monotherapy, consider switching to a six-week dosing of 400 mg

·       Many lung cancer patients worry about “discrimination” should they develop a COVID infection; it is important to support patients and help manage expectations and concerns

 

 

UPDATED 5/11/2020

Townhall on COVID-19 and Cancer Care with Leading Oncologists Series 4

Addressing the Challenges of Cancer Care in the Community

 

 

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The Second in a Series of Virtual Town Halls with Leading Oncologist on Cancer Patient Care during COVID-19 Pandemic: What you need to know

Posted in Biomarkers: Inflammation, Cancer - General, Cancer and Current Therapeutics, Cancer Researchers Fighting COVID-19, Coronavirus Gene Expression, COVID-19, Immune-Mediation (independent immunopathology: lung and reticuloendothelial system), interventional oncology, Patient Experience: Personal Memories of Invasive Medical Intervantion, Patient-centered Medicine, Patient’s Voice: Personal Experience with Invasive Medical Procedures, REAL TIME Conference Coverage Twitter's Hashtags and Handles per Presentation/session, SARS-CoV-2, Vaccinology, Women Health, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 3, 2020| 1 Comment »


The Second in a Series of Virtual Town Halls with Leading Oncologist on Cancer Patient Care during COVID-19 Pandemic: What you need to know

Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, PhD 

@StephenJWillia2

The second virtual Town Hall with Leading International Oncologist, discussing the impact that the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak has on cancer care and patient care issues will be held this Saturday April 4, 2020.  This Town Hall Series is led by Dr. Roy Herbst and Dr. Hossein Borghaei who will present a panel of experts to discuss issues pertaining to oncology practice as well as addressing physicians and patients concerns surrounding the risk COVID-19 presents to cancer care.  Some speakers on the panel represent oncologist from France and Italy, and will give their views of the situation in these countries.

Please register at the link below.

Link to register: https://us04web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YzsFbGacTg2DV73j6pYqxQ

This series is being hosted in partnership with Axiom Healthcare Strategies, Inc..

The Town Hall proceedings and live notes will be made available on this site and Live Notes will be Tweeted in Real Time using the #CancerCareandCOVID19 and @pharma_BI

 

Webinar banner

   Microsoft (Outlook)

Topic

COVID-19 Oncology Town Hall

Description

The goal of these town halls is to improve outcomes of cancer patients across the globe, by sharing insights and lessons learned from oncologists fighting COVID-19. Dr. Roy Herbst and Dr. Hossein Borghaei will be joined by a panel of thought leaders with expertise in a variety of solid tumors to discuss how COVID-19 has impacted patient care in oncology.

Following the session, a video, transcript, and key takeaways will be released on Monday 4/6.

Time

For Live Notes From the Last Town Hall Meeting Specifically on Lung Cancer and COVID19 please go to

https://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2020/03/28/live-notes-from-town-hall-for-patients-with-leading-oncologists-on-lung-cancer-and-covid19-3_28_20/

For more information on Cancer Care and Issues of Cancer and COVID19 please see our Coronavirus Portal at

https://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/coronavirus-portal/

 

 

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Live Notes from @HarvardMed Bioethics: Authors Jerome Groopman, MD & Pamela Hartzband, MD, discuss Your Medical Mind

Posted in and Bioethics, Bio-Ethics, Ethics and Leadership, Health Economics and Outcomes Research, Patient Experience, Patient Experience: Personal Memories of Invasive Medical Intervantion, Patient Outlook, Patient-centered Medicine, Prescription Drugs Costs on March 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »


Live Notes from @HarvardMed Bioethics: Authors Jerome Groopman, MD & Pamela Hartzband, MD, discuss Your Medical Mind

Writer: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D.

As part of the Harvard Medical School Series on Bioethics: author, clinician and professor Jerome Groopman, MD and Pamel Harzband, MD gave an online discussion of their book “Your Medical Mind”, a part of Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics Program’s Critical Reading of Contemporary Books in Bioethics Series. The Contemporary Authors in Bioethics series brings together authors and the community to discuss books that explore new and developing topics in the field. This was held as an online Zoom meeting on March 26, 2020 at 5 pm EST and could be followed on Twitter using #HarvardBioethics.  A recording of the discussion will be made available at the Harvard Med School Center for Bioethics.

 

Available at Amazon: From the Amazon book description:

An entirely new way to make the best medical decisions.

Making the right medical decisions is harder than ever. We are overwhelmed by information from all sides—whether our doctors’ recommendations, dissenting experts, confusing statistics, or testimonials on the Internet. Now Doctors Groopman and Hartzband reveal that each of us has a “medical mind,” a highly individual approach to weighing the risks and benefits of treatments.  Are you a minimalist or a maximalist, a believer or a doubter, do you look for natural healing or the latest technology?  The authors weave vivid narratives of real patients with insights from recent research to demonstrate the power of the medical mind. After reading this groundbreaking book, you will know how to arrive at choices that serve you best.

