The Onco'Zine Brief

The annual congress of the European Society for Medical oncology or ESMO, is one of the most influential oncology meetings for clinicians, researchers, patient advocates, and healthcare industry representatives from all over the world. This year the annual Congress was held September 9 - 13, 2022 in the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles in Paris, France.

In this episode of the Onco’Zine Brief, Peter Hofland, Ph.D., talks with:

- Eric Vivier DVM, Ph.D, senior vice president and scientific officer of Innate Pharma about anti-cancer drugs designed to harness the power of Natural Killer (NK-) Cells. During the ESMO Congress, the company presented a number of studies discussing the safety and efficacy of lacutamab in patients with relapsed/refractory peripheral T-cell lymphoma that express KIR3DL2 and the design of multispecific antibodies (ANKET for antigen-specific activation of NK cells).

- Daniel Teper, PharmD, MBA, co-founder, chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of Cytovia Therapeutics, a company developing Precision NK Therapeutics which may revolutionize cancer treatment. During the annual ESMO Congress, the company presented new preclinical data for its GPC3 Flex-NK™ cell engager antibody in combination with natural killer cells.

- Neil H. Bander, MD, Director of Urological Oncology Research at Weill Cornell Medicine and Co-founder of Convergent Therapeutics about prostate cancer. The company is developing a therapeutic platform that is capable of targeting validated and novel cancer antigens, including the first antibodies to specifically target prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA).

About The Onco'Zine Brief
The Onco'Zine Brief is distributed in the United States via PRX (Public Radio Exchange). In the United Kingdom and Europe, the program is distributed via UK Health Radio (UKHR). And the program can be downloaded via most podcasts and streaming media services, including iTunes, Spotify, TuneIn, and iHeart Radio.

For more information about The Onco'Zine Brief or how to sponsor or support this public radio broadcast and podcast, visit to download our Media Kit, visit Patreon at or contact the sales team.

For more information about cancer and cancer treatments, visit our online journal Onco'Zine.

To sign up for The Onco'Zine Newsletter (open for residents of the United States only), text the word CANCER to 66866.

The Onco’Zine Brief is made possible, in part, by Java Original Coffee – the home of artisan roasted coffee.

Clinical trials

• Study of Lacutamab in Peripheral T-cell Lymphoma - NCT04984837
• Safety and Efficacy of Lacutamab in Patients With Relapse Peripheral T-cell Lymphoma That Express KIR3DL2 - NCT05321147
• IPH4102 Alone or in Combination With Chemotherapy in Patients With Advanced T Cell Lymphoma (TELLOMAK) - NCT03902184

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Glioblastoma is an aggressive type of cancer that can occur in the brain or spinal cord. And while the disease can occur at any age, it tends to occur more often in older people.

According to the American Cancer Society, United States, doctors diagnose between 12,000 and 14,000 patients with glioblastoma in the U.S. each year. There is currently no cure for glioblastoma. The median length of survival after a diagnosis is 15-
18 months, while the disease’s five-year survival rate is around 10%.

And while all glioblastomas recur, initial treatments may keep the tumor controlled
for months or even years.

To improve the current standard of care, ongoing research and development is required.
Earlier this year, researchers at Modifi Biosciences published a critical study in thejournal
Science, validating a new oncology platform based on new classes of molecules
that exploit tumor-associated DNA repair defects through direct cancer cell DNA modification.

This approach redefines the rules on how to selectively kill cancer cells via direct DNA
modification

The technology bypasses conventional approaches that indirectly target proteins in cancer cells and demonstrates robust anti-tumor activity in glioma, one of the deadliest forms of brain cancer, while sparing normal tissue.

In the publication in Science, a new class of molecules were found to be very selective against cancer cells that lack expression of a key DNA repair protein.

And approximately half of all glioblastomas and up to 80% of gliomas lack this particular protein. Furthermore. emerging research indicates that this deficiency is seen in many
other tumor types, suggesting broad applicability for this strategy in treating cancer.

Based on this research, scientists at Modifi Bio are creating a new class of molecules, based on research conducted at Yale.

In this episode of The Onco’Zine Brief, Peter Hofland, Ph.D. talks with Ranjit S. Bindra, MD, Ph.D., a physician-scientist at Yale School of Medicine and the co-founder of Modify Bio.


