In the “Breaking News” department – at least as pertains to breast cancer – I thought this year’s AACR was a bust. There just isn’t much new going on, but here is what I did find:
A number of new targets have been identified, which will hopefully lead quickly to low-impact, high-benefit therapies. The advantage to these targeted therapies is that there is less “collateral damage” to healthy cells.
I think researchers have heard the demands of the patient community for more triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) research and that it’s starting to pay off. Each year I’m seeing more studies focused on TNBC, which is particularly important since we have no reliable targets.
One such potential advance is the use GDC-0425, an agent which blocks the protein kinase Chk1 and prevents cell repair. The inhibitor is being given alongside the chemotherapy agent gemcitabine. This data is from a Phase I trial.
There was also a promising Phase I study evaluating immunotherapy in TNBC. MPDL3280A targets the immune system’s T-cells, enabling them to return to attacking cancer cells. There have been some serious side effects that must be watched, but one can hope…
Speaking of immunotherapies, if there was a buzz about anything this year, I think immunotherapy is it. Researchers are realizing that creating something as effective as the human immune system to kill human cancer hasn’t been working. Instead, they are turning attention to why the immune system stops functioning and how to support its reactivation. According to one researcher, “Many patients who are on immunotherapy don’t even feel like they are taking a treatment.” Sounds good to me if we can make it happen!
On the prevention front I found two breast-cancer specific studies: One suggesting that extended overnight fasting (this study looked at 12 hours from dinner to breakfast) stabilized glucose levels and might thereby reduce cancer rates. I wouldn’t call this clinically relevant yet, but they are looking to investigate further. Perhaps curb the midnight munchies for now? Also, if you’ve been using aspirin for 16 years or more, you might also benefit from a reduced risk of breast cancer. Again, it’s early and they are not recommending a change without consulting your physician.
In my personal opinion, the need for new therapies to benefit metastatic breast cancer patients remains urgent. I didn’t see much that impressed me in terms of treatments poised to make a clinical impact. The focus was in broader areas of investigation, such as immunotherapies and circulating tumor cells, or CTCs.
CTCs are measurable cells in the bloodstream that correlate with cancer progression to metastasis, and may also allow ongoing and careful monitoring of cancer through phases of metastasis. Blood tests are obviously far easier than taking sequential biopsies, and allow for more frequent assessment. Labs are working on correlating CTC results with comparable tissue biopsies to ensure the reliability of the markers – but I honestly believe they are a game-changer.
Getting to these new kinds of progress is being done in large part thanks to integrative investigation. The shear volume of genomic information demands the attention of biologists, geneticists, engineers, computational scientists, microscopic imaging specialists, database managers, and computer manufacturers, to name just a few. Today the very physical space of researchers is being arranged to address these collaborative efforts. One research implied that there more contributor names you have on the last slide, the better you’re doing in cancer research today. When incredible minds from biological, physical, engineering and computational perspectives, come together to tackle the challenges of cancer we can make new kinds of progress – at last.
