UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
FORM
(Mark One)
ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHaANGE ACT OF 1934 |
For the fiscal year ended
OR
TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 FOR THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM TO |
Commission File Number
(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its Charter)
(State or other jurisdiction of incorporation or organization) |
(I.R.S. Employer Identification No.) |
(Address of principal executive offices) |
(Zip Code) |
Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:
Title of each class |
|
Trading Symbol(s) |
|
Name of each exchange on which registered |
|
|
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None
Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. YES ☐
Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Act. YES ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to submit such files).
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.
Large accelerated filer |
|
☐ |
|
Accelerated filer |
|
☐ |
|
|
|
|
|||
|
☒ |
|
Smaller reporting company |
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Emerging growth company |
|
If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act.
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report.
If securities are registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act, indicate by check mark whether the financial statements of the registrant included in the filing reflect the correction of an error to previously issued financial statements. ☐
Indicate by check mark whether any of those error corrections are restatements that required a recovery analysis of incentive-based compensation received by any of the registrant’s executive officers during the relevant recovery period pursuant to §240.10D-1(b). ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). YES ☐ NO
As of June 30, 2022, the last business day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter, the aggregate market value of the voting and non-voting common equity held by non-affiliates of the registrant, based on the closing price of the shares of common stock on The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC on June 30, 2022, was approximately $
As of March 20, 2023, the registrant had
Table of Contents
|
|
Page |
|
|
|
Item 1. |
7 |
|
Item 1A. |
41 |
|
Item 1B. |
84 |
|
Item 2. |
84 |
|
Item 3. |
84 |
|
Item 4. |
84 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Item 5. |
85 |
|
Item 6. |
85 |
|
Item 7. |
Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations |
86 |
Item 7A. |
98 |
|
Item 8. |
99 |
|
Item 9. |
Changes in and Disagreements with Accountants on Accounting and Financial Disclosure |
99 |
Item 9A. |
99 |
|
Item 9B. |
100 |
|
Item 9C. |
Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdictions that Prevent Inspections |
100 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Item 10. |
101 |
|
Item 11. |
101 |
|
Item 12. |
Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters |
101 |
Item 13. |
Certain Relationships and Related Transactions, and Director Independence |
101 |
Item 14. |
101 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Item 15. |
102 |
|
Item 16. |
104 |
Summary of Material Risks Associated with Our Business
Our business is subject to numerous material and other risks that you should be aware of before making an investment decision. These risks are described more fully in Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K entitled “Risk Factors.” These risks include, among others, the following:
|
|
|
We are a precision oncology company with a limited operating history. We have no products approved for commercial sale, have not generated any revenue from product sales and may never become profitable. |
|
|
|
We have incurred significant net losses since our inception and anticipate that we will continue to incur losses for the foreseeable future. We expect our operating results to fluctuate significantly in the future as our business advances. |
|
|
|
We will need to raise substantial additional funding. If we are unable to raise capital when needed or on terms acceptable to us, we would be forced to delay, reduce or eliminate some of our product development programs or commercialization efforts. |
|
|
|
We have never successfully completed any clinical trials and we may be unable to do so for any product candidates we develop. Certain of our programs are still in preclinical development and may never advance to clinical development. |
|
|
|
Our programs are focused on the development of oncology therapeutics for patients with genetically defined or biomarker-driven cancers, which is a rapidly evolving area of science, and the approach we are taking to discover and develop drugs is novel and may never lead to approved or marketable products. |
|
|
|
If we are unable to successfully validate, develop and obtain regulatory approval for companion diagnostic tests for our product candidates that require or would commercially benefit from such tests, or experience significant delays in doing so, we may not realize the full commercial potential of these product candidates. We will also rely on third-parties for screening for biomarkers that enable patient selection for trials. |
|
|
|
Clinical product development involves a lengthy and expensive process, with an uncertain outcome. Further, our current and potential future collaborations may not realize the anticipated benefits. |
|
|
|
Interim, top-line, and initial data from our clinical trials that we announce or publish from time to time may change as more patient data become available and are subject to confirmation, audit and verification procedures that could result in material changes in the final data. |
|
|
|
Results from early preclinical studies of our programs and product candidates are not necessarily predictive of the results of later preclinical studies and clinical trials of our programs and product candidates. If we cannot replicate the results from our earlier preclinical studies of our programs and product candidates in our later preclinical studies and clinical trials, we may be unable to successfully develop, obtain regulatory approval for and commercialize our product candidates. |
|
|
|
If we experience delays or difficulties in the initiation, enrollment or dosing of patients in clinical trials, the announcement of clinical trial results and our receipt of necessary regulatory approvals (if any) could be delayed or prevented. |
|
|
|
Our clinical trials or those of our current or future collaborators may reveal significant adverse events not seen in our preclinical or nonclinical studies and may result in a safety profile that could inhibit regulatory approval or market acceptance of any of our product candidates. |
|
|
|
Some of our product candidates modulate pathways for which there are currently no approved or effective therapies, and utilize novel binding locations, which may result in greater research and development expenses, regulatory issues that could delay or prevent approval, or discovery of unknown or unanticipated adverse effects. |
|
|
|
If we are not able to obtain, or if there are delays in obtaining, required regulatory approvals for our product candidates, we will not be able to commercialize, or will be delayed in commercializing, our product candidates, and our ability to generate revenue will be materially impaired. |
|
|
|
The COVID-19 pandemic, or a similar pandemic, epidemic, or outbreak of an infectious disease, may materially and adversely affect our business and our financial results and could cause a disruption to the development of our product candidates and the initiation and completion of clinical trials. |
|
|
|
We expect to rely on third parties to conduct our clinical trials, as well as investigator-sponsored clinical trials of our product candidates (if any). If these third parties do not successfully carry out their contractual duties, comply with regulatory requirements or meet expected deadlines, we may not be able to obtain regulatory approval for or commercialize our product candidates and our business could be substantially harmed. |
|
|
|
We contract with third parties for the manufacture of our product candidates for preclinical development and clinical trials and expect to continue to do so for future clinical testing and commercialization (if approved). This reliance on third parties increases the risk that we will not have sufficient quantities of our product candidates or products or such quantities at an acceptable cost, which could delay, prevent or impair our development or commercialization efforts. |
|
|
|
The third parties upon whom we rely for the supply of the active pharmaceutical ingredients and drug product to be used in our product candidates are our sole source of supply, and the loss of any of these suppliers could significantly harm our business. |
|
|
|
If we cannot obtain new patents, maintain our existing patents and protect the confidentiality and proprietary nature of our trade secrets and other intellectual property, our business and competitive position may be harmed. |
|
|
|
If we are found to be infringing third party patents, we may be forced to pay damages to the patent owner and/or obtain a license to continue the manufacture, sale or development of our products. If we cannot obtain a license, we may be prevented from the manufacture, sale or development of our products or product candidates, which may adversely affect our business. |
2
Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains express or implied forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”). Words such as "anticipates," "continue," "could," "may," "forecasts," "expects," "intends," "plans," "potentially," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," "predict," "target," and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict; therefore, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or forecasted in any such statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about our industry and business, management's beliefs, and certain assumptions made by our management, and may include, but are not limited to, statements regarding:
|
|
|
the initiation, timing, progress, results, and cost of our research and development programs and our current and future preclinical studies and clinical trials, including statements regarding the timing of IND filings, active enrollment in clinical trials, and initiation and completion of studies or clinical trials and related preparatory work, and the period during which the results of the clinical trials (including initial and final trial results) will become available; |
|
|
|
our ability to discover and develop product candidates efficiently (including the advancement of development candidates on the timelines identified and the ability to identify clinical trial investigators to use our product candidates in trials); |
|
|
|
our ability and the potential to manufacture our drug substances and product candidates successfully for preclinical use, for clinical trials and on a larger scale for commercial use, if approved; |
|
|
|
the ability and willingness of our third-party strategic collaborators to license and to continue research and development activities relating to our development candidates and product candidates; |
|
|
|
our ability to obtain funding for our operations necessary to complete further research, development and commercialization of our product candidates (and that existing cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities will enable us to fund our operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements at least into 2025); |
|
|
|
our ability to obtain and, if approved, maintain regulatory approval of our product candidates; |
|
|
|
our ability to commercialize our products, if approved; |
|
|
|
the pricing and reimbursement of our product candidates, if approved; |
|
|
|
the implementation of our business model, and strategic plans for our business and product candidates; |
|
|
|
the scope of protection we are able to establish and maintain for intellectual property rights covering our product candidates; |
|
|
|
estimates of our future expenses, capital requirements, and our need for additional financing; |
|
|
|
the potential benefits of strategic collaboration agreements, our ability to enter into strategic collaborations or arrangements, and our ability to attract collaborators with development, regulatory and commercialization expertise; |
|
|
|
future agreements with third parties in connection with the commercialization of product candidates (if approved) and any other approved products; |
|
|
|
the size and growth potential of the markets for our product candidates, and our ability to serve those markets; |
|
|
|
our financial performance, including the expectation that we will continue to incur operating losses and negative cash flow; |
|
|
|
the rate and degree of market acceptance of our product candidates, if approved; |
3
|
|
|
regulatory developments in the United States and foreign countries, including pricing regulations by U.S. (such as CMS) and foreign regulatory authorities; |
|
|
|
our ability to contract with third-party suppliers and manufacturers and their ability to perform adequately; |
|
|
|
our ability to produce our products or product candidates with advantages in turnaround times or manufacturing cost; |
|
|
|
the success of competing therapies that are or may become available; |
|
|
|
our ability to attract and retain key scientific or management personnel; |
|
|
|
the impact of laws and regulations; |
|
|
|
developments relating to our competitors and industry; |
|
|
|
the effect of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, including mitigation efforts and economic effects, on any of the foregoing or other aspects of our business operations, including but not limited to our preclinical studies and clinical trials and any future studies or trials; and |
|
|
|
other risks and uncertainties, including those listed in this Annual Report on Form 10-K under the section titled “Risk Factors.” |
The forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are based on current expectations and beliefs concerning future developments and their potential effects on us. There can be no assurance that future developments affecting us will be those that we have anticipated. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties (some of which are beyond our control) or other assumptions that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors described under the heading “Risk Factors” in Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any of our assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary in material respects from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Some of these risks and uncertainties may in the future be amplified by the COVID-19 outbreak and there may be additional risks that we consider immaterial or which are unknown. It is not possible to predict or identify all such risks. We do not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.
Corporate Information
We were formerly known as BCTG Acquisition Corp. (“BCTG”) and were incorporated in Delaware May 2020 as a special purpose acquisition company, formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or other similar business. On August 10, 2021, we consummated the merger pursuant to the Agreement and Plan of Merger, dated as of April 13, 2021, by and among BCTG, BCTG Merger Sub Inc. and Tango Therapeutics Sub, Inc. Upon the consummation of the merger, we changed our name to “Tango Therapeutics, Inc.
Our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, including exhibits, proxy and information statements and amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a), 14, and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, are available through the “Investors” portion of our website free of charge as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). We also make available, free of charge on our website, the reports filed with the SEC by our executive officers, directors and 10% stockholders pursuant to Section 16 under the Exchange Act as soon as reasonably practicable after copies of those filings are provided to us by those persons. Accordingly, investors should monitor such portions of the company’s website, in addition to following the company’s press releases, SEC filings and public conference calls and webcasts (if any). Information on our website is not to be deemed to be incorporated by reference in, and is not part of, this Annual Report on Form 10-K or any of our other securities filings, unless specifically incorporated herein by reference, and should not be relied upon in making a decision as to whether or not to purchase our common stock. Our filings with the SEC may be accessed through the SEC’s Interactive Data Electronic Applications system at http://www.sec.gov. All statements made in any of our securities filings, including all
4
forward-looking statements or information, are made as of the date of the document in which the statement is included, and we do not assume or undertake any obligation to update any of those statements or documents unless we are required to do so by law.
Further, the company intends to use its website http://www.tangotx.com as a means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with its disclosure obligations under the SEC Regulation FD. Such disclosures will be included on the company’s website under the heading “Investors.” Accordingly, investors should monitor such portions of the company’s website, in addition to following the company’s press releases, SEC filings and public conference calls and webcasts (if any). The information contained on, or that may be accessed through, the website is not part of, and is not incorporated into, this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Our principal executive office is located at 201 Brookline Avenue, Suite 901, Boston, Massachusetts.
5
USE OF DEFINED TERMS IN THIS ANNUAL REPORT ON FORM 10-K
Unless the context otherwise requires in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022 we use the following defined terms:
6
PART I
Item 1. Business.
Overview
Tango Therapeutics was founded with a clear mission: discover the next generation of precision medicines to help patients with cancer through addressing the specific genetic alterations that fuel the cancer. We leverage our state-of-the-art target discovery platform to identify novel targets and develop new drugs directed at tumor suppressor gene loss in defined patient populations with high unmet medical need. Tumor suppressor gene loss remains a largely unaddressed target space specifically because these genetic events cannot be directly targeted. Our novel small molecules are designed to be selectively active in cancer cells with specific tumor suppressor gene loss, killing those cancer cells while sparing normal cells. We also are extending this target space beyond the classic, cell-autonomous effects of tumor suppressor gene loss to include the discovery of novel targets that reverse the effects of tumor suppressor gene loss that prevent the immune system from recognizing and killing cancer cells (immune evasion). We believe our approach will provide the ability to deliver the deep, sustained target inhibition necessary to optimize tumor response and clinical benefit as a result of the unique ability of synthetic lethal targeting to spare normal cells.
Our lead program, TNG908, is an MTA-cooperative inhibitor of PRMT5 designed to work selectively in cancer cells with an MTAP deletion. MTAP-deletion occurs in approximately 10% to 15% of all human tumors including NSCLC, mesothelioma, pancreatic cancer, cholangiocarcinoma and GBM. In preclinical studies, TNG908 demonstrated 15-fold greater potency in MTAP-deleted cancer cells versus normal cells and robust efficacy in vitro and in vivo. Patients are actively being enrolled in the Phase 1/2 clinical trial and we expect to provide an update on the ongoing dose escalation portion of the trial, focusing on proof-of-mechanism, in the second quarter of 2023.
Given the large number of patients with MTAP-deleted cancers who may benefit from a PRMT5 inhibitor, and the resulting business opportunity, we also developed a next-generation PRMT5 inhibitor, TNG462, with increased potency, MTAP-deletion selectivity, as well as longer target coverage. TNG462 is 45 times more potent in cells with an MTAP deletion than those without and induces deep tumor regressions in preclinical models of multiple cancer types which is expected to significantly increase the therapeutic index. The clinical development path for TNG462 is expected to be similar to TNG908, evaluating safety and efficacy in multiple tumor types in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial. GBM will be excluded from the clinical trial as TNG462 is not expected to cross the blood-brain barrier. We expect to initiate the Phase 1/2 clinical trial for TNG462 in mid-2023.
Discovered as part of our immune evasion target discovery platform, TNG260 is a first-in-class, CoREST inhibitor, which has shown to reverse the immune evasion effect of STK11 loss-of-function mutations. STK11 loss-of-function mutations are present in approximately 15% of NSCLC, 15% of cervical, 10% of carcinoma of unknown primary, 5% of breast and 3% of pancreatic cancers. In syngeneic models with an STK11 mutation and an intact immune system, the combination of TNG260 with an anti-PD-1 antibody resulted in sustained complete tumor regressions and the induction of immune memory against re-implantation of tumors. We plan to file an IND for TNG260 in the first half of 2023. We expect that TNG260 will be among the first oncology molecules to leverage the benefits of genetically-based patient selection (STK11-mutation) with checkpoint inhibitor therapy.
We are developing TNG348, a novel allosteric inhibitor of USP1 for treatment of BRCA1 and BRCA2-mutant and other HRD+ cancers. BRCA1 or BRCA 2 mutations are present in approximately 15% of ovarian cancers, 10% of breast cancers, 10% of prostate cancers, 5% of endometrial cancers and 5% of pancreatic cancers and additionally, BRCA wild-type HRD+ mutations are present in approximately 40% of ovarian, 15% of breast, 3% of prostate and 2% of pancreatic cancers. In vivo preclinical studies for TNG348 have shown single agent efficacy and combination benefit with PARP inhibitors in BRCA1, BRCA2-mutant and other HRD+ cell-line and patient derived xenografts, including those that are intrinsically resistant to PARP inhibition. These preclinical data further demonstrate that TNG348 is synergistic with PARP inhibition across a panel of human ovarian and breast cancer cell lines, including both PARP inhibitor sensitive and resistant models. Clinically, we expect TNG348 to have single agent activity in PARP inhibitor -naïve and PARP inhibitor-resistant BRCA1/2 mutant and other HRD+ cancers, and to synergize with PARP inhibitors. We expect to file an IND for this program in mid-2023.
In October 2018, we entered into a collaboration agreement with Gilead (Gilead Agreement), which was expanded in August 2020. Our immune evasion platform is the foundation for this collaboration. Under the Gilead Agreement, we work together to identify and develop novel immune evasion targets by leveraging our proprietary functional genomics-based
7
discovery platform. To date, Gilead has licensed two programs and has extended their option on two programs. Our collaboration with Gilead excludes PRMT5, CoREST and USP1 programs as well as a growing pipeline of novel targets identified in our non-immune based target discovery screens. We retain the right to identify and validate targets outside the scope of our collaboration with Gilead, which includes all cell autonomous targets except those discovered in immune evasion contexts, and to develop and commercialize products directed to such targets on our own or in collaboration with third parties. See “— Collaboration and License Agreements — Collaboration and License Agreement with Gilead Sciences” for additional information.
Our Pipeline
We are leveraging the power and productivity of our discovery engine to discover and validate multiple novel targets each year. Our growing pipeline consists of discovery programs for multiple cancer types with limited treatment options as summarized in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Tango Therapeutics' product pipeline
Our Strategy
We are pioneering novel approaches to the discovery and development of innovative precision oncology therapies. We leverage the following core strategic components, enabling bold thinking in pursuit of transformative therapies for patients with cancer:
8
BACKGROUND
Unmet need of cancers caused by tumor suppressor gene loss
Many genetic drivers of cancer have been well-characterized but have not been directly targeted due to their molecular structure (undruggable oncogenes) or functional loss (tumor suppressor genes). Tumor suppressor gene loss represents a significant portion of the many genetic alterations that drive the formation of cancers but it remains a largely unaddressed target space. Targeting tumor suppressor gene loss directly is not possible because they are deleted or inactivated, and the immune evasion effects of tumor suppressor gene loss has only recently been described. We are using the concept of synthetic lethality to address the unmet medical need of these large groups of patients characterized by tumor suppressor gene loss and activation of immune evasion genes.
Synthetic lethality to address tumor suppressor gene loss
Synthetic lethal therapies for cancer refers to pairs of genes where one is inactivated by a genetic alteration and the other is inhibited pharmacologically. While genetic alterations give rise to the development of cancer, they also create a unique vulnerability that can be exploited therapeutically. Biologically, such vulnerability can be the inability of cancer cells to respond to a specific signal, such as DNA damage or cell cycle arrest, or the inability to remodel chromatin or to maintain cellular homeostasis. The unique advantage of a synthetic lethal approach to cancer therapy is that normal cells are not vulnerable to the synthetic lethal drug target and are largely unaffected at drug doses where the mutant cancer cells are selectively killed, noted in Figure 2 below. The recent success of PARP inhibitors in BRCA-mutant breast, ovarian and prostate cancers is the first clinical example of using synthetic lethality to target tumor suppressor gene loss.
Figure 2. In cancer cells, when a tumor suppressor gene is lost, it creates a genetic vulnerability that allows an inhibitor to target a synthetic lethal partner gene causing cell death. This selective killing only occurs in cancer cells with tumor suppressor loss, therefore largely sparing the normal cells. Therefore, these synthetic lethality targets inherently can offer a wide therapeutic index.
Moreover, we plan to use the tumor suppressor gene loss as a patient selection marker for clinical trial enrollment to ensure we are enrolling the patients most likely to benefit from each new drug candidate. We believe this approach should enable efficient clinical development and increase the probability of success with maximum clinical benefit for the patient.
Our immune evasion platform
Our synthetic lethal target discovery approach can be adapted to identify druggable targets that do not kill cancer cells directly, but rather attract immune cells to destroy them. Our immune evasion target discovery platform was designed to incorporate immuno-oncology therapies with genetically-defined patient populations to maximize clinical benefit. We are addressing the unmet medical need of this large group of patients by identifying novel immune evasion genes that (i) are activated by tumor suppressor gene loss and (ii) the effects of which can be reversed through inhibition with a small molecule. In the first step, we perform an in vivo CRISPR-based screen using immune cell-mediated cell killing as the readout. This first step allows us to identify tumor suppressor genes linked to immune evasion. For the second step, we repeat
9
the in vivo CRISPR screen in animals with an intact immune system looking for potential drug targets that reverse the immune evasion effects of the tumor suppressor gene deletion.
OUR PROGRAMS
PRMT5 inhibitors
Overview
We are currently developing TNG908 and TNG462, potent and selective oral small molecule MTA-cooperative inhibitors of PRMT5, which are designed to be synthetic lethal with MTAP deletion. Current preclinical data suggest the PRMT5-MTAP synthetic lethal interaction is one of the strongest and most prevalent synthetic lethal interactions in human cancers and represents a subset of synthetic lethality termed collateral lethality. This synthetic lethal interaction occurs when MTAP is co-deleted as a “passenger” with the frequently deleted tumor suppressor gene, CDKN2A (p16). The synthetic lethality occurs because MTAP-deleted cells accumulate the PRMT5 inhibitory factor MTA. As a result, PRMT5 is partially inhibited in MTAP-deleted cells, making those cells more sensitive than normal cells to further inhibition of PRMT5 activity.
Taking advantage of this unique interaction between PRMT5 inhibition and MTAP deletion requires that the inhibitors have a specific binding mechanism called MTA cooperativity. TNG908 and TNG462 bind cooperatively with MTA to inhibit PRMT5 function by blocking access to the PRMT5 active site for both protein substrates and the activating PRMT5 co-factor SAM. This MTA-cooperative binding mechanism allows selective inhibition of PRMT5 in tumor cells that have lost MTAP (MTAP-null) while being relatively inert in normal cells without MTAP deletion (MTAP WT). We believe TNG908 and TNG462 are differentiated from non-MTA-cooperative PRMT5 inhibitors as a result of this mechanism of action. This approach is expected to result in a large therapeutic window in patients with MTAP-deleted tumors, potentially limiting toxicity and leading to meaningful clinical responses.
We are developing TNG908 for the treatment of patients with solid tumors with homozygous MTAP deletion (10- 15% of all human tumors) including NSCLC, mesothelioma, pancreatic cancer, cholangiocarcinoma and GBM. In preclinical studies, TNG908 has 15-fold greater selectivity for MTAP-null cancer cells over MTAP WT cells, strong anti-tumor effects in vivo, and pharmacokinetics that support its potential to be a leading PRMT5 inhibitor if approved. The FDA granted TNG908 Fast Track designation to TNG908 and additionally, the granted Orphan Drug Designations to TNG908 for the treatment of MPNST and malignant glioma, including GBM. We are actively dosing patients in the Phase 1/2 clinical trial and we expect to provide an update on the ongoing dose escalation portion of the trial, focusing on proof-of-mechanism, in the second quarter of 2023.
We also are developing TNG462, a more potent and selective PRMT5 inhibitor with improved pharmacokinetic properties as compared to TNG908. We believe additional potency may allow stronger target inhibition and thus clinical efficacy, and additional selectivity for MTAP-deleted cells may provide a wider therapeutic index. In the first quarter of 2023, the FDA cleared the IND for the Phase 1/2 trial and granted Fast Track designation to TNG462. We expect to initiate a Phase 1/2 clinical trial in mid-2023. The trial, which will require all patients to have a homozygous MTAP deletion, will evaluate cancers including NSCLC, mesothelioma and cholangiocarcinoma. Unlike TNG908, GBM will be excluded from the clinical trial as TNG462 is not expected to cross the blood-brain barrier.
By advancing both TNG908 and TNG462 into the clinic, we not only maximize the opportunity to help patients with MTAP-deleted cancers but also increase our strategic optionality to develop and potentially commercialize a PRMT5 inhibitor. We look forward to emerging data from these trials to optimize our development and commercialization plans for these programs.
MTAP-deletion frequency in multiple solid tumor types
A partial deletion of chromosome 9p21, driven by loss of the tumor suppressor gene CDKN2A, is the most common homozygous deletion in human cancer. MTAP is adjacent to CDKN2A and is lost along with it in 80-90% of CDKN2A-deleted tumors, thus MTAP is one of the most commonly deleted genes across all cancer types. Based on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data and data from a 2014 publication by Lee et al, there are at least 15 cancer types where MTAP loss occurs in more than 10% of patients, including approximately 10% of non-squamous NSCLC, 20% of squamous NSCLC, 25% of bladder cancers, 30% to 55% of MPNST and 40% of GBM. Given that we believe this is a large and important opportunity for patients with cancer, we are developing both TNG908 and TNG462.
Figure 3. The frequency of MTAP deletion across tumor types as determined from analysis of TCGA and an indication specific publication
10
PRMT5 mechanism of action
PRMT5 has long been a therapeutic target of interest for cancer given its role in regulating proteins involved in multiple essential cellular functions, including RNA splicing, cell cycling, cell death, and metabolic signaling. PRMT5 is a protein arginine methyltransferase that modifies the activity of these proteins, which are critical for growth and viability of both normal and cancer cells.
PRMT5 methylates target proteins by removing a methyl group from SAM, the co-factor and methyl donor which is necessary for PRMT5 activity, and transferring that methyl group to a specific residue on target proteins. This methyl modification, or “mark,” alters the function of the target protein, thereby regulating the cell processes for which the protein is important.
The function of PRMT5 is regulated in several ways, including by the endogenous inhibitor MTA. MTA directly competes with SAM for binding to the PRMT5 active site but does not have a methyl donor. Thus, when present, MTA inhibits PRMT5 function.
