Nek­tar wants every­one to stay calm as they car­ry on with NK­TR-214, but #AS­CO18 spurs a stam­pede

CHICA­GO — Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb $BMY has gone all in on Nek­tar’s $NK­TR ap­proach to amp­ing up their check­point strat­e­gy, part­ner­ing on NK­TR-214. But in­stead of tak­ing a bow at #AS­CO18 on pos­i­tive da­ta, re­searchers spent the week­end ex­plain­ing why their lat­est da­ta read­out from a small study shouldn’t be cause for pan­ic.

It’s not what they were look­ing for, to put it mild­ly.

Mary Tagli­a­fer­ri

Un­like most of the more close­ly-watched pro­grams here at AS­CO, the re­searchers in­volved nev­er of­fered a pre­view of the da­ta that came out Sat­ur­day evening. And that was a se­ri­ous mis­step, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the re­porters cov­er­ing this ses­sion strug­gled to fig­ure out what was be­ing re­port­ed — and what it meant.

As it hap­pens, in­ves­ti­ga­tors ex­e­cut­ed a two-stage tri­al process, sign­ing up a small group of pa­tients to test the drug in dif­fer­ent can­cer types, then mov­ing on to the next stage with a new group of re­cruits. Do­ing that, says Mary Tagli­a­fer­ri, the chief med­ical of­fi­cer at Nek­tar, meshed well with their strat­e­gy for jump­ing in­to late-stage stud­ies as they com­mu­ni­cat­ed with reg­u­la­tors.

“The goal,” she tells me, “was al­ways to as­sess mov­ing very quick­ly in­to Phase III.”

In­vestors, though, weren’t hap­py with the way this all came down, and they bolt­ed when the mar­ket opened, with Nek­tar’s stock plung­ing a sting­ing 32% — ex­act­ly the kind of rout that Bris­tol-My­ers (down 1.6%) doesn’t need right now as it tries to re­store con­fi­dence in its pipeline. And it kept get­ting worse lat­er in the day, with shares down 42%.

Here’s what Nek­tar has found so far.

In their melanoma project, re­searchers saw that 11 of 13 pa­tients treat­ed with a com­bi­na­tion of Op­di­vo and NK­TR-214 re­spond­ed in round 1 — which is out­stand­ing. But, when they added 15 more pa­tients, they on­ly boost­ed their re­sponse rate by 3 pa­tients. And 3 out of 15 is not out­stand­ing.

In kid­ney can­cer, the step one re­sponse rate of 64% was fol­lowed up with an over­all step 2 rate of 46%.

In­vestors hate to see a falling re­sponse rate, for any rea­son, as it in­di­cates a prob­lem that can se­ri­ous­ly af­fect a can­cer drug’s longterm fi­nan­cial suc­cess.

Twit­ter’s day-trad­ing crew picked it up from there, with all sorts of #AS­CO18 chat­ter about a tri­al dis­as­ter in the mak­ing. And as of­ten hap­pens, Twit­ter is not a great source of re­al-time in­for­ma­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the com­pa­nies failed to ex­plain what the num­bers meant with an­a­lysts.

In the fol­lowup dis­cus­sion, though, Tagli­a­fer­ri of­fered the ra­tio­nale that it’s ear­ly days for the sec­ond batch­es of pa­tients and they ex­pect to see more re­spons­es with time. And they have rea­son to be­lieve that, af­ter track­ing a 46% ORR in RCC at SITC that has now grown to 71% at AS­CO.

“You’ll see the ORR go­ing up,” says Tagli­a­fer­ri, as they have a chance to col­lect mul­ti­ple scans on the sec­ond-stage pa­tients. “It s a lit­tle frus­trat­ing that peo­ple aren’t un­der­stand­ing that.”

Al­so im­por­tant, they say, is clear ev­i­dence that the com­bi­na­tion of NK­TR-214 is do­ing what they re­al­ly want­ed: Spark­ing re­spons­es in PD-L1 neg­a­tive tu­mors where Op­di­vo is not suc­cess­ful. If that all plays out in the am­bi­tious piv­otal pro­gram now un­der­way, it will eas­i­ly jus­ti­fy Bris­tol-My­ers’ record $3.6 bil­lion wa­ger.

If not….

In melanoma, re­searchers saw 5 out of 11 PD-L1 neg­a­tive pa­tients re­spond; in kid­ney can­cer it was 9 out of 17, or 53%. Those num­bers are fine.

Right now, though, they’ve cre­at­ed an at­mos­phere of doubt that will make every turn of da­ta a cat­a­lyst for the gam­blers now lin­ing up their bets for and against the com­bi­na­tion. That will ei­ther help or hurt these com­pa­nies, which are now bet­ting heav­i­ly that step 2 will ul­ti­mate­ly play out in their fa­vor.

We’ll find out more at the next SITC con­fer­ence in No­vem­ber, Tagli­a­fer­ri adds, with ab­stracts due in Au­gust.

Has the mo­ment fi­nal­ly ar­rived for val­ue-based health­care?

