Lexicon Pharmaceuticals CEO Discusses Q3 2010 Results – Earnings Call Transcript
Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (
)
Q3 2010 Earnings Conference Call
November 5, 2010 11:00 AM ET
Executives
Wade Walke – Senior Director of Communications and Investor Relations
Arthur Sands – President and CEO
Brian Zambrowicz – EVP and Chief Scientific Officer
Jeff Wade – EVP, Corporate Development and CFO
Analysts
Matthew Lowe – JP Morgan
Phil Nadeau – Cowen & Co.
David [ph] – Stifel Nicolaus
Presentation
Operator
Welcome to the Lexicon Pharmaceuticals Third Quarter 2010 Conference Call. (Operator Instructions)
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Lexicon Pharmaceuticals Inc. Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript
At this time, I would like to introduce your host for today’s call, Wade Walke, Senior Director of Communication and Investor Relation. Please go ahead, Dr. Walke.
Wade Walke
Good morning. Welcome to Lexicon Pharmaceuticals third quarter 2010 conference call. I am Wade Walke. With me today are; Dr. Arthur Sands, Lexicon’s President and Chief Executive Officer; Dr. Brian Zambrowicz, Lexicon’s Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer; and Jeff Wade, Lexicon’s Executive Vice President of Corporate Development and Chief Financial Officer.
We expect that you have seen a copy of our earnings press release was distributed this morning. During this call, we will review the information provided in the release, provide an update on our clinical programs, and then use the remainder of our time to answer your questions.
The call will begin with Dr. Sands, who will discuss our key accomplishment for the third quarter. Dr. Zambrowicz will then discuss the status of our drug development programs, and Mr. Wade will review of financial results for the third quarter and discuss our financial guidance for 2010. We will then open the call to your questions.
If you would like to review the slides for today’s call, please access the lexicon’s website at www.lexpharma.com. You will see link on the homepage for today’s webcast.
Before we begin, I’d like to state that we’ll be making forward-looking statements, including statements relating to Lexicon’s research and development of LX1031, LX1032, LX1033, LX2931, and LX4211, and the potential therapeutic and commercial potential of those drug candidates. This call may also contain forward-looking statements relating to Lexicon’s future operating results, financial arrangements, cash and investments, discovery and development of products, strategic alliances and intellectual property, various risks that may cause Lexicon’s actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements including uncertainties relating to the timing and results of clinical trials and preclinical studies of our drug candidates are dependent on strategic alliances and ability to enter into additional collaboration and license agreement.
The success and productivity of our drug discovery efforts, our ability to obtain patent protection for our discovery, limitations imposed by patents owned or controlled by third-party and the requirements of substantial funding to protect our drug discovery and development activity. For a list and description of the risks and uncertainties that we face, please see the report we have filed Securities and Exchange Commission.
I will now turn the call over to Dr. Sands.
Arthur Sands
Thank you, Wade, and thank you everyone for joining us this morning. Over the past quarter, we have continued to advance our strategy and our pipeline. Our strategy, of course, to discover and develop drug to the [inaudible] of novel mechanisms of action. Looking at our pipeline then, we’ll spend most of our time on the leading edge of our pipeline, these four programs.
The first tier ones, LX4211 for Diabetes and LX1031 for Irritable Bowel Syndrome, we have achieved of course peripheral concept and they vetted our next stage of development, a very important stage where we are working to prepare for latent stage development, working on form and formulation and other important studies that will preface the next step for those two programs. So, we’ll be discussing those.
Also, the next two programs that are up for proof of concept results, a very important Phase here, LX1032 for Carcinoid Syndrome and LX2931for Rheumatoid Arthritis. So, these being the next major events, I think major milestones for the company, we’ll start with those and review the data we expect and the timing for those milestones.
So, with that brief introduction, I will turn it over to Brian Zambrowicz to discuss first LX2931.
Brian Zambrowicz
Thank you, Arthur. I’m going to start with LX2931 because it’s a program for which we’ll be painting our next major clinical readout. LX2931 is a first in class sphingosine-1-phosphate lyase inhibitor for autoimmune disorders. It’s part of the pathway that’s become increased interest especially with the recent approval of FTY720 or Gilenya from Novartis for Multiple Sclerosis.
Gilenya is S1P receptor agonist. I want to make it clear that we had a different plan in the pathway. We had an intracellular target called the S1T lyase, which functions as to irreversibly degrade the endogenous second messenger S1P. The importance of getting this point in the pathway is both our pre-clinic and clinical data so far suggest that there’s a lymphoid [inaudible] when hitting the lyase that may provide a potential safety benefit.
2931 is an oral agent and we have preclinical data that there’s potential for this agent not only in arthritis, but also in other autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis and transplantation. In addition, it’s generally thought that if you can show a benefit in patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis that suggest that there may be benefits in other autoimmune indication.
For 2931, one of the models, animal models that we really like was rat arthritis model that we ran. We like the model because we think it is very similar to the Phase 2A trial, where the Phase 2A trial is going into patients who are failing on methotrexate. And in our arthritis model in rats, on the left you can see that with methotrexate alone, when we began treatment after the animals had reached the half maximal inflammatory response, methotrexate alone was not able to block the further inflammatory response.
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