Reference
[1] Lin K, Gueble SE, Sundaram RK, Huseman ED, Bindra RS, Herzon SB. Mechanism-based design of agents that selectively target drug-resistant glioma. Science. 2022 Jul 29;377(6605):502-511. doi: 10.1126/science.abn7570. Epub 2022 Jul 28. PMID: 35901163.

About The Onco'Zine Brief
The Onco'Zine Brief is distributed in the United States via PRX (Public Radio Exchange). In the United Kingdom and Europe, the program is distributed via UK Health Radio (UKHR). And the program can be downloaded via most podcasts and streaming media services, including iTunes, Spotify, TuneIn, and iHeart Radio.

For more information about The Onco'Zine Brief or how to sponsor or support this public radio broadcast and podcast, visit Onco'Zine to download our Media Kit or visit Patreon to become a Sustaining Member of the show and support the program.

For more information about cancer and cancer treatments, visit our online journal Onco'Zine.

To sign up for The Onco'Zine Newsletter (open for residents of the United States only), text the word CANCER to 66866.


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Your annual doctors- (or wellness-) visit may not be enough to prevent diseases like cancer. Daily health and lifestyle choices are the key to cancer prevention - but what are these choices? What is important?

In "It’s Time you Knew’ - The Power of Your Choices to Prevent Women's Cancer", board certified gynecological oncologist Dr Valene Wright offers simple and straightforward tools to help women listen to their own body – and in doing so take control of their own health.

In this episode Peter Hofland, Ph.D. talks with board certified gynecological oncologist and surgeon Valene Wright, MD. In her book, Wright helps women - but also men - to make critical choices help prevent cancer.

To order Dr. Wright's book, click on the link: https://amzn.to/3P5wIxl

About The Onco'Zine Brief
The Onco'Zine Brief is distributed in the United States via PRX (Public Radio Exchange). In the United Kingdom and Europe, the program is distributed via UK Health Radio (UKHR). And the program can be downloaded via most podcasts and streaming media services, including iTunes, Spotify, TuneIn, and iHeart Radio.

For more information about The Onco'Zine Brief or how to sponsor or support this public radio broadcast and podcast, visit: http://www.oncozine.com to download our Media Kit or visit Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theoncozinebrief to support the program.

For more information about cancer and cancer treatments, visit our online journal Onco'Zine at www.oncozine.com

To sign up for The Onco'Zine Newsletter (open for residents of the United States only), text the word CANCER to 66866.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-onco-zine-brief--2786156/support.

After checking your cholesterol, hemoglobin A1C, and glucose level during your annual wellness check, your primary care phycisian says: 'It looks like we haven't done your genome. Why don't we do that?' How would you respond? If you have a genetic mutation that increases your risk for a treatable medical condition, would you want to know? For many people the answer is yes. But typically, such information has not been a part of routine primary care.

In this episode Peter Hofland PhD talks with Noelle Carbognin and Elizabeth Chao, MD, FACMG, a Medical Geneticist at UC Irvine about about Lynch Syndrome, a type of inherited cancer syndrome associated with a genetic predisposition to different cancer types, including Colorectal cancer and about various aspects of genetic testing, new technologies, including next generation sequencing technology, and the potential future possibilities and benefits of genetic testing in preventing disease.[1][2]

About The Onco'Zine Brief
The Onco'Zine Brief is distributed in the United States via PRX (Public Radio Exchange). In the United Kingdom and Europe, the program is distributed via UK Health Radio (UKHR). And the program can be downloaded via most podcasts and streaming media services, including iTunes, Spotify, TuneIn, and iHeart Radio.

For more information about The Onco'Zine Brief or how to sponsor or support this public radio broadcast and podcast, visit: http://www.oncozine.com to download our Media Kit or visit Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theoncozinebrief to support the program.

For more information about cancer and cancer treatments, visit our online journal Onco'Zine at www.oncozine.com

To sign up for The Onco'Zine Newsletter (open for residents of the United States only), text the word CANCER to 66866.

