Kazia Therapeutics Limited (KZIA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, the world of cancer treatment is incredibly complex, but also very exciting in many ways because Kazia Therapeutics Limited is an oncology-focused drug development company. They've announced that its commenced enrollment to a Phase I clinical trial into an investigational cancer therapy. And CEO and Executive Director, Dr. James Garner, joins us now to explain. Welcome to Ticker NEWS.

Good afternoon, Adrian. Great to be with you.

So tell us a little bit more about what we need to know. Of course, it is a competitive field, I suppose, in many ways. It takes a lot of time to make sure the safety is in place; these trials take time. What are you up to exactly?

Adrian, you're so right. Well, the great thing about this drug is, it works in a really innovative way. It tries to cut off the blood supply to the cancer. We know that cancers grow really fast. They need a lot of nutrients and oxygen to grow in the human body. So our hope is that by cutting off that supply by sort of short circuiting the process by which cancers build new blood vessels, we can stop the cancer growing. And therefore, help open a window for other treatments and help prolong the patient's life. So we've got this drug EVT801. We've taken it through a lot of lab testing, and it really works tremendously well there. So we've just started now the human phase of testing, which, of course, is where the rubber hits the road for any new drug.

So what is the objective of the Phase I trial for you?

Well, this is what we call a first-in-human study. So we've had this drug in mice and rats, rabbits and dogs. But of course, we're not a veterinary company. We need to now test it in people. So when we start human testing, initially, we're focused primarily on the safety profile of the drug. We want to understand side effects and things of that sort. And we also want to understand the dosing of the drug. I want to understand how much to give, how often and so on. But we've got a step further than that. We are also looking at some really cutting-edge genetic testing to help us understand which patients are going to benefit from the drug. And we're using AI, artificial intelligence to analyze all the scans, all the CT scans and MRI scans in the study, which will help us to really understand very, very finely how the drug works and should really help us to fast track its development and take it forward to patients.

So how does this drug in particular fit with the broader strategy of Kazia?

Well, we're a virtual company. We don't have hundreds of people. We don't have large expensive labs. We work in partnership with other companies, with research institutes, with academics, with doctors. And this study really exemplifies that very innovative business models. We're working with a European company called Evotec to design a lot of the very sophisticated analyses around the struggle of the genetic testing. And we're working with one of the leading cancer hospitals in France, so Centre and Toulouse, France. Not just with their doctors to treat their patients, but also with their scientists and their researchers. So this is a really unusual collaboration between multiple parties in industry and academia in the clinic. And that's how we try to do business in Kazia. We're really focused on trying to put together these very, very innovative partnerships to try and speed drugs to patients and also to try and make this process much more cost effective.

And James, just to finish, how long will the trial run for? And what will be the next stage following the conclusion?

Well, we're hoping to have some initial data at least to share with people next year, it's calendar 2022. And beyond that, the next step for the drug is going to lie in learning how to combine it with other drugs. Most cancers we treat with more than one drug, that's going to be the case with this drug, too. And so the next thing we needed to do is, start to put it together all the drugs and really work out how best to use it and how best to bring benefit to patients. And that will put us directly on a path to take this drug forward to market.

Exciting times. Keep us up to date here at Ticker NEWS. Thanks so much for your time today.

Thanks, Adrian. Great to be with you.