Atreca, Inc. (NASDAQ:BCEL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Stephen Willey: Okay. And just with respect to the goal of enrolling an additional 30 to 40 patients before the end of this year, I know you’ve kind of talked about some of the headwinds that a lot of these Phase 1 site are facing, and we’ve heard that from other companies as well. But I guess, would you still — is the 30 to 40 incremental amount of patient data, is that requisite for making a no-go decision before year-end or is that something that is a little bit fungible in terms of time lines?

Philippe Bishop: Well, we — so as you know, the trial is currently set up as a final two-stage study and with criteria for expansion within specific indication. I think like early Phase 1 studies as you learn about your drug and you begin to collect information, adapting your approach and incorporating what you’re learning along the way is something that is done by most companies and certainly encouraged even by health authorities. So early in trial development, we tend to be as well. We tend to adapt as we learn more about our drug, either on the safety side or on the activity side or even sometimes with pharmacokinetics we can certainly modify the way we approach looking at these data. What is new with today’s presentation is the notion of disease control or stabilization of disease or durability of response.

And I think that’s a very important new information that we have today. If we think about a higher bar for making decisions, I think applying a bar that not only looks at response rate, but also look at some form of disease control would allow us to prioritize indications moving forward. And for that, I don’t think we would need to expand each one of those indications as we had planned earlier and we can probably make those decisions based on sound analytics principles using data and statistics with fewer patients in each one of the categories.

Stephen Willey: Okay. And then maybe just lastly, just in terms of — I thought it was interesting that you disclosed that about half of the antibodies that you’re disclosing are actually against these glycan targets, which I know from — as you mentioned, kind of the conventional immunization perspective have been really hard. These are carbohydrates. Just curious as to kind of where you think your progress puts you from a collaborative position, just kind of given just given the amount of interest there has been around this target class historically?

Tito Serafini: Stephen, so I’ll take that one. So we’ve — we’re in a number of discussions about programs, obviously. The profile of 444, as Stephen described it, is proving to be quite attractive and garnering a great deal of interest. You have something that’s binding a target expressed at certainly high levels in the majority of colorectal cancer patients where there’s unmet need. And yet you see great potency and lack of the safety signals so far, even with an Fv that has not yet been optimized. And so yes, I think you’re right. There are a couple of anti-glycan antibodies that have reached commercial stage. And part of the problem there that huge black-box warnings is they’re not specific tumor. They attack peripheral nerve, for example.

And what I believe you’re hearing today in Stephen’s part of this presentation is that our platform is delivering what you might expect. It’s glycans. You can’t really find through molecular biology tricks. You just can’t do it that easily with glycans, and they are fairly specific. And as you point out, we have a very nice IgG antibody recognizing that glycan simultaneously.

Operator: Our final question comes from the line of Kemp Dolliver of Brookline.

Kemp Dolliver: I have a couple of questions there. Some of them are pointed in quick. I’ll be respectful of your time. But quickly with regard to the incremental enrollment, what would be the assumed data cutoff to make a decision in the timeframe you’re thinking?