Reference
[1] Espenschied CR, LaDuca H, Li S, McFarland R, Gau CL, Hampel H. Multigene Panel Testing Provides a New Perspective on Lynch Syndrome. J Clin Oncol. 2017 Aug 1;35(22):2568-2575. doi: 10.1200/JCO.2016.71.9260. Epub 2017 May 17. PMID: 28514183; PMCID: PMC7186580.
[2] Karam R, Conner B, LaDuca H, McGoldrick K, Krempely K, Richardson ME, Zimmermann H, Gutierrez S, Reineke P, Hoang L, Allen K, Yussuf A, Farber-Katz S, Rana HQ, Culver S, Lee J, Nashed S, Toppmeyer D, Collins D, Haynes G, Pesaran T, Dolinsky JS, Tippin Davis B, Elliott A, Chao E. Assessment of Diagnostic Outcomes of RNA Genetic Testing for Hereditary Cancer. JAMA Netw Open. 2019 Oct 2;2(10):e1913900. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.13900. PMID: 31642931; PMCID: PMC6820040.

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Research out earlier this year confirms what many doctors had feared: Cancer
screenings dropped significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The study, published in the February 2022 edition of Journal of the National
Comprehensive Cancer Network, examined data from the Ontario Cancer Registry in
Canada. The results showed that in March 2020 the week-to-week rate of cancer diagnosis dropped by 34.3%. And this worries doctors, because over the last few decades, the
cancer survival rates have improved, in part because of earlier detection of disease. [1]

Doctors fear that this disruption to healthcare access may negatively impact early detection of cancers which may lead to serious problems later.

Another aspect doctors worry about is that delayed diagnoses and treatments means
that in some cases a patient’s diagnoses may not be brought to light until later stages – stage 3 and 4 – when cancer is more difficult to treat.

Based on the available data, some experts predict a spike in new cancer diagnosis
later this year and in 2023. The main reason, they believe, is pandemic-related, including
lockdowns and fears of the coronavirus – which cause COVID-19.

In addition to early diagnosis, the pandemic also stalled, delayed, or canceled clinical trials.
Based on some estimates, this impacted as many as 60% of all oncology clinical trials and biological therapies in the United States.

One big question remains, what are the real implications of stalling or canceling these
clinical trials?

In this episode of The Onco'Zine Brief, Peter Hofland, Ph,D. talks with Marie E. Lamont, the general manager and chief executive officer of Inteliquet, a company that strives to match patients to clinical trials, accurately and promptly – or, in other words, the company ensures that physicians and their patients have access to the latest and best clinical trials, using decision, making technology developed by the company.

About The Onco'Zine Brief
The Onco'Zine Brief is distributed in the United States via PRX (Public Radio Exchange). In the United Kingdom and Europe, the program is distributed via UK Health Radio (UKHR). And the program can be downloaded via most podcasts and streaming media services, including iTunes, Spotify, TuneIn, and iHeart Radio.

For more information about The Onco'Zine Brief or how to sponsor or support this public radio broadcast and podcast, visit: http://www.oncozine.com to download our Media Kit or visit Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theoncozinebrief to support the program.

For more information about cancer and cancer treatments, visit our online journal Onco'Zine at www.oncozine.com

To sign up for The Onco'Zine Newsletter (open for residents of the United States only), text the word CANCER to 66866.

Reference
[1] Eskander A, Li Q, Yu J, Hallet J, Coburn NG, Dare A, Chan KKW, Singh S, Parmar A, Earle CC, Lapointe-Shaw L, Krzyzanowska MK, Hanna TP, Finelli A, Louie AV, Look Hong N, Irish JC, Witterick IJ, Mahar A, Noel CW, Urbach DR, McIsaac DI, Enepekides D, Sutradhar R. Incident Cancer Detection During the COVID-19 Pandemic. J Natl Compr Canc Netw. 2022 Feb 1:1-9. doi: 10.6004/jnccn.2021.7114. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35104788.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-onco-zine-brief--2786156/support.

In the past 30 years, the survival rate for breast cancer has improved by about 40%, one of the highest survival rates of any cancer. The increase in survival is, in part, due to advances in screening technology as well as improvement in cancer treatment and a better understanding of the biology of cancer. All of which have had an impact on survival.

In this episode of The Onco’Zine Brief Peter Hofland, Ph.D. talks with talking with Stephen Malamud, MD, who is the regional director of medical oncology at Nuvance Health, a health network with hospitals, medical practices, and care centers located throughout New York’s Hudson Valley and Western Connecticut.

Hofland and Malamud talk about some of the results of studies presented during the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held December 7 – 10, 2021 in San Antonio, Texas, and virtually via streaming media. For this episode of The Onco’Zine Brief, the producers and editors selected just a few key presentations. In each case, Hofland and Malamud briefly discuss the study as well as how the results may improve the health-related Quality of Life (hrQoL) of patients. They also try to answer if the study results may change the way medicine is practiced.

