Arrowhead at Jefferies Conference: Strategic Pipeline Insights

On Wednesday, 04 June 2025, Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ARWR) participated in the Jefferies Global Healthcare Conference 2025. The company provided a strategic overview of its robust drug pipeline, highlighting both opportunities and challenges. While expressing cautious optimism about upcoming regulatory milestones, Arrowhead also detailed its future growth strategies and competitive positioning in the market.

Key Takeaways

• Arrowhead is optimistic about the regulatory progress of plazasiran, with a PDUFA date set for November.
• The company plans to have three to four drugs on the market by 2028, leveraging partnerships for commercialization.
• Arrowhead’s siRNA-based therapies aim to offer higher efficacy and safety compared to existing treatments.
• The severe hypertriglyceridemia (SHTG) program is progressing well, with phase 3 enrollment expected to complete this summer.
• Arrowhead’s business development strategy focuses on siRNA technology and future collaborations.

Financial Results

• Vascepa, a triglyceride-lowering therapy, generated approximately $614 million in sales in 2020, underscoring the market potential.
• SHTG affects around 3 million people in the U.S., while mixed hyperlipidemia impacts 22 million patients.

Operational Updates

• Plazasiran (APOC3 Inhibitor):

- PDUFA date is in November, with no advisory committee expected.

• Severe Hypertriglyceridemia (SHTG) Program:

- Enrollment for phase 3 studies (SHASTA-3, SHASTA-4, MIRROR III) is progressing well, with completion expected this summer.

- The last patient last visit is anticipated next summer.

• CNS Program (ARO-MAPT):

- Initiated first in human trials with subcutaneous delivery crossing the blood-brain barrier.

• Obesity Program:

- Inhibin E and ALK7 programs are in advanced stages, with human dosing initiated.

Future Outlook

• Plazasiran:

- Plans to launch and expand into the higher triglyceride market.

• Severe Hypertriglyceridemia (SHTG):

- Aims to complete phase 3 trials and submit a global registration package next year.

• CNS Program:

- Focused on proving the effectiveness of systemic delivery.

• Obesity Program:

- Initial data for Inhibin E expected in Q4, with ALK7 data in the first half of next year.

• Business Development:

- Anticipates more deals, leveraging its preclinical capabilities.

Q&A Highlights

• Regulatory Pathway for Plazasiran:

- Normal FDA interactions, no advisory committee expected.

• Pricing and Label Discussions:

- Aims for pricing similar to Ionis in the U.S., with hopes for similar pancreatitis claims.

• Triglyceride Reduction:

- Phase 2 showed around a 60% reduction.

• Safety and Convenience:

- Plazasiran dosing is once every three months, with low dropout rates.

In conclusion, Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals provided a comprehensive update on its strategic initiatives and drug development progress. For more detailed insights, please refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Jefferies Global Healthcare Conference 2025:

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Hi, everyone. My name is Maury Raycroft and I’m one of the analysts at Jefferies. And I’d like to welcome our guest today, Bruce Given, CMO at Arrowhead, who’s joining us for Fireside. Chad, thanks so much for joining us today, Bruce.

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Yeah, my pleasure. Always happy to be here.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: And maybe to start off, for those who are new to the story, if you want to give a one minute intro to Arrowhead.

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Sure. We’re a platform company. And part of what challenges those who follow us is that they can’t focus in on just one drug or one program because we have just a slew of exciting programs. We also run a hybrid model. So most of what we discover and bring into the clinic will eventually wind up in partners’ hands and not ours.

We discover way too many really good compounds for any company other than maybe a Merck or Pfizer to be able to develop them all if they could even discover that many good compounds in a year. So that’s our model. And that sometimes creates some challenges in following as well. But we have a drug pending at the FDA and EMA for instance right now. So we’re just pre commercial by 2028 that we’ll probably have on the order of three or four drugs hopefully on the market, two in the hands of partners and two of our own.

So that kind of maybe nutshells it.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Yeah, yeah, think that’s a good intro and overview. And you mentioned the drug that’s with FDA right now, plazasiran. It’s for APOC3. Wanted to check to see if there’s any update on feedback you’re getting from FDA and any perspective into timelines, potentially even a late AdCom for this program given the changes in leadership there.

