A bit more news from ASH 2012

Following up on our Immunotherapy post, here is a link to The In Vivo blog’s writeup of the deal struck between UPenn and Novartis to commercialize the CAR (and specifically CART19) technology that we discussed in our last post:

http://invivoblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/alliance-deal-of-year-nominee_418.html

In Vivo highlights this deal as one of its “Alliance” nominees of the year, and it illustrates the race going on among big pharma and biotech to tie up academic assets at an early stage. Indeed other big players tried very hard to secure this technology.

The Btk inhibitor Ibrutinib made its own splash over the last few days at ASH, including startling clinical data in CLL and MCL:

here’s the CLL press release (via FierceBiotech):

http://www.fiercebiotech.com/press-releases/new-investigational-agent-targets-gene-signaling-pathways-improve-therapeut

and the MCL story off the JNJ website:

http://www.jnj.com/connect/news/all/follow-up-results-of-phase-2-study-of-investigational-agent-ibrutinib-in-relapsed-refractory-mantle-cell-lymphoma-presented-at-american-society-of-hematology-annual-meeting

Taken together you have to wonder how these competing technologies – orally dosed small molecule kinase inhibitors v ex vivo T cell manipulation – will play out. Add a big dose of new biologics to the mix, and its clear that the field of B cell lymphoma treatment will become a very interesting scientific, clinical practice and commercial landscape.