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Cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the world, and numbers are on the rise. To respond to the growing need for therapeutic solutions, much research is needed. In this episode of The Onco’Zine Brief Peter Hofland, Ph.D. talks with Susan Pandya, MD.

Pandya is Vice President Clinical Development and Global Head of Cancer Metabolism at Servier Pharmaceuticals. She is also a board-certified Hematologist-Oncologist and a master clinician with a passion for innovation in cancer treatment. In her current role as Vice President of Clinical Development at Servier Pharmaceuticals Pandya is overseeing hematology and oncology clinical development programs. She is involved in developing novel therapeutics in rare oncology indications and is leading teams with the design, planning, and execution of Phase 1 and Phase 3 global pivotal studies.

Hofland and Pandya talk about how Servier Pharmaceuticals has made oncology one of the company's foremost priorities and endeavors to become a major player in treatments for cancers that are difficult to treat and for which therapeutic needs are generally not yet met, such as gastrointestinal, hematologic, pancreatic and pediatric cancers.

About The Onco'Zine Brief
The Onco'Zine Brief is distributed in the United States via PRX (Public Radio Exchange). In the United Kingdom and Europe, the program is distributed via UK Health Radio (UKHR). And the program can be downloaded via most podcasts and streaming media services, including iTunes, Spotify, TuneIn, and iHeart Radio.

For more information about The Onco'Zine Brief or how to sponsor or support this public radio broadcast and podcast, visit: http://www.oncozine.com to download our Media Kit or visit Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theoncozinebrief to support the program.

For more information about cancer and cancer treatments, visit our online journal Onco'Zine at www.oncozine.com

To sign up for The Onco'Zine Newsletter (open for residents of the United States only), text the word CANCER to 66866.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-onco-zine-brief--2786156/support.

In this episode of The Onco’Zine Brief Peter Hofland Ph.D. talks with Ellen J. Kim, MD. Kim is the Medical Director of the Dermatology Clinic at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine and Professor of Dermatology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the Lead Principal Investigator for the Phase 3 FLASH (Fluorescent Light Activated Synthetic Hypericin) study in cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL). This study is the largest multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, skin-directed therapy study in cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, to date, enrolling a total of 169 patients.

In our program today Hofland and Kim talk about the success of HyBryte™ (previously known as (SGX301); hypericin ointment 0.25%) in the broad cutaneous T-cell lymphoma patient population.

HyBryte™, being developed by Soligenix, a late-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing products to treat rare diseases where there is an unmet medical need, is a novel, first-in-class, photodynamic therapy utilizing safe, visible light for activation.

The active ingredient in HyBryte™ is synthetic hypericin, a potent photosensitizer that is topically applied to skin lesions that is taken up by the malignant T-cells, and then activated by visible light 16 to 24 hours later. The use of visible light in the red-yellow spectrum has the advantage of penetrating more deeply into the skin (much more so than ultraviolet light) and therefore potentially treating deeper skin disease and thicker plaques and lesions. This treatment approach avoids the risk of secondary malignancies (including melanoma) inherent with the frequently employed DNA-damaging drugs and other types of phototherapy that are dependent on ultraviolet exposure.

Combined with photoactivation, hypericin has demonstrated significant anti-proliferative effects on activated normal human lymphoid cells and inhibited the growth of malignant T-cells isolated from CTCL patients. In a published Phase 2 clinical study in CTCL, patients experienced a statistically significant (p=0.04) improvement with topical hypericin treatment whereas the placebo was ineffective.

HyBryte™ has received orphan drug and fast track designations from the FDA, as well as an orphan designation from the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

About The Onco'Zine Brief
The Onco'Zine Brief is distributed in the United States via PRX (Public Radio Exchange). In the United Kingdom and Europe, the program is distributed via UK Health Radio (UKHR). And the program can be downloaded via most podcasts and streaming media services, including iTunes, Spotify, TuneIn, and iHeart Radio.

For more information about The Onco'Zine Brief or how to sponsor or support this public radio broadcast and podcast, visit: http://www.oncozine.com to download our Media Kit or visit Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theoncozinebrief to support the program.

For more information about cancer and cancer treatments, visit our online journal Onco'Zine at www.oncozine.com

To sign up for The Onco'Zine Newsletter (open for residents of the United States only), text the word CANCER to 66866.

