A month after unveiling a pair of phase 3 trial fails that ended hopes for Kodiak Sciences’ lead eye drug program and sent its stock on a steep decline, the biotech’s chief medical officer will be moving on.
In a cursory Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, the company didn’t tie the two events together, only explaining that Jason Ehrlich, M.D., Ph.D., had informed Kodiak on Wednesday that he was resigning from his joint role as CMO and chief development officer, effective Aug. 25. “Dr. Ehrlich’s resignation was not the result of a disagreement with the company on any matter relating to the company’s operations, policies or practices,” the biotech added.
Kodiak had been betting the farm that its antibody-biopolymer conjugate, called tarcocimab tedromer, would ace two identical late-stage trials in diabetic macular edema (DME). Revealing the results in late July, the company blamed an “unexpected increase in cataracts” as the reason for neither study hitting its primary endpoint of showing noninferior visual acuity gains after 64 weeks when compared to Regeneron’s Eylea.
While claiming uncertainty about the exact cause of the cataracts, the company nonetheless “made a business decision to discontinue further development of tarcocimab.”
At the time, Ehrlich had attempted to salvage some good news from the wreckage of the results, pointing out that aside from the cataracts, “no new or unexpected safety signals were identified” in either study.
It wasn’t enough to reassure investors, who sent the company’s stock plunging 45% to $3.95 per share on the day of the news. Since then, Kodiak’s stock has continued to sink slowly on the Nasdaq, closing at $2.59 on Thursday.
In the company’s second-quarter earnings report earlier this week, Kodiak CEO Victor Perlroth, M.D., reiterated the biotech’s new strategy of focusing on KSI-501, a bispecific inhibitor of both IL-17 and VEGF in a phase 1 study for DME.
Trying to head off questions about “why are we confident in advancing KSI-501 if it is based on the same platform as tarcocimab,” Perlroth stressed the molecule’s “enhanced efficacy” as well as plans to explore the candidate in “its two therapeutic forms.”
The company’s SEC filing this week gave no indication of where Ehrlich will head next. He took on his joint CMO and CDO roles at Kodiak in 2018, having previously served as global head of clinical ophthalmology at Roche’s Genentech unit. Ehrlich played a key role in securing Roche’s blockbuster eye drug Lucentis an FDA approval, Kodiak noted when it first announced his appointment.