Arcus Biosciences, Inc. Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the Arcus Biosciences full year and fourth quarter 2025 earnings and financial results call. My name is Claire, and I'll be coordinating your call today. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to Holly Kolke from Arcus Biosciences to begin. Please go ahead.

good afternoon and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss argus's fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results and pipeline updates i will be filling in for pia eats our head of ir who is out on maternity leave i would like to remind you that on this call management will make forward-looking statements including statements about our cash runway our projected 2026 revenue and our expected clinical development milestones and timelines. All statements other than historical facts reflect the current beliefs and expectations of management and involve risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to differ from those expressed. Those risks and uncertainties are described in our most recent annual report in Form 10-K that has been filed with the SEC. For today's call, please refer to our latest corporate presentation posted in the investor section of our website. This afternoon, you'll hear from several members of our management team. So now, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Terry Rosen, to begin.

Thanks very much, Holly, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. 2026 is going to be a transformative year for ARCIS. As you know, we are, we've been focused on establishing CasDataphan as the unequivocal best-in-class HIF2-alpha inhibitor and the new standard of cure for clear cell renal cell carcinoma. And this year is going to be another substantial year for data presentations, as well as the advancement and expansion of our Phase III clinical program for Cas. I want to emphasize, particularly those who are new to Arcus or Castatafan, that the advantages of Castatafan are well understood. That's all connect from the earliest days of its design and development. The advantages derive from dramatic differentiation of Castatafan's PK-PD profile. These are evident in the highly quantitative and reproducible differentiation on the primary biomarker for HIF2-alpha inhibition, EPO production, and the manifestation is improvement on all key efficacy measures. CasDatafan hits a target harder, it hits it earlier. Just this week, we shared updated data from our ARC-20 cohorts evaluating CasDatafan monotherapy in late-line clear cell RCC. We're also thrilled that Dr. Tony Schrieri will be presenting these data this weekend at ASCO-GU. We're going to discuss these data in more detail today, but suffice it to say the bottom line is that single-agent CAS continues to achieve unprecedented ORR and PFS in late-line clear cell RCC. It's not only relative to data for belzutafam, the only currently marketed HIF2L inhibitor, but also relative to data for standard of care TKIs. This can be seen very clearly on slide 7 of our corporate deck. Importantly, CasDataphan achieves these outcomes without the debilitating toxicities associated with TKIs. In addition to the clinical data, the ESCO-GU presentation will include biomarker data that further reinforced the confidence in the differentiation of CasDataphan versus Belzer Defense. Also at ESCO-GU, we're going see the detailed results from the phase three light spark 011 study this evaluated belzutafan plus lumbatinib versus cabozantinib and io experienced clear cell rcc these data should be both validating and highly de-risking for our ongoing phase three peak one study which is evaluating cas plus cabo in a similar setting and with the same control arm with both our own data and the belzutafan data being presented, Ms. ASCO-GU will be an extremely important event for the HIF-2-alpha inhibitor class, firmly establishing it as a key standard of care in the treatment of RCC. We believe HIF-2-alpha inhibitors will have a place in every line of treatment for RCC, and CAS is extremely well-positioned to be the HIF-2-alpha inhibitor of choice across all settings. In fact, as we will describe later, we believe the profile of CAS will enable a unique frontline regimen that will transform the patient journey in the setting and could translate into multi-billion dollar commercial opportunities. Our first phase we study for CAS Peak One is enrolling and is designed to get CAS approved and to patients as quickly as possible. This represents our fast-to-market strategy. There's already a high level of excitement driving enrollment in peak one, and the strength of our new ARC-20 data, coupled with the further validation of the HIF2-alpha inhibition in early-line settings by the LightSpark data, will amplify the enthusiasm for the study. So by combining our best-in-class HIF2-alpha inhibitor with the most widely used TKI cabozatinib, we believe we'll capture a substantial share of the IO experience setting. Now I'd like to spend a few minutes on our frontline strategy because this is going to be a huge focus for us throughout 2026. Our frontline strategy is enabled by the consistently low rate of primary progression that's been observed with CAS DataPan across settings. This is shown very clearly on slide 20 of our corporate presentation. Primary progression reflects the proportion of patients whose disease progresses at or before the first scan. It's important for this rate to be as low as possible, particularly in early line treatment, because patients with primary progression not get an opportunity to benefit from therapy. This is devastating for both patients and their doctors. In contrast to the low rates for CAS, Belzutafan is associated with a very high rate of primary progression. Thirty-five percent is monotherapy in its Phase III trial. The manifestation of this key differentiation is that in frontline RCC, Belzutafan will likely always require a combination with a TKI to keep primary progression low. In fact, Merck's Phase III study in the frontline setting is evaluating exactly that. Lenva-Bels-Pembro. That's a pretty non-patient friendly regimen in the context of quality of life. A TKI-free regimen, on the other hand, is much more desirable for both patients and clinicians. The most common feedback that we receive from investigators is that given CasDatafan's profile, the use of a TKI can likely be put off for years. This offers a far better option for patients that would greatly improve their quality of life. Therefore, our frontline strategies to develop CasDataphan without a TKI and specifically with a backbone of CasDataphan with anti-PD-1, which we can build upon with a third non-TKI mechanism. We plan to execute on this strategy quickly and efficiently using our ARC-20 study. It's probably a good time to explain how we have and will continue to leverage ARC20 to drive our development strategy for CAS. First, with four monotherapy cohorts and 121 patients of efficacy data in late-line clear cell RCC, ARC20 enables us to clearly demonstrate that CAS has the best-in-class HIF2-alpha inhibitor profile. Second, with these four monotherapy cohorts, which were designed to to satisfy Project Optimus, we've established that 100 milligrams once a day is the optimal going forward dose of CasDataphan. Finally, the design allows us to rapidly and efficiently add and enroll cohorts to evaluate Cas and Cas-based combinations in other settings. We now have around 30 sites across four countries active in this study, and this drives efficiency. We first utilized this with the CAS plus CAVO cohort, where we quickly generated data to support our first phase three study, peak one. We then added three new cohorts, approximately 90 patients in total, to demonstrate the feasibility of using CAS without a TKI in early line settings. One of these cohorts is the CAS plus ZIM cohort, which is fully enrolled and for which we've already shared a primary progression rate of 9% for the first 23 of 30 patients. With the low rate of primary progression across all settings, we and our investigator advisors are convinced that the ideal frontline therapy is a TKI-sparing castatafan regimen. And we just started enrolling a new cohort to evaluate CASP with anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4 to support the rapid initiation and execution of our first phase 3 study in the front line settings. Finally, while RCC is our top priority, we've generated exciting preclinical data for CAS and HCC and are evaluating opportunities to pursue HCC in a cost and resource efficient manner. We spent a lot of time already on CAS StataFam, but I want to transition now to our immunology portfolio where there's been a lot of and growing interest. We've leveraged the same small molecule capability that created Castatafan to build an emerging portfolio of inflammation and immunology programs. Two of these are expected to enter the clinic over the next 12 months. We are focused on addressing validated targets against which it has historically been difficult to create small molecule drugs that have optimal pharmaceutical properties. For this reason, we expect limited competition for our I&I programs, similar to what we're seeing with CasDataFan. Our three most advanced molecules are an MRGPRX2 antagonist, a TNF inhibitor, a CCR6 antagonist. Later on this call, Juan will speak in more detail about the potential differentiation of our compounds relative to others. But before we go there, I'd like to turn the call over to Richard to review the new and updated CAS DataFam data that we'll be presenting at ASCO-GU this coming weekend.

