Proposing Complement C3 RNAi for Treating COVID19

Whereas my last blog considered lung-targeted RNAi for addressing COVID19, this entry will look at what a liver-directed RNAi approach could do for the disease.  It is in the liver that RNAi Therapeutics have proven to be extremely potent.  Moreover, it is amenable to subcutaneous administration and therefore appropriate for the current pandemic.

It has quickly become apparent that in a subgroup of patients COVID19 is associated with liver complications.  Managing these with gene silencing of resident liver proteins may be possible in theory and could be contemplated.  More interesting, however, would be intervening upstream of the liver in the respiratory tract.  

It is reported that it is an overactive (innate) immune system rather than cellular damage (cytopathic) by the virus itself that can cause the virus to be fatal.

And when it comes to an immune approach with RNAi at the moment, the complement pathway, many components of which are predominantly expressed by the liver and secreted into circulation comes to mind.

Interestingly, a relatively recent paper (Gralinski et al, 2018) in a mouse model of SARS-CoV-2-related SARS has shown that genetic complement C3 knockout lessened lung damage and overall health as measured by body weight.  This was associated with a reduced influx of neutrophils which are the carpet-bombers of the immune system.

The next question to be asked is that since RNAi gene silencing is not instantaneous but takes time to manifest, whether such intervention would be timely enough in a given patient.  For this, my assessment is that it should be possible based on the pharmacodynamics of a C3 RNAi in development by Silence Therapeutics (SLN500) and Mallinckrodt IF the disease can be diagnosed in time.

Accordingly, it took about 4 days for robust C3 silencing in mice which compares to the about 7-10 days it takes for SARS-CoV-2 to move from the upper respiratory tract (as manifested e.g. by throat pain) to the lower lungs where the critical battleground is.

These are extraordinary times and I believe this approach should be considered.  Besides Silence Therapeutics and Mallinckrodt, Alnylam, and Dicerna (in partnership with Alexion) are also working on RNAi for the complement system.  A monoclonal antibody approach may also be envisioned and could have advantage of a faster onset of action, but may lag in development timelines.

RNAi is the Future of Cardiovascular Disease

At least, this is what Big Pharma and Biotech is saying right now following deals between pure-play RNAi companies Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals and Dicerna with Amgen and Eli Lilly, respectively, and the sale of The Medicines Company with its lead PCSK9 RNAi asset really being only a matter of timing.  Besides its new relationship with Eli Lilly announced yesterday, Dicerna has an ongoin CVD-related NASH/NAFLD collaboration with Boehringer-Ingelheim.  In addition, Wave Life Sciences and Akcea, the commercial Ionis spin-out, have been pursuing cardiovascular targets along with Pfizer and Novartis, respectively, using the competitive RNaseH antisense gene knockdown technology.

Drugging the undruggable

Part of the attraction of RNAi for CVD for the pharmaceutical industry is because the targets that come from large genetic studies (e.g. ApoCIII, Apo(a), ANGPTL3) based on chance alone are not readily druggable.  To make matters worse, amorphous lipid macromolecular aggregates are particularly difficult to target with either small molecules or antibodies.

Infrequent dosing

What a difference 10 years can make.  When Protiva (now Arbutus) was one of the first to enter a systemically administered RNAi therapeutic against LDLc-related ApoB into the clinic a decade ago, it often found itself ridiculed for using RNAi in such an indication.  Systemic RNAi back then required relatively frequent (1-3 weeks) intravenous administration which would make it an unlikely modality for widespread diseases that ideally require decade-long preventive treatment strategies.

Fast-forward to the present and now we have subcutaneously delivered RNAi with potential dosing frequencies of up to once-a-year as evidenced by the lead candidate of this crop, phase III asset Inclisiran by The Medicines Company.  If the remarkable safety profile holds up following about 2000 patient years of clinical experience, such a drug should be very widely prescribed, not least because it should enjoy great adherence, one of the major impediments of treatment success in cardiovascular disease.   

Undoubtedly, it has been the Inclisiran performance so far that has attracted the attention of players like Eli Lilly and Amgen, the latter of which, of course, should know particularly well about the competitive threat from RNAi having an antibody-based PCSK9 agent on the market (Repatha).  Beyond the upcoming slew of phase III read-outs with Inclisiran, it will equally be interesting to see the types of new targets being pursued and the clinical validation of targets like Apo(a) by the antisense competition.

Review of Recent RNAi-Related Developments

The last 2 weeks have been busy ones in the lands of RNAi Therapeutics.  Here, I would therefore like to offer my take on the most important developments.

Alnylam’s Primary Hyperoxaluria Drug Breezes Through Clinic

With 20 subjects on Lumasiran, a GalNAc-RNAi targeting glycolate oxidase, for a median of 7 months, the investigational treatment for type I primary hyperoxaluria (PH1) ismore and more looking like a solid drug.  If the data presented last week at a Paediatric meeting in Turkey hold up in another 30 patients, it should fly through approval onto the market by the end of 2019.

While the relatively small numbers in each cohort has caused a bit statistical noise, it seemed like 3mg/kg monthly gives you an advantage over 1mg/kg monthly or 3mg/kg monthly in terms of the key biomarker urinary oxalate.  Interestingly, the company has chosen 3 times 3mg/kg monthly as the loading dose regimen in the now ongoing pivotal ILLUMINATE-A trial to be followed by dosing every 3 months. , the initiation of which the company has just announced.    

The core double-blind portion of the trial runs for only 6 months, so I am a bit puzzled how much the trial can inform on the value of the loading dose regimen and whether quarterly maintenance doses are sufficiently effective.   In any case, the trial design apparently was blessed by the FDA (incl. the urinary oxalate lowering primary endpoint), so surely they will know (e.g. based on preclinical animal data).

Regarding the competition with the primary hyperoxaluria drug candidate from Dicerna, the approximately 2/3 lowering of urinary oxalate and essentially all patients getting into a range considered safe and an unremarkable safety profile sets a high hurdle for the upcoming data presentation of DCR-PHXC at ASN later this month.

Arbutus HBV-RNAi Drug About to Die   

Yesterday, Arbutus provided an update on its LNP-enabled RNAi drug candidate for the treatment of chronic HBV (ARB-1467) and it does not bode well.  Similar to most other drug candidates attempted and barely tried, ARB-1467 should be canned in the not-too-distant future. 

