INKT - NASDAQ

Good morning and welcome to MiNK Therapeutics Second Quarter 2024 Conference Call and Webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode until question-and-answer session. Please note this event is being recorded. If anyone has any objection, you may now disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn to conference [technical difficulty]

Thank you all for joining us today. Today's call is being webcast and will be available on our website for replay. I'd like to remind you [technical difficulty] including statements regarding our clinical development, regulatory and commercial plans and timelines, as well as timelines for data release and partnership opportunities, among other updates. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and we refer you to our SEC filings available on our website for more details on these risks. Joining me today are Dr. Jen Buell, President and Chief Executive Officer; Dr. Marc Van Dijk, Chief Scientific Officer; Dr. Joy

Thank you,

Thank you, Jen. Turning to our preclinical pipeline. We are rapidly advancing MiNK-215 and IL-15 armored FAP-targeting CAR invariant natural killer T cell therapy, that's a mouthful, but it's targeting tumor stroma. This therapy has demonstrated very promising preclinical activity against solid tumors, including microsatellite stable colorectal cancer and liver metastases and non-small cell lung cancer. The strategic focus on targeting FAP expressing tumors stems from the overexpression of FAP in the tumor microenvironment, which plays a key role in supporting tumor growth and suppressing immune responses. By disrupting this environment, MiNK-215 is designed to enhance immune-mediated tumor destruction, offering a novel approach to combating these resistant cancers. Our team is dedicated in bringing this innovative therapy into the clinical arena, with plans to file an IND in 2025. We are developing a robust preclinical package that will allow us to identify and enrich a biomarker-based patient population, facilitating more rapid signals and signal detection and development. The potential for MiNK-215 to disrupt the treatment landscape in solid tumors is significant, particularly as we continue to see breakthroughs in CAR T therapies. Our manufacturing is led by Joy

Thank you very much Marc. Appreciate it. And this is -- as you can see we have an incredibly efficient platform in which we've been able to not only advance clinical programs but also some highly innovative, next-generation technologies. And as we advance these programs, which you can see, we are also very committed to fiscal conservatism ensuring that we leverage every mechanism available to advance our therapies highly efficiently. Our strategy includes pursuing nondilutive funding sources, and these include some of the grant funding programs that are currently underway as well as strategic partnerships to maintain our financial health, while bringing these deserving therapies to the forefront of treatment options. Our approach will not only accelerate the development of iNKT cell therapies, but also preserve value during this unusual time in biotech. So I want to thank you for your continued support. And I'm going to turn the call over to Christine to review our financials. Christine?

Thank you, Jen. We ended the quarter with a cash balance of $9.3 million, which reflects cash used in operations for the quarter of $2.3 million. This is a reduction from the $2.6 million used for the first quarter of this year. And as Jen mentioned earlier, an almost 50% reduction from prior year. Our net loss for the three months and six months ended June 30, 2024 was $2.7 million or $0.07 per share and $6.5 million or $0.18 per share. This compares to $6.2 million or $0.18 per share and $11.9 million or $0.35 per share for the same period in 2023. I will now turn the call back to the operator for questions.

Thank you. The floor is now open for your questions. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Emily Bodnar from HC Wainwright.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Jen, just to confirm, so the GvHD study that you're planning to initiate, it sounds like that's going to be funded with external capital. Is that correct? And then second question, when you say you are seeing early signs of activity in the gastric cancer study, can you provide any more front what you're kind of seeing and how that might compare to just standard of care chemo alone? Thanks.

Thank you very much for your questions, Emily. Your first for the GvHD program, yes this will be supported by external funding to advance the program. And secondly, in gastric now I -- given that Dr. Janjigian is planning to present these results at a conference, I'm hesitant to say any more than at least in the cohort that we have now observed and fully enrolled that's beyond three months to six months of follow-up, we are seeing some very exciting signals of clinical benefit that do exceed what our expectations are with RAMTAX on its own. And as you can imagine, given the number of patients, thousands of patients have been dosed with the chemotherapy, we have a strong sense of what that arm, how it will perform. And we're seeing performance far beyond that at this point in the trial.