Thank you, Terry. I'd like to start on slide nine of our corporate deck just to remind everyone about the design of our ARC-20 study. Today's data includes updated ORR and PFS based on a data cutoff date of January 30th from the four late-line monotherapy cohorts highlighted on the slide. This is now the fourth time we are presenting data for single-agent cast data found in the setting, and as you'll see on the next few slides, the efficacy data continue to improve with longer follow-up. Now moving to slide 10, where we show the latest ORRs for the 100 milligram QD cohort, which is our going-forward dose and formulation. The confirmed ORR increased from 35 percent at the August data cut now to 45%. A 45% ORR in this late-line patient population is remarkable in that it's twice that observed with Belzutifan in LightSpark 5. Similarly, the confirmed ORR for the pooled analysis improved from 31% to 35%, well above the range of ORRs that has been observed for Belzutifan. On slide 12, we show the latest Kaplan-Meier curve for the 100 milligram cohort. And you can see here that this 100-milligram cohort shows an impressive median PFS of 15.1 months after 17.8 months of median follow-up. There are some patients still on treatment who are censored before the median, but even in the highly unlikely scenario where all censored patients progress at their next scan, the median PFS for this cohort would still be 14.4 months. So let's move on to the next slide, slide 13, and we show the latest Kaplan-Meier curve for the pooled analysis. The median PFS remained at 12.2 months, and as you can see here, there are quite a lot of patients still on treatment beyond 12 months and even beyond 24 months. So overall, we are seeing PFS that is two to three times longer with CAS monotherapy than the 5.6 months observed for Belzutafat in the same setting. These data clearly support the proposition that castataphan is the best-in-class HIF2-alpha inhibitor, and our highest priority now is to maximize the potential of this molecule in clear cell renal cell carcinoma. So I'd now like to spend some time on our development plans, starting with our first phase 3 study, PEQ1, which is evaluating CAS plus CABO versus CABO in the immune therapy experience, CCRCC. The trial design is shown on slide 19 of our corporate deck. Peak One is actively enrolling, and we are confident that the study will complete enrollment quickly. Additionally, Peak One has a sole primary endpoint of PFS, which should enable a relatively short time to readout. So this is a fast-to-market strategy that builds on top of standard of care. And based on all the data to date, we have high confidence that this study will establish CAFs plus CABO has a new standard of care in IO-experienced ClearCell RCC. Meanwhile, as Terry talked about earlier, our first-line strategy has the potential to transform the treatment paradigm for RCC. We're focused on the development of a TKI-free regimen that improves on the efficacy of IO-only therapy. And there are several opportunities for CAFs to do this. First, the biggest limitation of anti-PD-1 plus anti-CTLA-4 therapy is that it has a relatively high rate of primary progression, that is of 20 to 25%. With CAS's low rate of primary progression and its orthogonal mechanism, we believe we can meaningfully improve upon this high rate of primary PD seen with the IO-only therapy. In fact, we have shown that patients who progress quickly on IO-based therapies have tumor markers that correlate with responsivity to CAS. Additionally, median PFS for IO-only regimens in Clear Cell RCC is relatively short at about 12 months. So again, we believe we can meaningfully improve on this PFS. To determine the optimal go-forward TKI-free regimen, we are evaluating multiple CAS combinations in Arc 20. These include our fully enrolled cohort evaluating CAS plus ZIM, which we believe will convincingly demonstrate the ability of CAS plus an anti-PD-1 to form the backbone of our first-line regimen based on both safety and efficacy. We plan to share data from this cohort in the second half of this year. Additionally, we just started a cohort to evaluate CAS in combination with anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4. In addition to this cohort, we also plan to evaluate another TKI-free combination for CAFs in the frontline setting, and we'll share more about this in coming months. Lastly, we continue to monitor data from the EVOLVE study evaluating CAFs plus lorustamig, an anti-PD-1 CTLA-4 bispecific that's in collaboration with AstraZeneca. The safety and early efficacy data from all of these cohorts will inform the design of our first Phase III study for CAS in the frontline setting. We have already started planning activities to enable us to initiate a Phase III study as soon as we have the relevant safety and efficacy data in hand, and our goal is to initiate a Phase III study at the end of this year. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jen to speak in more detail about the potential market opportunity for CAS out of hand.

