Member Info for crumbs

MD Anderson will still be involved with our US SCIB1 combo... they seem to be on the ball there.

'As we speak, there are something like 3,000 different immunotherapy trials underway.

The FDA has approved checkpoint inhibitor therapy for non-small cell lung cancer, small cell lung cancer, head and neck cancer, bladder cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, some kind of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, esophageal cancer, and some colorectal cancer that has defects to DNA damage. In fact, immunotherapy has been approved for any cancer type that has a defect in DNA damage repair called microsatellite instability.

The big pharmaceutical companies are now all players. Many, many early biotech firms are also trying to gain a presence. What you see, though, is that a lot of companies with patents on older, more conventional drugs are experimenting by combining them with checkpoints, just because they have the drugs. This is being done, in my opinion, without a lot of thought. A lot of them fail, but that information is usually lost because there’s no requirement for reporting. That’s still important information. So many combinations that are being tried are duplicative. It’s just a mess.

Are these trials being done on actual cancer patients?
Oh, yeah. They’re wasting patients. By that, I don’t just mean a large number of patients are not getting the treatments most likely to provide them benefit. Because we have a limited pool of patients, the most promising trials are not accruing sufficient patients fast enough to get these drugs to the clinic as quickly as we can.

Is that ethical?
I think it’s unethical. I think there shouldn’t be any trial where you don’t learn something.
Padmanee Sharma, who’s a clinical oncologist, and I have an operation here at MD Anderson called the Immunotherapy Platform. We’re currently involved in something like 117 different trials. We get tumor tissue from patients before and after treatment. We dissect it, looking for changes in cells, gene expression and structure. This can tell us something about what has happened.

If you are just looking for a clinical signal that a drug has worked or not, and that’s all you are doing, we might not learn anything.'

Fits in nicely with this recent Tweet from MD Andersons Padmanee (Allison's wife)
https://twitter.com/ASCO/status/1226178959706087425

Get in there Scancell!

Yeah, our old friend the 'star' of Immunotherapy - Jim Allison ... A good recent interview ....
'I’d go, “I’ve got something that can cure cancer,” and they’d go, “What kind of cancer would you use it for?” I’d say, “I don’t think the [specific] cancer matters much,” and that would be the end of the meeting. There had been a lot of failures with attempts to make vaccines for cancer. No one wanted to go there.

I went to the various pharmaceutical companies for two years, and only one small company, Medarex, was eventually interested. Medarex was later [in 2009] bought by Bristol-Myers Squibb, which took ippy through the approval process and to market.'

Because of the likes of Allison Immunotherapy has come far it still has a ways to go and let us all hope Lindys name ends up in as bright if not brighter lights than Allisons when the full story of curing cancer is finally written
https://www.quantamagazine.org/nobel-laureate-james-p-allison-cures-cancers-with-immunotherapy-20200203/

Infographic for World Cancer day by the British Society for Immunology explaining Immunotherapy ...Obviously getting it to work is where it gets far from simple! ...But science is getting there
https://www.immunology.org/news/world-cancer-day-2020

Indeed ... which is why I'm not getting this negativity some posters are putting on our combo trial !!!... Raising the bar and all that... late-stage melanoma is still a terribly hard condition to treat and 'cure' can only echo RG and others in hoping SCIB1 played a part in prolonging his life and others and sad news indeed on his passing... And yes let us hope moditope can do indeed raise that bar beyond where it is currently ....

Yes working to a 12-month plan as stated by Cliff at AGM and to me in an email... however he also mentioned competitive pressure could well cause interested parties to make a commercial move before their research collabs end..... nothing like a bit of competition especially if what you are looking at in your labs you are liking...

Although I'm not nibbling at the moment and well happy with my just over 200k... If he hit 5 again I will be taking more and if it comes to an OO I'm ready for that too..... It's great that Cliff is off to the US just as the US IND news has come in....

https://www.bio.org/events/bio-ceo-investor-conference

Quite an attendance list.... Apparently the BIA got us a big discount on attendence fee

I think as with the new full inclusion of renal cancer as an initial modi 1 target, a lot of pre-clinical work is ongoing with modi 1 and with the CAB and it will be from talks with them and others that the trial is taking shape... I believe Opvido is already approved for use in HNT cancer... but yeah I wonder if some form of arrangement whereby scancell will not need to cover the cost of that CI has or is coming together..... Such a potentially exciting trial... We already know Sarcomas are likely to also appear in the trial as a target if it is proving itself... with the further potential of it ending up in a whopping 15 targets all together!!! Doubt there has ever been such a trial!!?... Anyways we need it to begin first and then to hit it's targets but I'm backing Lindy and team scancell science.

