Rohan Hockings presented at the Bell Potter Healthcare...

Rohan Hockings presented at the Bell Potter Healthcare Conference today.

Rohan always presents well and with great energy but it seemed to me that he was positively bursting at the seams with excitement today!

Rather than speak to the current clinical programs, he chose to focus on the PYC-003 in ADPKD program, giving three reasons:

• The high potential patient impact of targeting a disease with high prevalence, significant impact on QOL and life expectancy and no effective treatment.
• The fact that two peer companies released their data last week and added substantially to their market caps (someone else may know more about this?).
• Because PYC will be releasing its ADPKD IND data pack next Monday.

Rohan worked though all the preclinical data to date which has demonstrated that PYC-003 reaches and has an impact on the target cells in the kidney.

When asked about likely durability of PYC-003 in people, Rohan suggested it might be a 1 hour long IV treatment every 2 months.

When Sarepta’s termination of its PPMO program due to safety concerns was raised, Rohan pointed out that PYC’s drug has achieved 1,000 fold greater delivery into tissue than Sarepta’s PPMO drug and so can be used at a much lower and safer dose.

Rohan says the clinical trial is already well organised and will commence early in the New Year. There will first be a single ascending dose in healthy volunteers, followed by commencement of dosing in patients with the disease mid-next year. Results from that patient group should start reading out later next year.

The Phase 2 (hopefully) registrational trial will probably enrol ~ 200-300 patients with a large partner sought to take the drug to market.

The company is said to be funded to FY26 and Rohan confidently stated that there are multiple financing options beyond this.