Happy New Year! Source: Roblespepe. http://bit.ly/1cpkyHX

As it does every year, Science published its “Breakthrough of the Year” for 2013 in the 20 December 2013 issue of the journal.

Science chose cancer immunotherapy as its Breakthrough of the Year 2013.

In its 20 December 2013 issue, Science published an editorial by its Editor-in-Chief, Marcia McNutt, Ph.D., entitled “Cancer Immunotherapy”. The same issue has a news article  by staff writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, also entitled “Cancer Immunotherapy”.

As usual, the 20 December 2013 issue of Science contains a Breakthrough of the Year 2013 news section, which in addition to the Breakthrough of the Year itself, also contains articles about several interesting runners-up, ranging from genetic microsurgery using CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat) technology to mini-organs to human cloning to vaccine design.

In the Science editorial and news article, the authors focus on the development and initial successes of two types of immunotherapy:

• Monoclonal antibody (MAb) drugs that target T-cell regulatory molecules, including the approved CTLA4-targeting MAb ipilimumab (Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Yervoy), and the clinical-stage anti-PD-1 agents nivolumab (Bristol-Myers Squibb) and lambrolizumab (Merck).
• Therapy with genetically engineered autologous T cells, known as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy, such as that being developed by a collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania and Novartis.

The rationale for Science’s selection of cancer immunotherapy as the breakthrough of the year is that after a decades-long process of basic biological research on T cells, immunotherapy products have emerged and–as of this year–have achieved impressive results in clinical trials. And–as pointed out by Dr. McNutt–immunotherapy would constitute a new, fourth modality for cancer treatment, together with the traditional surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.

However, as pointed out by Dr. McNutt and Ms. Couzin-Frankel, these are still early days for cancer immunotherapy. Key needs include the discovery of biomarkers that can help predict who can benefit from a particular immunotherapy, development of combination therapies that are more potent than single-agent therapies, and that might help more patients, and means for mitigating adverse effects.

Moreover, it will take some time to determine how durable any remissions are, especially whether anti-PD1 agents give durable long-term survival. Finally, although several MAb-based immunotherapies are either approved (in the case of  ipilimumab) or well along in clinical trials, CAR T-cell therapies and other adoptive immunotherapies remain experimental.

In addition to the special Science “Breakthrough 2013” section, Nature published a Supplement on cancer immunotherapy in its 19/26 December 2013 issue. This further highlights the growing importance of this field.

Cancer immunotherapy on the Biopharmconsortium Blog

Readers of our Biopharmconsortium Blog are no strangers to recent breakthroughs in cancer immunotherapy. In the case of MAb-based immunotherapies, we have published two summary articles, one in 2012 and the other in 2013. These articles noted that cancer immunotherapy was the “star” of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in both years.

Our blog also contains articles about CAR therapy, as being developed by the University of Pennsylvania and Novartis and by bluebird bio and Celgene. Moreover, the Biopharmconsortium Blog contains articles on other types of cancer immunotherapies not covered by the Science articles, such as cancer vaccines.

We look forward to further progress in the field of cancer immunotherapy, and to the improved treatments and even cures of cancer patients that may be made possible by these developments.

As the producers of this blog, and as consultants to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, Haberman Associates would like to hear from you. If you are in a biotech or pharmaceutical company, and would like a 15-20-minute, no-obligation telephone discussion of issues raised by this or other blog articles, or of other issues that are important to  your company, please contact us by phone or e-mail. We also welcome your comments on this or any other article on this blog.

Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. Source: Paulo Mourao. http://bit.ly/14ZLZqA

Both the 28 June 2013 issue of Science and the 27 June 2013 issue of Nature have articles or sections that feature discussions of new ways to treat or even cure various types of leukemia.

The human interest story about T-cell immunotherapy researchers in Science

The 28 June 2013 issue of Science contains an article by Science staff writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel entitled “The Dizzying Journey to a New Cancer Arsenal”. It focuses on researchers who have been working in the engineered T cell adoptive immunotherapy project at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. We featured a discussion of this project, which since August 6, 2012 has involved a collaboration with Novartis, in our September 12, 2012 article on this blog.

Ms. Couzin-Frankel’s article is a human interest story which especially focuses on Carl June, MD, and how he came to work on T-cell immunotherapy. This included how cancer had touched his own life, with the death of his first wife, Cynthia, in 2001. The article also focused on patients who were successfully treated with the therapy, including biotech company scientist Douglas Olson, and Emily Whitehead, who is now eight years old and achieved remission from what had been end-stage leukemia over a year ago.

As we discussed in our September 2012 article, the Penn group has been developing adoptive immunotherapy based on autologous T cells engineered with chimeric antigen receptors (CARs). Specifically, this involved a CAR with specificity for the B-cell antigen CD19, coupled with the T cell costimulatory receptor CD137 and CD3-zeta (a signal-transduction component of the T-cell antigen receptor) signaling domains. (In the Science article, CD19 is referred to by its alternative name, 4-1BB.) These engineered T cells are designed for the treatment of B-cell leukemias, such as B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). As discussed both in our 2012 blog article and in the 2013 Science article, Novartis has been collaborating with the Penn group in order to industrialize production of the autologous engineered T cells and their use in treatment of patients. Via the ability of Penn to patent and license its technology, the Novartis collaboration also provides a potential means to conduct clinical trials under FDA regulation, and thus to commercialize a form of adoptive cellular immunotherapy for the first time.

Nature’s special supplement on leukemia

The 27 June 2013 issue of Nature includes an entire Nature Outlook supplement on “Leukaemia”. The supplement–or at least the portion of it that consists of articles produced under Nature’s “full responsibility for all editorial content” is available free online to all.