In a combination study testing ARB-1467 in chronic HBV patients on nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor tenofovir, probably only 1 in 6 patients hit a pre-defined criteria in terms of HBsAg lowering that would allow the patient to then receive immune booster PEG-Interferon.  The not very forthcoming revelation and the fact that the data was mentioned even after dropping another shoe that its small molecule HBV RNA destabilizer is also biting the dust makes it clear that not even the company sees much value in ARB-1467.

What an utter disaster this company has been since its inception as a HBV solutions entity.

Arrowhead Early HBV Deal Further Validates

Last week, shareholders in Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals got a lesson in biotech investing as it shares have given up ~1/3 of its value following a nice deal with Johnson&Johnson for the leading HBV knockdown asset in the space, ARO-HBV.

The deal gives Arrowhead a solid $250M in financing, including a $175M upfront fee and a $75M investment in company stock at a premium of ~50% to current trading.  While this avoids an imminent dilutive secondary share issuance- the company had been running low of cash- the ‘up to 15%’ in royalties from future sales of early phase II-stage ARO-HBV is clearly disappointing.  The relatively low royalty despite of it having confirmed strong HBsAg knockdown in patients can be explained with the fact that Arrowhead has avoided bearing the full risk of having to show proof-of-concept of HBV control.  This despite of having earlier paraded results obtained with an earlier DPC-based RNAi candidate (ARC-520) as strong evidence that RNAi can achieve such immune control.

While Arrowhead got punished for playing it safely, it can now focus on commercial home-run indications with highly validated targets and transition to being a broad platform company with a wholly owned attractive lead candidate in ARO-AAT.  Indeed, Arrowhead may emerge as the leading RNAi company as Alnylam, with a market cap ~8x that of Arrowhead, is still burdened by late-stage RNAi drugs with suboptimal specificity.

While humiliating, this serves Alnylam as a good reminder to also value innovation by the direct competition (note: specificity-enhancing technology now adopted by Alnylam has been available for a decade and could have been had for peanuts, e.g. from now defunct RNAi play mdRNA/Nastech).  Fittingly, today long-time archrival Silence Therapeutics issued a press release indicating that Alnylam is playing hard-ball with regard to Silence-owned IP purportedly covering ONPATTRO.

My guess is that Alnylam would rather risk an injunction and deprive patients of a very good medicine than to submit to what appear to me legitimate demands of a competitor.

Akcea’s antisense drug for TTR amyloidosis gets FDA nod

Last Friday, Akcea’s TTR drug TEGSEDI (licensed from Ionis) finally got FDA marketing approval for patients suffering from TTR-related polyneuropathy.  As expected from the delay in the approval process, TEGSEDI’s approval is accompanied by hefty black box warnings highlighting thrombocytopenia and renal risks of the (non-GalNAc) phosphorothioate oligonucleotide.  

Furthermore, the REMS program calls for frequent blood monitoring, essentially negating the claimed at-your-home convenience advantage over competing RNAi drug ONPATTRO.  Add to the poor safety profile clear efficacy disadvantages and pricing at parity with ONPATTRO, ONPATTRO should clearly win out in the marketplace.

Having said that, the TTR community is relatively small and key opinion leaders with relationships to a given drug company tend to support the drugs from the same company.

Second-Tier RNAi Therapeutics Companies Starting to Deliver Clinically

Alnylam has had a 3 year head-start on the competition with GalNAc RNAi Therapeutics, but now additional companies are populating the field with actual clinical data.  While the knockdowns appear robust and the chemistries well tolerated, therapeutic utility and the potential of liver toxicity from off-targeting will have to be demonstrated in upcoming longer-term studies.

Dicerna clinically validates new target for primary hyperoxaluria

Dicerna used to be the leader in applying RNAi Therapeutics to primary hyperoxaluria (PH), an orphan genetic condition caused by dangerously high levels of oxalate in the blood.  Oxalate crystallization and deposition may then poison first the kidneys and then various organs leading to premature death.  Unfortunately, as its old LNP technology proved to be impractical, Alnylam's directly competing program targeting glycolate oxidase (GO) assumed the lead.

When Dicerna then came up with a GalNAc-based follow-up candidate (DCR-PHXC), it also chose a new target: hepatic lactate dehydrogenase (LDHA), a target which may have be applicable also for forms of PH beyond the most frequently diagnosed PH1 and for which GO is a suitable target.  Cynics may suspect that the new target was not chosen because it is the better one, but in an effort to provide differentiation over more advanced competition.  To wit, first-mover advantage can be significant in the orphan drug arena.

Perhaps due to its long-standing, deep relationship with the PH community, Dicerna has been able to recruit patients more quickly than I had suspected (in light of Alnylam's parallel recruitment efforts) in its first-in-patient study.  First data from this study (PHYOX) were revealed last week.  To their relief, LDHA knockdown resulted in oxalate lowering in all 9 subjects (8 PH1, 1 PH2) tested.

Following a single-dose of either 1.5mg/kg or 3.0mg/kg, at least 30% reductions in urinary oxalate were seen and all or almost all subjects got to urinary oxalate levels at or below 1.1mmol/24hrs/1.73m2, a level predictive of end-stage-renal-disease freedom.

More detailed data will be presented later this year where we will get a better sense in how the results stack up with those of Alnylam.  Earlier this summer, Alnylam reported 64% mean urinary oxalate reductions relative to baseline before following more than one dose.  Another area of concern is that it appears that 3 out of the 9 injections resulted in injection site reactions (ISR).  To see ISRs is not surprising per se, but the frequency appears to be on the high end based on early experience and could be a competitive disadvantage.  Similarly, no word was said about liver enzymes.

Given that Dicerna has been rushing the PHYOX trial without so much as testing multi-dose regimens, I expect the regulatory agencies to demand at least 2 dosing schemes in the upcoming pivotal trials.  A nightmare scenario would see Dicerna being sent back to phase II to test the safety of multi-dosing, a fate that Regulus Therapeutics had suffered before in Europe.

