Fantastic. Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for being here with us today. My name is Courtney Breen. I am the BioPharma analyst here at Bernstein, and I am very, very privileged to have Jamie Coleman here, who is the Chief Commercial Officer at Kailera Therapeutics. Looking forward to a good conversation and getting to dive into some of the fun debates that are happening at the moment. Jamie, to start, maybe it would be useful if you could give a little bit of context on your background.
Yeah.
Because I think that's pertinent to the conversation today, but also for those who don't know Kailera particularly well, what is the company, where do the drugs come from, and most importantly, why should a room of investors care about another GLP-1?
Yeah. Hi, everybody. Thanks for being here. As Courtney said, I'm Jamie Coleman, Chief Commercial Officer of Kailera Therapeutics. Kailera is about two years old. We're based out of Waltham, Massachusetts. We are advancing four, excuse me, clinical stage GLP-1 based programs. They span single, dual, and triple mechanism, injectable and oral, peptide and small molecule. We licensed the products from Hengrui Pharmaceuticals, which I'm guessing many have heard of at this point, but a major reputable player out of China. This really allows us, we have the ex-China rights to these, and they do all the early development, so it allows us to de-risk our own development and accelerate the innovation. I'll get back to why another GLP-1, but I joined Kailera from Lilly.
My last job at Lilly was as the head of marketing for Zepbound, so I had the privilege of bringing that product to market for Lilly. Before that job, I was leading the U.S. marketing of Trulicity. I kind of jokingly say the day that Ozempic became a weight loss drug overnight. It kind of felt like that inside. I've really been living this market for a long time. I absolutely love this space, and Kailera was just really attractive because the pipeline's exciting, the space is exciting. The investors were really renowned, and then our team of leaders was also very credible. I think why does the world need another GLP-1 is a great question, and I think there's so many ways we could take that. One is because there's just so many unmet needs. We've honestly barely gotten started.
There's so many ups and downs and all arounds that have happened over the last couple of years, but nonetheless, no matter how big it seems today, it's really maybe high single digit, low double digit treatment rates. There's tens of millions of people, probably 100 million people in the U.S., and a billion around the world that can still benefit. There really are continuing to be a lot of unmet needs. We'll talk about differentiation of our pipeline as we get into the conversation, but I think that's the reason. If you can take something proven, like a GLP-1 based mechanism, and make it better, why would you not?
Absolutely. You're absolutely right. There is so much opportunity, and so much need for these-
Yeah.
Therapies over the long run. Certainly the U.S. is at one stage in that-
Yeah.
Kind of journey, but outside the U.S. is perhaps even, we're at a more [nascent].
Even earlier. Mm-hmm.
Kind of market development. I do want to spend a couple of minutes on your journey here and how that might inform how you might approach this opportunity with Kailera. So back when you were at Lilly, you launched Zepbound into a market at about $1,000 in that environment. Net price has obviously come down materially since then. Kailera will be launching its asset as perhaps a fourth or fifth entrant.
The market has evolved already materially. We are talking about a baseline in the range of $250 per month when we think about Medicare and commercial market continues to evolve and become a larger and larger presence. Additionally, Kailera is a biotech. You do not necessarily have the same distribution platforms, the same customer teams that perhaps Novo Nordisk or Lilly have.
So how do we think about what does the obesity market look like as you begin to launch your assets? How can Kailera win in that evolving environment with perhaps a different role that it can play in the market or-
Yeah.
A different way of working that it can use to compete?
Yeah. Maybe a quick little history lesson on pricing. You mentioned $1,000, which we all know is not what most people are paying, but that actually was already innovative because we priced it the same as the diabetes. It was 35% less than Wegovy.
Yes.
Lilly was a little bit ahead of the game, at least relative to Novo at that point. We also launched, and a lot of people don't remember this, but we launched with this uncovered benefit where if you had commercial insurance but you didn't have obesity coverage, you could get it for $550. We actually had a self-pay option from day one. I'll come back to why that's relevant, because then we ran out of supply, which is a whole another issue, obviously.
Then the compounding stuff happened. Our own self-pay option with the compounding made us realize, oh, people are willing to pay for this. That wasn't necessarily in the base assumption. Then we see now Medicare and that. I think what we've seen is that you price molecules in pharma for value. But part of the value equation is, of course, the volume. The volume gets bigger pretty much every time the price comes down.
