Continuing our bispecific mini-series, we now switch from small to large biotech with a look at what Amgen are doing in this niche. They have both regular bispecifics, as well as T cell bispecifics in their early pipeline.

Our latest company interview focuses on several early phase 1 new product developments.

Aside from the BiTEs, we also discuss the clinical program with one of their most promising small molecules, AMG 510, a KRAS selective inhibitor that has been drawing much attention since the chemical structure was unveiled at AACR earlier this year.

There was much ballyhoo and yet more garish headlines in the media at ASCO regarding ‘Amgen showed it had developed a medicine that shrank tumors in 50% of lung cancer patients’ – in 10 patients. Was it really 10 people or a much higher number if we consider intent to treat amongst evaluable patients? Then of course, taking a small sample size into consideration, the next 10 might produce quite different results. We might also see resistance set in down the road (e.g. at 9 to 12 months as we have with BRAFi), so these are really very early days, something we pointed out during the daily ASCO coverage.

To be clear, I can say that both companies included in yesterday’s (Neon Therapeutics) and today’s (Amgen) articles were sensible, thoughtful, and well measured in how they handled the data rollouts, but the media frenzy that occurred with each is quite something else.

Since we had quite a few BSB readers ask about both sets of data, having discussed Neon’s yesterday, today we offer an interview with an Amgen exec at the heart of their early stage programs…

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