The general theme of the special supplement is stated in the introductory article by science writer and editor Apoorva Mandavilli “While survival rates for some types of leukaemia have improved dramatically, this family of blood cancers remains a potentially fatal disease. Research in epigenetics, immunotherapy, and cell transplants offers hope. And leukaemia is proving a testing ground for the theory of cancer stem cells — leading to knowledge that could advance cancer research overall.”

The Nature Perspective on adoptive T-cell immunotherapy by Penn researchers Levine and June

Included in the supplement is a short Perspective on CAR-based adoptive T-cell immunotherapy by Drs. Bruce L. Levine and Carl H. June of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. It is entitled “Assembly line immunotherapy”. According to this Perspective, CAR technology [unlike the earlier tumor infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) technology] enables researchers to ” efficiently produce large populations of T cells, approximating the mass of T cells in the human immune system”.

Drs. Levine and June further assert that by “using equipment and facilities developed for blood banks and stem-cell laboratories, and by automating production”, it will be possible to make CAR-based adoptive cellular immunotherapies (ACTs) widely available. Thus leukemia treatment may be on the brink of a revolution such as the auto industry experienced in recent years in moving from manual assembly lines to robotic automation.

Despite the issue of the pharmaceutical industry and regulatory agencies such as the FDA and the European Medicines Agency being geared to developing drugs, not individually-prepared cellular therapies, Drs. Levine and June cite the case of  organ, bone-marrow, and stem-cell transplants. These modalities were seen as exotic a few decades ago, but are now utilized in treatment of tens of thousands of people. The authors thus envision that ACT may also eventually be scaled up to treat the large numbers of patients who might benefit from this type of therapy. However, this will require innovation in regulatory agency oversight, and in the means by which the pharmaceutical industry might commercialize such individualized technologies. As we discussed in our September 2012 Biopharmconsortium Blog article, Novartis and Penn are leading the way.

Moving toward cures for chronic myeloid leukemia–Dr. Charles Sawyers’ Perspective

Another Perspective in the special supplement is authored by Charles L. Sawyers, M.D. [Chair, Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer (New York, NY), and Howard Hughes Medical Institute]. The Perspective, entitled “Combined forces”, focuses on chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). The first targeted kinase inhibitor for cancer, imatinib (Novartis’ Gleevec/Glivec) was initially approved for treatment of CML.

In our October 25, 2010 article on this blog, we discussed the classic proof-of-concept clinical trial that helped launch imatinib toward FDA approval. As we discussed in that article, Dr. Sawyers was a key leader of that trial. He was a co-recipient–with Drs.  Brian J. Druker and Nicholas B. Lydon, of the 2009 Lasker~DeBakey Award for Clinical Medical Research for his work on treatment of CML.

As we discussed in our Octotber 2010 article, imatinib is highly specific for the BCR-ABL fusion protein [which is generated as the result of the translocation that produces the Philadelphia (Ph) chromosome, the characteristic genetic abnormality of CML], as well as two other protein kinases. CML patients who are initially successfully treated with imatinib may experience resistance to that drug. As a result, two second-generation kinase inhibitors–dasatinib (Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Sprycel) and nilotinib (Novartis’ Tasigna) were developed to target imatinib-resistant mutated BCR-ABL proteins, and thus successfully treat imatinib-resistant CML. More recently–in September 2012–as mentioned in Dr. Sawyers’ Perspective, another second-generation agent, bosutinib (Pfizer’s Bosulif), has reached the market. A still newer agent, ponatinib (Ariad’s Iclusig) was approved in December 2012, under the FDA’s Accelerated Approval Program. Ponatinib is of special interest, since it  targets the T315I mutation, which confers resistance to all the other four targeted CML drugs.

In Dr. Sawyers’ Perspective, he discusses how oncologists might use the current armamentarium of targeted drugs for CML to move toward a cure for the disease. Resistance to imatinib occurs because of selection for resistant mutants of BCR-ABL . Second-generation agents inhibit BCR-ABL kinases with these mutations, thus restoring disease remission. The current armamentarium of kinase inhibitor drugs for CML covers all known resistance mutations; however, no single drug can prevent all forms of resistance.

The current paradigm for treatment of CML has been to start with imatinib, and keep treating with that agent until the patient develops resistance to that drug and disease recurs. Then the physician treats with one of the second-generation agents, which typically produces disease remission. However, this sequential treatment can select for cells with BCR-ABL molecules that contain multiple mutations, which will be resistant to all kinase inhibitors. (See a 2007 report by Dr. Sawyers and his collaborators demonstrating the hazard of sequential therapy with imatinib followed by dasatinib.)

Because the second-generation agents dasatinib and nilotinib are more potent than imatinib, they were approved for frontline therapy of CML instead of imatinib, subsequent to the publication of Dr.Sawyers’ 2007 article. They were approved for frontline therapy because of their superior clinical outcomes in head-to-head comparisons against imatinib. (Bosutinib and ponatinib are newer, and have not yet received frontline therapy approval.) However, Dr. Sawyers counsels caution, since  dasatinib and nilotinib have been studied for only 3–4 years compared with the 8–10 years of data that have amassed for imatinib. Thus replacing imatinib with one of these agents might still result in development of resistance down the road.

