Part 1 – Ibrutinib and the development of combination therapies for B cell lymphoma

For physicians, patients, investors etc, major medical conferences are a way to check in on the progress of a company’s drugs in the context of the medical communities response to the data, i.e. the buzz. Negative buzz is generally pretty straightforward, reflecting poor results or unexpected toxicity in a clinical trial. Positive buzz should be (and often isn’t) more nuanced, as positive data, while great to see, need to be placed into the context of evolving clinical practice and the ever-present competition for patients. Results, positive or negative, need to be vetted for robustness: clinical trial stage, sample size, design; endpoint design; therapeutic window (the dose range between efficacy and toxicity); and duration of response.

Last year saw extraordinary advances in the treatment of B cell lymphoma, particularly the Non-Hodgkin Lymphomas (NHL) that include well known cancers like Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL), Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL), indolent NHL (iNHL) and many others. This advances included small molecule therapeutics that target critical drivers of lymphoma cell proliferation and survival, novel antibodies (“naked”, enhanced, payload carrying), ex vivo modified patient T cells that attack lymphomas upon reinjection, and a variety of other modalities. It was interesting to see that the companies getting the most buzz varied during the year, with different companies “winning” different conferences. Be assured that in this context, winning reflects wins for the stock price! Winning in the medical marketplace is a whole different story.

With the medical marketplace in mind, a reasonable question for 2014 pops up when you step back and look at the breadth of the B cell lymphoma therapeutic landscape.

How will biopharmaceutical companies, physicians, and payers develop and use combinations of these therapies?

Lets think about the possible combinations. The most obvious are those that we are already seeing widely used, such as the combination of a small molecule inhibitor with a tumor-targeting antibody. One example is the combination of ibrutinib, a BTK inhibitor, and rituximab, an anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody. Ibrutinib was approved for treatment of relapsed/treatment refractory (rr) MCL in November 2013 under the brand name Imbruvica, and approval for rrCLL is expected soon (these indications were filed for approval together, in August 2013). Patients with relapsed/refractory small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) were included in the CLL arm of the clinical trial.

CLL is a good example of the power of combination therapy. Rituximab monotherapy in rrCLL/SLL produced overall response rates (ORR) in the range of 55% and a complete response rate (CR) of somewhere under 10%, depending on the trial. Note here that ORR and CR refer to assessments of tumor burden at a specific and predetermined time after treatment is initiated. A CR does not indicate a cure but rather is a measure of the degree of efficacy. The ORR and CR measurements are most meaningful when presented in the context of duration of response (DOR) or in the context of progression-free survival (PFS) or overall survival (OS).

Monotherapy of rrCLL/SLL with ibrutinib produced ORRs ranging from 70-80%, with CRs ranging from 0 – 10%. Duration of response was good, and there was a measurable impact on PFS. There are different classes of rrCLL patients, based on cytogenetic status. High risk CLL patients commonly carry a deletion on chromosome 17 (del17p) and/or other abnormalities. Such mutations predict poor prognosis for these patients. Last April, the FDA granted Ibrutinib Breakthrough Therapy Designation for high-risk rrCLL/SLL del17p patients based on achievement of a 50% ORR in these patients when given ibrutinib monotherapy.

Now to the combination of ibrutinib and rituximab (and a chemo agent, bendamustine). As discussed in earlier coverage of the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting (ASH), linked here, treatment of high-risk CLL patients with the combination therapy produced an ORR of 95%, with 78% maintaining response through 18 months. While only 10% of the responses were designated CR, the long duration of the partial responses (PR) was a dramatic result.

The cost of Rituxan treatment for B cell lymphoma is generally quoted at ~10K/month but billed to insurance at about 5K monthly, so we are somewhere between 60-120K per year per patient in the US. Imbruvica will cost 130K per year per patient in the US. Note here that neither therapy, given alone, is considered curative. We don’t know yet what the durable remission rate will be for the combination therapy, where we define durable remission as no detectable disease (in the blood, lymph nodes, bone marrow) without maintenance therapy. Curative treatment means no disease in a patient who no longer requires drugs.

So it’s fair to say that these combination therapies will be very expensive and may need to be used for a long time. Given the current climate of cost control, especially outside of the US, what are companies doing to anticipate eventual pushback on premium pricing?

