Amgen Inc. (AMGN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

September 20, 2020

NASDAQ US Health Care Biotechnology conference_presentation 67 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Operator

operator
#1

Good afternoon. My name is Annie, and I will be your conference facilitator today for Amgen's conference call in conjunction with the ESMO 2020 Virtual Congress. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to introduce Arvind Sood, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Sood, you may now begin.

Arvind Sood

executive
#2

Okay. Great. Thank you, Annie, and good afternoon, everybody. It's still morning for those of us on the West Coast. My apologies for the slightly delayed start this morning. Delighted you could join us today, and hopefully, you can join us again tomorrow. We presented some important data this morning in the virtual scientific session of ESMO on sotorasib, also known as AMG 510, which, as you know, is a first-in-class inhibitor of KRAS G12C, and this is advancing rapidly through clinical development. In addition, we are also presenting data tomorrow on our extended half-life BiTE AMG 160 that targets PSMA or prostate-specific membrane antigen. And in conjunction with that presentation, we'll conduct another call tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time to review that data. To further review the sotorasib data presented this morning, I'm joined today by Dr. David Reese, our Executive Vice President of Research and Development; and Dr. Greg Friberg, our Vice President of Global Oncology Development. Also joining us for the Q&A session is Dr. David Hong, who presented the data from the Code 100 (sic) [ CodeBreaK 100 ] study this morning. Dr. Hong is the Deputy Chair in the Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics at MD Anderson in Houston. So with that, I would like to turn the call over to Dave Reese. Dave?

David Reese

executive
#3

Well, hello, everyone. Thanks, Arvind, and thank you, everyone, for joining us here on a Sunday. If you'll turn to Slide 3 in the deck that we have posted. As Arvind mentioned, what we'll do today in terms of agenda is that I'll make a few brief introductory remarks. Greg will then review the sotorasib data that were presented earlier today and published more fulsomely in the New England Journal of Medicine simultaneously. And then, we will have a Q&A, for which we'll be also joined by Dr. David Hong from MD Anderson. If you turn to Slide 5, I wanted to remind you that in addition to today's presentation, there was also a poster. The third abstract listed on this slide, that is an extensive real-world data set on the prognosis of patients with non-small cell lung cancer and the G12C mutation. That data set, I think, is quite important in putting everything that you'll hear today into context. It shows that these patients have a prognosis that appears to be the same as the entire non-small cell lung cancer population. It is certainly no better. Importantly, we also had data on duration of response and progression-free survival today as well as our first look at biomarker data. If you advance to Slide 6, I would like to say that we remain very enthusiastic about the sotorasib program, both in terms of the efficacy and tolerability that we've seen so far. And as I mentioned, we now have promising data in terms of duration of response and progression-free survival. We have now several hundred patients who have been enrolled in all clinical studies and are moving forward rapidly with the broad-based development programs. On Slide 7, we list for you that development program, including both monotherapy studies in lung cancer, colorectal cancer and other solid tumors bearing the G12C mutation as well as a suite of combination studies. There are now 7 different arms of a master protocol for combination therapies that have been opened. In addition, we anticipate that 3 or 4 more arms with new combinations will be opened in the near future. So we're moving forward quite rapidly. Very pleased with what we've seen so far. And we'd now like to review the data presented this morning and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. And for that, I'll turn things over to Greg. Greg?

