Syndax's CEO Presents 3 Immediate Objectives, Possible Partnerships, Drug Pricing And More

Benzinga had the opportunity to chat with Briggs Morrison, M.D., Syndax's CEO and director. The interview took place at a time when the company's executives were in San Francisco in conjunction with the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference.

3 Immediate Objectives

Although Syndax did not present at the JPMorgan conference, Morrison set out three goals.

1. To speak with business development partners to set up collaborations with its pipeline or to enhance its pipeline. Morrison said there are several partners he will be meeting with that are medium- to large-size companies. Morrison said he is open to partnerships with companies located outside of the United States since the company can navigate through the regulatory process on its own domestically. "So, I'd say about a third of our meetings have been with people looking for opportunities to out license molecules or work on collaborations with our existing molecules," Morrison emphasized.
2. Morrison planned on meeting with investors who want to get caught up on the work the company is doing and to discuss the progress of its programs.
3. The executive was tasked with meeting bankers to discuss ways of further raising capital for the company.

Current Positioning

Morrison pointed out that Syndax has sufficient funding through roughly the middle of 2018 during which the company can complete readouts of ongoing clinical experiments. Nevertheless, the executive reached out with bankers to "understand the various options that are available to us."

Morrison added that he would prefer to be able to read out of the experiments that are ongoing, which could prove to be catalysts to boost the company's stock higher. Under that scenario, it would be easier to raise capital at a lower cost.

Morrison did emphasize that as it stands now, it is not active in raising capital as there is no need to do so.

"Right now, we're actually in good shape," he said.

Drug Pricing

The topic quickly shifted toward drug pricing policies.

Morrison argued that there is increasing price pressures although he did acknowledge there has always been pricing pressure. He suggested that the industry dynamics aren't as obvious to people outside of the industry as they are to people inside the industry.

"I think as the U.S. system continues to evolve, my personal view is that the large companies have quite a bit of experience in multiple different models and will know how to navigate that evolving structure," Morrison explained. "The impact on biotech, I think many people like to say well biotech is really early innovation. It tends not to be sort of large commercial organizations, and that's all very true. Yet, I think the ripple effect on biotech is, if it were true that a large company like a Pfizer or Novartis or somebody couldn't generate the same amount of profits that they were generating from their existing businesses then perhaps they don't have the demand for buying drops down a little bit and maybe prices go down a little bit on buying biotech companies."

Morrison did acknowledge he feels "pretty optimistic" and that "innovation is a good thing and it'll always be valued."

Pipeline

Morrison went on to explain Syndax's pipeline.

Entinostat is undergoing a phase 3 trial for the treatment of hormone receptor positive breast cancer. He explained that initial data suggests the company's therapy is pretty active and could provide important clinical benefits for patients.

"I think if we can show that we improved the survival, the chances of being alive from your breast cancer, that's innovation that will be valued whether it is in the U.K. or in the U.S. or France or Germany," Morrison said. "We're excited about that program."

Morrison also stated that another objective of Entinostat is to focus on populations of people who don't have current therapy. One of those populations is patients with melanoma who have failed in immunotherapy."

The executive estimates there are 15,000 to 20,000 patients a year in the United States alone who fail those therapies so the company is active in testing Entinostat in that population of patients and expects to have early data probably by the end of the first quarter of this year.

Entinostat's Adverse Events

Morrison acknowledged that there are toxicities that come from Entinostat, but they are not very severe. He explained that the main concern is a decrease in white blood cell count, but it doesn't have any clinical impact on the patient.

Another concern is patient fatigue. Specifically, patients tend to get fatigued on the day where they take the therapy, but the physicians who took part in the clinical studies felt it was quite tolerable for the patients.