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Live Notes, Real Time Conference Coverage 2020 AACR Virtual Meeting April 27, 2020 Opening Remarks and Clinical Session 11:45am-1:15pm Advances in Cancer Drug Discovery

Posted in Cancer - General, Cancer and Current Therapeutics, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, Conference Coverage with Social Media, Curation, Drug Delivery Platform Technology, Drug Development Process, Drug Discovery Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Drug Discovery, Pharmaceutical Industry Competitive Intelligence, Pharmaceutical R&D Investment, Pharmacodynamics and Pharmacokinetics, REAL TIME Conference Coverage Twitter's Hashtags and Handles per Presentation/session, Scientific & Biotech Conferences: Press Coverage, Small Molecules in Development of Therapeutic Drugs, 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 11:45am-1:15pm Advances in Cancer Drug Discovery

SESSION VMS.CH01.01 – Advances in Cancer Drug Design and Discovery

April 27, 2020, 11:45 AM – 1:15 PM
Virtual Meeting: All Session Times Are U.S. EDT
DESCRIPTIONAll session times are U.S. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

Session Type
Virtual Minisymposium
Track(s)
Cancer Chemistry
14 Presentations
11:45 AM – 11:45 AM
– ChairpersonZoran Rankovic. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN

11:45 AM – 11:45 AM
– ChairpersonChristopher G. Nasveschuk. C4 Therapeutics, Watertown, MA

11:45 AM – 11:50 AM
– IntroductionZoran Rankovic. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN

11:50 AM – 12:00 PM
1036 – Discovery of a highly potent, efficacious and orally active small-molecule inhibitor of embryonic ectoderm development (EED)Changwei Wang, Rohan Kalyan Rej, Jianfeng Lu, Mi Wang, Kaitlin P. Harvey, Chao-Yie Yang, Ester Fernandez-Salas, Jeanne Stuckey, Elyse Petrunak, Caroline Foster, Yunlong Zhou, Rubin Zhou, Guozhi Tang, Jianyong Chen, Shaomeng Wang. Rogel Cancer Center and Departments of Internal Medicine, Pharmacology, and Medicinal Chemistry, Life Sciences Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, Ascentage Pharma Group, Taizhou, Jiangsu, China

12:00 PM – 12:05 PM
– Discussion

12:05 PM – 12:15 PM
1037 – Orally available small molecule CD73 inhibitor reverses immunosuppression through blocking of adenosine productionXiaohui Du, Brian Blank, Brenda Chan, Xi Chen, Yuping Chen, Frank Duong, Lori Friedman, Tom Huang, Melissa R. Junttila, Wayne Kong, Todd Metzger, Jared Moore, Daqing Sun, Jessica Sun, Dena Sutimantanapi, Natalie Yuen, Tatiana Zavorotinskaya. ORIC Pharmaceuticals, South San Francisco, CA, ORIC Pharmaceuticals, South San Francisco, CA, ORIC Pharmaceuticals, South San Francisco, CA, ORIC Pharmaceuticals, South San Francisco, CA

12:15 PM – 12:20 PM
– Discussion

12:20 PM – 12:30 PM
1038 – A potent and selective PARP14 inhibitor decreases pro-tumor macrophage function and elicits inflammatory responses in tumor explantsLaurie Schenkel, Jennifer Molina, Kerren Swinger, Ryan Abo, Danielle Blackwell, Anne Cheung, William Church, Kristy Kuplast-Barr, Alvin Lu, Elena Minissale, Mario Niepel, Melissa Vasbinder, Tim Wigle, Victoria Richon, Heike Keilhack, Kevin Kuntz. Ribon Therapeutics, Cambridge, MA

12:30 PM – 12:35 PM
– Discussion

12:35 PM – 12:45 PM
1039 – Fragment-based drug discovery to identify small molecule allosteric inhibitors of SHP2. Philip J. Day, Valerio Berdini, Juan Castro, Gianni Chessari, Thomas G. Davies, James E. H. Day, Satoshi Fukaya, Chris Hamlett, Keisha Hearn, Steve Hiscock, Rhian Holvey, Satoru Ito, Yasuo Kodama, Kenichi Matsuo, Yoko Nakatsuru, Nick Palmer, Amanda Price, Tadashi Shimamura, Jeffrey D. St. Denis, Nicola G. Wallis, Glyn Williams, Christopher N. Johnson. Astex Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Cambridge, United Kingdom, Taiho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, Tsukuba, Japan

Abstract: The ubiquitously expressed protein tyrosine phosphatase SHP2 is required for signalling downstream of receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) and plays a role in regulating many cellular processes. Recent advances have shown that genetic knockdown and pharmacological inhibition of SHP2 suppresses RAS/MAPK signalling and inhibits proliferation of RTK-driven cancer cell lines. SHP2 is now understood to act upstream of RAS and plays a role in KRAS-driven cancers, an area of research which is rapidly growing. Considering that RTK deregulation often leads to a wide range of cancers and the newly appreciated role of SHP2 in KRAS-driven cancers, SHP2 inhibitors are therefore a promising therapeutic approach.
SHP2 contains two N-terminal tandem SH2 domains (N-SH2, C-SH2), a catalytic phosphatase domain and a C-terminal tail. SHP2 switches between “open” active and “closed” inactive forms due to autoinhibitory interactions between the N-SH2 domain and the phosphatase domain. Historically, phosphatases were deemed undruggable as there had been no advancements with active site inhibitors. We hypothesised that fragment screening would be highly applicable and amenable to this target to enable alternative means of inhibition through identification of allosteric binding sites. Here we describe the first reported fragment screen against SHP2.
Using our fragment-based PyramidTM approach, screening was carried out on two constructs of SHP2; a closed autoinhibited C-terminal truncated form (phosphatase and both SH2 domains), as well as the phosphatase-only domain. A combination of screening methods such as X-ray crystallography and NMR were employed to identify fragment hits at multiple sites on SHP2, including the tunnel-like allosteric site reported by Chen et al, 2016. Initial fragment hits had affinities for SHP2 in the range of 1mM as measured by ITC. Binding of these hits was improved using structure-guided design to generate compounds which inhibit SHP2 phosphatase activity and are promising starting points for further optimization.

