Troy Wilson
Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open.
Yes. So, you have a few things packed into that question, Pasquale, let me see if I can unpack them and answer your question. So, if we take a step back before we get to the novel FTI, one of the things that I think we've done, we've absolutely delivered on is the ability to unlock the biological insights of Farnesyl Transferase Inhibition. So, when we brought this program in from Janssen, it was clear that Tipifarnib was active, it was -- it had a reasonable tolerability profile, but there was not a good molecular level understanding of what was driving the clinical activity. We now have two sort of major mechanisms; one, HRAS mutant solid tumors, the other, CXCL12 hematologic and solid tumors, and we're going to continue to flash that story out throughout this year. I don't want to say too much, but we really view ourselves as the leader in Farnesyl Transferase Inhibition and that is understanding the molecular mechanisms, understanding opportunities as a monotherapy, understanding rational combinations, and we've been very successful both in the U.S. and now increasingly ex-U.S. at getting patent offices to issue fairly broad patents covering not only Tipifarnib, but any Farnesyl Transferase Inhibitor in certain settings, and that's because we did what no company working previously was able to do, and that was to assign the molecular targets. With that -- that took, as you can imagine, kind of an alignment of planet to get that right, but here we are. Now, we're at a point where we understand the opportunity, we understand the farnesyl transferase targets, and there are things we think we can improve upon, even with a drug that is as well-positioned as Tipifarnib. So, we've started a second-generation compound. I've made this reference before, one of the analogies I make is to formally Celgene that worked with initially Thalidomide and then Revlimid and then Pomalidomide, and simultaneously worked out IMID biology and developed a very robust franchise. We'd like to be in a position to do something similar in farnesyl Transferase Inhibition. I can't really speak to where the program is at, but this is -- we obviously have crystal structures, we have a number of highly-potent compounds, both ours and others, and I think it's a good opportunity for a very efficient drug discovery effort, and I hope that we'll have something more to say, either later this year or early next year.