Episode 22: Practice, Pitfalls, and Possibilities

Welcome back to Season 4! In this latest episode, we take a look at data from immunotherapy clinical trials from several different angles and investigate the challenges associated presented by different combination partners, control arms, patient populations, biomarkers, line of therapy, etc. When important phase 3 readouts hit the newswires, inevitable questions follow: - Is the data practice changing? - Which regimen should be used with which patient population? - What happens on the Weds after the conference in the clinic when a new patient presents; will oncologists do anything differently? While it's nice to have several positive trial results, how do physicians go about making sense of them? What are some of the hidden pitfalls of cross-trial comparisons that we should watch out for and consider? Professor Tom Powles (Barts Cancer Centre, London) is our narrator for this show and walks us through various challenges and opportunities that both investigators and oncologists face. We explore various examples from recent randomised clinical trial results in lung, renal and bladder cancers, as well as metastatic melanoma.   Along the way, we interview numerous experts who have treated cancer patients with several different types of therapy and participated in clinical trials, including Drs Roy Herbst (Yale), Hossein Borghaei (Fox Chase), Jack West (Swedish), Alan Sandler (Genentech) in lung cancer. Other specialists discuss the underlying science and practical aspects they have experienced to help illustrate the challenges and opportunities that the complexity in unravelling cancer presents and look at how emerging biomarkers can help. These include Professor Charles Swanton FRS and Dr Nicky McGranahan (UCL), Drs David Fabrizio (Foundation Medicine) and Kunle Odunsi (Roswell Park).   We also touch on the future and how important 'big data' is becoming, not just in terms of clinical trials, but the possibilities that it offers for personalising therapy. Dr Lizzie Coker (now at Sanger Institute) explains how her work on developing a public repository is intended to empower basic scientists with big datasets and the value of social media for young researchers. You can find more information in the show notes on https://noveltargets.com © 2018 Blue Ice Publishing LLC. All Rights Reserved.