I think the prices, Lilly and Novo Nordisk are smart. They've been competing with each other for 150 years. They're very deliberate in their pricing decisions, and these were not accidental pricing declines. These were very intentional decisions to unlock value and unlock volume. I think my guess is, and from everything I've read, that the kind of step change in price has probably mostly happened, and now we'll kind of see little iterations of it as we unlock value. But I'm not worried about the price component of it, because I think the volume's there, and there will certainly be segments of the market that are just really, really driven by price, and that's the only thing that matters, and maybe like a generic semaglutide or something plays there. But I think where we'll play is not there. We're aiming to play in differentiated space.
On your second question, I think there's two things that we think about and I think about daily. One is just how can you compete from a differentiation perspective?
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Is there an actual need and place for your products? I didn't mention it in the upfront, but our lead program is called ribupatide. It's a dual agonist. It was designed by Hengrui to be better than tirzepatide, so that was the whole intent. It's 3 x on the GLP-1. It's a longer half-life. The phase II data that we've seen really suggests that it has the potential for greatest weight loss. That's the one that's in phase III right now. Then we have an oral version of that that's shown really compelling tolerability that'll go into phase III beginning of next year. Those kind of collectively will come to the market at the end of the decade, when there's many more players than Lilly and Novo, many more products than Lilly and Novo.
As Kailera, I think about the differentiated products, the first thing, having commercial capabilities is essential, but this is not necessarily building thousands of people pounding the pavement. There's so many different partners and vendors. There's a lot of third parties that can help you scale. The advent of digital technologies and AI and all of that stuff, I think can really help a company like Kailera be broad enough to compete in obesity, but targeted enough to do it at a scale that makes sense for us.
Absolutely. You mentioned a little bit about ribupatide and kind of some of the differentiation angles that you're thinking about. How do we think about what's different enough from an efficacy, tolerability, dosing, price perspective?
Yeah.
How are you thinking about kind of those parameters relative to what's in market today, but what might be in market-
Yeah.
By the time you launch as well?
Yeah, for efficacy, maybe a point of context. Tirzepatide, clearly a product I care a lot about, has changed millions and millions of lives. But in the SURMOUNT-1 trials, patients had started with Class 2 obesity or a BMI of 35, which is about half of people with obesity. It is like 60 million people in the U.S. Two-thirds of them still had obesity at the end of those trials. I know many of them personally, their lives have been fundamentally changed and improved by losing that average of 20%. But if two-thirds are still living with obesity, we have not done the job.
There is clinical room to grow if we are really going to show the real-world evidence and improve the outcomes and things like that. Our goal is to be better than Tirzepatide. Retatrutide is the only one so far that seems to be on track to be able to do that, and with all the caution of cross-trial comparisons, we anticipate we could be kind of in that same range. There is a large portion of people that just really do need more weight loss, and they prioritize that as their primary driver of treatment choice. On tolerability, I think the tolerability of class has not gotten really in its way for most of adoption. But certainly there are people that really cannot tolerate the drugs early on, and at that point, there are really no options for them. Our oral tolerability had low double-digit vomiting, 11% vomiting.
That could be game-changing for somebody who's trying to get themselves onto therapy. I think that's really how we think about differentiation. Differentiating in price is dangerous game. I hope we're not playing that one. The other aspect of kind of form factor or oral or monthly dosing, things like that, I think are interesting, but always in the context of the clinical profile.
Absolutely. I think Ron Renaud, the CEO of the company-
Yeah.
Has said that good data can cut through kind of the noise of a market, and has pointed to some analog markets.
Yeah.
Kind of the statins or immuno-oncology and other places. Where are some of those parallels that exist? What analogs do you look to? And kind of what learnings are you taking forward in that differentiation strategy?
Yeah. I agree with him, and I would build on it. I think differentiation is essential but not sufficient.
LIPITOR, back to the statin world, became I think the number one, clearly the most well-renowned, even though there were a number of statins leading up to that. It was because they had great data, but it was also because they proved the outcomes of it. They also, though, by the way, had an incredible commercial footprint, of which, by the way, happened to be one. I sold LIPITOR as a sales rep. It was all in the early 2000s, so I lived this very personally. I think it's not an and, it's an or.
It's a lot harder to do if you don't have differentiation. But y ou can't only rely on the differentiation. So that's why I think having a commercial team in place, and we can talk more about that, was smart on Ron's part.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm
Because he realized that this was a commercial game as much as a clinical one.