Disclosure: Over the last few months, I have been largely playing the volatility of DRNA- both on the long and short side.  Looking ahead to the end of the year, I would be hesitant of taking a substantial long position due to a market cap approaching $1B with the potential of negative surprises both on safety and efficacy when more detailed PHYOX data will be presented.  On the other hand, a deal (such as on the IND-ready mystery candidate) could provide a catalyst to the upside at least in the short-term.

Arrowhead sees best HBsAg knockdowns so far with new GalNAc candidate

When similar to Dicerna Arrowhead had to retool its lead programs with the GalNAc technology, one question was whether they could achieve knockdowns as potent as with DPC delivery which employed explicit cell penetrating chemistries.  It was therefore cause for celebration when the company reported -2log HBV surface antigen (HBsAg) knockdowns at the World Gastroenterologists Summit, better than with ARC520 and ARC521 before (slides here).  Also, the knockdown was observed regardless of e-antigen status, but that was to be expected with the new sequence design.

Intriguingly, following 3 monthly injections, the knockdown curves still kept coming down, making it almost look like HBV can be beaten into submission by the knockdown effect alone and without the help of an immune boosting effect.

Unfortunately, only HBsAg results from the 100mg and 200mg monthly dosing cohorts were disclosed even though the company had dosed 9 other dosing and patient cohorts.  Based on cohorts 8-11, it appears that best results may in fact have been obtained with the 300mg monthly regimen which will probably be disclosed in the run-up to this year’s AASLD meeting.

Similar to Alnylam in 2014, after showing impressive RNAi target knockdowns in the clinic, the wait is now on to show that the knockdowns will translate into therapeutic benefits.  Given the speed of the company’s execution in general, I would expect pertinent data to emerge from the HBV program in late 2019/early 2020.

Disclosure: similar to Dicerna, I have been recently playing the volatility of ARWR stock, getting long as it had been consolidating around the $14 level, then selling and going short into last week’s 50% spike to a $2B market cap.  With the puts I then sold ($21 and $20 September strikes), I have a ~10% cushion should the stock zoom past $21 by the September options expiration and my max gain is ~13%.  This is intended as a short-term trade

Regulus Therapeutics Declares MicroRNA Therapeutics Bankrupt

Once considered a new star on the biotech firmament, the most prominent microRNA Therapeutics company is going from bad to worse fast.  

Last week, Regulus Therapeutics announced that both of its clinical programs in Alport’s Syndrome and autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (AKPKD) had been voluntarily halted for financial and preclinical reasons. Instead, the company will now try to renegotiate the Alport deal with Sanofi and use its remaining resources to focus on a preclinical program for HBV.

Management not in control

The program pauses follow a string of other setbacks over the last 3 or so years. Most prominently, it discontinued a highly promising candidate for the treatment of HCV due to safety questions and having been a few years too late to a highly competitive game.  A slow early advancement of that miR-122 program was partly to blame for this.

After that, it has been one delay after another for various programs.  Partner AstraZeneca e.g. returned a liver-targeted metabolic program and the Alport's program has been hit by multiple delays and trial reconfigurations.

If this was not sufficient proof that managing a biotech company has been well above the paygrades of the multiple executive teams that have come and gone over the years, running out of cash in this genetically-focused biotech bull environment is simply unacceptable.  Even if microRNAs may have lost its early luster as targets for particularly complex diseases, I had thought that having exclusive access to the huge IP portfolios of parent companies Ionis and Alnylam for microRNA Therapeutics purposes would provide a powerful backstop when it came to accessing fresh capital.

With a market cap of less than $40M and last week’s ‘we’ve-run-out-of-cash news’ I was obviously wrong…

Chasing a 'safe' target

Since microRNAs which typically have a range of biologically meaningful targets are thus promising for treating particularly diseases of complex causes and manifestations, I would have thought that with the genetics gold-rush that we are now witnessing in neurology, not least because of antisense drug SPINRAZA, there would be much interest in Regulus Therapeutics there.

I understand that HBV is becoming a hot area again, with the skyrocketing valuations of Arrowhead, Dicerna, and Arbutus suggesting that high rates of functional cures are just around the corner.  Going after HBV with a microRNA, however, would seem like a surprising choice though given that in terms of direct antiviral activity, a microRNA approach should pale in comparison to the RNAi competition.  You would therefore think that Regulus is considering a immune reactivation-related microRNA target for HBV, but it is not clear to me which model they would be basing this on.  

Hey, management, at least show us some data to hang our hats on when you sell a preclinical concept as your future.

Or does choosing HBV betray that they have lost all confidence in their ability to deal with the biological complexity of microRNAs, instead seeking safety in just measuring simple viral knockdowns?

After the quasi-demise of microRNA diagnostics leader Rosetta Genomics, there is now the real prospect that the therapeutics counterpart will equally go belly-up soon.  In order to avoid that, Regulus needs new, confident management first and foremost as the main task now is to make the case for microRNAs as therapeutic targets.  Where are all the boastful biotech executives when you need them?

Alnylam's Primary Hyperoxaluria RNAi Drug Clears Patient Hurdle

Alnylam today provided an update on its clinical program of Lumasiran for primary hyperoxaluria (PH), an ultra-rare disease of organ damage and failure due to elevated levels oxalate (here for OxalEurope presentation slides).

The new data include safety and efficacy from all three studied dose cohorts (1 and 3mg/kg monthly, 3mg/kg quarterly) and involved early-stage PH type 1 (PH1) patients without end-stage renal disease and systemic oxalosis.  Accordingly, RNAi knockdown of the target glycolate oxidase (GO) enzyme reduced (urinary) oxalate by ~2/3.

Importantly, this was uniformly achieved across all dosing cohorts, perhaps with somewhat less inter-patient variability for the 3mg/kg cohorts.  Accordingly, oxalate levels were reduced in all patients below a threshold where natural history studies point to an almost complete protection from progression to ESRD. 

Of note, despite the caution that RNAi competitor Dicerna Pharmaceuticals had voiced that GO as a target might be prone to a rebound effect- based on the preclinical observations that oxalate reductions only kick in after profound, ~85% GO gene knockdown is achieved- the new data provide no evidence for this.  Instead, quarterly dosing with 3mg/kg was as good as with monthly dosing of the same dose, consistent with the sustained target-gene knockdown profiles seen with most current GalNAc-RNAi candidates.

