Troy Wilson
Analyst · Barclays. Please go ahead. Mr. Lawson your line is now live
Thank you, Pete. And thank you all for joining us this afternoon. Despite what continues to be a challenging, broader market environment, we continue to operate from a position of strength here at Kura, armed with 3 independent drug development programs, a strong experienced team, a well-designed clinical development strategy, and a cash runway through 2024. Now, as we approach a series of important catalysts driven by completion of enrollment in the Phase 1b study of our Menin Inhibitor, Ziftomenib. And culminating in top-line data next quarter and a full data presentation in the fourth quarter. As mentioned, I'm pleased to report, we recently completed enrollment of the patients in the Phase 1b portion of KOMET -001, required to identify a recommended Phase 2 dose for Ziftomenib. Recall the study was designed to enroll 2 expansion Cohorts, 200 milligrams and 600 milligrams, with each Cohort comprised of patients with NPM1 mutant, or KMT2A rearranged, relapsed, and/or refractory acute myeloid leukemia. The goal of the Phase 1b is dose optimization, consistent with FDA's guidance around project optimist. And the 2 doses were selected based on the encouraging clinical activity, safety profile, and tolerability demonstrated in the Phase 1a portion of the study. We're now assessing the patients in each expansion cohort for safety and tolerability, Pharmacokinetics and exposure, as well as efficacy. We remain on track to identify the recommended Phase 2 dose for Ziftomenib, and to report top-line data from the Phase 1B study in the third quarter with a more complete dataset from common 001 reserved for presentation at a medical meeting in the fourth quarter. As a reminder, the study protocol gives us flexibility to enroll additional patients in the Phase 1B, enabling us to maintain momentum while we transition into a subsequent Phase 2 registration directed portion of comments 001. We believe data from all patients treated at the recommended Phase 2 dose will have potential to contribute to the registration on patient population. Meanwhile, we remain enthusiastic about the encouraging safety profile, tolerability, and clinical activity we're observing in the Phase 1B study. As we continue to add sites in the U.S. and Europe in anticipation of the subsequent Phase 2 portion of common 001. We also intend to conduct a comprehensive development strategy that builds upon the potential to register Ziftomenib as a monotherapy while giving us flexibility to access larger opportunities through combinations and in earlier lines, we look forward to sharing much more regarding our global development strategy for Ziftomenib later this year. Following identification of the recommended Phase 2 dose. Now let's turn our attention to our Farnesyl Transferase Inhibitor programs. We continue to view Farnesyl Transferase Inhibition as a potentially valuable therapeutic and commercial franchise, one with potential to deliver multiple opportunities in oncology. One of the first examples of the use of FTI s as a targeted therapy was demonstration of the potential for Tipifarnib to drive durable responses in recurrent and metastatic HRAS mutant HNSCC and our ongoing NHN registration directed trial continued in that indication. More recently, we've begun efforts to debuild upon the initial monotherapy activity of Tipifarnib with two goals: 1. To drive deeper and more durable responses, and 2. To expand the potential patient population. Toward this end, we're pursuing the current HN trial to evaluate the combination of Tipifarnib, and Alpelisib, an inhibitor of PI3 kinase alpha in selected HNSCC patient cohorts. By combining Tipifarnib and Alpelisib, we believe we can achieve both goals. Our preclinical data suggests the combination has potential to provide meaningfully better antitumor activity relative to inhibiting either target alone and by targeting both PIK3CA and HRAS dysregulated HNSCC. The combination has potential to increase the total addressable population for Tipifarnib to as much as 50% of patients with HNSCC. In December, we dose the first patient in our Phase 1-2 current HN trial of Tipifarnib in combination with Alpelisib in HNSCC. The initial cohort includes patients who have PIK3CA dependent HNSCC. Screening has commenced in an Hrs over-expression cohort, and we expect to dose the first patient in this cohort by the third quarter. Our goal with the current HN trial is to identify a recommended Phase II dose and schedule for the combination, and look for early signs of clinical activity. Our team is making excellent progress and we look forward to providing an update. Beyond HNSCC, we're beginning to understand FTI's may represent an ideal combination partner for certain classes of targeted therapy in large solid tumor indications. The first of these emerging combination opportunities was highlighted last month in a late-breaking presentation at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting in New Orleans. The new findings were generated through a collaboration with INSERM, the French National Institute of Health and medical research. The presentation featured pre -clinical data supporting the potential for Tipifarnib to prevent emergence of resistance to Osimertinib in EGFR mutant non-small cell lung cancer. Several farnesylated targets were identified that appear to control the ability of lung cancer tumor cells to enter and exit, a state that makes them tolerant to Osimertinib using preclinical and Vivo models of EGFR mutated lung tumors, core treatment with tipifarnib durably prevented relapsed to osimertinib for up to 6 months with no evidence of toxicity. Collectively, these data strongly support the potential use of an FTI to prevent or delay the adaptive response to osimertinib. We're preparing to initiate a Phase 1 study of tipifarnib in combination with osimertinib in treatment naive, locally advanced, and or metastatic EGFR mutated non-small cell lung cancer. And we expect to dose the first patient in that study, which we call the current lung trial in the third quarter. We intend to perform initial clinical evaluation with tipifarnib or osimertinib while in parallel advancing KO-2806, the lead development candidate in our next-generation FTI program through IND enabling studies. We remain on track to submit an IND application for KO-2806 in the fourth quarter. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Tom for a discussion of our financial results.