Yigal Nochomovitz: Got it. Thank you very much.
Raul Rodriguez: Thank you, Yigal.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kristen Kluska with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please proceed with your question.
Kristen Kluska: Hi, everyone. Good afternoon and congrats on this acquisition. Very good for your portfolio. So I wanted to comment on some of your key drivers for growth. One of the barriers what you said you noted was discomfort and familiarity with other drugs. So I know Blueprint has had some experience here with Genentech. Have they seen – or a lot of their adoption naive, or is it switch? And then on that note, I guess, what do you believe your team is going to do to help switch some of these patients in light of the familiarity with other drugs?
Raul Rodriguez: I’ll ask Dave to comment on that.
Dave Santos: Absolutely, Kristen. I think when you look at that barrier, we look at that as a great opportunity for us. Genentech and Blueprint did a great job, along with other companies in the targeted space in lung cancer, raising awareness of testing, raising awareness that when you do have a biomarker with an actionable drug or an actionable biomarker with an FDA-approved product, you should be moving there. And that’s what all the experts are saying over and over. Yet a pretty significant portion still like to stay with chemotherapy, with or without a checkpoint inhibitor, and use other products. And so, we view that as an opportunity. We think this market is continuing to move toward more testing, more identification of these biomarkers, and more use of targeted agents versus chemotherapy and checkpoint inhibitors in the first line.
And that’s why we think it’s an efficient call for us. We’re actually quite glad that this product has been on the market, along with other targeted therapies. As you know, in KRAS, that’s now a big discussion topic among clinicians who treat lung cancer. All of this noise out there just requires us to focus the message on GAVRETO. And the more people hear about GAVRETO, I think the more usage we’ll get. And we believe we can get our fair share of the RET inhibitor space. So that’s why we believe it’s a great opportunity for us. Just being a smaller company, we have the ability to focus on it and it’ll be something that we – are very important to us. Not saying that it’s not important to those other companies, but obviously we think it could be a driver for us.
And so that’s why we believe with the right direction, the right tools and a really smart investment in this place, we can grow with the market.
Kristen Kluska: Thanks so much. And then on TAVALISSE, can you comment on how you’re seeing the breakdown between different lines of therapies? I know 2023 was a record year for you. Would you say part of that was driven by some earlier line usage and greater compliance as a result of that? Thanks again.
Dave Santos: Yeah, thanks for that question, Kristen. We have updated our data that we shared from Rigel ONECARE, and it’s pretty similar. I will say that in Q4, we had a little bit more business in the second and third-line setting than we did – that we shared previously with you. So I think that’s moving in the right direction. We’re continuing to focus on patients who are post-steroids or post just one TPO agent and I think it’s working. More and more clinicians continue to use TAVALISSE.
Raul Rodriguez: The good thing about those earlier lines is that response rates are better and response – positive responses leads to a greater desire to use the product yet again. So it’s actually a virtuous circle there.
Kristen Kluska: Thank you.
Raul Rodriguez: Thank you, Kristen.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kalpit Patel with B. Riley Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Kalpit Patel: Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe one question on GAVRETO’s utilization today in the real world. Do we have any color on where the utilization is? Is it in mostly treatment naive patients or is it mostly in previously treated patients for lung cancer? And how do you anticipate that to shift over time?
Dave Santos: We have uses in both, Kalpit, at least in the market research we’ve reviewed there is use in the first-line as I showed you in the data, but there’s also usage in second-line. We do know that patients don’t generally get two RET inhibitors, they get one. And then, if you start on a RET inhibitor in the front-line, you move to chemotherapy in the second with or without an immune checkpoint inhibitor or vice versa. And so – but obviously with some patient dropout as you move from first-line to second-line, it’s critical that patients get treated at the earliest opportunity. And so that’s our focus. There is use in later lines, but we’re much more focused on looking at what our opportunity is in the first-line setting.
Kalpit Patel: Okay, got it. Can you maybe help us understand the gap between the sales of your drug versus the other RET inhibitor? It looks like they were both perhaps launched around the same time, but the sales of the competitor have taken off significantly. So, at least relative to yours.
Dave Santos: Yeah, I’ll make a few comments on that, Kalpit. The first thing is, GAVRETO was launched second to market. And I think, as I said, comfort and familiarity in this place means a lot. And second to market is a more challenging situation, and that’s part of it. And it’s not only second to market with approval, it’s been second to market with data as well, subsequent to that. And, so I think clinicians just generally think first of the first product that came to market and are very comfortable and familiarity – and familiar with it. And so I think that’s just an awareness issue that we’ll continue to assess and pursue. But I think, more importantly for us, we are very focused on the patients who are not getting a RET inhibitor in the first-line, because we think that’s where we can make a difference in discussing with clinicians, the advantages of a RET inhibitor, particularly, and specifically, GAVRETO.
Raul Rodriguez: The good thing, Kalpit, is that, as Dave said in his presentation, RET inhibition is, the testing rates are high, awareness of RET and the importance of it as treatment is high. And so now we have to introduce this product and its data to have it be a choice for these doctors. And many doctors are non-users of GAVRETO, 80%. So there’s a lot of opportunity there to grow this brand.