Gregory Friberg

executive
#4

Thanks, Dave. I want to point you to Slide 9, just to begin, and remind you that the data that we're going to be reviewing today was presented by Dr. Hong in the early morning hours here in the U.S. this morning. And this represents an update on our non-small cell lung cancer patients from the Phase I study, both the escalation and the expansion part of the Phase I. We were fortunate to have a simultaneous publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, and that publication involved the entire cohort, including these patients, but also patients who had colorectal cancer and other tumors. And the total number of patients there was 129. We move on to Slide 10. A quick review of the pathway. This audience certainly doesn't need much details here, but I will remind you that the non-small cell lung cancer patients that we're going to review today represent the largest tranche of patients who have this G12C KRAS mutation. About 1 in 8 non-small cell lung cancer patients have that at 13%. If we move on to Slide 11, we see the design of the Phase I study that Dr. Hong presented. We're calling this the CodeBreaK 100 study. As a reminder, this data is from the Phase I portion of the study and not the Phase II portion that we'll be revealing data before the end of the year. This is a fairly standard Phase I study. One of the commonalities, of course, across the different tumor types that were enrolled were that they all had the G12C mutation, as determined in their tumor biopsies. Next slide, Slide 12, jumps into the disposition of the patients who were treated, who have non-small cell lung cancer on the study. And the take-home message here is that there's more patients, we have 59 total patients now compared to the last time that we were speaking. And we have more time of follow-up, almost a year of follow-up, 11.7 months. And of course, with that additional follow-up, that allows us to, in a credible way, start describing some time-based endpoints that we'll dive into a little bit later on. From a demographic standpoint, I just want to highlight that all of these patients had, had prior chemotherapy that had failed them. They have progressed through that, and about 80% to 90% of them had, had prior PDL-1, PD-1 therapy. So the take-home message, again, these patients were under median of third- or fourth-line therapy. And of course, as with the demographics of this disease, most of them were prior smokers. If we move on to Slide 13, you see a summary of the treatment-emergent adverse events. There were no dose-limiting toxicities that were seen in these 59 patients. There were no fatal adverse events that were seen. And of note, there was only one treatment-related adverse event that led to discontinuation. It was 1 out of the 59. It was actually 1 out of 129 if you look at the New England Journal article. So certainly, the monotherapy has demonstrated a relatively safe safety profile. Moving on to Slide 14. And we're very fortunate today, we'll dive into some of the treatment-related adverse event terms. We have Dr. Hong on the line as well who can provide additional color. And really, the terms that you see on this slide are quite similar to the presentations we've seen previously, diarrhea, LFT abnormalities, a little bit of anemia. I think Dr. LoRusso summarized it quite nicely in her editorial in the New England Journal. This is quite a favorable safety profile and has the potential for minimal overlapping toxicity with other agents. If we move on to Slide 15, we start diving into the efficacy that's been seen in the non-small cell lung cancer patients. And what you see here is that there are 19 total partial responses confirmed as according to RECIST across the 59 patients here. If you only look at the cohort that was treated with the highest dose level, 960 milligrams, it's a little over half of those patients, 34 of them, and we clocked in with a confirmed partial response rate of 35%. And of course, as we've seen previously, that doesn't seem to describe the entirety of the activity of the drug. There was a disease control rate above 90% in this cohort as well, with a significant number of patients demonstrating stable disease. If we move on to Slide 16, we're presenting an update to the waterfall plot that shows the best RECIST response across the patients. 57 of the 59 patients had the appropriate scans, both pre and post, to be able to put them on this grid. And one of the factors that really jumps off the page here is that this looks remarkably similar to the prior presentations in terms of the shape of the waterfall. Again, we see that 32%, 35% confirmed response rate, but you also see 71% of patients who have some degree of shrinkage, and again, suggesting that perhaps the overall response rate number isn't describing the totality of the benefit. If we move on to Slide 17, we have an update of the swim lanes for you, including all those patients, those 19 responders that are in there. And looking at those 19 responders, there's a couple of trends I just want to point out. One is that 10 of 19 of these patients still remain in response at the time of the data analysis. Second would be that the responses are usually occurring fairly early in a patient's treatment course. Though that's not universal, there are some patients who had responses later. And of course, you see now we have a significant amount of follow-up, and that allows us to have enough data to start looking at Kaplan-Meier estimates. And below, you see again exactly that. You see a durability of response for those 19 patients that's estimated to be 10.9 months. So something that we feel quite encouraged by. On the right side of the slide, we now have the first Kaplan-Meier curve for progression-free survival. And as we noted, responses are an important benchmark to see in patients, but progression-free survival is measuring the effect for all the patients who come on to the study. So if you take all of those 59 patients and you estimate out what their time to be progression-free and alive is, you see a median of 6.3 months, again a number that we're quite encouraged by considering that these patients are on their third and fourth lines of therapy. Just to put that in context, standard docetaxel chemotherapy, depending on the patient population, probably has a progression-free survival in the order of 2 to 3 months across a similarly matched group, and that's not even accounting for the KRAS status. So moving on to Slide 18, we presented a patient case. This is an example of one of the best responders on the study. And while it's anecdotal, I think it has a few important points that are worth mentioning. First and foremost, this was a heavily pretreated patient again. Had a nice response, even though this patient did have an STK11 co-mutation, a very poor prognosis marker that was identified in their plasma. So that mutation doesn't seem to preclude the possibility of response. And this was also a patient with brain metastases that did shrink on scans on the study. This is obviously something that we're keenly interested in, and we're enrolling a cohort of similar patients and want to be able to describe this more broadly as time goes on. Moving on to Slide 19. We dig into a portion of the presentation that was not covered in the New England Journal article, and this is some of the first biomarker data that we've looked at. Clearly, we want to understand the factors that might predict responsiveness or sensitivity in these patients. So we took the patients for whom we have that data, and we did just that. We looked at responders and nonresponders, for that matter, and frankly, progressors, and ask the question, do we see differences in these biologic factors across the patients? And the answer was no. It does appear that sotorasib has clinical activity across a range of the G12C patients regardless of mutational allele frequency in tumor tissue, regardless of PDL-1 status as determined by the pharmDx assay in subset of patients and irregardless of tumor mutational burden as determined by a serum assay. Of course, these are early days, but it's a pertinent negative that's giving us insights that these are not eureka moments in terms of pointing out factors for sensitivity and resistance. We'll continue to look at these as time goes on. If we move to Slide 20, we are showing data for co-mutations on the patients. This is looking at their tissue, again, with the QIAGEN comprehensive cancer panel. So over 250 hotspot mutations that are looked at here, and we presented some of those that we feel are the most important here. Of note, 33 patients had tissue available for this analysis. And what you see here are a couple of factors. The take-home message really is that the presence of actionable co-mutations were quite rare. For example, you see 4 patients with EGFR mutations there. Details are important. None of these were T790M. None of them are actually even actionable EGFR mutations. The co-mutation level, whether it's EGFR or looking at epidemiologic factors over studies of ALK and other potentially actionable lesions, are rare in these patients. We also looked at co-mutations that can predict poor prognosis. And you see KEAP1 listed here. It does not appear to preclude responsiveness, the presence of KEAP1. The question came up with Dr. Lindsay earlier today, why are there no STK11 data reported here? The answer there is simple. We looked at it, and in the tissue, we actually did not find any cases of STK11, probably reflecting the poor prognosis of those patients and the fact that this was a Phase I study. They would have had to survive long enough to make it onto the study. Again, I think the take-home message here is that none of these co-mutations appear to predict sensitivity nor do they seem to predict inability to respond. We'll continue to look quite deeply at this, but this biology appears to be one that is not as simple as one might hope. So moving on to the final slide, Slide 21. We have a summary. Again, the New England Journal paper is out as well looking at the totality of the patients. And the safety profile was reported there as having a very encouraging profile. That, in addition to the activity that was seen, the 35% durable objective response rate in the 960-milligram cohort, the median progression-free survival in all patients of over 6 months and of course, the durability in responders estimated to be over 10 months. We see these as quite encouraging. And the 960-milligram dose, of course, that was identified was brought into the single-arm Phase II study in non-small cell lung cancer that we completed enrollment to back in December. So with that, I'm going to wrap up this presentation and hand it back to Dave, and we'll move on to the question and answer.

