Presentation

Company Profile
BerGenBio is a biopharmaceutical company developing transformative drugs targeting AXL as a potential cornerstone of therapy for aggressive diseases, including immune-evasive and therapy resistant cancers. The proprietary lead candidate, bemcentinib, is a potentially first-in-class selective AXL inhibitor in a broad Phase II oncology clinical development programme with six trials focused on combination and single agent therapy in lung cancer, leukaemia and COVID-19. A functional blocking anti-AXL antibody, tilvestamab, has completed Phase I. In parallel, BerGenBio is developing companion diagnostic tests to identify those patient populations most likely to benefit from bemcentinib or tilvestamab.

Recent highlights
In April, BerGenBio provided an update on the COVID-19 trials of bemcentinib, indicating a favourable safety profile, and early indications of efficacy. In May, top-line data from one of the trials showed that more than 50% of the severely affected COVID-19 patients demonstrated treatment effect, although the primary endpoint didn’t achieve statistical significance. In June, BerGenBio announced that they received FDA fast track designation for the combination of bemcentinib with anti-PD-(L)1 in AXL-positive NSCLC patients. In June the company presented at EHA updated preliminary data from a Phase II relapsed AML study. The data showed promising efficacy signals in the relapsed AML setting.

Outlook
The company’s focus currently lies on the advancement of bemcentinib’s clinical programme with more data readouts from the different trials to be expected in the near future.