Absolutely. Maybe to spend a little bit of time on kind of the assets and the pipeline, you've got kind of, as you mentioned, the injectable ribupatide as well as the oral. How do we think about that commercial strategy in the context of having both of those different form factors-
Yeah.
Relative to what we've seen in the market today?
Yeah. I'm really excited. I truly believe this is a differentiated franchise advantage for Kailera and for tirzepatide. You probably know semaglutide, Wegovy, is an injection and a pill. What we learn from that, which is really beneficial to us, is, one, there's clinical efficiencies, so we're going straight to phase III with that oral because we can leverage the data package of the injectable. That trial will be smaller in number. The FDA requires 4,500 patients for obesity indications. Our trial, we anticipate for the oral will be smaller because it's leveraging the patient base. The label will very likely have data that allows some switching back and forth. So those are the things that are very similar for semaglutide. What's really different though for us is that Novo positions the oral and injectable as basically alternatives of each other.
The 2.4 dose is effectively the same as the 25. They share a safety table in the label. They just kind of say, "Pick your form factor and you'll get the same result." In part, obviously we've seen the pill go crazy, but in large part, I think they're cannibalizing or blunting their injectable growth by doing that. That's not the case for tirzepatide. Because we have such high efficacy for tirzepatide injection, which our phase III goes to 10 mg, it's actually the equivalent of a 2 mg on our oral.
You can still switch and have that kind of seamless switch, stay in the franchise, stay in the family, but then you have a lot of runway to go from an intensification perspective. My prediction is that over time, we've seen so many people come into the orals market. They'll understand what it's like to lose weight, and have better outcomes. They'll want more of that, and on a product like tirzepatide, they can intensify or kind of upgrade, if you will to the injection and then have just a long runway ahead of them where they can just continue to work on outcomes without having to do a lot of switching.
Absolutely. I think kind of we're seeing patients go through these journeys. They have different phases in their perhaps rapid weight loss period versus weight maintenance and kind of the yo-yoing of-
Yeah.
Past kind of means that there's lots of phases.
Yeah.
For each of these patients.
Yeah.
You mentioned kind of what we're seeing at the moment in the current oral market, and I want to just spend a moment here. We're nine months into this market in the U.S. with Wegovy pill having launched, and then six months or so into Foundayo having launched as well. Has the uptake and the shape of that market kind of been as you expected and kind of have the brand shares tracked also as you have expected, and how does that then carry forward in the way that you're thinking about your opportunity?
Yeah. Largely yes. I've read your research on this too, and I agree that the market is kind of generally playing out how we expected. Before we knew for sure, I said Novo's going to call this Wegovy Pill. I knew it. That was different, right? You guys probably remember the type two and the obesity drugs to date still have different names. Until Foundayo launches for type two, that won't be true anymore.
The orals and the injectables had different name. Remember RYBELSUS, now called oral Ozempic. I did not think of that one. When they did that, I was like, "Oh, darn." Wegovy, I called it.
Yeah.
Because I was like, they are going to figure out how to leverage the brand equity of their injection to do something with this. That to me made sense, and the speed with which they were then able to come out on execution because they had brand awareness, because HCPs already knew their molecule, because the dosing equivalence was the same.
That was a huge advantage to them. Kudos to the Novo team. I think there's been a lot of skepticism around Foundayo and what's going on with Foundayo, what's happening. I think they're already up to a third of new patients or something are on Foundayo. No one had ever heard of this product just a few months ago. They're not doing a ton of advertising. They're using the same footprint as Foundayo and Zepbound, so they have a pretty big sales force presence. But I think we're going to continue to see that go. Lilly's obviously incredibly invested in that product succeeding, and once it goes worldwide, I think it's going to crush some when they take it worldwide, just from an execution perspective.
I did see a Martha Stewart ad the other day that I didn't quite understand for Foundayo, but they're doing a lot of fun things, and they're really invested also in the Medicare area, which we should talk more about. One thing that I learned that was really interesting to us and maybe not obvious is if you look at the patients who are taking the oral medications, it is not just people that need to lose 10%-15% weight. It actually spans.
