Oncternal Therapeutics, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to Ongtanal Therapeutics Inc Q4 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, This conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Richard Vincent, CFO of Ontanil Therapeutics, Inc. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Peter. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Joining me on the call this afternoon are our president and CEO, Dr. James Breitmaier, and our CMO, Dr. Selim Yazgi. Today's call includes a business update and discussion of our 2021 fourth quarter and full year financial results, which will be followed by Q&A. Today's press release and a replay of today's call will be available on the investor relations section of Ontario's website for at least the next 30 days. We filed our 10-K for the full year 2021 earlier today. Please note that certain information discussed on today's call is covered under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. We will be making forward-looking statements during this call about future events such as our business and product development strategies, the timing of initiation of our preclinical and clinical studies, the potential for our Zillow 301 study to support a VLA submission, the timing of planned interim data updates, and the timing of our regulatory filings and submissions. Our actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by these forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with our business. These forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with and are qualified by the cautionary statements contained in today's press release and our SEC filings, including our form 10-K for the full year ended December 31, 2021. This call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only after the date of this live broadcast, March 10, 2022. We undertake no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this call. With that, it's my pleasure to hand the call over to our CEO, Dr. Jim Breitmaier.

Thank you, Rich, and good afternoon, everyone. At Uncturnal, we are advancing a diversified and robust product pipeline with clinical and preclinical product candidates that target cancers with unmet medical need. During the fourth quarter of 2021, we made significant progress in the development of our entire pipeline, including Zolivertimab, our investigational potentially first-in-class humanized monoclonal antibody that binds with high affinity to a biologically important epitope on ROR1, otherwise known as receptor tyrosine kinase-like orphan receptor 1. We reached consensus with the FDA on the design and key elements of our planned global phase 3 study, ZELO301, designed to treat patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma with Xelovertimab in combination with Abrutinib. And we also received positive feedback from the agency on the key elements of our Xelovertimab development program. We expect to initiate the phase three study in the second quarter of 2022. Our commitment to this study and the positive developments on the regulatory front were all supported by clinical data from our ongoing phase one, two clinical trial of zolivertamab plus ibrutinib for patients with MCL or CLL, with efficacy and safety data that are encouraging compared to historical results with ibrutinib alone. Our CMO, Celine Yazzie, will summarize these exciting clinical results in a moment. We also made progress in our cell therapy program. We selected OCK808, an autologous CAR-T targeting ROR1, as our lead candidate. the lentivirus manufacturing campaign is progressing to plan at Lentigen, and we have very encouraging results for the number of expanded T cells, the CAR expression, and the T cell phenotype for the potential GMP CAR-T cell generation process development program. We had a very productive pre-IND meeting with the FDA, and IND enabling preclinical work is on track for a mid-2022 IND submission. Salim will also discuss the plan clinical development plan for our lead candidate. Research collaborations with Cellularity and with the Karolinska Institute continue to generate supportive data for our next generation off-the-shelf ROR1-based cell therapies. We are also very excited about OCT534. our lead candidate androgen receptor or AR inhibitor. At our R&D day in January, we presented detail about OCT534's novel mechanism of action as a dual action androgen receptor inhibitor or DARI, D-A-A-R-I, which also induces degradation of the androgen receptor. Our DARIs appear to be highly differentiated as we believe they interact with both the N-terminal domain, or NTD, and the ligand binding domain, or LBD, of the AR, inducing AR inhibition and degradation. Preclinical data presented at the AACR NCI EORTC Virtual International Conference on Molecular Targets showed that OCT534 exerts anti-tumor activity in clinically relevant prostate cancer models, including those with AR amplification, enzalutamide resistant, or that express androgen receptor splice variants, such as ARV7. These data suggest that OCT534 could play an important role in addressing unmet needs for prostate cancer patients with advanced treatment-resistant disease. Finally, We presented interim clinical data from the ongoing Phase 1-2 study of OCT216, our investigational targeted small molecule inhibitor of the E26 transformation-specific, or ETS, family of oncoproteins, at the CTOS 2021 virtual annual meeting. Two patients with relapsed refractory Ewing sarcoma continue to enjoy durable complete responses. including one patient who had a CR for 24 months on treatment and continues to have no evidence of disease off treatment after several months. We continue to explore optimizing the ONC216 treatment regimen for patients with Ewing sarcoma and are currently enrolling a new cohort of patients being treated with single-agent ONC216 using an intensified dosing schedule. Let me now turn over to our internal CMO, Dr. Saleem Yashi.

