Mark Capone
Analyst · BTIG. Please go ahead
Thanks, Brian. I would now like to provide some additional details on important clinical data and our performance for the second quarter beginning with hereditary cancer. The second quarter represented our first full quarter of commercializing riskScore, and we are exceptionally pleased with the customer feedback. We saw preventive care year-over-year volume trends accelerate during the fiscal second quarter, and believe the impact could be greater in the future, given that the full validation data was only presented in December at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. The validation data underscored how critical the information from riskScore can be to shaping patient care. Specifically, the data show that the lifetime risks associated with riskScore range widely from 1% to 66%. This dramatic difference in lifetime risk places patients along a continuum from below the general population risk to risks similar to that of high penetrance genes such as BRCA1 or BRCA2. Additionally, in the validation, 38% of patients had lifetime risks greater than 20%, which is the level of risk where guidelines recommend using more sensitive MRI screening instead of mammography. Moreover, 7% of patients had a lifetime risk greater than three times the general population risk. Putting this in context, riskScore identifies more patients with significantly elevated breast cancer risk in BRCA1 and BRCA2 combined. This is why healthcare providers truly believe we are entering the fourth major epic in hereditary cancer testing. Peter Kraft, an epidemiologist at Harvard, recently stated in MI Technology review, and I quote "it's like we have discovered another BRCA, but it’s not one gene." Overall customers are very pleased with Myriad's pioneering riskScore launch and we believe it will continue to be a competitive differentiator and catalyst for growth in our hereditary cancer franchise. We’re also seeing a significant increase in hereditary cancer testing among prostate cancer patients. Consistent with our four and six strategy, hereditary cancer testing for prostate cancer patients is being commercialized by both our oncology and our urology business units. Over the last year, we have seen a tenfold increase in volume and there have been recent catalysts, which could further accelerate testing. In October, NCCN updated its guidelines to recommend hereditary cancer testing for all patients with metastatic prostate cancer. Additionally, an expert panel of physicians recently released a consensus statement in a Journal of Clinical Oncology recommending the need for routine assessment of family history and hereditary cancer counselling for men with prostate cancer seen by either a urologist or oncologist. In total, there are approximately 46,000 newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients every year that meet professional guidelines and these patients are motivated not only because their test results could prevent cancers in their children, but because it could actually shape their therapy with targeted pharmaceuticals. On the companion diagnostic front, we are excited to launch BRACAnalysis CDx for HER2- metastatic breast cancer patients as a companion diagnostic for olaparib. As a reminder, there are approximately 155,000 metastatic breast cancer survivors in the United States today of which we estimate 125,000 do not know their BRCA status. In every year, there are 60,000 new patients diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Given the FDA approval of BRACAnalysis CDx, we believe there will now be a significant motivation for these patients to be tested to determine, if they are eligible for olaparib. Our oncology commercial team is aggressively working to ensure patients and physicians understand this new treatment option. From a sales perspective, we are collaborating with AstraZeneca and Merck in the United States, which doubles our commercial impact. We are also initiating one of our largest ever direct-to-patient and direct-to-provider digital marketing campaigns in support of this important launch, which have historically generated significant returns. Furthermore, we have fine-tuned our sales efforts to ensure higher and more frequent call volumes on the 3,300 oncologists that treat over 75% of metastatic breast cancer patients in the United States. Also, of note, Pfizer presented positive metastatic breast cancer data associated with the drug talazoparib in early December. Only patients testing positive with BRACAnalysis CDx were enrolled in this study. The results were highly statistically significant and demonstrated that talazoparib had median progression free survival of 8.6 months, compared to only 5.6 months for patients treated with physician’s choice of therapy. Myriad plans to submit a supplementary premarket approval application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under its existing BRACAnalysis CDx to include talazoparib. Looking into the future, we continue to see opportunities for market expansion with companion diagnostics. As early as fiscal year 2019, we expect data readouts in first line ovarian cancer and pancreatic cancer. Of note, we recently signed an expanded research collaboration with AstraZeneca using myChoice HRD Plus in first line ovarian cancer. As early as fiscal year 2020, we expected readouts in Adjuvant breast cancer and in prostate cancer. In combination, we believe these indications would represent over $700 million of annual addressable market opportunity. Moving on to GeneSight, we remain excited about the presentation and publication of full data set from our 1,200-patient randomized controlled trial by the end of this fiscal year. Early feedback on the top line data from physicians has been exceptional with doctors clearly impressed at this statistically significant improvement in the gold standard clinical outcomes of remission and response, given the unprecedented comparison to an actively managed optimized drug control arm. Psychiatrists appreciate how difficult psychotropic drugs studies are and understand that in registration studies for FDA approved medications compared to placebo, statistically significant improvements and remission and response where only seen 13% and 33% of the time respectively. We have also had very protective productive dialogue with large payers under nondisclosure agreements. As one national payer noted and I quote “the study design was exceptionally strong with an impressive list of key opinion leaders, and the results you demonstrated are real.” After reviewing with another technical assessment committee, they noted “This is high-quality evidence and a very large study, which addresses the gaps identified in our last review of GeneSight. And we encourage you to resubmit as soon as practical.” Consistent with historical precedent, we have assumed the coverage decisions from payers will occur after publication of the results in a peer-reviewed journal, but we believe our early educational efforts will help accelerate the timeline from publication to coverage. Also, we have reached another important milestone with GeneSight related to the Canadian impact study. Impact