Dr. Sawyers postulates that Instead of focusing on which individual drug is best as a monotherapy, it is time for researchers to consider whether it might be better to use combination therapy with multiple kinase inhibitors instead of sequential therapy. Extrapolating from the experience with single- versus multi-agent therapy for tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, a combination of two or three ABL inhibitors with non-overlapping BCR–ABL mutation resistance profiles would almost certainly prevent the emergence of drug resistance. This is particularly true in the light of ponatinib’s success against T315I.

In a recent French study cited by Dr. Sawyers, researchers found that patients with the best responses to treatment with imatinib alone (no BCR–ABL detectable for more than two years) may no longer need any kinase inhibitor drugs at all. In this study, 40% of patients had not relapsed after 18 months. This raises the possibility that these patients may be cured of their disease.

Dr. Sawyers hypothesizes that since next-generation BCR-ABL inhibitors have greater potency in clinical trials, and since two-drug combinations are superior to monotherapies in preclinical studies, upfront therapy with either a second-generation inhibitor or with a combination therapy may result in even higher percentages of patients who experience elimination of all CML cells.

Even though these more potent treatments would be even more costly than imatinib therapy, if these treatments are curative, their long-term cost will be lower than the current treatment. Therefore, they might be both medically and economically advantageous, as well as giving cancer patients what they really want–a cure.

Meanwhile, in the 18 July 2013 issue of Nature, Drs. Natalia L. Komarova (University of California Irvine, Irvine CA) and C. Richard Boland (Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas TX) published a News and Views article discussing recently published mathematical models that predict that combination therapy is more effective than sequential treatment in preventing drug resistance in cancer. These mathematical models were developed especially for treatment of CML and the solid tumors melanoma, pancreatic cancer, and colorectal cancer. But these types of models may apply to all cancers for which targeted therapies have been or are being developed.

Moving toward cures for chronic myeloid leukemia–the Novartis 27 June 2013 white paper

Bound with the Nature Outlook supplement on leukemia–immediately following the Levine & June article on adoptive immunotherapy–is a white paper by Novartis researchers (Szczudlo et al.), entitled “The Novartis research vision and approach for treating patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia”. Unfortunately, since this “sponsor feature” was not written under Nature’s “full responsibility for all editorial content”, this white paper is treated almost as an advertisement. It is not available in the online version of Nature, or anywhere else online. Perhaps Novartis will make this valuable white paper available online in the near future. As with other published reviews in scientific journals (and unlike advertisements), this white paper is signed by its authors, and has reference citations.

The subject of the white paper is developing approaches that will enable CML patients on tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) therapy to safely and effectively suspend their drug therapy, while maintaining minimal residual disease (MRD) levels that are either undetectable or below the level at which there is a risk of progression to more advanced phases of disease. Such a condition is known as “treatment-free remission” (TFR).

The research that is the focus of the Novartis white paper does not involve treatment with combination therapies, but monotherapy with nilotinib (Novartis’ Tasigna). The TFR-focused clinical trials with nilotinib are made possible not only by the potency of this agent, but also the development of new diagnostic assays for level of residual disease. Traditional diagnostics for CML have been based on achieving a “complete cytogenetic response” (CCyR). A CCyR is defined as the state in which there are so few Philadelphia chromosome positive (Ph+) cells in a patient’s blood or marrow that they are undetectable by this assay.

The new diagnostic assays involves measuring levels of BCR-ABL messenger RNA (mRNA) transcripts using a real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RQ-PCR). The results of these sensitive assays are reported as major molecular response [MMR–a 3-log reduction in BCR-ABL levels from the international scale (IS) baseline; molecular response ≥ 4.0 logs (MR4); and molecular response ≥ 4.5 logs (MR4.5)].

Using these assays, researchers are participating in new Novartis-sponsored clinical studies of

1. patients who had previously been treated with imatinib, without achieving MR4.5, and who were then switched to nilotinib.
2. patients treated do novo with nilotinib.

The strategy is to maintain patients on nilotinib who have achieved MR4.5 for one year at that level, and then discontinue drug treatment. These patients continue to be monitored, and must maintain ≤ MR4 in order to remain free of nilotinib treatment. Those who exceed this threshold will be put back on nilotinib. So far, in earlier studies, patients on imatinib or niolotinib who were ≤MR4 off-drug and who then exceeded this level, when put back on their drug went back to deeper levels of molecular response to therapy, and showed no drug resistance. These clinical trial protocols therefore appear to be safe.

For more information about the above clinical trials, see ClinicalTrials.gov, clinical trial number NCT01784068 and NCT01698905. Both of these trials are recruiting patients.

The Novartis white paper does discuss a different kind of combination therapy than the ones proposed by Dr. Sawyers–combination therapy with a potent TKI such as nilotinib and an agent that specifically targets leukemic stem cells (LSCs). TKI-insensitive leukemia stem cells have been implicated in the persistence of MRD, and LSCs could contribute to the re-emergence of disease following suspension of TKI treatment.

Novartis and its collaborators are now testing TKIs in combination with Novartis’ experimental agent sonidegib (LDE225). Sonidegib is an inhibitor of the hedgehog (Hh) pathway. Aberrant activation of the Hh pathway has been implicated in the activity of LSCs and of other types of cancer stem cells. A poster session that described an in vitro study of a combination of sonidegib and nilotinib in CML was presented at a scientific meeting in 2010. Sonidegib (which is also known as erismodegib) has also been undergoing preclinical studies as a potential inhibitor of prostate cancer stem cells.

Conclusions

We recommend the 28 June 2013 Science article by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, and the special supplement on leukemia in the 27 June 2013 issue of Nature for your late summer reading. It is heartening to see that at least some researchers are moving towards cures for various types of leukemia–with potential implications for development of cures for other types of cancer.