Okay great. Thank you. That’s helpful.

Our next question comes from Jack Allen from Baird.

Hi, thanks so much for taking the questions and congratulations on the progress. I wanted to dive a little bit more deeply into the gastric update that we expect. I guess I understand you don't want to make too many comments ahead of the scientific presentation. But can you just remind us about the different cohorts in the study? And any comments on where patients were enrolled as it relates to those cohorts to date? And then on the graft versus host disease trial, very exciting news to see that got underway. I just wanted to see if you had any more comments as it relates to the size of that study and when we can expect initial data from that trial.

Certainly. Thanks, Jack, for your questions. On the gastric program, this is a program in which we have a very heavy translational component as well as clinical component. So looking at very traditional endpoints, response rate, tumor reduction overall survival in this population as well as some of the translational markers. And to do so, what we have embarked on is a trial that allows us to interrogate iNKT as an induction and iNKT on top of standard of care chemo, RAMTAX, as well as iNKTs in combination with BOT/BAL and chemo. And we have representative patients in each of those treatment considerations. So the data that you will see will give some semblance not only of translational mechanisms that are happening, but also clinical outcomes in those populations. GvHD, so this is a program that we are as excited as you are, Jack, to get this underway. This is -- our preclinical data has really supported the importance of iNKT in this particular disease setting. And what we've observed is that preclinically, we know that iNKT may uniquely transform the landscape that will enable engraftment success and also mitigate and prevent GvHD. This is such a growing problem, impacting over 50% of patients that are undergoing stem cell transplantation. But we believe that these cells can deliver benefit both in adult patients, as well as in pediatric patients. And you may know that there is a mesenchymal stem cell approved in Europe and not yet in the U.S. that has demonstrated that an important benefit, particularly in pediatric population, specifically where GvHD is organ-based. And we think that ourselves may even be able to expand benefit beyond the observation today, certainly beyond ruxolitinib, as well as beyond some of the available cell approaches given the mechanism of action. We will be activating the trial. We're working aggressively to do so this year. Ideally, we will have some patients who can start enrolling in this calendar year. Otherwise, it will be very early next year. The endpoints are rapid in this with response rates and for protection and mitigation within about a 28-day window. So we would expect to have data from the trial in 2025, probably in the second half of the year.

Got it. Great. Thank you so much for that update. And then maybe just one last question, more broad, but as it relates to securing additional nondilutive funds to the capital, I just wanted to hear any comments you have around appetite of partnerships and things of that nature.

Yes. Partnering is actually really core to our strategy, and it will be important not only to expand our bandwidth but also our global presence. So we continue to have very active interactions with potential partners who share our vision and also have the bandwidth to do -- to deliver in regions of the world where we do not yet have a footprint but also to help us accelerate the development of these cells.

Got it. Thanks so much. Congratulations again on the progress.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from a Mayank Mamtani from B. Riley.

Hi, good morning team. Thanks for taking our questions. And congrats on the progress. So in regards to the 797 combination work with BOT/BAL sort of informing also your future combination work you may pursue with T cell engagers, could you maybe just talk a little bit more about that? And if there are any specific tumor service antigen modalities, T cell engagers that you have in mind? And then the second question about the 215 IND filing plans actually to early 2025. I would love to hear the initial Phase I protocol plan you're looking to submit with your IND filing. And any color on what dose levels you're looking to produce? And how much you be thinking of manufacturing given you've invested in-house in developing this modality?