David Reese

executive
#5

Well, thanks, Greg. And again, thank you, everyone. So Annie, why don't we go ahead and open up the line for questions.

Operator

operator
#6

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Evan Seigerman from Crédit Suisse.

Evan Seigerman

analyst
#7

Congrats on the update. So two questions. One, can you help us better understand why some patients progress so quickly after initiation of treatment, especially at the high dose? Is anything unique in these patients? And also, do you have any color on the median duration of therapy or duration of response in the 960-milligram cohort? Is it similar to that 10.9 months in the overall population?

David Reese

executive
#8

Yes. Thanks, Evan. Those are good questions. We have looked at that. It's the real -- the 960-milligrams in terms of follow-up suggest that Kaplan-Meier estimates. But we certainly would have no reason to believe that, that would be inferior to the overall population. Let me ask Greg if he wants to provide a little more color there, but I think the answer is fairly simple.

Gregory Friberg

executive
#9

Yes. The data just hasn't reached maturity yet, but we have no inclinations or reason to believe that there's something dramatically different in that group. With regard to the other question and potential for progression, we have more patients treated at the 960 dose. If you look at the waterfall plot that's not only in this presentation or the New England Journal, you'll see that there were a handful of patients who had tumor shrinkage who then didn't go on to be confirmed. There is no one story to describe that. One answer is sometimes it's a math issue, and patients have a very -- close to 30%, and the next will be right above or below the line. Second would be that we have seen a couple of patients with some heterogeneous tumor responses. And we have seen a small number, but a couple of patients who had tumor shrinkage followed on the next scan by growth. We think it's a rare phenomenon, but it's something that we're going to follow very closely. And of course, as we learn more about the biology of the disease here, we'll learn how best to deploy this drug.

Operator

operator
#10

Our next question comes from the line of Geoff Meacham from Bank of America.

Aspen Mori;BofA Merrill Lynch;Analyst

analyst
#11

It's Aspen on for Geoff. Just a couple of quick ones. I guess, first off, are there any notable differences in the studies here, the Phase I data, and maybe the baseline characteristics versus the Phase II study that's coming for the rest of the year that then might drive some different results? And then has FDA communicated any sort of thresholds to you for the Phase II study? And I guess how does -- how the data today kind of inform how you're thinking about that?

David Reese

executive
#12

Yes. Let me address the second question, and then I'll ask Greg to talk about the outpatient characteristics in the Phase I versus Phase II, which are quite similar, in general. We don't comment on regulatory actions. I think one way to think about this is if we repeated in the Phase II data that were similar to what we've observed here in the Phase I trial, we'd be quite happy with those results, both in terms of response rate, also particularly in terms of duration of response and progression-free survival and the tolerability. So all of those, of course, are factors that regulatory authorities look at when affecting the benefit/risk of a new therapy. And like I said, if we can -- if we're in the ballpark of what we've seen in Phase I, we would be pleased with those results. Greg, do you want to speak to some of the nuances of the patient populations?

Gregory Friberg

executive
#13

Sure. The short answer is that the populations are essentially the same. Of course, when we enroll to a Phase II, we have additional sites, and the geographic footprint might be a slight smaller mix, though all patients are being centrally confirmed with the QIAGEN G12C assay for this particular study. I would just add that there are some nuances in the entry criteria about prior therapies. But in practical purposes, we think that, that will result in an incredibly similar patient population where a great majority of the patients will have had prior PD-1 therapies, and everybody will have prior chemotherapy.

David Reese

executive
#14

Great. Thanks. And before we move on, and we've got David Hong on the line, it might be good to have him just weigh in briefly in terms of his assessment given his vast experience on the efficacy data and tolerability profile. David?

David Hong;MD Anderson;Deputy Chair, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics

attendee
#15

Can you guys hear me?

David Reese

executive
#16

Yes.

Gregory Friberg

executive
#17

Yes.

David Hong;MD Anderson;Deputy Chair, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics

attendee
#18

Okay. So yes. So I think, number one, I'm more of an early-drug-at-the-moment Phase I guy, and my bread and butter is trying to identify toxicities in these new molecules. And this drug is incredibly well-tolerated. I don't know what else to say. The vast majority of these patients have really minimal adverse events of Grade 1 or 2. Even our patients who've had Grade 3-elevated LFTs, the vast major of these patients, if you stop the drug or dose-reduce them, the liver function tests return back to Grade 1 or lower. So I'm really pleased by, one, as an early phase drug-developing investigator, that this drug has been not only efficacious but has been well-tolerated. And I think that bodes well in the context that we are moving very quickly towards combination studies, which I think will test the hypothesis that this may actually, in combination, even more efficacious in the existing non-small cell lung cancer patient population and/or -- and possibly beneficial in the colorectal cancer population. And I don't necessarily focus on GI, but I do have an interest in GI. And I do think, just my best guess here, just -- is that this will have much more benefit in the context of the combination of chemo plus EGFR inhibitor with 510 in colorectal than alone. So I'm excited about that. Again, from an efficacy standpoint, I do think that the current population is -- does not -- is -- does not really show the potential of what this drug may be in either the second-line setting, as in CodeBreaK 200, and maybe even in the first-line setting. As you all know, Phase I populations tend to be very heavily pretreated. These patients often have much more higher tumor burden. And as Greg alluded to, the heterogeneity, oftentimes, these patients will have not only KRAS G12C clones, when they may have other clones within their tumor microenvironment that may lead them to faster progression, et cetera. So I'm hopeful. Obviously, this is still preliminary, but I'm hopeful that as we move up the line of prior lines of therapy, that we will see more efficacy.