  • anti estrogen receptor therapy: ER degraders is one class
  • AZ9833 enhances degradation of ER alpha
  • worked in preclinical mouse model (however very specific)
  • PK parameters were good for orally available in rodents;  also in vitro and in vivo correlation correlated in rats but not in dogs so they were not sure if good to go in humans
  • they were below Km in rats but already at saturated in dogs, dogs were high clearance
  • predicted human bioavailability at 40%

 

12:45 PM – 12:50 PM
– Discussion

12:50 PM – 1:00 PM
1042 – Preclinical pharmacokinetic and metabolic characterization of the next generation oral SERD AZD9833Eric T. Gangl, Roshini Markandu, Pradeep Sharma, Andy Sykes, Petar Pop-Damkov, Pablo Morentin Gutierrez, James S. Scott, Dermot F. McGinnity, Adrian J. Fretland, Teresa Klinowska. AstraZeneca, Waltham, MA

1:00 PM – 1:05 PM
– Discussion

1:05 PM – 1:15 PM
– Closing RemarksChristopher G. Nasveschuk. MA

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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

Follow on Twitter at:

@pharma_BI

@AACR

@GenomeInstitute

@CureCancerNow

@UCLAJCCC

#AACR20

#AACR2020

#curecancernow

#pharmanews

 

 

 

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Live Conference Coverage of AACR 2020 Annual Virtual Meeting; April 27-28, 2020

Posted in Cancer - General, Cancer and Current Therapeutics, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, Cancer Genomics, Cancer Prevention: Research & Programs, Cancer Vaccines: Targeting Cancer Genes for Immunotherapy, Childhood cancer, Conference Coverage with Social Media, REAL TIME Conference Coverage Twitter's Hashtags and Handles per Presentation/session, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Live Conference Coverage of AACR 2020 Annual Virtual Meeting; April 27-28, 2020

Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D.

The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will hold its Annual Meeting as a Virtual Online Format.  Registration is free and open to all, including non members.  Please go to

https://www.aacr.org/meeting/aacr-annual-meeting-2020/aacr-virtual-annual-meeting-i/?utm_source=Salesforce%20Marketing%20Cloud&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=&sfmc_s=0031I00000WsBJxQAN

to register for this two day meeting.  Another two day session will be held in June 2020 and will focus more on basic cancer research.

Please follow @pharma_BI who will be live Tweeting Real Time Notes from this meeting using the hashtag

#AACR20

And @StephenJWillia2

The following is a brief summary of the schedule.  Please register and go to AACR for detailed information on individual sessions.

 

AACR VIRTUAL ANNUAL MEETING I: SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE

AACR Virtual Annual Meeting I is available free Register Now

VIRTUAL MEETING I: BROWSER REQUIREMENTS AND ACCESSVIRTUAL MEETING I: FAQVIRTUAL MEETING I: MEETING PLANNER (ABSTRACT TITLES)

Presentation titles are available through the online meeting planner. The program also includes six virtual poster sessions consisting of brief slide videos. Poster sessions will not be presented live but will be available for viewing on demand. Poster session topics are as follows:

  • Phase I Clinical Trials
  • Phase II Clinical Trials
  • Phase III Clinical Trials
  • Phase I Trials in Progress
  • Phase II Trials in Progress
  • Phase III Trials in Progress

Schedule updated April 24, 2020

MONDAY, APRIL 27

Channel 1 Channel 2 Channel 3
9:00 a.m.-9:30 a.m.
Opening Session
_______________________
9:30 a.m.-11:40 a.m.
Opening Clinical Plenary
_______________________
11:40 a.m.-2:00 p.m.
Clinical Plenary: Immunotherapy Clinical Trials 1
_______________________		 ___ 11:45 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
Minisymposium: Emerging Signaling Vulnerabilities in Cancer
_______________________		 ___ 11:45 a.m.-1:15 p.m.
Minisymposium: Advances in Cancer Drug Design and Discovery
__________________________
2:00 p.m.-4:50 p.m.
Clinical Plenary: Lung Cancer Targeted Therapy
_______________________		 ___ 1:55 p.m.-4:15 p.m.
Clinical Plenary: Breast Cancer Therapy
_______________________		 ___ 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
Minisymposium: Drugging Undrugged Cancer Targets
__________________________
4:50 p.m.-6:05 p.m.
Symposium: New Drugs on the Horizon 1_______________________		 ___ 4:50 p.m.-5:50 p.m.
Minisymposium: Therapeutic Modification of the Tumor Microenvironment or Microbiome
_______________________		 ___ 4:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.
Minisymposium: Advancing Cancer Research Through An International Cancer Registry: AACR Project GENIE Use Cases__________________________

All session times are EDT.

TUESDAY, APRIL 28

Channel 1 Channel 2 Channel 3
9:00 a.m.-101:00 a.m.
Clinical Plenary: COVID-19 and Cancer
__________________________
11:00 a.m.-1:35 p.m.
Clinical Plenary: Adoptive Cell Transfer Therapy__________________________		 ___ 10:45 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Symposium: New Drugs on the Horizon 2_________________________		 ___ 10:45 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Minisymposium: Translational Prevention Studies
______________________
___ 12:30 p.m.-1:25 p.m.
Symposium: New Drugs on the Horizon 3
_________________________		 ___ 12:30 p.m.-2:15 p.m.
Minisymposium: Non-coding RNAs in Cancer
______________________
1:35 p.m.-3:35 p.m.
Clinical Plenary: Early Detection and ctDNA__________________________		 ___ 1:30 p.m.-3:50 p.m.
Clinical Plenary: Immunotherapy Clinical
Trials 2
_________________________		 ___ 2:15 p.m.-3:45 p.m.
Minisymposium: Novel Targets and Therapies______________________
3:35 p.m.-5:50 p.m.
Minisymposium: Predictive Biomarkers for Immunotherapeutics__________________________		 ___ 3:50 p.m.-5:35 p.m.
Minisymposium: Evaluating Cancer Genomics from Normal Tissues through Evolution to Metastatic Disease
_________________________		 ___ 4:00 p.m.-4:55 p.m.
Clinical Plenary: Targeted Therapy______________________
5:00 p.m.-5:45 p.m.
Symposium: NCI Activities– COVID-19 and Cancer Research
Dinah Singer, NCI
______________________
5:45 p.m.-6:00 p.m.
Closing Session
______________________

All session times are EDT.

 

 

 

Day

 

Session Type

Topic Tracks

For more on @pharma_BI and LPBI Group Conference Coverage in Real Time please go to

https://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/press-coverage/

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Opinion Articles from the Lancet: COVID-19 and Cancer Care in China and Africa

Posted in Biomarkers: Inflammation, Cancer - General, Cancer and Current Therapeutics, Cancer Prevention: Research & Programs, Cancer Researchers Fighting COVID-19, Cancer Screening, Coronavirus Gene Expression, COVID-19, COVID-19: Pandemic Surgery Guidance, Economic Impact of Coronavirus Pandemic, interventional oncology, number of asymptomatic infections, Population genetics, Population Health Management, Population Health Management, Genetics & Pharmaceutical, SAR-Cov-2 a vasculotropic (blood vessels) RNA Virus, SARS-CoV-2, Seasonality & Environmental Factors in Resurgence, Serology tests for coronavirus antibodies, Treatment Protocols for COVID-19, Virus Infective Acute Respiratory Syndrome: SARS-CoV, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 25, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Opinion Articles from the Lancet: COVID-19 and Cancer Care in China and Africa

Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, PhD

Cancer Patients in SARS-CoV-2 infection: a nationwide analysis in China

Wenhua Liang, Weijie Guan, Ruchong Chen, Wei Wang, Jianfu Li, Ke Xu, Caichen Li, Qing Ai, Weixiang Lu, Hengrui Liang, Shiyue Li, Jianxing He

Lancet Oncol. 2020 Mar; 21(3): 335–337. Published online 2020 Feb 14. doi: 10.1016/S1470-2045(20)30096-6

PMCID: PMC7159000

 

The National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease and the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China collaborated to establish a prospective cohort to monitor COVID-19 cases in China.  As on Jan31, 20202007 cases have been collected and analyzed with confirmed COVID-19 infection in these cohorts.

