Torbjørn Furuseth, Targovax ASA
Thank you, Øystein. Yes. As Øystein alluded to, we’ve had seen interesting progress on the TG platform with a new cell collaboration with the Parker and Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. And we will also face now new data readouts in the near term, 2 data readout points. So we will not spend too much time today as data will come quite soon.
Just to remind you, this is the overall program. The light blue boxes with the completed programs; dark blue, ongoing; and the gray ones, in planning.
And first, on the colorectal cancer with the TG02 product. This is a mechanism of action trial where we want to show not only that we’re able to create the right T-cells in the bloodstream more systemically but also that the T-cells find their way into the tumor. And naturally, we are not able to prove that in the previous trial in resected pancreatic cancer as the tumor was resected. So that’s the ambition and the target for this trial. And the data readout will come here in a couple of months.
Secondly, as Øystein mentioned, we signed a collaboration with Parker Institute. We are very proud that they wanted to invite us into this club of elite researchers and leading university hospitals in the U.S. Parker Institute has an ambition to crack the very challenging and hard-to-treat cancers with immune therapy. And they have pancreatic cancer as one of their focus area indications. And they want to solve that with combination trials where several treatments are combined. And a peptide vaccine with a RAS targeting mutant RAS is really of their interest.
So very exciting. This is a combination trial, as we said and, to really find the right design, may take some time because we will combine both with immune therapy drugs and chemotherapy and in vaccine and so on so and other new novel immune therapies. So it might take some time before the final design is concluded.
And then thirdly, the resected pancreatic cancer trial where we have previously released 2-year readout. Within a couple of weeks or 2 weeks from now, we will release 3-year data and that will also be very interesting to see. If I may remind you of the data we have previously released, we saw a very strong immune activation in the 94% of the patients. And for the second cohort especially, we saw a strong increase in disease-free survival. And the median overall survival is not yet reached at the time we had the last data readout. So it will be now very interesting to see if the improvement in disease-free survival is also translating into overall survival. So then we were able to sort of extend these curves and see if there is still separations and the survival of the patients. And that will come, as I said, within 2 weeks.
So that was shortly on the TG platform. Over to the financials. We did a private placement in the end of March, as Øystein said. And the cash at the end of first quarter plus the private placements was NOK 172 million. The net cash flow was minus NOK 46 million for the quarter, which is significantly higher than the previous quarters, and I can show you on the next page why we saw this increase. And at least, there’s still an annual run rate of NOK 124 million over the last 4 quarters.
Currently, the market cap is at around NOK 400 million at a share price of NOK 6.5. The turnover of the share increased also in the last quarter compared to previous quarter.
When it comes to more – a bit more details on the numbers. As you can see, the total operating expenses for the first quarter was NOK 40 million compared to NOK 42 million in the fourth quarter. But the fourth quarter was quite special with the high expenses compared to previous quarters. And the net change in cash for the fourth quarter was only NOK 22 million. So we accrued a lot of costs, invoices not paid, which now has been paid in the first quarter. So that’s why you see the quite steep increase in the cash spend for the quarter. And now with the private placement, we have, as I previously said, NOK 172 million.
So to sum up. This is the overview of the pipeline. Good news on the mesothelioma where we have earlier readout than we have previously communicated. Around new year, we will come with the data on the randomized phase. In melanoma, we will have data coming within a couple of months, by end of June. And also, the 3-year survival data on the TG platform will come in 2 weeks and the colorectal cancer trial in TG02 also in this first half, so within a couple of months.
Just to remind you also about the upcoming events we will participate. I think just to mention the AX Exposure, May 23. We will have an interview with our CMO, Magnus Jäderberg. He was not able to participate today because he had to go to an investigator meeting for the completed trial. So we need to make sure that we keep the pace on the trial. But he will then be talking more about the clinical programs and the data we have released.
Also, the subsequent offering from the private placement will open tomorrow and close at May 24, half past 4. And the subscription rights will be similar to the private placement, and the subscription rights are given to shareholders that held shares registered in the VPS as of March 25 or shareholders that had shares when the private placement was announced.
So Targovax. We have – ONCOS-102 is our lead product, and it’s one of the furthest developed viruses in the field. Also, we have strong single-agent data, which is really important now in these times where you see a lot of combinations. So we were early. So we have a single-agent data that’s important. And as you’ve heard now, we have several upcoming data readouts coming.
The mutant RAS and neoantigen vaccine platform are very interesting targets. I think that’s now becoming quite clear for everyone in the field. We have clinical efficacy shown in resected pancreatic cancer and a strong immune reaction also proven clinically.
The pipeline is very innovative. Next-generation viruses as they stand to get through today and also with the potential within the TCR therapies of mutant RAS. So thank you very much for your attention, and we will open up for questions.
Is there any in the audience or on the web? No questions on the web. Okay. Thank you, everyone, for watching.