Nivolumab being BMS's opdivo of course...their big PD1 rival to Mercks keytruda....

I think this is new?
'If selected for expansion, HPV-negative head and neck patients will be treated with nivolumab and Modi-1'

Presentation PDF...
https://www.scancell.co.uk/Data/Sites/1/media/docspres/presentation-to-lsx-world-congress-february-2020.pdf

We always hope for the deal/s :) ... The final shape of the modi1 trial is yet to be revealed yet it is becoming more obvious that the number of targets expected to be included is growing with renal cancer now seemingly being added to the initial 3 trial targets and the trial could end up with many more being added on incoming positive results..that surely will mean more patients dosed? if so the cost will rise and possibly by a lot...Do scancell have a good idea of where funds for that are coming from? I don't know but adding another target to the initial 3 does seem a confident move at this stage...Anyways I'm looking forward to more positive newsflow... I bet Cliff was relieved today to be able to do that presentation with US IND approved :)

At least with today's news removes what I consider to have been the biggest drag on the sp of scancell for the last few years....the SCIB1 combo no show, show, went on for far too long, at last, the curtains are opening and back on the biggest stage of them all the USA... with Flaherty still in leading role ....

You'll always get sellers on a rise plenty of 10%ers ... I'd think the ones that sold on Friday are the real losers, oh well that is the market, as you say so much potential here however no definites or knowing when they may arrive.... Tomorrow would be nice though :)... to get that BioNTech deal over the commercial line would be just ideal

Surely the UK trial has started it is there registered on clincaltrials.... A first suitable patient has simply not been dosed probably as one has not presented themselves yet.... What happens now will be interesting.... I suppose it does depend on how many other UK clinics are showing an interest and how much of the original US plan we can get back... All to be revealed no doubt

It will do no harm knowing that BMS's opdivo is almost the same as Mercks Keytruda... instant competition there

And blows away the conspiracies of maybe there is something wrong with SCIB1 for the FDA not to greenlight it... well they have now and Ichor v2 .. who I reckon must be relieved and excited too...

SCIB1 definitely looks a great candidate to be that combo therapy....It has been such a long time coming and yes still a way to go but as has been said Flaherty has stuck by scancell all the way... that is almost 5 years of frustration!

I think we know the main issue with getting patients in UK is getting access to free Keytruda... We have only managed this in Notts and so no doubts the patient pool we currently are trying to recruit in the UK is small... We ought to have better success in the US if we get most of the original planned clinics and people involved... Keith Flaherty being key!

But this was the original plan...

'Scancell to conduct Phase II checkpoint inhibitor combination study with SCIB1 with leading US melanoma specialists

Harvard, MD Anderson, Memorial Sloan Kettering, University of Colorado clinical team to lead checkpoint inhibitor combination trial with SCIB1

Aim of study will be to improve objective response to anti-PD-1 monotherapy without additional toxicity

Scancell Holdings Plc, (AIM:SCLP), today announced formation of its core US investigator team to lead a Phase II checkpoint inhibitor combination study with Scancell's lead cancer vaccine SCIB1. Dr Keith Flaherty, M.D., Director of the Termeer Center for Targeted Therapy at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School has been named the Principal Investigator. Joining Dr Flaherty are Dr Jennifer Wargo of the Department of Surgical Oncology at MD Anderson, Dr Michael Davies of the Department of Melanoma Oncology at MD Anderson, Dr Paul Chapman in the Melanoma/Sarcoma Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering and Dr Rene Gonzalez of the Division of Medical Oncology at University of Colorado.

Dr Keith Flaherty, Associate Professor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Director of Developmental Therapeutics, Henri and Belinda Termeer Center for Targeted Therapies, Massachusetts General Hospital said: "Based on the scientific and translational research behind SCIB1, I believe there is a compelling case for further investigation in both the metastatic and adjuvant melanoma settings. Despite meaningful recent advances in the treatment of this disease there still remains a significant unmet medical need. I am very excited to be working with Scancell and my other colleagues in the investigator team to bring this innovative treatment to patients."

Dr Paul Chapman, Dept. of Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center added: "SCIB1 represents a potentially important complement to checkpoint inhibitor therapy. Despite the unquestionable clinical utility of anti-PD-1 drugs, only around 30% of patients respond to treatment. Available data supports testing the hypothesis that the use of SCIB1 in combination with these agents may increase the number of patients responding to treatment and prolong progression free survival without the additional burden of significant further side effects." '