Thanks, Richard. I'd like to start on slide 22. RCC represents a massive, multi-billion-dollar market opportunity for test data fans. Sales for RCC drugs in just some major markets are over $10 billion annually today, and it's indicated to grow to $13 billion by 2030. As you can see here, historically, the market has been dominated by only two classes of therapies, IO and TKIs, and HIF-2-Alpha inhibition is the only new class of drugs on the horizon today. Importantly, as of today, the HIF2-alpha inhibitor field is only a two-horse race, with just belzudafan and us with castatafan. While Mark is slightly ahead of us, historical data has shown that in just a two-player market in oncology, second entrants have captured 42% when there is zero differentiation. And let me repeat that, this is when there is no differentiation. With efficacy differentiation, as we were seeing with casketafan, this share can be meaningfully higher, and oncology analogs have shown that SPAS followers with differentiation, share can be as high as 85%. Additionally, we are developing CAFs with different combination partners than balezutafan, which should drive even further differentiation. Turning to slide 23, the sole marketed HIF-to-OF inhibitor balezutafan, which is currently improved only in light-line clear-cell RCC, is already generating annual run rate sales of nearly $1 billion. While impressive, this is only scratching the surface in terms of market opportunity for a best-in-class HIF-2-alpha inhibitor. For castatafan, we are focused on early line settings, which have larger patient populations and longer durations of therapy, both of which will contribute to a much larger market opportunity that is multi-billion dollars in size. Specifically, our Peak One study is targeting the IO experience setting, of which there are approximately 21,000 patients in the major markets alone, so more than twice the third-line patient population, or BELZO, is approved today. Additionally, with the duration of therapy at least double that of BELZutafan today, we expect a peak sales opportunity of $2.5 billion in the IO experience, or Peak One, setting alone. In first line, the opportunity is even greater. With our TKI-free strategy, we believe we can take meaningful share from both IO-IO and IO-TKI regiments. Here, we estimate peak sales potentially for CAF of $3 billion or more. All in, Castatafin could be a $5 billion drug in first and second-line RCC alone. And to be clear, this is a revenue opportunity to ARCIS, not TAM or total addressable market. there's opportunity to expand that further with trials that support castatophant usage in other rcc settings as well as potentially other tumor types like hcc which cherry referenced earlier and as a reminder we have all of the rights to castatophant including economics other than in japan and certain other southeast asia countries so nearly 100 percent of castatophant revenues would accrue to us i'll end with one slide that supports our plans to focus on a tti free regimen in the front line and that's slide 24. Here we show market research that we recently conducted to determine the preferred combination partner for CAS in the front line. You can see here very clearly that the IO-IO regimen is preferred three times more than the IO-TKI regimen as a combination partner for CAS for all the reasons we discussed earlier today. I'd now like to turn the call over to Juan to discuss our immunology portfolio and work.