Reference
FLASH [Fluorescent Light Activated Synthetic Hypericin] Clinical Study: Topical SGX301 (Synthetic Hypericin) for the Treatment of Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma (Mycosis Fungoides) - NCT02448381

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In this episode of The Onco’Zine Brief Peter Hofland, Ph.D. talks with Eyal Talor, Ph.D., a clinical immunologist with over 25 years of hands-on management experience in clinical research and drug development. Talor joined CEL-SCI in October 1993 and was promoted to Chief Scientific Officer in October 2009. CEL-SCI is developing a new immunotherapeutic drug for the treatment of cancer, autoimmune diseases, and infectious diseases. In today’s program, Hofland and Talor are talking about one of these agents, an investigational drug called leukocyte interleukin, or Multikine®

Multikine® is currently in late-stage development and is being investigated as a possible new adjuvant therapy for patients diagnosed with head-and-neck cancer and cervical dysplasia.

The published results of clinical studies, including a recently concluded Phase 3 study, are very promising in patients diagnosed with head-and-neck cancer. Patients treated with this new anticancer agent in combination with standard of care (SOC) versus standard of care alone had an overall survival benefit of 14.1% at five years. These results exceeded the predefined 10% overall survival benefit set out for the study population as a whole.

About The Onco'Zine Brief
The Onco'Zine Brief is distributed in the United States via PRX (Public Radio Exchange). In the United Kingdom and Europe, the program is distributed via UK Health Radio (UKHR). And the program can be downloaded via most podcasts and streaming media services, including iTunes, Spotify, TuneIn, and iHeart Radio.

For more information about The Onco'Zine Brief or how to sponsor or support this public radio broadcast and podcast, visit: http://www.oncozine.com to download our Media Kit or visit Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theoncozinebrief to support the program.

For more information about cancer and cancer treatments, visit our online journal Onco'Zine at www.oncozine.com

To sign up for The Onco'Zine Newsletter (open for residents of the United States only), text the word CANCER to 66866.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-onco-zine-brief--2786156/support.

In this episode of The Onco’Zine Brief Peter Hofland, Ph.D. talks with Diane Simeone, MD, the Committee Chair and Principal Investigator and Executive Committee Chair of the PRECEDE Consortium. Simeone is also the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Professor of Surgery, Department of Surgery at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Professor, Department of Pathology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Director, Pancreatic Cancer Center and Associate Director, Translational Research, Perlmutter Cancer Center.

Hofland also talks with Tom Schoenherr, the Chief Executive Officer of Ambry Genetics, one of the participating industry partners of the PRECEDE program.

In today’s episode Simeone, Schoenherr, and Hofland talk about Pancreatic Cancer and a new, international collaborative initiative called The Pancreatic Cancer Early Detection or PRECEDE Consortium, which includes more than 35 leading academic medical centers across the globe. The PRECEDE Consortium wants to transform the early detection and prevention of pancreatic cancer, with the aim of increasing the 5-year survival rate from 10 percent today to 50 percent within the next 10 years

In addition to academic centers, the PRECEDE Consortium includes industry partners who bring their expertise and resources in genetic testing, pathology, and imaging as well as in information technology to support the program; to determine who is at an elevated risk for developing pancreatic cancer, define that risk, and invite those with a higher risk to participate in a state-of-the-art clinical screening program.

The PRECEDE Consortium analyzes and standardizes data curated through an integrated diagnostics platform called LATTICE™, a platform that runs on Amazon Web Services or AWS. LATTICE uses Amazon HealthLake, a HIPAA-eligible service that helps organizations store, transform, query, and analyze health data, and will help researchers and clinicians gain new genomic insights for detecting and preventing pancreatic cancer.

About The Onco'Zine Brief
The Onco'Zine Brief is distributed in the United States via PRX (Public Radio Exchange). In the United Kingdom and Europe, the program is distributed via UK Health Radio (UKHR). And the program can be downloaded via most podcasts and streaming media services, including iTunes, Spotify, TuneIn, and iHeart Radio.

For more information about The Onco'Zine Brief or how to sponsor or support this public radio broadcast and podcast, visit: http://www.oncozine.com to download our Media Kit or visit Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theoncozinebrief to support the program.

For more information about cancer and cancer treatments, visit our online journal Onco'Zine at www.oncozine.com

To sign up for The Onco'Zine Newsletter (open for residents of the United States only), text the word CANCER to 66866.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-onco-zine-brief--2786156/support.