The safety profile was unremarkable for a disease like this.  The only obvious drug-related side effect were transient injection site reactions in 2 out of the 9 patients receiving the investigational agent.

With these data in hand, Alnylam is about to embark on a registrational study of Lumasiran in ~25 PH1 patients.  This study will further include younger patients and those with more advanced disease than in the present study.  Given the similarity of the oxalate knockdowns across the cohorts, it is difficult to predict what the dose and dosing schedule will be, but testing both 1mg/kg and 3mg/kg quarterly could be a good idea.

Dicerna competition

Lumasiran is not the only gene knockdown agent in the clinic.  Its closest competitor, ~1.5 years behind based on the May 30 announcement that the 1^st PH patient has now been dosed, is Dicerna Pharmaceuticals’ DCR-PHXC.  DCR-PHXC is differentiated from Lumasiran in that it targets LDHA instead of GO1 and is expected to have a more linear target gene knockdown-oxalate knockdown relationship.  

It is also applicable beyond the PH1 patient population, i.e. also for the less severe (and much less commonly diagnosed) PH2 and PH3 forms of primary hyperoxaluria.

Lumasiran has thus now set a high bar for the commercially currently most valuable patient population.  It will be thus be important for Dicerna to improve diagnosis rates of PH2 and 3 as it intends to embark on a pivotal study in 2019.

Busy Week in Oligonucleotide Therapeutics

Ionis-Akcea ApoCIII Panel

Alnylam CNS Aspirations

Arrowhead Cardiovascular Data 

Dicerna Deal Pre-Announcement

It’s been a very busy week in the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics space, so I thought to memorialize the most important events of last week with this blog entry. 

Difficult Volanesorsen Panel

The highlight of the week certainly was the Advisory Committee on Volanesorsen (VLN; commercial name WAYLIVRA) for the treatment of Familial Chylomicronemia Syndrome (FCS) hypertriglyceridemia.  Here, the FDA, experts in the field, and sponsor Akcea Therapeutics were struggling to assess the risk:benefit of the ApoCIII-targeting phosphorothioate antisense gapmer. I had previewed the panel here.  

As I had expected, the majority voted yes on whether VLN should be approved for FCS.  

While following a very strict diet can be a powerful risk mitigator in FCS, it greatly affects quality of life and alone cannot absolve patients from the risk of pancreatitis attacks, abdominal pain and a range of other morbidities related to having very high triglyceride levels in the blood.  Because VLN is by far the most effective agent for lowering triglyceride, I would have been very surprised in this era of patient choice if a panel of experts wanted it to be out of reach for them.

Unfortunately, aside from on-target pharmacological efficacy, VLN performed very poor in terms of safety and tolerability.  Moreover, the trial was too small and ill-designed to tease out real disease benefits such as a lower pancreatitis attack rate and improved quality of life.  Not even a trend in favor of VLN could be discerned here.

As a result, the discussion was mostly centered around what an effective risk mitigation program (REMS) could look like to prevent dangerous bleeding events caused by the thrombocyte-(= platelet-) suppressing activity of VLN, the adverse event that was singled out as most concerning. 

Unfortunately, the practical experience with VLN showed that even closely following platelet counts and stopping VLN administration or adjusting dosing frequency in response to dropping levels are not able to stop such bleeding risk from continuing.  As such, it is to be expected that VLN will get onto the market without a really satisfactory REMS and that patients may have to accept the bleeding risk, knowing that treating physicians will be ready to administer steroids and/or IVIG should platelets drop to extremely low levels.

Due to thrombocytopenia and the range of other safety and tolerability issues and safety monitoring demands, there is a real possibility that VLN will mostly be a placeholder until safer ApoCIII-lowering alternatives can get approved.  In light of what we have learned from mipomersen and TTR-lowering drug Inotersen, the most negative impact of the VLN data is probably on the potential of systemically administered phosphorothioate antisense oligos outside of the liver.  While GalNAc for the liver and potentially GLP-1 peptides for pancreatic beta cells should keep required ASO levels substantially below the 200-300mg/week dose known to cause the tox and tolerability issues, the prospect for tissues, including muscle, that require systemic ASO administrations is less bright.

Having said that, there could be very simple solutions such as minimal reductions in the extent of phosphorothioation that miraculously can get rid of most of these side effects.  In the absence of a reliable animal model system, however, learning the rules in the clinic could take quite a few more years.  

Alnylam announces CNS aspirations

Another highlight of the week in Oligonucleotide Therapeutics was Alnylam’scoming out in applying RNAi for gene knockdown in the central nervous system (see presentation here). 

While CNS had been an area of interest of the company in its early days (Huntington’s Disease collaboration with Medtronic, a Parkinson’s program), the direct intrastriatal injection results and delivery approaches with old RNAi trigger formats were far from promising for clinical translation.  Not surprisingly, CNS had dropped off the corporate radar.

With the lesson learned from GalNAc-RNAi for the liver, most notably that of the importance of high chemical stabilization and ligands to maximize both oligonucleotide concentration and cellular uptake, and the surprisingly broad CNS biodistribution seen following intrathecal administration of antisense oligonucleotides by Ionis, it was only a matter of time that companies in the RNAi space would re-visit ‘old tissues’ for RNAi.  So with Arrowhead stoking interest in its RNAi efforts in the lung and Alnylam now in the CNS, RNAi is on the cusp of shedding its perception that it is ‘only for the liver’.  And unlike Ionis and Akcea, the RNAi space has street cred so that the capital markets are likely to buy into those claims.

To make matters worse for Ionis, Alnylam is now predicting that (similar to the liver), knockdown with its RNAi molecules should be longer-lived and much better tolerated than the phosphorotioate competition (from Ionis and Biogen): 

'Expect superior potency, duration and systemic safety profile vs. ASOs'

In light of the limited though promising public data (single rat intrathecal injection of 0.9mg of RNAi trigger causing substantial, ~75% target gene lowering for at least 1 month, the latest time point measured), it is too early to decide whether that’s true.  More information on this subject should, however, emerge over the next 2 years by which time Alnylam plans to file its first IND for the CNS.

