Asco 2022 – Affimed suffers withdrawal symptoms

After becoming the first company to see an NK cell engager, AFM13, score clinical validation, courtesy of an MD Anderson trial splashed at AACR in April, Affimed was priming investors for more at next month’s Asco conference. Not any more, it seems: MD Anderson’s abstract 7505, which yesterday was still listed for oral presentation on June 3, no longer appears in the meeting programme. At the time of going to press neither Asco nor Affimed had responded to questions seeking to clarify the situation. And Affimed has not issued a public statement about it – something that presumably will need to be rectified soon, given that the planned presentation was press released on April 27. Assuming that this is not a technical glitch, one reason for the presentation’s removal might be that the results have been deemed old, with nothing new versus the AACR dataset. There is precedent: at the 2016 Asco meeting, for instance, the organisers removed from a press briefing a late-breaking presentation by Dr James Kochenderfer that had already been disclosed in an EHA abstract, and kicked Immunomedics out entirely for revealing embargoed data at investor meetings. Affimed is off 10% today, still with no explanation.

Update: after market close Affimed issued a statement confirming the abstract's withdrawal, citing non-compliance with Asco's embargo policies given that the data had been presented at AACR.