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New Approvals for Tumor-Agnostic Cancer Treatments — and the Questions They Raise

On August 15, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted accelerated approval to Genentech/Roche’s Rozlytrek (entrectinib) for the treatment of adult and adolescent patients with solid tumors that exhibit neurotrophic tyrosine receptor kinase (NTRK) fusions and for whom there are no existing effective treatments. While NTRK fusions are rare, appearing in about 1% of solid...

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Liquid Biopsy Methods Showing Their Worth

The ability to detect and monitor mutational changes in tumors through a simple blood test has spurred considerable development within the field of liquid biopsy. While questions remain about the accuracy of such tests and the most relevant analyte to measure (i.e., circulating tumor DNA, cell free DNA, circulating tumor cells), liquid biopsy could offer...

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Alzheimer’s Disease Update

Scientific evidence increasingly points to brain inflammation as a major driver of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Researchers have discovered that amyloid, one of the hallmarks of the disease, is antimicrobial and may help the immune system fight invaders to the brain. They theorize that accumulating amyloid plaques and tau tangles in response to infection set the...

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Precision Medicine and NGS Cancer Panels — ASCO Round-Up Part Two

As we wrote in our last post, precision medicine in oncology was the big theme of this year’s ASCO meeting. One of the key advances that has made possible this focus on treating cancer based on particular biomarkers expressed by a patient’s tumors, has been the advent of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS)-based analysis of tumor DNA....

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Hot Topics in Neurology at AAN

We have been thinking for some time about the importance of biomarkers in both drug discovery and clinical medicine as they relate to Alzheimer’s (and our In Vivo publication also addresses this topic in depth). At the recent American Academy of Neurology (AAN) conference, there was also widespread interest in this topic, spurred in part...

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Alzheimer’s Disease: Continued Clinical Failure and a Potential New Development Pathway

Alzheimer’s disease continues to be a costly and frustrating minefield for drug developers. Most recently, Boehringer Ingelheim halted development of the phosphodiesterase type 9 (PDE9) inhibitor BI 409306 after it failed in phase 2. Merck also ended its trial of verubecestat, the company’s beta-secretase-1 (BACE1) inhibitor, in early stage Alzheimer’s disease patients for futility, a few...

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Alzheimer’s Disease: The Case for Drug-Diagnostic Partnerships

Developing an Alzheimer’s disease drug has been notoriously expensive and high risk. Part of the problem has been the difficulty in identifying the right patients for clinical trials and at the right time – that is, those patients showing early signs of cognitive impairment who will progress to AD. However, new diagnostics, biomarkers, and digital...

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Giving Thanks in IO

The immuno-oncology (IO) field has a lot to be thankful for as the year comes to a close.   Not only are PD-1/PDL-1 inhibitors being rapidly approved, their use is being extended into new indications and tumor types well beyond what people expected. From melanoma and lung cancer to bladder, gastric and liver cancer, drugs...

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ESMO 2017 — Recent Developments in the Oncology Arena — Part One

We recently returned from the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2017 meeting, which is the major meeting for oncology professionals in Europe, attracting over 24,000 participants from 131 countries.  This fall meeting saw a lot of news, notably in the areas of lung cancer, breast cancer, and melanoma as well as immuno-oncology generally, including...

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Diagnosing Alzheimer’s Disease — Part 2

As we wrote in our last post, the ability to accurately diagnose Alzheimer’s disease before a person’s death has been problematic. Experts estimate that a third or more of patients’ cognitive impairment or dementia may be inaccurately diagnosed. As a result, such patients may not benefit from the treatments they do receive or may have...