Thanks, Jen. I'm happy to describe such emerging immunology portfolio. This is an area in which we have interest and in-house expertise since the funding of the company. This portfolio currently includes five programs that you can see in our slide deck, reflecting the maturity of multiple years of research and compound optimization. Our strategy is simple and has been core to our approach since the very beginning of the company to minimize biological risk by focusing on and building upon mechanisms with validated clinical activity. In general, we are focused on taking a small molecule approach to pathways where biologics have been highly successful. This is where we believe that we have an opportunity to create the most value. We generally look for more than just the convenience of a neural drug. In fact, the value proposition for several of our programs includes an expectation of differentiated efficacy safety relative to the approved biologics. Our portfolio includes several programs, as I mentioned before, five active ones, but today I will focus on our MRG PRX2 and TNF incubator programs, which are expected to be the first to reach the clinic. Firstly, regarding our X2 antagonist program, we plan to target both chronic corticaria as well as atopic dermatitis. X2, which has received a lot of attention in recent months, represents a novel and exciting target for the modulation of mast cell activity. While anti-IgE and anti-IL4 receptor antibodies are marketed very successfully, for example, the Pixent alone is a $15 billion drug, there's still significant unmet medical need. While with the marketed antibodies, a substantial percentage of patients don't respond well to treatment, I want to emphasize that targeting mast cells is a validated approach in allergic conditions such as chronic urticaria and allergic asthma. A small molecule approach that targets a novel pathway for mast cell decarnylation could represent a differentiated mechanism of action to address the existing clinical need both in chronic urticaria as well as atopic dermatitis relative to the available biologics. Our candidate molecule has been specifically designed to improve both on the potency and pharmacokinetics side of the equation relative to the early small molecule entrance into the clinic. In fact, we believe that our required clinical exposure in patients, obviously, will be dramatically lower than those required for the leading small molecule currently being evaluated in clinical trials. This could translate into a potentially improved therapeutic index and potential best-in-class profile. We expect our MRG-PRX2 antagonist to enter the clinic later this year. We plan to start with a healthy volunteer phase one study to follow quickly with a proof-of-concept study in chronic inducible urticaria. This program has the potential to generate proof-of-concept data within 9 to 12 months following entry into the clinic. Our TNF inhibitor program also represents another significant opportunity. Anti-TNF antibodies are amongst the most successful drugs ever developed. With our small molecule approach, we have the potential to develop a Humira in a pill. One of the challenges with today's TNF antibody therapies is that they block TNF signaline at both receptor 1 and receptor 2. However, blocking TNF receptor 2 can actually impact regulatory T cells and tissue repair, resulting in a paradoxical inflammation as a side effect in some patients. Our approach is designed to selectively prevent TNF from activating TNF receptor 1 while preserving TNF receptor 2 biology, which we expect to be an effective but safer alternative to be antibodies. Relative to the early competitor in the clinic, our molecule has been designed to have a better overall potency and human PK profile, and we expect to be in the clinic with this program in late 26 or early 2027. Similarly to the X2 program, the TNF program also has the potential to generate proof concept data fairly quickly. We are very excited about the potential for our immunology programs to provide improved options for patients and we are working to move these into the clinic as rapidly as possible. With that I'd like now to hand it over to Bob to review our financials.

Thanks Juan. Our cash at the end of the fourth quarter was one billion dollars as compared to $841 million as of the end of the third quarter. Our cash position was bolstered by proceeds from our $288 million financing in November. Turning to our financial results for the quarter, we recognized gap revenue for the fourth quarter of $33 million, which compares to $26 million for the third quarter. Our revenue is primarily driven by our collaboration with Gilead. Our R&D expenses for the fourth quarter were $121 million as compared to $141 million in the third quarter. G&A expenses were $26 million for the fourth quarter compared to $27 million for the third quarter. Total non-cash stock-based compensation was $15 million for the fourth quarter compared to $14 million for the third quarter. Shifting gears to guidance for 2026, we expect to recognize GAAP revenue of $45 to $55 million for the full year of 2026. As we discussed on prior calls, we expect operating expenses to decrease meaningfully in 2026 as compared to 2025. The magnitude of this decrease will be in part determined by the results of the futility analysis for star 121, which will be conducted in the next couple of months accordingly we expect to provide more detailed r d expense guidance in connection with our q1 call we expect our cash and investments will enable us to fund operations until at least the second half of 2028 for more details regarding our financial results please refer to our earnings press release from earlier today and our 10k i'll now turn it back over to terry thanks very much

