EHA 2023 – earlier leak limits the surprise factor

With Asco just around the corner biotech investors might be excused for forgetting that another oncology-focused conference is about to take place. The European Hematology Association meeting starts on 8 June, two days after Asco concludes, and most abstracts have now gone live. Not that this will come as much of a surprise to those who already saw the data when the EHA briefly leaked the conference abstracts by accident last month. This revealed keenly awaited numbers behind Carvykti’s Cartitude-4 study, which Asco is separately still allowing to be highlighted at a late-breaker, and another EHA plenary that technically remains under wraps, covering the Commands study of Reblozyl. The latter will make EHA another showdown for Reblozyl against Geron’s imetelstat, and myelofibrosis data also include Bristol Myers Squibb’s little-known BET inhibitor BMS-986158. Car-T presentations at EHA include an unusual anti-CD5 approach from China’s Iaso that claims impressive remissions in T-cell lymphomas, albeit with a big toxicity price. The conference will also see human data on Lilly’s Bcl2 inhibitor LOXO-338, but on the face of it remissions look unimpressive, and it is unclear how this project might compete against Abbvie/Roche’s behemoth Venclexta.