Latest news with #oncology
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Stifel Keeps Buy Rating on Compass Therapeutics (CMPX)
Compass Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CMPX) is one of the 10 Best Performing Penny Stocks So Far in 2025. On July 14, Stifel reiterated its 'Buy' rating for Compass Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CMPX) with a price target of $11. This decision came after investor meetings with the company's management. According to the research firm, the extended timeline for overall survival event accrual in the Phase 2/3 COMPANION-002 trial is a good thing. The trial is testing paclitaxel with or without tovecimig in patients with second-line biliary tract cancer. A biopharmacist holding a magnifying glass up against a microscope lens, studying a biological sample. Compass Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CMPX) now expects to share the topline data in the fourth quarter of 2025. This means patients will be followed up for more than 19 months on average. Stifel noted that this is important because in this disease, the overall survival of the control arm rarely goes beyond 6 months. Besides the COMPANION-002 trial, Stiefl analysts believe upcoming data disclosures for two other compounds in the second half of 2025 could potentially prove to be important catalysts for Compass Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CMPX). These include Phase 1 dose-escalation data for CTX-8371, a PD-1xPD-L1 bispecific antibody, and preclinical data for CTX-10726, a PD-1xVEGF-A bispecific antibody. Compass Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CMPX) is a clinical-stage, oncology-focused biopharmaceutical company developing proprietary antibody-based therapeutics. The company focuses on the relationship between angiogenesis, the immune system, and tumor growth. While we acknowledge the potential of CMPX as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: 10 Best American Semiconductor Stocks to Buy Now and 11 Best Fintech Stocks to Buy Right Now. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Globe and Mail
a day ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
How Will Eli Lilly's Oncology Drugs Perform in Q2 Earnings?
Eli Lilly LLY offers a diverse range of products that serve multiple therapeutic areas. While the company's primary focus is on diabetes and obesity drugs, the oncology franchise also remains a key contributor to the top line. Sales from the oncology segment accounted for over 15% of Lilly's first-quarter revenues, which grew more than 11% year over year. Our model estimates second-quarter 2025 sales for the overall oncology unit to be $2.4 billion, indicating more than 11% year-over-year growth. A significant portion of these revenues is likely to have been generated from sales of the company's blockbuster breast cancer drug, Verzenio. Sales of this drug are expected to have been driven by increased demand and higher realized prices during the quarter, partially offset by currency headwinds and competitive dynamics. Sales of RET inhibitor Retevmo and newer lymphoma drug Jaypirca are also likely to have contributed positively to top-line growth during the quarter. However, these gains might have been partially offset by the declining sales of older cancer drugs like Alimta and Cyramza, which are being impacted by competition from immuno-oncology agents in the United States. Though Lilly's oncology portfolio is contributing meaningfully, investor focus will largely remain on blockbuster GLP-1 medicines — Mounjaro (for type II diabetes) and Zepbound (for obesity). Investors will closely track their sequential growth and market share trends in the upcoming second-quarter results on Aug. 7. Competition in the Oncology Space Other bigger players in this area are AstraZeneca AZN, Merck MRK and Pfizer PFE. For AstraZeneca, oncology sales now account for nearly 41% of total revenues. Growth in AZN's oncology franchise is being driven by medicines such as Tagrisso, Lynparza, Imfinzi, Calquence and Enhertu (in partnership with Daiichi Sankyo). Merck's key oncology medicines are PD-1 inhibitor, Keytruda and PARP inhibitor, Lynparza, which it markets in partnership with AstraZeneca. Keytruda, approved for several types of cancer, alone accounts for nearly half of Merck's product revenues. Pfizer's oncology segment — comprising drugs like Xtandi, Lorbrena, the Braftovi-Mektovi combination and Padcev — currently accounts for more than 27% of its total revenues. LLY's Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates Shares of Lilly have outperformed the industry year to date, as seen in the chart below. From a valuation standpoint, Eli Lilly is expensive. Based on the price/earnings (P/E) ratio, the company's shares currently trade at 29.66 times forward earnings, higher than its industry's average of 14.91. However, the stock is trading below its five-year mean of 34.54. EPS estimates for 2025 have risen from $21.92 to $21.99, while those for 2026 have declined from $30.91 to $30.79 over the past 30 days. Eli Lilly currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days Just released: Experts distill 7 elite stocks from the current list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buys. They deem these tickers "Most Likely for Early Price Pops." Since 1988, the full list has beaten the market more than 2X over with an average gain of +23.5% per year. So be sure to give these hand picked 7 your immediate attention. See them now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report AstraZeneca PLC (AZN): Free Stock Analysis Report Pfizer Inc. (PFE): Free Stock Analysis Report Merck & Co., Inc. (MRK): Free Stock Analysis Report Eli Lilly and Company (LLY): Free Stock Analysis Report