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Well, you know, it’s always a challenge to know exactly what the FDA is going to do. So far we’ve been advised that no advisory committee is expected. So far the interaction to us feels normal. So that’s about the best we could do. I mean we have our PDUFA date in November.

But you know, like everyone else, we’re looking at what’s going on in Washington and scratching our heads as well of will it have an impact on us. But we haven’t been told it’s having an impact. We haven’t seen an impact. That’s about the best I can give you.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Okay, makes sense. And I know you’re not in label discussions yet, but what do you expect your label to look like relative to Ionis Trinkles with regard to patient population and just wording around reduction of acute pancreatitis?

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: I know even less about that than what I just said because, again, with the agency, they ask you questions but they don’t answer. We don’t give them questions and they don’t answer questions. So ultimately, we like our package. We like the data that we produced. We think everything was produced in a proper way.

But ultimately what gets into labeling is, yes it’s a discussion, but nothing gets in that the FDA doesn’t want in.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Yeah, yeah, makes sense. And so you’ll probably, you may ask for pancreatitis as part of the claims. Sure,

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: yeah. Well, yeah, don’t think it’s likely that the agency is going to give anybody an explicit claim for pancreatitis. You know, not on the basis of a 75 patient study per se. But Ionis did get pancreatitis in the label even though they weren’t statistically significant in their trial. They got the mention.

So I would hope that we would get similar treatment given that we were statistically significant in the trial. But again, I don’t, I’ve learned over the years that in the end the FDA will do what they decide to do.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Right. Yeah, it makes sense. And maybe talk about pricing relative to Ionis in The United States and EU5. And wondering if you can comment on potential differences in how payers may view plazasiran relative to Ionis.

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Yeah, also a hard question to answer. So, well, I mean in The US, obviously Ionis being on the market has sort of set the game. And we would expect that we’ll be in their neighborhood in The US. Europe’s a more complicated issue just because you have the national payers. They do their own assessment.

And this is something that maybe is not always that well understood by investors. But the EMA approves the drugs in Europe. But that’s just kind of the opening ante. The real game comes down to how the national payers view a drug and how they view it in the context of how they want to see a disease treated. So Ionis is not yet on the market in Europe.

They have not yet even started the process with national payers. So how that’s going to play out in Europe, I think at this point is really an unknown.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Got it. And this is for FCS, which is a smaller market opportunity, but the plan here is to build the infrastructure, get this approval, and this will allow you to expand into the higher triglyceride opportunity, which could be much bigger. Maybe talk about the three phase three studies that you’re running right now, the Shasta three, SHASTA-four for SHTG, and then MIRROR III for mixed dyslipidemia. Talk about the pace of enrollment, feedback from site investigators, and timelines to completing enrollment.

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Okay, first real quickly, you know, FCS is an orphan disease. Estimates vary and depends on whether you talk about purely genetic FCS or clinical FCS. But we’re probably talking about a few thousand in The U. S. If you can get into clinical FCS as well as genetic.

Whereas severe hyperdruglyceridemia, which is generally defined as patients over 500, is probably around 3,000,000 or so in The U. S. So you’re talking about a much larger market, much greater opportunity. So we have two studies that are specifically in phase three studies in severe hypertriglyceridemia. And then we have a third study that’s in mixed hyperlipidemia just to build up the safety database to meet ICH guidelines.

All of those studies have enrolled extremely well. And we have guided that we expect enrollment to complete this summer. And I see nothing that’s standing in the way of that happening. And then the last patient in basically that stays on therapy will be followed for a year. So we would expect last patient, last visit again summer of next year.

And then probably a few months to put together the registration package and then we’ll submit around the world based on that. So that once we are able to announce that we’ve enrolled the last subject, that kind of starts the clock and you’ll be able to refine your timing expectation. But yes, will complete this summer.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Got it. And for Shasta three and Shasta four, for those pivotal studies, how much triglyceride reduction do you need to show there? And based on your phase two experience, I guess, how much do you need to achieve with TG reduction in order to hit stat sig in the phase 3s?

