Kura Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KURA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Troy Wilson: I think Phil, so today we put down in our milestone slide for the first time. It’s no later than mid-2024. Based on what we’re hearing from the competition guiding that they’ll complete enrollment Q1, Q2. I think even that let’s hit that. We’re super competitive right? We’re maybe a few weeks apart or maybe a couple of months at the most. We’re going to do everything we can to drive enrollment. We’ve resisted the urge given that we continue to say we’re highly encouraged. We’ve resisted the urge to pull those milestones in until it’s really a data complete. So I would say to you don’t anticipate us to move any milestones on enrollment of our NPM1 pivotal. I think we’re very much to do as well as that if not better. And I would say just stay tuned.

Phil Nadeau: Fair enough. Thanks for taking our question.

Troy Wilson: Our pleasure. Thank you, Phil.

Operator: Your next question comes from Brad Canino from Stifel. Your line is open.

Brad Canino: Thank you. Troy, I just want to pull back and ask a question about the menin class in general. I think the street view is that KMT2Ar is the more sensitive population to men inhibition, which might just be because the name of the alteration is more similar. But nevertheless, some struggle with investing in this class, because the best efficacy is then expected in the smaller patient population. But as I was reflecting on all of the menin data sets this afternoon from J&J from Syndax and of course, your own the common trend is to actually see more responses in NPM1. And I want to know where do you stand with your synthesis of the data across the class? Should we on the Street actually recalibrate and expect the best efficacy to be confirmed in the larger NPM1 population? Thanks.

Troy Wilson: Yeah. Brad, It’s a good question and thank you, it’s actually not a question I’ve heard before. And I think it is worthwhile to set expectations. So we have to be careful what we’re talking about here, right? The registrational endpoints for the relapsed/refractory setting are CR/CRH for the frontline setting, they will be CR for the maintenance setting they will be survival. Other companies and we got to wrap abstracts out our reporting ORRs, in one case even including stable disease MLSS, CRIs, those are all measures of clinical activity and those are important. But I think the registrational endpoints are at least at this stage are what’s important. Can you drive the CR/CRH and in the frontline can you drive the CR.

The reason I frame it that way is that can be a little confounded by are you getting full count recovery are patients going on to [Technical Difficulty]. So that’s why CRC is also worth looking at. We probably wouldn’t go beyond CRC. And at this point, I think although again emotionally intuitively it makes sense that KMT2A should be more sensitive. In reality, we’re seeing activity pretty robust activity in both populations across the class. And I think that’s only going to improve in combination. What we’re really hoping in combination to do is, can we drive deeper responses, can we eliminate extramedullary disease and minimal residual disease, can we drive length in the time to recurrence and drive better survival. And I’ll go back to something I said a couple of — as an answer to a couple of calls ago, that’s going to come down to who has the ability to keep menin pressure on in the presence of combo and then ultimately in the maintenance setting as a monotherapy without having to jump through a lot of hoops.