bob um i'm going to end on slide 33 spend a bit of time on our upcoming news flow for 2026. as i mentioned at the beginning of the call this is going to be another huge year for cast data fan data those data are both going to reinforce the confidence in its best-of-class profile and provide greater clarity on our first line development strategy later this year we'll have of at least two additional data presentations for CAS. First, we'll be presenting updated data for the CAS plus CAVO cohort. We'll do that either at an investor event or medical meeting, by which time we'll have a minimum of 12 months follow up on all patients. So the aim here is to be able to provide a relatively mature and meaningful data set, including Kaplan-Meier curves. Also later this year, we'll share new data from the CAS DataFan plus ZIM cohort of ARC-20. This is intended to demonstrate the safety and early efficacy of the combination and to establish CAS plus Anti-PD-1 as the backbone for our first-line combination. There's also a lot happening on the development front. For PEAK-1, our first phase three study for CAS DataFan, our goal is to complete enrollment by year end. Also, we're adding first-line combination cohorts to ARC-20 to determine the optimal regimen for our first Phase III study in the first fault-line setting, and this will enable us to initiate our second Phase III study for Casdanafan at the end of this year. We also expect to advance our two lead programs targeting inflammation and autoimmune disease into the clinic by early next year. with that i'd like to thank everybody for joining us we appreciate your interest your continued support of arcus and we're happy to open the call for questions thank you to ask a question please

press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now if you change your mind please press star followed by two when preparing to ask your question please ensure your device is unmuted locally Our first question comes from Salem side from Mizuho. Your line is now open, please go ahead.

Great. Thanks for the question, guys, and congrats on the data at ASCOGU. Just one from us, and I appreciate all the color around the first line strategy. Just the numbers that you provided here on PD and PFS, are there any particular trials that you guys are looking at just so we can start to think about the right io io benchmarks here as you move away from tki based regimens and just second to that um any any thoughts here on what you would like to see in terms of improvement from those benchmarks thanks so much that's a

good question and i think as we um move into this tk sparing regimen the focus should really go to to ipinevo. So there's a lot of data out there on ipinevo, those of you who were at ASCO last year, decade of follow-up. And the reason is it's the number one therapy that is utilized in the front line, and it's roughly in a third to 35 percent of patients. And one of the reasons it is growing, that it isn't used even more, is the rate of primary progression. And that's on the order of 20 to 25 percent. Second, it has a relatively short PFS. It's on the order of 12 months or so. So I think those numbers become very clear, simple lines to put in the sand where obviously we want to demonstrate meaningful improvement. And I would emphasize, you know, that's all going to start with that rate of primary progression. And, you know, we believe it's exciting that we've even shown with anti-PD-1 alone, we're looking at potentially single-digit rate of primary progression. And we'll have more to say on that later this year. But I think those form a good conversation around benchmark.

Yeah, it just looked like a specific study to look at our Checkmate 214, which was the registrational study for Ipenevo and Frontline RCC, and then the other study to look at that had an Ipenevo arm was Cosmic 313, and interestingly, the key efficacy measures, so Rata PD, PFSOS, You know, we're all very, very similar across those two studies.

Super helpful. Thanks so much, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Leigh Wutzik.

from canter your line is now open please go ahead hey this is daniel brander on for the uh congrats on the data update as well from uh our end um we're just curious to hear um where you're at with the vulva plus uh cas run-in in the frontline study that's being operationalized by astrazeneca i know you had mentioned that it was paused and as you're looking at the data but um any more color

about when it might open again if it's going to open again yeah so thanks um so that what um the question is referring to is the collaboration that we have with astrazeneca uh that's looking at a combination of castataphan and their bispecific uh anti-pd1 anti-ctla4 antibody um uh as you stated that study was paused, but the patients on the study continued. They were dosed down in terms of the dose of Volru. They also saw continued use of castatafen. So actually, we're learning quite a bit about that access, anti-PD-1, anti-CTLA-4, combined with castatafen, and it was looking good. So we haven't, since that dose down, we haven't seen any additional immune AEs. And I'll remind you, those look very VORU, very anti-CTL4-like. We haven't seen those up in the dosing down. I also think one important thing there, so it's a very, even though it's small end, things were looking in the direction that we, you know, find and expected to be the case. And at this point, I can't say anything further discussing with AstraZeneca. I think though it's probability standpoint, while we continue to learn from the study and anything we do will inform what we do in phase three, but the thing to be knocked off the pedestal going in is that we recognize that IPI anti-PD-1 combined with CAS is what anything would need to be. So I think our intent is that study, that arm is open now. I want to emphasize it will enroll fast. We'll get the data that we need and that'll inform what we do in our phase three study.

thank you thank you our next question comes from dana graybosh from lee rink partners your line

is now open please go ahead everyone you got bill on for dana uh thanks for the question and congrats on all the data looks really great um so in your biomarker analyses uh you mentioned that the deeper epo reductions were correlated responses um this is due to higher baseline epo i guess in other In other words, did patients generally reach a similar, I guess, numeric, equal level after I got one follow-up.

So, I'll let Juan give you some comments on that.

So, there's a…what I would describe as a soft correlation between baseline levels being higher and the extent of reduction. both of those we interpret it like we have data to to support that those reflect the extent of hip-to-alpha activity in those tumors. The tumors that have a stronger hip-to-alpha signal tend to present with higher EPO levels and those also tend to be the patients that that display the deepest and more sustained reductions.