Thank you, Jim. Good afternoon, everyone. As a reminder, our recently announced Phase III study, 0301, will randomize patients with relapsed or refractory MCL who have only had stable disease or reached a partial response after receiving four months of abrutinib monotherapy. and we'll randomize them to receive either blinded zolivertumab or placebo plus abridgenate. This study may provide two potential approvals. First, an escalated approval based on overall response rate, or ORR, plus duration of response, or DOR, and second, a regular FDA approval based on progression-free survival, or PFS, as a primary endpoint. Additionally, we are planning to conduct ZELO-302, an open-label companion study of zelovertimab plus abritinib for patients who have progressive disease during the abritinib monotherapy run-in of study ZELO-301. And results of this study could support a third label indication. This innovative study design may support both an escalated approval and final approval in single study. We plan to randomize roughly 250 patients, and we currently expect to reach the escalated approval or our endpoint in as early as two years after the initial patient is enrolled. And the final approval PFS endpoint in as early as three years after enrolling the first patient. We are now in the final study ramp-up phase. We have selected a global CRO to support the operational execution, and we expected to initiate the study in the second quarter of this year. As Jim mentioned, we are entering this late clinical stage supported by very encouraging data from our ongoing phase one, two clinical trials of zolivertumab in combination with abritinib. The thorough study, as presented at the ASH meeting in December 2021, has an overall response rate of 81% and a CR rate of 35% for patients with MCL treated with zolivertumab plus abritinib. which is compared favorably to the historical ORR of 66% and 20% for abrigionib monotherapy, respectively. Median PFS of 35.9 months for MCL patients with a median follow-up of 14.4 months, which also compares favorably to the historical PFS of 12.8 months for abrigionib monotherapy. The CLL data were also very encouraging with a landmark PFS of 100% at 36 months for CLL patients who had previously received one or two prior lines of therapy, which compared federally to historical abrutinib monotherapy of PFS of around 75% at 36 months. The combination of zolabertumab and abrutinib continues to be well-colorated with a safety profile consistent with or improved compared with historical data for abritinib monotherapy. For example, in patients with MCL grade 3 and 4, nitrophil decrease was documented in only 9.7% of the patients with zolivertumab plus abritinib compared to 29% of abritinib alone from its registrational studies. Regarding UNC808, the lead candidate of our Autologous Road 1 targeting CAR-T program, we had productive pre-IND meeting with the FDA, and we are on track to submit our IND in the middle of this year. We also recently established a very experienced self-therapy scientific advisory board and are close to selecting major academic centers as the clinical sites. Our proposed first-in-human study will enroll patients with relapsed or refractory hematologic malignancy, including those who have failed CD19 CAR-T cell therapy. I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Rich Vincent, to review our financial results and upcoming milestones.