Results: 18 or 1% of COVID-19 cases had a history of cancer (the overall average cancer incidence in the overall China population is 0.29%) {2015 statistics}.  It appeared that cancer patients had an observable higher risk of COVID related complications upon hospitalization. However, this was a higher risk compared with the general population.  There was no comparison between cancer patients not diagnosed with COVID-19 and an assessment of their risk of infection.  Interestingly those who were also cancer survivors showed an increased incidence of COVID related severe complications compared to the no cancer group.

Although this study could have compared the risk within a cancer group, the authors still felt the results warranted precautions when dealing with cancer patients and issued recommendations including:

  1. Postponing of adjuvant chemotherapy or elective surgery for stable cancer should be considered
  2. Stronger personal protection for cancer patients
  3. More intensive surveillance or treatment should be considered when patients with cancer are infected, especially in older patients

Further studies will need to address the risk added by specific types of chemotherapy: cytolytic versus immunotherapy e.g.

 

Preparedness for COVID-19 in the oncology community in Africa

Lancet Oncology, Verna Vanderpuye, Moawia Mohammed,Ali Elhassan

Hannah Simonds: Published:April 03, 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S1470-2045(20)30220-5

Africa has a heterogeneity of cultures, economies and disease patterns however fortunately it is one of the last countries to be hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, which allows some time for preparation by the African nations.  The authors note that with Africa’s previous experiences with epidemics, namely ebola and cholera, Africa should be prepared for this pandemic.

However, as a result of poor economic discipline, weak health systems, and poor health-seeking behaviors across the continent, outcomes could be dismal. Poverty, low health literacy rates, and cultural practices that negatively affect cancer outcomes will result in poor assimilation of COVID-19 containment strategies in Africa.”

In general African oncologists are following COVID-19 guidelines from other high-income countries, but as this writer acknowledges in previous posts, there was a significant lag from first cases in the United States to the concrete formulation of guidelines for both oncologists and patients with regard to this pandemic.  African oncologist are delaying the start of adjuvant therapies and switching more to oral therapies and rethink palliative care.

However the authors still have many more questions than answers, however even among countries that have dealt with this pandemic before Africa (like Italy and US), oncologists across the globe still have not been able to answer questions like: what if my patient develops a fever, what do I do during a period of neutropenia, to their satisfaction or the satisfaction of the patient.  These are questions even oncologists who are dealing in COVID hotspots are still trying to answer including what constitutes a necessary surgical procedure? As I have highlighted in recent posts, oncologists in New York have all but shut down all surgical procedures and relying on liquid biopsies taken in the at-home setting. But does Africa have this capability of access to at home liquid biopsy procedures?

In addition, as I had just highlighted in a recent posting, there exists extreme cancer health disparities across the African continent, as well as the COVID responses. In West Africa, COVID-19 protocols are defined at individual institutions.  This is more like the American system where even NCI designated centers were left to fashion some of their own guidelines initially, although individual oncologists had banded together to do impromptu meetings to discuss best practices. However this is fine for big institutions, but as in the US, there is a large rural population on the African continent with geographical barriers to these big centers. Elective procedures have been cancelled and small number of patients are seen by day.  This remote strategy actually may be well suited for African versus more developed nations, as highlighted in a post I did about mobile health app use in oncology, as this telemedicine strategy is rather new among US oncologists (reference my posts with the Town Hall meetings).

The situation is more complicated in South Africa where they are dealing with an HIV epidemic, where about 8 million are infected with HIV. Oncology services here are still expecting to run at full capacity as the local hospitals deal with the first signs of the COVID outbreak. In Sudan, despite low COVID numbers, cancer centers have developed contingency plans. and are deferring new referrals except for emergency cases.  Training sessions for staff have been developed.

For more articles in this online open access journal on Cancer and COVID-19 please see our

Coronovirus Portal
Responses to the #COVID-19 outbreak from Oncologists, Cancer Societies and the NCI: Important information for cancer patients

 

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Personalized Medicine, Omics, and Health Disparities in Cancer:  Can Personalized Medicine Help Reduce the Disparity Problem?

Posted in and Bioethics, Big Data, Bio-Ethics, BioBanking, BioIT: BioInformatics, BioIT: BioInformatics, NGS, Clinical & Translational, Pharmaceutical R&D Informatics, Clinical Genomics, Cancer Informatics, Biomarkers & Medical Diagnostics, Breast Cancer - impalpable breast lesions, Cancer - General, Cancer and Current Therapeutics, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, Cancer Genomics, Cancer Informatics, Cancer Prevention: Research & Programs, Cancer Screening, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Funding Opportunities for Cancer Research, Health Care System by Country, Health Economics and Outcomes Research, Health Law & Patient Safety, HealthCare IT, Healthcare Reform, interventional oncology, TP53 - Germline mutations, Women Health, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Personalized Medicine, Omics, and Health Disparities in Cancer:  Can Personalized Medicine Help Reduce the Disparity Problem?

Curator: Stephen J. Williams, PhD

In a Science Perspectives article by Timothy Rebbeck, health disparities, specifically cancer disparities existing in the sub-Saharan African (SSA) nations, highlighting the cancer incidence disparities which exist compared with cancer incidence in high income areas of the world [1].  The sub-Saharan African nations display a much higher incidence of prostate, breast, and cervix cancer and these cancers are predicted to double within the next twenty years, according to IARC[2].  Most importantly,

 the histopathologic and demographic features of these tumors differ from those in high-income countries

meaning that the differences seen in incidence may reflect a true health disparity as increases rates in these cancers are not seen in high income countries (HIC).

