RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:AACR - late breaking absracts text posted by noon today "On the other hand, I can see the ability to attract a partner purely on the CPI/TH1902 combo changing the entire dynamic in cold tumors if the data holds up strongly."
For me there's a few more boxes to be ticked before that happens. Maybe they can get Merck to provide some free pembro for a trial but that would not amount to much, Merck does this with immeasurable numbers of drug developers. Having said that the market sometimes buys into these deals. THTX has so under-delivered then maybe any news would be leaped upon.
Generally I think you're over-stating the depth of any potential deal on the combo trial front. The early deals I've seen tend to not involve money exchange. Both companies hold onto the rights of their own drugs and typically the junior partner is mostly covering costs. It's just a fact that THTX needs a good CPI more than most of those CPIs need SORT1 tech.
I'm just generally not that excited about this atm. It's back to preclinical and a long, more complex and more expensive path if it gets off the ground.
It seems from what little we've seen that they don't have an idea on the mechanism behind this. Maybe this synergy is as surprising as hitting the brick wall in Ph1 was, IDK. An MOA for this would help. I've got one but I'm pulling out of a not so clever part of my body. I want TH1902 to be depleting Sortilin on the surface of tumour cells and this to be shifting the tumour towards being "hot" by suppressing anti-inflammatory processes. I'm making that up just to be clear.
So IF they had something more positive from their mono therapy trial and/or IF they had a MOA for why th1902 might be making tumours more immunologically "hot" then maybe those would be the boxes to get a tick to make a combo deal a more exciting prospect.
The best option atm seems to be their short term aims which seem to be much greater targeting of the right patients for the Ph1 mono therapy trial.
Wino115 wrote: You're right. I recall them talking about checkoint inhibitors quite a while ago (I think it's even mentioned in their pipeline oncology presentation from 2 years ago), and now it seems they've focused on the anti PD-L1 angle within the broader immunotherapy market. I didn't know enough about CPIs to connect PD-L1 to it. This test was only on melanoma, but the CPIs are used on all sorts of solid tumors now --lung, breast, etc. I guess they picked melanoma for the reasons they stated, it's the standard of care for them and they are the most immunogenic. So if you can get that CPI into the cold tumor with your combo, even just a little, you're expanding a standard treatment to another whole class of tumor-types.
I think they agree with you, as we all should, that it would be imperative to still show response, safety and efficacy in at least one kind of tumor in humans as a monotherapy too, maybe even just safety and stability readings (although that's on the weak side). It "squares the circle" as you say. That would add a whole lot more and they mentioned that in the call.
On the other hand, I can see the ability to attract a partner purely on the CPI/TH1902 combo changing the entire dynamic in cold tumors if the data holds up strongly. We'll see what it is next week. Reason being we have plenty of examples specifically in the PDC area of companies partnering off pre-clinical data in very specific uses/tumors/combos where they can get in early and cheap and drive a deal to their liking. Bicycle did that with a few indications. Let's face it, THTX will take any reasonable deal and try to "circumscribe" it to keep it very specific as it would finally lend credibility to the Sort1 platform. Let alone, they need the money! I'm fine with that since it wouldn't be giving away the whole platform, hopefully just the immunotherapy combo side. Anyway, getting way ahead of it without seeing if these numbers are statistically significant and very strong. I assume since they said they've never reached out domestically to any partner (only China), that this would be one more angle to put on the partnership discussion table if it gets to that, which I hope it does.
One thing about opening up partnering opportunities in North Amer, there's a whole lot more companies vying in the marketplace, relying on these kind of partnerships for future growth (the "shrink the RD dept" factor), have money specifically for deals like this, and would need to beat their competitors to the table. Two big "ifs", but if the data is solid, if they can negotiate smartly, they may be able to move it ahead quicker than expected regardless of waiting around for a restarted monotherapy result trial. It still may be a novel and exciting enough finding to explore clinically. The dose level was half the normal dose of docetaxel, so in a much "safer" level according the the original dosage trial data where there were no SAEs at the 150-200 levels. So you could trial it just based on that safety signal, regardless of current efficacy issues. They'd be nice to see, but maybe not necessary. THTX should tell us more on that though as I'm purely guessing.