MTA-cooperative PRMT5 inhibition as a novel synthetic lethal mechanism in cancers with MTAP-deletion
Our differentiated approach with TNG908 and TNG462
The challenge for PRMT5 inhibitors that are not MTA-cooperative is that they kill rapidly growing normal cells (bone marrow cells in particular) as effectively as cancer cells and therefore the level of inhibition needed to kill cancer cells is reduced by on-target, dose-limiting bone marrow toxicity. To address this problem, we designed TNG908 and TNG462 to be selectively active (synthetic lethal) in cancer cells that have a homozygous deletion of MTAP, which is not deleted in normal cells.
TNG908 and TNG462 bind PRMT5 cooperatively with MTA, whereas the non-MTA-cooperative PRMT5 inhibitors previously evaluated in clinical trials are either SAM-cooperative or SAM-competitive. In normal cells (MTAP WT), MTA is rapidly degraded by MTAP. When MTAP is deleted in cancer cells, intracellular MTA is markedly elevated compared to normal cells (Figures 4 and 5 below). TNG908 and TNG462 preferentially bind PRMT5 in the presence of MTA and “lock” the enzyme into the inactive state which prevents PRMT5 from methylating target proteins critical for cell survival. As a
11
result, TNG908 and TNG462 selectively kill MTAP-deleted tumor cells with elevated MTA levels while sparing normal cells.
Figure 4. Schematic of PRMT5 and MTAP functions
PRMT5 is an essential enzyme for all cell types, and MTAP deletion in cancer cells results in tumor specific sensitivity to PRMT5 inhibition. MTA-cooperative PRMT5 inhibitors, such as TNG908 and TNG462, may provide a wide therapeutic index by preferentially inhibiting PRMT5 in MTAP-deleted cancer cells, while relatively sparing normal tissue.
Figure 5. TNG908 and TNG462 have an MTA-cooperative mechanism of action that is selective for MTAP-deleted cancer cells
We compared the potency and selectivity of TNG908 and TNG462 to a non-MTA-cooperative PRMT5 inhibitor, GSK3326595, in a panel of 180 cancer cell lines representing multiple histologies, including NSCLC, bladder cancer, pancreatic cancer, mesothelioma, cancers of the central nervous system, leukemia and lymphoma. TNG908 and TNG462 demonstrated significant MTAP-selective inhibition of viability, while GSK3326595 showed no selectivity for MTAP-null cell lines over MTAP WT (Figure 6).
Figure 6. TNG462 and TNG908 demonstrate strong MTAP selectivity in 180 cancer cell lines as compared to GSK3326595
12
PRMT5 catalyzes SDMA residues of substrate proteins, a modification that can be detected and quantified by SDMA-specific antibodies as a direct measurement of PRMT5 activity. Therefore, SDMA quantification can be used as a pharmacodynamic biomarker for PRMT5 inhibitors. TNG908 and TNG462 both inhibit PRMT5 90-100% in the MTAP-null HAP1 cell line with marked selectivity over the MTAP WT cell line (Figure 7). The degree of PRMT5 inhibition and selective viability are consistent with data generated in isogenic xenograft models that differ only by presence or absence of the MTAP gene (Figure 8).
Figure 7. PRMT5 inhibition by TNG908 and TNG462 is dose-dependent and MTAP-selective.
In vitro in-cell western data demonstrating dose-dependent reduction of SDMA levels after 24 hours of TNG908 or TNG462 treatment in HAP1 MTAP-isogenic cancer cell lines
Figure 8. TNG908 demonstrates strong, MTAP-selective anti-tumor activity in xenograft models. TNG908 selectively inhibits PRMT5 in MTAP-null cancer in vivo
13
PRMT5 preclinical data overview
TNG908 and TNG462 are both highly selective for PRMT5 against a panel of 38 methyltransferases at 10 µM, showing they do not inhibit any other methyltransferases, even well above the predicted clinical efficacious exposure range. Both TNG908 and TNG462 have excellent drug-like properties and are formulated for oral administration. Dose-dependent PRMT5 inhibition and anti-tumor efficacy have been shown in MTAP-null xenograft models, which demonstrate that both molecules suppress tumor growth in an on-target manner.
TNG908 and TNG462 drive dose-dependent, on-target, anti-tumor activity including deep and durable regressions in MTAP-null xenograft models regardless of histology. TNG462 has demonstrated increased potency and MTAP-deletion selectivity as compared to TNG908. Additionally, due to improved pharmacokinetic properties, TNG462 will be dosed once daily in the Phase 1/2 clinical trial.
TNG908 preclinical data summary
In our preclinical studies, TNG908 demonstrated 15-fold greater potency in MTAP-deleted cancer cells versus normal cells and robust efficacy in vitro and in vivo. Consistent with these findings, TNG908 demonstrated significant and dose-dependent anti-tumor activity in over 50 xenograft models representing multiple tumor lineages (sample data shown in Figure 9) that did not have a bias to specific histologies. These histology-agnostic responses included strong and durable regressions in a number of models including PDX models of cholangiocarcinoma, NSCLC, bladder cancer and GBM. Notably, in both the NSCLC (squamous) and GBM PDX models shown in Figure 9, complete responses were observed while on TNG908-treatment and maintained when therapy was discontinued in all mice (NSCLC-squamous PDX) and in 4/5 mice (GBM PDX).
Figure 9. TNG908 demonstrates strong anti-tumor activity with regressions in MTAP-deleted xenograft models
14
In preclinical non-human primate studies, TNG908 has exposure in CSF that is equivalent to plasma when corrected for protein-binding. In addition to the strong anti-tumor activity demonstrated in subcutaneous MTAP-null GBM xenograft models, we also have shown strong efficacy and prolonged survival in a GBM xenograft model that was inoculated in the brain. We believe these data uniquely position TNG908 as a potential treatment option for patients with MTAP-deleted tumors of the central nervous system (CNS), including GBM and CNS metastases of MTAP-deleted solid tumors.
TNG462 preclinical data summary
TNG462 has the same mechanism of action as TNG908 with improved potency and selectivity in MTAP-deleted cancer cell lines. In preclinical studies, TNG462 is 45 times more selective for MTAP-deleted cells (3-fold greater than TNG908) and 28 times more potent than TNG908, which may translate to a wider therapeutic index and stronger target inhibition than TNG908. TNG462 has improved pharmacokinetic properties relative to TNG908 that support once daily dosing in the clinic. Similar to TNG908, TNG462 drives strong anti-tumor activity without bias towards any specific histology. Deep and durable regressions were demonstrated in PDX models derived from cholangiocarcinoma, mesothelioma, lung, bladder and pancreatic cancer (sample data shown in Figure 10). In the preclinical models, TNG462 treatment also suppresses tumor growth even after removal of therapy in a NSCLC (squamous) PDX model.
Figure 10. TNG462 demonstrates strong anti-tumor activity with regressions in MTAP-deleted xenograft models
15
Preclinical combination data
While we expect TNG908 and TNG462 both will show strong single-agent efficacy, we plan to evaluate these molecules clinically in combination with other agents in the future. Based on strong preclinical data showing significant in vivo combination benefit, combinations of potential interest include CDK4/6, MAT2A, and KRAS inhibitors and potentially other oncogene-targeted therapies.
Planned clinical trials
TNG908 Phase 1/2
The Phase 1/2 first-in-human trial is evaluating the oral administration of TNG908 monotherapy in patients with MTAP-deleted tumors (See Figure 11 below). As TNG908 is designed to selectively inhibit PRMT5 in cancers with MTAP deletion, we are limiting enrollment to patients with MTAP-deleted cancers.
We are actively enrolling patients in the dose escalation phase and evaluating safety, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics and efficacy in patients with locally advanced or metastatic solid tumors of any histology with an MTAP deletion. Following determination of the optimal efficacious dose, we will evaluate the efficacy of TNG908 in multiple histology-specific expansion arms including MPNST, NSCLC, mesothelioma, cholangiocarcinoma and GBM. In parallel, we will enroll a histology-agnostic cohort to provide optionality for a registration strategy in all tumors regardless of histology if broad activity is observed. Given that MTAP deletion is common in multiple indications, we may expand into additional histology-specific cohorts based on activity observed in the Phase 1/2 trial.
16
The indication specific cohorts were selected based on the unmet medical need for new therapies in prevalent histologies, including NSCLC, mesothelioma, cholangiocarcinoma and GBM, as well as indications where there are limited treatment options with no standard of care such as MPNST.
In the first quarter of 2022, the FDA cleared the IND for the Phase 1/2 trial and granted Fast Track designation to TNG908. We are actively enrolling patients in the Phase 1/2 clinical trial of TNG908. Based on a recent protocol amendment, GBM patients will be added to the ongoing trial. We expect to provide an update on the ongoing dose escalation portion of the trial, focusing on the proof-of-mechanism, in the second quarter of 2023.
Figure 11. TNG908 First-in-human trial schema.
TNG462 Phase 1/2
In the first quarter of 2023, the FDA cleared the IND for the Phase 1/2 trial and granted Fast Track designation to TNG462. We plan to initiate a Phase 1/2 clinical trial in mid-2023. The clinical trial for TNG462 is similar to the TNG908 trial, wherein all cancers must have an MTAP deletion. Similar to TNG908, the dose expansion portion of the clinical trial will include a histology-agnostic cohort. Unlike TNG908, GBM patients will be excluded from the clinical trial as TNG462 is not expected to cross the blood-brain barrier.
TNG260, CoREST-Selective Inhibitor
Overview
CoREST was discovered as a drug target with the potential to reverse the immune evasion associated with STK11 mutations using our immune evasion target discovery platform. This platform uses high throughput in vivo CRISPR-based target discovery screens to identify druggable targets that do not kill cancer cells directly, but rather attract immune cells to destroy them in the context of specific tumor suppressor gene loss.
TNG260 is a novel small molecule inhibitor of the CoREST deacetylase complex that reverses checkpoint inhibitor resistance in STK11 mutant preclinical models. TNG260 is being developed in combination with an anti-PD-1 antibody and is designed to reverse immune evasion in STK11-mutant cancers, with the aim of restoring sensitivity to immune checkpoint inhibition. In preclinical studies, selective CoREST inhibition by TNG260 in combination with an anti-PD-1 antibody resulted in complete regressions in ~60% of mice as a result of the transcriptional reprogramming of STK11-mutant tumor cells. In STK11-mutant cancers, TNG260 directly alters tumor cell cytokine secretion, markedly reduces recruitment of immune suppressive T regulatory cells, upregulates components of the antigen presentation machinery as well as PD-L1 on the tumor cell surface, which together lead to a more immunogenic tumor microenvironment. Preclinically, TNG260 in combination with an anti-PD-1 antibody resulted in complete tumor regressions and prevented regrowth in STK11-mutant
17
tumors, inducing immune memory. STK11 loss-of-function mutations occur in approximately 15% of NSCLC, 15% of cervical, 10% carcinoma of unknown primary, 5% of breast and 3% of pancreatic cancers. We plan to file an IND for TNG260 in the first half of 2023.
Mechanism of action
STK11 mutant cancers have several key features that contribute to an immune checkpoint resistant tumor microenvironment, including low PD-L1 expression, low T effector cell infiltration, and high levels of immune suppressor T regulatory cells. Treatment with an immune checkpoint inhibitor, such as anti-PD-1, is not sufficient to overcome the immune evasive environment of STK11-mutant tumors, leading to very limited clinical response in these patients. Inhibition of the CoREST complex by TNG260 has been shown to lead to changes in expression of immune-related genes that favor a more active immune environment. For example, TNG260 treatment leads to increased expression of CXCL9, CXCL10, and CXCL11, which are cytokines responsible for recruiting T effector cells, therefore increasing the anti-tumor immune response when combined with anti-PD-1 antibody. Additionally, the combination of TNG260 with an anti-PD-1 antibody in preclinical studies leads to decreased expression of CCL1 and CCL22, which are chemokines responsible for recruiting immune suppressive regulatory T cells to the tumor environment. Together, this leads to an uncoupling of the levels of T effector and regulatory T cells in the tumor, which contributes to a more active immune microenvironment and re-sensitization to anti-PD-1 treatment.
Target discovery
Our state-of-the-art in vivo CRISPR discovery platform enabled the discovery of STK11 as a tumor suppressor gene that drives immune evasion when not functional in cancer cells. We engineered a syngeneic mouse tumor model in which STK11 loss-of-function drives resistance to immune checkpoint blockade. Applying our in vivo CRISPR screen in this STK11 loss-of-function model, HDAC1 was identified as a target that reversed anti-PD-1 resistance caused by STK11 deletion. Though HDAC1 is a component of three major regulatory complexes, we observed that TNG260 is highly selective and only inhibits the CoREST complex and spares the other two complexes (Sin3 and NuRD).
Preclinical data summary
In preclinical models, TNG260 demonstrated strong genetic and pharmacologic validation showing reprogramming of the tumor microenvironment and strong sensitization to anti-PD-1 therapy in STK11-deficient tumor models. In a syngeneic mouse tumor model where STK11 mutations drive resistance to immune checkpoint blockade, CoREST inhibition by TNG260 in combination with an anti-PD-1 antibody resulted in complete tumor regressions in five out of eight treated mice. Treatment was stopped on Day 48 and the five of eight mice that were completely tumor-free at that time remained tumor-free for 21 days with no further treatment. Furthermore, when tumor cells were re-implanted in these mice on day 69, they were rejected, compared to a treatment-naïve group of animals where tumors grew as expected. This demonstrated the induction of immune memory in the animals with complete responses to TNG260 with anti-PD-1 antibody (Figure 12).
Figure 12: Pharmacologic proof-of-concept for CoREST inhibition in STK11 mutant MC38 mice with TNG260 in combination with an anti-PD-1 antibody
18
Planned clinical trials
Our Phase 1/2 first-in-human trial of TNG260 will evaluate the oral administration of TNG260 in combination with pembrolizumab (anti-PD-1 antibody) in patients with STK11-mutant solid tumors (Figure 12). As TNG260 is designed to work in combination with anti-PD-1 antibodies in tumors with STK11 loss, enrollment will be limited to patients with STK11 mutated tumors.
The dose escalation phase of this clinical trial will evaluate safety, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and efficacy of TNG260 in combination with pembrolizumab in patients with locally advanced or metastatic cancer of any solid tumor histology with an STK11 mutation. Since efficacy with TNG260 requires combination with an anti-PD-1 antibody, TNG260 will be evaluated in combination with pembrolizumab. Following determination of the optimal efficacious dose, we will evaluate the efficacy of TNG260 plus pembrolizumab in indication-specific expansion arms including STK11 mutated NSCLC. In parallel, we will enroll a solid tumor, histology-agnostic cohort including cervical, pancreatic and breast cancer as well as carcinoma of unknown primary. We plan to file an IND for TNG260 in the first half of 2023.
Figure 12. TNG260 in combination with pembrolizumab first-in-human trial schema
19
TNG348, USP1 Inhibitor
Overview
TNG348 is a novel allosteric inhibitor of USP1 for treatment of BRCA-mutant and other HRD+ cancers. USP1 was initially identified as a strong synthetic lethal target for BRCA1 loss-of-function using CRISPR-based screens in a panel of BRCA1-mutant versus wild-type cancer cell lines. In vivo preclinical studies of TNG348 have shown single agent efficacy and combination benefit with PARP inhibitors in BRCA1, BRCA2-mutant and other HRD+ cell-line and patient derived xenografts, including those that are intrinsically resistant to PARP inhibitors. These preclinical data further demonstrate that TNG348 is synergistic with PARP inhibition across a panel of human ovarian and breast cancer cell lines, including both PARP inhibitor sensitive and resistant models. Clinically, we expect TNG348 to have both single agent activity and combination benefit with PARP inhibitors in PARP inhibitor-naïve and PARP inhibitor-resistant BRCA1/2 mutant cancers and other HRD+ cancers. As such, USP1 has the potential to treat a patient population that is at least comparable in size to the PARP inhibitor market. BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations are present in approximately 15% of ovarian cancers, 10% of breast cancers, 10% of prostate cancers, 5% of endometrial cancers and 5% of pancreatic cancers and additionally, BRCA wild-type HRD+ mutations are present in approximately 40% of ovarian, 15% of breast, 3% of prostate and 2% of pancreatic cancers. We expect to file an IND for TNG348 in mid-2023.
Mechanism of action
While normal cells have multiple mechanisms to repair damaged DNA and prevent the associated cell death, tumors with BRCA1/2 mutations lack one of those mechanisms, the ability to repair double strand breaks. BRCA1/2 mutant and other HRD+ cancers rely in part on translesion synthesis (TLS) and base excision repair (BER) for DNA damage repair and cell survival. USP1 and PARP inhibitors exploit these dependencies by preventing efficient translesion synthesis and base excision repair respectively (See Figure 18). Clinically, blocking DNA damage repair to induce cancer cell death is a validated therapeutic strategy in oncology as exemplified by PARP inhibitors for the treatment of BRCA1/2 mutant cancers.
Figure 13. Overview of DNA damage repair mechanism and how genetic alterations causing homologous recombination deficiency, such as BRCA1/2 loss, leads to a dependency on translesion synthesis (USP1) and base excision repair (PARP) pathways
USP1 is a deubiquitinating enzyme (DUB) that co-localizes with PCNA to DNA replication forks to ensure high-fidelity DNA replication. When mono-ubiquitinated PCNA (ub-PCNA) encounters DNA damage, USP1 removes ubiquitin from PCNA, switching synthesis to low fidelity TLS polymerases for gap filling and repair (See Figure 14). By inhibiting USP1, TNG348 blocks the ubiquitin removal from PCNA, driving PCNA poly-ubiquitination and degradation. This results in incomplete translesion synthesis repair. Ultimately, the replication stress induced by USP1 inhibition leads to decreased DNA synthesis, cell cycle arrest, and induction of cell death as detailed in our recent peer reviewed publication (Antione et al. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, 2023).
20
Figure 14. TNG348 blocks an important DNA damage repair pathway known as translesion synthesis. By inhibiting USP1 activity, TNG348 prevents the posttranslational modification of PCNA required to bypass DNA damage using low fidelity TLS polymerases for gap filling and repair
Preclinical data summary
The DNA damage repair pathways regulated by USP1 are not currently targeted by any marketed drug. Based on genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 screens in the presence of our USP1 inhibitors, we validated that the activity of TNG348 converges on ubiquitination of PCNA, which represent a highly differentiated mechanism relative to other DNA damage repair enzyme inhibitors, including PARP inhibitors (Figures 13 and 14). Based on in vitro cell line profiling and ex vivo studies in patient-derived organoid cultures, we expect TNG348 to have both single agent activity and combination benefit with PARP inhibitors in PARP inhibitor-naïve and PARP inhibitor-resistant cancers. (See Figure 15 and Figure 16). Because USP1 inhibition blocks TLS and PARP inhibition blocks BER, the drug combination is highly synergistic resulting in tumor regression in multiple patient-derived xenograft models that are not sensitive to either single agent alone (Figure 17).
Figure 15. TNG348 profiling using 7-14 day clongenic assays across a panel of sixty-one breast and ovarian cancer cell lines, including BRCA1/2 mutant and HRD+ models, show single agent activity and strong combination synergy with PARP inhibitors.
Figure 16. PARPi-resistant patient-derived organoids are sensitive to USP1 inhibition and are synergistic with niraparib
21
Figure 17. TNG348 demonstrates significant combination benefit with PARP inhibitor in breast cancer patient derived xenograft models harboring homologous recombination repair defects
Collaboration and License Agreements
Collaboration and License Agreement with Gilead Sciences
In August 2020, we entered into an amended and restated research collaboration and license agreement, which we refer to as the Gilead Agreement, with Gilead. The Gilead Agreement expanded our 2018 collaboration with Gilead, or the 2018 Gilead Agreement. Pursuant to the Gilead Agreement we use our proprietary functional genomics-based discovery platform to identify and develop novel immune evasion targets during a seven-year period ending in August 2027, or the Research Term. During the Research Term, Gilead has the option to obtain exclusive, worldwide licenses to develop and commercialize products directed to up to 15 targets validated in the collaboration. Prior to exercising its option for a program, Gilead may “extend” such program, in which case we will further collaborate with Gilead during the Research Term to discover and develop immuno-oncology treatments directed to such target(s), potentially through early clinical development and be eligible to receive research extension payments from Gilead. Gilead will retain its option rights to any such extended
22
program. For up to five programs licensed by Gilead, we have the option to co-develop and co-promote the lead product for such program in the United States, subject to certain exceptions, and eligible to receive milestone payments and royalties on ex-U.S. sales.
Under the terms of the Gilead Agreement, we received an upfront payment of $125.0 million in addition to an upfront payment of $50.0 million received under the 2018 Gilead Agreement. We also received a $20.0 million equity investment in connection with the Gilead Agreement, and as of December 31, 2022, we received $21.1 million in license fees and $22.0 million in research option-extension fees. We are eligible to receive up to an additional $410.0 million per program in license, research extension, and clinical, regulatory and commercial milestone payments. We are also eligible to receive tiered royalties in the first decile on net sales by Gilead on a country-by-country and product-by-product basis until the later of (i) the expiration of the last valid claim of our patents or, in some instances, certain of Gilead’s patents, in each case covering such product in such country or (ii) ten years after the first commercial sale of such product in such country. For those products that we opt to co-develop and co-promote in the United States, we and Gilead will equally split profits and losses from the sales of such products in the United States, as well as development costs for such products attributable to the United States.
Either party may terminate the Gilead Agreement if the other party materially breaches the terms of such agreement, subject to specified notice and cure provisions, or enters into bankruptcy or insolvency proceedings. Additionally, Gilead may terminate the agreement for any or no reason, in its entirety or on a program-by-program basis, upon specified written notice. If we terminate the Gilead Agreement for Gilead’s material breach, or Gilead terminates the Gilead Agreement without cause, then Gilead is obligated to negotiate with us in good faith for a specified period regarding the transfer by Gilead of certain assets and the provision by Gilead of certain assistance to enable us to continue the research, development and commercialization of products under any terminated programs.
To date, Gilead has licensed two of our programs and has research option-extended two programs under the Gilead agreements.
Our collaboration with Gilead excludes our lead programs, PRMT5, CoREST, USP1 as well as a growing pipeline of novel targets identified in our non-immune related target discovery screens. We also retain the right to identify and validate targets outside the scope of our collaboration with Gilead (all cell-autonomous targets, exclusive of those in immune evasion contexts), and to develop and commercialize products directed to such targets, on our own or in collaboration with third parties.
License Agreement with Medivir AB
In March 2020, we entered into a license agreement, or the Medivir Agreement, with Medivir AB, or Medivir, pursuant to which we obtained a worldwide, royalty-bearing, exclusive license under certain current and/or future patents and know-how of Medivir, to research, develop and commercialize products that are covered by such licensed patents or otherwise modulate USP1.
Under the terms of the Medivir Agreement, we are obligated to pay Medivir in connection with development, regulatory and commercial activities. We have agreed to make certain milestone payments of (i) $1.4 million in the aggregate for the first licensed product that achieves specified clinical milestones plus $25.0 million for the first licensed product that achieves specified regulatory approval and sales milestones, in each case, in either of the first two specified genetic contexts and (ii) $0.7 million in the aggregate if that first licensed product achieves specified clinical milestones plus $5.0 million if that first licensed product achieves specified regulatory and sales milestones for a third genetic context or the second licensed product achieves such specified development, regulatory and sales milestones in either of the first two specified genetic contexts. We have the right to reduce these milestone payments by a specified amount in the event the licensed product is not covered by Medivir’s patents or if payments are due to a third party for a license under such third party’s intellectual property rights. We are also obligated to pay Medivir a low single-digit royalty on net sales of any product covered by a licensed patent.
Payments in respect of net sales or sublicense in a country shall remain in force on a product-by-product, country-by-country basis, with respect to products that are not covered by a licensed patent or certain of our patents, for ten years from the date of first commercial sale in such country, and products that are covered by a licensed patent or certain of our patents, until the expiration date of the last to expire of the licensed patents covering such product or its manufacture or use in the applicable country. No milestones have been achieved to date.
23
The Medivir Agreement expires on the date of expiration of all royalty obligations. Either party may terminate the Medivir Agreement earlier upon an uncured material breach of the other party.
Manufacturing
Our lead investigational products are small molecule inhibitors that can be readily manufactured without requiring any specialized equipment or processes. We do not own or operate, and currently have no plans to establish any manufacturing facilities. We rely, and expect to continue to rely, on third-party Contract Development and Manufacturing Organizations, or CDMOs for the manufacturing, packaging, labeling and distribution of our investigational products for preclinical and clinical testing, as well as for commercial manufacturing if any of our investigational products obtain marketing approval. A team of internal experts oversee activities at contracted CDMOs with the goal of ensuring our investigational products are being manufactured under current good manufacturing practices, or cGMP. Currently, all manufacturing of our product candidates drug substance and drug product to be used in our planned clinical trial in the U.S. is conducted by one manufacturer. We believe that the contracted CDMO has the capacity to support our planned registrational studies, in addition to the first-in-human studies for our product candidates. The operations of the CDMO manufacturing drug substance and drug product are located outside the U.S. and, therefore, in addition to the sole-source risks related to this CDMO, we may also encounter challenges related to supply chain, climate issues, pandemic and geopolitical risks. We plan to expand and diversify our supply chain by identifying and contracting other CDMOs with the capacity and expertise to support our product candidates and other investigational products in our pipeline and to manufacture commercial supply of our drugs (if those therapies obtain regulatory approval).
Intellectual Property
We strive to protect and enhance the proprietary technology, inventions and improvements that are commercially important to the development of our business and our product candidates, including seeking, maintaining and defending patent rights, whether developed internally or licensed from third parties. We also rely on trade secrets relating to our proprietary target discovery technology platform and on know-how, continuing technological innovation and in-licensing opportunities to develop, strengthen and maintain our proprietary position in the field of precision oncology that may be important for the development of our business and product candidates. We additionally may rely on regulatory protection afforded through data exclusivity, market exclusivity and patent term extensions, where available. Patent rights and regulatory protections are key factors that determine the period of market exclusivity for products in our industry. It is during the period of market exclusivity that, we believe, our potential future products have their greatest commercial value.
