The end looms for Syros
Three months after Syros’s lead project tamibarotene flunked a mid-stage study in acute myeloid leukaemia, it has stumbled again, this time in myelodysplastic syndrome. The group said after hours on Tuesday that the Select-MDS study, in first-line high-risk patients with RARA gene overexpression, hadn’t met its primary endpoint of complete response rate. Tamibarotene, a retinoic acid receptor alpha (RARα) agonist, was being tested in combination with azacitidine. Syros’s future now looks dim, especially as the company said the trial's failure constituted a default on its loan with Oxford Finance LLC. Syros, which had $58m in cash at the last count, was worth just $73m even before the latest news, giving it little chance of raising more money, and its stock sank 80% premarket on Wednesday. Syros’s pipeline is also bare: its website lists SY-2101, an oral formulation of arsenic trioxide, and the CDK7 inhibitor SY-5609, but these were deprioritised in 2023 so Syros could focus on tamibarotene. There are no other RARα agonists in active development, according to OncologyPipeline, but CDK7 is a more active area of research, with six assets in the clinic.
Tamibarotene trials
Trial | Setting | Regimen | Data |
---|---|---|---|
Select-AML-1 | 1st-line unfit AML pts with RARA gene overexpression | Tamibarotene + Velclexta + azacitidine, vs Venclexta + azacitidine | Dec 2023: CR/CRi 100% (9/9) with triplet vs 70% (7/10) with doublet; Aug 2024: study discontinued for futility after interim analysis found CR/CRi 65% (13/20) with triplet vs 70% (14/20) with doublet |
Select-MDS-1 | 1st-line high-risk MDS pts with RARA gene overexpression | Tamibarotene + azacitidine, vs azacitidine | Nov 2024: study failed; CR 24% (30/126) with tam/aza vs 19% (12/64) with aza |
Source: OncologyPipeline & company releases.
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