Thank you, Salim. Our grant revenue is derived from a California Institute for Generative Medicine, or CIRM, grant sub-award and two research and development grants from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH. In October 2017, CIRM awarded an $18.3 million grant to researchers at the UC San Diego School of Medicine to advance our soil study. We are conducting this study in collaboration with UC San Diego and expect to receive approximately $14.4 million in development milestones under research subawards throughout the award period that expires in the first quarter of 2022. In the third quarter of 2021, the NIH awarded the company two research and development grants for up to $2.2 million to support preclinical activities for the company's ONCT 534 and ONCT 216 programs. including $0.7 million payable to subawardees. Our grant revenue was $0.6 million for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2021, and $4.3 million for the full year 2021. Our total operating expenses for the fourth quarter ending December 31, 2021 were $8.6 million, with $1.7 million in non-cash stock-based compensation expense. and were $35.7 million for the full year 2021, with $5.9 million in non-cash stock-based compensation expense. In the fourth quarter, research and development expenses totaled $6 million, and general and administrative expenses totaled $2.6 million. For the full year 2021, research and development expenses totaled $24.1 million, and general and administrative expenses totaled $11.6 million. Cost for the fourth quarter was $8.1 million for a loss of 0.16 or 16 cents per share, basic and diluted. Well, the full year ended December 31, 2021. Our net loss was $31.3 million for a loss of 64 cents per share, basic and diluted. As of December 31, 2021, we had $90.8 million in cash and cash equivalents and no debt. We believe these funds will be sufficient to support our operations in the mid-2023. We have and will continue to manage expenses carefully and will explore all potential sources of capital to enable us to reach our milestones. As of December 31, 2021, we had 49.4 million shares of common stock outstanding. With respect to upcoming milestones for our Zillow VertiMAT program, we expect to initiate the global registrational phase three study, Zillow 301, in the second quarter of 2022. We expect to report an interim clinical data update for patients with MCL and CLL treated with Zillow Vertimab plus ibrutinib from our ongoing Searle study in the second quarter of 2022. We also expect to have a phase 1B investigator-sponsored trial of Zillow Vertimab plus docetaxel initiated for patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer in mid-2022. On the cell therapy front, we plan to submit our first IND, FRONT 808, our autologous war one CAR T cell therapy candidate in mid-2022. FRONT 534, our lead DARI product candidate, we expect to initiate IND-enabling GLP toxicology studies and GMP manufacturing in the second quarter of 2022. For ONCT 216, we expect to report updated interim clinical data for patients with young sarcoma treated in the dose-intensified expansion cohort in the fourth quarter of 2022. Now, I will turn the call back over to Jim.

Thank you, Rich. We are pleased with the progress in 2021 and look forward to multiple catalysts in 2022. especially the initiation of our global phase three zolivertamab study, and also submitting our ROR1 CAR-T IND application, as well as advancing our DARI program toward the clinic. Our strong balance sheet will help us navigate this historically challenging macro environment. We plan to focus our resources on areas of high unmet patient need, where we believe our product candidates can make the greatest difference for patients. Thank you for joining us today and we look forward to updating you for the remainder of 2022. With that, I will turn things back to Peter for the Q&A portion of this afternoon's call.

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question is from Artaj Singh with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Great, thank you, Peter. Just a couple of questions, Jim and team, and thanks for the updates. One is just for ONC-808, the ROL1 CAR-T, what could, you know, clinical trials there look like? You know, would these sort of be basket trials, monotherapy combo with ibrutinib? And then what specifically are the learnings from the zolivertamab MCL and CLL studies that, you know, kind of help you designing those CAR-T trials. And I just got a couple of quick follow-ups.

Thank you, Hartaj. I'll start with the second question. And so we're moving into the CAR-T clinical trials with an increased sense of confidence that we're capable of targeting ROAR-1 specifically and such that The CAR-Ts are expected to primarily interact with tumor cells, and we're hoping to see a minimal cross-reactivity with normal adult tissues, which may lead to an acceptable safety program. We are also continuing to learn that ROR1 is important in large numbers of hematologic malignancies, which is where we'll do that first clinical trial. I'll turn over to Celine to answer your question about the general shape of the phase one study for the 808 ROR1 CAR T. Yeah, thanks, Jim.

So we're planning actually to do a person-human CAR-T, which is, I think, in the dose escalation phase, we'll try to not mix patient population. We're specifically probably going to be in lymphoma. But once we reach the therapeutic dose and recommended phase two dose, this is where we will start to do some expansion and different indications. Does that answer your question, Hotash?

Yep. No, thank you, Slim. That helps a lot. But I just want to be clear. So I might have missed that. You will include a broad range of patients in the initial cohorts, or will that happen when you get into the expansion part of the CAR-T trials?

Yeah, the plan is when we get to the expansion, because I think usually CAR-T and FDA want you to have a very specific safety population and a dose escalation, not to have a mixed group. Yep.

But let me add that we do think that lymphoma is an acceptable... small basket, I guess, for the initial clinical trial population.

Great. And then just, would you be using any kind of ibrutinib or any other, one of the small molecules in combining, or that also, will you wait to do that if you're going to do that when you get to the expansion part of the trial?