And when you're looking at these biomarkers, did you also look at VEGF and other genes that might also be downstream of HIF2?

Yes, and there are other soluble peripheral markers that we'll be disclosing later this year. that are regulated by HIF-2-Alpha and are well known to be, each one of them, independently negative prognostics in this setting.

You know, one thing I would emphasize also about the biomarker work that I think is important for people to recognize, this is most important in just sort of supporting the overall understanding in tie to mechanism of the activity, but in this particular case, there's no sense that we would ever think about having or needing a selection criteria based on the myelomarker, because what I'll remind you is that probably 80-plus percent to 90-some-odd percent of patients with clear cell RCC have some level of HIF2 as a driver. So when we report on the – what you're actually seeing is while there's correlation, even those patients with lower levels are – there is benefit. So we get a pretty continuous benefit throughout those patients as opposed to some sort of binary cutoff that you might be seeking.

got it thank you our next question comes from richard law from goldman sachs your line is now

open please go ahead hi this is jane on for rich uh congrats on the progress uh so we have two questions about the upcoming presentation at asko gu this weekend um so first merch will present detailed results of thousand plus lenva in the phase three light spark 11 which may set the bar in second line so what are your thoughts and expectations for light spark 11 and my second question is, so Mark is also running a study of bowels plus Zenza in the Phase 1B to keymaker U03. So they have a poster about the TIP poster this weekend. So what's your view on this combo strategy versus CAS plus capital? Thank you.

So let me start with expectations around LightSpark 011. From everything that Mark put out, You know, they obviously said that the study was successful and any body language that you might infer. We think, you know, the data are going to look quite good, and we're excited about that. We think a couple things. First off, it's really providing important validation for the field in an earlier line setting, And we feel great knowing that we have a better HIF-2 inhibitor on top of what is the standard of care TKI versus LANVA, and we have the same control arm. So from our perspective, obviously we have no knowledge of anything quantitative, but we expect good data. and the better we feel will be better for patients. I think we're going to outperform them with both of the molecules in our combination. The second part, when I say there's two important things, is all of our investigators have emphasized this point, which we recognize. We have a lot of tailwinds in terms of enrolling peak one, but for a number of reasons the positive data that they'll present is going to really help us to drive enrollment as i mentioned we're looking to be fully enrolled by the end of this year and we think the the light spark data will help us very much i'll make a couple of comments on zanza and i'll see if jen or richard want to add anything more on top of it but we we just simply don't see ZANZA as being a key change.

Keymaker, USRBH, you were asking for the which would be presented for Bell.

Right. Yes. It's a TIP poster. Thank you so much. This is super helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ashdika Junawadine from Truist. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Carby on for Ask the Good from Truist. Thank you for the questions. Just on the first question, on ART20 monotherapy, the last update had ORR somewhere in the 30% range and now you're showing improvement in the mid-40s. So how much of that was due to deepening responses and at what time point were you seeing responses start to deepen? So it's definitely all due to deepening

of response and i i like the question because it does go back we share a lot of data and we share almost in real time and so one of the slides you know we've included we've shown how those data have evolved over time but we also pointed out at the earliest time point um how with this mechanism and also the safety profile, it's very clear that responses can occur even out past a year. So the responses occur at all sorts of different time points. Stable disease patients also continue to do very well. The question about DOR hasn't come up, but what I can say is we're not close to a DOR. So patients, once they can get past that initial scan, do very well, and that's why we're seeing the PFS we're talking about. But there's no generalities in terms of where those responses may occur. And, you know, to your question on deepening, even when we've seen patients that have generated their initial response out past the year, it's meaningful. So it isn't just that, you know, they were at a tumor reduction and they went to 31%. These are genuine deepening of response. And the way we interpret it is that, you know, I think people aren't used to looking at oncology mechanisms that have a relatively benign safety profile. And what I mean by that is they're not, you know, poisoning you while they're reducing the size of your tumor. So once these patients become stabilized and they become healthier and they become stronger, all those things kick in, including their own immune system. That's why you may see patients that all of a sudden, you know, deepen. It may have not even always been a gradual deepening. They start to deepen later on. And you do have for this mechanism what looks very IO-like in terms of the tail. So patients that do well do well, and they do well for a long time. And that's one of the reasons we feel, and I think justified by the data, that the market, it's not only going to be driven by the number of patients, but by the durability of the treatment. And we've had a lot of patients, even as a late line, out past two years, we think that the front line, you know, is going to be something where you can have patients going three, four, five years. And that gets the whole TKI sparing strategy that you're not just pushing off that TKI for a matter of months, but you're going to dramatically change the opportunity for that patient that first presents. insofar as not having to go for TKI until many years later. But they'll still ultimately get whatever benefit you might get from the TKI. But you just flip around the paradigm of no longer requiring that, you know, at the outset to get the tumor under control, but they can get that years into their therapy.