Operator

operator
#19

We have another question from the line of Matthew Harrison from Morgan Stanley.

Matthew Harrison

analyst
#20

I guess -- I sort of have a broad question, which I know may be difficult to answer. But I think one of the questions people are all asking is, how do you think about this as a monotherapy profile if you're able to achieve something similar in the Phase II study from a registrable profile? Do you think this is enough? Or do you think you need to see more efficacy to be able to have something that's registrable?

David Reese

executive
#21

Yes. Thanks, Matt. And as always, we don't speak to specific regulatory conversations. But again, I think if we replicated these results in the Phase II, we would certainly be very interested in moving forward with the drug from an approvability standpoint after the appropriate conversations with regulatory authorities. And again, it will be the entire mix of data not only the response rate but duration, progression-free survival and confirming the tolerability data that we've seen before. But again, I think as Dr. Hong just pointed out, for this patient population, it's still an overview of fairly impressive set of results.

Operator

operator
#22

And our next question comes from the line of Yaron Werber from Cowen and Company.

Yaron Werber

analyst
#23

If you don't mind, I have a couple. And maybe just to clarify, maybe David or Dr. Hong. I mean when we look at the 960 dose, 5 out of the 12 responders are still ongoing and very durable. So when you said that the overall MDOR is not -- you don't think it's substantially different from the overall cohort, I guess my real question is, why -- one would imagine it should be higher than 10.9 months as the data matures. And then second question, just again maybe to Dr. Hong's question or comments about -- in CodeBreaK 200, the baseline characteristic would be earlier. Any thoughts on the Phase II characteristics and enrollment? In this case, about 60% of patients had 2 or more prior lines of therapy. Would that be the same in the ongoing Phase II?

David Reese

executive
#24

Yes. Let me actually ask Greg to discuss the issue of the 960-milligram dose and estimates of duration. Again, for your -- there's, of course, no reason for us to believe that, that should be any different or shorter than the overall population. And as you point out, some -- a number of those patients are -- remain on therapy. It's early days and, therefore, statistically hard or not possible to make a specific estimate of duration of response in that population. Greg, anything you would like to add?

Gregory Friberg

executive
#25

Yes, Dave. I would just add that we have left data for a subset of those groups, the group that enrolled later on with the study. And so probably it was more fair to say it should be no worse than the overall. But I wouldn't overread that we said not significantly different. It's less mature, and we're being conservative in not wanting to overstate what we know and what we don't know based on space and time.

Yaron Werber

analyst
#26

So it sounds like that arm is still enrolling. Can you confirm that?

Gregory Friberg

executive
#27

From the Phase I perspective, the 129 patients represent a great majority of those that are going to be in that group. We do have a few additional clinical pharmacology cohorts. But I think what you can look at here is a great majority of the patients who will be enrolled there. Our eyes are now pointing to the additional studies that we have opened to ask additional questions. So this data represents a pretty full set. And again, we'll continue to follow those patients. And as you noted, there are several of them that are still on study. So we look forward to seeing how that data evolves. Of course, I just want to remind you all that we have fully enrolled the Phase II cohort, and we'll be turning that cohort over before the end of the year. And so from that standpoint, we're really looking forward to that data set as well.

Yaron Werber

analyst
#28

Great. And Dr. Hong, there was a question regarding the Phase I population and then the population enrolling in Phase II. Any further comments you'd like to make about that?

David Hong;MD Anderson;Deputy Chair, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics

attendee
#29

No. Like I said, the Phase I population, as Greg and Dave already mentioned, I mean, these are really heavily pretreated population, median of 3-plus prior therapies. And these patients tend to have more resistant tumor burden disease, in general, for all therapies, whether it's targeted or immunotherapies. And so my hope and my guess, and that's just my guess, is that you're going to -- if you have second-line patients who are going to be randomized to docetaxel versus 510, that you're probably going to see a better response rate in those patients on the 510. But you just -- as we all know, you just don't know until you conduct experiment, right? But that's my guess.

David Reese

executive
#30

Great. Thanks, David. And we would point out that we had roughly 90% of patients in the Phase I who have received prior PD-1 therapy, which is a requirement for the Phase II unless PD-1 is contraindicated. So we expect, again, roughly similar populations in terms of prior treatments and other demographic characteristics.

Operator

operator
#31

We have our next question from the line of Terence Flynn from Goldman Sachs.

Terence Flynn

analyst
#32

Maybe -- I think, Dave, you had mentioned that PFS for Taxotere of 2 to 3 months and the fact that, that doesn't account for KRAS status. So when you -- do you guys have data that shows if you do account for KRAS status, what that would be? And then was wondering, in terms of the combination strategy, obviously, you did a detailed biomarker analysis here and it seems somewhat inconclusive. So as you think about the combination strategy here, you mentioned broadening that program, adding 3 or 4 additional combos. So how are you approaching that now given you've seen some of the early biomarker data? And when could we see some combo data from you guys in the clinic?

David Reese

executive
#33

Yes. Thanks, Terence. In terms of the combination strategy, we are facing that on fundamental biology and, of course, standard regimens in different treatment types. So in colorectal cancer, combination with an EGFR inhibitor, for example. In non-small cell lung cancer and other solid tumors, looking at chemotherapy combinations as appropriate. So I think all of that is founded in both good, basic and clinical science. And we would expect data from the combination regimens over the first half or so of next year. And can you remind me what the first part of your question was again? All right. While we're waiting for Terence to come back, with that, Annie, can we have the next question?

