Do Any Signs Of Life Remain In OnceMed's Demcizumab Development?

On April 10, Oncomed Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ: OMED) announced demcizumab had missed its primary endpoint in the Phase 2 YOSEMITE trial in pancreatic cancer, while the company’s partner, Bayer, had decided not to opt-in to develop Wnt inhibitors vantictumab and ipafricept.

H.C. Wainwright’s Shaunak K. Deepak maintains a Buy rating on Oncomed Pharma, with a price target of $9.

Trial Failure

The analyst believes that this news “does not necessarily mean the development of these assets is over.”

For the Phase 2 YOSEMITE trial, Oncomed Pharma announced that demcizumab (dem) failed to show survival benefit compared with the control arm in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer in terms of either the primary endpoint of progression free survival or the secondary endpoint of interim median overall survival.

Other Data

Oncomed Pharma expects to report data from its discontinued Phase 2 DENALI trial for dem in non-small cell lung cancer later in the quarter, along with preliminary data from the Phase 1b study, although Deepak believes that this would be unlikely following the failure of the YOSEMITE trial.

The analyst lowered the probability of successful development of demcizumab from 30 percent to 10 percent.

“Separately at AACR, Oncomed discussed preclinical development efforts for its wholly owned GITRL-FC trimer demonstrating interesting anti-tumor efficacy in a range of mouse tumor models and identifying biomarkers in tumor tissue and blood that it intends to incorporate into clinical trials,” Deepak reported.

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