The bad news just keeps coming for Kinnate

Kinnate Biopharma has lost over 90% of its value since floating in 2020, and the bad news just keeps on coming. Two delays to its lead project, exarafenib (KIN-2787), were followed yesterday by a move to cut 70% of the company’s staff. The cost-cutting plan is designed to enable Kinnate to exist on its current $204m cash balance until the second quarter of 2026, around a year longer than expected before, but what’s odd is that it comes just five months after the company trumpeted long-awaited exarafenib data, and brought two new projects, the MEK inhibitor KIN-7136 and the cMET inhibitor KIN-8741, into its pipeline. Yesterday it suspended development of the former, and said it would focus exarafenib development on a combo with Pfizer’s Mektovi. First-generation RAF inhibitors, including Maktovi, Roche’s Zelboraf and Novartis’s Tafinlar, work only in class 1 (also known as V600) BRAF mutations, but exarafenib is said to have activity in class 2 and 3 BRAF alterations. However, after two delays exarafenib monotherapy data showed an ORR of just 14% at the highest doses. This has presumably spurred the move to a Mektovi combo, where Kinnate claims a 38% ORR in BRAF inhibitor-naive patients.

RAF inhibitors with possible activity beyond class 1 BRAF mutations

Note: *Fore was earlier known as NovellusDx; Daiichi rights stem from acquisition of Plexxikon. Source: OncologyPipeline.