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
START and Advarra Unite to Deliver Unmatched Speed, Quality, and Predictability for Early-Phase Oncology Trials
START enhances its global leadership by integrating Advarra's advanced regulatory and technology solutions, creating a seamlessly connected site network to accelerate trials and relieve pressure on the oncology drug development ecosystem SAN ANTONIO, July 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The START Center for Cancer Research (START), the leading global community-based early-phase oncology research network, today announced a strategic partnership with Advarra, the premier provider of clinical research solutions for sites and institutions, including ethics oversight, technology, and consulting and professional services. This collaboration significantly advances START's leadership position in oncology research by creating an end-to-end, patient-centric clinical trial workflow across its growing network of sites, driving standardization, data efficiency, compliance, and consistent high quality. Through this strategic alliance, START's global site network will leverage Advarra's comprehensive portfolio of products and services. Advarra will be START's preferred provider for Independent Review Board (IRB) and Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) services. Additionally, START will leverage new technologies that seamlessly integrate with Advarra's OnCore Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS), which supports over 85% of NCI-designated cancer centers and has been actively used to improve operational efficiency across START's network since 2024. Initially, START will deploy Advarra's CTMS-integrated electronic regulatory management system, called eReg, for end-to-end, secure management of regulatory documents across all sites participating in a trial. "Oncology drug development companies are under intense pressure to deliver innovative treatments to patients swiftly and reliably," said Nick Slack, MBE, Chairman and CEO of START. "By partnering with Advarra, we are building a truly interconnected ecosystem, leveraging the best technology and regulatory expertise in the industry, and adopting Advarra's standardized workflows and integrated platforms will significantly enhance our operational efficiency, compliance, and quality—ensuring that we not only accelerate the delivery of breakthrough therapies to patients but also uphold the highest standards of patient safety. We're proud to advance our mission with a partner equally committed to excellence." Implementation of Advarra's integrated solutions across START's global network is well underway, with OnCore and Advarra's IRB and IBC services already actively in use. This partnership marks a significant milestone in START's continued investment in infrastructure, operational excellence, and its mission of delivering "Hope Through Access," aimed at connecting patients, physicians, and advocacy groups with community-based cancer trials. "Advarra is honored to support START in fulfilling its mission of bringing cutting-edge cancer treatments to patients," said Gadi Saarony, CEO of Advarra. "With deep expertise in oncology research, decades-long partnerships with leading cancer centers, and a proven track record of delivering solutions for regulatory compliance and operational excellence, our role is to help remove barriers to research—streamlining the path from discovery to care. We're proud to partner with START as it expands its reach and impact around the world." About The START Center for Cancer Research Deeply rooted in community oncology centers globally, The START Center for Cancer Research provides access to specialized preclinical and early-phase clinical trials of novel anti-cancer agents. START sites have conducted over 1,000 early-phase trials, including studies for 45 therapies approved by the FDA or EMA. Representing the world's largest roster of early-phase Principal Investigators across ten clinical trial sites, START accelerates the journey from trials to treatments, delivering hope to patients, families, and physicians worldwide. Learn more at About Advarra Advarra breaks the silos that impede clinical research, aligning patients, sites, sponsors, and CROs in a connected ecosystem to streamline trials. Advarra is number one in research review services, a leader in site and sponsor technology, and is trusted by the top 50 global biopharma sponsors, top 20 CROs, and 50,000 site investigators worldwide. Advarra solutions enable collaboration, transparency, and efficiency to optimize trial operations, ensure patient safety and engagement, and reimagine clinical research while improving compliance. For more information, visit Media Contacts: STARTLauren Panco, VP Marketing | 609-216-4920 | Osborne, PR Consultant | lisa@ AdvarraMichelle Valentine, PR Consultant, michellevalentinepr@ / mediarelations@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE The START Center for Cancer Research Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
a day ago
- Health
- Forbes
