Jun. 3 at 3:33 PM
$BCAX $MRUS $PDSB
CEO Response:
There are two key reasons we’re focusing on HPV-negative disease. First, as I mentioned earlier, HPV-negative tumors are known to express higher levels of both EGFR and TGF-β, which are the targets of our therapy. Second, these patients tend to respond more poorly to immunotherapy compared to HPV-positive patients.
In our earlier studies, we did treat a few HPV-positive patients and saw some responses including two complete responses but historically, EGFR inhibitors have shown less favorable outcomes in this group.
by selecting a patient population where our drug is more likely to work based on biology and unmet need, we believe we’re increasing the chances of success in our pivotal trial.
Now, while I don’t want to draw direct comparisons, it’s worth noting that Merus has shown promising data in HPV-positive patients, but their dataset is still quite small. They’ve also reported additional HPV-positive patients where responses were not as strong.