Our commercial success may depend in part on our ability to: obtain and maintain patent and other proprietary protection for commercially important technology, inventions and know-how related to our business; defend and enforce our patents; preserve the confidentiality of our trade secrets; and operate without infringing the valid enforceable patents and proprietary rights of third parties. Our ability to limit third parties from making, using, selling, offering to sell, or importing our product candidates (and any future products that may be approved for marketing by regulatory authorities) may depend on the extent to which we have rights under valid and enforceable licenses, patents, or trade secrets that cover these activities. In some cases, enforcement of these rights may depend on third-party licensors. With respect to both licensed and company-owned intellectual property, we cannot be sure that patents will be granted with respect to any of our pending patent applications or with respect to any patent applications filed by us in the future, nor can we be sure that any of our existing patents or any patents that may be granted to us in the future will be commercially useful in protecting our commercial products and methods of manufacturing the same and to the extent such patents are commercially useful in protecting our commercial products or methods of manufacturing, such patents may be challenged or invalidated or otherwise become less useful in protecting our commercial products and methods of manufacturing.
Because a significant portion of a pharmaceutical product’s patent protection can elapse during the course of developing and obtaining regulatory approval of the product, certain countries, including the U.S., provide compensatory mechanisms to extend patent terms for pharmaceutical products. Patent expiration dates noted in the following paragraphs refer to statutory expiration dates and do not take into account any potential patent term adjustment or extension that may be available, or any potential disclaimers that may be needed to obtain certain patents that may reduce the term of such patents to correspond to that of earlier-expiring patents. There is no guarantee that any of our product candidates would be eligible for patent term extensions.
PRMT5 inhibitors
We exclusively own three patent families covering the composition of matter, form and methods of use for our product candidates TNG908, TNG462 and other structurally related PRMT5 inhibitors. For the first family, a US patent has been granted, and patent applications are pending in the United States, Argentina, Pakistan, Taiwan, Australia, Brazil,
24
Canada, China, Eurasia, Europe, Israel, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand and South Africa. Any patents granted in this family would be expected to expire no earlier than 2041. A Patent Cooperation Treaty application is pending in the second family, and any patents granted in this family would be expected to expire no earlier than 2042. A provisional United States patent application is pending in the third family, and any patents granted in this family would be expected to expire no earlier than 2043.
Additionally, we exclusively own six patent families covering other PRMT5 inhibitors and their methods of use with expiration dates ranging from 2039 to 2043. A US patent has been granted and a US patent application is pending in the first family. A US patent application is pending in the second family. Patent Cooperation Treaty applications are pending in the remaining four families.
USP1 inhibitors
We own two patent families covering USP1 inhibitors and methods of use thereof. Patent Cooperation Treaty applications are pending in both families. Any patents issuing from each of these two patent families are expected to expire no earlier than 2042. One of the patent families is exclusively owned by us, and the remaining one is jointly owned by us and Medivir AB and exclusively licensed to us under the Medivir Agreement.
CoREST inhibitors
We exclusively own two patent families relating to our CoREST inhibitor program, including composition of matter and methods of use thereof. A Patent Cooperation Treaty application is pending in the first family, and a provisional application is pending in the second family. Any issued patents, if granted, covering the composition of matter for our CoREST inhibitor, or methods of use thereof, are expected to expire no earlier than 2042.
Government Regulation
The FDA and other regulatory authorities at federal, state and local levels, as well as in foreign countries, extensively regulate, among other things, the research, development, testing, clinical trials, manufacture, quality control, import, export, safety, effectiveness, labeling, packaging, storage, distribution, recordkeeping, approval, advertising, promotion, marketing, post-approval monitoring and post-approval reporting of drugs. We, along with our vendors, contract research organizations, or CROs, clinical investigators and contract development and manufacturing organizations, or CDMOs, will be required to navigate the various preclinical, clinical, manufacturing and commercial approval requirements of the governing regulatory agencies of the countries in which we wish to conduct studies or seek approval of our product candidates. The process of obtaining regulatory approvals of drugs and ensuring subsequent compliance with appropriate federal, state, local and foreign statutes and regulations requires the expenditure of substantial time and financial resources.
In the United States, the FDA regulates drug products under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, or FD&C Act, its implementing regulations, and other federal statutes and regulations. Drugs are also subject to other federal, state and local statutes and regulations. If we fail to comply with applicable FDA or other regulatory requirements at any time with respect to product development, clinical testing, approval or any other regulatory requirements relating to product manufacture, processing, handling, storage, quality control, safety, pharmacovigilance, marketing, advertising, promotion, packaging, labeling, export, import, distribution or sale, we may become subject to administrative or judicial sanctions or other legal consequences. These sanctions or consequences could include, among other things, the FDA’s refusal to approve pending applications, issuance of clinical holds for ongoing studies, suspension or revocation of approved applications, warning or untitled letters, product withdrawals or recalls, product seizures, relabeling or repackaging, total or partial suspensions of manufacturing or distribution, injunctions, fines, civil penalties or criminal prosecution.
Our product candidates must be approved for therapeutic indications by the FDA before they may be marketed in the United States. For drug product candidates regulated under the FD&C Act, FDA must approve a New Drug Application, or NDA. The process generally involves the following:
25
Preclinical studies and clinical trials for drugs
Before testing any drug in humans, the product candidate must undergo rigorous preclinical testing. Preclinical studies include laboratory evaluations of product chemistry, formulation and stability, as well as in vitro and animal studies to assess safety and in some cases to establish the rationale for therapeutic use. The conduct of preclinical studies is subject to federal and state regulation and requirements, including GLP requirements for safety/toxicology studies. The results of the preclinical studies, together with manufacturing information and analytical data, must be submitted to the FDA as part of an IND.
An IND is a request for authorization from the FDA to administer an investigational product to humans and must become effective before clinical trials may begin. An IND includes the general investigational plan and the protocol(s) for clinical studies, the results of animal and in vitro studies assessing the toxicology, pharmacokinetics, pharmacology, and pharmacodynamic characteristics of the product; chemistry, manufacturing, and controls information; and any available human data or literature to support the use of the investigational product. Some long-term preclinical testing may continue after the IND is submitted. The IND automatically becomes effective 30 days after receipt by the FDA, unless the FDA, within the 30-day time period, raises concerns or questions about the conduct of the clinical trial, including concerns that human research subjects will be exposed to unreasonable health risks, and imposes a full or partial clinical hold. A clinical hold can also be imposed once a trial has already begun, thereby halting the trial until any safety concerns or deficiencies articulated by FDA are corrected.
The clinical stage of development involves the administration of the product candidate to healthy volunteers or patients under the supervision of qualified investigators, who generally are physicians not employed by or under the trial sponsor’s control, in accordance with GCP requirements, which include the requirements that all research subjects provide their informed consent for their participation in any clinical trial. Clinical trials are conducted under protocols detailing, among other things, the objectives of the clinical trial, dosing procedures, inclusion and exclusion criteria and the parameters and criteria to be used in monitoring safety and evaluating effectiveness. Each protocol, and any subsequent amendments to the protocol, must be submitted to the FDA as part of the IND. Furthermore, each clinical trial must be reviewed and approved by an IRB for each institution at which the clinical trial will be conducted to ensure that the risks to individuals participating in the clinical trials are minimized and are reasonable compared to the anticipated benefits. The IRB also approves the informed consent form that must be provided to each clinical trial subject or his or her legal representative and must monitor the clinical trial until completed. The FDA, the IRB, or the sponsor may suspend or discontinue a clinical trial at any time on various grounds, including a finding that the subjects are being exposed to an unacceptable health risk. There also are requirements governing the reporting of ongoing clinical trials and completed clinical trials to public registries. Information about clinical trials, including results for clinical trials other than Phase 1 investigations, must be submitted within specific timeframes for publication on www.ClinicalTrials.gov, a clinical trials database maintained by the National Institutes of Health.
A sponsor who wishes to conduct a clinical trial outside of the United States may, but need not, obtain FDA authorization to conduct the clinical trial under an IND. If a foreign clinical trial is not conducted under an IND, FDA may nevertheless accept the results of the study in support of an NDA if the study was conducted in accordance with GCP
26
requirements, and the FDA is able to validate the data through independent analysis and an onsite inspection if deemed necessary.
Clinical trials to evaluate therapeutic indications to support NDAs for marketing approval are typically conducted in three sequential phases, which may overlap or be combined.
In the first quarter of 2022, we received clearance of our IND application for TNG908 to initiate a Phase 1/2 clinical trial. In the first quarter of 2023, we received clearance of our IND application for TNG462 to initiate a Phase 1/2 clinical trial.
In March 2022, the FDA released final guidance titled “Expansion Cohorts: Use in First-In-Human Clinical Trials to Expedite Development of Oncology Drugs and Biologics,” which outlines how drug developers can utilize an adaptive trial design commonly referred to as a seamless trial design in early stages of oncology drug development (i.e., the first-in-human clinical trial) to compress the traditional three phases of trials into one continuous trial called an expansion cohort trial. Information to support the design of individual expansion cohorts are included in IND applications and assessed by FDA. Expansion cohort trials can potentially bring efficiency to drug development and reduce development costs and time.
Post-approval trials, sometimes referred to as Phase 4 clinical trials or post-marketing studies, may be conducted after initial marketing approval. These trials are used to gain additional experience from the treatment of patients in the intended therapeutic indication and are commonly intended to generate additional safety data regarding use of the product in a clinical setting. In certain instances, the FDA may mandate the completion of Phase 4 clinical trials as a condition of NDA approval.
Progress reports detailing the results of the clinical trials, among other information, must be submitted at least annually to the FDA. Written IND safety reports must be submitted to the FDA and the investigators within 15 days for reporting for serious and unexpected suspected adverse events, findings from other studies or animal or in vitro testing that suggest a significant risk for human volunteers and any clinically important increase in the rate of a serious suspected adverse reaction over that listed in the protocol or investigator brochure. The sponsor must also notify the FDA of any unexpected fatal or life-threatening suspected adverse reaction as soon as possible but in no case later than seven calendar days after the sponsor’s initial receipt of the information.
Concurrent with clinical trials, companies usually complete additional animal studies and must also develop additional information about the chemistry and physical characteristics of the product candidate and finalize a process for manufacturing the drug product in commercial quantities in accordance with cGMP requirements. The manufacturing process must be capable of consistently producing quality batches of the product candidate and manufacturers must develop, among other things, methods for testing the identity, strength, quality and purity of the final drug product. Additionally, appropriate packaging must be selected and tested, and stability studies must be conducted to demonstrate that the product candidate does not undergo unacceptable deterioration over its shelf life.
U.S. marketing approval for drugs
Assuming successful completion of the required clinical testing, the results of the preclinical studies and clinical trials, together with detailed information relating to the product’s chemistry, manufacture, controls and proposed labeling, among other things, are submitted to the FDA as part of an NDA package requesting approval to market the product for one or more indications. An NDA must contain proof of the drug’s safety and efficacy for the requested indications and the marketing
27
application is required to include both negative and ambiguous results of preclinical studies and clinical trials, as well as positive findings. Data may come from company-sponsored clinical trials intended to test the safety and efficacy of a product’s use or from a number of alternative sources, including studies initiated by investigators. To support marketing approval, the data submitted must be sufficient in quality and quantity to establish the safety and efficacy of the investigational drug to the satisfaction of the FDA. The FDA must approve an NDA before a drug may be marketed in the United States.
The FDA reviews all submitted NDAs to ensure they are sufficiently complete to permit substantive review before it accepts them for filing and may request additional information rather than accepting the NDA for filing. The FDA must make a decision on accepting an NDA for filing within 60 days of receipt, and such decision could include a refusal to file by the FDA. Once the submission is accepted for filing, the FDA begins an in-depth substantive review of the NDA. The FDA reviews an NDA to determine, among other things, whether the product is safe and effective for the indications sought and whether the facility in which it is manufactured, processed, packaged or held meets standards, including cGMP requirements, designed to assure and preserve the product’s continued identity, strength, quality and purity. Under the goals and policies agreed to by the FDA under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, or PDUFA, the FDA targets ten months, from the filing date, in which to complete its initial review of a new molecular entity NDA and respond to the applicant, and 6 months from the filing date of a new molecular entity NDA for Priority Review. The FDA does not always meet its PDUFA goal dates for standard or priority NDAs, and the review process is often extended by FDA requests for additional information or clarification. Further, under PDUFA, as amended, each NDA must be accompanied by a substantial user fee.
The FDA also may require submission of a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, or REMS, if it believes such a strategy is necessary to ensure that the benefits of the drug outweigh its risks. A REMS can include use of risk evaluation and mitigation strategies such as medication guides, physician communication plans, assessment plans, and/or elements to assure safe use, such as restricted distribution methods, patient registries, special monitoring or other risk-minimization tools.
The FDA may refer an application for a novel drug to an advisory committee. An advisory committee is a panel of independent experts, including clinicians and other scientific experts, which reviews, evaluates and provides a recommendation as to whether the application should be approved and under what conditions. The FDA is not bound by the recommendations of an advisory committee, but it considers such recommendations carefully when making decisions.
Before approving an NDA, the FDA typically will inspect the facility or facilities where the product is manufactured. The FDA will not approve an application unless it determines that the manufacturing processes and facilities are in compliance with cGMP requirements and are adequate to assure consistent production of the product within required specifications. Additionally, before approving an NDA, the FDA may inspect one or more clinical trial sites to assure compliance with GCP and other requirements and the integrity of the clinical data submitted to the FDA.
After evaluating the NDA and all related information, including the advisory committee recommendation, if any, and inspection reports regarding the manufacturing facilities and clinical trial sites, the FDA may issue an approval letter, or, in some cases, a Complete Response Letter. A Complete Response Letter indicates that the review cycle of the application is complete and the application is not ready for approval. A Complete Response Letter generally contains a statement of specific conditions that must be met in order to secure final approval of the NDA. The FDA may require additional clinical or preclinical testing or recommend other actions, such as requests for additional information or clarification, that the applicant might take in order for the FDA to reconsider the application. Even with submission of this additional information, the FDA ultimately may decide that the application does not satisfy the regulatory criteria for approval. If and when those conditions have been met to the FDA’s satisfaction, the FDA will typically issue an approval letter. An approval letter authorizes commercial marketing of the product with specific prescribing information for one or more indications.
Even if the FDA approves a product, it may limit the approved indications for use of the product, require that contraindications, warnings or precautions be included in the product labeling, require that post-approval studies, including Phase 4 clinical trials, be conducted to further assess a product’s safety after approval, require testing and surveillance programs to monitor the product after commercialization, or impose other conditions, including distribution and use restrictions or other risk management mechanisms under a REMS, which can materially affect the potential market and profitability of the product. The FDA may prevent or limit further marketing of a product based on the results of post-marketing studies or surveillance programs. After approval, some types of changes to the approved product, such as adding new indications, manufacturing changes, and additional labeling claims, are subject to further testing requirements and FDA review and approval.
28
Orphan drug designation and exclusivity
Under the Orphan Drug Act, the FDA may grant orphan drug designation to a drug intended to treat a rare disease or condition, which is a disease or condition with either a patient population of fewer than 200,000 individuals in the United States, or a patient population greater than 200,000 individuals in the United States when there is no reasonable expectation that the cost of developing and making the product available in the United States for the disease or condition will be recovered from sales of the product. Orphan drug designation must be requested before submitting an NDA. After the FDA grants orphan drug designation, the generic identity of the therapeutic agent and its potential orphan use are disclosed publicly by the FDA. Orphan drug designation does not convey any advantage in or shorten the duration of the regulatory review and approval process, although companies developing orphan-designated products are eligible for certain incentives, including tax credits for qualified clinical testing and waiver of application fees.
If a product that has orphan designation subsequently receives the first FDA approval for the disease or condition for which it has such designation, the product is entitled to a seven-year period of marketing exclusivity during which the FDA may not approve any other applications to market the same therapeutic agent for the same indication, except in limited circumstances, such as a subsequent product’s showing of clinical superiority over the product with orphan exclusivity or where the original applicant cannot produce sufficient quantities of product.
Competitors, however, may receive approval of different therapeutic agents for the indication for which the orphan product has exclusivity or obtain approval for the same therapeutic agent for a different indication than that for which the orphan product has exclusivity. Orphan product exclusivity could block the approval of one of our products for seven years if a competitor obtains approval for the same therapeutic agent for the same indication before we do, unless we are able to demonstrate that our product is clinically superior. If an orphan designated product receives marketing approval for an indication broader than what is designated, it may not be entitled to orphan exclusivity.
Expedited development and review programs for drugs
The FDA maintains several programs intended to facilitate and expedite development and review of new drugs to address unmet medical needs in the treatment of serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions. These programs include Fast Track designation, Breakthrough Therapy designation, Priority Review and Accelerated Approval, and the purpose of these programs is to get important new drugs to patients more quickly than standard FDA review timelines typically permit.
A new drug is eligible for Fast Track designation if it is intended to treat a serious or life-threatening disease or condition and demonstrates the potential to address unmet medical needs for such disease or condition. Fast track designation applies to the combination of the product candidate and the specific indication for which it is being studied. Fast Track designation provides increased opportunities for sponsor interactions with the FDA during preclinical and clinical development, in addition to the potential for rolling review once a marketing application is filed. Rolling review means that the FDA may review portions of the marketing application before the sponsor submits the complete application. In the first quarter of 2022 and 2023, the FDA granted Fast Track designation for TNG908 and TNG462, respectively.
In addition, a new drug may be eligible for Breakthrough Therapy designation if it is intended to treat a serious or life-threatening disease or condition and preliminary clinical evidence indicates that the drug, alone or in combination with one or more other drugs, may demonstrate substantial improvement over existing therapies on one or more clinically significant endpoints, such as substantial treatment effects observed early in clinical development. Breakthrough Therapy designation provides all the features of Fast Track designation as well as more intensive FDA interaction and guidance.
Products with Fast Track or Breakthrough Therapy designation may also be eligible for additional FDA programs intended to expedite the review and approval process, including Priority Review designation and Accelerated Approval. Any product submitted to the FDA for approval that has the potential to provide a significant improvement in safety or effectiveness in the treatment, diagnosis or prevention of a serious disease or condition may be eligible for priority review. Under priority review, the FDA’s goal date to take action on the marketing application is six months compared to ten months for a standard review. Products are eligible for Accelerated Approval if they can be shown to have an effect on a surrogate endpoint that is reasonably likely to predict clinical benefit, or an effect on a clinical endpoint that can be measured earlier than an effect on irreversible morbidity or mortality, which is reasonably likely to predict an effect on irreversible morbidity or mortality or other clinical benefit, taking into account the severity, rarity, or prevalence of the condition and the availability or lack of alternative treatments.
Accelerated Approval is usually contingent on a sponsor’s agreement to conduct, in a diligent manner, adequate and well-controlled post-approval confirmatory studies to verify and describe the product’s clinical benefit and, under the Food and Drug Omnibus Reform Act of 2022, or FDORA, the FDA may require, as appropriate, that such trials be underway prior
29
to approval or within a specific time period after the date accelerated approval is granted. Under FDORA, the FDA has increased authority for expedited procedures to withdraw approval of a drug or an indication approved under Accelerated Approval if, for example, the confirmatory trial fails to verify the predicted clinical benefit of the product.
Even if a product qualifies for one or more of these programs, the FDA may later decide that the product no longer meets the conditions for qualification or the time period for FDA review or approval may not be shortened. Furthermore, these FDA programs do not change the scientific or medical standards for approval or the quality of evidence necessary to support approval, though they may expedite the development or review process.
Pediatric information and pediatric exclusivity
Under the Pediatric Research Equity Act, or PREA, as amended, certain NDAs and NDA supplements must contain data that can be used to assess the safety and efficacy of the product candidate for the claimed indications in all relevant pediatric subpopulations and to support dosing and administration for each pediatric subpopulation for which the product is safe and effective. The FDA may grant deferrals for submission of pediatric data or full or partial waivers. The PREA requires that a sponsor who is planning to submit a marketing application for a product candidate that includes a new active ingredient, new indication, new dosage form, new dosing regimen or new route of administration submit an initial Pediatric Study Plan, or PSP, within 60 days of an end-of-Phase 2 meeting or, if there is no such meeting, as early as practicable before the initiation of the Phase 3 or Phase 2/3 study. The initial PSP must include an outline of the pediatric study or studies that the sponsor plans to conduct, including study objectives and design, age groups, relevant endpoints and statistical approach, or a justification for not including such detailed information, and any request for a deferral of pediatric assessments or a full or partial waiver of the requirement to provide data from pediatric studies. The FDA and the sponsor must reach an agreement on the PSP. Unless otherwise required by regulation, PREA does not apply to a drug for an indication for which orphan designation has been granted, except that PREA will apply to an original NDA for a new active ingredient that is orphan-designated if the drug is a molecularly targeted cancer product intended for the treatment of an adult cancer and is directed at a molecular target that FDA determines to be substantially relevant to the growth or progression of a pediatric cancer.
A drug can also obtain pediatric exclusivity in the United States. Pediatric exclusivity, if granted, adds six months to existing exclusivity periods and patent terms. This six-month exclusivity may be granted based on the voluntary completion of a pediatric study that adequately responds to an FDA-issued “Written Request” for such a study.
U.S. post-approval requirements for drugs
Drugs manufactured or distributed pursuant to FDA approvals are subject to continuing regulation by the FDA, including, among other things, requirements relating to recordkeeping, periodic reporting, product sampling and distribution, reporting of adverse experiences and promotion and advertising requirements. FDA's advertising and promotion requirements include restrictions on promoting products for unapproved uses or patient populations (known as “off-label use”) and limitations on industry-sponsored scientific and educational activities. Although physicians may prescribe approved products for off-label uses, manufacturers may not market or promote such uses. The FDA and other agencies enforce the laws and regulations prohibiting the promotion of off-label uses, including not only by company employees but also by agents of the company or those speaking on the company’s behalf, and a company that is found to have improperly promoted off-label uses may be subject to significant liability, including investigation by federal and state authorities. Failure to comply with these requirements can result in, among other things, adverse publicity, warning letters, corrective advertising and potential civil and criminal penalties, including liabilities under the False Claims Act where products are reimbursed under federal health care programs. Promotional materials for approved drugs must be submitted to the FDA in conjunction with their first use or first publication. Further, for certain modifications to the drug, including changes in indications, labeling or manufacturing processes or facilities, the applicant may be required to submit and obtain prior FDA approval of an NDA supplement, which may require the development of additional data or preclinical studies and clinical trials.
The FDA may impose a number of post-approval requirements as a condition of approval of an NDA. For example, the FDA may require post-market testing, including Phase 4 clinical trials, and surveillance to further assess and monitor the product’s safety and effectiveness after commercialization, as well as the manufacturing process for making the drug to confirm continued compliance with cGMP. Manufacturers and certain subcontractors must register their establishments with the FDA and applicable state agencies and are subject to periodic unannounced inspections for compliance with regulatory requirements. Changes to the manufacturing process are strictly regulated and, depending on the nature of the change, may require prior FDA approval before implementation. In addition, manufacturers and other parties involved in the drug supply chain must comply with product tracking and tracing requirements and notify the FDA of counterfeit, diverted, stolen and intentionally adulterated products or products that are otherwise unfit for distribution. Accordingly, manufacturers must
30
continue to expend time, money and effort in the area of production and quality control to maintain compliance with cGMP and other regulatory requirements.
The FDA may withdraw approval of a product if compliance with regulatory requirements and standards is not maintained or if problems occur after the product reaches the market. Later discovery of previously unknown problems with a product, including adverse events of unanticipated severity or frequency, or with manufacturing processes, or failure to comply with regulatory requirements, may result in revisions to the approved labeling to add new safety information, requirements for post-market studies or clinical trials to assess new safety risks, or imposition of distribution or other restrictions under a REMS. Other potential consequences include, among other things:
Regulation of companion diagnostics
Companion diagnostics provide information that is essential for the safe and effective use of a corresponding drug. A companion diagnostic may be used to help identify patients who are most likely to benefit from a particular therapeutic product, identify patients likely to be at increased risk for serious side effects as a result of treatment with a particular therapeutic product, or monitor response to treatment with a particular therapeutic product for the purpose of adjusting treatment to achieve improved safety or effectiveness. Companion diagnostics are regulated as medical devices by the FDA. In the United States, the FD&C Act, and its implementing regulations, and other federal and state statutes and regulations govern, among other things, medical device design and development, preclinical and clinical testing, premarket clearance or approval, registration and listing, manufacturing, labeling, storage, advertising and promotion, sales and distribution, export and import, and post-market surveillance. Unless an exemption or FDA exercise of enforcement discretion applies, diagnostic tests generally require marketing clearance or approval from the FDA prior to commercialization. The two primary types of FDA marketing authorization applicable to a medical device are clearance of a premarket notification, or 510(k), and approval of a PMA.
The FDA has issued several guidance documents regarding the co-development of drugs and companion diagnostic tests, including a 2014 final guidance titled “Guidance for Industry: In Vitro Companion Diagnostic Devices”, a 2016 draft guidance titled “Principles for Codevelopment of an In Vitro Companion Diagnostic Device with a Therapeutic Product,” and a 2018 draft guidance titled “Developing and Labeling In Vitro Companion Diagnostic Devices for a Specific Group or Class of Oncology Therapeutic Products. Once cleared or approved, the companion diagnostic device must adhere to applicable post-marketing requirements including the FDA’s quality system regulation (QSR), adverse event reporting, recalls and corrections, and product marketing requirements and limitations. Like drug manufacturers, companion diagnostic manufacturers are subject to unannounced FDA inspections at any time during which the FDA will conduct an audit of the product(s) and the company’s facilities for compliance with regulatory requirements.
