Karyopharm Therapeutics CEO And CFO Talk Company Finances, Partnerships And Pipeline

Benzinga recently had the chance to discuss Karyopharm Therapeutics Inc KPTI’s promising results in multiple myeloma (MM) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with the company’s co-founder and CEO Michael G. Kauffman, M.D., Ph.D., and its chief financial officer, Justin A. Renz.

The Balance Sheet

Talking about the future of the company, Benzinga asked about the balance sheet and capital raise plans.

“We are well resourced as we currently sit here and have this conversation. So, we were able to raise $47 million between September and October [...] we’ll finish this year with more than $170 million in cash,” Renz assured. “Our current plan is to call for roughly an $85 million burn in 2017, so we are projecting cash to the end of 2018.”

The CFO went on to state that Karyopharm will always remain opportunistic. “As a money-losing biotech company, we have a strong balance sheet as we sit here, but you can never have a strong enough balance sheet,” he continued. “Our management team and boards desire to go as long as we can and as far as we can in clinical development. That is where we will need a commercial partner; but for now we are content with where we are.”

Partnerships

When asked about bigger players approaching Karyopharm about possible partnerships, Renz responded, “There is definite interest, and we have been taking meetings. As a public company, we are always open minded, but we want to make the best economic decision for ourselves, so the partnership economics will dictate when and if we do a deal.”

The Pipeline

Benzinga finally questioned the execs about other drugs besides selinexor.

“Today we are showing some early data from our second generation compound, KPT-8602,” Renz said. “That is a promising molecule that we will be taking forward in 2017 in additional studies.”

Going into pipeline candidates KPT-335 (verdinexor) and KPT-350, the exec explicated. “Our expertise is in oncology so although we have those molecules, we are looking really to partner those and develop those either in combination with government funding or a business development collaboration because we want to focus on being an oncology company. So, those discussions are ongoing. We are moving those at a slow pace because we want to be cognizant of our burn and focus our resources on selinexor’s clinical development.”

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