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Well, mean, these are massively overpowered. I mean, we had much smaller studies in phase two and the difference versus placebo was less than 0.0001. So you know, studies are much bigger. They’re one dose versus placebo instead of three doses versus placebo. So they’re ludicrously overpowered.

They’re really for safety. So what you need to be statistically significant is not much. What we need to be competitive, we’ll understand more when Ionis announces their results. What we saw in phase two was around a 60% reduction. And you know the things currently on the market usually give you about 20% reduction.

So these APOC3 inhibitors are massively beneficial relative to anything that’s been on the market before. So it’s a great mechanism. So I would expect we’re going to be in that 50 to 60% or something. It’s the placebo subtracted stuff that makes it a little bit hard to predict exactly what it’ll look like.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Got it. And are overpowered. I guess the question is, what’s the minimum number of patients you estimate you would need to achieve stat sig benefit and could you potentially do a twelve month primary analysis on a smaller proportion of patients and accelerate the timeline there for expansion?

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: No, don’t think so. Well, we could prove efficacy with a tiny study. The whole basis of doing the phase three program really is to get the safety data set that’s required by ICH. So I mean, again, I think we couldn’t accelerate it because it’s a safety database that actually drove the whole phase three program. ICH basically wants 1,500 patients treated for twelve months against a placebo control.

So our phase two studies were two doses. These studies are four doses to get the full twelve year exposure versus placebo. So we can’t accelerate it because we can’t magically make that fifteen hundred appear.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Got it, makes sense. And what would you estimate the odds are of hitting stat sig on the secondary endpoint of acute pancreatitis? And if you were to combine Shasta three, Shasta four and MIRROR three events within that relatively one year timeframe. Have you had any conversations with

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: the FDA about doing this pooled analysis? Well, our focus in severe hypertriglyceridemia is not really on pancreatitis. And I think the likelihood of achieving a pancreatitis endpoint in these studies as opposed to in FCS is hard to predict but relatively low in my view. So that’s not really what we’re trying to achieve in this program. We measure pancreatitis events.

We adjudicate them. But we’re not, and in the MIRROR study, the mixed hyperlipidemia study, we don’t expect to see any pancreatitis at all. That’s why we’re actually doing a dedicated pancreatitis outcome study which will be the first of its kind ever done. Now it’s not a registrational study per se. It’s really for the payers.

And that study is not on the same timeline and will not be likely included in the registration package. But we are doing that study to really settle the discussion once and for all about whether patients with severe hypertriglyceridemia are at risk for pancreatitis. And then these drugs actually, well we know they’re at risk, but these drugs actually have demonstrated that benefit. And that study is up and running.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Got it. Ionis, they’ve commented about potentially pooling their two studies, CORE and CORE II, and maybe hitting stat sick on acute pancreatitis over the twelve months. Do you think that could be possible? And have you had that conversation with FDA about doing something like that?

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Oh, we are also intending to pool. You know there is a nuance here. We actually study definite pancreatitis. The Ionis approach doesn’t look at definite pancreatitis. They look at severe abdominal pain.

Some of which meets the criteria for pancreatitis and some of which doesn’t. The FDA let them do that. We don’t know whether the Europeans, for instance, will go along with it. We don’t know whether the payers, especially in Europe, will go along with it. But you know we chose to be purists I guess you could say on this and just look at definite diagnostic pancreatitis and not include abdominal pain that did not meet the criteria for pancreatitis.

And we don’t know how many of their patients, even in their BALANCE study, actually had pancreatitis. I think they did clearly show a benefit on abdominal pain but that of course is not the same thing.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Got it, interesting. Are you measuring abdominal pain in your studies as well? Sure, we

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: measure that too, but we adjudicate for actual pancreatitis. Got it, okay.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: And maybe comment on safety and also convenience too relative to Ionis.

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Yeah, yeah. Well, sure. So olazarcin is once a month, we’re once every three months. Tend to, both of us had reasonable, well they had a reasonable dropout rate compared for instance to their predecessor drug, volanosorcin. We had a very low dropout rate across the entire plazasiran program.

Patients tolerate, generally patients tolerate siRNAs better than ASOs. And I think that’s the case here as well. We of course have not done head to head trials. Trials. So this is just comparing to cross trials, which is always a tricky thing to do.