Other regulatory matters
Manufacturing, sales, promotion and other activities of product candidates following product approval, where applicable, and commercialization are also subject to regulation by numerous regulatory authorities in the United States in addition to the FDA, which may include the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, other divisions of the HHS, the Department of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and state and local governments and governmental agencies.
31
Other healthcare laws
Healthcare providers, physicians, and third-party payors will play a primary role in the recommendation and prescription of any products for which we will seek to obtain marketing approval. Our business operations and any current or future arrangements with third-party payors, healthcare providers and physicians may expose us to certain liabilities and other healthcare laws and regulations that may constrain the business or financial arrangements and relationships through which we develop, market, sell and distribute any drugs for which we obtain marketing approval in the future. In the United States, these laws include, without limitation, state and federal anti-kickback, false claims, physician transparency, and patient data privacy and security laws and regulations, including but not limited to those described below.
32
The scope and enforcement of each of these laws is uncertain and subject to rapid change in the current environment of healthcare reform, especially in light of the lack of applicable precedent and regulations. Federal and state enforcement bodies have recently increased their scrutiny of interactions between healthcare companies and healthcare providers, which has led to a number of investigations, prosecutions, convictions and settlements in the healthcare industry. It is possible that governmental authorities will conclude that our business practices do not comply with current or future statutes, regulations or case law involving applicable fraud and abuse or other healthcare laws and regulations. If our operations are found to be in violation of any of these laws or any other related governmental regulations that may apply to us, we may be subject to significant civil, criminal and administrative penalties, damages, fines, imprisonment, disgorgement, exclusion from government funded healthcare programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, reputational harm, additional oversight and reporting obligations if we become subject to a corporate integrity agreement or similar settlement to resolve allegations of non-compliance with these laws and the curtailment or restructuring of our operations.
Insurance Coverage and Reimbursement
In the United States and markets in other countries, patients who are prescribed treatments for their conditions and providers performing the prescribed services generally rely on third-party payors to reimburse all or part of the associated healthcare costs. Thus, even if a product candidate is approved, sales of the product will depend, in part, on the extent to which third-party payors, including government health programs in the United States such as Medicare and Medicaid, commercial health insurers and managed care organizations, provide coverage, and establish adequate reimbursement levels for, the product. In the United States, the principal decisions about reimbursement for new medicines are typically made by CMS. CMS decides whether and to what extent a new medicine will be covered and reimbursed under Medicare and private payors tend to follow CMS to a substantial degree. Coverage and reimbursement for drug products can differ significantly from payor to payor. The process for determining whether a third-party payor will provide coverage for a product may be separate from the process for setting the price or reimbursement rate that the payor will pay for the product once coverage is approved. Third-party payors are increasingly challenging the prices charged, examining the medical necessity, reviewing the cost-effectiveness of medical products and services and imposing controls to manage costs. Third-party payors may limit coverage to specific products on an approved list, also known as a formulary, which might not include all of the approved products for a particular indication.
In order to secure coverage and reimbursement for any product that might be approved for sale, a company may need to conduct expensive pharmacoeconomic studies in order to demonstrate the medical necessity and cost-effectiveness of the product, which will require additional expenditure above and beyond the costs required to obtain FDA or other comparable regulatory approvals. Some product candidates may not be considered medically necessary or cost effective. A decision by a third-party payor not to cover a product could reduce physician utilization once the product is approved and have a material adverse effect on sales, our operations and financial condition (when a product candidate is approved for marketing). Levels of coverage and reimbursement for a product can differ significantly from payor to payor.
The containment of healthcare costs has become a priority of federal, state and foreign governments (and other third-party payers), and the prices of products have been a focus in this effort. Governments have shown significant interest in implementing cost-containment programs, including price controls, restrictions on reimbursement and requirements for substitution of generic products. Adoption of price controls and cost-containment measures, and adoption of more restrictive policies in jurisdictions with existing controls and measures, could further limit a company’s revenue generated from the sale of any approved products. Coverage policies and third-party payor reimbursement rates may change at any time.
33
In the European Union, pricing and reimbursement schemes vary widely from country to country. Some countries provide that products may be marketed only after a reimbursement price has been agreed upon. Some countries may require the completion of additional studies that compare the cost-effectiveness of a particular product candidate to currently available therapies or so-called health technology assessments, in order to obtain reimbursement or pricing approval. For example, the European Union provides options for its member states to restrict the range of products for which their national health insurance systems provide reimbursement and to control the prices of medicinal products for human use. European Union member states may approve a specific price for a product or may instead adopt a system of direct or indirect controls on the profitability of the company placing the product on the market. Other member states allow companies to fix their own prices for products, but monitor and control prescription volumes and issue guidance to physicians to limit prescriptions. Recently, many countries in the European Union have increased the amount of discounts required on pharmaceuticals and these efforts could continue as countries attempt to manage healthcare expenditures, especially in light of the severe fiscal and debt crises experienced by many countries in the European Union. The downward pressure on healthcare costs in general, particularly prescription products, has become intense. As a result, increasingly high barriers are being erected to the entry of new products. Political, economic and regulatory developments may further complicate pricing negotiations, and pricing negotiations may continue after reimbursement has been obtained. Reference pricing used by various European Union member states, and parallel trade, i.e., arbitrage between low-priced and high-priced member states, can further reduce prices. There can be no assurance that any country that has price controls or reimbursement limitations for pharmaceutical products will allow favorable reimbursement and pricing arrangements for any products, if approved in those countries.
Current and future healthcare reform legislation
In the United States and certain foreign jurisdictions, there have been, and likely will continue to be, a number of legislative and regulatory changes and proposed changes regarding the healthcare system directed at broadening the availability of healthcare, improving the quality of healthcare, and containing or lowering the cost of healthcare. For example, in 2010, the United States Congress enacted the ACA, which, among other things, includes changes to the coverage and payment for products under government health care programs. The ACA includes provisions of importance to our potential product candidates that:
Additionally, there has been increasing legislative and enforcement interest in the United States with respect to drug pricing practices. Specifically, there has been heightened governmental scrutiny over the manner in which manufacturers set prices for their marketed products, which has resulted in several U.S. Congressional inquiries and proposed and enacted federal and state legislation designed to, among other things, bring more transparency to drug pricing, reduce the cost of prescription drugs under Medicare, and review the relationship between pricing and manufacturer patient programs. President Biden has issued multiple executive orders that have sought to reduce prescription drug costs. In February 2023, HHS issued a proposal in response to an October 2022 executive order from President Biden that includes a proposed prescription drug
34
pricing model that will test whether targeted Medicare payment adjustments will sufficiently incentivize manufacturers to complete confirmatory trials for drugs approved through FDA’s accelerated approval pathway. Although a number of these and other proposed measures may require authorization through additional legislation to become effective, and the Biden administration may reverse or otherwise change these measures, both the Biden administration and Congress have indicated that they will continue to seek new legislative measures to control drug costs.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, or IRA, includes several provisions that may impact our business to varying degrees, including provisions that reduce the out-of-pocket cap for Medicare Part D beneficiaries from $7,050 to $2,000 starting in 2025, thereby effectively eliminating the coverage gap; impose new manufacturer financial liability on certain drugs under Medicare Part D; and allow the U.S. government to negotiate Medicare Part B and Part D price caps for certain high-cost drugs and biologics without generic or biosimilar competition. Specifically, under the IRA, a single-source pharmaceutical product qualifies for selection for participation in the drug price negotiation program if it is (i) a small-molecule drug for which at least seven years have passed since the date of approval from the FDA and there is no generic on the market (as of the date of selection); or (ii) a biologic for which 11 years have passed since the date of FDA licensure and there is no biosimilar on the market (as of the date of selection). Given that any negotiated price does not take effect until approximately two years after selection, small-molecule drug and biologic manufacturers are afforded at least nine years and 13 years, respectively, before they may be obligated to sell their product under Medicare Part B and Part D, as applicable, at CMS-negotiated pricing. The IRA also requires companies to pay rebates to Medicare to the extent that drug pricing increases faster than inflation, and it also further delayed until January 1, 2032 the implementation of the HHS rebate rule that would have limited the fees that pharmacy benefit managers can charge.
We expect that additional U.S. federal healthcare reform measures will be adopted in the future, any of which could limit the amounts that the U.S. Federal Government will pay for healthcare drugs and services, which could result in reduced demand for our drug candidates or additional pricing pressures.
Individual states in the United States have also become increasingly active in passing legislation and implementing regulations designed to control pharmaceutical and biological product pricing, including price or patient reimbursement constraints, discounts, restrictions on certain drug access and marketing cost disclosure and transparency measures designed to encourage importation from other countries and bulk purchasing. Legally mandated price controls on payment amounts by third-party payors or other restrictions could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. In addition, regional healthcare authorities and individual hospitals are increasingly using bidding procedures to determine what pharmaceutical products and which suppliers will be included in their prescription drug and other healthcare programs. This could reduce the ultimate demand for our drugs (if approved for marketing) or put pressure on our drug pricing, which could negatively affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.
Outside the United States, ensuring coverage and adequate payment for a product also involves challenges. Pricing of prescription pharmaceuticals is subject to government control in many countries. Pricing negotiations with government authorities can extend well beyond the receipt of regulatory approval for a product and may require a clinical trial that compares the cost-effectiveness of a product to other available therapies. The conduct of such a clinical trial could be expensive and result in delays in commercialization.
Other United States environmental, health and safety laws and regulations
We may be subject to numerous environmental, health and safety laws and regulations, including those governing laboratory procedures and the handling, use, storage, treatment and disposal of hazardous materials and wastes. From time to time and in the future, our operations may involve the use of hazardous and flammable materials, including chemicals and biological materials, and may also produce hazardous waste products. Even if we contract with third parties for the disposal of these materials and waste products, we cannot completely eliminate the risk of contamination or injury resulting from these materials. In the event of contamination or injury resulting from the use or disposal of our hazardous materials, we could be held liable for any resulting damages, and any liability could exceed our resources. We also could incur significant costs associated with civil or criminal fines and penalties for failure to comply with such laws and regulations.
We maintain workers’ compensation insurance to cover us for costs and expenses that we may incur due to injuries to our employees, but this insurance may not provide adequate coverage against potential liabilities. However, we do not maintain insurance for environmental liability or toxic tort claims that may be asserted against us.
In addition, we may incur substantial costs in order to comply with current or future environmental, health and safety laws and regulations. Current or future environmental laws and regulations may impair our research, development or
35
production efforts. In addition, failure to comply with these laws and regulations may result in substantial fines, penalties or other sanctions.
Government regulation of drugs outside of the United States
To market any product outside of the United States, we would need to comply with numerous and varying regulatory requirements of other countries regarding safety and efficacy and governing, among other things, clinical trials, marketing authorization, manufacturing, commercial sales, promotion and distribution of our potential future products. For instance, in the European Economic Area, or the EEA (comprised of the 27 EU Member States plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), medicinal products must be authorized for marketing by using either the centralized authorization procedure or national authorization procedures.
In both cases, as with the centralized procedure, the competent authorities of the EEA Member States assess the risk-benefit balance of the product on the basis of scientific criteria concerning its quality, safety and efficacy before granting the marketing authorization.
Now that the United Kingdom has left the European Union, Great Britain is no longer covered by the EEA procedures for the grant of marketing authorizations described above (under the Northern Ireland Protocol, centralized European Union marketing authorizations continue to be recognized in Northern Ireland) and a separate marketing authorization is therefore required to market drugs in Great Britain. For three years from January 1, 2021, the UK’s regulator, the MHRA, may adopt decisions taken by the European Commission on the approval of new marketing authorizations through the centralized procedure, and the MHRA will have regard to marketing authorizations approved in a country in the EEA (although in both
36
cases a marketing authorization will only be granted if any Great Britain-specific requirements are met). This is known as the EC Decision Reliance Procedure. On January 24, 2023, the MHRA announced that a new international recognition framework will be put in place from January 1, 2024, which will have regard to decisions on the approval of marketing authorizations made by the European Medicines Agency, or EMA, and certain other regulators. On February 27, 2023, the UK government and the European Commission announced a political agreement in principle to replace the Northern Ireland Protocol with a new set of arrangements, known as the “Windsor Framework”. This new framework fundamentally changes the existing system under the Northern Ireland Protocol, including with respect to the regulation of medicinal products in the UK. In particular, the MHRA will be responsible for approving all medicinal products destined for the UK market (Great Britain and Northern Ireland) and the EMA will no longer have any role in approving medicinal products destined for Northern Ireland. A single UK-wide marketing authorization will be granted by the MHRA for all medicinal products to be sold in the UK, enabling products to be sold in a single pack and under a single authorization throughout the UK. Once the Windsor Framework is approved by the EU-UK Joint Committee, the UK Government and the European Union will enact legislative measures to enact it into law.
In the EEA, new products for therapeutic indications that are authorized for marketing (i.e., innovator products) qualify for eight years of data exclusivity and an additional two years of market exclusivity upon marketing authorization. The data exclusivity period prevents generic or biosimilar applicants from referencing the preclinical and clinical trial data contained in the dossier of the innovator product when applying for a generic or biosimilar marketing authorization in the EEA during a period of eight years from the date on which the innovator product was first authorized in the EEA. The additional two-year period of market exclusivity period prevents a successful generic or biosimilar applicant from commercializing its product in the EEA until ten years have elapsed from the initial authorization of the reference product in the European Union. The overall ten-year period can be extended to a maximum of eleven years if, during the first eight years of those ten years, the marketing authorization holder obtains an authorization for one or more new therapeutic indications which, during the scientific evaluation prior to their authorization, are held to bring a significant clinical benefit in comparison with existing therapies. Even if a compound is considered to be a new chemical entity so that the innovator gains the prescribed period of data exclusivity, another company may market another version of the product if such company obtained marketing authorization based on a MAA with a complete independent data package of pharmaceutical tests, preclinical tests and clinical trials
The criteria for designating an “orphan medicinal product” in the EEA are similar in principle to those in the United States. Under Article 3 of Regulation (EC) 141/2000, in the EEA a medicinal product may be designated as orphan if it meets the following criteria: (i) it is intended for the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of a life-threatening or chronically debilitating condition; and (ii) either (a) such condition affects no more than five in 10,000 persons in the EEA when the application is made, or (b) it is unlikely that the product, without the benefits derived from orphan status, would generate sufficient return in the EEA to justify the investment needed for its development; and (iii) there exists no satisfactory method of diagnosis, prevention or treatment of such condition, or if such a method exists, the product will be of significant benefit to those affected by the condition. Orphan medicinal products are eligible for financial incentives such as reduction of fees or fee waivers and are, upon grant of a marketing authorization, entitled to ten years of market exclusivity for the approved therapeutic indication. During this ten-year orphan market exclusivity period, no marketing authorization application shall be accepted, and no marketing authorization shall be granted for a similar medicinal product for the same indication, unless certain conditions are met. An orphan product can also obtain an additional two years of market exclusivity in the European Union for pediatric studies. Orphan drug designation does not convey any advantage in, or shorten the duration of, the regulatory review and approval process.
Similar to the United States, the various phases of non-clinical and clinical research in the European Union are subject to significant regulatory controls.
The Clinical Trials Directive 2001/20/EC, the Directive 2005/28/EC on GCP and the related national implementing provisions of the individual EU Member States govern the system for the approval of clinical trials in the European Union. Under this system, an applicant must obtain prior approval from the national competent authority, or NCA, of the EU Member States in which the clinical trial is to be conducted. Furthermore, the applicant may only start a clinical trial at a specific study site after the competent ethics committee, or EC, has issued a favorable opinion. The clinical trial application must be accompanied by, among other documents, an investigational medicinal product dossier (the Common Technical Document) with supporting information prescribed by applicable directives. All suspected unexpected serious adverse reactions to the investigated drug that occur during the clinical trial have to be reported to the NCA and ECs of the Member State where they occurred.
37
Government regulation of data collection outside of the United States
In the event we conduct clinical trials in the European Union, we will be subject to additional privacy restrictions. The collection and use of personal health data in the European Economic Area, or EEA (being the European Union plus Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein), is governed by the General Data Protection Regulation, or the GDPR, which became effective on May 25, 2018. The GDPR applies to the processing of personal data by any company established in the EEA and to companies established outside the EEA to the extent they process personal data in connection with the offering of goods or services to data subjects in the EEA or the monitoring of the behavior of data subjects in the EEA. The GDPR enhances data protection obligations for data controllers of personal data, including stringent requirements relating to the consent of data subjects, expanded disclosures about how personal data is used, enhanced requirements for securing personal data, requirements to conduct privacy impact assessments for “high risk” processing, limitations on retention of personal data, mandatory data breach notification and “privacy by design” requirements, and creates direct obligations on service providers acting as processors. The GDPR also imposes strict rules on the transfer of personal data outside of the EEA to countries that do not ensure an adequate level of protection, like the United States. Failure to comply with the requirements of the GDPR and the related national data protection laws of the European Union Member States and Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, which may deviate slightly from the GDPR, may result in fines of up to 4% of a company’s global revenue for the preceding financial year, or €20,000,000, whichever is greater. Moreover, the GDPR grants data subjects the right to claim material and non-material damages resulting from infringement of the GDPR. Given the breadth and depth of changes in data protection obligations, maintaining compliance with the GDPR will require significant time, resources and expense, and we will be required to put in place controls and processes ensuring compliance with the new data protection rules. There has been limited enforcement of the GDPR to date, particularly in biopharmaceutical development, so we face uncertainty as to the exact interpretation of the new requirements on any future trials and we may be unsuccessful in implementing all measures required by data protection authorities or courts in interpretation of the new law. Further, the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union, means that it has in force its own legislation which is aligned with the GDPR, known as the Data Protection Act 2018. The requirements are similar except that the United Kingdom is now regarded as a “third country” for the purposes of transfers of personal data from the EEA. Transfers continue to flow freely from the United Kingdom to the EEA; however, as part of the agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union, the United Kingdom intends to obtain an adequacy decision from the European Commission to ensure personal data can continue to flow freely from the European Union to the United Kingdom.
Data protection authority activity differs across the European Union, with certain authorities applying their own agenda which shows there is uncertainty in the manner in which data protection authorities will seek to enforce compliance with GDPR. For example, it is not clear if the authorities will conduct random audits of companies doing business in the European Union, or if the authorities will wait for complaints to be filed by individuals who claim their rights have been violated. Enforcement uncertainty and the costs associated with ensuring GDPR compliance are onerous and may adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.
Should we utilize third-party distributors, compliance with such foreign governmental regulations would generally be the responsibility of such distributors, who may be independent contractors over whom we have limited control.
Competition
We face direct competition from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies leveraging the principle of synthetic lethality as well as companies developing therapies for the same target pathway and the same indications. Well-established companies that are developing or may develop therapies based on synthetic lethality include AstraZeneca, Amgen, GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck KGaA and Pfizer. Smaller and earlier-stage companies focused on synthetic lethality include Artios Pharma, KSQ Therapeutics, IDEAYA Biosciences, Mirati Therapeutics, Repare Therapeutics and Servier Pharmaceuticals.
Our PRMT5 inhibitor programs, which includes TNG908 and TNG462, will face direct competition from companies that have clinical-stage, MTA-cooperative PRMT5 inhibitors that are selective for MTAP-deleted cancers. We are aware that Mirati Therapeutics and Amgen are in Phase 1/2 clinical trials with MTA-cooperative PRMT5 inhibitor programs, using the same mechanism of action as TNG908 and TNG462. Currently, there are no MTA-cooperative PRMT5 inhibitors that are authorized for marketing by any regulatory authority.
Indirect competition may come from MAT2A inhibitor programs that are uniquely different than the TNG908 and TNG462 mechanism of action but are synthetic lethal with MTAP-deletions. MAT2A is an enzyme upstream of PRMT5 essential for the metabolism of the PRMT5 co-factor SAM that acts on the same pathway as TNG908. We are aware that
38
IDEAYA Biosciences (IDE397) has a clinical program and Servier Pharmaceuticals (S95035) has a preclinical MAT2A inhibitor program.
We are not aware of any competition from other companies developing a similar mechanism as TNG260, our CoREST inhibitor program.
Competition for TNG348, our USP1 inhibitor program, comes from KSQ Therapeutics, which has a USP1 program in clinical development. Additionally, in March 2023, Debiopharm acquired global rights to a USP1 inhibitor in late preclinical development.
We face competition more broadly across the oncology market for safe, efficacious, and reimbursable cancer treatments. The most common methods of treating patients with cancer are surgery, radiation, and drug therapy, including chemotherapy, hormone therapy, biologic therapy (such as monoclonal and bispecific antibodies), immunotherapy, cell-based therapy and targeted therapy, or a combination of any such methods. There are a variety of available drug therapies marketed for cancer. In many cases, these drugs are administered in combination to enhance efficacy. While our product candidates, if any are approved, may compete with these existing drugs and other therapies, to the extent they are ultimately used in combination with or as an adjunct to these therapies, our product candidates may not be competitive with them. Some of these drugs are branded and subject to patent protection, and others are available on a generic basis. Insurers and other third-party payors may also encourage the use of generic products or specific branded products. As a result, obtaining market acceptance of, and gaining significant share of the market for, any of our product candidates that we successfully introduce to the market may pose challenges. In addition, many companies are developing new oncology therapeutics, and we cannot predict what the standard of care will be as our product candidates progress through clinical development.
Many of our competitors, either alone or with their collaborators, have significantly greater resources, expertise in research and development, manufacturing, preclinical and clinical testing, obtaining regulatory approvals and reimbursement, and marketing approved products than we do. These competitors also compete with us in recruiting and retaining qualified scientific, sales, marketing and management personnel, establishing clinical trial sites and patient registration for clinical trials, as well as in acquiring technologies complementary to, or necessary for, our programs. Smaller or early-stage companies may also prove significant competitors, particularly through collaborative arrangements with large and established companies. Additionally, mergers and acquisitions may result in even more resources being concentrated in our competitors.
Employees and Human Capital Resources
Attracting and retaining qualified and experienced employees in research and development, clinical, manufacturing, quality and other positions is crucial to our ability to compete effectively. Competition for these employees is intense in the pharmaceutical industry in which we operate. Our ability to recruit and retain such employees depends on a number of factors, including the growth of our organization, the culture and work environment we have created, our organizational values and goals and our corporate philosophy; talent development and career opportunities; and compensation and benefits.
As of December 31, 2022, we had 110 full-time employees, 84 employees are engaged in research and development and 26 are engaged in business development, finance, legal, and general management and administration. None of our employees are represented by labor unions or covered by collective bargaining agreements.
Talent Acquisition and Employee Development:
Our principal talent acquisition goal is to attract, retain, and develop the highest quality talent. As we build our organization beyond drug discovery and drug development, our goals have been extended to include establishing an employee base that will allow us to efficiently move our pipeline products through clinical trials, regulatory approvals and into the market where we can help patients and their families and, simultaneously, to have a workforce that provides diverse backgrounds and ideas, are trained to operate and act at the highest standards of ethics and integrity, and are dedicated to achieve the highest level of innovation and to advance oncology treatments through the use of synthetic lethality. To support our talent acquisition, our human resources programs are designed to develop talent to prepare them for leadership positions in the future; reward employees through competitive benefits programs, including competitive pay, incentive compensation, and an equity program that aligns the incentives of our employees with the interests of our shareholders; enhance our culture through efforts aimed at making the workplace more engaging and inclusive; and retain and develop talent that embody our core values.
Diversity:
39
While Tango is early in its corporate development, our employees represent a broad set of backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. We attribute our early growth and success to the diversity that our employees bring with them to their professional roles. We are committed to the goals of diversity, equity and inclusion, which is the foundation upon which we are building a leading synthetic lethality business that is pushing the advances in oncology care, all with the objective of benefiting patients. We are building a work environment where employees can express themselves and have a voice in how we operate. Among other things, members of our management meet in small group sessions with all employees throughout the year and the feedback in these meetings is used to drive our professional development programs, our compensation structure, our organizational development and our culture.
Tango has also recently established a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) Council in which a broad, cross-section of our employees are members. The DE&I Council is responsible for initiatives that prioritize building a diverse workforce and creating an environment that is equitable and inclusive for all employees and employee candidates. The DE&I Council has led company-wide education efforts to inform our employees and our management team of the challenges employees face in the work environment so actions can be taken throughout the organization to support a range of diversity, equity and inclusion causes.
Further, the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee charter sets forth specific guidelines that the Committee will use in evaluating future individuals for nomination to the Board of Directors. Among the identified factors the Committee is to consider in nominating a candidate is the diversity of a candidate. The Board recognizes that diversity plays an important role in its functioning and operations.
These and similar programs are important to develop a sense of belonging for all employees and for our Board of Directors.
Employee Engagement:
We survey our employees on an annual basis to assess overall engagement of our workforce, and compare our engagement results against prior year results, as well as a set of benchmark companies. These companies are in the biotech sector and of similar size (number of employees). We use these results, both our internal results and the comparative results against the benchmark companies, to assess our employee engagement performance during the preceding year and to determine areas of focus going forward.
Following the 2021 engagement survey, we were able to implement a number of initiatives in response to employee feedback, including updating our vacation policy and adopting policies designed to improve employee wellness. In our most recent survey, conducted in 2022, we continued to generate results that were generally higher than our benchmark dataset, which supports our view that we have positive employee engagement. We identified areas where we are performing well, such as our efforts around innovation and social connection. As is the case with every survey, we also used the data to identify areas where we want to focus our efforts for improvement, including employee empowerment. As was the case in 2022, we will take these 2022 results, and a task force has been formed to enable actions that will further improve our engagement.
We also conduct regular townhall meetings with our employees that are intended to keep our employees updated on important corporate initiatives and to obtain input from employees on these initiatives. We also use periodic employee surveys so we can quickly obtain employee feedback on new programs or policies that are under consideration.
40
Item 1A. Risk Factors.