Operator

operator
#34

We have our next question from the line of Michael Yee from Jefferies.

Michael Yee

analyst
#35

Question for Dr. Hong and question for Dr. Reese. Dr. Hong, maybe you could just comment on what you think the level of clinical meaningfulness is versus the alternatives here? Given the durability you've seen here in the overall responses, maybe just talk a little bit about the magnitude of clinical meaningfulness, I guess, versus options. And then for David, can you just remind us what the Phase IIb? Is there something that triggers the completion of that? Is it just kind of arbitrary, more than 6 months of follow-up on all the responders? Maybe just talk about what actually drives you to decide, stop it, lock it and release the data?

David Reese

executive
#36

Thanks. And maybe I'll start, and then I'll ask Dr. Hong to weigh in. First, let me address the first part of Terence's prior question on KRAS status. We are conducting large real-world evidence studies to date. We don't see any dramatic change in behavior in terms of response based on KRAS G12C status in the lung cancer population. We're continuing to accrue more data there. But certainly, to date, we've not really seen anything suggesting an enhanced response to, for example, standard chemotherapy. In terms of the Phase IIb study, we -- all patients will be followed for a minimum of 6 months after a first response. And so remember, scans are done every 6 weeks. So if you have a response at 6 weeks or 12 weeks, all patients will be followed for at least 6 months after that response to get solid estimates of duration of response. And let me -- with that, let me ask David Hong to comment on your views of the clinical meaningfulness of the data.

David Hong;MD Anderson;Deputy Chair, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics

attendee
#37

Yes. So I'm not a lung guy, so I'm not an investigator who focuses on lung. I focused primarily on early drug development and so forth. But I've spoken to many of my lung colleagues and our colleague, Bob Li, who is also the co-author on New England Journal of Medicine paper. All of this -- in this population, this population of non-small cell lung cancer patients, 3 lines or more who've been mostly -- all have been chemorefractory and immunorefractory, the median progression-free survival of 6.3 months is very significant. And the fact that -- and if this pans out in a Phase II, would -- in a larger Phase II set, would definitely be informatory of this. So I think all these things -- and that's why I think it got published in the New England Journal, right? I mean if this was not significant, I'm sure Dan Longo and the editorial staff would probably have dismissed this paper. But the fact that we're seeing these response rates and also particularly the meaning of progression-free survival, which is a fairly, I think, accurate surrogate for overall survival in the non-small cell lung cancer setting, is promising.

Operator

operator
#38

We have another question from the line of Ronny Gal from Bernstein.

Ronny Gal

analyst
#39

Congratulations on the data. And I have two. First, I'm a bit confused about how to think about the relationship between KRAS and PD-1. You have preclinical data showing an enhancement of PDL-1 standing by KRAS. Merck presented data suggesting the KEYTRUDA works the longest in KRAS-mutated patients. And today, you have told us that PD-L1 standing is not a good biomarker for the activity of anti-KRAS agents. So I was wondering if you can just let us know with kind of like what is your thinking right now. What is the hypothesis about the interaction between those 2 agents? And then for Dr. Hong, as somebody who looks at the early-stage data, I'm sure you kind of looked at the comparison along the various KRAS G12C targeting agents. I wonder if you can comment, in your mind, where does the science stand today, especially in the relationship between agents targeting the RAS on- and off-state with the KRAS-mutated targeting agents.

David Reese

executive
#40

Thanks, Ronny. Let me ask Greg to talk about the relationship between response and PD-1 expression. And I think the take-home message here was that we saw responses across a range of PD-1 expression. Small data sets and a lot more to learn here. We'll have extensive data in the Phase II trial as well. But let me ask Greg if he wants to provide a little additional color.

Gregory Friberg

executive
#41

Thanks, Dave. Yes, when we looked at a variety of molecular epidemiologic studies, there's a clear pattern that these KRAS G12C patients are more commonly smokers. They have higher tumor mutational burden. And unsurprisingly, they have, de novo, a slightly higher PDL-1 expression levels compared to an unselected population. Now that's, again, an epidemiologic phenomena. What we have to keep in mind is that the patients who are flowing into the study that we've just presented data on are those that in whom PDL-1 and PD-1 therapies have failed them and that they've progressed through those. So that may explain when we show our data. The numbers are small, but you see that there's -- it looks like there are very few patients in the study, numerically, who have high PDL-1 expression. Whether or not this is going to be a hard trend that plays out or not, this is the data. And what's fair to say is the patients for whom those therapies are no longer active, no longer working, our data shows that, that doesn't preclude the possibility of response in later lines of therapy.

David Reese

executive
#42

Great. Thanks. And David, there was a question about on-off inhibitors, if you want to just speculate briefly about that.

David Hong;MD Anderson;Deputy Chair, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics

attendee
#43

Well, I'm not entirely -- I'm not sure if I can entirely answer that question. Let me go back to the -- try to add also some -- a little additional thoughts on the immunotherapy cohort. I think one subset of patients who do poorly on -- with KRAS, who do poorly on immunotherapy, are these patients who have this LKB1, STK11 and KEAP1 mutations, which our colleague here, [ Ferno Scolidas ], published in cancer discovery. And that showed that these patients really don't do that well with immunotherapy. And we did an analysis here looking at just all KRAS G12C patients. And one of the more common mutations we did see associated with G12C was STK11 or KEAP1. Now in our patient population in this trial, again, we didn't see them probably, as Greg alluded to, because they tend to be -- have poor prognosis and may have not had the chance to get onto this trial. But I think one possibility is as we go into earlier-stage patients, we may see more and more of these patients. And I think that those patients will -- are not responding or probably not responding to immunotherapy. So I think that's an important aspect and nuance of all this. The other -- the question, on and off inhibitors, are you -- I don't -- are you talking about Revolution's? There's -- I think Revolution Medicines has an on-off inhibitor. Are you talking about other competing KRAS G12C inhibitors like MRTX849?

