Journalist @ApexOnco. The Wolverine Of Biotech / Mr ASH. Interested in: oncology. Not interested in: what stock you bought today. My internal plan is as follows
London, UK
Joined October 2012
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$TNGX off 17%. A bit naughty, including responses from a vopi dose that was deemed too toxic, as @ByMadeleineA wrote -> apexonco.com/esmo-2026-tango… #Esmo26
No idea if this is why $MRNA is off 17%, or if it's just because ph3 data have waned from ph2, but this is a smart take #Esmo26 $MRK
$MRNA with the single most hilarious possible outcome in this study. EFS HR 0.58. Down the the hundredth, EXACTLY what *NEO*-adjuvant treatment with pembro yielded against adjuvant pembro (the nerfed comparator $MRNA studied against) in SWOG S1801.
What does this mean in English? $MRNA’s drug is showing the exact same benefit versus adjuvant pembrolizumab as NEOadjuvant pembrolizumab did.
Even more simply? If you just give patients a few doses of the pembrolizumab BEFORE you cut their cancer out, you do what $MRNA does for you, except with just the free tumor that’s already inside your body. No need to pay for this $400K drug.
And this makes rational sense, right? The whole point of $MRNA’s vaccine is to produce stuff that looks like the tumor.
You know what looks A LOT like the tumor does? THE FREAKING TUMOR!!!!!!
Absolutely poetic that $MRNA produced the EXACT HR benefit as neoadjuvant pembro did. Truly, the most hilarious possible outcome.
Now can we move on from this bullshit? $MRK and $MRNA should feel free to study their vaccine against the REAL standard of care now - NEOadjuvant immunotherapy.
From my perspective, this has been total fugaze, and an amateurish pump and dump worthy of much lesser enterprises.
Yes indeed. I'm not suggesting the argument is 100% sound, but it's a smart take that raises many pertinent questions $MRNA $MRK #Esmo26 xitter.cf/bridgelabd/status/2113…
Agree — and to be clear, this is not a comment on whether $MRNA Phase 3 itself succeeded. From a commercialization and ultimate patient-benefit standpoint, the logic is straightforward: if simply moving a few doses of pembrolizumab earlier (before surgery) can already deliver a large relative risk reduction, why add a fully personalized vaccine on top later?
INTerpath-001 showed an RFS HR of 0.58 (2-year RFS 82.2% vs 70.0%) and DMFS HR of 0.62 for intismeran + pembro versus adjuvant pembro alone — nearly identical to the HR 0.58 from neoadjuvant pembro versus adjuvant pembro in SWOG S1801.
That overlap is hard to dismiss when the vaccine requires individualized manufacturing and logistics at very high cost. Cost-effectiveness looks challenging when a simpler neoadjuvant approach can produce a similar relative benefit. This is also a key reason $BNTX has leaned toward off-the-shelf mRNA strategies rather than fully personalized ones.
I’ve been saying the market’s expectations after the August topline were too aggressive. These numbers look like a solid but incremental adjuvant result, not the major paradigm shift that was priced in.
Didn't take long for the first #Esmo26 embargo breach then.
Another frisson: the clocks change in Europe (but not in the US) on Saturday night. Enjoy those embargoes!
Obv we're still desperate for more data on CCR8, but this $BMY imzokitug ph1/2 trial expansion is barely credible. 185 -> 949 patients?! clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT…
#ESMO26 regular abstracts lift at 6:05pm EST today.
Check out all the @ApexOnco previews here -> apexonco.com/search/node?key…
All #ESMO26 late-breaking abstracts will be published at 12:05am European time on the day of presentation.