is a major ongoing prospective open-label study conducted in conjunction with the center for addiction and mental health that to date has enrolled over 8,000 patients with a range of mental health conditions. If you recall last quarter, we discuss the positive outcome from impact study for general anxiety disorder. One of the primary goals for this study was to compare the performance of GeneSight guided arms and depressed patients between primary care physicians and psychiatrists. The analysis from this subset of the impact study includes outcomes from over 2,000 moderate to severely depressed patients. I am pleased to announce that the topline results from this study show that primary care physicians had even better outcomes than psychiatrists in all three study endpoints remission, response, and symptom improvement. And the results were highly statistically significant with p-values less than 0.0005. We anticipate presenting the full data set in an upcoming conference and submitting it for publication by the end of this fiscal year. We believe this data will be pivotal in broadening Medicare coverage to include primary care physicians, and we will be presenting this data to the MolDX program before the end of this fiscal year. Finally, on GeneSight, we have launched another study in conjunction with the Department of Veterans Affairs. The study titled the PRIME Care will be a randomized controlled trial, which will enroll over 2,000 patients with major depressive disorder and include 250 healthcare providers at 21 VA medical centers. The Department of Veterans Affairs has committed over $12 billion to fund the study, which will evaluate how the GeneSight test impacts the key endpoints of remission, response, and symptom improvement relative to a controlled group. We are honored to work with the Department of Veterans Affairs on this important initiative. Given that over 20% of the 2.6 million veterans who are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan returned with major depressive disorder or related mental health condition. This study is anticipated to complete by 2021 and is currently enrolling ahead of schedule. If successful, the study could lead to broader utilization guidelines for Department of Defense Personnel. Next, I would like to discuss Vectra DA, starting first with our efforts to broaden commercial coverage. Based upon feedback from commercial payers in the past year, we identified four questions to be addressed that would enhance the chain of evidence supporting coverage for Vectra DA. First, payers are interested in any guidelines that includes Vector DA. Currently, Vector DA is in the United Rheumatology guidelines, which represent approximately 10% of rheumatologists, and is under consideration for ACR guidelines. Second, to answer the question of how Vector DA compares to other measures of disease activity, we presented two major studies showing that Vector DA is the best predictor of radiographic progression with performance more than three times better than conventional disease activity measures. Third, to answer the question on how to use Vector DA to modify treatment, we recently submitted a manuscript for publication, which determine the magnitude of change in Vectra DA scores that justify a change in therapy. This clinical utility data will be used as the basis to add a medical management protocol with every Vector DA test report, similar to what we have with our hereditary cancer tests. The final request by payers is for data demonstrating the improved outcomes when physicians follow our medical management protocol. We are currently generating both retrospective and prospective data to answer this request and expect the retrospective data to be available for a complete dossier by the end of this fiscal year. I’m also pleased to announce another advance in the clinical utility of Vector DA with recent publication in the Annals of Rheumatic Diseases that demonstrate a strong link between Vectra DA scores in cardiovascular disease. The study evaluated Medicare claims data from over 70,000 patients and found that for every 10-point change in Vectra DA score, the hazard ratio for a major coronary event was 1.32, and was statistically significant. Patients with rheumatoid arthritis are at double the risk of heart disease already and according to this study, a patient with the Vector DA score of 60 would have a three-times greater risk of major coronary event, compared to a patient with a Vector DA score of 20. Physicians’ previous data of adding substantial additional clinical utility for Vector DA. Dr. Jonathan Graff, a professor of medicine at University of California San Francisco stated and I quote “This is some of the best data available to suggest the link between RA and heart disease. I think these results prove the hypothesis that inflammation drives cardiac disease.” We anticipate future versions of the test report will provide an individualized cardiovascular risk determination. Moving onto EndoPredict, we presented our first chemopredictive data at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in December demonstrating the ability of EndoPredict to predict therapy response in the neoadjuvant setting. Approximately 15% of breast cancer patients receive the adjuvant chemotherapy. The study, which evaluated 217 women with HR+ breast cancer demonstrated that patients with a low EndoPredict score responded substantially better to endocrine therapy, where patients with high EndoPredict score responded significantly better to adjuvant chemotherapy. These results of both these outcomes were highly statistically significant. Lastly, I wanted to provide an update on myPath Melanoma, which increasingly looks like it will add to revenue growth in fiscal 2019. Every year in the United States, there are approximately 2 million skin biopsies, of which approximately 15% or 300,000 have an uncertain diagnosis. This represents a $500 million total addressable market based upon our $1,500 targeted average selling price. Even with efforts limited to select opinion leaders, our small sales team was still able to generate over 300 samples per territory, per quarter. When we obtain broader reimbursement, we will expand our sales team and increase our marketing spend to access the entire market of 1,000 dermatopathologists. Overall, I am exceptionally pleased with our business performance in the second fiscal quarter, and our ability to raise financial guidance for this fiscal year. We have a solid hereditary cancer foundation with growing volumes and stable pricing in hereditary cancer market that still remains less than 10% penetrating. In addition, we continue to grow new product volume at a robust double-digit pace in highly underpenetrated markets, and we have a number of near-term catalysts that can expand reimbursement. Also, we're beginning to see a significant impact from Elevate 2020 initiatives as we build a leaner more efficient organization. And most importantly, we have an extraordinarily talented team that is passionately focused on improving patient's lives, while achieving our long-term financial goal. With that, I’m pleased to turn the call back over to Scott for Q&A.