Dr. Wick: Telik is a cancer-focused biotechnology company that distinguishes itself by having discovered its own drugs using a proprietary computational drug discovery technology called TRAP. We have a portfolio of drugs in development, including TELCYTA, TELINTRA and several pre-clinical candidates.
TWST: I see that Telik is committed to a novel small-molecule drug approach. How many drugs out there are derived from biotechnology and are small molecules?
Dr. Wick: The term "biotechnology drugs" used to mean protein-based drugs, but the majority of drugs currently used in cancer treatment are small-molecule or chemically based drugs, and that's our expertise. Clearly, there's an important role for antibodies and proteins, and our belief is that the best treatments come from the combination of these approaches.
TWST: Would you describe your product pipeline?
Dr. Wick: Our lead compound is TELINTRA, which is designed for treatment of hematologic malignancies such as leukemia and MDS, or myelodysplastic syndrome. MDS is a form of pre-leukemia where many of the patients go on to develop leukemia. We are currently conducting a Phase II study to confirm the results we've seen with both an oral and IV formulation. TELINTRA may have additional applications. It's capable of stimulating white blood cell levels, so we are testing it in diseases that have a low white cell count. In animal models, TELINTRA has also shown the ability to accelerate the recovery from chemotherapy-induced neutropenia, which is low white count as a result of the toxic effect of chemotherapy. TELCYTA, a tumor-activated cancer drug, has been in multiple Phase II/Phase III trials, and has shown to be an active drug and well tolerated. We recently reported results in a randomized Phase II/Phase III study with TELCYTA in combination with DOXIL for the treatment of ovarian cancer. We had statistically significant results for the treatment of patients with refractory ovarian cancer, which is a particularly hard-to-treat type of ovarian cancer. Additionally, the results of TELCYTA in combination with current chemotherapy agents for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer in a triple combination was recently published in a leading peer-reviewed journal. These results showed there was a significant advantage to patients who received maintenance therapy with TELCYTA. The disadvantage with most chemotherapy is that patients cannot take treatment for a very long period of time due to toxicities. With TELCYTA's tolerability profile, patients are able to stay on therapy for extended periods of time. Those are the two lead indications for TELCYTA. Then beyond that, we are working on additional small-molecule compounds that we plan on bringing into the clinic later.
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