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As the producers of this blog, and as consultants to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, Haberman Associates would like to hear from you. If you are in a biotech or pharmaceutical company, and would like a 15-20-minute, no-obligation telephone discussion of issues raised by this or other blog articles, or of other issues that are important to  your company,  please contact us by phone or e-mail. We also welcome your comments on this or any other article on this blog.

Tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in a colorectal carcinoma. Source: Nephron. http://bit.ly/QdusBi

On April 27, 2011 we published an article on this blog entitled “Adoptive immunotherapy for metastatic melanoma?” This blog post, which was in part based on an article in the April 2011 issue of The Scientist, described a treatment for metastatic melanoma known as adoptive cell transfer (ACT), or adoptive immunotherapy. ACT is the only type of therapy that has resulted in high percentages of durable compete responses in metastatic melanoma. A durable complete response, which is tantamount to a cure, is the real desire of every cancer patient, and of their loved ones, and of caring physicians who treat them.

In ACT, a physician/researcher extracts a patient’s antigen-specific immune cells, which are usually found in tumor tissue. Such cells are known as “tumor infiltrating lymphocytes” (TILs). He or she then expands the numbers of the antitumor T lymphocytes in cell culture, using the T-cell growth factor, IL-2. The physician/researcher then infuses the cells, plus IL-2, intravenously into the patient. The infused T cells traffic to tumors and can mediate their destruction. Prior to TIL infusion, the patient may have his or her immune system temporarily ablated via “preparative lymphodepletion” with chemotherapy and sometimes also total-body irradiation. The preparative lymphodepletion treatment is associated with enhanced persistence of the transferred TILs.

In a clinical study of ACT published in 2011, the treatment resulted in the disappearance of all tumors in 20/93 patients (21.5%) with advanced metastatic melanoma. For 19 of these 20 patients (95%), the complete responses have been durable and long-lasting, in some cases lasting for over 7 years. (See also the Faculty of 1000 evaluation.)

Research on the mechanistic basis of adoptive immunotherapy, as well as on means to improve ACT technologies, is ongoing, so there is the potential to improve the durable complete response rate further. We featured a December 2012 Nature cancer immunotherapy review article that included a discussion of ways to improve ACT in the 2011 end-of-year article on our Biopharmconsortium Blog.

Despite the fact that ACT is the only type of therapy that has resulted in high percentages of durable compete responses in metastatic melanoma, it is not widely available. ACT is only available in a small number of cancer canters worldwide, and there has been little commercial interest in developing ACT.

Adoptive immunotherapies are still considered experimental, are not FDA-approved, and are not covered by third party payers. Thus only a handful of locations can bear the financial burden of administering adoptive immunotherapy. If a cancer center has a cell production facility with the required staff, the cost of producing a single dose of T-cells for adoptive transfer is approximately $20,000. ACT treatment also entails factoring in the cost of hospitalization. However, most patients only require a single dose.

The cost of ACT is, however, much lower than a full course of other immunotherapies, such as the dendritic cell vaccine Provenge (which is not indicated for melanoma) or the immunotheraputic MAb drug ipilimumab, both of which cost approximately $120,000. The total cost of a 6-month treatment with the targeted kinase drug vemurafenib is $56,400. None of these treatments result in durable complete responses, except in a very small number of patients.

The main problem with increasing the availability of ACT is the lack of a viable business model for its commercialization. Adoptive immunotherapies lack a clearly defined claim to intellectual property (IP), since the patient’s own cells are not a “drug” to be patented. It would be difficult for a private company to pursue clinical trials for FDA approval and commercialization of ACT. To conduct such trials, a company would need to build a specialized cell processing and treatment facility, with a highly trained and competent staff. If the therapies cannot be protected as IP, and would therefore not be considered proprietary, it would not be worth the effort and expense to commercialize them.

The Novartis/Penn agreement

Now comes an agreement (announced on August 6, 2012) between Novartis and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) aimed at commercializing adoptive cellular immunotherapy.

The agreement is based on one of the improvements to ACT discussed in the December 2011 Nature cancer immunotherapy review, in which autologous T cells isolated from patient blood (not from tumors) are engineered with retroviral vectors carrying chimeric antigen receptors (CARs). This technology allows physician researchers to extend ACT beyond patients from whom TILs can be isolated and expanded. It also enables them to extend ACT beyond melanoma to include other types of solid tumors and leukemias and lymphomas. Unlike TILs, CAR-bearing T cells do not recognize surface antigens on tumor cells [presented by major histocompatibility complex (MHC) proteins] via their T-cell receptors. They instead recognize surface proteins on tumor cells via the affinity domain on the engineered CAR. This also expands the kinds of tumor cells that can be recognized, as compared to TILs.

In the Penn studies, led by David L. Porter, M.D. at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, the researchers used this technology to treat patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). They designed a lentiviral vector expressing a chimeric antigen receptor with specificity for the B-cell antigen CD19, coupled with the T cell costimulatory receptor CD137 and CD3-zeta (a signal-transduction component of the T-cell antigen receptor) signaling domains. They used this vector to engineer autologous T cells, and infused the engineered cells into the patient after preparative lymphodepletion with chemotherapy. In a pilot study with one patient with refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), the infused cells exhibited in vivo expansion and anti-leukemia activity. The treatment resulted in complete remission, which was ongoing 10 months after initiation.

