What does the AACR conference bring?

Nice post, Georges, (16 April) summarizing what we may expect from tonight's poster presentation in US at the American Association for Cancer Research.  Should be very significant.

Yesterday Merck gained the AACR headlines with details of its recent trials of Keytruda for melanoma and lung cancers. The conclusion was that the head to head trials with Yervoy showed that Keytruda offered better results and that it should be preferred.  As Bripoz pointed out, VLA is commencing trials with Yervoy (owned by Bristol Myer Squibbs) to hopefully show that the combination gives better results than Yervoy alone. See

http://www.bioworld.com/content/aacr-2015-keytruda-shines-melanoma-lung-cancer-0

The Study Lead for the Keytruda trial, Antionio Ribass, said that he believes that similar effects of Keytruda would be achieved with Optivo.  BMY has high hopes for Optivo with FDA approval and better results than its own Yervoy drug. With BMY and VLA now in a collaborative agreement, and BMY currently the most advanced biotech in immunotherapy drugs, it seems to me likely that CAVATAK will be combined with Optivo to see if it can offer better results than Keytruda.

The expected benefit of CAVATAK is that it both kills cancer cells and can be used to complement anti -PD-1 therapies such as Keytruda and Optivo - leading to better overall performance. Add that to the potential of intravenous delivery to find and destroy metastatic melanomas as well as some other major cancers, and we have potentially world-beating performance.

Another conclusion from yesterday's presentation - chemo may be on the way out, replaced soon by drugs that are far less harmful to the patient.