Investing in our securities involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all other information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including our financial statements and the related notes and the “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” The occurrence of one or more of the events or circumstances described in these risk factors, alone or in combination with other events or circumstances, may have a material adverse effect on our business, reputation, revenue, financial condition, results of operations and future prospects, in which event the market price of our common stock could decline, and you could lose part or all of your investment. The material and other risks and uncertainties summarized above and described below are not intended to be exhaustive and are not the only ones we face. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently deem immaterial may also impair our business operations. This Annual Report on Form 10-K also contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including the risks described below. See also the section titled “Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” above.
Risks Related to Our Limited Operating History, Financial Position, and Capital Requirements
We are a precision oncology company with a limited operating history.
We are a precision oncology company with a limited operating history. Biopharmaceutical product development is a highly speculative undertaking and involves a substantial degree of risk. Since the Company's inception, we have devoted substantially all of our efforts to organizing and staffing our company, acquiring and developing intellectual property, business planning, raising capital, conducting discovery, research and development activities, and providing general and administrative support for these operations. We have no products approved for commercial sale and therefore have never generated any revenue from product sales, and we do not expect to in the foreseeable future. The revenue that we have generated from our collaboration agreement is also not sufficient to fund our operations. We have not obtained regulatory approvals for any of our product candidates, and there is no assurance that we will obtain approvals in the future. We have two investigational new drug, or IND, applications, for TNG908 and TNG462 that were cleared by the FDA in the first quarters of 2022 and 2023, respectively. Other than TNG908 and TNG462, all of our product candidates are still in preclinical development. We expect to continue to incur significant expenses and operating losses over the next several years and for the foreseeable future. Our prior losses, combined with expected future losses, have had and will continue to have an adverse effect on cash and cash equivalent holdings, our stockholders’ equity and working capital. If we were to expend our cash resources more quickly than we anticipate as we advance into and through the approval process, our cash runway may be shorter than the target we may disclose from time to time.
We have incurred significant net losses since our inception and anticipate that we will continue to incur losses for the foreseeable future.
We have incurred significant net losses since our inception. As of December 31, 2022, we had an accumulated deficit of $269.5 million. Substantially all of our net losses have resulted from costs incurred in connection with our research and development programs and from general and administrative costs associated with our operations. We expect our research and development expenses to increase significantly in connection with the commencement and continuation of clinical trials of our product candidates. In addition, if we obtain regulatory approval for our product candidates, we will incur significant sales, marketing and manufacturing expenses. As a result, we expect to continue to incur significant and increasing operating losses for the foreseeable future. Because of the numerous risks and uncertainties associated with developing pharmaceutical products, we are unable to predict the extent of any future losses or when we will become profitable, if at all. Even if we do become profitable, we may not be able to sustain or increase our profitability on a quarterly or annual basis.
We expect our operating results to fluctuate significantly in the future as our business advances
The amount of our future losses is uncertain and our quarterly and annual operating results may fluctuate significantly or may fall below the expectations of investors or securities analysts, each of which may cause our stock price to fluctuate or decline. Our quarterly and annual operating results may fluctuate significantly in the future due to a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control and may be difficult to predict, including the following:
the timing and success or failure of on-going and future clinical trials for our product candidates or competing product candidates, or any other change in the competitive landscape of our industry, including consolidation among our competitors or partners;
our ability to obtain INDs for our pipeline product candidates, successfully open clinical trial sites and recruit and retain subjects for clinical trials, and any delays caused by difficulties in such efforts;
41
our ability to obtain regulatory approval for our product candidates, and the timing and scope of any such approvals we may receive;
the timing and cost of, and level of investment in, research and development activities relating to our product candidates and any future product candidates and research-stage programs, which may change from time to time;
the cost of manufacturing our product candidates and products, should they receive regulatory approval, which may vary depending on FDA and other comparable foreign regulatory requirements, the quantity of production and the terms of our agreements with manufacturers;
expenditures that we will or may incur to develop additional product candidates;
the level of demand for our product candidates should they receive regulatory approval, which may vary significantly;
the risk/benefit profile, cost and reimbursement policies with respect to our product candidates, if approved, and existing and potential future therapeutics that compete with our product candidates;
the changing and volatile U.S. and global economic environments, including as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic; and
future accounting pronouncements or changes in our accounting policies.
As a result, comparing our operating results on a period-to-period basis may not be meaningful. This variability and unpredictability could also result in our failing to meet the expectations of industry or financial analysts or investors for any period. If our revenue or operating results fall below the expectations of analysts or investors or below any forecasts we may provide to the market, or if the forecasts we provide to the market are below the expectations of analysts or investors, the price of our common stock could decline substantially. Such a stock price decline could occur even when we have met any previously publicly stated guidance we may provide.
We have no products approved for commercial sale and have not generated any revenue from product sales.
Our ability to become profitable depends upon our ability to generate revenue. To date, we have not generated any revenue from product sales, and we do not expect to generate any revenue from the sale of products in the near future. Our ability to generate revenue depends on a number of factors, including, but not limited to, our ability to:
successfully complete our planned preclinical studies for our novel precision oncology development programs;
timely file INDs for our programs, and obtain clearance of these INDs to allow for commencement of such future clinical trials;
timely complete patient enrollment and patient dosing in our TNG908 and TNG462 clinical trials;
successfully complete our TNG908 and TNG462 clinical trials and any future clinical trials;
initiate and successfully complete all safety and efficacy studies required to obtain U.S. and foreign regulatory approval for our product candidates;
make and maintain arrangements with third-party manufacturers for clinical supply and commercial manufacturing;
obtain and maintain patent and trade secret protection or regulatory exclusivity for our product candidates;
launch commercial sales of our products, if and when approved, whether alone or in collaboration with others;
obtain and maintain acceptance of our products, if and when approved, by patients, the medical community and third-party payors;
position our products to effectively compete with other therapies;
obtain and maintain healthcare coverage and adequate reimbursement for our products, if and when approved;
enforce and defend intellectual property rights and claims;
implement measures to help minimize the risk and disruption of COVID-19 to our employees as well as patients and subjects to be enrolled in our clinical trials; and
maintain a continued acceptable safety profile of our products following approval.
Further, our most advanced program is a PRMT5 inhibitor, TNG908. Given the large number of patients with MTAP-deleted cancers who may benefit from a PRMT5 inhibitor, and the resulting business opportunity, we also developed a next-generation PRMT5 inhibitor, TNG462, with increased potency, MTAP-deletion selectivity, as well as longer target coverage.
TNG462, our next-generation PRMT5 inhibitor, is 45-fold more potent in cells with an MTAP deletion than those without and induces deep tumor regressions in preclinical models of multiple cancer types. The clinical development path for TNG462 is expected to be similar to TNG908, evaluating safety and efficacy in multiple tumor types in a future Phase 1/2 clinical trial. GBM will be excluded from the clinical trial as TNG462 does not cross the blood-brain barrier in preclinical non-human primate models. If clinical evaluation of TNG462 supports this hypothesis, we may elect to promote TNG462 as our lead PRMT5 inhibitor, which may result in a delay to our development timeline for the lead PRMT5 program of approximately 12 to 18 months (in this case, we could continue clinical development of TNG908, however, the focus would be on GBM, which constitutes only a subset of the larger MTAP-deleted cancer patient population). If we elect to promote TNG462, it may result in the delay in receiving potential revenue from product sales, if approved by regulatory authorities.
42
We will need to raise substantial additional funding. If we are unable to raise capital when needed or on terms acceptable to us, we would be forced to delay, reduce or eliminate some of our product development programs or commercialization efforts.
The development of pharmaceutical products is capital-intensive. We are currently advancing our precision oncology programs through clinical and preclinical development. We received FDA clearance of our IND applications for TNG908 and TNG462 in the first quarters of 2022 and 2023, respectively. We are actively enrolling patients in the TNG908 Phase 1/2 clinical trial, which is evaluating safety and efficacy in multiple indications. We expect to initiate the Phase 1/2 clinical trial for TNG462 in mid-2023 which will evaluate safety and efficacy in multiple indications. We plan to file an IND for TNG260, our selective CoREST inhibitor, in the first half of 2023. We also plan to file an IND for TNG348, our USP1 inhibitor, in mid-2023. Consequently, we expect our expenses to significantly increase in connection with our ongoing activities, particularly as we continue the research and development of, initiate and complete clinical trials of, and seek regulatory approval for, our product candidates. As a result, we will be required to raise substantial additional funding in the future in order to continue our operations.
In addition, if we obtain regulatory approval for any of our product candidates, we expect to incur significant commercialization expenses related to product sales, marketing, manufacturing and distribution. We may also need to raise additional funds sooner if we choose to pursue additional indications and/or geographies for our current or future product candidates or otherwise expand more rapidly than we presently anticipate. Furthermore, we have, and will continue to, incur additional costs associated with operating as a public company. Accordingly, we will need to obtain substantial additional funding in connection with our continuing operations. If we are unable to raise capital when needed or on attractive terms, we would be forced to delay, reduce or eliminate certain of our research and development programs or future commercialization efforts.
We expect that our existing cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities will fund our operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements at least into 2025. However, our future capital requirements will depend on and could increase significantly as a result of many factors (which may result in exhausting such cash resources prior to 2025), including:
the scope, progress, results and costs of product discovery, preclinical and clinical development, and clinical trials for our product candidates;
the potential additional expenses attributable to adjusting our development plans (including any supply related matters) to the COVID-19 pandemic;
the scope, prioritization and number of our research and development programs;
the costs, timing and outcome of regulatory review of our product candidates;
our ability to establish and maintain additional collaborations on favorable terms, if at all;
the achievement of milestones or occurrence of other developments that trigger payments under our existing collaboration agreements or any additional collaboration agreements we may establish;
the costs of preparing, filing and prosecuting patent applications, maintaining and enforcing our intellectual property rights and defending intellectual property-related claims;
the extent to which we acquire or in-license other product candidates and technologies;
the costs of securing manufacturing arrangements for clinical and commercial production;
our ability to hire and retain skilled scientific and operational personnel to meet our development, clinical and commercial objectives;
costs related to the development of any companion diagnostics we may use in the future; and
the costs of establishing or contracting for sales and marketing capabilities if we obtain regulatory approvals to market our product candidates.
Our commercial revenue, if any, will be derived from sales of products that we do not expect to be commercially available for many years, if at all. Accordingly, we will need to continue to rely on additional financing to achieve our business objectives.
As a result of disruptions in the financial markets in general, and the recent decrease in biopharmaceutical stock prices and market capitalizations in particular, as well as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, equity and debt financing may be more difficult to obtain and may have a material adverse effect on our ability to meet our fundraising needs. We cannot guarantee that future financing will be available in sufficient amounts or on terms acceptable to us, if at all.
43
If we are unable to obtain funding on a timely basis or on acceptable terms, we may be required to significantly curtail, delay or discontinue one or more of our research or development programs or the commercialization of any product that has received regulatory approval or be unable to expand our operations or otherwise capitalize on our business opportunities as desired, which could materially affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Raising additional capital may cause dilution to our stockholders, restrict our operations or require us to relinquish rights to our technologies or product candidates.
Until such time, if ever, as we can generate substantial product revenue, we expect to finance our cash needs through one or a combination of private and public equity offerings, debt financings, collaborations, strategic alliances and licensing arrangements. We do not have any committed external source of funds. The terms of any financing may adversely affect the holdings or the rights of our stockholders and the issuance of additional securities, whether equity or debt, by us, or the possibility of such issuance, may cause the market price of our shares to decline. To the extent that we raise additional capital through the sale of common stock or securities convertible or exchangeable into common stock, the ownership interest of our existing common stockholders will be diluted, and the terms of those securities may include liquidation or other preferences that may materially adversely affect your rights as a common stockholder. Debt financing, if available, would increase our fixed payment obligations and may involve agreements that include covenants limiting or restricting our ability to take specific actions, such as incurring additional debt, acquiring, selling or licensing intellectual property rights, and making capital expenditures, declaring dividends, repurchase shares of our common stock, or other operating restrictions that could adversely impact our ability to conduct our business. We could also be required to meet certain milestones in connection with debt financing and the failure to achieve such milestones by certain dates may force us to relinquish rights to some of our technologies or product candidates or otherwise agree to terms unfavorable to us which could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and prospects.
We also could be required to seek funds through arrangements with additional collaborators or otherwise at an earlier stage than otherwise would be desirable. If we raise funds through additional collaborations, strategic alliances or licensing arrangements with third parties, we may have to relinquish valuable rights to our intellectual property, future revenue streams, research programs or product candidates, grant licenses on terms that may not be favorable to us or grant rights to develop and market our product candidates that we would otherwise prefer to develop and market ourselves, any of which may have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and prospects.
Risks Related to the Development of our Precision Oncology and Other Programs and Product Candidates
We have never successfully completed any clinical trials and we may be unable to do so for any product candidates we develop. Certain of our programs are still in preclinical development and may never advance to clinical development.
We have not yet demonstrated our ability to successfully register, initiate, enroll and complete clinical trials, including large-scale, pivotal clinical trials, obtain regulatory approvals, manufacture a commercial scale product or arrange for a third party to do so on our behalf, or conduct sales and marketing activities necessary for successful commercialization. We received FDA clearance of two IND applications for TNG908 and TNG462. We may not be able to file any future INDs for any of our other product candidates on the timelines we expect, if at all. Further, timelines for developing and filing INDs are subject to significant uncertainties and projected timelines can be improved upon or delayed. For example, we extended the timeline for filing an IND for our USP1 inhibitor program as we continued work on a development candidate, TNG348, that has improved pharmaceutical properties. Moreover, we cannot be sure that submission of an IND will result in the FDA allowing clinical trials to begin, or that, once begun, issues will not arise that require us to suspend or terminate clinical trials. Any guidance we receive from the FDA or other regulatory authorities is subject to change. These regulatory authorities could change their position, including on the acceptability of our trial designs or the clinical endpoints selected, which may require us to complete additional clinical trials or result in the imposition of stricter approval conditions than we currently expect. Successful completion of our clinical trials is a prerequisite to submitting an NDA to the FDA, a Marketing Authorization Application, or MAA, to the European Medicines Agency, or EMA, or other marketing applications to regulatory authorities in other jurisdictions, for each product candidate and, consequently, the regulatory approval of each product candidate. While the INDs for TNG908 and TNG462 were cleared by the FDA, it is possible that an adequate number of patients may not be enrolled on a timely basis, or at all, and the studies may not be completed (and preliminary, initial or final trial results may not be available) on time. Similarly, future clinical trials may not begin on time or be completed on schedule, if at all.
If we are required to conduct additional preclinical studies or clinical trials of our product candidates beyond those that we currently contemplate, if we are unable to successfully complete clinical trials of our product candidates or other
44
testing, if the results of these trials or tests are not positive or are only modestly positive or if there are safety and/or efficacy concerns, we may, among other things:
be delayed in obtaining regulatory approval for our product candidates;
not obtain regulatory approval at all;
obtain regulatory approval for indications or patient populations that are not as broad as intended or desired;
be subject to post-marketing testing requirements; or
have the product removed from the market after obtaining regulatory approval.
Our programs are focused on the development of oncology therapeutics for patients with genetically defined or biomarker-driven cancers, which is a rapidly evolving area of science, and the approach we are taking to discover and develop drugs is novel and may never lead to approved or marketable products.
The discovery and development of oncology therapeutics for patients with genetically defined or biomarker-driven cancers is a rapidly evolving area, and the scientific discoveries that form the basis for our efforts to discover and develop product candidates are relatively new. Our proprietary functional genomics discovery approach is based on the genetic concept of synthetic lethality. The scientific evidence to support the feasibility of developing product candidates based on these discoveries is both preliminary and limited. Although we believe, based on our preclinical work, that the genetic markers targeted by our programs drive the formation and spread of certain cancers, clinical results may not confirm this hypothesis or may only confirm it for certain alterations or certain tumor types. The patient populations for our product candidates are limited to those with specific target alterations and may not be completely defined but are substantially smaller than the general treated cancer population, and we will need to screen and identify these patients with targeted alterations. Successful identification of patients is dependent on several factors, including achieving certainty as to how specific alterations respond to our product candidates and the ability to identify such alterations. Furthermore, even if we are successful in identifying patients with specific targets, we cannot be certain that the resulting patient populations with each mutation will be as large as we anticipate, large enough to allow us to successfully obtain approval for each such mutation and commercialize our product candidates and achieve profitability.
Clinical product development involves a lengthy and expensive process, with an uncertain outcome.
Our preclinical studies, our TNG908 and TNG462 clinical trials and future clinical trials may not be successful. It is impossible to predict when or if any of our product candidates will prove effective and safe in humans or will receive regulatory approval. Before obtaining regulatory approval from regulatory authorities for the sale of any product candidate, we must complete preclinical studies and then conduct extensive clinical trials to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of our product candidates in humans. Clinical testing is expensive, difficult to design and implement, can take many years to complete and outcomes are uncertain. A failure of one or more clinical trials can occur at any stage of testing. The outcome of preclinical development testing and early clinical trials may not be predictive of the success of later clinical trials, and interim or preliminary results of a clinical trial do not necessarily predict final results (or be indicative of safety and efficacy if commercialized and used in a broader population). Moreover, preclinical and clinical data are often susceptible to varying interpretations and analyses, and many companies that have believed their product candidates performed satisfactorily in preclinical studies and clinical trials have nonetheless failed to obtain regulatory approval of their product candidates.
If we or third-parties are unable to successfully develop screening technology for biomarkers that enable patient selection, or experience significant delays in doing so, we may not realize the full commercial potential of our product candidates.
A key component of our strategy includes the use of next-generation sequencing to guide patient selection and/or to confirm target engagement of our product candidates. In some cases, third-parties provide this technology. It is not always the case, however, that the biomarker we have identified for patient selection is on the panel offered by certain next generation technology sequencing providers. If not already commercially available, we may collaborate with sequencing companies for the development of biomarkers associated with our product candidates. We may have difficulty in establishing or maintaining such development relationships, and we will face competition from other companies in establishing these collaborations.
There are also several risks associated with biomarker identification and validation. We, in collaboration with any diagnostic partners, may not be able to identify predictive biomarkers or pharmacodynamic biomarkers for one or more of our programs. We may not be able to validate potential biomarkers (e.g., certain genetic mutations) or their functional relevance preclinically in relevant in vitro or in vivo models. Data analytics and information from databases that we rely on for identifying or validating some of our biomarker-target relationships may not accurately reflect potential patient
45
populations. Potential biomarkers, even if validated preclinically, may not be functionally effective or validated in human clinical trials.
If next generation sequencing companies experience any delays including the biomarkers we have identified for patient selection on their panels or tests, or if they do not include those biomarkers on their panels or tests, our clinical trials may be delayed or may not identify sufficient patients to complete the trial and our clinical trials may be unsuccessful and our therapies will not advance to approval.
If we are unable to successfully validate, develop and obtain regulatory approval for diagnostic tests for our product candidates that require or would commercially benefit from such tests, or experience significant delays in doing so, we may not realize the full commercial potential of these product candidates.
In connection with the clinical development of our product candidates for certain indications, we may engage third parties to develop or otherwise obtain access to in vitro companion diagnostic tests to identify patient subsets within a disease category who may derive selective and meaningful benefit from our product candidates. Such companion diagnostics may be used during our clinical trials as well as in connection with the commercialization of our products that receive regulatory approval. To be successful, we or our collaborators will need to address a number of scientific, technical, regulatory and logistical challenges. The FDA and comparable foreign regulatory authorities regulate in vitro companion diagnostics as medical devices and, under that regulatory framework, will likely require the conduct of clinical trials to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of any diagnostics we or third parties may develop, which we expect will require separate regulatory clearance or approval prior to commercialization.
We intend to rely on third parties for the design, development and manufacture of companion diagnostic tests for our therapeutic product candidates that may require such tests. If we enter into such collaborative agreements, we will be dependent on the sustained cooperation and effort of our future collaborators in developing and obtaining approval for these companion diagnostics. It may be necessary to resolve issues such as selectivity/specificity, analytical validation, reproducibility, or clinical validation of companion diagnostics during the development and regulatory approval processes. Moreover, even if data from preclinical studies and early clinical trials appear to support development of a companion diagnostic for a product candidate, data generated in later clinical trials may fail to support the analytical and clinical validation of the companion diagnostic. We and our future collaborators may encounter difficulties in developing, obtaining regulatory clearance or approval for, manufacturing and commercializing companion diagnostics similar to those we face with respect to our therapeutic product candidates themselves, including issues with achieving regulatory clearance or approval, production of sufficient quantities at commercial scale and with appropriate quality standards, and in gaining market acceptance. If we are unable to successfully develop companion diagnostics for these therapeutic product candidates, or experience delays in doing so, the development and commercialization of these therapeutic product candidates may be adversely affected, these therapeutic product candidates may not obtain regulatory approval, and we may not realize the full commercial potential of any of these therapeutic products that obtain regulatory approval.
Interim, top-line, and initial data from our clinical trials that we announce or publish from time to time may change as more patient data become available and are subject to confirmation, audit and verification procedures that could result in material changes in the final data.
From time to time, we may publicly disclose interim, top-line or initial data from our current and future clinical trials, which is based on a preliminary analysis of then-available data, and the results and related findings and conclusions are subject to change following a more comprehensive review of the data, including audit and verification procedures, and as results from additional clinical trial participants become available and trial participants spend additional time on therapy. For example, we may report responses in certain patients that are unconfirmed at the time and which do not ultimately result in confirmed responses to treatment after follow-up evaluations. We may also make assumptions, estimations, calculations and conclusions as part of our analyses of data, and we may not have received or had the opportunity to fully and carefully evaluate all data. As a result, initial, interim and top-line data should be viewed with caution until the final data are available. In addition, we may report interim analyses of only certain endpoints rather than all endpoints. Interim data from clinical trials that we may complete are subject to the risk that one or more of the clinical outcomes may materially change as patient enrollment continues and more patient data become available. Adverse differences between initial or interim data and final data could significantly harm our business prospects and may cause the price of our common stock to fluctuate or decline.
Further, regulatory agencies and others may not accept or agree with our assumptions, estimates, calculations, conclusions or analyses or may interpret or weigh the importance of data differently, which could adversely impact the potential of the particular program, the likelihood of obtaining regulatory approval of the particular product candidate, the
46
scope of product label, and commercialization of any approved product. In addition, the information we choose to publicly disclose regarding a particular study or clinical trial is derived from information that is typically extensive, and you or others may not agree with what we determine is material or otherwise appropriate information to include in our disclosure.
We may from time to time indicate the intent to publicly disclose certain clinical trial data at a future date. We have, for example, noted that we will provide an update on the ongoing dose escalation portion of the TNG908 clinical trial, focusing on proof-of-mechanism. Due to the factors described above, and elsewhere in these Risk Factors, we may be unable to report that data on or before the time indicated to investors, we may not have the data to provide the information previously indicated and, even if we do provide such clinical trial data, the final results from that phase of the clinical trial may be different from what we disclose initially.
If the initial, interim or top-line data that we report differ from final or actual results, or if others, including regulatory authorities, disagree with the conclusions reached, our ability to obtain approval for, and commercialize, our product candidates may be significantly impaired, which could materially harm our business, operating results, prospects or financial condition.
We may incur additional costs or experience delays in initiating or completing, or ultimately be unable to complete, the development and commercialization of our product candidates.
We may experience delays in initiating or completing our preclinical studies or clinical trials, including as a result of delays in obtaining, or failure to obtain, the FDA’s clearance to initiate clinical trials under future INDs. Additionally, we cannot be certain that preclinical studies or clinical trials for our product candidates will not require redesign, will enroll an adequate number of subjects on time, or will be completed on schedule, if at all. We may experience numerous unforeseen events during, or as a result of, preclinical studies and clinical trials that could delay or prevent our ability to receive regulatory approval or commercialize our product candidates, including the following:
we may receive feedback from regulatory authorities that require us to modify the design or implementation of our preclinical studies or clinical trials or to delay or terminate a clinical trial;
regulators or IRB, or ethics committees may delay or may not authorize us or our investigators to commence a clinical trial or conduct a clinical trial at a prospective trial site;
we may experience delays in reaching, or fail to reach, agreement on acceptable terms with prospective trial sites and prospective CROs, the terms of which can be subject to extensive negotiation and may vary significantly among different CROs and trial sites;
preclinical studies or clinical trials of our product candidates may fail to show safety or efficacy or otherwise produce negative or inconclusive results, and we may decide, or regulators may require us, to conduct additional preclinical studies or clinical trials, or we may decide to abandon product research or development programs;
preclinical studies or clinical trials of our product candidates may not produce differentiated or clinically significant results across tumor types or indications;
the number of patients required for clinical trials of our product candidates may be larger than we anticipate, enrollment in these clinical trials may be slower than we anticipate or participants may drop out of these clinical trials or fail to return for post-treatment follow-up at a higher rate than we anticipate;
our third-party contractors may fail to comply with regulatory requirements, fail to maintain adequate quality controls, be unable to provide us with sufficient product supply to conduct or complete preclinical studies or clinical trials, fail to meet their contractual obligations to us in a timely manner, or at all;
our clinical trial sites or investigators may deviate from the clinical trial protocol or drop out of the trial, which may require that we add new clinical trial sites or investigators in order to ensure our trials generate statistically significant results;
we may elect to, or regulators or IRBs or ethics committees may require us or our investigators to, suspend or terminate clinical research for various reasons, including noncompliance with regulatory requirements or a finding that the participants in our clinical trials are being exposed to unacceptable health risks;
the cost of clinical trials of our product candidates may be greater than we anticipate;
clinical trials of our product candidates may be delayed due to complications associated with the evolving COVID-19 pandemic which we have experienced in connection with our TNG908 clinical trial as described below;
the supply or quality of our product candidates or other materials necessary to conduct clinical trials of our product candidates may be insufficient or inadequate;
our product candidates may have undesirable side effects or other unexpected characteristics, causing us or our investigators, regulators or IRBs or ethics committees to suspend or terminate the trials, or reports may arise from preclinical or clinical testing of other cancer therapies that raise safety or efficacy concerns about our product candidates;
regulators may revise the requirements for approving our product candidates, or such requirements may not be as we anticipate; and
47
regulatory developments with respect to our competitors’ products, including any developments, litigation or public concern about the safety of such products.