There are plenty of people with BMI over 35 who have started on an oral. Somebody in our clinical group said to me, "Why would anybody with a BMI of 35 start on an oral? They should go to injection." I said, "Well, because there are different reasons you start, and they are just trying to get started. Not everybody wants to think about what an injection means to their health. The lower price points of the oral I think also helped with adoption. But it speaks well for us and tirzepatide because even though they are distinct profiles, I think we will be able to find a consistent patient experience that we can really pull through.
Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned kind of the Medicare opportunity and what we are seeing with the market there. In some ways, a pricing floor or a soft floor is being set in the way that deal was structured, and we are seeing kind of a pretty rapid kind of launch into this Medicare market expanding. What are the elements that you're looking at when you see this Medicare expansion, and what do you expect this to look like by the time you're joining that market?
Yeah. We're obviously watching it really closely. I think it so far is favoring Lilly. Maybe that's not surprising because the market leader is Lilly, but I also think it comes a lot down to execution. I know that they had a very robust readiness plan for Medicare, and you can see it in the Martha Stewart ad, for example. But I was just looking at the Zepbound website this morning, and they have data cuts pre-specified in 65 or older. At ADA, they had imagery, and they had a very concerted effort, and I think Novo was a little bit behind on that.
Almost didn't realize that it was a big of a thing. The thing I'm really interested to see what happens is when we have new players, or new products. CagriSema comes to the market, it's Novo, but it's a new product. If BI is able to bring survodutide to the market, now you have a new player. How does it adapt? Is it just a Zepbound semaglutide thing, or does it really become a class? Because today in obesity, if you have AOM coverage, you have coverage for all of them.
Obviously, if you have more and more and more and more choices, history would say you'll start to see some preference amongst it. I think Medicare's probably here to stay in some fashion. I think it would be hard for them to take it away completely at this point.
Yeah.
How Kailera can be a part of that is the place that I'm watching really closely.
Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of the intention, at least what has been said about this, is that this is about driving access over the long run for these-
Right.
Patient populations.
Yeah. I think that's an important thing because there's a lot of attention and excitement around self-pay because it's generating a ton of value for patients, but also for Lilly and Novo Nordisk. It's really like no other market where you see that amount of self-pay, but the absolute best way to create value in this market for everyone is to get it covered.
Yes.
That is actually, I think, a risk of the self-pay market is it gives payers a little bit of an out sometimes.
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Like we've seen that with some employers say, "Well, now you can just go buy it for yourself.
Yes.
I think Kailera is by and large going to be a price and access taker of the market.
Yeah.
We're relying. I'm cheering Lilly and Novo on for many reasons because I think they have the power to truly expand the market, and if the market's expanded, then I can compete on share with a differentiated molecule.
Absolutely.
Most people can't afford the self-pay prices.
Yes.
We need the prices at $25 or $50 like in Medicare.
Yeah, absolutely. I think there's even different dynamics in those different markets about kind of persistence of use.
Oh, there is. Yep.
All those types of factors.
Exactly.
As well that we're going to see play out over time in terms of the durability of patients.
Yep.
I want to pivot to some of the commercial choices. Kailera has obviously hired you as the Chief Commercial Officer three years or so before the launch, which is early for some biotechs.
Yep.
What are the things that you have to get right this year, next year, and even in 2028 to ensure that 2029-2030 launch? What can wait?
Yeah.
What can you leave until we're closer?
Yeah.
What's on the priority list?
Yeah. I laughed a little bit when I read this question because I didn't realize that it was unique when I came to Kailera. This was my first role in biotech, so I didn't actually have the context that it was a unique role. Ron told me I was his first-ever chief commercial officer, and then I started looking for peers and realized there really weren't any, or they're further to commercialization. I think it just goes back to Ron. Ron knew that this is not just a clinical opportunity, it's a commercial opportunity. My team was deeply involved in designing our trials, making sure we had the right doses, titration, endpoints. The BMI 35 trial that we have was as a result of thinking about strategic differentiated commercialization opportunities. What device do we have?
I spend a lot of my time with investors like yours, helping them to really understand the potential for this market. There's doubters on the market in general, and then, of course, you're always convincing on the product. I right now am working with our board to understand what a go-to-market path could look like so we can have a really sophisticated understanding of our capital formation over time.
I think just having some expertise at the table has just helped our company perform. My team is doing things right now like naming the product and picking the colors and designing the packaging and really deeply understanding the market and thinking about strategy. We are also doing a lot of market access. That is what cannot wait really, is that type of stuff. What will wait is, of course, anything having to do with how many sales reps do you need, what is your creative campaign going to be? All that tactical stuff, that is more like 2028 when we have our data.