In a later study, the researchers treated three more patients with autologous engineered CAR T cells. The T cells expanded over 1000-fold in vivo, trafficked to bone marrow, and continued to express CARs at high levels for at least six months. The CAR T-cells showed anti-leukemia activity, with each engineered T cell eliminating approximately 1000 CLL cells. A CD19-specific immune response was demonstrated in the blood and bone marrow of two of three patients; these patents showed complete remission. Some of the cells in these patients persisted as memory CAR T cells and retained anti-CD19 effector activity. These results suggested that this technology has the potential to effectively treat B cell malignancies, and to induce durable complete remissions in at least a portion of patients.

As reported in August 2012, of the three patients who showed positive results with the anti-CD19 immunotherapy, two were still in complete remission over a year into the CART-19 trial, and the third patient maintained partial remission for more than seven months. An immune deficiency resulting from the treatment known as hypogammaglobulinemia, an expected chronic toxic effect of anti-B cell therapy, was corrected with infusions of intravenous immune globulin. Patients were also treated for symptoms associated with tumor lysis syndrome, an effect of tumor breakdown.

Under the agreement, Novartis acquired exclusive rights from Penn to CART-19, the investigational CAR immunotherapy that was the focus of the studies discussed earlier. The target of CART-19, CD19, is associated with several B-cell malignancies, including CLL, B-cell acute lymphocytic leukemia and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Novartis expects to initiate a Phase II clinical trial with CART-19 in collaboration with Penn during the fourth quarter of 2012.

To facilitate the discovery and development of additional types of CAR immunotherapy, Novartis and Penn will build the Center for Advanced Cellular Therapies (CACT) at Penn. This center will be established specifically to develop and manufacture adoptive T-cell immunotherapies under the research collaboration between Penn and Novartis.

Penn also granted Novartis an exclusive worldwide license to CARs developed through the collaboration for all indications, in addition to CART-19. In return, Novartis will provide an up-front payment, research funding, funding for the establishment of the CACT and milestone payments for the achievement of certain clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones as well as and royalties on any sales.

Business implications of the Novartis/Penn agreement

The feasibility of developing and commercializing CAR T-cell-based immunotherapy is based on the ability of Penn to patent and license its CAR technology. Such an approach in principle would apply to immunotherapies based on other types of engineered T cells, such as those engineered with retroviral vectors carrying cloned T-cell receptors, as discussed in the December 2011 Nature review article.

As discussed earlier, adoptive immunotherapies with engineered T cells would also address patients with a variety of types of cancer (not just melanoma) and from who TILs cannot be isolated. However, whether any therapies with engineered T cells can give the percentages of durable complete responses seen with TIL-based therapy of melanoma remains to be demonstrated in clinical trials.

The Novartis/Penn agreement represents an example of Novartis’ willingness to take risks, in order to “bring innovative therapies to patients”, as stated by Hervé Hoppenot, President, Novartis Oncology. Mark Fishman, President of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, sees cancer immunotherapy as “one of the exciting frontiers in cancer research,” and the CAR technology as showing “early promise as a new way for treating cancer.”

Novartis thus has not built a viable business model for TIL-based ACT. However, it is developing a parallel technology that is more protectable than TILs, which might result in bringing adoptive cellular immunotherapy to a much larger number of patients.

BiTE immunotherapy

Meanwhile another type of T-cell-based immunotherapy technology (also discussed in the Nature review) is now under development. This is bi-specific T-cell engager (BiTE) technology, originally developed by the German-American biotech company Micromet. Amgen acquired Micromet in April 2012, and is now developing the first BiTE agent, blinatumomab. Blinatumomab is a bispecific MAb that binds to CD19 on target B-cell malignancies and to CD3 (an invariant component of the T-cell receptor) on T cells. This results in the activation of the T cell to exert cytotoxic activity on the target cell. BiTE immunotherapy does not require isolation and culture of autologous T cells, and BITE technology and therapeutics derived from it are patentable as with other drugs.

In May 2012, Amgen reported that blinatumomab treatment gave a high rate (72 percent) of complete responses in a Phase 2 study in patients with relapsed or refractory B-precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The rate of remission seen in this trial was a great improvement over the current standard of care. However, no durable complete responses were seen; median survival was 9 months.

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As the producers of this blog, and as consultants to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, Haberman Associates would like to hear from you. If you are in a biotech or pharmaceutical company, and would like a 15-20-minute, no-obligation telephone discussion of issues raised by this or other blog articles, or an initial one-to-one consultation on an issue that is key to your company’s success, please contact us by phone or e-mail. We also welcome your comments on this or any other article on this blog.

Amyloid precursor protein (APP)

As we mentioned in our August 19, 2012 article on Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the results of Phase 3 trials of Lilly’s amyloid-targeting monoclonal antibody (MAb) drug solanezumab, had been expected soon.

On August 24 2012, Lilly announced the top-line results of the two Phase 3, double-blind, placebo-controlled EXPEDITION trials of solanezumab in patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease. The primary endpoints, both cognitive and functional, were not met in either of these trials.

However, a pre-specified secondary analysis of pooled data across both trials showed statistically significant slowing of cognitive decline in the overall study population, and pre-specified secondary subgroup analyses of pooled data across both studies showed a statistically significant slowing of cognitive decline in patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease, but not in patients with moderate Alzheimer’s disease.

These results were reported in a press release.  What was absent was data from the trials. However, the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS), (an academic national research consortium) will present its independent analysis of the data from the EXPEDITION studies at the American Neurological Association (ANA) meeting in Boston on October 8, 2012, and at the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease (CTAD) meeting in Monte Carlo, Monaco, on October 30, 2012.