We could encounter delays if a clinical trial is suspended or terminated by us, by the IRBs of the institutions at which such trials are being conducted, by the Data Safety Monitoring Board, or DSMB, for such trial or by the FDA or other regulatory authorities. Such authorities may impose such a suspension or termination or clinical hold due to a number of factors, including failure to conduct the clinical trial in accordance with regulatory requirements or our clinical protocols, adverse findings upon an inspection of the clinical trial operations or trial site by the FDA or other regulatory authorities, unforeseen safety issues or adverse side effects, failure to demonstrate a benefit from using a product, changes in governmental regulations or administrative actions or lack of adequate funding to continue the clinical trial. Many of the factors that cause, or lead to, a delay in the commencement or completion of clinical trials may also ultimately lead to the denial of regulatory approval of our product candidates. Further, the FDA may disagree with our clinical trial design or our interpretation of data from clinical trials or may change the requirements for approval even after it has reviewed and commented on the design for our clinical trials.
Moreover, principal investigators for our current or future clinical trials may serve as scientific advisors or consultants to us from time to time and receive compensation in connection with such services. Under certain circumstances, we may be required to report some of these relationships to the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities. The FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authority may conclude that a financial relationship between us and a principal investigator has created a conflict of interest or otherwise affected the interpretation of the study. The FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authority may therefore question the integrity of the data generated at the applicable clinical trial site, and the utility of the clinical trial itself may be jeopardized. This could result in a delay in approval, or rejection, of our marketing applications by the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authority, as the case may be, and may ultimately lead to the denial of regulatory approval of one or more of our product candidates.
Our product development costs will also increase if we experience delays in testing or regulatory approvals. We do not know whether any of our current or future clinical trials will begin as planned, or whether any of our current or future clinical trials will need to be restructured or will be completed on schedule, if at all. Significant preclinical study or clinical trial delays, including those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, also could shorten any periods during which we may have the exclusive right to commercialize our product candidates or allow our competitors to bring products to market before we do, which would impair our ability to successfully commercialize our product candidates and may significantly harm our business, operating results, financial condition and prospects.
If we experience delays or difficulties in the enrollment of patients in clinical trials, our receipt of necessary regulatory approvals could be delayed or prevented.
We may not be able to initiate clinical trials for our product candidates if we are unable to locate and enroll a sufficient number of eligible patients to participate in these trials as required by the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities, or as needed to provide appropriate statistical power for a given trial. In particular, because we are focused on patients with specific genetic mutations for the development of our precision oncology programs and because some of the indications we are pursuing are orphan indications that have small populations, our ability to enroll eligible patients may be limited or may result in slower enrollment than we anticipate. For example, following the FDA's clearance of our IND application for the Phase 1/2 clinical trial of TNG908, we and our third-party CRO have initiated multiple clinical trial sites, and we are actively enrolling patients in the trial. While we expect to continue to enroll patients in our TNG908 clinical trial, we have experienced slower than expected enrollment, due to limited site resources resulting from COVID-19, and may experience slower enrollment as a result of limited trial populations due to competitive trials or other factors beyond our control. Delays in enrollment may affect the timing of any results from the TNG908 Phase 1/2 trials (as well as the timing for dose escalation and dose expansion) and therefore the regulatory approval (if any) for TNG908 may extend beyond the period we have targeted or beyond the timeline expected by investors.
The patient eligibility criteria defined in our trial protocols, including biomarker-driven identification, may limit the patient populations eligible for our clinical trials to a greater extent than competing clinical trials for the same indication that do not have biomarker-driven patient eligibility criteria. We also rely on the willingness and ability of clinicians to screen their patients for biomarkers to indicate which patients may be eligible for enrollment in our clinical trials.
In addition, some of our competitors have ongoing clinical trials for product candidates that treat the same indications as do our product candidates, and patients who would otherwise be eligible for our clinical trials may choose instead to enroll in clinical trials of our competitors’ product candidates (for example, two INDs for other companies have been cleared by the FDA for clinical trials of MTA-cooperative PRMT5 inhibitors for the treatment of cancer patients, such trials have already
48
enrolled patients and those trials are using some of the same clinical trial sites that we use). Further, the IND for TNG462, our next generation MTA-cooperative PRMT5 inhibitor, was cleared by the FDA in January 2023 and we expect to initiate the Phase 1/2 clinical trial for TNG462 in mid-2023. The patient population eligible for the TNG462 clinical trial will be largely the same as for the TNG908 clinical trial. As a result, our own trials may compete to enroll patients among a limited population and each trial may experience delays or limited enrollment. Furthermore, as noted above, our ability to enroll patients may be significantly delayed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (including due to lack of resources and personnel at trial sites), and we cannot accurately predict the extent and scope of such delays at this point.
In addition to the competitive trial environment, the eligibility criteria of our clinical trials will further limit the pool of available study participants as we will require that patients have specific characteristics that we can measure to assure their cancer is either severe enough or not too advanced to include them in a study. The process of finding patients may prove costly. We also may not be able to identify, recruit or enroll a sufficient number of patients to complete our clinical studies because of the perceived risks and benefits of the product candidates under study, the availability and efficacy of competing therapies and clinical trials, the proximity and availability of clinical trial sites for prospective patients, and the patient referral practices of physicians. If patients are unwilling to participate in our studies for any reason, the timeline for recruiting patients, conducting studies, reporting initial and final trial results and obtaining regulatory approval of potential products may be delayed.
Further, if we are unable to identify patients with the targeted genetic mutations for our clinical trials, this could compromise our ability to seek designations under applicable FDA expedited review and development programs, including Breakthrough Therapy Designation and Fast Track Designation (to the extent these are available to us), or otherwise seek to accelerate clinical development and regulatory timelines. Patient enrollment may be affected by other factors, including:
the severity of the disease under investigation;
the efforts to obtain and maintain patient consents and facilitate timely enrollment in clinical trials;
the ability to monitor patients adequately during and after treatment;
the ability to recruit clinical trial investigators with the appropriate competencies and experience;
reporting of the initial results of any of our clinical trials; and
factors we may not be able to control, including the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, that may limit patients, principal investigators or staff or clinical site availability.
We anticipate that certain of our current product candidates and future product candidates could be used in combination with third-party drugs or biologics, some of which are still in development, and we have limited or no control over the supply, regulatory status, or regulatory approval of such other drugs or biologics.
Certain of our current product candidates and any future product candidates may have the potential to be administered in combination with existing standards of care such as checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapies, chemotherapies, targeted therapies or radiotherapy. Our ability to develop and ultimately commercialize our current programs and product candidates and any future programs or product candidates for use in combination with other therapies will depend on our ability to access such drugs or biologics on commercially reasonable terms for the clinical trials and their availability for use with our commercialized product, if approved. We cannot be certain that current or potential future commercial relationships will provide us with a steady supply of such drugs or biologics on commercially reasonable terms or at all.
Any failure to maintain or enter into new successful commercial relationships, or the expense of purchasing checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapies or other potential combination or comparator therapies in the market, may delay our development timelines, increase our costs and jeopardize our ability to develop our current product candidates and any future product candidates as commercially viable therapies. If any of these occur, our business, financial condition, operating results, stock price and prospects may be materially harmed.
Moreover, the development of product candidates for use in combination with another product or product candidate may present challenges that are not faced for single agent product candidates. The FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may require us to use more complex clinical trial designs in order to evaluate the contribution of each product and product candidate to any observed effects. It is possible that the results of such trials could show that any positive previous trial results are attributable to the other therapy and not our current product candidates and any future product candidates. Even if successful, such trials may cause delays in the time to obtain regulatory approval, thereby limiting any exclusive periods we have to market the product candidate. Moreover, following product approval, the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may require that products used in conjunction with each other be cross labeled for combined use. To the extent that we do not have rights to the other product, this may require us to work with a third party to satisfy such a requirement. Moreover, developments related to the other product may impact our clinical trials for the combination as well
49
as our commercial prospects should we receive regulatory approval. Such developments may include changes to the other product’s safety or efficacy profile, changes to the availability of the other product, quality, manufacturing and supply issues with respect to the other product, and changes to the standard of care.
Results from earlier preclinical studies of our programs and product candidates are not necessarily predictive of the results of later preclinical studies and clinical trials of our programs and product candidates. If we cannot replicate the results from our earlier preclinical studies of our programs and product candidates in our later preclinical studies and clinical trials, we may be unable to successfully develop, obtain regulatory approval for and commercialize our product candidates.
Any results from our earlier preclinical studies of our programs or our product candidates may not necessarily be predictive of the results from later preclinical studies and clinical trials. Similarly, even if we are able to complete our planned preclinical studies and clinical trials of our product candidates according to our current development timeline, the results from such preclinical studies and clinical trials of our product candidates may not be replicated in subsequent preclinical studies or clinical trial results.
Many companies in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries have suffered significant setbacks in late-stage clinical trials after achieving positive results in early-stage development, and we cannot be certain that we will not face similar setbacks. These setbacks have been caused by, among other things, preclinical and other nonclinical findings made while clinical trials were underway, or safety, pharmacokinetic or efficacy observations made in preclinical studies and clinical trials, including previously unreported adverse events. Moreover, preclinical, nonclinical and clinical data are often susceptible to varying interpretations and analyses and many companies that believed their product candidates performed satisfactorily in preclinical studies and clinical trials nonetheless failed to obtain regulatory approval.
We may not be able to file INDs for our precision oncology and other programs to commence clinical trials on the timelines we expect, and even if we are able to, the FDA may not permit us to proceed.
We have received FDA clearance of our IND applications for TNG908 and TNG462 and we are actively enrolling patients in our Phase 1/2 clinical trial for TNG908. We expect to initiate the Phase 1/2 clinical trial for TNG462 in mid-2023. Additionally, we plan to file an IND for: (i) TNG260, our selective CoREST inhibitor, in the first half of 2023 and (ii) TNG348, our USP1 inhibitor, in mid-2023. However, we may not be able to file such INDs or INDs for future product candidates for our precision oncology or other programs on the timelines we expect. We have in the past, for example, extended the timeline for filing an IND for our USP1 inhibitor program as we continued to work on the development candidate in order to improve its pharmacologic properties.
Further, we may experience manufacturing delays or other delays with IND-enabling studies. Moreover, we cannot be sure that submission of an IND will result in the FDA allowing clinical trials to begin, or that, once begun, issues will not arise that suspend or terminate clinical trials. These risks also apply to amendments we submit to existing INDs or to a new IND. Any failure to file INDs on the timelines we expect or to obtain regulatory approvals for our planned clinical trials may prevent us from initiating or completing our clinical trials or commercializing our product candidates on a timely basis, if at all.
Our clinical trials or those of our current or future collaborators may reveal significant adverse events not seen in our preclinical or nonclinical studies and may result in a safety profile that could inhibit regulatory approval or market acceptance of any of our product candidates.
Before obtaining regulatory approvals for the commercial sale of any products, we must demonstrate through lengthy, complex and expensive preclinical studies and clinical trials that our product candidates are both safe and effective for use in each target indication. Clinical testing is expensive and can take many years to complete, and outcomes are inherently uncertain. Failure can occur at any time during the clinical trial process. Because our precision oncology programs and our product candidates are in an early stage of development, there is a high risk of failure, and we may never succeed in developing marketable products. There is typically an extremely high rate of attrition from the failure of product candidates proceeding through clinical trials. Product candidates in later stages of clinical trials also may fail to show the desired safety and efficacy profile despite having progressed through nonclinical studies and initial clinical trials. If the results of our current and future preclinical studies and clinical trials are inconclusive with respect to the safety, pharmacokinetics or efficacy of our product candidates, if we do not meet the clinical endpoints with statistical and clinically meaningful significance, or if there are safety concerns associated with our product candidates, we may be prevented from, or delayed in, obtaining regulatory approval for such product candidates. In some instances, there can be significant variability in safety or efficacy results between different clinical trials of the same product candidate due to numerous factors, including changes in trial procedures set forth in protocols, differences in the size and type of the patient populations, changes in and adherence to the clinical trial protocols and the rate of dropout among clinical trial participants. There may be side effects experienced
50
during clinical trials in connection with the use of oncology therapies. Results of our trials could reveal a high and unacceptable severity and prevalence of side effects as a result of the use of our therapy (or due to other factors). In such an event, our trials could be suspended or terminated, and the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities could order us to cease further development of or deny approval of our product candidates for any or all targeted indications. Treatment-related side effects could also affect patient recruitment or the ability of enrolled patients to complete the trial or result in potential product liability claims. Product liability claims can be expensive to defend and result in significant damages and harm to our reputation. While we do have insurance to cover certain product liability claims, including in connection with certain injury during clinical trials, the coverage may not may not cover all injuries, be sufficient to cover all expenses related to any injury and we may be required to pay damages from our own resources and the amount of such damages may be significant.
Further, our product candidates could cause undesirable side effects in clinical trials related to on-target toxicity. If on-target toxicity is observed, or if our product candidates have characteristics that are unexpected, we may need to abandon their development or limit development to more narrow uses or subpopulations in which the undesirable side effects or other characteristics are less prevalent, less severe or more acceptable from a risk-benefit perspective. In addition, our product candidates could cause undesirable side effects that we have not yet observed. Many compounds that initially showed promise in early-stage testing for treating cancer have later been found to cause side effects that prevented further development of the compound. There can be no assurance that any of our current or future clinical trials will ultimately be successful or support further clinical development or regulatory approval of any of our product candidates.
Certain of our product candidates will be used, and future product candidates may be used, in combination with one or more cancer therapies. The uncertainty resulting from the use of our product candidates in combination with other cancer therapies may make it difficult to accurately predict side effects in future clinical trials. As is the case with many treatments for cancer and rare diseases, it is likely that there may be side effects associated with the use of our product candidates. If significant adverse events or other side effects are observed in our clinical trial of our product candidate in combination with another therapy, we may have difficulty recruiting patients to our clinical trials, patients may drop out of our trials, or we may be required to abandon the trials or our development efforts of one or more product candidates altogether. We, the FDA or other applicable regulatory authorities, or an IRB may suspend or terminate clinical trials of a product candidate at any time for various reasons, including a belief that subjects in such trials are being exposed to unacceptable health risks or adverse side effects. Even if the side effects do not preclude combination products from obtaining or maintaining regulatory approval, undesirable side effects may inhibit market acceptance of the approved products due to its tolerability versus other therapies. Any of these developments could materially harm our business, operating results, financial condition and prospects.
Some of our product candidates modulate pathways for which there are currently no approved or effective therapies, and utilize novel binding locations, which may result in greater research and development expenses, regulatory issues that could delay or prevent approval, or discovery of unknown or unanticipated adverse effects.
Some of our product candidates modulate pathways for which there are currently no approved or effective therapies, which may result in uncertainty regarding our current and future development efforts and ability to obtain regulatory approval for such candidates. We select programs for cancer driver targets based on what we believe is compelling biological rationale. We explore new programs based on extensive preclinical data analysis which sometimes cannot predict efficacy or safety in humans.
Some of our product candidates utilize novel binding locations, which may result in greater research and development expenses, regulatory issues that could delay or prevent drug candidate development and approval, or discovery of unknown or unanticipated adverse effects. We utilize structural biology in tight integration with our medicinal chemistry and biology capabilities to predict and design the compounds that we believe will achieve the most desirable characteristics, including potency, selectivity, bioavailability, and drug-like properties. A disruption in any of these capabilities may have significant adverse effects in our ability to expand our pipeline of product candidates, and we cannot predict whether we will continue to have access to these capabilities in the future to support our pipeline development. In addition, there can be no assurance that we will be able to identify, design and synthesize the necessary compounds or that these or other problems related to the development of product candidates will not arise in the future, which may cause significant delays or raise problems we may not be able to resolve.
Regulatory approval of novel product candidates such as ours can be more expensive, riskier and take longer than for other, more well-known or extensively studied pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical product candidates due to our and regulatory agencies’ lack of experience with them. The novelty of the mechanism of action of any of our product candidates may lengthen the regulatory review process, require us to conduct additional studies or clinical trials, increase our development costs, lead to changes in regulatory positions and interpretations, delay or prevent approval and commercialization of our product candidates or lead to significant post-approval limitations or restrictions. The novel mechanism of action also means that fewer people are trained in or experienced with product candidates of this type, which
51
may make it more difficult to find, hire and retain personnel for research, development and manufacturing positions and to identify clinical trial investigators to use our product candidates in trials. If our inhibitors utilize a novel mechanism of action that has not been the subject of extensive study compared to more well-known product candidates, there is also an increased risk that we may discover previously unknown or unanticipated adverse effects during our preclinical studies and clinical trials. Any such events could adversely impact our business prospects, operating results and financial condition.
We conduct clinical trials for our product candidates outside the United States, and the FDA and comparable foreign regulatory authorities may not accept data from such trials.
We currently conduct certain clinical trials outside the United States, and expect we will continue to do so in the future, and these jurisdictions may include countries in Europe, Australia or other foreign jurisdictions. For example, a separate clinical trial for TNG908 has commenced in France. The acceptance of trial data from clinical trials conducted outside the United States by the FDA, or comparable foreign regulatory authorities, may be subject to certain conditions. In cases where data from clinical trials conducted outside the United States are intended to serve as the sole basis for regulatory approval in the United States, the FDA will generally not approve the application on the basis of foreign data alone unless: (i) the data are applicable to the United States population and United States medical practices, (ii) the trials were performed by clinical investigators of recognized competence and pursuant to Good Clinical Practices, or GCP, regulations; and (iii) the data may be considered valid without the need for an on-site inspection by the FDA, or if the FDA considers such inspection to be necessary, the FDA is able to validate the data through on-site inspection or other appropriate means. Additionally, the FDA’s clinical trial requirements, including sufficient size of patient populations and statistical powering, must be met. Many foreign regulatory bodies have similar approval requirements. In addition, such foreign trials would be subject to the applicable local laws of the foreign jurisdictions where the trials are conducted. There can be no assurance that the FDA or any comparable foreign regulatory authority will accept data from trials conducted outside of the United States or the applicable jurisdiction. If the FDA or any comparable foreign regulatory authority does not accept such data, it would result in the need for additional trials, which would be costly and time-consuming and delay aspects of our business plan, and which may result in our product candidates not receiving regulatory approval or clearance for commercialization in the applicable jurisdiction.
Although we intend to explore other therapeutic opportunities in addition to the programs and product candidates that we are currently developing, we may fail to identify viable new product candidates for clinical development for a number of reasons. If we fail to identify additional product candidates, our business could be materially harmed.
The ongoing success of businesses in the biopharmaceutical industry depend, to a large extent, on the ability to continue to introduce new products, especially as exclusivity rights to given therapies or indications expire. Research programs to pursue the development of our existing and planned product candidates for new or additional indications and to identify new product candidates and disease targets require substantial technical, financial and human resources whether or not they are ultimately successful. Our screening technology and research programs may fail to yield results for clinical development for a number of reasons, including:
the research methodology used may not be successful in identifying potential indications and/or product candidates (or the development of a chemical compound or formulation that has the desired effect cannot be developed);
potential product candidates may, after further study, be shown to have harmful adverse effects or other characteristics that indicate they are unlikely to be effective products; or
it may take greater human and financial resources than we possess to identify additional therapeutic opportunities for our product candidates or to develop suitable potential product candidates through internal research programs, thereby limiting our ability to develop, diversify and expand our potential product portfolio.
Because we have limited financial and human resources, we intend to initially focus on research programs and product candidates for a limited set of indications. As a result, we may forego or delay pursuit of opportunities with other product candidates or for other indications that later prove to have greater commercial potential or a greater likelihood of success. Our resource allocation decisions may cause us to fail to capitalize on viable commercial products or profitable market opportunities.
Accordingly, there can be no assurance that we will ever be able to identify additional therapeutic opportunities for our product candidates or to develop suitable product candidates through internal research programs, which could materially adversely affect our future growth and prospects.
52
If we are not able to obtain, or if there are delays in obtaining, required regulatory approvals for our product candidates, we will not be able to commercialize, or will be delayed in commercializing, our product candidates, and our ability to generate revenue will be materially impaired.
Our product candidates and the activities associated with their development and commercialization, including their design, testing, manufacture, safety, efficacy, recordkeeping, labeling, storage, approval, advertising, promotion, sale, distribution, import and export are subject to comprehensive regulation by the FDA and other regulatory agencies in the United States and by comparable foreign regulatory authorities. Before we can commercialize any of our product candidates, we must obtain regulatory approval. We received clearance of our IND applications for TNG908 and TNG462. We are actively enrolling patients in our Phase 1/2 clinical trial for TNG908 and we expect to initiate the Phase 1/2 clinical trial for TNG462 in mid-2023. We have not received approval to market any of our product candidates from regulatory authorities in any jurisdiction. It is possible that our product candidates, including any product candidates we may seek to develop in the future, will never obtain regulatory approval. We have limited experience in filing and supporting the applications necessary to gain regulatory approvals and expect to rely on third-party CROs and/or regulatory consultants to assist us in this process. Securing regulatory approval requires the submission of extensive preclinical and clinical data and supporting information to the various regulatory authorities for each therapeutic indication to establish the product candidate’s safety and efficacy. Securing regulatory approval also requires the submission of information about the product manufacturing process to, and inspection of manufacturing facilities by, the relevant regulatory authority. Our product candidates may not be effective, may be only moderately effective or may prove to have undesirable or unintended pharmacokinetics, side effects, toxicities or other characteristics that may preclude our obtaining regulatory approval or prevent or limit commercial use. In addition, regulatory authorities may find fault with our manufacturing process or facilities or that of third-party contract manufacturers. We and our third-party manufacturers that we expect to rely on for commercial production of our therapies, if approved, may also face greater than expected difficulty in manufacturing our product candidates.
The process of obtaining regulatory approvals, both in the United States and abroad, is expensive and often takes many years. If the FDA or a comparable foreign regulatory authority requires that we perform additional preclinical studies or clinical trials, approval may be delayed, if obtained at all. The length of such a delay varies substantially based upon a variety of factors, including the type, complexity and novelty of the product candidate involved. Changes in regulatory approval policies during the development period, changes in or enactment of additional statutes or regulations, or changes in regulatory review policies for each submitted NDA, premarket approval application, or PMA, or equivalent application types, may cause delays in the approval or rejection of an application. The FDA and comparable foreign regulatory authorities have substantial discretion in the approval process and may refuse to accept any application or may decide that our data are insufficient for approval and require additional preclinical, clinical or other studies. Our product candidates could be delayed in receiving, or fail to receive, regulatory approval for many reasons, including the following:
the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may disagree with the design or implementation of our clinical trials;
we may be unable to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities that a product candidate is safe and effective for its proposed indication or a related companion diagnostic is suitable to identify appropriate patient populations;
the results of clinical trials may not meet the level of statistical significance required by the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities for approval;
we may be unable to demonstrate that a product candidate’s clinical and other benefits outweigh its safety risks;
the data collected from clinical trials of our product candidates may not be sufficient to support the submission of an NDA, or other submission or to obtain regulatory approval in the United States or elsewhere;
the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may find deficiencies with or fail to approve the manufacturing processes or facilities of third-party manufacturers with which we contract for clinical and commercial supplies;
the approval policies or regulations of the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may significantly change such that our clinical data are insufficient for approval; and
· due to the factors identified above in this and other risk factors;
Even if we were to obtain regulatory approval, regulatory authorities may approve any of our product candidates for fewer or more limited indications than we request, thereby narrowing the commercial potential of the product candidate. In addition, regulatory authorities may grant approval contingent on the performance of costly post-marketing clinical trials, or may approve a product candidate with a label that does not include the labeling claims necessary or desirable for the successful commercialization of that product candidate. Any of the foregoing scenarios could materially harm the commercial prospects for our product candidates.
If we experience delays in obtaining, or if we fail to obtain, approval of our product candidates, the commercial prospects for our product candidates may be harmed and our ability to generate revenue will be materially impaired.
53
The COVID-19 pandemic, or a similar pandemic, epidemic, or outbreak of an infectious disease, may materially and adversely affect our business and our financial results and could cause a disruption to the development of our product candidates and the initiation and completion of clinical trials.
Public health crises such as pandemics or similar outbreaks could adversely impact our business. Beginning in 2020 and continuing through the date of this filing, a novel strain of a virus named SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2), or coronavirus, which causes COVID-19 has spread across the world. Despite progress with distribution and administration of vaccines, COVID-19 and its effects continue to evolve, and countries continue to respond with the implementation of various responses. The extent to which the coronavirus impacts our operations or those of our third-party partners, including our preclinical studies and clinical trial operations, will depend on future developments, which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted with confidence and could adversely impact our preclinical or clinical trial operations in the United States and our future clinical trial sites in foreign jurisdictions, including our ability to recruit and retain patients and principal investigators and site staff who, as healthcare providers, may have heightened exposure to COVID-19 if an outbreak occurs in their geography. For example, similar to other biopharmaceutical companies, we may experience delays in initiating IND-enabling studies, protocol deviations, delays in enrolling our clinical trials, or dosing of patients in our clinical trials as well as in activating new trial sites. COVID-19 may also affect employees of third-party CROs located in affected geographies that we expect that we will rely upon to carry out our clinical trials. Any negative impact COVID-19 has to patient enrollment or treatment or the execution of our product candidates could cause costly delays to clinical trial activities, which could adversely affect our ability to obtain regulatory approval for and to commercialize our product candidates, increase our operating expenses, and have a material adverse effect on our financial results.