Arrowhead highlights cardiovascular pipeline

Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals seems to have repaired relationships with investors following its DPC Waterloo and is increasingly getting credit for its GalNAc-based turnaround.  Outside of its lead programs in HBV and AAT-related liver disease, it is cardiovascular disease indications that are the focus of these efforts.

So at ATVB, the company presented an update on these programs with a focus on ANGPTL3 for the treatment of a range of lipid-related abnormalities, especially hypertriglyceridemia.  Of note, first monkey data showed that the administration of therapeutically relevant 3mg/kg triggered robust, 80% target gene knockdown lasting for more than 4 weeks. 

With INDs/CTAs planned for both ANGPTL3 and ApoCIII as well as potentially Lp(a) by partner Amgen anticipated before the end of the year, 2019 promises to be a clinical data-rich year for RNAi in cardiovascular disease.

Dicerna kind of pre-announces AAT-deal as investors get ready to sell shares

Much of what is going on behind the scenes at Dicerna is currently only being reflected by its SEC filings.  

On May 4, large shareholders who had supported the company throughout its litigation with Alnylam and now stand to be richly rewarded for it (~5x gain currently) had their shares registered for sale in an S-3 filing.  These shares account for a whopping roughly half of the shares outstanding.

To bring all investors up to speed, such a registration necessitates the filing of a prospectus.  Interestingly, this document was very specific in that the company now expects to partner the mystery orphan-disease candidate it has been talking about for quite some time this quarter:

‘We plan to seek a risk-sharing collaborator for this program before we file an IND and/or CTA, which we expect to be prepared to file in the second quarter of 2018.’

The document also removes any doubt that the secret target of that program is alpha-1-antitrypsin:

‘The protein causes progressive liver damage and fibrosis, in some cases leading to cirrhosis and liver failure, and we believe that silencing of the disease gene will prevent production of the abnormal protein and thereby slow or stop progression of the liver fibrosis. Greater than 100,000 people in the United States (“U.S.”) are believed to be homozygous (i.e. having identical pairs of genes for any given pair of hereditary characteristics) for the mutation that causes the liver disease, and at least 20% of those people, and potentially a significantly higher fraction, are believed to have liver-associated disease as a consequence.’

So if you were mesmerized by the stocks recent strong performance on modest volume, here’s a conspiracy theory: the company is helping supportive investors to get out on a high volume day that an AAT deal announcement would precipitate.  And spending a few bucks to run the shares up is well worth the investment. 

If the events unfolds as I speculate, it is yet another powerful reminder it is not sufficient for investors to merely follow the press releases, but carefully read the regulatory filings, even if they may seem dry and overly long. 

Addendum 15May18: on its quarterly conference call, Dicerna clarified its convoluted statement in the prospectus regarding the timing of partnership and IND of the mystery candidate. Accordingly, the candidate will be ready for IND/CTA filing by the end of Q2. An actual filing, however, will have to await a partnership which the company now guides for the second half of this year.  Apparently, they are currently in talks with 'more than two' potential partners.

Another focal point of the conference call Q&A session was the rationale behind the single-dose trial with DCR-PHXC for primary hyperoxaluria and how they want to use that as the basis for designing a pivotal registrational, multi-dose trial in 2019.  In this regard, contradictory statements were made.  On the one hand, the CMO contended that as seen with the more advanced program by Alnylam, most of the oxalate lowering can be seen following a single dose already so the company will have a good idea as to the necessary dose and dosing frequency for the pivotal trial.  On the other hand, the CEO predicted that repeat dosing is likely to be necessary to get an idea as to the actual oxalate-lowering potential of a given dose.  Here, I side with the CEO, but keep asking myself why on earth are they taking so much scientific and regulatory risk with a single-dose trial? 

Dicerna Focuses Operations Following Settlement With Alnylam

Last Friday, Dicerna and Alnylam announced that they had settled all ongoing litigation between the parties just as the acrimonious fight was about to court. 

Settlement terms

As part of the settlement, Dicerna will pay Alnylam $25M in stock and cash and drop its anti-competitive practices counter-suit against the RNAi behemoth.  In addition, Dicerna has agreed to not pursue certain targets/indications (see discussion below).  In return, Alnylam will drop its trade secret lawsuit it had filed on grounds of suspected GalNAc-conjugate trade secret misappropriation in the wake of Alnylam’s acquisition of the Merck RNAi assets in early 2014.

Litigation background

Allegedly, ex-Merck employees who had been hired by Dicerna had taken along competitively advantageous information that Alnylam claimed that it paid for.

Personally, given the timing and fuzziness of the litigation, I had always believed that Alnylam primarily filed the lawsuit to drain a much smaller, but direct competitor of vital financial resources.  In particular, even if these ex-Merck employees took with them information important to Alnylam, Merck obviously didn’t protect such knowledge as expected for trade secrets.  Moreover, Dicerna’s application of GalNAc-RNAi conjugate looks extremely different from that of Alnylam.  Even a more negative outcome should therefore not have adversely affected Dicerna's ability to further develop its technology.  

Coming out from underneath the litigation cloak

Still, this strategy had almost worked out.  Ironically, it was Alnylam’s own success in the clinic (à primarily Patisiran phase III APOLLO data last fall, but also GalNAc-related data) that had provided Dicerna stock with sufficient strength for the company to be in a position to ward off the existential threat posed by the litigation: $25M just 15 months ago would have been a mortal blow to ~$50M market cap minion Dicerna.  Today, the $600M market cap makes the $25M almost immaterial.

Nevertheless, based on the extremely bullish market reaction to the deal (up close to 40% following announcement of the settlement before settling the day at +18%), I believe that an important facet of the deal has been widely underappreciated.  Specifically, the fact that Dicerna had to agree not to pursue certain targets could completely change the face of this company. 

From the Alnylam press release:

'Dicerna will be restricted in its development and other activities relating to oligonucleotide-based therapeutics directed toward a defined set of Alnylam targets, for periods ranging from 18 months up to four years.'

Instead of a broad pure-play GalNAc RNAi company, Dicerna now probably needs to be considered a 5-or-so development candidate company for which the end game will be its sale to a larger company.  Except for the long-promised deal on the mystery candidate (AAT?), this reduces expectations for future strategic blockbuster deals.