Excellent. Okay. Mayank, I'm going to start with the second question, and I'll turn it over to Marc, and we also have Dr. Joy

Yes. Thanks, Jen. So engagers are interesting. I mean, there is quite a lot of development in the cell engager space, more and more so also in the solid tumor space. We've seen some success with one approval. And I think we can increase the efficacy enormously by adding an allogeneic cell therapy component in the form of iNKT cells. And I say this specifically because engagers are sort of they induce the local -- the central immune response and they are -- they need to pull T cells into the tumor, but there is a lot of resistance in the tumor. And iNKT cells, they are very good entering sites where T cells cannot easily go, as well as overcoming local immune suppression. That's the reason to build 215. That's the reason why 797 has shown activity in gastric cancer. And we believe that combining bispecific cell engagers for solid tumors with AgenT-797 or later with 215 really starts to add those two efficacy mechanisms together to have a much higher impact than either one or cell engagers alone can achieve. And the other really differentiating component is that 797 is applied without lymphodepletion. And that's essential for maximizing the immune response of the patient's own immune system. So that combination and non-lymphodepleting INKT cells plus cell engagers, we believe, has an enormous potential for solid tumor treatment. But that's what we're exploring with both our own cell engager program, but also looking at cell engagers that are out there. And we have quite a lot of preclinical data that we hope to share at the conference later this year.

Got it. Thank you for that comprehensive answer. And then just -- if I could squeeze one more in, Jen, on the couple of options for non-dilutive financing, Are you able to talk to the scale and scope and in terms of what remains to kind of get that through the finish-line, that would be helpful. And thanks again for taking my question.

Thanks, Mayank. With respect -- as you're seeing with some of the non-dilutive grant funding support that we have been able to garner to support our trials in immune-related diseases as well as in oncology, you can see how the excitement of these cells and their potential is shared with a number of groups, a diverse set of groups who are very intrigued by advancing the technology. That has allowed us to continue to really prioritize the development of data that will help us to continue to advance some of the discussions that are actively underway. So I hesitate to give any additional color, except to say that the interest of what these cells can do have been coming inbound from pharma groups who are interested in expanding the footprint of their cell therapy programs, as well as those looking to get into the space. There is quite a bit of interest in the autoimmunity, the GvHD data, as well as on the engineered portfolio with the preponderance of additional interest in respiratory diseases coming from a very focused group of pharma companies. So I'm going to leave it at that, just to simply say for us, the most important thing is regional infrastructure and global footprint that can allow us to accelerate the development of these important therapies. And that's been driving our prioritization of the conversations that we're having now and some of which we'll expand on in the next couple of weeks. And ideally, we will be able to have some of these advanced far enough by the end of this year or early next year.

Understood. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Matthew Phipps from William Blair.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Jen I'm glad to see the GvHD trial getting started. Just wondering if you could give some details, steroid-refractory, but will you allow for other lines of prior therapy. And is this going to be a single ascending dose, multiple ascending dose. Can you give us any details on the dosing schemes?

Yes. Thanks so much, Matt. On the dosing scheme, at this point we have been able to administer the cells beyond one dose, and we are very pleased that we can do so tolerably in populations of patients that we wanted to monitor really quite closely. So if we can administer the cells, we do not see any enhanced reactivity or rejection and administering beyond one dose. We would look at this -- from a target dosing standpoint, we have generated quite a bit of data now beyond 80 patients in dose finding. And I think we have quite a bit of confidence that 1 billion cells is our target dose. We wouldn't want to start very much lower than that. We may do a step-down dose in the GvHD trial. However, we may not need to. So we're negotiating that currently and we would look at about 1 billion cells, We would do a single dose, as well as we would explore if a second dose or a third dose is necessary. I'm not sure that it will be. We will be open, and we are finalizing those design elements right now with some regulatory interactions. We are open to other lines of therapy, we want to be sure to have the right reference so that in our trial, which even in the Phase I, we may contemplate -- we're contemplating right now a reference group that would allow us to accelerate the development by demonstrating if we are looking at 40% to 50% or higher and response rates compared to what we are seeing is 30% with some of the available therapeutic approaches. We want to keep the prior lines of therapy relatively clear so that we have a homogeneous population even in a Phase I setting that will allow us to advance very quickly into a randomized Phase II.

Okay, great. Thank you.

There are no further questions. So I'll turn the call back over to Dr. Jennifer Buell.

Thank you very much, everyone. I want to thank my team as well as for those on the line for your continued support. Appreciate it.