Additionally, timely enrollment in planned clinical trials and the reporting of clinical trial results is dependent upon clinical trial sites which could be adversely affected by global health matters, such as pandemics. We are conducting, and plan to conduct, clinical trials for our product candidates in geographies which are currently affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including our clinical trial for TNG908, a Phase 1/2 clinical trial in which we are actively enrolling patients in the United States and in France. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the resources at clinical trial sites, among other factors, may impact the enrollment and progression (including dose escalation and dose expansion) of the Phase 1/2 trials for TNG908 and TNG462 and any future clinical trials we may conduct. Some factors from the COVID-19 pandemic that may delay or otherwise adversely affect enrollment in the clinical trials of our product candidates, including TNG908 and TNG462, as well as our business generally, include:
the potential diversion of healthcare resources away from the conduct of clinical trials to focus on pandemic concerns, including the attention of physicians serving as our clinical trial investigators, hospitals serving as our clinical trial sites and hospital staff supporting the conduct of our clinical trials;
the potential negative effect on the operations of our third-party manufacturers;
interruption in global shipping affecting the transport of clinical trial materials, such as patient samples, investigational drug product and conditioning drugs and other supplies used in our clinical trials;
staffing shortages at clinical trial sites, both healthcare professionals (e.g. physicians, nurses) and support staff, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges of finding replacements may adversely impact the timing and on-going performance of a clinical trial;
changes in local regulations as part of a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which may require us to change the ways in which our clinical trials are conducted, which may result in unexpected costs, or to discontinue such clinical trials altogether; and
interruption or delays in the operations of the FDA or other regulatory authorities, which may impact review and approval timelines.
Our employees, including our lab personnel, are currently working at our office headquarters. We have, in the past, taken temporary precautionary measures intended to help minimize the risk of the virus to our employees, including temporarily requiring certain of our employees to work remotely, suspending all non-essential travel worldwide for our employees, implementing COVID-19 testing policies for employees in certain instances and discouraging employee attendance at industry events and in-person work-related meetings, which could negatively affect our business.
Risks Related to Commercialization
We face substantial competition, which may result in others discovering, developing or commercializing products before or more successfully than we do.
The development and commercialization of new products in the biopharmaceutical and related industries is highly competitive. We compete in the segments of the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and other related markets that address structural biology-guided chemistry-based drug design to develop therapies in the fields of cancer and genetic diseases. There
54
are many other companies focusing on precision oncology to develop therapies in the fields of cancer and other diseases. Specifically, with respect to TNG908 and TNG462 (each of which received FDA clearance of our respective IND applications), we are aware that Mirati Therapeutics, Inc. and Amgen each have a clinical MTA-cooperative PRMT5 inhibitor program that have commenced clinical trials, using the same mechanism of action as TNG908 and TNG462 (and there are other indirect competitors in the PRMT5 inhibition space as well).
We also compete more broadly across the market for cost-effective and reimbursable cancer treatments. Some of these competitive products and therapies are based on scientific approaches that are the same as or similar to our approach (as noted above), and others are based on entirely different approaches. These companies include divisions of large pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology companies of various sizes, such as Amgen. We face competition with respect to our current product candidates, and expect that we will face competition with respect to any product candidates that we may seek to develop or commercialize in the future, from major pharmaceutical companies, specialty pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology companies worldwide. Potential competitors also include academic institutions, government agencies and other public and private research organizations that conduct research, seek patent protection and establish collaborative arrangements for research, development, manufacturing and commercialization.
Any product candidates that we successfully develop and commercialize will compete with currently approved therapies and new therapies that may become available in the future from segments of the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and other related markets. We believe principal competitive factors to our business include, among other things, our ability to identify biomarkers and third-party genetic screening services that include the applicable biomarkers in their test panels, ability to successfully transition research programs into clinical development, and the scalability of the platform, pipeline, and business. The key competitive factors affecting the success of all of our product candidates, if approved, are likely to be their efficacy, safety, convenience, price, level of generic competition and novel competition that utilize the same mechanism of action and availability of reimbursement from government and other third-party payors.
Many of the companies that we compete against or which we may compete against in the future have significantly greater financial resources and expertise in research and development, manufacturing, preclinical and clinical testing, obtaining regulatory approvals and marketing, promoting and selling approved products than we do. Mergers and acquisitions in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostic industries may result in even more resources being concentrated among a smaller number of our competitors. Smaller or early-stage companies may also prove to be significant competitors, particularly through collaborative arrangements with large and established companies. These competitors also compete with us in recruiting and retaining qualified scientific and management personnel and establishing clinical trial sites and patient registration for clinical trials, as well as in acquiring technologies complementary to, or necessary for, our programs. If barriers to entry do not remain in place, other companies may be able to more directly or effectively compete with us.
Our commercial opportunity could be reduced or eliminated if our competitors develop and commercialize products that are safer, more effective, have fewer or less severe side effects, are more convenient or are less expensive than any products that we or our collaborators may develop. Our competitors also may obtain FDA or other regulatory approval for their products sooner than we may obtain approval for ours, which could result in our competitors establishing a strong market position before we or our collaborators are able to enter the market.
If the market opportunities for our programs and product candidates are smaller than we estimate or if any regulatory approval that we obtain is based on a narrower definition of the patient population, our revenue and ability to achieve profitability will be adversely affected, possibly materially.
The incidence and prevalence for target patient populations of our programs and product candidates have not been established with precision. TNG908 and TNG462, our first two product candidates to have INDs cleared by the FDA, are both oral small molecule inhibitors of PRMT5. We are developing TNG908 for the treatment of patients with solid tumors with MTAP deletion, a genetic alteration which occurs in 10% to 15% of all human tumors, including NSCLC, mesothelioma, cholangiocarcinoma, and GBM, as well as indications where there are limited treatment options with no standard of care, including MPNST. Our next-generation PRMT5 product candidate, TNG462, is being developed for the same patient population as TNG908 with the exception of GBM as TNG462 does not cross the blood-brain barrier in preclinical non-human primate models. Additionally, TNG260 is a first-in-class, CoREST inhibitor, which reverses the immune evasion effect of STK11 loss-of-function mutations. STK11 loss-of-function mutations are a genetic alteration in approximately 15% of NSCLC, 15% of cervical, 10% carcinoma of unknown primary, 5% of breast and 3% of pancreatic cancers. TNG348 is a USP1 inhibitor that is a strong synthetic lethal target for BRCA1/2 mutations, which are present in approximately 15% of ovarian, 10% of breast, 10% of prostate, 5% of endometrial and 5% of pancreatic cancers and additionally, BRCA wild-type HRD+ mutations which are present in approximately 40% of ovarian, 15% of breast, 3% of
55
prostate and 2% of pancreatic cancers. Our projections of both the number of people who have these diseases, as well as the subset of people with these diseases who have the potential to benefit from treatment with our product candidates, are based on our estimates.
The total addressable market opportunity will ultimately depend upon, among other things, the diagnosis criteria included in the final label (if approved for marketing), the indications for which our product candidates are approved for sale, acceptance by the medical community and patient access, product pricing and reimbursement. The number of patients with the cancers and solid tumors for which our product candidates may be approved as treatment may turn out to be lower than expected, patients may not be otherwise amenable to treatment with our products, or new patients may become increasingly difficult to identify or gain access to, all of which would adversely affect our results of operations and our business. We may not be successful in our efforts to identify additional product candidates. Due to our limited resources and capital, we must prioritize development of certain product candidates, which may prove to be the wrong choice and may adversely affect our business.
If our current product candidates or any future product candidates do not achieve broad market acceptance, the revenue that we generate from their sales may be limited, and we may never become profitable.
We have never commercialized a product candidate for any indication. Even if our current product candidates and any future product candidates are approved by the appropriate regulatory authorities for marketing and sale, they may not gain acceptance among physicians, patients, third-party payors, and others in the medical community. If any product candidates for which we obtain regulatory approval do not gain an adequate level of market acceptance, we may not generate significant revenue and may not become profitable or may be significantly delayed in achieving profitability. Market acceptance of our current product candidates and any future product candidates by the medical community, patients and third-party payors will depend on a number of factors, some of which are beyond our control. For example, physicians are often reluctant to switch their patients, and patients may be reluctant to switch, from existing therapies even when new and potentially more effective or safer treatments enter the market. If public perception is influenced by claims that the use of certain precision oncology product candidates or immunotherapies and targeted therapies is unsafe, whether related to our or our competitors’ products, our potential future products may not be accepted by the general public or the medical community. Future adverse events in precision oncology, immuno-oncology or the biopharmaceutical industry could also result in greater governmental regulation, stricter labeling requirements and potential regulatory delays in the testing or approvals of our product candidates.
Efforts to educate the medical community and third-party payors on the benefits of our current product candidates and any future product candidates may require significant resources and may not be successful. If our current product candidates or any future product candidates are approved but do not achieve an adequate level of market acceptance, which will depend on a number of factors, we could be prevented from or significantly delayed in achieving profitability.
Risks Related to Our Reliance on Third Parties
We expect to rely on third parties to conduct our clinical trials. If these third parties do not successfully carry out their contractual duties, comply with regulatory requirements or meet expected deadlines, we may not be able to obtain regulatory approval for or commercialize our product candidates and our business could be substantially harmed.
We do not have the ability to independently conduct clinical trials. We expect to rely on medical institutions, clinical investigators, contract laboratories and other third parties, such as CROs, to conduct or otherwise support clinical trials for our product candidates, including our Phase 1/2 clinical trials of TNG908 and TNG462, and for any other product candidates that emerge from our precision oncology programs. We may also rely on academic and private non-academic institutions to conduct and sponsor clinical trials relating to our product candidates.
Since we will rely on third parties for execution of clinical trials for our product candidates, we will control only certain aspects of their activities that will be important for the conduct of the trial (and such control that we do exercise may be based on contractual provisions that may be breached by the third-party). For example, for the Phase 1/2 clinical trials of TNG908 and TNG462, we will rely on one CRO (and expect that we will rely on that same CRO in connection with our TNG260 clinical trial if the IND for such therapy is approved by the FDA) for the conduct of the trials and, depending on the trial, one or a very limited number of manufacturers to manufacture the study drug to be used during the course of the trials. We are responsible for ensuring that each of our clinical trials is conducted and the study drug is manufactured in accordance with the applicable protocol, legal and regulatory requirements and scientific standards, and our reliance on a CRO or CDMO will not relieve us of our regulatory responsibilities. For any violations of laws and regulations during the conduct of our clinical trials, we could be subject to warning letters or enforcement action that may include civil penalties, suspension/hold or termination of trials and other penalties up to and including criminal prosecution.
56
We, our principal investigators and our CROs are required to comply with regulations, including GCP for conducting, monitoring, recording and reporting the results of clinical trials to ensure that the data and results are scientifically credible and accurate, and that the trial patients are adequately informed of the potential risks of participating in clinical trials and their rights are protected. These regulations are enforced by the FDA, the Competent Authorities of the Member States of the European Economic Area and comparable foreign regulatory authorities for any products in clinical development. The FDA enforces GCP regulations through periodic inspections of clinical trial sponsors, principal investigators and trial sites. If we, our principal investigators or our CROs fail to comply with applicable GCP, the clinical data generated in our clinical trials may be deemed unreliable and the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may require us to perform additional clinical trials before approving our marketing applications. We cannot assure you that, upon inspection, the FDA will determine that any of our current or future clinical trials will comply with GCP. In addition, our clinical trials generally must be conducted with product candidates produced under cGMP regulations. Our failure or the failure of our principal investigators, third party manufacturers or CROs to comply with these regulations may require us to repeat clinical trials, which would delay the regulatory approval process, significantly increase our expenditures and could also subject us to enforcement action. We also are required to register ongoing clinical trials and post the results of completed clinical trials on a government-sponsored database, ClinicalTrials.gov, within certain timeframes. Failure to do so can result in fines, adverse publicity and civil and criminal sanctions.
Although we have designed our Phase 1/2 clinical trials of TNG908 and TNG462 and intend to design the future clinical trials for our product candidates, the operational details of these trials will be executed by CROs and we expect CROs will conduct all of our future clinical trials. As a result, many important aspects of our development programs, including their conduct and timing, are outside of our direct control. Our reliance on third parties to conduct future clinical trials also results in less direct control over the management of data developed through clinical trials than would be the case if we were relying entirely upon our own staff. Communicating with outside parties can also be challenging, potentially leading to mistakes as well as difficulties in coordinating activities. Outside parties may have staffing difficulties, fail to comply with contractual obligations, experience regulatory compliance issues, undergo changes in priorities or become financially distressed or form relationships with other entities, some of which may be our competitors.
If the principal investigators or CROs do not perform clinical trials in a satisfactory manner, breach their obligations to us or fail to comply with regulatory requirements, the development, regulatory approval and commercialization of our product candidates may be delayed, we may not be able to obtain regulatory approval and commercialize our product candidates or our development program may be materially and irreversibly harmed. If we are unable to rely on clinical data collected by our principal investigators or CROs, we could be required to repeat, extend the duration of, or increase the size of any clinical trials we conduct and this could significantly delay commercialization and require significantly greater expenditures.
If any of our relationships with these third-party principal investigators or CROs terminate, we may not be able to enter into arrangements with alternative investigators (or clinical trial sites) and CROs. If principal investigators or CROs do not successfully carry out their contractual obligations or meet expected deadlines, if they need to be replaced or if the quality or accuracy of the clinical data they obtain is compromised due to the failure to adhere to our clinical protocols, regulatory requirements or for other reasons, any clinical trials such principal investigators or CROs are associated with may be extended, delayed or terminated, and we may not be able to obtain regulatory approval for, or successfully commercialize, our product candidates. As a result, we believe that our financial results and the commercial prospects for our product candidates in the subject indication would be harmed, our costs could increase and our ability to generate future revenue, if any, could be delayed.
We have entered into collaborations and we may seek to establish additional collaborations in the future, and we might not realize the anticipated benefits of such collaborations. If we are not able to establish additional collaborations on commercially reasonable terms, or at all, we may have to alter our development and commercialization plans.
Our product development programs and the potential commercialization of our product candidates will require substantial additional cash to fund expenses. For some of our product candidates, we may decide to collaborate with other pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, like our existing collaboration with Gilead, for the development and potential commercialization of those product candidates.
We face significant competition in seeking appropriate collaborators. Whether we reach a definitive agreement for a collaboration will depend, among other things, upon our assessment of the collaborator’s resources and expertise, the terms and conditions of the proposed collaboration and the proposed collaborator’s own evaluation of a potential collaboration. Factors a potential collaborator will use to evaluate a collaboration may include the design or results of clinical trials, the likelihood of approval by the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities, the potential market for the subject product candidate, the costs and complexities of manufacturing and delivering such product candidate to patients, the potential of
57
competing products, the existence of uncertainty with respect to our ownership of technology, which can exist if there is a challenge to such ownership without regard to the merits of the challenge, as well as industry, and market conditions generally. The collaborator may also consider alternative product candidates or technologies for similar indications that may be available to collaborate on and whether such a collaboration could be more attractive than the one with us for our product candidate. The terms of any additional collaborations or other arrangements that we may establish may not be favorable to us.
We may also be restricted under collaboration agreements from entering into future agreements on certain terms with potential collaborators. Collaborations are complex and time-consuming to negotiate and document. In addition, there have been a significant number of recent business combinations among large pharmaceutical companies that have resulted in a reduced number of potential future collaborators.
We may not be able to negotiate additional collaborations on a timely basis, on acceptable terms, or at all. If we are unable to do so, we may have to curtail the development of the product candidate for which we are seeking to collaborate, reduce or delay its development program or one or more of our other development programs, delay its potential commercialization, or increase our expenditures and undertake development or commercialization activities at our own expense. If we elect to increase our expenditures to fund development or commercialization activities on our own, we may need to obtain additional capital, which may not be available to us on acceptable terms or at all and it may be difficult to recruit and retain the expertise needed to launch and commercialize a new drug therapy. If we do not have sufficient funds, we may not be able to further develop our product candidates or bring them to market and generate product revenue.
In addition, any future collaborations that we enter into may not be successful. The success of our collaboration arrangements will depend heavily on the efforts and activities of our collaborators. Collaborators generally have significant discretion in determining the efforts and resources that they will apply to these collaborations. Research, development, commercialization and/or strategic collaborations, including the existing collaboration that we have with Gilead, are subject to numerous risks that may impact the success of a collaboration, which include the following:
collaborators may have significant control or discretion in determining the efforts and resources that they will apply to a collaboration, and might not commit sufficient efforts and resources or might misapply those efforts and resources;
we may have limited influence or control over the approaches to research, development and/or commercialization of product candidates in the territories in which our collaboration partners lead research, development and/or commercialization;
collaborators might not pursue research, development and/or commercialization of collaboration product candidates or might elect not to continue or renew research, development and/or commercialization programs based on nonclinical and/or clinical trial results, changes in their strategic focus, availability of funding or other factors, such as a business combination that diverts resources or creates competing priorities;
collaborators might delay, provide insufficient resources to, or modify or stop research or clinical development for collaboration product candidates or require a new formulation of a product candidate for clinical testing;
collaborators with sales, marketing and distribution rights to one or more product candidates might not commit sufficient resources to sales, marketing and distribution or might otherwise fail to successfully commercialize those product candidates;
collaborators could independently develop, or develop with third parties, products that compete directly or indirectly with our product candidates;
· disputes might arise regarding the ownership of inventions and know-how resulting from the joint creation or use of intellectual property by our collaborators and us and our partners or with those we engage in connection with sponsored research;
collaborators might not properly maintain or defend our intellectual property rights or might use our intellectual property improperly or in a way that jeopardizes our intellectual property or the potential commercial benefit of our product candidates or exposes us to potential liability;
collaboration activities might result in the collaborator having intellectual property covering our activities or product candidates, which could limit our rights or ability to research, develop and/or commercialize our product candidates;
collaborators might not be in compliance with laws applicable to their activities under the collaboration, which could impact the collaboration and us;
disputes might arise between a collaborator and us that could cause a delay or termination of the collaboration or result in costly litigation that diverts management attention and resources; and
collaborations might be terminated, which could result in a need for additional capital to pursue further research, development and/or commercialization of our product candidates.
In addition, funding provided by a collaborator might not be sufficient to advance product candidates under the collaboration. For example, although Gilead provided us with $175.0 million upfront payments and a $20.0 million equity investment in connection with our collaboration, we might need additional funding to advance product candidates prior to the completion of the clinical milestones of the collaboration agreement with Gilead.
58
If a collaborator terminates a collaboration or a program under a collaboration, including by failing to exercise a license or other option under the collaboration, whether because we fail to meet a milestone or otherwise, any potential revenue from the collaboration would be significantly reduced or eliminated. In addition, we will likely need to either secure other funding to advance research, development and/or commercialization of the relevant product candidate or abandon that program (or abandon a different program to allocate resources to the program rejected by the collaborator), the development of the relevant product candidate could be significantly delayed, and our cash expenditures could increase significantly if we are to continue research, development and/or commercialization of the relevant product candidates.
Additionally, disagreements between parties to a collaboration arrangement regarding clinical development and commercialization matters can lead to delays in the development process or commercializing of the applicable product candidate and, in some cases, termination of the collaboration arrangement. These disagreements can be difficult to resolve if neither of the parties has final decision-making authority. Collaborations with pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies and other third parties often are terminated or allowed to expire by the other party. Any such termination or expiration would adversely affect us financially and could harm our business reputation
Any one or more of these risks, if realized, could reduce or eliminate future revenue from product candidates under our collaborations, and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and/or growth prospects.
We contract with third parties for the manufacture of our product candidates for preclinical development and expect to continue to do so for clinical testing and commercialization. This reliance on third parties increases the risk that we will not have sufficient quantities of our product candidates or products or such quantities at an acceptable cost, which could delay, prevent or impair our development or commercialization efforts.
We do not currently own or operate, nor do we have any plans to establish in the future, any manufacturing facilities. We rely, and expect to continue to rely, on third parties for the manufacture of our product candidates for preclinical development and clinical testing, as well as for the commercial manufacture of our products if any of our product candidates receive regulatory approval. In some cases, we rely on one party to manufacture our preclinical and clinical products and we exercise limited direct control over this manufacturer (and it would be time consuming and expensive to move production to a new manufacturer, if we were able to do so at all). This reliance on third parties increases the risk that we will not have sufficient quantities of our product candidates or products, if approved, or such quantities at an acceptable cost or quality, which could delay, prevent or impair our development or commercialization efforts. For example, we rely on a limited number of CDMOs to perform certain chemistry-related work on our preclinical product candidates. One such CDMO is located in Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia in February 2022 and, as a result, their work on our behalf of was interrupted. Another CDMO, with operations in Shanghai, was impacted when lock-down procedures were recently implemented due to COVID-19 and was unable to operate at full capacity. Events such as those in Ukraine and China may delay development of our future product candidates, which have been temporary and limited to date, but such delays may materially impact the timing for moving products into development candidate stage and IND-enabling studies, as well as initiating trials, in the future.
The facilities used by our contract manufacturers to manufacture our product candidates must be inspected by the FDA pursuant to pre-approval inspections that will be conducted after we submit our marketing applications to the FDA. We do not control the manufacturing process of, and will be completely dependent on, our contract manufacturers for compliance with cGMP in connection with the manufacture of our product candidates. If our contract manufacturers cannot successfully manufacture material that conforms to our specifications and the strict regulatory requirements of the FDA or others, they will not be able to pass regulatory inspections and/or maintain regulatory compliance for their manufacturing facilities. In addition, we have no control over the ability of our contract manufacturers to maintain adequate quality control, quality assurance and qualified personnel. If the FDA or a comparable foreign regulatory authority finds deficiencies with or does not approve these facilities for the manufacture of our product candidates or if it finds deficiencies or withdraws any such approval in the future, we may need to find alternative manufacturing facilities, which would significantly impact our ability to develop, obtain regulatory approval for or market our product candidates, if approved.
If any CDMO with whom we contract fails to perform its obligations, we may be forced to enter into an agreement with a different CDMO, which we may not be able to do on reasonable terms, if at all, and such new agreement may result in significantly greater costs to us. In such scenario, our clinical trials supply could be delayed significantly as we establish alternative supply sources. In some cases, the technical skills required to manufacture our products or product candidates may be unique or proprietary to the original CDMO and we may have difficulty, or there may be contractual restrictions prohibiting us from, transferring such skills to a back-up or alternate supplier, or we may be unable to transfer such skills at all. In addition, if we are required to change CDMOs for any reason, we will be required to verify that the new CDMO
59
maintains facilities and procedures that comply with quality standards and with all applicable regulations. We will also need to verify, such as through a manufacturing comparability study, that any new manufacturing process will produce our product candidate according to the specifications previously submitted to the FDA or another regulatory authority. The delays associated with the verification of a new CDMO could negatively affect our ability to develop product candidates or commercialize our products in a timely manner or within budget. Furthermore, a CDMO may possess technology related to the manufacture of our product candidate that such CDMO owns independently. This would increase our reliance on such CDMO or require us to obtain a license from such CDMO in order to have another CDMO manufacture our product candidates. In addition, changes in manufacturers often involve changes in manufacturing procedures and processes, which could require that we conduct bridging studies between our prior clinical supply used in our clinical trials and that of any new manufacturer. We may be unsuccessful in demonstrating the comparability of clinical supplies which could require the conduct of additional clinical trials.
Further, our failure, or the failure of our third-party manufacturers to comply with applicable regulations could result in sanctions being imposed on us, including clinical holds, fines, injunctions, civil penalties, delays, suspension or withdrawal of approvals, license revocation, seizures or recalls of product candidates or products, if approved, operating restrictions and criminal prosecutions, any of which could significantly and adversely affect our business and supplies of our product candidates.
Our product candidates and any products that we may develop may compete with other product candidates and approved products for access to manufacturing facilities. There are a limited number of manufacturers that operate under cGMP regulations and that might be capable of manufacturing for us.
The third parties upon whom we rely for the supply of the active pharmaceutical ingredients and drug product to be used in our product candidates are our sole source of supply, and the loss of any of these suppliers could significantly harm our business.
The active pharmaceutical ingredients, or API, and drug product we expect to use in all of our product candidates are supplied to us from single-source suppliers, in some cases the same manufacturer produces the API and drug product. Our ability to successfully develop our product candidates, and to ultimately supply our commercial products in quantities sufficient to meet the market demand (and to meet requirements in connection with our planned clinical trials), depends in part on our ability to obtain the API and drug product for these products in accordance with regulatory requirements and in sufficient quantities for clinical testing and commercialization. We are also unable to predict how changing global economic conditions or global health concerns such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as potential supply chain disruptions or cost increases related thereto, will affect our third-party suppliers and manufacturers. Any negative impact of such matters on our third-party suppliers and manufacturers may also have an adverse impact on our results of operations or financial condition.
For all of our product candidates, we intend to identify and qualify additional manufacturers to provide such API and drug product prior to submission of an NDA to the FDA and/or an MAA to the EMA. We are not certain, however, that our single-source suppliers will be able to meet our demand for products, either because of the nature of our agreements with those suppliers, our limited experience with those suppliers or our relative importance as a customer to those suppliers. It may be difficult for us to assess their ability to timely meet our demand in the future based on past performance. While our suppliers have generally met our demand for their products on a timely basis in the past, they may subordinate our needs in the future to their other customers.
Establishing additional or replacement suppliers for the API and drug product used in our product candidates, if required, may not be accomplished quickly (or at all). If we are able to find a replacement supplier, such replacement supplier would need to be qualified and may require additional regulatory inspection or approval, which could result in further delay. While we seek to maintain adequate inventory of the API and drug product used in our product candidates, any interruption or delay in the supply of components or materials, or our inability to obtain such API and drug product from alternate sources at acceptable prices in a timely manner could impede, delay, limit or prevent our development efforts, which could harm our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.
Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property
If we cannot obtain new patents, maintain our existing patents and protect the confidentiality and proprietary nature of our trade secrets and other intellectual property, our business and competitive position may be harmed.
60
Our success depends in part on our ability to obtain and maintain patent and regulatory protections for our products candidates, to preserve our trade secrets and other proprietary rights and to prevent third parties from infringing on our rights and our proprietary technology.
We have procured patent rights, through both ownership and license, that cover our product candidates, and expect apply for additional patent protections in the future. However, our patent applications may not result in the issuance of patents in the U.S. or other countries. In addition, a patent may be issued in one country, but a counterpart patent may not be issued in another country, which is not uncommon in the biopharmaceutical industry.
