We’re very excited about these results. This is a phase I/II study of the drub enasidenib, formally known as AG-221, which is a blocker of mutant IDH2. We’re going to be presenting the results of this phase I/II study in patients with relapsed and refractory acute myeloid leukaemia.

We’re very excited about the results of this study because the total number of patients that were treated on the study was 345 and of those a large number of those patients had relapsed and refractory acute myeloid leukaemias, about 250 that had relapsed and refractory acute myeloid leukaemia. What we’re excited about is that this is an oral medication the patients take once daily and appears to be very well tolerated. If you look at the safety profile of the drug really the only things that stand out are what’s called an indirect hyperbilirubinemia and that’s actually not because of any sort of liver issues with the drug but rather because the drug causes a Gilbert’s-like effect so that it inhibits the conjugation of bilirubin by inhibiting the UGT1A1 enzyme. This is a minor issue that doesn’t really have any clinical sequelae so I’ve been very impressed in my own patients that I’ve treated by how tolerable the drug is.

The other thing that we’re really excited about is that in this relapsed and refractory acute myeloid leukaemia population the overall response rate is 40% with approximately 20% of those patients achieving a true complete remission. What that translates into in terms of overall survival is that in the overall patient population the median overall survival is 8.3 months; in the group of patients who got 100mg of the drug per day, which is the dose we’re taking forward, the median overall survival was also 8.3 months. If you just look at the patients who enter into complete remission the median overall survival on those patients who enter a complete remission is nearly two years, it’s 22.9 months. Those patients who are in a partial remission or a complete remission with incomplete count recovery median overall survival is a little over 15 months. So we think this represents a real meaningful step forward in the treatment of patients with AML that have this IDH2 mutation.

I suppose the next step would be further trials so are there any plans going forwards?

Absolutely, yes. We’re excited because we have a number of trials that are currently ongoing. So now that we see that the drug is really quite effective in the relapsed and refractory setting we are working to move the drug into earlier lines of therapy. So there are ongoing clinical trials combining this drug with induction chemotherapy, that’s a phase I trial. There’s also a phase I/II trial combining this drug with the hypomethylating agent azacitidine for those patients who might not be eligible for induction chemotherapy.

And you mentioned that 40% were responding, how many of the patient population you’re treating were eligible for, for example, my notes here about stem cell transplant as a possible follow-up?

Yes, so I can’t tell you how many of those patients who got a response went on to a stem cell transplant, we don’t have that data yet. But what I can tell you is that many of these patients are just very old and beyond the age where one would consider stem cell transplant. So because of that we think this represents a real step forward. So we don’t necessarily see it as what’s called a bridge to transplant where the goal of the therapy is to get a patient to transplant, we think the goal of the therapy is really to keep the patient in remission for as long as possible.

That answers that and that covers all of my notes. Is there anything else that you would like to add? A summary, conclusion or any way that we can keep track of these results going forwards?

I guess what I would say is that these results are very encouraging. Some of the results have just been published in the journal Blood along with the translational manuscript that explains the scientific rationale behind it. The results I’ll be presenting are a little bit updated but if you want to get a flavour for a little bit more of what the drug is like I would encourage everyone to look at that paper.