David Reese

executive
#44

Yes, maybe we can take that question up subsequently. And in the interest of time, I think we only have about 15 minutes left, so let's just move on to the next question.

Operator

operator
#45

Our next question comes from the line of Mohit Bansal from Citigroup.

Mohit Bansal

analyst
#46

Congratulations on drilling down drug eval here as the medium resilient point. So while these responses are really good, typically in targeted mutations, we have seen much higher response rate, if you look at KRAS inhibitors or RAS or EGFRs. My question is, what is different about KRAS G12C that is leading to these? We are not seeing very high responses here that we are accustomed to see with the targeted therapies. And the second part is, in the combo model, what you are doing, biologically, which ones do you think could improve these results or shift tools? And I know you are doing a lot of work there.

David Reese

executive
#47

Right. Thanks for the question. And I think it's an important one, and it's one that there's been some speculation on. With the receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors, response rates are somewhat higher. I think the fundamental answer here is that this is very different biology. This is not a receptor tyrosine kinase. And after 40 years, this is the first time that we really have any kind of extensive data at all on RAS inhibitors. So I'm just not sure how much you can read across from receptor inhibitors to inhibitors of RAS. In terms of the combination studies, again, these are really founded, both in basic science, which combinations look promising based on laboratory experiments. And we've done an extensive preclinical characterization of combinations. And so combinations such as MEK and EGFR inhibitors are going forward in the clinic, both in lung cancer but also in colorectal cancer, where we would like to enhance response rates. And as I mentioned, we're going to generate a lot of data in the next 6 to 12 months across these different combination arms, multiple combinations, probably over 10 to 12 in the end. And I think we'll then have a very good idea clinically of what looks most promising and what to take forward.

Operator

operator
#48

We have another question from the line of Geoffrey Porges from SVB Leerink.

Geoffrey Porges

analyst
#49

A couple of questions. First, David, as you're thinking about all these combinations and, frankly, reflecting on this data, are there any considerations of different doses, either higher or more frequent dosing? Are you looking at b.i.d.? And then how much do you think you might need to dose down in some of the combinations? And then secondly, perhaps Dr. Hong could answer this or Greg, in the patients, it seems as though there are patients who actually fail fairly early, and I presume that they progressed quite quickly then. Do you happen to know whether that's due to further changes in G12C? Do they -- does the G12C somehow avoid the treatment? Or is it due to induction of another mutation or driver? Sorry, I just -- I presume you're starting to get some idea about that.

David Reese

executive
#50

Yes. Thanks, Geoff. Both very good questions. The first question relates to dosing in combination therapy. And as David had pointed out in his presentation earlier this morning, because we saw activity across a range of doses, that does give us the possibility for ultra doses in some combinations, if that's required. Of course, our first choice would be to move forward with the 960-milligram dose. And as in all Phase Ib drug development, what we do will be determined by the specifics of the combinations and the tolerability profiles, both that one can expect in the single agents and then what one might see in combination. So I think a lot of work to come there. But based on the monotherapy tolerability, we remain keenly interested in these combinations and optimistic about our ability to move forward. We are looking at b.i.d. dosing and scheduling as one always does. But right now, certainly, in lung cancer, we're quite comfortable with the 960, once-daily monotherapy dose. Let me ask Greg, and then David, if he wishes to comment on the second part of the question there. Greg?

Gregory Friberg

executive
#51

Sure. Thanks, Dave. I think one of the challenges, of course, in lung cancer is the availability of tissue. Both pretreatment as well as post-treatment biopsies can be quite a challenge. We have, of course, monitored in these folks serum samples through time as well. We haven't presented that data. We have no reason to believe that KRAS G12C goes away in these folks. But whether or not there are different nuances with regard to molecular signaling, it's just too early to say. David, please, I invite you to add anything if you feel that's worthwhile.

David Hong;MD Anderson;Deputy Chair, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics

attendee
#52

Yes. So I agree with Greg here, it's too early to say. We are -- I mean the trial was designed that we could try to get, for example, progression biopsies. We are following these patients with cfDNA. It's not that easy to get patients who are coming off study progression biopsy. These patients, obviously, are refractory patients, and this may be their last line of therapy. And so if they do transition, sometimes they don't want to come back to a place like MD Anderson to get just the biopsy for the study. So -- but we have gotten -- as I recall, some biopsies in the cfDNA have been captured. So we'll see. That data is still ongoing and the analysis. I do think if you look in the literature, right now, probably the likely mechanisms or resistance are alternative pathways, whether it's EGFR or whether it's Wnt, whether it's PI3 kinase pathways, et cetera, that those may be good candidates. And we are moving very rapidly towards all these combinations. I'll be honest, I don't want to -- these guys are -- the answer is -- it's almost too fast for me to try to get these combinations up and running. So we're -- they are being fast and furious about trying to understand which combinations will be working best. But we are excited because the modular nature of the ongoing master protocol really has sped up these combinations. And as things come out of the literature, as things come up about the understanding of this molecule and other 510 molecule, we are designing amendments and combinations very quickly.

Operator

operator
#53

We have Chris Raymond on the line from Piper Sandler.

Christopher Raymond

analyst
#54

Congrats from us as well. I'm sorry, David, if you guys already explained this, but I'm getting a few questions from folks. And just looking at the swimmer plot on Slide 17, can you just remind us how do you -- what is the methodology you're using to get to that 10.9 months number? Can you just review that? If you can, just eyeballing the swimmer plot, there's very few patients that reached that number. I know it's a projection, but if you could just walk us through the methodology there.