 

Doctors Groopman and Hartzband began the discussion with a recapping medical research studies and medical panels, which had reported conflicting results or reversal of recommendations, respectively.  These included studies on the benefits of statin therapy in cholesterol management, studies on whether or not Vitamin D therapy is beneficial for postmenopausal women, the ongoing controversy on the frequency with which women should get mammograms, as well as the predictive value of Prostate Specific Antigen and prostate cancer screening.  The authors singled out the research reports and medical panels reviewing the data on PSA in which the same medical panel first came out in support of using PSA levels to screen for prostate cancer and then later, after reconvening, recommended that PSA was not useful for mass screenings for prostate cancer.

In fact, both authors were

completed surprised of the diametrically opposed views within or between panels given similar data presented to those medical professionals.

The authors then asked a question:  Why would the same medical panel come to a reversal of their decision and more, importantly,  why are there such disparate conclusions from the same medical data sets, leading to varied clinical decision-making.

In general, Drs. Groopman and Hartzband asked how do physicians and patients make their decisions?

To answer this they looked at studies that Daniel Bernouli had conducted to model the economic behaviors of risk aversion in the marketplace. Bernouli’s theorem correlated market expectation with probability and outcomes

expectation = probability x utility of outcome

However, in medicine, one can measure probability (or risk) but it is very hard to measure utility (which is the value or worth of the outcome).

For example, they gave an example if a person was born blind but offered a risky to regain sight, the individual values their quality of life from their own perspective and might feel that, as their life is worthwhile as it is, they would not undergo a risky procedure. However a person who had suddenly lost their sight might value sight more, and be willing to undergo a risky procedure.

Three methods are used to put a value on utility or outcome worth with regards to medical decisions

  1. linear scale (life or death; from 0 to 1)
  2. time trade off:  e.g. how much longer do I have to live
  3. standard gamble:  let’s try it

All of these methods however are flawed because one doesn’t know their future medical condition (e.g. new information on the disease) and people values and perceptions change over time.

An example of choice of methods the medical community uses to make decisions include:

  • In the United Kingdom, their system uses a time trade off method to determine value in order to determine appropriate course of action which may inadvertently, result in rationed care
  • in the United States, the medical community uses the time trade off to determine cost effectiveness

 

Therefore Drs. Groopman and Harztband, after conducing multiple interviews with patients and physicians were able to categorize medical decision making based on groups of mindsets

  1. Maximalist: Proactive behavior, wants to stay ahead of the curve
  2. Minimalist: less intervention is more; more hesitant to try any suggested therapy
  3. Naturalist:  more prone to choose natural based therapies or home remedies
  4. Tech Oriented: wants to try the latest therapies and more apt to trust in branded and FDA approved therapeutics
  5. Believer:  trust in suggestions by physician; physician trusts medical panels suggestions
  6. Doubter: naturally inquisitive and more prone to investigate risk benefits of any suggested therapy

The authors also identified many Cognitive Traps that both physicians and patients may fall into including:

  • Relative versus Absolute Numbers: for instance putting emphasis on one number or the other without regard to context; like looking at disease numbers without taking into consideration individual risk
  • Availability: availability or lack of available information; they noticed if you fall in this trap depends on whether you are a Minimalist or Maximalist
  • Framing:  for example  when people talk to others about their conditions and hear stories about others treatments, conditions .. mainly anecdotal evidence

Stories can be helpful but they sometimes increase our overestimation of risk or benefit so framing the information is very important for both the patient as well as the physician (even doctors as patients)

Both authors have noticed a big shift in US to minimalism probably because of the rising costs of healthcare.

How do these mindsets affect the patient-physician relationship?

A University of Michigan study revealed that patients who would be characterized as maximalists pushed their physicians to do more therapy and were more prone to seek outside advice.

Physicians need to understand and listen to their patients during the patients’s first visit and determine what medical mindset that this patient has.

About the authors:

Jerome Groopman, M.D. is the Dina and Raphael Recanati Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chief of Experimental Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and one of the world’s leading researchers in cancer and AIDS. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker and has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,The Washington Post and The New Republic. He is author of The Measure of Our Days (1997), Second Opinions (2000), Anatomy of Hope (2004), How Doctors Think (2007), and the recently released, Your Medical Mind.

Dr. Pamela Hartzband is an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Medical School and Attending Physician in the Division of Endocrinology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. She specializes in disorders of the thyroid and pituitary glands. A magna cum laude graduate of Radcliffe College, Harvard University, she received her M.D. from Harvard Medical School. She served her internship and residency in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and her specialty fellowships in endocrinology and metabolism at UCLA.

More articles on BioEthics and Patient experiences in this Online Open Access Journal Include:

Ethics Behind Genetic Testing in Breast Cancer: A Webinar by Laura Carfang of survivingbreastcancer.org

Tweets and Re-Tweets by @Pharma_BI ‏and @AVIVA1950 at 2019 Petrie-Flom Center Annual Conference: Consuming Genetics: Ethical and Legal Considerations of New Technologies, Friday, May 17, 2019 from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM EDT @Harvard_Law

Innovation + Technology = Good Patient Experience

Drivers of Patient Experience

Factors in Patient Experience

Patient Experience Survey

Please also see our offering on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076HGB6MZ

“The VOICES of Patients, Hospital CEOs, Health Care Providers, Caregivers and Families: Personal Experience with Critical Care and Invasive Medical Procedures,”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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