Aadi gets an ADC makeover
Aadi Bioscience, already moving towards ADCs, has made its new look official, rebranding as Whitehawk Therapeutics to focus on three conjugates it picked up from WuXi and Hangzhou DAC in December. Aadi’s previous lead asset, the approved nanoparticle-bound sirolimus formulation Fyarro, will be sold to Japan’s Kaken for $100m in a deal also previously announced. Alongside a $100m PIPE financing, Whitehawk will have cash of around $180m – enough to last it until 2028 and see “meaningful” phase 1 data on all three ADCs, the group’s chief executive, Dave Lennon, said during its fourth-quarter call on Wednesday. The projects have yet to go into the clinic, but their targets, PTK7, MUC16 and SEZ6, have relatively little competition – a conscious choice, Lennon said. PTK7 is the most crowded, with clinical-stage projects from Genmab (via ProfoundBio), Day One and Kelun; however, there are doubts about this mechanism after Pfizer and AbbVie discontinued cofetuzumab pelidotin. Whitehawk reckons its contender HWK-007 could have an improved therapeutic index; instead of an auristatin payload, HWK-007 employs a topoisomerase 1 inhibitor, as well as a “highly stable yet cleavable” linker. Still, Day One and Kelun also have topo1-based projects, and are further ahead.
Whitehawk’s ADC pipeline
| Project | Target | Ph1 planned indication(s) | IND/ph1 timing | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HWK-007 | PTK7 | NSCLC, ovarian | H2 2025 | Pfizer/AbbVie’s cofetuzumab pelidotin discontinued Nov 2023; other ADCs in clinical development from Genmab (GEN1107), Day One (DAY301) & Kelun (SKB518) |
| HWK-016 | MUC16 (membrane bound portion) | Ovarian | YE 2025 | Regeneron has MUC16-targeting T-cell engager (ubamatamab); no ADCs in clinic |
| HWK-206 | SEZ6 (biparatopic) | SCLC, neuroendocrine neoplasms | Mid-2026 | Only ADC in clinic is AbbVie’s ABBV-706 (early data at ASCO 2024) |
Source: OncologyPipeline & company presentation.
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