Oric looks over its shoulder

If Oric Pharmaceuticals is nervously eyeing its larger competitors that's understandable. The biotech's two remaining lead projects, ORIC-944 and ORIC-114, find themselves at the mercy of developments at Pfizer with mevrometostat, and at Boehringer Ingelheim with zongertinib.

This could be why Oric this week accelerated the development of both ORIC-944 and ORIC-114, bringing forward timelines and focusing only on their biggest commercial opportunities. One upside is that this extends cash – important in the current markets – but Oric will also be smarting from a 12% share price fall earlier this month, triggered by data Pfizer put out on mevrometostat.

Mevrometostat is a direct threat to Oric, even though that molecule is an EZH2 inhibitor, while ORIC-944 inhibits the EED subunit of PRC2. But the PRC2 complex has several subunits, and one of these is none other than EZH2; Oric has argued that ORIC-944 could have an edge over EZH2 inhibitors, but investors haven't seen things that way.

Both projects are being studied in combination with androgen therapy (Xtandi, Erleada or similar) in prostate cancer patients who have progressed on another androgen therapy. At ASCO-GU phase 1 data backed Pfizer's earlier move of mevro plus Xtandi into phase 3, with a first-line study to begin this year, and the markets took the view that Oric would find it hard to catch up.

Early catalysts

Now Oric has claimed "favourable enrolment trends" into its phase 1 trial, which combines ORIC-944 with either Erleada or Nubeqa.

This trial has yielded some early data, but all-important combo results from dose-escalation cohorts are now due in the first half of this year; these had earlier not been expected until the fourth quarter. The timeline for entering phase 3 – presumably in the second-line setting and pending a positive phase 1 update – has been confirmed as the first half of 2026.

Oric had $256m in the bank at the end of last year, and earlier this month said this was enough to fund it into late 2026. Now, based on economies elsewhere, the runway is said to have been extended into 2027.

Oric and the competition

Source: OncologyPipeline.

One economy will come from a narrowed focus with Oric's other pipeline project, the EGFR/HER2 inhibitor ORIC-114. 

This is being tested in lung cancer with exon 20 mutations in EGFR and in HER2, as well as in "atypical" EGFR mutations, and until recently was targeting the first and second-line settings alike. Now Oric has ditched the second line, citing a bigger commercial opportunity in first-line settings, "and the current state of capital markets".

No doubt also playing on management's mind will be developments at Boehringer, which recently filed zongertinib for NSCLC with HER2 mutation (this will include exon 20), and the fate of Takeda's Exkivity, approved for second-line EGFR exon 20 NSCLC but then withdrawn from the market.

Oric's focus on the front line will likely be seen as an attempt to leapfrog zongertinib, whose second-line accelerated approval filing has an August regulatory action date. All eyes are also on Bayer's BAY2927088, which could be filed for the same indication imminently.

Castoffs?

With Oric still carrying a market cap above $500m investors might recall that ORIC-944 and ORIC-114 were both let go cheaply by their originators.

Neither molecule was in Oric's pipeline when the company floated in 2020, its focus then being the glucocorticoid receptor antagonist ORIC-101 and the CD73 inhibitor ORIC-533. The former was discontinued in early 2022, while the latter was last year put up for licensing out, and has since quietly been dropped from Oric's pipeline.

Meanwhile, ORIC-114 and ORIC-944 came from late 2020 licensing deals, with Voronoi and Mirati respectively. The prices involved were remarkably undemanding: $5m in cash and $8m in Oric equity for the former, and just $20m in stock for the latter.