But I always look at discontinuation rates as the biggest indicator of how drugs are really doing in practice. If patients can’t stay on a drug, that tells you you’ve got an issue. Their discontinuation rate’s a bit higher than ours and I think that says something. Of course it was sky high with olanosarcin’s grandfather of vilanosorcin, which is why they had to develop olanosarcin in the first place.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Got it, makes sense. Posazarine is about three to four times more potent at reducing triglyceride levels consistently across patient baselines relative to Amarin’s Vascepa, which is the fish oil mechanism. Looking back, what are the key learnings from Vascepa’s launch in SHTG, which generated about $614,000,000 in sales in 2020?

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Well, I mean, think it shows there’s a market there. And they of course, really, they didn’t have the opportunity to really fully exploit that market before they lost their patent and really lost the ability to effectively market. But there’s clearly a market there. And you know, the number of patients in The US, for instance, that are on either a fibrate or a fish oil is very high. It’s like a million and a half.

So physicians are aware that their patients have SHTG. They’d like to treat it. So we’re pretty bullish on the possibilities for the SHTG market. We just think it’s an unserved market for all intents and purposes.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Got it. And maybe just last question on posazosin, just maybe talk about the timelines for inflection points with this program for label expansions and potentially running a CVOD study as well. Latest thoughts there.

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Yeah, so clearly the SHTG program from our perspective is huge. Mixed hyperlipidemia is still an unserved market. It’s about twenty two million patients. But it requires a cvot to do. And for us, that’s a big nut.

And what we’ve said is if we have sufficient capital we would like to do a C. In the mixed hyperlipidemia space. But at this point we don’t have that capital. So we’ve got a study planned. You know, we know what it would look like.

We could start figuratively almost tomorrow if we had the, if we felt it was the right thing for us to do to invest that. But at this point, that doesn’t, you know, that’s not something that we’ve been willing to commit to do to, because it’s a huge commitment of capital.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Got it. So get the FCS approval, and then you can focus on this SHE expansion, which is going to be a huge opportunity.

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Huge opportunity, yeah.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Makes sense. And so let’s shift gears and briefly talk about your CNS programs. Maybe talk about the broader strategy there. You’ve got a proprietary transferrin binding approach for subcutaneous CNS delivery. How can this lead to differentiated efficacy and safety in clinical programs?

And maybe talk about ARO MAPT as well.

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Yeah, well you know, I mean I’m just really bullish on the whole concept of crossing the blood brain barrier with siRNAs. They don’t normally cross the blood brain barrier. And one of the nice safety features of siRNAs, for instance in something like obesity, is that they don’t cross the blood brain barrier. But, so we don’t get accumulation in the brain and we don’t have to worry about any potential knockdown in the brain. But obviously for CNS, you know, it’s hard for me to imagine a world where you can really have very effective therapy if everybody’s gotta get intrathecal injections, you know, on a, in some frequent basis.

I mean you could do that for really, deadly orphan diseases. But does that, is that ever going work in Alzheimer’s for instance? I don’t think so. So we have developed a subcutaneous platform that works extremely well in primates. We believe will be the first in the world to have a trial in humans with, again, subcutaneous delivery crosses the blood brain barrier and knocks down a gene of interest.

Our first target is MAPT which is basically for the tau protein which has been, I don’t know, I first worked with a drug that was supposed to target MAPT back in the 1990s. It’s been a favorite target, undruggable target for big pharma going all the way back that thirty some years. And we think this is an exciting approach. We’ll see if it works, but you know we’re excited about it. The other thing about the systemic delivery, different than intrathecal delivery, is intrathecal delivery to get to the high brain, it’s got to basically, these molecules have to swim upstream you might say.

And with systemic delivery you really bathe the whole brain. You know, if you can get across the blood brain barrier you can get to all the tissues. And that’s what we see in the primates. We see much better knockdown in deep brain regions that you really wanted, you know, a lot of these targets, you know, like Alzheimer’s, you know, like Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s, you know, you need deep brain penetration. So I think the ability of siRNAs to cross the blood brain barrier is going to be transformational for the field.