Disclosure: Especially in light of the target selection restrictions, I view the settlement as incrementally negative for Dicerna and expect the market to realize the same soon.  Following Friday's strong move to the upside, Dicerna is a short-term conviction short with a $10 near-term price target.  Also expect Alnylam to sell the 2M million Dicerna shares almost as soon as it receives them (please read comments section below for correction).  Long Alnylam.

Dicerna Supremely Confident About Clinical Pharmacology of its GalNAc Platform

Dicerna has just entered its GalNAc-RNAi conjugates into the clinic and by the looks of it, seems extremely confident about being able to forecast its performance in humans.  

Single-dose study

At least this is what I am forced to interpret into their remarkable decision to merely conduct a single-dose phase I/II study with DCR-PHXC for primary hyperoxaluria before going straight into a planned (multi-dose) pivotal study in 2019.

There is, of course, precedent from Alnylam’s ample experience with a related GalNAc-RNAi conjugate format and how animal studies have translated into humans and how repeat-dosing in man have increased and extended the knockdown compared to single dose administrations.

 

Dicerna thus believes it will be able to predict the optimal dosing schedule for the all-important registrational study based on single-dose monkey-to-human translation and the effect of repeat dosing in monkeys.  

You’ll probably be scratching your head already how accurate such modeling by triangulation can be.  Complicating matters, the primary aim is not to achieve a predetermined level of target knockdown (lactate dehydrogenase A/LDHA), but in fact oxalate knockdown which is downstream from LDHA.

So a lot of moving parts between a single-dose gene knockdown and therapeutic lowering of a toxic metabolite following prolonged and pronounced multi-dose knockdown.  And don’t get me started on the impact of RNAi trigger formats, the nature of their chemical modification as well as the target gene identity on gene silencing duration…and what about the small issue called 'safety'?

Dicerna: if this rushed design is an effort to catch up with the competitive program by Alnylam to better compete for patients for the pivotal trial, it’s probably not worth it.  Either you are greatly increasing the risk of phase III failure or, more likely, you'll be sent back into earlier-stage multi-dose studies by regulators (similar to what happened to the Alport program by Regulus Therapeutics).

Dicerna talking down value of mystery program

Following DCR-PHXC, Dicerna plans to bring two additional drugs into the clinic in the near future: one against HBV and another one for an undisclosed orphan disease.

Aside from the fact that I believe that there is little point in keeping the target identity a secret since they have pretty much given it away by characterizing it as one with >100,000 patients in the US alone (à alpha-1-antitrypsin-related liver disease), it is remarkable that the CEO has said that they are looking for a ‘risk-sharing’ partner at this early stage already.

Even more surprising was the comment last week that Dicerna will even wait to partner the program before entering it into clinical development!  

This truly is unheard of for a company in the red-hot genetic biotechnology space where funding is relatively easy to come by these days for a company of a profile like Dicerna (clinically ready genetic technology, $700M market cap).  Here, the universally accepted name of the game is to get at least a couple of drug candidates into the clinic with minimal ownership dilution (e.g. by partnering) early on.  Developing an orphan candidate to clinical readiness and then idling it sends out a clear signal that the candidate is deemed to have disappointing prospects.

 

It would be easy for Dicerna, with the stock up 100% since the recent offering, to do another ~$100M raise to comfortably navigate three programs through proof-of-concept.

With these two unexplainable apparent unforced major errors, it got me thinking: can it be explained with the uncertainty around the trade secret litigation with Alnylam? According to the Q4 2017 conference call, a trial date has been set for April.

Happy Gene Therapy Talk Presaged Market Correction

In January, many biotech stocks went parabolic shattering all-time-highs.  Now they have started crashing back down to earth.

The run-up was partly driven by real fundamentals.  These include corporate tax reform in the US, a new FDA commissioner (Scott Gottlieb) who makes all the right decisions (speeding access to innovative medicines, fostering generic competition, amenable to rational discussion etc), and a voracious appetite for innovative pipelines in the pharmaceutical industry which has manifested itself in a number of chunky, multibillion dollar acquisitions. 

At the same time, ever-increasing valuations in a deceptively low-volatility stock market environment has emboldened analysts, investors, and managements alike to proclaim that the golden era of curative medicines is upon us.  Gene therapy and genome editing in particular got hyped beyond reason as if all of a sudden critical bottlenecks in tech development had been solved.  CRISPR companies Editas Medicines and CRISPR Therapeutics, without a single drug candidate in the clinic, were bid up to $2B valuations although access to genome editing tools have become a commodity and cannot be considered gate-keeping tech any more.

Not much changed technology-wise

I understand that gene therapies have made tremendous inroads into the pharmaceutical marketplace with the first 3 gene therapy approvals in the US over the last year, one for an eye disease by Spark Therapeutics and two CAR-T cell cancer therapies going after the same target.

While I acknowledge these successes, what is really surprising here is that it took that long to get there given that the related delivery and genetic technologies (AAV, gene insertion, immune cell transfer) have been in existence for a decade or two already.  In that light, the recent Happy Talk around gene therapy seemed overdone.

The CEO of one genome editing company, Sangamo Therapeutics, is a great example of this divergence between scientific progress and clinical reality.  

Having come on board only a year ago, the good Dr. Macrae looks as if he is having a steep learning curve ahead of himself.  The reason I got the impression is that he likes to grandiosely talk about how the company's AAV capsid shuffling will enable them to cure all these CNS disorders while making great progress with LNPs to address the rest of humanity's afflictions.

Well, LNPs have gotten 10x more potent every year for the last 15 years so we must have reached homeopathic doses by now; and looking at the literature, AAV shuffling hasn't changed all that much since I completed my post-doc in an AAV lab in Stanford.  Or maybe Jim Wilson has grown exceedingly gun-shy when he resigns from his well-paying function at AAV company Solid Biosciences over concerns of toxicity from high systemic AAV doses and possibly also his finding that delivery to a certain tissue in the mouse does not predict same delivery in humans.

Certainly, there are also tailwinds supporting gene therapy that had not been around a decade ago.  As alluded to above, society and regulators have finally warmed up to a very sensible approach to medicines in the genomic era.  Moreover, there are established paths now to effectively develop such therapies and the challenge of producing large quantities of viral vectors is gradually being addressed.