Most frequent male cancers in SSA include prostate, lung, liver, leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and Kaposi’s sarcoma (a cancer frequently seen in HIV infected patients [3]).  In SSA women, breast and cervical cancer are the most common and these display higher rates than seen in high income countries.  In fact, liver cancer is seen in SSA females at twice the rate, and in SSA males almost three times the rate as in high income countries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reasons for cancer disparity in SSA

Patients with cancer are often diagnosed at a late stage in SSA countries.  This contrasts with patients from high income countries, which have their cancers usually diagnosed at an earlier stage, and with many cancers, like breast[4], ovarian[5, 6], and colon, detecting the tumor in the early stages is critical for a favorable outcome and prognosis[7-10].  In addition, late diagnosis also limits many therapeutic options for the cancer patient and diseases at later stages are much harder to manage, especially with respect to unresponsiveness and/or resistance of many therapies.  In addition, treatments have to be performed in low-resource settings in SSA, and availability of clinical lab work and imaging technologies may be limited.

Molecular differences in SSA versus HIC cancers which may account for disparities

Emerging evidence suggests that there are distinct molecular signatures with SSA tumors with respect to histotype and pathology.  For example Dr. Rebbeck mentions that Nigerian breast cancers were defined by increased mutational signatures associated with deficiency of the homologous recombination DNA repair pathway, pervasive mutations in the tumor suppressor gene TP53, mutations in GATA binding protein 3 (GATA3), and greater mutational burden, compared with breast tumors from African Americans or Caucasians[11].  However more research will be required to understand the etiology and causal factors related to this molecular distinction in mutational spectra.

It is believed that there is a higher rate of hereditary cancers in SSA. And many SSA cancers exhibit the more aggressive phenotype than in other parts of the world.  For example breast tumors in SSA black cases are twice as likely than SSA Caucasian cases to be of the triple negative phenotype, which is generally more aggressive and tougher to detect and treat, as triple negative cancers are HER2 negative and therefore are not a candidate for Herceptin.  Also BRCA1/2 mutations are more frequent in black SSA cases than in Caucasian SSA cases [12, 13].

Initiatives to Combat Health Disparities in SSA

Multiple initiatives are being proposed or in action to bring personalized medicine to the sub-Saharan African nations.  These include:

H3Africa empowers African researchers to be competitive in genomic sciences, establishes and nurtures effective collaborations among African researchers on the African continent, and generates unique data that could be used to improve both African and global health.

There is currently a global effort to apply genomic science and associated technologies to further the understanding of health and disease in diverse populations. These efforts work to identify individuals and populations who are at risk for developing specific diseases, and to better understand underlying genetic and environmental contributions to that risk. Given the large amount of genetic diversity on the African continent, there exists an enormous opportunity to utilize such approaches to benefit African populations and to inform global health.

The Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) consortium facilitates fundamental research into diseases on the African continent while also developing infrastructure, resources, training, and ethical guidelines to support a sustainable African research enterprise – led by African scientists, for the African people. The initiative consists of 51 African projects that include population-based genomic studies of common, non-communicable disorders such as heart and renal disease, as well as communicable diseases such as tuberculosis. These studies are led by African scientists and use genetic, clinical, and epidemiologic methods to identify hereditary and environmental contributions to health and disease. To establish a foundation for African scientists to continue this essential work into the future work, the consortium also supports many crucial capacity building elements, such as: ethical, legal, and social implications research; training and capacity building for bioinformatics; capacity for biobanking; and coordination and networking.

The World Economic Forum’s Leapfrogging with Precision Medicine project 

This project is part of the World Economic Forum’s Shaping the Future of Health and Healthcare Platform

The Challenge

Advancing precision medicine in a way that is equitable and beneficial to society means ensuring that healthcare systems can adopt the most scientifically and technologically appropriate approaches to a more targeted and personalized way of diagnosing and treating disease. In certain instances, countries or institutions may be able to bypass, or “leapfrog”, legacy systems or approaches that prevail in developed country contexts.

The World Economic Forum’s Leapfrogging with Precision Medicine project will develop a set of tools and case studies demonstrating how a precision medicine approach in countries with greenfield policy spaces can potentially transform their healthcare delivery and outcomes. Policies and governance mechanisms that enable leapfrogging will be iterated and scaled up to other projects.

Successes in personalized genomic research in SSA

As Dr. Rebbeck states:

 Because of the underlying genetic and genomic relationships between Africans and members of the African diaspora (primarily in North America and Europe), knowledge gained from research in SSA can be used to address health disparities that are prevalent in members of the African diaspora.

For example members of the West African heritage and genomic ancestry has been reported to confer the highest genomic risk for prostate cancer in any worldwide population [14].

 

PERSPECTIVEGLOBAL HEALTH

Cancer in sub-Saharan Africa

  1. Timothy R. Rebbeck

See all authors and affiliations

Science  03 Jan 2020:
Vol. 367, Issue 6473, pp. 27-28
DOI: 10.1126/science.aay474

Summary/Abstract

Cancer is an increasing global public health burden. This is especially the case in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA); high rates of cancer—particularly of the prostate, breast, and cervix—characterize cancer in most countries in SSA. The number of these cancers in SSA is predicted to more than double in the next 20 years (1). Both the explanations for these increasing rates and the solutions to address this cancer epidemic require SSA-specific data and approaches. The histopathologic and demographic features of these tumors differ from those in high-income countries (HICs). Basic knowledge of the epidemiology, clinical features, and molecular characteristics of cancers in SSA is needed to build prevention and treatment tools that will address the future cancer burden. The distinct distribution and determinants of cancer in SSA provide an opportunity to generate knowledge about cancer risk factors, genomics, and opportunities for prevention and treatment globally, not only in Africa.

 

