Category Archives: Rational Drug Design

Vanquish Oncology – Procaspase 3 Activation Factor to Selectively Induce Apoptosis

Procaspase-3 is an executioner protein catalyzes the hydrolysis of more than 100 protein targets. These cleavage events ultimately lead to cell suicide, or apoptosis. Caspase-3 is triggered by the intrinsic and extrinsic apoptosis cascades. Continue reading

Priority Review for Potent Novel Therapy for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL)

Venetoclax is a novel cancer therapy being developed by Roche and AbbVie. The U.S. FDA has accepted the New Drug Application and granted Priority Review and Breakthrough Therapy Designation for venetoclax for the treatment of people with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) who have received at least one prior therapy, including those with 17p deletion. Continue reading

Two New Drugs Effective in Kidney Cancer – Opdivo and Cometriq

Opdivo (nivolumab – BMS) and Cometriq (cabozantinib -Exelixis) demonstrated positive results in studies of patients with kidney cancer. Renal cell carcinoma is the most common type of kidney cancer in adults, accounting for more than 100,000 deaths annually. Globally, the five-year survival rate for those diagnosed with metastatic, or advanced kidney cancer, is 12.1 percent. Continue reading

Tipifarnib Ras Inhibitor Pursued by Kura

A drug that was rejected by the FDA in 2005 for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia, and has also failed studies in pancreatic cancer will be further developed by a company called Kura, which in-licensed the drug from J&J. Continue reading

Adenosine Receptor Agonist for Liver Cancer

Can-Fite BioPharma announced that it has dosed the first patient in a Phase II trial for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer. The study will enroll 78 patients with refractory advanced hepatocellular carcinoma  with Child-Pugh Class B cirrhosis. Patients will receive 25 mg of CF102 orally twice a day; the endpoint will be overall survival between those receiving CF102 versus placebo. Continue reading

Kyprolis FOCUS Phase 3 Study for Multiple Myeloma

Last week, Amgen (Onyx) announced negative news from its FOCUS clinical trial of multiple myeloma drug Kyprolis. Let’s put this into perspective. Continue reading

Targeted therapies for cancer – overview

The National Cancer Institute has a very informative, yet easy to understand overview  presented as a Q&A – Targeted Cancer Therapies. Continue reading

Monoclonal antibodies + kinase inhibitors are better than antibodies alone in breast cancer and B-cell lymphoma

The combination of Herceptin plus pan-HER (EGFR and Her 2 an 4) kinase inhibitor neratinib resulted in a 33% improvement in progression free survival versus Herceptin alone in breast cancer patients.  Rituxan combined with idelalisib, PI3K inhibitor, resulted in a near doubling of progression-free survival at 24 weeks versus Rituxan, alone in patients with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and small cell lymphoma.  The news for neratinib tripled the valuation of Puma Biotechnology, while the FDA granted approval of Gilead’s drug Zydelig (idelalisib). Continue reading