David Reese

executive
#55

Yes. I mean it's a standard Kaplan-Meier estimate, time-to-event analysis. This is the way almost all oncology trials would report duration of response and other time-to-event analysis. So nothing special. In fact, I would say, it's a bread-and-butter analysis, and it's probably reasonably robust in the setting of a Phase I study.

Christopher Raymond

analyst
#56

Okay. And maybe a second question on the biomarker data. So just correct -- these are pretreatment biopsies. Are you looking at any post-treatment biopsies for differences?

David Reese

executive
#57

Yes. Good question. And as David mentioned, we do have -- the protocol does permit post-treatment and post-progression biopsies. So we'll be collecting as many of those as we can. We're also collecting blood for circulating tumor DNA or cell-free DNA to look at mutational patterns to see if we can identify the existence of any emerging mutations that may predict resistance. So all of that work's ongoing and all of that work will also be encompassed within the Phase II trial as well.

Operator

operator
#58

We have our question from the line of Umer Raffat from Evercore ISI.

Umer Raffat

analyst
#59

I had three very quick ones, if I may. First, perhaps just some color on that Grade 5 dyspnea, that would be very helpful. Secondly, one thing I noticed was as we went into the expansion phase, my sense was they would all be focused on 960 milligrams. And I'm -- I was a little surprised to notice the sheer number of patients that were added on the 360 dose and none new -- no new ones on 720. Just wanted to understand what the thought process was behind that. Is 360 the dose you want to use for PD-1 combination? It was my gut reaction, but I'd be curious what happened there. And finally, so we saw a fair amount of PK variability in the first set of patients reported at ASCO last year versus the cohort that was reported at World Lung. And I noticed the PK data was not updated in the New England Journal paper today. Just wanted to understand what you're finding there.

David Reese

executive
#60

Great. Thanks, Umer. I'll address the first couple of questions and then ask Greg to talk about the PK data. The explanation for the Grade 5 dyspnea is straightforward. This is a patient that developed aspiration pneumonia, which is not uncommon in this patient population. This patient had actually had multiple prior episodes of aspiration pneumonia and, unfortunately, passed away from this particular episode. And then the explanation for the enhanced number of patients at 360 milligrams is quite simple. That's where we expanded numbers of patients to do some of our basic clinical pharmacology studies such as food effects and drug-drug interactions on things like these. And this is quite a standard approach in dose escalation studies as one moves along. So nothing really beyond standard clinical pharmacology. And let me ask Greg now to talk about the pharmacokinetic data.

Gregory Friberg

executive
#61

Yes, Dave, I would just add that the data in the New England Journal of Medicine describes the PK profile for the 960-milligram dose. We, of course, are continuing to measure and evaluate the PK profiles not only in the Phase I study but in the Phase II. And we're looking forward to presenting that and the population PK model when it's reached the point where it's able to be shared.

Operator

operator
#62

We have Cory Kasimov from JPMorgan.

Cory Kasimov

analyst
#63

Curious, are there any underlying common characteristics in patients who experienced their first response quickly within 1 to 2 months versus those who -- or took a little bit longer at 4-plus months? And then as a related follow-up, just curious for your views on the correlation between depth of response and duration at this point in time.

David Reese

executive
#64

Great. Thanks, Cory. Both great questions. The first, relating to the kinetics of response, something obviously that we're quite interested in, does the mutational pattern, the co-mutational pattern or do other characteristics I think predict for a more rapid response. I think it's too early to say right now. We need to accumulate more data, and that's obviously a question we will be quite interested in, in the Phase II program. Let me ask Greg to comment on potential observations between depth of response and duration of response. Of course, it's not unusual in oncology that depth tends to correlate with duration, although not always. Greg?

Gregory Friberg

executive
#65

Yes. No, I would just add, Dave, similar to your comments about the late responders, we don't have quite enough heterogeneity in that data set out to that far-right side of the waterfall plot to make any sweeping conclusions. I would just add that, anecdotally, some of the patients that had some of the best responses, of course, have been on the study the longest. But I can't comment that there's a formal analysis that can show that at this point. Of course, we're very much looking forward to having more data and more time of follow-up. But this is the totality of the data that we've shown. And again, it was just 2 years ago that we dosed our first patient in the clinic, and so we're feeling quite encouraged by the data that we have in hand today. But of course, there are more questions to answer, and we're going to continue to ask them as we get more information and more insights into the biology.

Operator

operator
#66

We have Alethia Young on the line from Cantor Fitzgerald.

Alethia Young

analyst
#67

This is very nice data in lung. I just wanted to ask a question, maybe to Dr. Hong, to talk about the importance of disease control as these people are pretty far out. And in line to treatment, how meaningful that would be in clinical practice in spite of even the response, which is good? And then just another question on -- is there any early work that you guys are doing with G12D or V based on the success? Or is it just a complex thing?

David Reese

executive
#68

Great. Thanks. Let me comment on the other KRAS mutations, G12D, G12V. We're quite interested in this, are taking a variety of approaches preclinically. And as we generate data, we'll be talking about that going forward. Let me ask David to talk about the notion of the disease control rate and potential clinical meaningfulness in this patient population. David?

