Corbus begins pivotal Nectin-4 ADC trial, guides cash into 2028

Corbus Pharmaceuticals Holdings has moved its Nectin-4-directed antibody-drug conjugate, sutantatug envedotin (CRB-701), into pivotal testing. The company said in its third-quarter report on 10 November that the first participant entered TEMPO-1 in September, two months after the US Food and Drug Administration cleared the study to proceed.

TEMPO-1 is designed to recruit 250 people with oropharyngeal cancer whose disease has progressed beyond first-line treatment. Corbus gave no timelines for completion or data in the material available, so the commercial opportunity cannot yet be sized from the facts on file.

The balance sheet is the other business marker. Corbus booked a net loss of $37.8m for the quarter and ended it with $115.3m in cash, which management expects to cover operations into 2028.

The company also released Phase 1b CANYON-1 results for CRB-913, an oral obesity candidate. Participants taking the 60 mg dose lost an average of 5% of body weight over 12 weeks. Corbus plans to present the findings at ObesityWeek on 15 November and to hold talks with the FDA on development plans. What a later-stage programme would look like has not been set out.