Results from two studies at ESMO point to a targeted future for cholangiocarinoma with Agios and Incyte both planning year-end FDA filings in different patient subsets.

A first look at data from Merck & Co’s KEYNOTE-522 trial of Keytruda in early triple-negative breast cancer showed significant pathological response rates and hinted at good things to come in event-free survival, but experts at ESMO want more mature data.

Pfizer’s dominance of the CDK4/6 inhibitor market will come under renewed pressure as the MONALEESA-3 and MONARCH-2 studies for Novartis’s Kisqali and Lilly’s Verzenio presented at ESMO confirmed their survival benefits in advanced hormone-receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer. The data firmly push the drug class into front-line advanced setting in these patients.

Two new PARP inhibitor studies – GSK’s PRIMA and AstraZeneca/Merck & Co.’s PAOLA-1  – are set to widen the ovarian cancer market after they reported highly positive first-line results in advanced patients at ESMO.

Full data at ESMO show Opdivo managed to scrape a tolerability edge over standard-of-care sorafenib in liver cancer, but eyes were drawn to Roche’s early study of Tecentriq/Avastin as the way forward in this difficult-to-treat cancer.

Once the stuff of (largely implausible) science fiction, gene therapy is now a clinical reality and one that is taking an increasing share of the pharma R&D limelight. In Vivo takes a look at how these therapies work, how the field has emerged and where it is likely to go next.