Panna Sharma: Yes, that’s a great question. We think Starlight is very unique because there’s really no company that has focused 100% on a breakthrough new molecule for CNS indications. It’s the reason we’re able to get a lot of interest around it. We’ve had pharmas reach out about it. We’ve had biotechs reach out about it. The drug has some very good history in terms of its ability to be a proven mechanistic manner in which you can kill GBM cells, which is an alkylating agent. In fact, the only drug that seems to really work to kill off, our alkylators like nitro series and TMZ. I mean, everything else has had a middling to no effect. So we’re in a good drug class. We’re in a class that has a history of working. We’re in a drug that seems to prefer cancer cells over any other type of cell.
It seems to be much more bioavailable. And it seems to be — have better blood-brain barrier penetrability than TMZ. It seems to be agnostic to MGMT, and it seems to work in several other brain cancers. So I think it was a very unique opportunity. We had the AI insights with a unique molecule. We’re able to find not just one indication, but a family of kind of indications. And so it was really paramount that we launched this effort on its own and get it done further and deeper. If we see opportunities like that, we’ll pursue them. We’ve to pursue them. I mean, I think ADCs could be like that. What we’re seeing in terms of the early efforts, both on our antibody drug conjugate, but also another very exciting space we’re looking at are fragments — fragment bodies.
And we can actually get even more precision against the antigen or the target of interest with what we call FDCs, fragment drug conjugates. And we’ve begun some very early exploratory work in that area with the cryptophycin and other picomolar agents. So again, we’re trying to use the ADC module that we created to find targets and then to find something unique in those targets and then further classify both late-stage existing antibodies, but also some early stage where perhaps we can make the process compressed and cheaper and that fragment — FDCs can hold that future. And then we’re also trying to find the right agents that give us the right kind of DAR and improvement in kill rates. Like we said, the cryptophycin versus the MMAEs and others that just have a — it’s just — it’s a log better kill rate on the cancer cells.
So it’s — if we think we can hold it up in a small portfolio of indications, again, it could be — again, a very great spin-out idea or a partnering idea very early on.
Panna Sharma: Another question is around business development opportunities.
Panna Sharma: Yes. So we’re exploring business development opportunities in three categories. Again, I don’t like to really talk about deals until deals are really done. I don’t think there’s any point in getting people excited about pharma industry, everyone talks to everyone. So yes, we’re in discussions with a lot of different companies. It doesn’t mean that there may or may not be a deal. But let me walk through our deal ideas that we’ve that we’re working on. Number one, we do expect to announce deals with other biotech companies where they use our platform, and we get certain rights to their drugs or development efforts. So we’re using our platform as a currency to help those companies compress the time line or decrease the risk or increase the ideas around for their portfolio, and we get something in exchange for that.
And that can be done with our platform. The second type of deal that we’re beginning to explore and it’s in fits and starts, but is with big tech companies. Big tech companies want to have unique platforms that they can offer in the cloud as a service to all their biopharma and academic and research groups. So now RADR can be taken into one of the big tech companies as a platform, and you can basically have RADR as a service. You can have any of these eight modules as a service, drug combination, blood-brain barrier penetrability, drug mechanism of action, hunting, ADC design. So any of these modules, and that’s where we’re trying to really create these unique modules. So again, that’s very early. And the third one is traditional partnership, licensing, selling of an asset or program to big pharma.
And I think the best way to excite big pharmas is data. So we’ll power for the trials, we’ll keep options open and share the data and results. And that — again, we have 11, 12 programs now. So the likelihood of one of those — two of those programs or even more getting licensed or spun out or sold off or partnered I think, continues to get higher and higher every quarter. Thank you for that question. So with that, I’d like to take a moment personally to thank everyone on our team for helping us prepare for these calls and prepare the information. We’ve got a lot of information out in the PR and also in the updated slides. We’ll have a series of webinars throughout this year. We’ve the first three or four actually already kind of been programmed.
And those Webinar Wednesdays, I definitely urge you guys to join. We’re very excited about what the future holds for us. We’ve got a number of trials that are ongoing. We’ve got a number of exciting programs that we can bring to market or either spinouts or partnered out assets. And most importantly, the platform begins to grow. We’re entering a new era of the AI platform. The AI platform now is beginning to grow itself. And more importantly, we’re now creating new generative AI capabilities around molecular optimization and target selection, things that just didn’t exist a year ago. So on all fronts, we’re growing, we maintain fiscal discipline and we’ve got a significant amount of cash to continue executing our plan and reach milestones for partnering, selling, licensing on our portfolio.
So thank you very much, and thank you for joining me this afternoon.
David Margrave: Thanks a lot.
Panna Sharma: Thank you, David.
