Ameet Mallik
Analyst · RBC. Your line is open
Thanks, Amanda, and thank you all for joining us today. During the third quarter, we made good progress executing on our strategy. There is a strong sense of purpose and direction across the company, and I'm proud of the collective effort we are putting forward to serve our patients. I would like to highlight some of our achievements during the quarter, starting with Zynlonta. Net sales in the third quarter were $21.3 million, representing 23% growth over Q2. Zynlonta's strong performance was driven by the targeted initiatives we put in place in the second and third quarters, which began to produce results. I will elaborate on this more in a moment. The Zynlonta development program continues to make progress, encouraging safety run-in data from the Phase 3 LOTUS 5 trial in second line plus DLBCL patients was presented at the Society of Hematology Oncology Congress in September, providing initial evidence of the efficacy and safety of the Zynlonta and rituximab combination. As for the geographic expansion of Zynlonta during the quarter, we signed an agreement with Sobi for the development and commercialization of Zynlonta in Europe and international territories, excluding Greater China and Japan. We received a positive opinion from the CHMP in September and expect a regulatory decision by the end of the year. Sobi is making good progress with launch preparations and expect to launch upon the completion of the marketing authorization transfer, which typically takes two to three months after approval. With the Sobi partnership, Mitsubishi Tanabe in Japan and the Overland JV in China, we have commercial partners for Zynlonta worldwide. Turning to Cami for Hodgkins lymphoma, we believe that the data from the Phase 2 trial demonstrates strong clinical activity and the potential to offer a significant benefit to later line HL patients. However, it became clear to us during our recent interactions with the FDA that the regulatory landscape is evolving more dramatically than we had previously anticipated regarding accelerated approvals. The FDA is now strongly guiding towards an extensive confirmatory Phase 3 study to be well underway before considering accelerated approval. As such, we are no longer planning to submit our BLA next year. We are pausing material investments in the Hodgkin lymphoma program as we continue our dialogue with the FDA regarding their guidance and the potential regulatory path forward. Joe will elaborate on this shortly. During the quarter, we also made the decision to discontinue the Cami combination with pembrolizumab in solid tumors. While there were some interesting signals of immunomodulatory activity, the clinical data were not compelling enough for us to move forward. We recognize that the considerable effort required to fully pursue this opportunity may be better suited for our partner with IO development expertise. This immunotherapy approach is very different from our other solid tumor programs, and we do not see any read-through to our other trials. We are committed to prioritizing our preclinical and clinical programs and are taking a disciplined approach to resource allocation. We continue to progress the rest of our pipeline and Joe will give a more detailed update. We have a strong balance sheet with $381 million in cash, not including $125 million in potential future milestones related to the European regulatory approval and first EU sales of Zynlonta. These milestones, combined with our business plan provided an expected cash runway extending into early 2025. Before I provide some additional details about the Zynlonta launch, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome our new Chief Commercial Officer, Kristen Harrington Smith; and our new Chief Legal Officer, Peter Graham for the company. We are thrilled districting the management team with such a high caliber of talent. In particular, Kristin has an impressive commercial background with relevant experience in the DLBCL space to continue building on Zynlonta's strong momentum. I would like to thank Jennifer Herron for her many contributions to the company, including building the commercial organization and the launch of Zynlonta. Jennifer will stay with the company through mid-December to ensure a smooth transition. Now I'm going to provide a deep dive into the Zynlonta launch. We are encouraged by Zynlonta's strong performance this quarter resulting from our focus on customer-facing execution and the new initiatives we launched in the second and third quarters. We saw continued progress in Q3 in terms of awareness, share of voice and third line plus patient share. The new initiatives focused on three areas: one, health care professionals; two, community practices and networks; and three, patients and caregivers. These initiatives are building momentum in the marketplace and position us well for steady growth in the coming quarters. First, starting with health care professionals. We enhanced our promotional materials with more competitive messaging and additional data and launch the new regional marketing capabilities. At the same time, we increased our face-to-face interactions, which is critical to build awareness, familiarity, trial and adoption. Second, we saw a strong uptake in Zynlonta use with a significant number of new accounts in the community. At the same time, the number of academic accounts ordering remained relatively stable. In terms of volume, we're seeing growth from both segments, rapid growth in the community and steady growth from academia. In Q3, for the first time since launch, our greater proportion of accounts ordering Zynlonta came from the community, roughly 60% as compared to 50% since launch. In terms of volume, historically, academic accounts represented approximately 60% of our business, but with the growth in the community segment in Q3, volume by segment is now approximately a 50-50 split. As a new key initiative starting in Q4, we began contracting with community oncology networks. We believe this will help us unlock an important opportunity as roughly half of the community market is served by these networks. Although GPO contracts will modestly impact our gross to net, we believe the upside volume will outweigh the costs. Lastly, we have increased our multichannel patient education and engagement efforts. Since the launch of our patient campaign, we've been able to drive a meaningful increase in online awareness, interest and engagement. We know that in the third line plus setting, patients and caregivers play an integral role in making treatment decisions. Overall, we are pleased with the significant progress we have made with the Zynlonta launch in Q3. Looking forward, we are confident in our ability to continue to grow both the community and academic segments over the coming quarters as we engage health care professionals, community networks and patients regarding Zynlonta's differentiated product profile. Now I'll turn the call over to Joe to provide an update on our pipeline. Joe?