Yeah.
It is really about brand foundations, market access, and making sure the enterprise is ready to compete.
Absolutely. You mentioned the board kind of conversations on, well, what does go to market look like here? What are the various kind of options you are considering, or what do you think is the space that you could potentially consider?
Yeah.
To deliver against this opportunity in the best possible way for Kailera?
Yeah. I think if you look at how the incumbents today are doing it, which by and large is what I would anticipate the incomers to do it. They're doing the traditional things like HCP promotion. And consumer promotion because those things work.
Especially in the launch, they drive a heavy amount of impactable sales. They deliver ROIs relatively quickly. We will do those things. To the scale of how we do them will not look like a Lilly, but we'll do them in a way that makes sense. But I believe really strongly that if you're going to compete in this market, even for a little share, you've got to invest where the data suggests the impactable share is. What we're also looking at are things like partnering with telehealth companies, thinking about the direct-to-employer world, thinking about direct-to-patient.
The thing that's really beautiful about all of those is that they're all vendor things. I don't have to build this massive team or invest tons and tons. There's so many capabilities out there of white label pharmacies you can have. Even the telehealth partnerships today are not really value exchanges. They're more just opportunities for reach and awareness. I think right now, three years before launch, with what I know, my plan is that we're going to do the things that the obesity market requires from a capability perspective, but we're going to have to get very, very smart with our capital.
I'm not going to go to the board and say I need 1,200 tirzepatide reps, for example. One, because I don't have the capital, but two, because I'm not trying to beat Lilly.
Yes.
I'm trying to help and own a part of the market that can create value for patients and for Kailera.
Absolutely. I think to that point, you seem to be very clear on there is a rising tide lifts all boats kind of-
Yeah.
Opportunity here when it comes to the market leaders continuing to drive this market. What are some of the signals and markers that you're looking for in over the next couple of years that might support your confidence continuing to rise?
Yeah. We just did a big forecasting exercise, and there were kind of four areas that really drove the sensitivity. One of them is the market treatment rate.
I have very little control over that. Actually, almost zero control over that in the next couple of years, and that's a rising tides. Like with HCP awareness, consumer awareness, generally speaking, when you have new products, treatment rates go up. I'm pretty bullish that that will increase, I'm not worried about that one. The level of coverage. Employer coverage has been pretty stagnant.
Pretty much since I started, we've kind of been seeing 50%, so I would love some of these direct-to-employer programs that are out there to expand that. Clearly, Medicare is a huge access unlock and has been, so that's one. Price, we've already talked about, and I kind of mentioned that one. Market share, as you might imagine. When I think about market share, I'm looking at how successful is a new entrant like Boehringer Ingelheim going to be.
The next time, or the monthly is, does anybody really care? Things like that. Then the last one is length of therapy, and you talked about that. That is really in my control. Like how long somebody stays on treatment. We're going to for sure capturing the patient is part of the dynamic, but especially for a company like Kailera, we probably generate even more value by just keeping them.
We have benefit there of the oral injectable, but we're also thinking a lot about patient support programs and different incentives and support that could help people really stay.
Absolutely.
On therapy.
Yeah. I think that conversation around, particularly with the consumer orientation in this market, the membership or the subscription models.
These things that can. Kind of inherently support.
Yeah.
Persistence.
Yeah.
Especially when you have kind of these seasonality factors around.
Yes.
Springtime being the time when everyone starts because they get out their wardrobe.
Yep.
And realize it doesn't fit-
Yep.
In the way they thought-
Yep.
it was going to.
Oh, yeah. There's decades of Google trends that just show you that, and this is logical, but that the interest in weight is highest at the end of the year, and it falls all year long. Not necessarily that the adoption of these therapeutics should follow that same thing, but clearly if people aren't looking, they're not going to be starting. So, yeah, having a strong Q1 is very important.
Absolutely. You raised over $700 million in the IPO, and a lot of the guidance around the allocation of that raise was associated with the injectable phase III.
Yeah.
How should we be thinking about fully funding the oral phase III and trade-offs with doing some of the commercial work you spoke about and-
Yeah.
The capital required to build the right infrastructure so that you are ready to go and ready to capture and commercialize and generate that revenue-
Yeah.