How Regulatory-Grade Oncology AI Is Transforming Cancer Care
David Talby, PhD, MBA, CTO at John Snow Labs. Solving real-world problems in healthcare, life sciences and related fields with AI and NLP. For decades, the oncology field has faced an unfortunate truth: Extracting high-quality, structured information from clinical charts is a tedious, labor-intensive and largely manual task. Even as AI models have advanced, their outputs remain incomplete without human intervention. And what many people don't know is that behind every patient is a cancer registry specialist (CRS) spending hours reading through charts, identifying events, interpreting dates and ensuring accuracy for each case. But as we approach regulatory-grade accuracy—a level of performance long considered the exclusive domain of highly trained human experts—that's all about to change. In the world of cancer data extraction, this means AI is hitting a consistent threshold of 95% accuracy. That figure isn't arbitrary; it's the benchmark achieved by experienced teams working meticulously, often with multiple levels of quality control. Thanks to the combined power of healthcare-specific natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs), and a careful approach to model selection and orchestration, we're crossing that threshold in some of the most critical areas of oncology information, including tumor staging, grading and beyond. Here's why it matters. Hidden Complexities Of Oncology Data To appreciate the significance of this leap, it's important to understand the scale and complexity of the problem. A single cancer diagnosis involves hundreds of discrete data points: dates of imaging, biopsies, surgeries, therapies, pathology reviews and more. There are often dozens of potential diagnosis dates, and a specific rule determines which one is considered official for registry purposes. Even determining the primary cancer site or tumor grade can involve navigating contradictory information scattered across different documents. Currently, filling out a registry case takes a herculean amount of time and effort. Registrars estimated taking approximately one hour and 15 minutes to complete an abstract for a simpler case and about two and a half hours to complete an abstract for a more complex case. This is done once a year for each patient, and with growing backlogs, data is often outdated by the time it's available for clinical decisions or research. The delay isn't just inconvenient. It's a barrier to real-time care optimization and scientific discovery. Over the years, AI models have grown steadily more accurate. Best-in-class systems could extract relevant information from charts, but not reliably enough to replace human interpretation. They were assistive tools that were helpful, but not trustworthy enough to operate independently in regulatory contexts. Why General-Purpose LLMs Fall Short Now, with AI systems achieving 95%-plus accuracy on key fields without manual oversight, AI can replicate, and, in some cases, outperform, the gold standard achieved by expert cancer registrars. But not all models are created equally. These AI-driven tools are built specifically to tackle the unique challenges of healthcare, and oncology in particular. Rather than relying on general-purpose AI like GPT-4, which often struggles with domain-specific details, these models are trained on medical texts and structured to understand the nuances of clinical language. It's tempting to believe that large, general AI models can solve these problems with simple prompts like, "Extract cancer diagnosis and treatment." But in practice, they fall short. Too often, they miss subtle distinctions, hallucinate relationships between entities or misinterpret clinical negations. While useful as a starting point, they lack the precision, stability and regulatory readiness needed for real-world healthcare applications. The Power Of Medical Language Models Healthcare-specific language models aren't just a tech upgrade; they're a foundation for the next generation of cancer care. What was once buried in notes and PDFs is now accessible, providing real, actionable insights. What this looks like in practice is automated case findings, real-time reporting and monitoring integrated into existing clinical workflows. Achieving higher accuracy in entity recognition, better handling of negation and superior ontology mapping, domain-specific models produce results that are reproducible and explainable, which are key for auditability and trust. Here are several ways regulatory-grade oncology AI is being applied: • Tumor Registry Automation: Cancer centers are required to maintain registries of patients, including data on diagnosis, staging and treatment. Oncology models can scan pathology reports, read and decode them automatically, drastically reducing the need for manual chart review. • Clinical Trial Matching: Finding eligible patients for a trial targeting a very specific cancer can be like finding a needle in a haystack. AI models can sift through thousands of records, pulling out the relevant biomarker and tumor type to flag potential candidates in near real time. • Quality Monitoring: AI can flag when recommended treatments are missing. For example, if a patient doesn't have a recorded therapy plan, the system can alert the quality improvement team to investigate further. • Adverse Event Tracking: Side effects can be buried in progress notes. AI can extract and monitor