References

  1. Rebbeck TR: Cancer in sub-Saharan Africa. Science 2020, 367(6473):27-28.
  2. Parkin DM, Ferlay J, Jemal A, Borok M, Manraj S, N’Da G, Ogunbiyi F, Liu B, Bray F: Cancer in Sub-Saharan Africa: International Agency for Research on Cancer; 2018.
  3. Chinula L, Moses A, Gopal S: HIV-associated malignancies in sub-Saharan Africa: progress, challenges, and opportunities. Current opinion in HIV and AIDS 2017, 12(1):89-95.
  4. Colditz GA: Epidemiology of breast cancer. Findings from the nurses’ health study. Cancer 1993, 71(4 Suppl):1480-1489.
  5. Hamilton TC, Penault-Llorca F, Dauplat J: [Natural history of ovarian adenocarcinomas: from epidemiology to experimentation]. Contracept Fertil Sex 1998, 26(11):800-804.
  6. Garner EI: Advances in the early detection of ovarian carcinoma. J Reprod Med 2005, 50(6):447-453.
  7. Brockbank EC, Harry V, Kolomainen D, Mukhopadhyay D, Sohaib A, Bridges JE, Nobbenhuis MA, Shepherd JH, Ind TE, Barton DP: Laparoscopic staging for apparent early stage ovarian or fallopian tube cancer. First case series from a UK cancer centre and systematic literature review. European journal of surgical oncology : the journal of the European Society of Surgical Oncology and the British Association of Surgical Oncology 2013, 39(8):912-917.
  8. Kolligs FT: Diagnostics and Epidemiology of Colorectal Cancer. Visceral medicine 2016, 32(3):158-164.
  9. Rocken C, Neumann U, Ebert MP: [New approaches to early detection, estimation of prognosis and therapy for malignant tumours of the gastrointestinal tract]. Zeitschrift fur Gastroenterologie 2008, 46(2):216-222.
  10. Srivastava S, Verma M, Henson DE: Biomarkers for early detection of colon cancer. Clinical cancer research : an official journal of the American Association for Cancer Research 2001, 7(5):1118-1126.
  11. Pitt JJ, Riester M, Zheng Y, Yoshimatsu TF, Sanni A, Oluwasola O, Veloso A, Labrot E, Wang S, Odetunde A et al: Characterization of Nigerian breast cancer reveals prevalent homologous recombination deficiency and aggressive molecular features. Nature communications 2018, 9(1):4181.
  12. Zheng Y, Walsh T, Gulsuner S, Casadei S, Lee MK, Ogundiran TO, Ademola A, Falusi AG, Adebamowo CA, Oluwasola AO et al: Inherited Breast Cancer in Nigerian Women. Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2018, 36(28):2820-2825.
  13. Rebbeck TR, Friebel TM, Friedman E, Hamann U, Huo D, Kwong A, Olah E, Olopade OI, Solano AR, Teo SH et al: Mutational spectrum in a worldwide study of 29,700 families with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations. Human mutation 2018, 39(5):593-620.
  14. Lachance J, Berens AJ, Hansen MEB, Teng AK, Tishkoff SA, Rebbeck TR: Genetic Hitchhiking and Population Bottlenecks Contribute to Prostate Cancer Disparities in Men of African Descent. Cancer research 2018, 78(9):2432-2443.

Other articles on Cancer Health Disparities and Genomics on this Online Open Access Journal Include:

Gender affects the prevalence of the cancer type
The Rutgers Global Health Institute, part of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey – A New Venture Designed to Improve Health and Wellness Globally
Breast Cancer Disparities to be Sponsored by NIH: NIH Launches Largest-ever Study of Breast Cancer Genetics in Black Women
War on Cancer Needs to Refocus to Stay Ahead of Disease Says Cancer Expert
Ethical Concerns in Personalized Medicine: BRCA1/2 Testing in Minors and Communication of Breast Cancer Risk
Ethics Behind Genetic Testing in Breast Cancer: A Webinar by Laura Carfang of survivingbreastcancer.org
Live Notes from @HarvardMed Bioethics: Authors Jerome Groopman, MD & Pamela Hartzband, MD, discuss Your Medical Mind
Testing for Multiple Genetic Mutations via NGS for Patients: Very Strong Family History of Breast & Ovarian Cancer, Diagnosed at Young Ages, & Negative on BRCA Test
Study Finds that Both Women and their Primary Care Physicians Confusion over Ovarian Cancer Symptoms May Lead to Misdiagnosis

 

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Bioinformatic Tools For RNASeq: A Curation

Posted in Cancer - General, Cell Biology, Computational Biology/Systems and Bioinformatics, CRISPR alternative for editing genes without cutting, CRISPR/Cas9 & Gene Editing, Disease Biology, Meta-analysis of transcriptome data, RNA Biology, RNA Biology, Cancer and Therapeutics, tagged , , , , , , , on December 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Bioinformatic Tools for RNASeq: A Curation

Curator: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D. 

 

 

Note:  This will be an ongoing curation as new information and tools become available.

RNASeq is a powerful tool for the analysis of the transcriptome profile and has been used to determine the transcriptional changes occurring upon stimuli such as drug treatment or detecting transcript differences between biological sample cohorts such as tumor versus normal tissue.  Unlike its genomic companion, whole genome and whole exome sequencing, which analyzes the primary sequence of the genomic DNA, RNASeq analyzes the mRNA transcripts, thereby more closely resembling the ultimate translated proteome. In addition, RNASeq and transcriptome profiling can determine if splicing variants occur as well as determining the nonexomic sequences, such as miRNA and lncRNA species, all of which have shown pertinence in the etiology of many diseases, including cancer.

However, RNASeq, like other omic technologies, generates enormous big data sets, which requires multiple types of bioinformatic tools in order to correctly analyze the sequence reads, and to visualize and interpret the output data.  This post represents a curation by the RNA-Seq blog of such tools useful for RNASeq studies and lists and reviews published literature using these curated tools.

 

From the RNA-Seq Blog

List of RNA-Seq bioinformatics tools

Posted by: RNA-Seq Blog in Data Analysis, Web Tools September 16, 2015 6,251 Views

from: https://en.wiki2.org/wiki/List_of_RNA-Seq_bioinformatics_tools

A review of some of the literature using some of the aforementioned curated tools are discussed below:

 

A.   Tools Useful for Single Cell RNA-Seq Analysis

 

B.  Tools for RNA-Seq Analysis of the Sliceasome

 

C.  Tools Useful for RNA-Seq read assembly visualization

 

Other articles on RNA and Transcriptomics in this Open Access Journal Include:

NIH to Award Up to $12M to Fund DNA, RNA Sequencing Research: single-cell genomics, sample preparation, transcriptomics and epigenomics, and genome-wide functional analysis.

Single-cell Genomics: Directions in Computational and Systems Biology – Contributions of Prof. Aviv Regev @Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cochair, the Human Cell Atlas Organizing Committee with Sarah Teichmann of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

Complex rearrangements and oncogene amplification revealed by long-read DNA and RNA sequencing of a breast cancer cell line

Single-cell RNA-seq helps in finding intra-tumoral heterogeneity in pancreatic cancer

First challenge to make use of the new NCI Cloud Pilots – Somatic Mutation Challenge – RNA: Best algorithms for detecting all of the abnormal RNA molecules in a cancer cell

Evolution of the Human Cell Genome Biology Field of Gene Expression, Gene Regulation, Gene Regulatory Networks and Application of Machine Learning Algorithms in Large-Scale Biological Data Analysis

 

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AACR Congratulates Dr. William G. Kaelin Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Dr. Gregg L. Semenza on 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Posted in Anaerobic Glycolysis, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, cancer metabolism, Cell Biology, Cell Biology, Signaling & Cell Circuits, tumor microenvironment, Warburg effect, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 10, 2019| Leave a Comment »

AACR Congratulates Dr. William G. Kaelin Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Dr. Gregg L. Semenza on 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, PhD

 

from The American Association for Cancer Research aacr.org:

 

AACR Congratulates Dr. William G. Kaelin Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Dr. Gregg L. Semenza on 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

10/7/2019

PHILADELPHIA — The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) congratulates Fellow of the AACR Academy William G. Kaelin Jr., MD, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, MD, FRS, and AACR member Gregg L. Semenza, MD, PhD, on receiving the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.