We'll study the CAR-T alone initially so that we're sure we have a clear picture of its safety profile by itself and then we'll consider augmenting with additional factors later.

Great. Thank you, Jim. And the last question is, just on, you know, the Ewing sarcoma project, there, you know, 216, you've got the two really nice complete responses, one for more than 24 months. You know, when we get to the latter part of this year and you're looking for that high-dose data, What is the kind of hurdle you're looking for in order to continue on with the project? I mean, what would you like to see, you know, in order to go to the next steps? And thank you for all the questions.

Sure, Hartaj. And I'll take your last question as well. So we're looking for an indication that the true response rate to TK216 is is around at least 20%. And that would be partial response and complete responders.

Great. Thank you, Jim.

Thank you. Our next question is from Carl Barnes with Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks for the question and congratulations on the progress. How do you see R&D spending ramping up throughout 2022 considering the initiation of the Zylo trials and also obviously the other R&D programs that are ongoing? Thanks.

Rich?

Sure. So as we mentioned, we ended 2021 with about $91 million in cash and cash equivalents with no debt on the books, a decrease of just under $7 million for the fourth quarter. While we do not provide guidance on our quarterly or annual cash burn, we do anticipate that our current cash resources are sufficient to fund our client operations into mid-2023. Got it. Thanks.

Thank you. Our next question is from Kaveri Polam with BDIG. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good afternoon, and thanks for the update. My first question is for 534. The drug binds both the N-terminal and ligand-binding domain, but how stable is the binding in the absence of the ligand-binding domain? Because a lot of air variants lose the LBD. And does 534 bind at the same ligand-binding domain site where andalutamide binds?

Kaveri, this is Jim. Those are both good questions. So we are seeing very satisfying activity, both in vitro and in vivo, in models of prostate cancer that have lost the binding, the ligand binding domain. So we do believe that the N-terminal binding is sufficient to inhibit prostate cancer. On the ligand-binding domain side, it does appear to bind differently than enzalutamide because we are seeing activity in enzalutamide-resistant strains or lines of prostate cancer.

Got it. And for zolortimab, Do you see an opportunity in EGFR mutated non-small cell lung cancer patients? I believe there have been some studies that have shown shorter survival benefit with TKI in patients who over-express ROR1.

Yes. We've noticed those data as well, and we're doing some preclinical work in lung cancer right now. A particularly intriguing result that we are pursuing is a publication suggesting that lung cancer cells that have become resistant to Oc-Mertinib might be resensitized to Oc-Mertinib treatment by inhibiting ROR1. And that, of course, is a very important clinical problem in the lung cancer arena right now.

Yeah, that's very helpful. Thank you. And maybe the last one on the breast cancer ISP studies. So for HR-positive or, you know, TNBC or HER2-negative breast cancer, how do you think about the changing treatment, changing landscape with recent progress made by ADCs and any insight you can provide on your development strategy?

Thank you, Kaveri. So in breast cancer... The clinical work that's been done so far has been through investigator-sponsored studies, and we have noted that that landscape is becoming increasingly complicated. Now, that's fantastic news for patients with breast cancer, but it makes it a complicated arena for a small company, and we're also aware that that breast cancer trials would have to be quite large and long in duration. And so you'll notice that when we are stating that we are emphasizing hematologic malignancies in prostate cancer, that breast cancer is no longer on the list as one of our prioritized indications.

Got it, that makes sense. Thanks for taking my questions.

Thank you for the good questions.

Thank you. Our next question is from Robert Burns with HC Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys, thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the updates. I've got three, if I may. So with regard to Zillow 301, specifically announced today, I'm sort of curious to hear your thoughts around what you think the delta would have to be for accelerated approval between those two arms, the Brutinib plus Zillow versus the Brutinib plus placebo. Any thoughts around that? Shalane?

Yep. So we have actually, our statistician looked into this very carefully, and we have a very statistical significant delta. I mean, I think we can say it could be, you know, anywhere additional 60% or 70% of what you see in the control arm.

Okay. The next question, with regard to Zillow 302, obviously, that's an open-label companion study. How are you thinking about that potential study for, you know, potential movement into that space, the post-progression on ibrutinib?