Once again, an amyloid pathway-targeting drug for Alzheimer’s disease that was taken into Phase 3 trials despite Phase 2 results that showed no statistically significant efficacy has failed in Phase 3. Solanezumab joins a list of such failed drugs that includes Myriad Pharmaceuticals’ Flurizan (tarenflurbil), Neurochem’s (now Bellus Health) Alzhemed (3-amino-1-propanesulfonic acid), and as of July 2012, Pfizer/Janssen’s bapineuzumab (“bapi”). Nevertheless, as in the Phase 2 results with bapi, Lilly sees hope for the drug in the results of secondary analyses.

On the day of the Lilly announcement, August 24 2012, Lilly executives and stock analysts turned the results of these trials into something “positive”, as the result of the secondary analysis. This resulted in a one-day 3.4 percent increase in the price of Lilly stock. However, the results of the secondary analysis do not give Lilly any basis for going to the FDA with a New Drug Application (NDA) for solanezumab. Nor do they provide any realistic hope for AD patients, the physicians who treat them, or caregivers of AD patients.

At best, Lilly’s secondary analysis gives rise to a hypothesis–that solanezumab–and presumably other anti-amyloid MAbs–will be effective in treating earlier-stage AD patients, especially those who have not suffered extensive, irreversible brain damage. This is the very same hypothesis that is now being tested by Roche/Genentech in its clinical trials of its anti-amyloid MAb crenezumab, as we discussed in our August 19, 2012 article. Genentech is testing its drug candidate in a Phase 2a trial in a very special population–members of a large Colombian kindred who harbor a mutation in presenilin 1 (PS1) that causes dominant early−onset familial AD.

A News Focus article in the 17 August 2012 issue of Science, written by science writer Greg Miller, PhD, discusses three upcoming clinical trials designed to test the “treat early-stage or presymptomatic AD with anti-amyloid MAbs” hypothesis. One of these studies is the Genentech trial of crenezumab in the extended family in Colombia.

Another of these studies is being conducted in conjunction with the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN), a consortium led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis, MO). This study will include people with mutations in any of the three genes linked to early-stage, dominantly-inherited AD–PS1, PS2, and amyloid precursor protein (APP).

Initial studies, published ahead of print in the July 11 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) looked at changes in biomarkers and in cognitive ability as a function of expected age of AD onset in people with these mutations. Concentrations of amyloid-β1–42 (Aβ42) in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) appeared to decline 25 years before expected symptom onset. This decrease may reflect impaired clearance of Aβ42 from the brain, which may be a factor in the amyloid plaque increase that is associated with AD. Amyloid accumulation in the brain was detected 15 years before expected symptom onset. Other biomarkers, as well as cognitive impairment, were also followed in the study published in the NEJM. In the first stage of the actual trial, three drugs (which have not yet been selected) will be tested in this population, and changes in biomarkers and cognitive performance will be followed.

The third study, known as the Anti-Amyloid Treatment of Asymptomatic Alzheimer’s (A4) trial, will involve treating adults without mutations in any of the above three genes, whose brain scans show signs of amyloid accumulation. A4 is thus designed to study prevention of sporadic AD (by far the most common form of the disease). It will enroll 500 people age 70 or older who test positive on a scan of amyloid accumulation in the brain. (This is in contrast to the two trials in subjects with gene mutations, who are typically in their 30s or 40s.) A4 will also have a control arm of 500 amyloid-negative subjects. Amyloid-positive and control subjects will be entered into a three-year double-blind clinical trial that will look at changes in cognition with drug treatment. The A4 researchers [led by  Reisa Sperling, Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard University (Boston, MA), and Paul Aisen, University of California, San Diego] plan to select a drug for testing by December 2012.

If Lilly wishes to test solanezumab in early-stage (or presymptomatic) sporadic AD, it will need to follow a similar methodology to the studies outlined in the new Science article, especially with respect to the use of biomarkers to define “early-stage” AD and to track the effects of the drug. Studies such as the DIAN biomarker study published in the NEJM used the positron emission tomography (PET) ligand Pittsburgh Compound-B (PiB-C11), to image amyloid plaques. However, the use of this compound is limited by the short half-life of carbon-11 (20.4 minutes). A new PET amyloid imaging agent, Amyvid (florbetapir F18 Injection) was developed by Lilly and approved by the FDA in April 2012. This compound contains fluorine-18, which has a half-life of 109.8 minutes. A recent study indicates that Amyvid provides comparable information to PiB-C11. If Lilly wishes to conduct new studies of solanezumab in early-stage or presymptomatic sporadic AD, it may wish to use Amyvid, as suggested in a comment to an August 24, 2012 solanezumab post in Derek Lowe’s blog “In the Pipeline”. However, the FDA, in its press release announcing the approval of Amyvid, warns that increased amyloid plaque content (as detected by Amyvid or Pittsburgh Compound-B) may be present in the brains of patients with non-AD neurologic conditions, and in older people with normal cognition. Thus defining or detecting “early-stage (or presymptomatic) sporadic AD” is difficult.

In any case, for Lilly to follow up on its secondary analyses of the Phase 3 clinical trials of solanezumab will necessitate additional long and expensive clinical trials, with no assurance of success. Lilly executives will need to determine if such a course is worth the risk, or whether it should invest in other R&D efforts that might have a higher probability of success.

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As the producers of this blog, and as consultants to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, Haberman Associates would like to hear from you. If you are in a biotech or pharmaceutical company, and would like a 15-20-minute, no-obligation telephone discussion of issues raised by this or other blog articles, or of other issues that are important to  your company, please click here. We also welcome your comments on this or any other article on this blog.