Kaelin, professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston; Ratcliffe, director of Clinical Research at the Francis Crick Institute in London; and Semenza, director of the Vascular Program at the Institute for Cell Engineering at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, are being recognized by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for identifying the molecular machinery that regulates the activity of genes in response to varying levels of oxygen, which is one of life’s most essential adaptive processes. Their work has provided basic understanding of several diseases, including many types of cancer, and has laid the foundation for the development of promising new approaches to treating cancer and other diseases.

Kaelin, Ratcliffe, and Semenza were previously recognized for this work with the 2016 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award.

Kaelin’s research focuses on understanding how mutations affecting tumor-suppressor genes cause cancer. As part of this work, he discovered that a tumor-suppressor gene called von Hippel–Lindau (VHL) is involved in controlling the cellular response to low levels of oxygen. Kaelin’s studies showed that the VHL protein binds to hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) when oxygen is present and targets it for destruction. When the VHL protein is mutated, it is unable to bind to HIF, resulting in inappropriate HIF accumulation and the transcription of genes that promote blood vessel formation, such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). VEGF is directly linked to the development of renal cell carcinoma and therapeutics that target VEGF are used in the clinic to treat this and several other types of cancer.

Kaelin has been previously recognized with numerous other awards and honors, including the 2006 AACR-Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award.

Ratcliffe independently discovered that the VHL protein binds to HIF. Since then, his research has focused on the molecular interactions underpinning the binding of VHL to HIF and the molecular events that occur in low levels of oxygen, a condition known as hypoxia. Prior to his work on VHL, Ratcliffe’s research contributed to elucidating the mechanisms by which hypoxia increases levels of the hormone erythropoietin (EPO), which leads to increased production of red blood cells.

Semenza’s research, which was independent of Ratcliffe’s, identified in exquisite detail the molecular events by which the EPO gene is regulated by varying levels of oxygen. He discovered HIF and identified this protein complex as the oxygen-dependent regulator of the EPO gene. Semenza followed up this work by identifying additional genes activated by HIF, including showing that the protein complex activates the VEGF gene that is pivotal to the development of renal cell carcinoma.

The recognition of Kaelin and Semenza increases the number of AACR members to have been awarded a Nobel Prize to 70, 44 of whom are still living.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for discoveries of major importance in life science or medicine that have changed the scientific paradigm and are of great benefit for mankind. Each laureate receives a gold medal, a diploma, and a sum of money that is decided by the Nobel Foundation.

The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony will be Dec. 10, 2019, in Stockholm.

Please find following articles on the Nobel Prize and Hypoxia in Cancer on this Open Access Journal:

2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for contributions to Cancer Immunotherapy to James P. Allison, Ph.D., of the University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas. Dr. Allison shares the prize with Tasuku Honjo, M.D., Ph.D., of Kyoto University Institute, Japan

The History, Uses, and Future of the Nobel Prize, 1:00pm – 6:00pm, Thursday, October 4, 2018, Harvard Medical School

2017 Nobel prize in chemistry given to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson  for developing cryo-electron microscopy

Tumor Ammonia Recycling: How Cancer Cells Use Glutamate Dehydrogenase to Recycle Tumor Microenvironment Waste Products for Biosynthesis

Hypoxia Inducible Factor 1 (HIF-1)[7.9]

 

 

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Using A.I. to Detect Lung Cancer gets an A!

Posted in Artificial Intelligence - General, Artificial Intelligence in CANCER, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 4, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Using A.I. to Detect Lung Cancer gets an A!

Reporter: Irina Robu, PhD

3.3.19

3.3.19   Using A.I. to Detect Lung Cancer gets an A!, Volume 2 (Volume Two: Latest in Genomics Methodologies for Therapeutics: Gene Editing, NGS and BioInformatics, Simulations and the Genome Ontology), Part 2: CRISPR for Gene Editing and DNA Repair

Google researchers hypothesized that computers are as good or better than doctors at detecting tiny lung cancers on CT scans, since CT scan combines data from several X-rays to produce a detailed image of a structure inside the body. CT scans produce 2-dimensional images of a slice of the body and the data can also be used to construct 3-D images.

However, the technology published in Nature Medicine offers input in the future of artificial intelligence in medicine. By feeding vast amounts of data from medical imaging into systems called artificial neural networks, scientists can teach computers to identify patterns linked to a specific condition, like pneumonia, cancer or a wrist fracture that would be hard for a person to see. The system trails an algorithm, or set of instructions, and learns as it goes. The more data it receives, the better it becomes at interpretation.

The process, known as deep learning enables computers to identify objects and understand speech but it also created systems to help pathologists read microscope slides to diagnose cancer, and to help ophthalmologists detect eye disease in people with diabetes. In their recent study, the scientist used artificial intelligence to CT scans used to screen people for lung cancer, which caused 160,000 deaths in the United States last year, and 1.7 million worldwide. The scans are recommended for people at high risk because of a long history of smoking.

Screening studies showed that it can reduce the risk of dying from lung cancer and can also identify spots that might later become cancer, so that radiologists can categorize patients into risk groups and decide whether they need biopsies or more frequent follow-up scans to keep track of the suspect regions.

However, the test has errors. It can miss tumors or mistake benign spots for malignancies and shove patients into invasive, risky procedures like lung biopsies or surgery.

SOURCE

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/health/cancer-artificial-intelligence-ct-scans.html

Other related articles were published in this Online Scientific Open Access Journal including the following:

Multiple Barriers Identified Which May Hamper Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Clinical Setting

AI System Used to Detect Lung Cancer

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An Intelligent DNA Nanorobot to Fight Cancer by Targeting HER2 Expression

Posted in Apoptosis, BioIT: BioInformatics, NGS, Clinical & Translational, Pharmaceutical R&D Informatics, Clinical Genomics, Cancer Informatics, Biological Networks, Breast Cancer - impalpable breast lesions, Cancer - General, Cancer and Current Therapeutics, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, Cancer Genomics, cancer metabolism, Cancer Prevention: Research & Programs, Cancer Screening, Cancer Vaccines: Targeting Cancer Genes for Immunotherapy, Cancer-Immune Interactions, Cell Biology, Cell Biology, Signaling & Cell Circuits, Metabolic Immuno-Oncology, Monoclonal Immunotherapy, Oligonucleotide Therapeutics & Delivery, Precision Cancer Medicine, RNA Biology, Cancer and Therapeutics, Signaling & Cell Circuits, tagged , , , , , , on July 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »

An Intelligent DNA Nanorobot to Fight Cancer by Targeting HER2 Expression

Reporter and Curator: Dr. Sudipta Saha, Ph.D.

