Nello Mainolfi
Analyst · Guggenheim.
Yes. No, great question, Paul. So let me start with -- so obviously, we built a really robust preclinical package, right? We've shown in vitro first that we degrade this target fully with picomolar concentrations, in all relevant cell types. When I say relevant, I mean, cell types, human cell types, they are relevant to all these TH2 diseases, whether it's respiratory, derm GI. We've shown that if you look at pathway inhibition, so IL-4/13 biology downstream of the receptor, we're able to block that pathway actually more potently than dupilumab. If we go in vivo, we've shown either in atopic derm model or more translationally in the asthma model, that's a 30-day HDM model, we've shown that with 90% degradation of STAT6, we have an ability to block a plethora of TH2 biomarker as well as disease endpoints either equally or better than DUPIXENT. So we've shown preclinically in terms of pharmacology that this drug behaves like a very, very robust, probably best-in-class pathway inhibitor. We've also shown the safety profile to be so far, absolutely pristine, which we talked about early in the year, in January about that we haven't seen any adverse events in our non-GLP tox. Today, we're seeing as an update that even going through GLP tox, we haven't seen any adverse events in any doses that we've tested. So also the safety profile is quite compelling. So the goal of the Phase I study is to demonstrate that everything that we've done so far in preclinical species or at least most of the things that we've done in preclinical species, replicated human. And importantly is the PK that leads to a dose-dependent and robust degradation in blood and skin. And then we're using the biomarker that DUPIXENT has modulated. To just confirm, to be honest, it's totally expected, but confirm in humans that blocking STAT6 will lead to downstream biomarker changes, which, again, we've shown extensively in all sorts of preclinial models. If you look at the data that the pics that have shown, and I encourage everybody to kind of study that so they were aligned on expectations. You've seen that we do -- you can reduce the TARC and also IgE in 28 days. And so if you look at the data, somewhere between 20% and 40%, depending on the biomarker that you use. Again, it shows that there is a pathway in ambition even in healthy volunteers that don't have ongoing inflammation. And so it's a confirmation of target engagement. I don't believe we will use that data for any decision-making with regards to indication, given that those are again qualitative biomarker in a healthy volunteer population. Our goal will be to go in patients soon thereafter to establish a more robust both proof of mechanism and proof of fund.