The APP processing pathway

An exciting new study on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) was published in the 2 August issue of Nature. The study was carried out by researchers at deCode Genetics (Reykjavik Iceland) and their collaborators at Genentech and several academic institutions. A News and Views article by leading AD researcher Bart De Strooper and genomics researcher Thierry Voet (both at KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium) analyzes this study and its implications.

Amyloid plaques are a central feature of AD.  They largely consist of amyloid-β (Aβ) peptides. Aβ peptides are formed via sequential proteolytic processing of the amyloid precursor protein (APP), catalyzed by two aspartyl protease enzymes–β-secretase and γ-secretase.  The β-site APP cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE1) cleaves APP predominantly at a unique site. However, γ-secretase cleaves the resulting carboxy-terminal fragment at several sites, with preference for positions 40 and 42. This leads to formation of amyloid-β1–40 (Aβ40) and Aβ1–42 (Aβ42) peptides. APP processing to yield Aβ peptides is illustrated by the figure at the top of this article.

By studying rare, familial cases of early-onset AD, human geneticists have identified three disease genes in these conditions— genes for APP, and for two presenilins, PS1 and PS2. The presenilins are components of γ-secretase, which exists as an intramembrane protease complex. Mainly because of these genetic studies, as well as studies in animal models and postmortem studies of AD brains, the majority of AD researchers have focused on the APP processing pathway and/or on aggregation of Aβ to form plaques as intervention points for therapeutic strategies. The hypothesis that this is the central AD disease pathway is called the “amyloid hypothesis”.

Up until the publication of the new deCode report, of the 30-odd coding mutations in APP that have been found, around 25 are pathogenic, usually resulting in autosomal dominant early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Coding mutations at or near the β- or γ-proteolytic sites have appeared to result in overproduction of either total Aβ or a shift in the Aβ40:Aβ42 ratio towards formation of Aβ42, which is the more toxic of the two Aβ peptide. Until now, mutations in APP have not been implicated in the common, late-onset form of Alzheimer’s disease.

In the new deCode study, the researchers studied coding variants in APP in a set of whole-genome sequence data from 1,795 Icelanders. They identified a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), designated as rs63750847. The A allele of this SNP (rs63750847-A) results in an alanine to threonine substitution at position 673 in APP (A673T). The A673T mutation was found to be significantly more common in the elderly (age 85-100) control group (i.e., those without AD) than in the AD group. The researchers therefore concluded that the mutation is protective against AD.

The researchers also found that in a cohort of individuals over 80, those who were heterozygous for the A673T mutation performed better in a test of mental capacity than did control subjects. The authors concluded that the A673T mutation not only protects against AD, but also against the mild cognitive decline that is normally associated with old age.

In cellular studies (i.e., studies in cultured cells transfected with genes coding for wild type or mutant APP) and in biochemical studies, the researchers found that APP carrying the A673T mutation undergoes about 40% less cleavage by BACE1 than does wild-type APP, resulting in 40% less production of both Aβ40 and Aβ42.

The researchers conclude that the strong protective effect of the A673T mutation against AD provides proof of principle for the hypothesis that reducing the β-cleavage of APP (e.g., by use of BACE1 inhibitors, such as those being  developed by some pharmaceutical companies) may protect against the disease. (However, success in developing BACE1 inhibitors has been elusive.) Moreover, since the A673T allele also protects against cognitive decline in elderly individuals who do not have AD, AD and age-related mild cognitive decline may be mediated through the same or similar mechanisms.

Despite this compelling genetic finding, amyloid pathway-targeting drugs have not shown efficacy in Phase 3 trials

In our January 26, 2010 blog article, we discussed Phase 2 clinical trials of bapineuzumab, a monoclonal antibody (MAb) drug that is specific for Aβ, in mild to moderate AD. In that article, we referred to the drug as “Elan/Wyeth’s bapineuzumab”, after the original developers of the drug. As the result of mergers and acquisitions, the drug is now referred to as “Pfizer/Janssen’s bapineuzumab”. Many commentators call it “bapi” for short.

As we discussed in that article, the overall result of the Phase 2 trial was that there was no difference in cognitive function between patients in the bapi-treated and the placebo groups. However, the study did not have sufficient statistical power to exclude the possibility that there was such a difference. Retrospective analysis of the data from the trial suggested that bapi-treated patients who were not carriers of the apolipoprotein E epsilon4 allele (ApoE4) showed improved cognitive function as compared to placebo treatment. Given that this conclusion was reached via retrospective analysis, the idea that the bapi was efficacious in ApoE4 noncarriers was only a hypothesis, which would require prospective clinical trials to confirm. Janssen and Pfizer had been conducted large Phase 3 trials of bapi, which they prospectively segregated into ApoE4 carrier and noncarrier groups in order to test this hypothesis.

As of the past several weeks, the results of these Phase 3 trials have come in. On July 23rd, 2012, Pfizer announced the top-line results of an 18-month Janssen-led Phase 3 study of intravenous bapi in approximately 1,100 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease who carry at least one ApoE4 allele. The drug failed to meet its co-primary endpoints (change in cognitive and functional performance compared to placebo) in that study. On August 6, 2012, Pfizer announced the top-line results of the corresponding Phase 3 study of intravenous bapi in patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease who do not carry the ApoE4 genotype. Once again, the co-primary clinical endpoints were not met. Based on these results, the companies decided to discontinue all other intravenous bapi studies in patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease.

The bapi development program continues a history of amyloid pathway-targeting drugs that were taken into Phase 3 trials despite Phase 2 results that showed no statistically significant efficacy. For example, we cited the cases of Myriad Pharmaceuticals’ Flurizan (tarenflurbil) and Neurochem’s (now Bellus Health) Alzhemed (3-amino-1-propanesulfonic acid) in our January 26, 2010 blog article.