3.2.9

3.2.9   An Intelligent DNA Nanorobot to Fight Cancer by Targeting HER2 Expression, Volume 2 (Volume Two: Latest in Genomics Methodologies for Therapeutics: Gene Editing, NGS and BioInformatics, Simulations and the Genome Ontology), Part 2: CRISPR for Gene Editing and DNA Repair

HER2 is an important prognostic biomarker for 20–30% of breast cancers, which is the most common cancer in women. Overexpression of the HER2 receptor stimulates breast cells to proliferate and differentiate uncontrollably, thereby enhancing the malignancy of breast cancer and resulting in a poor prognosis for affected individuals. Current therapies to suppress the overexpression of HER2 in breast cancer mainly involve treatment with HER2-specific monoclonal antibodies. However, these monoclonal anti-HER2 antibodies have severe side effects in clinical trials, such as diarrhea, abnormal liver function, and drug resistance. Removing HER2 from the plasma membrane or inhibiting the gene expression of HER2 is a promising alternative that could limit the malignancy of HER2-positive cancer cells.

DNA origami is an emerging field of DNA-based nanotechnology and intelligent DNA nanorobots show great promise in working as a drug delivery system in healthcare. Different DNA-based nanorobots have been developed as affordable and facile therapeutic drugs. In particular, many studies reported that a tetrahedral framework nucleic acid (tFNA) could serve as a promising DNA nanocarrier for many antitumor drugs, owing to its high biocompatibility and biosecurity. For example, tFNA was reported to effectively deliver paclitaxel or doxorubicin to cancer cells for reversing drug resistance, small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) have been modified into tFNA for targeted drug delivery. Moreover, the production and storage of tFNA are not complicated, and they can be quickly degraded in lysosomes by cells. Since both free HApt and tFNA can be diverted into lysosomes, so,  combining the HApt and tFNA as a novel DNA nanorobot (namely, HApt-tFNA) can be an effective strategy to improve its delivery and therapeutic efficacy in treating HER2-positive breast cancer.

Researchers reported that a DNA framework-based intelligent DNA nanorobot for selective lysosomal degradation of tumor-specific proteins on cancer cells. An anti-HER2 aptamer (HApt) was site-specifically anchored on a tetrahedral framework nucleic acid (tFNA). This DNA nanorobot (HApt-tFNA) could target HER2-positive breast cancer cells and specifically induce the lysosomal degradation of the membrane protein HER2. An injection of the DNA nanorobot into a mouse model revealed that the presence of tFNA enhanced the stability and prolonged the blood circulation time of HApt, and HApt-tFNA could therefore drive HER2 into lysosomal degradation with a higher efficiency. The formation of the HER2-HApt-tFNA complexes resulted in the HER2-mediated endocytosis and digestion in lysosomes, which effectively reduced the amount of HER2 on the cell surfaces. An increased HER2 digestion through HApt-tFNA further induced cell apoptosis and arrested cell growth. Hence, this novel DNA nanorobot sheds new light on targeted protein degradation for precision breast cancer therapy.

It was previously reported that tFNA was degraded by lysosomes and could enhance cell autophagy. Results indicated that free Cy5-HApt and Cy5-HApt-tFNA could enter the lysosomes; thus, tFNA can be regarded as an efficient nanocarrier to transmit HApt into the target organelle. The DNA nanorobot composed of HApt and tFNA showed a higher stability and a more effective performance than free HApt against HER2-positive breast cancer cells. The PI3K/AKT pathway was inhibited when membrane-bound HER2 decreased in SK-BR-3 cells under the action of HApt-tFNA. The research findings suggest that tFNA can enhance the anticancer effects of HApt on SK-BR-3 cells; while HApt-tFNA can bind to HER2 specifically, the compounded HER2-HApt-tFNA complexes can then be transferred and degraded in lysosomes. After these processes, the accumulation of HER2 in the plasma membrane would decrease, which could also influence the downstream PI3K/AKT signaling pathway that is associated with cell growth and death.

However, some limitations need to be noted when interpreting the findings: (i) the cytotoxicity of the nanorobot on HER2-positive cancer cells was weak, and the anticancer effects between conventional monoclonal antibodies and HApt-tFNA was not compared; (ii) the differences in delivery efficiency between tFNA and other nanocarriers need to be confirmed; and (iii) the confirmation of anticancer effects of HApt-tFNA on tumors within animals remains challenging. Despite these limitations, the present study provided novel evidence of the biological effects of tFNA when combined with HApt. Although the stability and the anticancer effects of HApt-tFNA may require further improvement before clinical application, this study initiates a promising step toward the development of nanomedicines with novel and intelligent DNA nanorobots for tumor treatment.

References:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b01320

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27939064

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11694782

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27082923

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25365825

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26840503

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29802035

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Can Elephants Help Fight Cancer?

Posted in Breast Cancer - impalpable breast lesions, Cancer - General, Cancer and Current Therapeutics, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, Cancer Genomics, cancer metabolism, Funding Opportunities for Cancer Research, tagged , , , , on June 16, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Can Elephants Help Fight Cancer?

Reporter: Gail S. Thornton, M.A.

 

 

This paragraph is excerpted from the American Technion Society Facebook page.

Professor Avi Schroeder and Dr. Josh Schiffman of the The University of Utah are working with elephants at Utah’s Hogle Zoo on a possible new tool to fight against lung, bone, breast, and other cancers. Dr. Schiffman found that p53, a cancer-suppressing protein, is far more prevalent in elephants, which rarely develop cancer. Prof. Schroeder is now working to manufacture the protein in nanoparticles to begin preclinical testing.


This article is excerpted from The Salt Lake Tribune, May 2, 2019.

Earth’s biggest, smallest, oddest life forms are getting new attention from scientists. A Utah author explores what they’re learning.

Published: May 2, 2019

Researchers have long ignored superlative life forms — the biggest, the tiniest, ones that can survive extremes — as outliers, Utah author Matthew D. LaPlante says.

But they’re now realizing the value of studying nature’s “oddballs,” he adds, which are helping scientists discover how to better fight disease and aging, understand the history of life on this planet and how we might reach others.

LaPlante’s new book, “Superlative: The Biology of Extremes” was released this week. On Friday at 7 p.m., the associate professor of journalistic writing at Utah State University will read from “Superlative” and talk about his work at The King’s English Bookshop, 1511 S. 1500 East, Salt Lake City. The event is free and open to the public.

The co-writer of several books on the intersection of scientific discovery and society, LaPlante now is working with Harvard geneticist David Sinclair on a book about human longevity. “Superlative” from BenBella Books is the first solo book by LaPlante, a former reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune.

As he surveys unusual life around the earth, there are stops in Utah — from Pando, the aspen clone in Sevier County believed to be the single most massive living organism known on Earth, to pop-up appearances by researchers at the University of Utah and elephants at Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City.