Even if a patent is issued, that is not conclusive as to its inventorship, scope, validity or enforceability and therefore that patent may not afford adequate (or any) protection for our product candidates or future approved products. On the basis of such inconclusiveness, third parties may challenge our patents. Furthermore, patents have a limited lifespan. In the United States and most other jurisdictions in which we have undertaken patent filings, the natural expiration of a patent is generally twenty years after it is filed, assuming all maintenance fees are paid. Given the amount of time required for the development, testing and regulatory review of new product candidates, patents protecting such candidates might expire before or shortly after such candidates are commercialized. As a result, patents we may own or in-license may not provide us with adequate and continuing patent protection sufficient to exclude others from commercializing drugs similar or identical to our current or future product candidates, including generic versions of such drugs. Nor can we be certain that we will obtain any patent term extension as permitted under the “Hatch-Waxman Amendments” which permit a patent restoration term of up to five years as compensation for patent term lost during product development and the FDA regulatory review process.
If any of our patents are narrowed, invalidated, revoked or become unenforceable, competitors may develop and market products similar or identical to ours that do not conflict with or infringe our patents rights, which could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition. Even if we obtain and maintain patents, our business may be significantly harmed if the patents are not broad enough to protect our products from copycat or similar products.
In addition, if there are challenges to our intellectual property by third parties, we may in the future enter into agreements with those parties that provide certain intellectual property rights to our future marketed products or products in our pipeline. If we do enter into such agreements, we may not be the exclusive provider of a therapy and, as a result, we expect that any potential revenue from the sales of such therapies would be materially and negatively impacted.
We may in the future be subject to claims by our former employees or consultants asserting an ownership right in our patents or patent applications, as a result of the work they performed on our behalf. Although we generally require all of our employees, consultants and advisors and any other third parties who have access to our proprietary know-how, information or technology to assign or grant similar rights to the inventions they make in the course of their work to us, we cannot be certain that we have executed such agreements with all parties who may have contributed to our intellectual property, nor can we be certain that our agreements with such parties will be upheld in the face of a potential challenge, or that they will not be breached, for which we may not have an adequate remedy.
We have, and expect that we will continue, to finance or collaborate in research and development projects conducted by third parties, including government organizations, hospitals, universities or other educational or research institutions, or other for-profit companies. Such third parties may be unwilling to grant us certain rights to technology or products developed through such projects. Disputes may also arise as to the rights to technology or products developed in collaboration with such third parties and we may not be able to secure the proprietary rights to any technology generated in such collaboration.
Significant legal questions exist concerning the extent and scope of patent protection for biopharmaceutical products and processes in the U.S. and elsewhere. Accordingly, there is no certainty that patent applications owned or licensed by us will issue as patents, or that our issued patents will afford meaningful protection against competitors. Once issued, patents are subject to challenge through both administrative and judicial proceedings in the U.S. and other countries. Such proceedings include re-examinations, inter partes reviews, post-grant reviews and interference proceedings before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, as well as opposition proceedings before the European Patent Office and other non-U.S. patent offices. Certain countries have laws that provide stronger bases for challenging third party patent rights than are available to challenge patents in other countries. Therefore, we may be able to defend our patents against a third-party claim in one country but counterpart patents may be invalidated in other countries and we may be able to invalidate a third-party patent in one country but not invalidate its counterpart patents in other countries. Further,, in jurisdictions outside the United States, a license may not be enforceable unless all the owners of the intellectual property agree or consent to the license. Accordingly, any actual or purported co-owner of our patent rights could seek monetary or equitable relief requiring us to pay it compensation for, or refrain from, exploiting these patents due to such co-ownership. Litigation may be required to enforce, defend or obtain our patent and other intellectual property rights. Any administrative proceeding or litigation could require a
61
significant commitment of our resources and, depending on outcome, could adversely affect the scope, validity or enforceability of certain of our patent or other proprietary rights.
Other parties have developed technologies that may be related or competitive to our own, and such parties may have filed or may file patent applications, or may have received or may receive patents, claiming inventions that may overlap or conflict with those claimed in our own patent applications or issued patents, with respect to either the same compounds, methods, formulations or other subject matter, in either case that we may rely upon to dominate our patent position in the market. Publications of discoveries in the scientific literature often lag behind the actual discoveries, and patent applications in the United States and other jurisdictions are typically not published until at least 18 months after the earliest priority date of patent filing, or, in some cases, not at all. Therefore, we cannot know with certainty whether we were the first to make the inventions claimed in patents we may own or in-license patents or pending patent applications, or that we were the first to file for patent protection of such inventions. As a result, the issuance, scope, validity, enforceability and commercial value of our patent rights cannot be predicted with any certainty.
Some of the sensitive technology, techniques and proprietary compounds used in our business are protected as trade secrets. Among other things, we enter into confidentiality agreements and license agreements to protect proprietary know-how that may not be patentable, processes for which patents are difficult to enforce and any other elements of our product discovery and development processes that involve proprietary know-how, information, or technology that may not be covered by patents (or for which we determine we will not seek patent protection). Although we seek to require all of our employees, consultants, advisors, and any third parties who have access to our proprietary know-how, information, or technology to enter into confidentiality agreements, trade secrets can be difficult to protect and we have limited control over the protection of trade secrets used by our collaborators and suppliers. We cannot be certain that we have or will obtain these agreements in all circumstances and we cannot guarantee that we have entered into such agreements with each party that may have or have had access to our trade secrets or proprietary information (or that the terms of such agreements are enforceable). In our business, we rely on collaboration with, or discuss the potential for collaboration with, suppliers, outside scientists and other biopharmaceutical companies. Collaboration and discussion of potential collaboration or inadvertent disclosure of a trade secret present a strong risk of exposing our trade secrets. If our trade secrets were exposed, we may lose the protection and potential exclusive rights afforded by trade secret law, and such exposure may likely help our competitors and allow them to access technology without restriction and adversely affect our business prospects.
In addition, the patent prosecution process is expensive and time-consuming, and we may not be able to file and prosecute all necessary or desirable patent applications at a reasonable cost or in a timely manner. Due to expense of patent filings, we also may not file in every jurisdiction in which patents may be issued (and, therefore, we may not be able to assert patents rights in every country in the future). Further, with respect to certain pending patent applications covering our current or future product candidates, prosecution has yet to commence. Patent prosecution is a lengthy process, during which the scope of the claims initially submitted for examination by the relevant patent office(s) may be significantly narrowed by the time they issue, if they ever do. It is also possible that we will fail to identify patentable aspects of our research and development output before it is too late to obtain patent protection. Moreover, in some circumstances, we may not have the right to control the preparation, filing and prosecution of patent applications, or to maintain the patents, covering technology that we license from or to third parties. Therefore, these patents and applications may not be prosecuted and enforced in a manner consistent with the best interests of our business.
Similarly, trademarks and trade names we utilize in our business may be challenged, infringed, diluted or declared generic or determined to be infringing on other marks. These marks can be important for name recognition in markets. If we are unable to secure and protect our trademarks and trade names, our business could be harmed.
If we are found to be infringing third party patents, we may be forced to pay damages to the patent owner and/or obtain a license to continue the manufacture, sale or development of our products. If we cannot obtain a license, we may be prevented from the manufacture, sale or development of our products or product candidates, which may adversely affect our business.
Parts of our technology, techniques, proprietary compounds and potential product candidates, including those which are or may be in-licensed or developed in collaboration with third parties, may be found to infringe patents owned by or granted to others. We may in the future receive notices claiming our products (if approved) and product candidates infringe third party patents (and notices offering the right to license certain technology to us) and third parties may in the future file civil lawsuits against us claiming infringement of their intellectual property rights.
Third parties may claim that the manufacture, use or sale of our products or product candidates infringes patents owned or granted to such third parties. We may become aware of patents owned by third parties that might be claimed by such third parties to be infringed by the development and commercialization of our products (if approved) or our
62
investigational compounds. In such cases we may take certain actions with respect to some of these, for example we may try to invalidate the patents or obtain licenses to a technology or invention.
Any holder of patents covering similar technology to our technology could sue us for damages, which may be material in amount, and seek to prevent us from manufacturing, selling or developing our products (and we may be, in certain cases, prevented from initiating product launches in certain jurisdictions or required to withdraw the product from the market after it has been launched). Intellectual property disputes, can be costly and time consuming to defend and there is no guarantee that we would prevail in such lawsuit. If we cannot successfully defend against any infringement claims, we may seek to invalidate the patent or seek a license to the technology prior to or during legal actions in order to reduce the risks in connection with the product launches (or at a later time after product introduction) and to reduce further costs and the risk of a court determination that our technology, techniques, proprietary compounds or potential product candidates infringe the third party’s patents. A required license may be costly or may not be available on acceptable terms, if at all. A costly license, or inability to obtain a necessary license, could have a material adverse effect on our business.
In some instances, we believe we may prevail in a patent infringement action. There can, however, be no assurance that the court will agree with our position or that it will decide any infringement case in our favor. Nor can we be certain that, if we do not prevail in litigation, that we may be able to obtain a license to any third-party patent on commercially reasonable terms (or at all); successfully develop non-infringing alternatives on a timely basis (or at all); or license alternative non-infringing technology, if any exists, on commercially reasonable terms (or at all). Any impediment to our ability to manufacture, use or sell approved forms of our future products (if approved by regulatory authorities) or our product candidates could have a material adverse effect on our business and prospects.
It is possible that we could lose market exclusivity for a product earlier than expected, which may harm our competitive position.
In our industry, much of an innovative product’s commercial value is realized while it has market exclusivity.
Market exclusivity for our future products (if approved for sale by regulatory authorities) will likely depend in large part on patent rights and certain regulatory forms of protection. As noted above, patent protection can be uncertain as to the validity, scope and enforceability of many issued patents. Absent relevant patent protection for a product, once regulatory exclusivity periods expire, generic versions of the product can be approved and marketed.
The market exclusivity of our products may be impacted by competitive products that are either innovative or generic copies. In our industry, the risk of generic challenges has been increasing. U.S. law includes an approval pathway for generic versions of innovative small molecule products. Under the pathway, the FDA may approve products that are generic copies of innovative small molecule therapies on the basis of less extensive data than is required for a full new drug application. The law provides a mechanism to challenge the patents that protect an innovator’s products. Such litigation may begin as early as four years after the innovative small product is first approved by the FDA. Pathways for generic products also exist in many other markets, including Europe and Japan. Competition, including from generics approved for marketing, would likely result in a decrease in volume of sales of our products, as well as a decrease in prices and lower margins for our products (if approved for marketing by regulatory authorities).
We may initiate, become a defendant in, or otherwise become party to lawsuits to protect or enforce our intellectual property rights, which could be expensive, time-consuming, and unsuccessful.
Competitors may infringe any patents we may own or in-license, our trade secrets or other proprietary rights. In addition, any patents or other proprietary rights we may own or in-license also may become involved in inventorship, priority, validity or unenforceability disputes. To counter infringement or unauthorized use, we may be required to file infringement claims, which can be expensive and time-consuming. We may not prevail in any lawsuits that we initiate, and the damages or other remedies awarded, if any, may not be commercially meaningful (and we may not be able to prevent the commercialization of the competitor product). In addition, in an infringement proceeding, a court may decide that one or more of any patents we may own or in-license is not valid or is unenforceable or that the other party’s use of our technology that may be patented falls under the safe harbor to patent infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(e)(1). There is also the risk that, even if the validity of these patents is upheld, the court may refuse to stop the other party from using the technology at issue on the grounds that any patents we may own or in-license do not cover the technology in question or that such third party’s activities do not infringe our patent applications or any patents we may own or in-license (or any other proprietary rights we may own). An adverse result in any litigation or defense proceedings could put one or more of any patents we may own or in-license at risk of being invalidated, held unenforceable, or interpreted narrowly and could put our patent applications at risk of not issuing. Uncertainties resulting from the initiation and continuation of patent litigation or other proceedings relating to our proprietary rights could have a material adverse effect on our ability to compete in the marketplace and may negatively impact our stock price.
63
Post-grant proceedings provoked by third parties or brought by the USPTO may be necessary to determine the validity or priority of inventions with respect to our patent applications or any patents we may own or in-license. These proceedings are expensive and an unfavorable outcome could result in a loss of our current patent rights (or technology covered under current patent applications) and could require us to cease using the related technology or to attempt to license rights to it from the prevailing party. Our business could be harmed if the prevailing party does not offer us a license on commercially reasonable terms. In addition to potential USPTO post-grant proceedings, we may become a party to patent opposition proceedings in the EPO, or similar proceedings in other foreign patent offices or courts where our patents may be challenged. The costs of these proceedings could be substantial, and may result in a loss of scope of some claims or a loss of the entire patent.
Even in cases in which we or our licensors or strategic partners initiate legal proceedings against a third party to enforce a patent covering one of our current or future product candidates, the defendant could (and in pharmaceutical patent litigation the defendant often does) make a counterclaim that the patent covering our product candidate, as applicable, is invalid and/or unenforceable. In patent litigation in the United States, defendant counterclaims alleging invalidity and/or unenforceability are commonplace, and there are numerous grounds upon which a third party can assert invalidity or unenforceability of a patent. If such counterclaims are successful, the exclusivity related to the product may be lost and our business would be harmed.
Intellectual property litigation and administrative patent office patent validity challenges in one or more countries could cause us to spend substantial resources and distract our personnel from their normal responsibilities.
Even if resolved in our favor, litigation or other legal proceedings relating to intellectual property claims may cause us to incur significant expenses, and could distract our technical and management personnel from their normal responsibilities. In addition, there could be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim proceedings or developments and if securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a substantial adverse effect on the price of our common stock. Such litigation or proceedings could substantially increase our operating losses and reduce the resources available for research and development activities or any future sales, marketing, patient support or distribution activities. We may not have sufficient financial or other resources to conduct such litigation or proceedings adequately
We may be subject to damages or settlement costs resulting from claims that we or our employees have violated the intellectual property rights of third parties, or are in breach of our agreements. We may be accused of, allege or otherwise become party to lawsuits or disputes alleging wrongful disclosure of third-party confidential information by us or by another party, including current or former employees, contractors or consultants. In addition to diverting attention and resources to such disputes, such disputes could adversely impact our business reputation and/or protection of our proprietary technology.
The intellectual property landscape relevant to our product candidates and programs is crowded, and third parties may initiate legal proceedings alleging that we are infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating their intellectual property rights, the outcome of which would be uncertain and could have a material adverse effect on the success of our business. We cannot assure you that our current or future product candidates and other technologies that we have developed, are developing or may develop in the future do not or will not infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate existing or future patents or other intellectual property rights owned by third parties. For example, many of our employees were previously employed at other biotechnology or pharmaceutical companies. Although we try to ensure that our employees, consultants and advisors do not use the proprietary information or know-how of others in their work for us, we may be subject to claims that we or these individuals have used or disclosed intellectual property, including trade secrets or other proprietary information, of any such individual’s former employer. We may also be subject to claims that patents and applications we have filed to protect inventions of our employees, consultants and advisors, even those related to one or more of our current or future product candidates, are rightfully owned by their former or concurrent employer. Litigation may be necessary to defend against these claims.
If a third party claims that we infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate its intellectual property rights, we may face a number of issues, including, but not limited to:
substantial damages for infringement, misappropriation or other violations, which we may have to pay if a court decides that the product candidate or technology at issue infringes, misappropriates or violates the third party’s rights, and, if the court finds that the infringement was willful, we could be ordered to pay treble damages and the patent owner’s attorneys’ fees;
64
a court prohibiting us from developing, manufacturing, marketing or selling our current product candidate, including TNG908 and TNG462, or future product candidates, or from using our proprietary technologies, unless the third party licenses its product rights to us, which it is not required to do, on commercially reasonable terms or at all;
if a license is available from a third party, we may have to pay substantial royalties, upfront fees and other amounts, and/or grant cross-licenses to intellectual property rights for our products, or the license to us may be non-exclusive, which would permit third parties to use the same intellectual property to compete with us;
redesigning our current or future product candidates or processes so they do not infringe, misappropriate or violate third-party intellectual property rights, which may not be possible or may require substantial monetary expenditures and time; and
there could be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim proceedings or developments, and, if securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a substantial adverse effect on the price of our common stock. Some of our competitors may be able to sustain the costs of complex patent litigation more effectively than we can because they have substantially greater resources. In addition, any uncertainties resulting from the initiation and continuation of any litigation could have a material adverse effect on our ability to raise the funds necessary to continue our operations or could otherwise have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.
We may be unable to obtain patent or other intellectual property protection for our current or future product candidates or our future products, if any, in all jurisdictions throughout the world, and we may not be able to adequately enforce our intellectual property rights even in the jurisdictions where we seek protection.
We may not be able to pursue patent coverage of our current or future product candidates in all countries. Filing, prosecuting and defending patents on current or future product candidates in all countries throughout the world would be prohibitively expensive, and intellectual property rights in some countries outside the United States can be less extensive than those in the United States. In addition, the laws of some foreign countries do not protect intellectual property rights to the same extent as federal and state laws in the United States. Consequently, we may not be able to prevent third parties from practicing our inventions in all countries outside the United States, or from selling or importing products made using our inventions in and into the United States or other jurisdictions. Competitors may use our technologies in jurisdictions where we have not obtained patent protection to develop their own products and further, may export otherwise infringing products to territories where we have patent protection, but where intellectual property rights enforcement is not as strong as that in the United States. These products may compete with our current or future product candidates and in jurisdictions where we do not have any issued patents our patent applications or other intellectual property rights may not be effective or sufficient to prevent them from competing. Much of our patent portfolio is at the very early stage. We will need to decide whether and in which jurisdictions to pursue protection for the various inventions in our portfolio prior to applicable deadlines.
Many companies have encountered significant problems in protecting and defending intellectual property rights in foreign jurisdictions. The legal systems of certain countries, particularly certain developing countries, do not favor the enforcement of patents, trade secrets and other intellectual property protection, particularly those relating to pharmaceutical products, which could make it difficult for us to stop the infringement of any patents we may own or in-license or marketing of competing products in violation of our proprietary rights generally. We may not prevail in any lawsuits that we initiate and the damages or other remedies awarded, if any, may not be commercially meaningful. Accordingly, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights around the world may be inadequate to obtain a significant commercial advantage from the intellectual property that we develop or license.
Many countries have compulsory licensing laws under which a patent owner may be compelled to grant licenses to third parties. In addition, many countries limit the enforceability of patents against government agencies or government contractors. In these countries, the patent owner may have limited remedies, which could materially diminish the value of such patent. If we are forced to grant a license to third parties with respect to any patents we may own or license that are relevant to our business, our competitive position may be impaired, and our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects may be adversely affected.
If we fail to comply with our obligations in any agreements under which we may license intellectual property rights from third parties or otherwise experience disruptions to our business relationships with our licensors, we could lose license rights that are important to our business.
We may from time to time be party to license and collaboration agreements with third parties to advance our research or allow commercialization of current or future product candidates. For example, in March 2020 we entered into a License Agreement with Medivir with respect to certain technology related to USP1. Such agreements may impose numerous obligations, such as development, diligence, payment, commercialization, funding, milestone, royalty, sublicensing, insurance, patent prosecution, enforcement and other obligations on us and may require us to meet development timelines, or to exercise commercially reasonable efforts to develop and commercialize licensed products, in order to maintain the
65
licenses. In spite of our best efforts, our licensors might conclude that we have materially breached our license agreements and might therefore terminate the license agreements, thereby removing or limiting our ability to develop and commercialize products and technologies covered by these license agreements.
Further, the terms of these agreements can be complex, and certain provisions in such agreements may be susceptible to multiple interpretations. The resolution of any contract interpretation disagreement that may arise could narrow what we believe to be the scope of our rights to the relevant intellectual property or technology, or increase what we believe to be our financial or other obligations under the relevant agreement, either of which could have a material adverse effect on our business
Any termination of these licenses, or if the underlying patents fail to provide the intended exclusivity, could result in the loss of significant rights and could harm our ability to commercialize our current or future product candidates, and competitors or other third parties would have the freedom to seek regulatory approval of, and to market, products identical to ours and we may be required to cease our development and commercialization of certain of our current or future product candidates. Any of the foregoing could have a material adverse effect on our competitive position, business, financial conditions, results of operations, and prospects.
Disputes may also arise between us and our licensors regarding intellectual property subject to a license agreement, including:
the scope of rights granted under the license agreement and other interpretation-related issues;
whether and the extent to which our technology and processes infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate intellectual property rights of the licensor that is not subject to the licensing agreement;
our right to sublicense patent and other rights to third parties under collaborative development relationships;
our diligence obligations with respect to the use of the licensed technology in relation to our development and commercialization of our current or future product candidates, and what activities satisfy those diligence obligations;
the priority of invention of any patented technology; and
the ownership of inventions and know-how resulting from the joint creation or use of intellectual property by our future licensors and us and our partners.
Changes in patent law could diminish the value of patents in general, thereby impairing our ability to protect our current or future product candidates.
Patent reform legislation in the United States and other countries, including the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, or Leahy-Smith Act, signed into law on September 16, 2011, could increase uncertainties of the scope of our patent protection and the costs related to obtaining and enforcing our patents. The Leahy-Smith Act includes a number of significant changes to U.S. patent law. These include provisions that affect the way patent applications are prosecuted, redefine prior art and provide more efficient and cost-effective avenues for competitors to challenge the validity of patents. These include allowing third-party submission of prior art to the USPTO during patent prosecution and additional procedures to attack the validity of a patent by USPTO administered post-grant proceedings, including post-grant review, inter partes review, and derivation proceedings. An adverse determination in any such submission or proceeding could reduce the scope or enforceability of, or invalidate, our patent rights, which could adversely affect our competitive position. Because of a lower evidentiary standard in USPTO proceedings compared to the evidentiary standard in United States federal courts necessary to invalidate a patent claim, a third party could potentially provide evidence in a USPTO proceeding sufficient for the USPTO to hold a claim invalid even though the same evidence would be insufficient to invalidate the claim if first presented in a district court action. Accordingly, a third party may attempt to use the USPTO procedures to invalidate our patent claims that would not have been invalidated if first challenged by the third party as a defendant in a district court action.
In addition, the Leahy-Smith Act has transformed the U.S. patent system into a “first inventor to file” system. The first-inventor-to-file provisions, however, only became effective on March 16, 2013. Accordingly, it is not yet clear what, if any, impact the Leahy-Smith Act will have on the operation of our business.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on several patent cases in recent years, either narrowing the scope of patent protection available in certain circumstances or weakening the rights of patent owners in certain situations. Additionally, there have been recent proposals for additional changes to the patent laws of the United States and other countries that, if adopted, could impact our ability to obtain patent protection for our proprietary technology or our ability to enforce our proprietary technology. Depending on future actions by the U.S. Congress, the U.S. courts, the USPTO and the relevant law-making bodies in other countries, the laws and regulations governing patents could change in unpredictable ways that would weaken our ability to obtain new patents or to enforce our rights under patents that we might obtain in the future. Further, other countries and jurisdictions, such as the European Union, periodically review their intellectual property laws and they
66
may also take similar actions that impact the laws and regulations governing patents and they may implement changes that could weaken our ability to obtain new patents or to enforce our rights under patents that we might obtain in the future
We may not identify relevant third-party patents or may incorrectly interpret the relevance, scope or expiration of a third-party patent, which might subject us to infringement claims or adversely affect our ability to develop and market our current or future product candidates.
We cannot guarantee that any of our or our licensors’ patent searches or analyses, including the identification of relevant patents, the scope of patent claims or the expiration of relevant patents, are complete or thorough, nor can we be certain that we have identified each and every third-party patent and pending patent application in the United States and abroad that is relevant to or necessary for the commercialization of our current or future product candidates in any jurisdiction. For example, U.S. patent applications filed before November 29, 2000 and certain U.S. patent applications filed after that date that will not be filed outside the United States remain confidential until patents issue. As mentioned above, patent applications in the United States and elsewhere are published approximately 18 months after the earliest filing for which priority is claimed, with such earliest filing date being commonly referred to as the priority date. Therefore, patent applications covering our current or future product candidates could have been filed by third parties without our knowledge. Additionally, identification of third-party patent rights that may be relevant to our operations is difficult because patent searching is imperfect due to, for example, differences in terminology among patents or incomplete databases. Additionally, pending patent applications that have been published can, subject to certain limitations, be later amended in a manner that could cover our current or future product candidates or the use of our current or future product candidates. The scope of a patent claim is determined by an interpretation of the law, the written disclosure in a patent and the patent’s prosecution history. Our interpretation of the relevance or the scope of a patent or a pending application may be incorrect, which may negatively impact our ability to market our current or future product candidates. We may incorrectly determine that our current or future product candidates are not covered by a third-party patent or may incorrectly predict whether a third party’s pending application will issue with claims of relevant scope. Our determination of the expiration date of any patent in the United States or abroad that we consider relevant may be incorrect, which may negatively impact our ability to develop and market our current or future product candidates. Our failure to identify and correctly interpret relevant patents may negatively impact our ability to develop and market our current or future product candidates.
If we fail to identify and correctly interpret relevant patents, we may be subject to infringement claims. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to successfully settle or otherwise resolve such infringement claims which can result in the adverse consequences related to infringement as described in the preceding risk factors.
Intellectual property rights do not guarantee commercial success of current or future product candidates or other business activities. Numerous factors may limit any potential competitive advantage provided by our intellectual property rights.
The degree of future protection afforded by our intellectual property rights, whether owned or in-licensed, is uncertain because intellectual property rights have limitations, and may not adequately protect our business, provide a barrier to entry against our competitors or potential competitors, or permit us to maintain our competitive advantage. Moreover, if a third party has intellectual property rights that cover the practice of our technology, we may not be able to fully exercise or extract value from our intellectual property rights. The following examples are illustrative:
patents, should they issue, that we may own or in-license, may not provide us with any competitive advantages, may be narrowed in scope, or may be challenged and held invalid or unenforceable;