Just a quick reminder that Imbruvica (ibrutinib) is a Pharmacyclics/Johnson&Johnson (J&J) product and the Rituxan is a Roche product and further, that Roche has a next generation anti-CD20 antibody, obinutuzumab, recently approved for the treatment of CLL (including as first line treatment), under the brand name Gazyva. This antibody given in combination with a cheap chemotherapy agent, chlorambucil, produced an ORR = 78% and a CR of 28% in the phase 3 trial. This antibody was significantly better than Rituxan (rituximab) plus chlorambucil in the same clinical trial (ORR = 65%, CR = 7%). The trial was done in rrCLL patients including high-risk patients defined as del17p.

Another anti-CD20 antibody, ofatumumab from GSK, has been approved for second-line use in rrCLL. This drug, priced at 120K yearly, ran into reimbursement pressure in Europe and the UK as not showing sufficient benefit to justify the price. This is a hint of price pressures to come.

This is where I think things get really interesting. I spent some quality time on clinicaltrials.gov, trying to understand how companies competing in the B cell lymphoma space are looking ahead, the assumption being that one can do this by looking at the trials planned or underway for the top tier drugs. Many of the oral drugs in advanced development for B cell lymphomas are reviewed here.

Nearly all advanced oral drugs for B cell lymphoma have trials underway or planned with an anti-CD20 antibody. Most of these trials are done with rituximab, probably just reflecting the wide availability of this antibody. Perhaps some companies are sticking with rituximab in the belief that generic biosimilar forms of this antibody will become available in Europe (where it is now off-patent) and in the US (where patent protection expires in 2018), which may make combination therapy more widely available. The rituximab trials are not done in collaboration with Roche, with one notable exception which we will get to later.

There are 11 clinical trials listed as active that include ibrutinib with rituximab either alone or with various other agents. Some of these trials have already read out results:

Note that FL is follicular lymphoma and DLBCL is diffuse large B cell lymphoma. DLBCL-ABC is a subtype. These are all types of B cell lymphomas. R-CHOP is rituximab plus a standard mixture of chemotherapeutic agents, and I may or may not have defined this correctly, suffice to say if it says CHOP then there is a potent mix of chemo being given; “v” means versus, that is, it is a comparator arm.

There are another seven or eight single agent ibrutinib trials also, but I did not include those here, so what we see all together is a full court press of clinical trials designed to show benefit of ibrutinib in multiple different B cell lymphomas, as first line or second line therapy. These trials will produce a tidal wave of data that, if positive, will by their sheer volume place ibrutinib at the top of the heap of B cell lymphoma oral agents. So, yes, I’m betting on Pharmacyclics (stock symbol PCYC) and J&J to win the marketplace, at least for the near term.

Ibrutinib development does not stop there. There are three trials with lenalidomide, also known as Revlimid, approved as second line therapy for multiple myeloma (MM). A monotherapy trial of lenalidomide in CLL was halted last year due to an increase in deaths seen in the active arm. Even at a reduced dose (I’m guessing here) the use of this agent plus ibrutinib plus rituximab seems risky. Also, the drug is owned by Celgene. So why conduct trials with lenalidomide at all? The answer to that question will be found in the list of clinical trials for CC-292, Celgene’s BTK inhibitor under development for B cell lymphoma.

But just to finish with ibrutinib. Here are the rest of the active clinical trials I could find:

Ublituximab is a new anti-CD20 antibidy from TG Therapeutics and the clinical trial is being run by that company, not by J&J/PCYC. In contrast the ofatumumab trials, which are “active but not recruiting” are sponsored by Pharmacyclics.

Finally, just some tidbits. Ibrutinib presentations recently have included studies in some interesting new indications, particularly MM. There are two MM trials shown here, the second one being run in collaboration with Onyx Pharmaceuticals, whose proteosome inhibitor carfilzomib, has been approved for treatment of rrMM under the name Kyprolis.

I suspect we will see many more such collaborative efforts as the field matures.

Next up we will look at the efforts of two of the compounds seeking to compete with ibrutinib, Gilead’s idelalisib and Celgene’s CC-292.

Stay tuned.