In this edition of The Onco’Zine Brief Peter Hofland, Ph.D. talks with Christian Massacesi, MD, Senior Vice President, Head of Late Development Oncology R&D at AstraZeneca and with Jeffrey Skolnik, MD, Vice President, Clinical Development at Inovio Pharmaceuticals about new data and exciting developments both companies are presenting during the 2020 virtual annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology – ASCO.

This year, amidst the SAR-CoV-2 or coronavirus pandemic, the ASCO organization has been hard at work to offer a unique scientific program for oncology professionals, patient advocates, and industry representatives.

In the program, Hofland and Massacesi talk about AZD9833, a drug in clinical development for the treatment of women with ER+ HER2- advanced breast cancer. They also talk about a drug AstraZeneca is developing for the treatment of Tripple Negative Breast Cancer… and a potential treatment for a very uncommon form of lung cancer … and, last but not least, they talk about the company’s partnerships with Daiichi Sankyo in developing a very targeted drug – an Antibody-drug Conjugate or ADC – called Trastuzumab Deruxtecan - for the treatment of patients with HER2-positive advanced gastric cancer – and other HER2-positive cancers.

In the second part of the program, Hofland talks with Jeffrey Skolnik about the DNA medicines Inovio Pharmaceuticals is developing to potentially treat and protect people from serious diseases, including life-threatening diseases associated with HPV, cancer, and infectious diseases.

They talk about the company’s presentations during ASCO, including data about their HPV treatment and novel treatment for Glioblastoma or GBM, a hard to treat form of brain cancer. They also talk about the complexity of conducting clinical trials during the coronavirus pandemic and how the pandemic is impacting the clinical trial process.

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