Member Info for RayPointer

Ivy

Yes, I'm sure we will all be happier when the Combo trial is underway and I think the market will too.

2 quotes concerning Merck from the excellent link you posted some days ago

https://t.co/XsNc44FY2U

"Then in April, Merck and Incyte said a Phase III trial involving people with melanoma failed to show any benefit from a combination of epacadostat and Keytruda. Because oncologists see melanoma as the most likely cancer to respond to immunotherapy, confidence in the field plummeted. Big pharma companies swiftly dropped or pared back late-stage studies."

“There’s a lot of talk about these” immunotherapy combinations, says Roy Baynes, head of global clinical development at Merck, “but I’m not aware of any trial that has convincingly shown that the combination is better than PD-1 alone.”

Perhaps Merck are not yet a convert to Lindy's science and are waiting for further proof that hopefully the Combo trial will provide. The preliminary results from the trial may be enough to do the trick.
Alternatively, perhaps they are a conservative organisation not prone to commit to novel approaches.

ATB

Thanks Inan

Nuggets 3 and 4 are more like boulders LOL

As for you Rats, your first post of the day had me in stitches. After reading the post, I went outside to finish laying a brick wall. I'd better go out and check the bricks are the right way up.

Good points, all of you.

As for Inan

Well I always find little gold nuggets in his posts.

I have my own theory why no deal resulted from the SCIB1 trial.

Big pharma fight battles over various technological advances,

So there is a battle on checkpoint inhibitors.
There is a battle on CAR-T.
There is a battle on TCR.

So, here comes tiny Scancell, with novel technologies that, to my knowledge, nobody else is exploring with any vigour. There is no battlefield!

The 2 pronged method of binding to APCs is unique to Immunobody.
The sheer power of the immune response induced by Moditope is unique.

So, the problem Scancell have, is to persuade a big pharma to shift their emphasis from the battles already being waged.

No such problem for Juno which operates in the CAR-T/TCR battlefields.
As far as I can see, no successful phase 2 trial

https://www.junotherapeutics.com/our-pipeline/

1 trail is currently suspended - JTCR016

Also I trail discontinued - JCAR015 after trial deaths

https://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2017/03/01/after-trial-deaths-juno-pivots-and-scraps-lead-car-t-therapy/

As we know, Juno has been sold for $9 billion.
The reason - Juno has lots of trials in big pharma battlefields and Celgene are desperate to win battles.
It does not seem to matter that, so far, Juno does not have a successful phase 2 trial to its name.

Back to Scancell.
Could it be that a successful SCIB1/Keytruda trial will create an immunobody battlefield?
As for Moditope, I think the battlefield is already in formation.

All IMHO of course

.

https://immuno-oncologynews.com/2018/08/17/cancer-cells-can-flood-bloodstream-with-protein-warriors-against-immune-system-study-shows/?utm_medium=desktop-push-notification&utm_source=Notifications&utm_campaign=OneSignal

Very relevant to the imminent (hopefully) SCIB1 combo trial.
It appears that cancer cells can send out their own PD-L1 army into the bloodstream.

Rule 6

If you are going to post non-English, please also post an English translation of your post.

http://www.thewhitecrow.co.uk/

another first for Lancashire!

"I have never seen any pre clinical data that compares with moditope"

Inan is not alone.
Lindy said much the same thing and arguably more forcefully

Hi Wild
I came to a different conclusion.
They must be man and wife.

There appears to be a difference in approach for the 2 companies in that BionTech place a greater emphasis on partnering.

https://biontech.de/

"BioNTech’s commercial strategy is to collaborate with selected partners that have a similar drive and commitment in developing and commercializing truly innovative and disruptive immunotherapies."

Scancell, on the other hand, are only interested in partnering based on their own platforms.

Scancell's collaboration with BionTech is very promising in its own right. Even more interesting in that there could be a 3rd party (one of BionTech's other partners) keeping a close eye on this collaboration and ready to pounce if and when a favourable outcome results from the collaboration.

Agreed entirely

So is SCIB1 worth more than £46 mill ?

Provenge was sold for $820 million as a withdrawn vaccine!!

So, if I understand this.

a) The Scancell vaccine creates an army of high avidity cytotoxic T cells via clonal expansion
b) Once the tumour attack starts, the tumour starts to express more of the target epitopes (inflammation)
c) The immune system now thinks it is really onto something and accelerates the attack with further clonal expansion

The strength of clonal expansion is related to metabolic rate

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4837657/

So, the SCIB1 trial with a median age of 61 (from memory) is even more impressive

Sorry yes, BMS not Merck.

I cannot see a reason for failure especially, as you say, we already have a very successful SCIB1 trial.

I was under the impression that the clonal expansion took place around the APCs to which the vaccine binds.
Does it also take place in the vicinity of the tumour as the tumour expresses more and more of the epitopes?

It is worth repeating the statement below for a 2nd time. It appears that Scancell are doing work that you would have thought Merck themselves would do.

"""" We believe this is the first demonstration of the induction or enhancement of tumor-reactive cytotoxic CD4+ T cells after ipilimumab treatment and is therefore a novel property of CTLA-4 blockade.""""

So you have to admire Lindy's attention to detail.
She is not content to just rely on mouse experiments to prove synergy with Keytruda but she also does her level best to prove the synergy using patients.
Keytruda is paving the way for immunobody vaccines to attack the tumour with impunity. At least that's what is looks like to me.

Morning Wild

Yes, I looked at 240. It looks like Scancell's 3rd platform is more than promising.
I will have a closer look tonight and may have some questions

Thanks for the post

Oh, and one thing we know about CAR-T is that it is very expensive

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/895735

Thanks Wig
Interesting in that the NCI may well be the nearest US equivalent to our own CRUK.
Having said that, the NCI is government funded,

https://www.cancer.gov/about-nci/overview#funding

Also, the director has direct access to the President

"Provided the NCI director with direct access to the president of the United States and required the NCI director to submit an annual budget, called the “bypass budget,” directly to the president, bypassing the approval of the NIH director or HHS, as required of other National Institutes of Health (NIH) institutes."

https://www.cancer.gov/about-nci/overview/history

Kite's pipeline includes CAR and TCR therapies. One drug has been submitted for EU approval

https://www.kitepharma.com/our-research/pipeline/

CRUK seem to produce the trial progress document every 6 months or so. (September 2017 was the document prior to April 2018)
So we may get an update in September or October. Hopefully, we will also get RNSs from Scancell.

boom, you are correct.

http://commercial.cancerresearchuk.org/clinical-development