Vast sequences of the genetic coding that humans share with elephants still perform similar functions in each species, LaPlante explains. And long after the two diverged, both developed the same genetic solution for the oxygen needs of a larger brain.

So there’s reason to believe that responses elephants have evolved — such as rarely developing cancer — might be spurred in humans.

The potential within a genome for such new traits to develop is at the heart of comparative genomics — and at the work of Utah pediatric oncologist Josh Schiffman.

This excerpt from “Superlative” explains how Schiffman began working with Hogle Zoo’s African elephants — the largest living land mammals — to fight cancer.

It all started in the summer of 2012, when [pediatric oncologist Josh] Schiffman’s beloved dog, Rhody, passed away [due] to histiocytosis, a condition that attacks the cells of skin and connective tissue. “It was the only time my wife has ever seen me cry,” he told me. “Rhody was like our first child.”

Schiffman had heard dogs like his had an elevated risk of cancer, but it wasn’t until after Rhody’s death that he learned just how elevated it was. Bernese mountain dogs who live to the age of ten have a 50 percent risk of dying from cancer.

“Suddenly it dawned on me there was this whole other world, this young field of comparative oncology,” he said, “and I was pulled into the idea of being a pioneer and maybe a leader to help move things along.”

Schiffman had long been intrigued by the fact that size doesn’t appear to correlate to cancer rates — a phenomenon known as “Peto’s Paradox,” named for Oxford University epidemiologist Richard Peto. But when Schiffman took his children on an outing to Utah’s Hogle Zoo — the same place I sometimes go to have lunch with my elephant friend, Zuri — everything came together.

A keeper named Eric Peterson had just finished giving a talk to a crowd of visitors, mentioning in passing that the zoo’s elephants have been trained to allow the veterinary staff to take small samples of blood from a vein behind their ears. As the crowd dispersed, an angular, excited man approached him.

“I’ve got a strange question,” Schiffman said.

“We’ve heard them all,” Peterson replied.

“OK then — how do I get me some of that elephant blood?” Schiffman asked.

Peterson contemplated calling security. Instead, after a bit of explanation from Schiffman, the zookeeper told the inquisitive doctor he’d look into it. Two and a half months later, the zoo’s institutional review board gave its blessing to Schiffman’s request.

Things moved fast after that.

(Steve Griffin | Tribune file photo) Lab specialists Lauren Donovan Cristhian Toruno, Lisa Abegglen and researcher Joshua Schiffman, from left, are testing the effects of elephant gene p53 (EP53) in human cancer cells at the Huntsman Cancer Institute.
(Steve Griffin | Tribune file photo) Lab specialists Lauren Donovan Cristhian Toruno, Lisa Abegglen and researcher Joshua Schiffman, from left, are testing the effects of elephant gene p53 (EP53) in human cancer cells at the Huntsman Cancer Institute.

Cancer develops in part because cells divide. During each division the cells must make a copy of their DNA, and once in a while, for various reasons, those copies include a mistake. The more cells divide, the greater the odds of an error, and the more prone an error is to be duplicated again and again.

And elephant cells? Those things are dividing like crazy. Based on the number of cell divisions elephants need to get from Zuri’s size when we met to the size she is now, in just a few short years, it stands to reason they should get lots of cancer. Yet they almost never do.

“Going from 300 pounds as a calf to more than 10,000 pounds, gaining three-plus pounds a day, they’re growing so quickly, so big and so fast — baby elephants really shouldn’t make it to adulthood,” Schiffman said. “They should have 100 times the cancer. Just by chance alone, elephants should be dropping dead all over the place.” Indeed, he said, they should probably die of cancer before they’re even old enough to reproduce. “They should be extinct!”

Already, comparative oncologists suspected the exceptionally low rate of cancer in elephants had something to do with p53, a gene whose human analog is a known cancer suppressor. Most humans have one copy — two alleles — of the gene. Those with an inherited condition known as Li–Fraumeni syndrome, however, have just one allele — and a nearly 100 percent chance of getting cancer. The logical conclusion is more p53 alleles mean a better chance of staving off cancer. And elephants, it turns out, have twenty of them.

The big find that came from Schiffman’s exploration of the elephant blood he got at the zoo, though, was not just that there were more of these genes in elephants, but that the genes behaved a little bit differently, too.

In humans, the gene’s first approach for suppressing tumor growth is to try to repair faulty cells — the sort that cause cancer. So, at first, Schiffman’s team assumed having more p53 genes meant elephants had bigger repair crews. With the goal of watching those crews in action, the researchers exposed the elephant cells to radiation, causing DNA damage. But they noticed that, instead of trying to fix what was broken, the elephant cells seemed to grow something of a conscience.

To understand this, it’s helpful to think about how you’d respond in a zombie apocalypse. Of course you’d fight long and hard to keep from being infected, right? But if a zombie was about to chomp down on your arm, and there was nothing you could do to stop it, and if you had but one bullet remaining in your gun —and a few moments to consider what you might do to your fellow humans as a part of the legion of the undead — what would you do?

That’s what elephant cells do, too. Under the directive of p53, mutated cells don’t put up a fight. Upon recognizing the inevitability of malignant mutation, they take their own lives in a process known as apoptosis.

And they don’t just do this for one kind of cancer. The p53 gene apparently programs cells to do this in response to all kinds of malignantly mutated cells in elephants—a finding that flies in the face of the conventional assumption that there is no one singular cure for the complex group of disorders we call cancer.

When I first met Schiffman in 2016, he was brimming with excitement about the potential elephants have to help us understand cancer. He was also very cautious not to suggest he was anywhere near a cure, nor that he ever would be.

Just a few years later, though, Schiffman was speaking openly about his intention to rid the world of cancer. And, to that end, what’s happening in his lab is encouraging, to say the least.

He and his team have been injecting cancer cells with a synthetic version of a p53 protein modeled on the DNA he’s drawn from Zuri and other elephants from around the world. Viewed on time-lapse video, the results are unmistakable and amazing.

Breast cancer. Gone.

bone cancer. Gone.

Lung cancer. Gone.

One by one, each type of cancer cell falls victim to zombie-cell hara-kiri, shriveling and then exploding, and leaving nothing behind to mutate. Schiffman is now working with Avi Schroeder, an expert in nanomedical delivery systems at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, to create tiny delivery vehicles to take the synthetic elephant protein into mammalian tumors.

If this was all the benefit we ever derived from studying elephants, it would be plenty.

But it’s not. Not at all.

Source:

https://www.sltrib.com/artsliving/2019/05/02/earths-biggest-smallest/?fbclid=IwAR09iwADrhUKkuoXDRMBHFIMstUESU3OBXxKeN0dTKwxapTUASWsv1T_kZI

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