RBC Capital Markets’ Healthcare Technology Analyst, Sean Dodge, spotlights a new breed of tech-enabled providers who are rapidly transforming the way clinicians deliver healthcare, and explores the key question: can this accelerating revolution overturn the US healthcare system?

Key points

Tech-enabled healthcare providers are poised to help the US transition to value, not volume, as the basis for reward.
The move to value-based care has policy momentum, but is risky and complex for clinicians.
Outsourced tech specialists are emerging to provide the required expertise, while healthcare and tech are also converging through M&A.
Value-based care remains in its early stages, but the transition is accelerating and represents a huge addressable market.

Alaa Halawaa, executive director at Mubadala’s US venture group

The ven­ture crew at Mubadala are up­ping their biotech cre­ation game, tak­ing care­ful aim at a new fron­tier in drug de­vel­op­ment

It started with a cup of coffee and a slow burning desire to go early and long in the biotech creation business.

Wrapping up a 15-year discovery stint at Genentech back in the summer of 2021, Rami Hannoush was treated to a caffeine-fueled review of the latest work UCSF’s Jim Wells had been doing on protein degradation — one of the hottest fields in drug development.

“Jim and I have known each other for the past 15 years through Genentech collaborations. We met over coffee, and he was telling me about this concept of the company that he was thinking of,” says Hannoush. “And I got immediately intrigued by it because I knew that this could open up a big space in terms of adding a new modality in drug discovery that is desperately needed in pharma.”

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No­var­tis touts sev­en years of dura­bil­i­ty da­ta for Zol­gens­ma

The same day that Roche touted positive durability and safety data for its spinal muscular atrophy drug Evrysdi, Novartis also made a splash with its multi-million dollar gene therapy for the disease.

Novartis rolled out interim data from two long-term follow-up studies Monday at the 2023 Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Clinical and Scientific Conference. In the first study, LT-001, all children in the trial that were treated after showing symptoms of SMA “maintained all previously achieved motor milestones” up to 7.5 years after being dosed. The average time since Zolgensma was given was 6.86 years.

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'Band­ing to­geth­er': 50 fe­male biotech ex­ec­u­tives lay out plans for board di­ver­si­ty, new com­pa­nies and men­tor­ing founders

Earlier this month, during the Silicon Valley Bank meltdown, Angie You recalled the speed with which female biotech CEOs were helping each other connect with bankers, get their wires through and assuage concerns during a financial implosion.

This past weekend, 50 of about 125 women who are part of that Slack group and a broader coalition self-dubbed the Biotech Sisterhood met in person in Cancun for the second rendition of an annual summit connecting female biotech CEOs. The attendance list doubled that of the inaugural gathering in Arizona 12 months ago.

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Rohan Palekar, 89bio CEO

89bio’s PhII da­ta add to quick suc­ces­sion of NASH read­outs as field seeks turn­around

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.

FDA in­di­cates will­ing­ness to ap­prove Bio­gen ALS drug de­spite failed PhI­II study

Ahead of Wednesday’s advisory committee hearing to discuss Biogen’s ALS drug tofersen, the FDA appeared open to approving the drug, newly released briefing documents show.

Citing the need for flexibility in a devastating disease like ALS, regulators signaled a willingness to consider greenlighting tofersen based on its effect on a certain protein associated with ALS despite a failed pivotal trial. The documents come after regulatory flexibility was part of the same rationale the agency expressed when approving an ALS drug last September from Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, indicating the FDA’s openness to approving new treatments for the disease.

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Roche and Lil­ly team up to de­vel­op blood test to de­tect ear­ly signs of Alzheimer's

Eli Lilly is teaming up with Roche to help develop a blood test to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease and determine whether a patient should go for further confirmatory testing.

Roche’s Elecsys Amyloid Plasma Panel (EAPP) measures pTau 181 protein assay and APOE E4 assay in human blood plasma – elevations in pTau 181 are present in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, while the presence of APO E4 is the most common genetic risk factor for the disease.

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Francesco Marincola, newly-appointed Sonata Therapeutics CSO

Kite's head of re­search leaves for Flag­ship start­up Sonata

Another leader is departing Kite Pharma, and will to spend the “last part” of his career exploring how cancer evades the immune system.

Kite’s senior VP and global head of cell therapy research Francesco Marincola left the Gilead CAR-T unit last week for Sonata Therapeutics. Flagship last May unveiled the startup, which was pieced together from two fledgling biotechs Inzen and Cygnal Therapeutics. As CSO, Marincola will lead Sonata’s push to reprogram cancer cells to make them more immunogenic.

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Vipin Garg, Altimmune CEO

Al­tim­mune’s shares halved af­ter in­ter­im look at PhII weight loss drug da­ta

Altimmune’s attempt to catch up to Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly’s GLP-1 drugs hit an investor snag Tuesday after the biotech shared interim Phase II weight loss data.

The Maryland biotech’s pemvidutide is a GLP-1/glucagon dual receptor agonist meant to activate GLP-1 receptors to squash appetite and glucagon to ramp up energy use. The 2.4 mg dose showed a placebo-adjusted weight loss of 9.7% at week 24 of 48, which Jefferies analysts said would be comparable to Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide (Wegovy) and Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide (Mounjaro).

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