David Hong;MD Anderson;Deputy Chair, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics

attendee
#69

Yes. I do think the disease control rate here is meaningful. These patients -- many of these are now third line and beyond, really have nothing else. They come to -- usually, these docs send -- the referring docs from thoracic send these patients to our group. And if we did not have this trial, for example, they pretty much would have gone on to hospice or they would have tried maybe another line of chemotherapy they wouldn't have gone, which probably would not have done much benefit, probably at most, less than 2 months of benefit. So I do think that in this case, this disease control rate here in this 5-point study does show that there is some benefit going on in the context of even just the stable disease patients. I've had several patients who, although by -- through a definition of RECIST response, have not had a PR or still on study and doing very well. I think also the fact that -- again, I want to emphasize again the fact that this drug does not have a huge amount of toxicity. These patients who may -- if you had, for example, a drug that had Grade 2 nausea and maybe had some stability of drug, many of these patients did take themselves off because they can't continue without any -- or even just Grade 2 events. And these patients on this trial have not had that. So many of our stable disease patients are being -- are still meeting on study and doing well. So I do think that this disease control rate here is a meaningful market here.

Operator

operator
#70

We have the final question from the line of Kennen MacKay from RBC Capital Markets.

Kennen MacKay

analyst
#71

Congrats on the data, to the team as well as to Dr. Hong on the presentation. I have three sort of quick questions for Dr. Hong. First, in that anecdotal patient case that you reported, did that patient that had the brain met that responded to treatment, did that patient have any other treatments for the brain met, either a therapeutic or radiation? Just like you discussing them, I'm just trying to understand the potential for CNS activity here. And the next two are just sort of housekeeping questions. In that waterfall plot that you presented, is the color-coded best response bars represent the maximally achieved dose or is that just a starting dose? If it is just the starting dose, wondering if you can help us understand how many of the lower-dose patients were escalated, particularly up to 960. And then lastly, another question on that figure. It looks like there were several patients who appeared to have tumor shrinkage greater than 30% who were still being listed as stable disease and not partial responses. Just hoping you could help us understand why that is. Is it the amount of immature scans and maybe these will be confirmed in the next scan? Or why they weren't responding there? And similarly, it did look like there was a PR that had 100% tumor reduction. So just wondering why that wasn't in the PR.

David Reese

executive
#72

Yes. So...

David Hong;MD Anderson;Deputy Chair, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics

attendee
#73

Great. Let me...

David Reese

executive
#74

Go ahead, David.

David Hong;MD Anderson;Deputy Chair, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics

attendee
#75

Yes. So let me try to answer that question about the patient. I'm sorry, I'm going to have to ask you to restate that second question. But the patient did have Gamma Knife for the brain lesion. This is oftentimes what we do for patients who have not a whole lot of number of lesions in the brain. I think he had only 1 or 2. And -- but as you can see in the scan, he had an almost complete response to 510. Usually, these patients don't -- who get Gamma Knife, the lesions don't entirely disappear. And in fact, if you see sometimes a -- after Gamma Knife lesions, you may actually may see a ring of edema and so forth. And -- but this patient does seem to have responded to at least 510 in this context. So -- but remember, all these patients must have had treated brain mets. That means they either had whole brain radiation or Gamma Knife. And given the washout period -- I think it was 4 weeks before they could even get onto the study from whatever period, but some of these patients may have had it even before the 4-week washout. So in this context, I do think that there is going to be -- this is my opinion, that we're testing the hypothesis out. I do think that there's going to be likely some crossing of this -- of the drug across the blood-brain barrier. And I think we're going to see activity in CNS, but it's still early for us to fully confirm that. And I'm sorry, your second question was what? I apologize, I missed your second question.

David Reese

executive
#76

How many on lower doses were escalated to the 960-milligram dose? Perhaps I can ask Greg to...

David Hong;MD Anderson;Deputy Chair, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics

attendee
#77

Yes. Greg probably knows that question better, yes.

Gregory Friberg

executive
#78

Yes. Why don't I tackle both of those. For this waterfall plot, there was a handful of patients that were, over time, escalated. Just anecdotally, I can tell you that as we increased the dose, didn't see things -- didn't see shrinkage that looked, in those individual patients, dramatically different over time. But we'll have to get back to you with the details on that. With regard to why there are some patients who have over 30% shrinkage, who are listed as stable disease, the answer is -- and I think I alluded to this before, there are several patients on here, one of them who, in their confirmatory scan, was just over the line on one side, just below the line on the other. And there are a couple of patients each, split probably pretty equally, who had heterogeneous lesion responses, so their measurable lesions might shrink for one scan. Again, this is the best RECIST shrinkage, and at the follow-up scan, may have had progression in non-target lesions. And similarly, there were at least a couple of patients who had shrinkage followed by growth within the lesions that shrunk. So it's not a common phenomena, but that's why you see, again, what we've done as we set the bar pretty high. These are RECIST-confirmed responses if we're calling them partial responses, and those that have a degree of shrinkage that couldn't be confirmed below that or listed as stable disease as is standard and appropriate. I'll just add that the patients who had what looks like 100% shrinkage also had some non-measurable lesions, which can happen with RECIST, and that's why we do not call it a complete response. Those non-measurable lesions did not disappear, but those that were measurable disappeared off the CAT scan.

David Reese

executive
#79

Great. Thanks, Greg. And I'd like to, again, thank Dr. Hong for being with us today. We will -- with that, we'll conclude things. We remain very enthusiastic about the sotorasib program. As we mentioned, a very broad-based development program moving forward, and we look forward to the Phase II results emerging later this year. I'd also like to remind everyone that we'll be presenting prostate cancer data from AMG 160 and half-life extended BiTE tomorrow morning, bright and early on a U.S. time, at ESMO. And we'll have another call after that to discuss those data, and we hope you'll find them intriguing. And as always, our Investor Relations team will be available for follow-up questions over the next few days if you've got them. So thanks, and I hope to talk to a number of you again tomorrow. Take care, everyone.

Gregory Friberg

executive
#80

Great. Thank you, everybody.

Operator

operator
#81

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

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