On day one?
Yeah. It's not really an either/or, it's an and. We're starting the phase III, so we've decided that's where we're putting the money. Like I mentioned, my team is small right now. I have four people. Next year it'll be a few more. We're really not talking about scaling an organization until we have, by and large, de-risked through 2028. Today, it's not a trade-off between doing the oral or commercializing the product. Certainly, there's a world in the future where there could be other trade-offs that we have to decide behind because we have such a pipeline of assets, we have life cycle clinical opportunities, you have global expansion. There's lots and lots of things you could trade off. Today we see it as, we are building both the clinical assets, but we're also preparing for the commercial build over time.
Absolutely. One of the things that you kind of referenced a couple of times in the conversation so far that I want to go back to and spend a moment on is you've come from a large organization, and you're now in a small biotech, and there are some pros, there are some cons to that transition and what that affords you to be able to do and set up in your infrastructure and kind of the challenges that you have ahead. What are some of the things that you think that you are going to be able to do in Kailera that you weren't able to do-
Oh.
In Lilly? Because we can think about all the constraints, and I think that's the easy-
Yeah.
Part.
Yeah.
But just in terms of kind of what freedoms or kind of optionality does being in a biotech bring?
Yeah. That's such an interesting question. One thing that Kailera has is just focus.
I think that can be really beneficial. Certainly, Zepbound was Lilly's priority at the time, so it got a lot of attention and very well-resourced. It also played within an enterprise, and it played When the immunology data came out, for example, we had some stuff with Taltz, and that was a little bit messy trying to figure out how that business unit works with that business unit, and how do you think about that. I think they are going to prioritize obesity, but they are fundamentally running a much more big organization. Kailera, it is obesity. That is what we are here for. Our whole company is built around it. ribupatide is focused there. We are today not doing other outcomes trials, other indications. We are explicitly going to the root and the heart of the challenge for a billion people around the world.
I think focus is really the big one. I hope we can move with much more speed. Certainly, we have seen that in the clinical development space. The company is not even two years old, and we are on track with a phase III program that was set up by the end of last year and about to start our second one.
I have heard that is uncommon. I think we can operate with speed because we are small, and then focus, I think, will help.
Absolutely. Having spent many years at a company like Merck, I know the complexities that come-
Yes.
With large enterprises.
Yes, complexities.
And navigating all of those pieces.
Yeah.
Certainly, a lot of opportunity to kind of cut through-
Yeah.
Some of that noise.
Yeah.
At Kailera. I guess also the other benefit that you gain is kind of some of that China data as well, and kind of as you think about the insights you have and the de-risking.
Yeah.
Of the steps and the investments you guys are making, how much are you relying on kind of that China data? Do you have to bring an angle to it because the patient population is quite different, as you're thinking about it from a commercial lens, specifically?
Yeah. From commercial, to be honest, it has really essentially no bearing on commercial. In China, when they launch, sometime next year, I think. But it's different titration, it's different dosing, it's a different patient population, it's a different brand name.
Yeah.
So there's really effectively zero commercial. Certainly, we'll learn from the real-world experience of the product, which will be helpful. But there won't be that. Then all of my claims and my label and everything commercially will be built up of our own global phase III's. So I don't anticipate I will ever talk about China data or have to translate it for patients or HCPs because we'll have our robust global phase III program. We do talk about that a lot with investors. He lping investors understand the data that performs in China and how that compares to, for example, there was a tirzepatide study that was done specifically in China where you can really see how well tirzepatide 6 mg does against tirzepatide 15 mg.
Our phase III goes up to 10 mg, so it's a cue to a differentiated profile. We talk about it a lot to help people understand our belief that the data will translate out of China. Although this is not my area of expertise, like with regulators having all of that data from thousands of patients have been dosed on tirzepatide. Most biotechs at this stage don't get to say Now we have 5,000 patients on our own trials. Before we started them, we had thousands of patients from that database in China.
Yes.
Even though it tends to be a lower BMI, a younger patient population, just with the way Chinese studies enroll in the Asian population. Still, we've learned a lot about how do we design dosing, titration, things like that. It's hugely beneficial. Hengrui is also doing studies in many indications.
Although that's not our area of focus, it again contributes to the profile of the drug, the belief of its applicability as a dual agonist.