Got it. Thank you so much. If I may, I'm just going to squeeze in one more question. Sure. Okay. Thank you. So, you have said that STAR-121 will have a fertility analysis in the coming months. So, if you choose to discontinue STAR-121 based on a result, what is the clinical impact and what is the impact on your R&D spend?

So I'm anticipating from an operational standpoint that that likely will occur, but we may see something that tells us to keep going. Impact-wise, operationally, because the study is basically fully enrolled. So that impact operationally would be that, you know, you wouldn't be doing all that that work leading up to the registration. I'll let Bob comment on how we think about sort of the expense part of that whole thing.

Yeah, I mean, the vast majority of the expense that we see for especially any of our late stage clinical trials really is incurred primarily through the enrollment cycle. And as the primary portion of patient treatment is occurring, so when you get to the latter parts the trial and you've presumably seen that decrease in expense as an example for 221 and 121 and other studies. When we get to the latter part of the life cycle of trials, the expense starts to drop

off pretty markedly. Got it. That's helpful. Thank you so much. Our next question comes from

Igor Nokomovic from Citigroup. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Thanks. I just

want to probe a little bit more in terms of the frontline strategy. So, you've indicated that CAS and plus ZIM will be the backbone of this strategy. And then the question, of course, is whether the CTLA-4 comes into the mix. So, with that in mind, I'm just curious, when you asked the oncologist, as you showed us this new market data, in that question, you didn't put in the question on CAS plus ZIM, you put the triple. So I'm just wondering is the interpretation there that your base case is really to do PD-1, CTOA-4, CAS, and that's where it's going to shake out? Or is there some reasonable potential that it could end up just being what you've identified as the backbone, CAS plus ZIM? I'll let Jen start on that. We'll see

You probably had anything on top of what she said.

Well, but anyway, yeah, I mean, I think you actually described it really well, that right now our base case assumption is that it would be CAS plus Ipenevo, and so right now we're thinking of CAS plus XIM or CAS plus anti-PD-1, really, as the backbone, and that we would likely build on that. You know, we'll keep looking at the CAS plus XIM data, you know, see how it looks over time, but, you know, certainly base case right now is CAS plus Ipenevo, and as we talked about today that cohort is actually now enrolling and you know the idea is to generate safety data very very quickly and um and get an early look at efficacy by looking at the rate of primary progression and so it's also nice about this combination as terry was talking about earlier because ipinibo has a relatively high rate of primary progression if we see early on you know at the first scan that that rate of primary progression is coming down that gives us a very

early read on efficacy which is nice to have so what i'll add um eagle and this actually it's come you know questions come up from investors and it it's a topic also with investigators so um the data that we've seen thus far and obviously we just there early and we showed you the primary progression but it's a good start um in the context value uh does the um anti-ctla4 bring so obviously we're going to have uh an early uh data set but the way we look at it is if you think about it in front and this comes up even though it wasn't a formal part of that analysis that that Jen did, when you talk with investigators, including some of those who are aware of the anti-PD-1 early data more specifically, as you can imagine, anti-PD-1 plus CAT, from a patient standpoint, that would just be awesome. I mean, to not have to go with anti-CTLA-4 and not have to go with TKI would be, like, it comes up sometimes like a vacation. So we are going to pay a lot of attention to that. With that said, I'd like to also put the other conservative part of this that we think is important. We don't want to get too cute. So if that anti-PD-1, anti-PD-1, anti-CTLA-4, each on top of CAS similar or maybe like anti-PD-1 potentially could be there, we're still more likely than not to go for a three-arm study where we would have anti-PD-1, anti-CTLA-4 CAS versus anti-PD-1. anti-PD-1 CAS versus Ipenevo, so we're not going to get too early data, but if it should, we're going to give anti-PD-1 CAS at the limelight if possible, because it would be great for patients.

Our next question comes from Jonathan Miller from Evercore.

Let me just follow up on the first line setting. You know, you say at least one phase three starting this year. You're adding an additional undisclosed combo to ARC 20 in the first line setting this year. The Ipenevo combo is open. You just said it was sort of your base case, but you haven't committed to showing data for us ahead of making that phase three decision. So I just want to get a sense for, broadly speaking, how many first line phase threes are you thinking about in aggregate eventually? Essentially, what are your plans for the adjuvant setting, which I noticed you didn't mention except saying that CAS belongs in all lines of therapy, and what are your current thoughts on partnering in RCC and beyond for CAS and whether that unlocks additional bandwidth to do some of these late-stage designs?