such events over time, alerting clinicians when recurring toxicities could signal a need to adjust therapy. • Outcomes Research: For research teams comparing outcomes, AI tools can provide the structured data needed to stratify patients and link treatment patterns to survival trends. Despite the obvious benefits, AI isn't a fix-all for oncology tracking. In rare cancers, evolving treatment protocols or atypical patient presentations, human registrars can be better equipped to contextualize and accurately code information that lacks precedent in training data. Regulatory compliance, ethical considerations and quality assurance also demand expert oversight, ensuring data integrity and alignment with evolving standards. So, for now, human expertise remains vital to the accuracy and reliability of cancer registries. The role will just evolve with the technology. With regulatory-grade AI for oncology, structured cancer data will become as current and accessible as the clinical notes they come from. Instead of data entry, registrars can shift their focus to more meaningful work, like quality assurance. In turn, patients will benefit from faster research and more responsive care. We're nearing the point at which AI is no longer just supporting our work—it's starting to do the work itself, and do it at a level healthcare professionals can rely on. It's just going to take time. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Associated Press
2 days ago
- Health
- Associated Press
Creative Biolabs Debuts Platforms for Smarter T Cell Stimulation
Creative Biolabs delivers tailored T cell activation solutions using hydrogel matrices, DNA scaffolds, and synthetic systems for precise and efficient immune modulation. Creative Biolabs, the global pioneer in immunotherapy, has developed novel artificial T cell-stimulating platforms —like hydrogel matrices, DNA scaffolds, and synthetic systems—to enhance CAR-T, TCR-T, and adoptive cell therapy research in oncology and immunology. Activation of T cells is also a key issue in cancer immunotherapy, especially as researchers seek more physiologically relevant conditions in which to optimize cell growth, survival, and activity. Creative Biolabs' artificial platforms replicate the most critical aspects of the original lymphoid microenvironment—enabling antigen-specific stimulation and controlled co-signal presentation that reduce activation-induced death and provide for long-lasting immunity. One of the newly announced technologies is a hydrogel-based artificial T cell-stimulating platform, which includes tunable formats such as artificial T cell-stimulating matrices (aTM), artificial lymph node scaffolds (aLN), and immunomodulatory macroporous hydrogels. The platforms enable the possibility of accurately modulating the stiffness of the matrix and biochemical ligand density, triggering localized immune activation with a low off-target effect. Complementing these is the DNA-based platform, which uses self-assembled DNA scaffolds to mimic dendritic cell architectures. With tunable conjugation protein ratios and high surface-to-volume efficiency, researchers can modulate multi-signal stimulation profiles to fit therapeutic design parameters. The platform further improves functional antibody display and allows for scalable stimulation approaches. 'Our tools bridge the gap between engineering precision and biological complexity,' said a Creative Biolabs senior R&D director. 'By simulating the critical immunological signals with synthetic and bioinspired materials, we're empowering scientists to accelerate discovery and improve cell product quality.' In addition to proprietary technology, Creative Biolabs offers end-to-end service customization in processes like DNA scaffold design, molecular engineering, protein functionalization, and in vitro / in vivo testing. Each workflow is supported by GLP-grade quality systems and high-throughput facilities to offer reproducibility and data integrity during the experimental stages. Customers are not only offered cutting-edge platforms but also professional advice and flexible project delivery. Creative Biolabs' team of specialists ranges from immunology, synthetic biology, and materials science to offer cross-functional support that is tailored to achieve every research goal. With applications from antigen-specific T cell screening to potency optimization and the development of novel therapeutics, artificial stimulation platforms hold the promise of transforming the evaluation and scaling of cell therapies. Creative Biolabs is leading innovation in this space, committed to enabling global partners to unlock the full potential of immune-based therapeutics. For additional information or to obtain a custom quote, visit About Creative Biolabs Creative Biolabs is a leader in immunotherapy, delivering customized artificial T cell-activating platforms for CAR-T and TCR-T studies. Their hydrogel, DNA, and synthetic platforms replicate critical immune signals, optimize activation efficiency, and facilitate scalable therapies—uniting engineering accuracy and biological sophistication to propel global cell therapy innovation. Media Contact Company Name: Creative Biolabs Contact Person: Candy Swift Email: Send Email City: Shirley State: New York 11967 Country: United States Website: Press Release Distributed by To view the original version on ABNewswire visit: Creative Biolabs Debuts Platforms for Smarter T Cell Stimulation
