Ann: Imugene Phase 1 onCARlytics CD19 virus clinical trial opens, page-89

@DickyB

Hi Dicky, nice post. I have a slightly different take on it.

"Why do Amgen only appear to be lukewarm with their support of this trial? "

I don't believe Amgen have anything at all to do with this trial, other than Imugene showed up at the drugstore and purchased their product from a random vendor somewhere. If we go back and take a look at the poster presentations for sitc where all 3 pre-clinical submissions were accepted (Imugene.com presentation page) and compare them, you will note that the poster for the combo with Blinatumomab is absent in any reference to not only Amgen but even its drugs trade name Blincyto. The others have logos, names, links, doctors etc. I feel this is quite telling, because Amgen were possibly entirely unaware their drug was being used along side a virus until they stumbled on the pre-clinical data. I'm sure that Imugene (or at the very least - hope) reached out to them when the pre-clinical came back so spectacular. How many drug trials are there with the 5 approved cd19 products? Possibly hundreds. How much attention do they pay to pre-clinical? No idea. Perhaps it was the standard industry reply "come back with data after ph1". LC and PH have said it's all about ph2 data and it's hard to have any conversations without spectacular ph1 data.

Imugene have shown a number of times now that they are more than willing to purchase the drugs and get stuck into it rather than waiting for politics and red tape. We all of course hope that Amgen are keenly aware and paying attention, but unfortunately it simply may not be the case. While I have generally found Imugene pretty good at responding when I have reached out, that specific part of my questioning has never been addressed. "Do xxx (Amgen/Merk) have any active interests in the xxx(trial) or are we running the trial completely independent of them?"