Yeah, so we do... Go ahead, Jim. So, actually, as you know, those patient populations have a huge unmet medical need, and, you know, we believe any... Any response there, if you'll be able to rescue those patients, it could be very meaningful, especially after progressing on BGKI. Sure. Okay.

Last one for me with regard to 808. So I know you're going to be doing the IND submission by the middle of this year, and then you're applying a Phase I trial, which is predominantly going to be in hematological delinquencies, but I would assume that the next step would then be solid tumors. Can you provide some clarity around sort of times when you think you might initiate a solid tumor program and whether you would institute a biomarker sort of threshold with regard to ROR1 expression and what that sort of cutoff could potentially look like?

You squeezed in three questions there in your third one. So we will investigate solid tumor indications with the 808 system. But as you know, it is a straightforward autologous CAR-T with the same features as successful CD19 CAR T, but it doesn't have any enhanced features that would make it particularly applicable to solid tumors. So this is, we believe that to move into the solid tumor space, that something in addition to the vanilla CAR T is necessary. And so we're looking in parallel at adding additional features to the 808 platform, but at the same time, we are looking at off-the-shelf alternatives such as pluripotent stem cell-based CAR-T or CAR-NK. And in those cases, from the beginning, we're looking at incorporating additional features into the cell therapy. that would be designed to give us a better chance in the solid tumor environment.

Awesome. Thanks for those updates, guys.

All right. Thank you, Robert.

Thank you. Our last question is from Kumar Wajah with Brookline Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi. I'm Shubendu calling in for Kumar. Thanks for the update. Now with regards to the ON534 program in prostate cancer, do you plan to also test the drug in other AR-driven indications like AR-positive breast cancer or in non-oncology indications that overhead stress AR? Also, in addition to the IND enabling studies, what can you share more about the program?

Yes, thank you. Thank you for the question and give our best to Kumar. I'm sure he's having a busy day. Yeah, thank you. Okay, thank you. So we do have some interesting indications that the way that ONK534 inhibits the androgen receptor might be applicable in a non-oncology indication called Kennedy's disease, which is a severe form of neuromuscular degeneration that's related to, uh, aberrations in the androgen receptor. Um, and, and the, um, the, the, what I can, what I can say about the rest of the preclinical program is that it's moving along very nicely. Um, we have a formulation identified. We are, uh, just gearing up right now to start the toxicology studies and, and, the behavior of the 534 molecule up to this point is what we would hope to see for a successful small molecule early development program.

Thank you. That is useful. What is the expectation of the safety and side effect profile of Ong 534 when you compare it to, say, hormone therapies that decrease androgen levels or block androgen action in prostate cancer?

So since we haven't done toxicology studies yet, this is a theoretical answer, but I would say our first assumption would be that many of the toxicities would be similar to a drug like enzalutamide. There's one thing that we're excited about, and that is that some of the androgen antagonists have been associated with seizure activity as a side effect. And we were delighted to find that OCT534 does not cross the blood-brain barrier, so we have a theoretical possibility of having a lower seizure risk.

Okay, great. And finally, I was just wondering if you could speak on the research collaboration, the ongoing collaboration with Karolinska Institute. for the cell therapies, and when can we expect updates on that front?

Thank you. The collaboration is going well. In fact, we're having two of our collaborators are traveling all the way from Sweden to San Diego next week, and we're going to have our first face-to-face meeting with them in a year and a half. Looking forward to it. And so, So the Karolinska, of course, is where the natural killer cell was discovered and a lot of its early characterization was done. And there is a very exciting consortium of companies and academic organizations that collaborate together through the Karolinska to make advances in cell therapy. And we were delighted that was invited to join into that consortium. So I think that you can expect to see results from the 534 preclinical program at some point over the course of this year as it is on track for an IND in mid-year.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

All right. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question and answer session, and I would like to turn the call back to Dr. Breitmaier for closing remarks.

Well, and let me close by thanking all of you for your time and attention. We particularly appreciate the excellent questions and the opportunity to interact with the questioners on the call today. So thank all of you and we look forward to updating you again in about a quarter.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.