SNTA @ Deutsche (5/7/12)
[George Farmer, VP Corp Development, presented here.]
1. Decision to ultimately proceed to Phase 3 of GALAXY based on signal in two pre-specified sub-populations that they believe shows "very dramatic activity."
2. Immediately after the first point, around the 4-minute mark, it's noted that pre-specified populations were mutant KRAS and squamous disease, patients who have high and low LDH. So, it sounds like the signal is in mutant KRAS and in squamous (I took the speaker to mean that high and low LDH was a subset of squamous disease but if it's a third distinct category then the signal is in two of those 3 sub-groups.)
3. Farmer barely references INFI's candidate as a competitor (as iwfal posted, he notes that the drug is basically 17AAG once in the bloodstream). He referred to NVS' AUY-922 as the closest Hsp90 competitor and said that drug had similar potency to ganetespib but a presentation slide noted that drug had 89% ocular tox in a trial.
4. Starting around the 26:30 mark of the presentation, Farmer states he hasn't seen the data but he has seen the looks on the faces of the SNTA medical team and they are extremely excited about what they see. He also states that if the signal were merely a doubling of PFS at this early stage of the trial, he does not think they would feel comfortable in making this kind of announcement (about the signal in the two sub-groups) at such an early stage of the game. He adds that the signal is extremely strong.
5. Regarding partnering, the GALAXY data has changed SNTA's thinking about how they should partner ganetespib. Farmer states that knowing what they know now, SNTA believes they have an extremely valuable asset beyond ALK.
