MITI Updates on Drug Development

On Friday April 24, 2009, Micromet Inc. (MITI - Analyst Report) held a briefing for investors and financial analysts in New York to provide an update on the company's drug development pipeline.

A key highlight of the presentation was the announcement that a rapid path to market has been identified in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) for the company's lead drug candidate BiTE antibody blinatumomab (MT103) with a registration trial planned for 2010. This was in addition to a dose escalation study which is currently underway of blinatumomab for non Hodgkin's lymphoma, with final results expected to be reported at the American Society of Hematology meeting in December.

MITI also provided an update on MT110, which is currently in a phase 1 dose-escalating clinical trial in patients with lung or gastrointestinal cancer. In addition, pre-clinical data for the company's EGFR BiTE Antibody, presented at the recent annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) demonstrated a high activity against KRAS-and BRAF-mutated human colorectal cancer cell lines, which have been linked to more than 40% of colorectal cancer cases.

Investors might recall, that in March 2009, MITI announced that development partner MedImmune (acquired by AstraZeneca, AZN - Analyst Report) had returned its North American license rights to MT103 (blinatumomab) and as a result, the company would assume responsibility for its worldwide clinical development and commercialization.

About 5,500 cases of acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) are diagnosed each year in the US, mostly in children. Current treatment regimes, which typically commence with chemotherapy, account for an overall cure rate in children of approximately 85%, and about 50% of adults. So the potential target market for a new drug may be relatively small and subject to increased competition from other products currently in development.

Nonetheless, we believe -- clinical risk aside -- initiation of a pivotal trial of in 2010 bodes well for validation of the company's proprietary BiTE platform, and attractiveness of other pipeline candidates to prospective collaborative partners.