Leading industry commentator Matthew Herper of Forbes referred to the failure of bapi as “the latest piece of evidence of the drug industry’s strange gambling problem.” Johnson & Johnson (the parent company of Janssen) spent more than $1 billion to invest in Elan and get one-quarter of bapi, and Wyeth (later Pfizer) and Elan put the drug into Phase 3, despite the Phase 2 failure of bapi.

The temptation for pharmaceutical companies to take a chance on an AD drug such as bapi, Flurizan, and Alzhemed is driven by the complete lack of disease-modifying AD drugs, and the thinking that even a not-very-effective drug that receives FDA approval might generate billions of dollars in annual sales. In the case of bapi there was also that tantalizing suggestion that bapi might show efficacy in the subset of patients who lacked ApoE4.

In an August 16, 2012 article in Forbes, Dr. John LaMattina (the former President of Pfizer Global R&D) engages in informed speculation as to why bapi was moved into Phase 3. Dr. LaMattina (in contrast to critics like Mr. Herper, who discounted the ApoE4 retrospective analysis as “data-dredging” that was “likely to be due to chance”) referred to the efficacy signal of the Phase 2 trials as “mixed” due to the ApoE4 analysis. He stated that such “mixed results” present an “agonizing” dilemma for a pharmaceutical company.

In deciding whether to go forward Phase 3 trials of bapi, Dr. LaMattina further speculates that the decision might have been influenced by stakeholders such as AD patient advocates, and scientists who strongly believed in the science behind bapi, especially the amyloid hypothesis. Moreover, bapi had been shown to be relatively safe. In addition, dropping bapi would have caused public relations damage. Dr. LaMattina concludes, based on this analysis, “…this was a situation where these companies were in possession of a relatively safe drug, with a modest chance of success in being efficacious in what may be the biggest scourge that society will face.  How can you not make this investment?” He reminds us that pharmaceutical R&D “is a high risk, high reward business”.

Nevertheless, bapi joined Flurizan and Alzhemed on the list of high-profile amyloid-pathway failures. Now a Phase 3 trial of Lilly’s solanezumab, another MAb drug that targets Aβ, is nearing completion, with the results expected in September. Published Phase 2 results were designed to test safety, not efficacy, and 12 weeks of drug treatment gave no change in cognitive function. Although the results of the Phase 3 trial will not be known until they are reported, analysts expect the drug to fail because of its similarity to bapi.

Why don’t amyloid pathway-targeting drugs show efficacy in clinical trials, despite the compelling genetic evidence for the amyloid hypothesis?

The almost standard answer to that question given by scientists and clinicians who support the amyloid hypothesis is that we have been testing the drugs too late in the course of AD progression, after the damage to the brain has become irreversible. Roche/Genentech is testing this idea in its clinical trials of its drug candidate crenezumab (licensed from AC Immune), which is yet another MAb drug that targets Aβ. In a 5-year Phase 2a clinical trial, Genentech is testing intravenous crenezumab in 300 cognitively healthy individuals from a large Colombian kindred who harbor the Glu280Ala (codon 280 Glu to Ala substitution) PS1 mutation. This mutation causes dominant early−onset familial AD, and is associated with increased levels of Aβ42 in plasma, skin fibroblasts, and the brain. Family members with this mutation begin showing cognitive impairment around age 45, and full dementia around age 51.

Genentech is conducting this trial in collaboration with the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute and the National Institutes of Health. The company says that this trial is the first-ever AD prevention study in cognitively healthy individuals. Genentech further says that the trial may help to determine if the amyloid hypothesis is correct–more specifically, it may help to determine if a drug that works by depleting amyloid plaques can be effective in preventing and/or treating AD.

Moreover, Genentech states that there is significant unmet medical need within this Colombian population. This large extended family may have as many as 5,000 living members, and no other population in the world offers a sufficiently large number of mutation carriers close to the age of potential disease onset for a study to determine whether a prevention treatment may work. This effort by Genentech thus represents an application of a rare disease strategy to AD.

It is also possible, however that drugs that work by lowering levels of Aβ will not be efficacious in treating AD, even if administered early in the disease process. This may be true despite the findings of the new genetic study by the deCode Genetics group. For example, in their Nature News and Views article, Drs. De Strooper and Voet remind us that if the A673T mutation indeed works via lowering of Aβ levels, it works via lifelong lowering of Aβ, not lowering of Aβ in patients who already have AD, as in all clinical trials so far of anti-Aβ antibodies. (Even Genentech’s Colombian trial may involve lowering of Aβ levels relatively late in the course of exposure of patients to a disease process that will result in AD.)

Moreover, as these authors speculate on the basis of work on another mutation at the same site in the APP protein, it is possible that the protective effect of the A673T mutation may be due to changing the aggregation properties of Aβ peptides, resulting in a less-toxic form of Aβ. If true, this would mean that the protective effect of the A673T mutation is due to qualitative, rather than quantitative changes in Aβ. In that case, the finding of protection from AD by the A673T mutation might not be as predictive of the efficacy of such Aβ-lowering treatments as the use of anti-Aβ MAb drugs as drug developers might like.
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As the producers of this blog, and as consultants to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, Haberman Associates would like to hear from you. If you are in a biotech or pharmaceutical company, and would like a 15-20-minute, no-obligation telephone discussion of issues raised by this or other blog articles, or of other issues that are important to  your company, please click here. We also welcome your comments on this or any other article on this blog.