Still, amid the hype and stock market giddiness, valuations in many of these companies have run ahead of themselves and were ripe for a pull-back.

Next time you hear so much Happy Talk around a biotech subsector leader as has been the case for gene therapy, watch out for a correction.   

What about RNAi stocks?

RNAi stocks have also benefited from the overall bullishness in the biotech sector with ARWR and DRNA having run up by 300% or so in a matter of months.  While I still hold shares in these companies, I have written calls (largely in-the-money) on essentially all of them meaning that I am fairly insulated should they fall another 10% or so.   

Since I still like ARWR and DRNA ahead of their first clinical GalNAc knockdown data, and in the case of Dicerna the potential removal of the overhang from the Alnylam litigation, I am eyeing (and have been) selling out-of-the money puts on these for 10+% premiums or so.

If the market turns back up, you pocket the premium. 10% or so in a matter of 2 months is not bad in my mind.  If, however, the stocks decline and the puts are in-the-money at expiration, you get handed a stock that you like anyway.  Say Arrowhead for a price of $4.5 instead of $5.45 yesterday.  

But before you place any such options bets, consult with your investment advisor first to familiarize you with the risks of writing options!

On the simple, naked long side, I like Ionis Pharmaceuticals which, as a biotech stock that has essentially missed out on the post-Trump rally and with the upcoming Huntington’s data catalyst, has the potential to become a new biotech bellwether following subsector rotations that usually occur following corrections (remember the 2015 correction following which oligonucleotide stocks turned from sector leaders to laggards?).  Alnylam, meanwhile, looks tired here with a lot of the upside priced in, at least regarding the TTR story.

Happy trading and be mindful.

Going into 2018, OligoRx Has Become Mainstream Drug Modality

When I became interested in drug development almost 2 decades ago, I just didn’t get it: why was it that gene-centric biotech was seen as an esoteric, money-losing endeavor, and why did shot-in-the-dark small molecule drug development represent the pharmaceutical elite?  After all, biology has fully moved into molecular gear and how could medicine not follow that?

After a quarter of a lifetime I now understand that what makes sense often takes a decade or two to manifest.  So if you are dead sure about your view of the world, stick to your conviction and resist the urge to follow the herd.

The gene-centric drug development revolution has occurred, long live Oligonucleotide Therapeutics

In 2018 though, gene-centric drug development has taken the pharmaceutical world by storm.  This just 8 years after gene therapy, RNAi, and oligonucleotides were widely ridiculed for having been hyped and supposedly failed.

Yes, in 2017, antisense drugs Spinraza (for spinal muscular atrophy) and Exondys 51 (for Duchenne muscular dystrophy) made a big commercial splash, RNA knockdown for TTR amyloidosis proved positive in 2 large phase III trials, all the while the first gene therapy products (2 CAR-T cell/gene therapies and 1 ocular gene therapy) got approved.

This momentum will only pick up speed on 2018.  The year is already starting with an onslaught of drug development VC investments prominently featuring mRNA and gene-modulation startups (e.g. $270M investment in personalized/mRNA oncology Co bioNTech, and ~$100M for gene processing plays ExpansionTherapeutics and Stoke Therapeutics).

 

Further down the pipeline, we should see approvals and commercializations for at least 3 important oligonucleotide therapeutics drugs: Patisiran (RNAi/Alnylam) and Inotersen (RNaseH antisense/Ionis) for TTR amyloidosis in addition to Volanesorsen (RNaseH antisense/Ionis-Akcea) for lowering triglycerides.  At the same time, Sarepta will continue to walk the tightrope with their first-generation PMO splice skippers for DMD hoping for approvals of additional exons.

RNAi drug Givosiran should also be speeding towards approval in 2018.  After a sweet and brief phase I/IIa study sponsor Alnylam is pursuing a laser-like direct-into-pivotal study/biomarker-based approval strategy.  Expect this to become quite commonplace rather than the exception, especially under the new FDA.

Adding gravitas to all these activities will be the further commercialization successes of Spinraza and Exondys51 that will break down pretty much all commercialization barriers that may have been put up by payors.  After all, these are all delay tactics intended to save the system a few billion dollars (at the cost of childrens’ lives mind you), get a few bureaucratic underlings promoted, but really won’t stand a chance against the desire of patients and their families to get access to such foundational drugs.

It is my belief that with the commercial successes of Spinraza and Exondys51, all previous reservations with regard to oligonucleotide therapeutics being mere scientific tools rather than real-world drugs have disappeared among pharma and investors.

RNAi Therapeutics Stock Thoughts for 2018

Moving on towards the investment end of the business, Alnylam will be a show-me stock which will have its ups and downs as the market will challenge Patisiran sales numbers against its $12B market cap.  Alnylam knows this and is throwing everything behind the commercialization of Patisiran to the extent that it renegotiated its platform deal with Sanofi to retain full global responsibility for commercializing Patisiran and follow-on ALN-TTRsc02.

The easiest RNAi money in my opinion will be made with Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals (~400M market cap) which has impressed me recently with the vengeance with which it is getting back into the clinic (IND equivalents filed recently for its HBV and AAT drugs) and between it and Amgen it could have brought half a dozen drug candidates to the IND stage within the span of just one year (from having zero in the clinic!).  Just by executing on bringing these drugs to the clinic, Arrowhead’s market cap should exceed those of genome editing high-fliers like Sangamo and Editas (~$1.5B).

The topping on the cake, however, will come from potentially first proof-of-concept biomarker data from their GalNAc programs by the end of the year.  And who knows what will happen to the stock if they can declare HBsAg seroclearance based on the legacy HBV program (ARC-520/1)!  And this is not all as we have yet to learn more about Arrowhead’s lung delivery platform which could be a very big franchise onto its own without much competition.

In terms of striving towards first proof-of-concept and critical biomarker data for its GalNAc RNAi platform, Dicerna is similar to Arrowhead.  The difference is that Dicerna’s goals are not as grandiose as those of Arrowhead (Arrowhead is built to become a $50-100B biotech juggernaut) focusing its resources on a few (ultra-)orphan indications which they are addressing with much care and detail.  At a market cap of $450M after the recent conversion of their convertible debt, the downside could be enormous should the lead program for primary hyperoxaluria stumble.  The upside, however, is also significant as they have their eyes set on 2 orphan drug approvals by 2023.

