IPH-6501

Plus, news about Astellas’ setidegrasib and Anavex: 📈 Kodiak’s eye drug win: The biotech’s experimental drug Zenkuda, whose scientific name is tarcocimab tedromer, beat a sham procedure in patients with diabetic retinopathy in a Phase 3 trial. It’s the second Phase 3 trial to succeed against a placebo. But the bigger test will come in a third late-stage study that’s testing Zenkuda against the blockbuster eye drug Eylea. Data are expected to read out in the third quarter. Like Eylea, Zenkuda is an anti-VEGF therapy. Kodiak’s stock price $KOD rose about 68% on Thursday morning. — Max Gelman 🛑 Innate stops anti-CD20 program: The biotech is terminating a Phase 1/2 study for the therapy, called IPH6501, in patients with B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The move comes as part of an ongoing restructuring. Innate also said Thursday that it has €44.8 million ($51.7 million) in cash as of Dec. 31, 2025, giving it runway through the end of the third quarter. — Max Gelman 📊 Early results on a new type of KRAS drug from Astellas: The drugmaker is developing a KRAS G12D degrader known as setidegrasib, which is meant to destroy the mutant protein as opposed to blocking it like other KRAS treatments. In 45 patients with non-small cell lung cancer who received the 600 mg dose that Astellas is moving forward with, 36% saw their tumors shrink substantially, and the treatment kept cancer at bay for a median 8.3 months. Meanwhile, in 21 pancreatic cancer patients who received the 600 mg dose of setidegrasib as a second- or third-line treatment, 24% responded. The median progression-free survival was three months while overall survival was 10.3 months. On safety, the most common treatment-related adverse events were infusion-related reactions, like rash and nausea. Two patients discontinued treatment due to adverse events. “These results support continued clinical development of setidegrasib in rational combination strategies in these patients,” the study investigators wrote in a New England Journal of Medicine paper. — Lei Lei Wu 📉 Anavex withdraws Alzheimer’s drug from EU: The company’s stock was down $AVXL nearly 35% at close on Wednesday after it said it withdrew its application for blarcamesine to the European Medicines Agency as an add-on therapy for Alzheimer’s disease. The decision comes after the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use rejected the drug in December over concerns about its effectiveness and safety, including that the pill could contain potentially cancer-causing impurities. — Anna Brown

Back in September, IPH6501 wasn’t named among the most valued candidates in Innate’s pipeline.\n Innate Pharma has finally called time on an NK cell engager in phase 1/2 development as part of an ongoing fine-tuning of the French biotech’s pipeline.The Marseille-headquartered company had been evaluating IPH6501, a tetraspecific antibody-based natural killer cell engager, in a phase 1/2 study for B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma. As recently as November, Innate had been planning to enroll up to 184 patients across the U.S., Australia and France.But the biotech disclosed in its full-year 2025 earnings results Thursday that the study has been “discontinued as part of the company’s strategic prioritization of its pipeline.” Innate had previously reported that the dose-escalation portion of the trial had already been completed, and the biotech explained this morning that data from the study would be presented at some point this year.The decision to end the trial is part of a larger strategic rethink at the company, which saw Innate lay off 30% of its employees last year to focus on its “highest-value assets.” At the time of that move, IPH6501 wasn’t named among the most valued candidates in Innate’s pipeline, suggesting that the drug’s days could be numbered.Instead, the company said at the time that it wanted to focus on assets such as IPH4502, a Nectin-4-targeting antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) undergoing a phase 1 study for a range of solid tumors. In this morning’s release, Innate CEO Jonathan Dickinson said the company believes IPH4502 has “best-in-class potential among Topo I-based Nectin-4 ADCs.” Dickinson pointed to “early signs of anti-tumor activity in heavily pre-treated patients,” including in patients with urothelial cancer who have already received Astellas’ ADC Padcev. Another drug in the spotlight is lacutamab, an anti-KIR3DL2 antibody that Innate is gearing up for a phase 3 study in an aggressive skin cancer called Sézary syndrome. There’s also the AstraZeneca-partnered anti-NKG2A antibody monalizumab, which is being evaluated in a phase 3 study for non-small cell lung cancer. Dickinson described that readout as a “key catalyst for Innate.” Innate first penned a collaboration with Sanofi back in 2016 to work on various drugs from Innate’s NK cell engager platform, dubbed ANKET. But in April 2025, Sanofi decided to hand back a CD123-targeting drug, known as SAR443579 or IPH6101, to Innate.In this morning’s release, Innate confirmed that Sanofi had deprioritized another asset from that agreement, namely a trifunctional BCMA-targeting NK cell engager called IPH6401 or SAR’514. Sanofi retains the rights to develop or commercialize the drug in the future, Innate noted.