Not just for us, I think we’ll be the first in the clinic. Other people will follow us, other people are working on transferrin, you know, sort of transfer of these molecules. But it’s going to be exciting I think.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Got it. And that NHP biodistribution should translate to humans. Guess are there any reasons why it wouldn’t? And maybe talk about just the chronic tox studies.

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: So far, in our experience, and you know, we’re the leaders industry at targeting tissues outside of the liver with siRNA. So far we’ve not seen a situation where something that worked in primates did not work in humans. That doesn’t mean that this can’t be the case. But you know, I’m always pretty bullish if things work in primates. I always feel pretty confident that they’re likely to work in humans because we’ve yet to fail in that regard.

This is, yeah, this is I think going to be important.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Got it. Okay, so let’s shift gears to your obesity programs where there’s also a lot of interest. With inhibin E, we’ll likely see more data from that program later this year relative to your ALK7 program, which is targeting adipocytes. What’s the status of both programs? And how are you setting expectations for initial Inhibin E data in fourth quarter?

And yeah, maybe start there.

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Yeah, well the inhibit E program got started earlier, maybe even toward the end of last year. I can’t remember when the first patient enrolled. But either late last year or early this year we enrolled our first patient. We’re already in multiple dose work. We’re already doing combination work with tirzepatide in otherwise healthy obese patients.

And we’ll be getting into type two diabetes, obese type two diabetics as well. And I’m not sure exactly how much will be available The only reason I say that is just that siRNAs, one of their great advantages is that they have such long duration. But when you’re anxious for data, one of their great disadvantages is they have such long duration. And, you know, it takes a while.

And of course obesity is something that you don’t get immediate gratification. You have to sort of watch it over time. So I’m not sure exactly how much we’ll have. We’ll certainly have pretty mature single dose data for instance. You know, we’ll understand target engagement.

We’ll understand knockdown. We’ll probably have some insight into some weight loss. But you know, these are not huge studies and we won’t have had a chance to watch them long enough probably. But we should be getting some insights at least on target engagement which I think is important in this area. Activin E is not the easiest target inhibit E.

And ALK7, we’re the first company that’s ever gone into the clinic with adipocyte delivery. So this is our first adipocyte program. So it’s not only important because we think ALKS seven’s a great target, but it’s important because it’s a proof of concept. And we’ve got a whole phalanx of targets that are, we’re currently doing the preclinical work on, you know, adipocyte targets. We think it’s a fantastic organ to target.

So this is important to us. We can show target engagement and knock down a valk seven, you know, bodes very well for the delivery system. The nice thing about RNAi is, you know, once you’ve got a delivery mechanism, it’s plug and play to put a different siRNA against a different target for that tissue. Unlike small molecules or monoclonal antibodies, to know one is to know one, with siRNAs, once you can hit a tissue you can just keep hitting it with different targets and you’ll have a high likelihood of success.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Right, and for the end of this year, do you think you could potentially have ALK7 proof of concept data there for target engagement?

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: I don’t know, it’s asking a lot, I’m not sure. I mean we did just start, we just announced I think yesterday the initiation of human dosing. So the first humans have been dosed. But it’s hard to predict that. I think the guidance has been maybe we’ll have some at the end of this year, certainly first half of next year we can expect ALK7.

But you know, data will come out sort of as we’re able to but as I said with siRNAs it just takes some time.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Yeah, yeah, makes sense. And for inhibiting, you mentioned that you started dosing with tirzepatide. Could you have some combo data by the end of this year?

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: I don’t know. It really depends on how quickly we’re able to fill those cohorts and how much of the data we can actually get analyzed. The one thing I do want to caution is I think it’s going to be a couple decades here of just incredible innovation in the obesity space. You know the GLP-1s have been a fabulous innovation, but there’s a lot of white space around them. The weight loss quality has some real problems.

The tolerability issues at the doses that give you the best weight loss are a problem. There are lots of issues with these drugs and so there’s lots of opportunities to play alongside them. We’re not trying to replace them. We’re trying to fill some of the needs. We’re trying to improve the quality of the weight loss, maybe allow a lower dose of the GLP-one so they’re not as toxic for the patients.