Critically for Arrowhead, Dicerna, and other companies in the space, given the positive news from Spinraza and Exondys51 sales and TTR trial results, the resistance of more conservative investors to invest in second-tier companies so they can grow into substantial multi-billion companies themselves should also be alleviated.

Finally, investors in Ionis Pharmaceuticals face a critical year.  No, this time it’s not about hitting clinical endpoints and how well their drugs are selling.  Instead, Ionis will have to decide its corporate future.  Run away if it makes the mistake of continuing to try and dominate every area of oligonucleotide therapeutics development.  It is this ambition and resulting lack of focus that is responsible for the company giving away much of the commercial upside of its drugs to its partners.

As the basic oligonucleotide chemical building blocks and designs are coming off patent and more and more disease-focused, nimble companies come online, this train has left the station.  Boy, this company is in dire need of fresh management blood from the outside world. 

The macroeconomic environment also bodes well for a blockbuster oligonucleotides stock year: low inflation and interest rates, good economic growth at low unemployment, lowered corporate taxes in the US and an FDA that seeks to speed up and protect innovation in exchange for ensuring that off-patent drugs are highly affordable.  It is probably this blue sky, however, that scares me most and it is my New Year’s resolution to take it easy on my margin balance for a change.

RNAi Therapeutics Stocks (Part 1)

According to the RNAi calendar, a calendar characterized by 3-year sentiment cycles, we are coming to the end of the first third of another RNAi Therapeutics stock bull market. 

The current cycle follows one (2014-7) that I had referred to as The Wait when the stock market had priced in the ability of RNAi to knock down genes in humans, yet still needed confirmation that this would translate into overall therapeutically beneficial drugs to justify a further increase in the valuation of RNAi companies.  As you know, the phase III APOLLO study of Patisiran in hATTR amyloidosis has provided us with just that.  Expectedly, this has not only lifted the stock price of Alnylam (+70% since results 1 ½ months ago), but positive sentiment has trickled down to 2^nd tier companies like Arrowhead Research and Dicerna vying to be the next Alnylam.

The following blog entries will give you a quick run-down on my thoughts about the most bona fide, publicly-listed RNAi companies and stocks as well as the most interesting plays in the oligonucleotide therapeutics arena at large.

 

Alnylam (ALNY)

Love them or hate them, this company and management has stuck to their belief that RNAi is a major drug development platform to support the development of major biotech companies.  Such belief is shown by the fact that Alnylam has long chosen to retain main commercialization rights to their drug candidates while building 100 million $ manufacturing and sales operations around that.  Talk about planning for success!

While this company has recently received most recognition for the outstanding APOLLO data, it has another three (!) drug candidates (Fitusiran for hemophilia, Givosiran for Acute Hepatic Porphyria, and MDCO-partnered PCSK9 inhibitor Inclisiran) for which pivotal phase III data will read out over the next 2 years.

Nevertheless, I suspect that their share price will be largely driven by the launch of Patisiran in 2018. While the base case of ~10k patients on drug seems to be baked into its $13B market cap, there is an upside from the identification of more TTR amyloidosis patients which I feel is quite likely.  And if the amyloidosis, largely heart disease, from wild-type TTR becomes more widely recognized as a significant disease in the elderly along with diseases like Alzheimer’s, TTR amyloidosis alone should be able to support the $30-40B market caps enjoyed by similar niche players like Alexion (àsevere complement-related diseases) and Vertex Pharmaceuticals (àcystic fibrosis).

The main risk is that the competitor TTR drug Inotersen by Ionis will gain a larger market share than is currently widely anticipated, partly because patients prefer the convenience of a simple at-home injection to a day spent in an infusion center every 3 weeks.

I currently view ALNY as the RNAi stock in most need of a breather and am playing the stock from the short side as a hedge for temporary dips in the oligonucleotide and wider biotech stock market.

Dicerna (DRNA)

Long a neglected laggard in RNAi stocks, DRNA has been catching up with the competition with a solid ~200% increase over the last 3 months.

The bullish view of why you might want to ride up the stock further (note: unlike you constantly luck out on binary events, riding a stock up in bull markets is your best bet to make outsized stock market returns) is that DRNA sits now where Alnylam was in 2011/12 when it first demonstrated solid gene knockdown in humans.  It’s been a ~20x return since then. 

Actually, Dicerna’s technology is more advanced than Alnylam’s was back then.  On the other hand, there is now more competition for knocking down genes in the liver which is where Dicerna is focused on almost exclusively.  Still, I love Dicerna as they have a chance to bring two distinct, impactful drugs for severe orphan diseases towards marketing application by 2022 (for primary hyperoxaluria and an undisclosed one).  

A currently diluted market cap of slightly more than $300M is attractive given this realistic opportunity, and in hindsight their widely poo-poo’d March 2017 convertible stock offering now looks like genius as they keep hitting on all the milestones for lowering the inherent cost of the convertible. 

Some of the main 2018 potential catalysts will be (1) the conclusion of the litigation with Alnylam, (2) the disclosure of the second orphan drug candidate and subsequent IND/CTA filing, and (3) positive clinical biomarker data from the hyperoxaluria program.

DRNA is my second largest position along with IONS. 

Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals (ARWR)

While the discontinuation of their DPC-based pipeline was certainly a setback, for the long-term development of the company it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as its once ardent supporters, now harshest critics make it out to be. 

DPC, as illustrated by the cardiovascular deal with Amgen preceding the DPC fiasco, was on its way out and simpler conjugates on their way in as enhanced RNAi trigger stabilization chemistry has been able to close the potency gap with DPC and is now able to provide more sustained gene knockdown.

To play in that area, Arrowhead has been assembling an able, integrated drug development team with a proven track record of quickly advancing drug candidates towards the clinic using best RNAi practices.  Pair that with one, if not the industry’s most commanding IP estates and a proven ability to deal with Big Pharma (à partnering opportunities), I consider Arrowhead as the most likely ‘2^nd tier’ company to achieve or even exceed Alnylam greatness.

Look for continued progress of them getting back into the clinic and advances of achieving robust gene knockdown outside the liver.

ARWR has been my largest position for the last few months.

To be continued…