Yeah, so I'm just going to comment briefly and then turn it over to Jen to give a more fulsome answer on all that. but I'll address the partnering part. All we usually see and you probably will see are like clinical collaboration. So at this point, we feel we love that we basically own 100% of the CAF staff and rights other than in Japan and a few other Southeast Asian, as you know, that gives us an enormous strategic optionality with that said um there are other mechanisms and settings that make sense the you know cast data fan is a relatively rare uh beast um we feel like we're in a good position to do some smart uh clinical collaborations i'll let jen comment more broadly, though, on, you know, the number of phase threes we might do, how they're sequencing, when we'll disclose some data, et cetera, because we will decision without sort of giving a sense

of what drove that decision. Go ahead, Jen. Yeah, so, you know, just on the phase three front, so obviously we have peak one that's enrolling. You know, our plan is to start one other phase three study around year end that would be in the frontline setting and informed by this new cohort that we're adding that you referred to johnson a cohort that's looking at cast plus anti-pd1 plus ctla4 so you could probably make an assumption that you know that first face tree study would be looking at that triplet versus ipiniva so that would probably be your base case something today um we'll probably also add as you were pointing out another combination to arc 20 to look at cast plus anti-pd1 plus another mechanism probably something that wouldn't be a big surprise to a lot of people you know i'd say as far as whether we took that into a Phase 3 is very TBD right now. I think right now that first Phase 3 in the Frontline setting that I mentioned is our top priority and what we'd really be focusing on from a resource perspective. But we're also interested in generating some other data with that other combination as well. And then on the Adjuvant setting, we'll see what the LightSpark 022 data looks like. And I think right now we probably view that as lower priority relative to um certainly frontline and maybe some other things we might do with cath including hcc just given it's not a huge market you know patients are on treatment for 12 months max it's a very high bar from a safety perspective in the adjuvant setting just because these patients are doing pretty well and feeling well so a lot of times they don't want to be on therapy they come off therapy so so like i said we'll see their data um we're always evaluating it we'll continue to evaluate and it's something that we might consider for the future i think the way and

obviously as the year goes along we'll continue to share and probably into next year we'll be sharing every like our view is that if two inhibition is going to be used in every line in every setting of clear cell rcc and our ultimate development strategy you know whether it's supportive of studies, et cetera, is going to look like we're going to make sure we've covered everything with time. But from a prioritization standpoint, it's peak one, frontline, potentially another one next year, and then we'll be surrounding those with other studies that make sense so that we're leaving no stone unturned in being able to be used and reimbursed, et cetera, in every line of therapy.

Yeah, and we're continuing to look at, you know, with your clinical collaborations for that other new frontline option that we're thinking about, you know, so not everything is on our dime, it's not all our resources, et cetera. So that's important.

Great. And if I could just squeeze in one more before we run out of time. On PRX2, you've mentioned a couple of times the potential for a safety delta on the basis of better potency and lower dosing. But are there specific safety signals that we should be looking at when we think about initial data here? And how much data from the initial cohorts, especially in healthy volunteers, will you need to be able to put some bookends around what that potential safety delta might look

Right. So I'm always saying that outside of oncology, you're always one dose away from complete disaster. So the answer is that a well-run healthy volunteer study will give you some comfort. but you know that you're always accumulating additional data the the thing to the default thing to always look out for and i think that some of our competitors in the space sort of generate a little bit of a hint of this when you're dealing with a very high exposure of any xenobiotic you need to look at liver functions okay and so you can go you can actually as our competitors have seen, if you go too high, you will actually start to see the liver complaining. And so we think that we'll be able to put way more daylight between the amount of our drugs required to elicit the similar pharmacology and levels where the liver is going to start to

complain. Thank you. Our next question, our last question, sorry, comes from Emily Bodnar from hc wainwright your line is now open please go ahead um yeah i was going to ask if you could

give us some more updated expectations for your task with cabo data later this year given you now have pretty mature monotherapy pfs of over 12 months um so how are you kind of thinking about what the combo could look like in earlier line patients um in that full 45 patient data thanks

Yeah, so as Terry said, when we present the data, the goal is to have 12 months minimum follow-up on everybody so that we may not have a PFS, but, you know, we'll be able to look at a Kaplan-Meier curve and, you know, at least make some educated guesses as far as where PFS could shape out or shape up. And so, as you know, for CAS Mono, PFS, we're seeing a range of 12 to 15 months. So, you know, we'll see what CAS Cabo shows. And, you know, right now, we obviously believe very, very strongly that we can be Cabo alone because CAS Mono alone looks better than Cabo. And so, you know, we'll build on both what CAS Mono looks like and what Cabo Mono looks like. So, yeah, so we're excited to get this data out. and um you know we think like the light spark 011 data it will also be very de-risking for

the peak one study the other nice thing about light spark 011 um just may be obvious but um it'll give a good uh call it contemporary look at what cable alone looks like because that's uh the control arm so to the extent that i'm thinking about yeah and what gives us obviously

a lot of confidence in the CAS plus Cabo data and the PFS is, like I said, you know, just what we're seeing with CAS Mono, you know, and the fact that, you know, CAS Mono looks better than Cabo Mono and, you know, we think, you know, may even look better than Bells plus LEN, you'll see what the LightSparker 1-1 data shows. Great, thank you. Thank you. We currently have no further

questions and therefore concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.