You know, for instance, and still get the weight loss you want. I’m personally most excited about the possibility of durability. That you know, you get your weight loss with your GLP-one and then you have a way to keep the patients from gaining weight back. Because that’s a huge problem, know. We do surgery on patients, You know, take out huge parts of their gut and they lose a lot of weight and then three years later, four years later they’ve gained it all back.

It’s just depressing to deal with this issue. And you know, people go on crash diets, lose a lot of weight and then two years later they’ve gained the weight back and then some. So you know, there’s a lot of white space and I’m just excited to be in this game. Know, will these two drugs turn out to be, you know, the big answer or a big answer? I just think there are be a ton of winners in this space.

And it’s, you know, like the most important public health problem we have on a global basis. I mean it’s just an immense problem. And I just don’t think GLP-1s are the sole answer by any means. So, you know, don’t compare these drugs head to head. You know, may surprise us and you know, maybe you’ll find something that will totally disrupt the GLP-one space.

But that’s not what we’re trying to do. Right. You know, we’re just trying to fill the white space and, you know, most of these chronic diseases need multiple therapies, you know. Most of them need two or three, you know, drugs in combination to really get, get the job done. So we’ll see.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Right, yeah the GLP-1s probably be viewed as like a sledgehammer type approach, kind of the first crack at this. And it shows that they work, there’s definitely tradeoffs with them. Inhibiting ELK7 have biological validation which shows that these could be better targets to go after.

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Lots of white space. Lots of ways to help these patients in a durable long term way. For part of

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: what you’re measuring, I think you’ve mentioned that you’re doing MRIs on patients. We’ve been looking at GLP-1s and some of the MRI data out there, which shows that you can lose the lean muscle mass over time. Maybe talk about just what you’re going to show in the inhibiting data update when it comes to weight loss, body composition, just any other biomarker.

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Yeah, so nature’s already done the experiment. Part of what we like about inhibin E and ALK7 is nature does this. There are people walking around that, you know, mostly heterozygous, so they’ve got one gene that, you know, for ALK7 or in human one that’s normal and one that’s not normal. And those patients tend to be thinner, they tend to have less visceral fat, obviously normal muscle mass, you know, they eat normal quantities of food but they just don’t gain the weight. You know, they tend to have less, lower instance of type two diabetes.

Lots, you know, they’re just metabolically just better off. So, you know, that’s kind of what we would hope that we can replicate, you know, in patients in the clinic. So we would hope that they, you know, that we can have weight loss without the muscle loss, which is a big problem. And we would hope that we could have sort of durability and maybe patients can have a more normal diet and still be able to control their weight. So those are the kinds of things we’re hoping to see.

I’m not sure we’ll learn all of that from our initial study here, but over time I think that’s what we’re hoping we can demonstrate. Got it. And we’re pretty much out

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: of time, so I’ll ask you a two part question to close out. You’ve got the pulmonary platform where you’ve shown good proof of concept there. And you’ve talked about BD in the past and we’ve seen some siRNA BD deals recently, which are kind of interesting. Just what are your latest thoughts on BD and maybe just close out with key events ahead that investors should be focused on?

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Yeah, one of the things as a thirty five year drug developer that surprised me is that big pharma has been so slow to, I mean they kept doing ASO deals long after I think they should have given up on that technology and moved to siRNA. I’ve just never understood why they did that. But I think, you know, finally, you know, people have woken up and realized that siRNA is a wonderful technology. So I think we’re going to see more BD deals, you know, going forward. And that’s going to remain a very important part of our, you know, strategy of our business.

You know, as I opened up and said, you know, we produce way too many really wonderful drugs of our preclinical group which is easily the most productive in the industry. And, you know, most of those have to find homes outside of Arrowhead for going certainly into phase two and phase three. It’s just too capital intensive for a pre commercial company especially to exploit all those. So expect more BD from us in the future. I mean, we just did the huge Sarepta deal, of course, last fall.

But I expect us to continue to see BD.

Maury Raycroft, Analyst, Jefferies: Great. Thanks so much for joining us today, Bruce.

Bruce Given, CMO, Arrowhead: Thank you. My pleasure.

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