Collaboration: June 11, 2017 Snippets
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A few weeks ago on May 23, the United States Food & Drug Administration granted approval to a new cancer treatment: a drug developed by Merck, scientifically known as pembrolizumab, and now better known by its brand name Keytruda.
FDA approves first cancer treatment for any solid tumor with a specific genetic feature | US FDA
This is a big deal for two reasons. First of all, it’s the first time that the FDA has approved a cancer drug for treatment of any solid tumor with a specific genetic signature, without being specific to any organ or location in the body. In other words, rather than being approved for lung cancer or colorectal cancer, this drug is approved for targeting any tumor that features a particular gene expression pattern — wherever it might be located. As quoted in the FDA’s announcement:
“This is an important first for the cancer community,” said Richard Pazdur, M.D., acting director of the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research and director of the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence. “Until now, the FDA has approved cancer treatments based on where in the body the cancer started — for example, lung or breast cancers. We have now approved a drug based on a tumor’s biomarker without regard to the tumor’s original location.”
The second reason is that the drug’s mechanism of action works through the body’s immune system — by blocking a certain cellular signalling pathway, Keytruda seems to be helping the body’s own immune system attack the tumor. This technique — known as immunotherapy — has long been a goal of the oncology community: the ability to fight cancer, a complex adaptive disease, by recruiting the body’s own complex adaptive defence, the immune system. Immunotherapy has been a long time coming, and it will hopefully live up to its potential as a powerful tool in our fight against cancers of all kinds. But as these complex tools reach the mainstream and patient treatment becomes highly personalized, we face a new kind of problem: oncologists themselves are becoming a new bottleneck. A recent story in the New York Times is a revealing anecdote for why oncologists are so excited but also stressed out: it’s increasingly hard to keep up. The pace of new trials and personalized opportunities is accelerating so quickly that great opportunities for specific patients are increasingly being overlooked or missed entirely:
Thankfully, help is on the way: not only from new technology and pioneering companies like Syapse, but also from a culture shift taking place in the oncology community. Sharing data within and between patient networks is key to making this new kind of oncology successful, and Syapse is doing their part to get us there. CEO Ken Tarkoff writes, while recently announcing the Syapse Network for national data sharing ahead of their presentations at this year’s annual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting:
“We need to fix this problem. We need a world where oncologists can make treatment decisions based on the combination of molecular and clinical data, have access to local experts in a streamlined and efficient way, and, most importantly, have access to real-world evidence at the point of care, informing them on what similar patients are experiencing in both treatments and outcomes. Thankfully, the healthcare community is coming together to solve this massive problem. Along with advances in technology and medicine, we are in the midst of a rapid culture shift towards a willingness to share data.”
Why we need more data sharing in cancer care | Ken Tarkoff, Syapse
There’s no magic solution for this fight; only a lot of hard work and a lot of teamwork. New immunotherapy drugs could end up being the real thing we’ve been hoping for for years. But they create a whole new set of challenges — complexity, teamwork, collaboration — that we’re just beginning to learn how to handle.
People who’ve been around for a long time:
How AWS cloud is demolishing the cult of youth | James Governor, Redmonk
Oldest homo sapiens fossil claim rewrites our species’ history | Ewen Callaway, Nature
And today’s newcomers:
Electric cars hit the 2 million threshold worldwide | Katie Fehrenbacher, Green Tech Media
Out in the ocean:
The ocean sustains humanity. Humanity treats the ocean with contempt. | The Economist
Doing science right, and wrong:
Why a French drug trail may have gone horribly wrong | Hinnerk Feldwisch-Drentrup, Science
Arguing over the future of DevOps:
“Serverless and the death of DevOps.” Can you not? | James Governor, Redmonk
Serverless is SuperOps — which could be why there’s an adoption problem | Paul Johnston
Other reading from around the Internet:
Silicon Valley home prices, stock prices & bitcoin | Adam Nash
Battle of the maps, & Bill Janeway on Artificial Intelligence | Babbage Podcast
The art of VC is knowing when to seem crazy | Sarah Tavel
WSJ ends Google users’ free ride; then fades in search results | Gerry Smith, Bloomberg
Amazon to ramp up lending in challenge to big banks | Financial Times
Assisted writing: reimagining word processing | @samim
In this week’s news and notes from the Social Capital family:
Netskope has raised a fresh 100 million dollar funding round in order to hit profitability, prepare for a public offering, and fuel their rapid rise to the top of the Cloud Access Security Broker market:
Netskope raises $100M million as it seeks to turn a profit, go public | NYT
When Netskope was founded five years ago, the future of enterprise IT security was very much an open-ended topic. What would be the implications of bring-your-own-device, or the migration to public cloud? Who should decide what apps and API calls are allowed, which are blocked, for whom, and when? Since then, the old assumptions about enterprise security have fully broken down: the concept of a “security perimeter” has become outdated as work became a thing that you do, rather than a place that you go. Furthermore, the boundaries of what constitutes a secured work device and how it might interface with local networks, versus the cloud, versus the web have all begun to dissolve — with great security implications for organizations. Netskope’s Amol Kabe writes, in a follow-up post:
“It is getting harder and harder to distinguish between cloud and web. A web page today is dynamic, a composite formed from many API calls to many other cloud and web services. A page may load ads from one service, static images from another, let readers share content on social media and may allow comments through an integrated forum. Is this a cloud app or a dynamic web page? We believe this is an artificial distinction that will quickly fade away.”
Security for the Cloud Everything era | Amol Kabe, Netscope
Netskope’s newest IT security product, Netskope For Web, is built with this future in mind and will be coming out later this year; legacy security vendors better take note. You can keep up to date with what they’re up to on their blog, and for the more technically minded of you, their excellent collection of white papers. They are also currently hiring for engineering positions in Los Altos as well as in Bangalore; as well as sales and support roles all over the world- if you’re looking to start or continue a career in enterprise cloud security, or know someone who is, give Netskope a look.
A few shoutouts to close out the week:
Pharmaceutical benefit manager mPharma got some nice recognition in the Financial Times for their work improving the local supply chain for medicine in Africa:
Four innovators help to improve healthcare access for the poor | Andrew Jack, Financial Times
You can catch Treehouse CEO Ryan Carson live on Cheddar TV, talking about how Treehouse is helping to support diversity in the tech industry by bringing back apprenticeships:
How Treehouse is making the tech industry more diverse | Cheddar TV
And finally, an interview with our own Ashley Carroll on product management, the startup ecosystem, the coming transformation of venture capital, and what she’s learned along the way:
From product manager to partner: an interview with Ashley Carroll | Cara Harshman, Amplitude
Have a great week,
Alex & the team at Social Capital
