An Interview from the 2016 EHA with Dr. Jeffrey Jones on the Role of Venetoclax in CLL
Dr. Susan O’Brien of the U. of California at Irvine shared the important papers from ASCO 2016 related to chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). One interesting abstract was a pre-clinical poster presentation of the new molecule, GDC-0853 that has a different way to bind to and thus block the BTK pathway. This is the pathway that ibrutinib blocks resulting in the impressive clinical efficacy for most patients, but a few can develop resistance.
Take Away Points:
- In the laboratory, GDC-0853 has been shown to turn off the same BTK pathway that is turned off by ibrutinib.
- GDC-0853 binds by a different mechanism and so might be an important option for those few patients that become resistant to ibrutunib due to a mutation in the C481 binding site.
- There is no human data yet to share.
The ASCO abstract is available here.
Here is the video of Dr. O’Brien discussing the research from ASCO 2016.
Another drug in early development, SNS-062, has a similar mechanism of binding as GDC-0853 as explained in this abstract from November 2015 at the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference: Molecular Targets and Cancer.
While this is very early in the process, it is encouraging to know there is ongoing research to help those who fail ibrutinib as this is an unmet need in CLL care.
Brian Koffman, MD 9-6-16
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