In this Nasdaq Trade Talks interview, global markets reporter Jill Malandrino speaks with Nima Farzan, CEO of Kynate Biopharma, about the company’s mission to expand precision oncology through next‑generation targeted therapies. Farzan explains that current targeted cancer drugs address only about 10% of patients, with half of those showing limited or short‑lived responses, leaving roughly 2‑3% of cancer patients benefiting from durable treatments. Kynate’s lead program, KIN‑2787, is a small‑molecule inhibitor designed for class II and class III BRAF mutations—genetic alterations present in 1‑6% of various tumor types (breast, prostate, pancreatic, lung, melanoma). The goal is a safe drug that produces high response rates and long‑lasting tumor regression. He emphasizes that advances in next‑generation sequencing and liquid‑biopsy blood tests are essential for identifying patients who carry these mutations, making therapy delivery feasible. Kynate’s pipeline also includes a second candidate targeting FGFR mutations, common in bladder and liver cancers, slated to enter human trials in early 2023. Key 2022 milestones include the first data readout for KIN‑2787 (mid‑year), potential fast‑track and accelerated approval pathways, and the launch of the FGFR program. The conversation concludes with a celebration of Kynate’s one‑year IPO anniversary, highlighted by ringing the Nasdaq closing bell, underscoring how public‑market capital enables the company to pursue its mission without compromise.
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Welcome to Nasdaq Trade Talks. I'm Jill Malandrino, Global Markets Reporter at Nasdaq. Joining me is Nima Farzan, CEO of Kynate Biopharma. As the Kynate team and many of their family and friends celebrate their first year as a public company, Nima joins us to talk about how the Kynate company is helping more cancer patients benefit from precision medicine through the development of a new generation of targeted therapies. It's great to see you at MarketSite. Welcome to Trade Talks. And I'd like to start with explaining to the audience what targeted therapies are and how they help people with cancer.
Absolutely, Jill. Thanks for having us. Targeted therapies in cancer are when you actually design a drug that's not about the type of tumor you have, whether it's breast cancer, skin cancer, or lung cancer, but really the genetic mutation that's driving the cancer, something wrong in those cancer cells. And if you have a targeted therapy, you can go after that specific mutation that's driving that tumor, and maybe you can turn it off, and you can give hope to patients who, who maybe have no other options for their cancer.
Nima, what's the unmet need created by the limitations of currently available targeted therapies?
Absolutely. Today, only about 10% of patients with cancer have a targeted therapy available to them. Of that 10%, about half of them won't respond to the therapy. And of that half that do respond, about half of them won't be able to respond for a long period of time. The duration may not be optimal. So ultimately, really, it's only 2 or 3% of total cancer patients who today can have durable, responsive treatment, response to these treatments. So the goal is to improve the duration, improve the response rate, and improve the overall percentage of patients who can be eligible for these types of therapies.
And you recently began clinical trials for your lead targeted therapy candidate, KIN-2787. What do you hope to see from that trial?
Yeah, so 2787 is our lead candidate. We're targeting BRAF mutations. So these are typically class 2 and class 3 BRAF mutations. What that means is it's a a certain type of genetic marker that can be found in anywhere between 1 and 6% of patients with various types of tumors. Breast, prostate, pancreatic, lung, melanoma, each of these have 1 to 6% of them may have this type of mutation. Our goal, of course, is for those patients who have that BRAF class II or III mutation, regardless of the type of tumor it is, that we would be able to have, of course, first and foremost, safe drug, but second of all, a drug that would generate a response rate. A response rate means that you're actually able to regress the disease, to shrink the tumor, potentially even completely regress the disease and eliminate the tumor entirely. And the goal is to have that be persistent over many, many months.
Yeah, that really is quite encouraging. So Nima, tell us how are advances in genetic testing helping connect patients to these new targeted therapies?
Yeah, it's absolutely critical. Without the genetic testing, you can't identify the patient to use a targeted therapy on them. So genetic testing or next-generation sequencing that really is looking at whole genes and identifying a variety of different mutations that could be causing the tumor are absolutely critical. It's how we identify all of our patients for our clinical trial. And ultimately, if our drug is to be approved, how you would find that patient to prescribe them the drug. So without genetic testing, None of this works. The technologies for genetic testing are getting better. We're able to find more of these mutations and it's getting cheaper. We're able to do it with less spend. And additionally, historically a lot of that has been requiring a biopsy. So, you actually have to go into the tumor and take out some tissue to be able to find those patients. There's also new technologies where you can test simply by taking a blood draw. So all of these advancements help identify more patients who could potentially benefit from targeted therapies.
Is Kinete working on other targeted therapy candidates?
Absolutely. Our second targeted therapy candidate is for a genetic mutation called FGFR, which we anticipate being— starting human clinical trials the first half of next year. That's a mutation that is often found in types of tumors like bladder cancer and certain forms of liver cancer. That'll be the next targeted therapy we bring to the clinic. And we anticipate having multiple ones behind that that we are working on that we'll bring into human studies.
What milestones are you excited about in 2022?
Well, the big one, the clear big one, is getting our first data readout from 2787, our lead program in BRAF Class II and Class III. We expect that in the middle of the year, and that will give us a sense certainly around the safety of the drug and also hopefully some signals around the possible efficacy of that drug. If that's positive, that would put us on a nice path going forward to hopefully a fast-track status and an accelerated approval that would ultimately get this drug approved and into the hands of patients. Beyond that, starting our second clinical program with FGFR, I'd say, is the next big milestone.
All right. And you and members of the Kynate team are ringing or rang the closing bell at NASDAQ on December 7th, depending if you get us on the replay here. Tell us about what you're celebrating and what the work your team does mean to them.
Absolutely. You know, our goal is, of course, to give hope to those patients who are battling cancer, whether they're patients, caregivers, or physicians. And obviously that's through targeted therapies and making those available to more people. The milestone we're celebrating is our 1-year anniversary of the IPO, and the IPO here at NASDAQ really helped provide us with the capital and the resources to go after that mission without having to make compromises. Doing the best possible science and ensuring that these drugs have the best possible chance of making impact. You know, what we, what we say internally is, you know, patients are waiting. And without this, this milestone in the company, we wouldn't be able to go after pursuing these medicines for those patients.
Right. Well, Nima, thank you for all the work that your team does, certainly to fight cancer. And thank you for joining us on Trade Talks. I'm Jill Malandrino, global markets reporter at Nasdaq.