Absolutely. You've mentioned it a couple of times, your focus on the obesity space versus some of these ancillary or kind of other comorbid options. How do you think about that from a commercial perspective, that decision and trade-off around?
Yeah.
Particularly recognizing the access challenges that still exist for obesity today? What bets are you making as you think about that obesity focus?
Yeah. Our big bets are that what drives the bulk of value is the weight.
And that we can make a connection that weight loss improves outcomes even if we don't have data that explicitly improves outcomes. It's not something I worry about, but it is something that's top of mind.
A little bit less so with patients. That's why I point to Ozempic versus Wegovy as pure examples. Ozempic was around for a long time, but until it became a weight loss drug, no one knew about it, right? What drove all the energy for that was the weight loss component. Similarly, Wegovy has the CV outcome study, which it's done a lot for it relative to tirzepatide because tirzepatide's still seen as a better drug.
There is kind of a general belief with most. There are 500,000 prescribers of these medicines. Some of them care a lot about outcomes and data.
Yeah.
Many of them do not have the time or-
Yes.
The energy to care.
Yes.
That is our bet. Is that we can really anchor on weight loss, translate that weight loss to outcomes.
Yeah.
Without having the studies.
The explicit studies.
Yeah.
I think certainly with the mechanisms having parallels, I am sure that kind of-
Yeah.
Gives you reasons to believe there as well.
It's a very strong part of why having a GLP-1 based pipeline is beneficial versus other mechanisms that are not yet proven.
Yeah, absolutely. I want to spend a couple of minutes at the end here on the company and perhaps what investors might be missing at the moment. The stock price at the moment is below that initial IPO offering price, and cash is the majority of the market cap.
Yeah.
There's a lot of debate as you spoke to before, kind of are there risks to this overall market? What are these later players going to be able to kind of capture from the value perspective in this market? What do you think the market is most getting wrong about Kailera, and what is it getting right?
Yeah I will caveat this with I am not an expert in the stock market, so you guys can probably all educate me a little bit. I think there's a few things. One is, let's remember, we just went public in April. We're still in the lockup period. So we're still very much in a very early stage. When we talk to investors, we still feel a high level of confidence in our underlying story.
There is the two part of do you believe in obesity and Kailera? But obesity stocks are doing okay, so I don't think that's really the problem. I think it's more so it's just the newness of our public offering, and we've been a little quiet since then, but the underlying story is there, and there's all these market dynamics.
I would point to 2027, which is not that far away at this point. We have a number of catalysts. Like I mentioned, we're starting our oral phase III program. Probably the most important one is we have a high-dose phase II of ribupatide.
Our phase III program goes to 10 mg. We are doing a high dose that goes all the way to 20, so we really think there is an opportunity based on the tolerability profile to go even further. That phase II has the 10-mg dose in it.
It will be a shorter study and a smaller study, but it will be a good read-through to what the phase III could deliver in 2028. Then we will also have phase II data on KAI-7535, our now called safiglipron, our small molecule, and then phase I on the triple G. I think 2027, I am really excited about 2027. I think that is going to be our real opportunity to show investors and to show the market what this pipeline and what this company can do.
Absolutely. With the final couple minutes that we have got left, AI is a massive topic at the moment in every regard, and I know you are thinking about from a commercial perspective, doing things in the most efficient and effective way. Can you help me understand where do you believe AI is going to give your team the most leverage?
Yeah.
Is that something that is unique that you are able to do at Kailera that you couldn't do at other places?
I hope we can make it unique. I think I am learning this alongside many people. Today we are using it mostly for productivity. We had an AI intern this summer, and he did this pretty cool thing where he created, I don't know, an AI tool. I am not sure what you call it. It was basically every day scanning the internet and summarizing consumer sentiment around obesity GLP-1. There are all these filters where we can go in and like, "Oh, what are people saying about tolerability?" and things like that.
That is a small example, but it is an example of where a company like I don't have unlimited budget for market research. I don't have a huge media monitoring team or social media team, et cetera. But I have this tool now. Where I can at least get a good sense of what is happening in the market in really daily time. Apparently, he almost broke our AI infrastructure. It is so complicated.
That is a big one. There are a lot of advancements in sales force targeting. All of that stuff that has been going on for a while, but I think that will grow. Maybe you have agentic reps someday or something like that. But I think the sales force is one place where they will be here because they do work, and HCPs are very influenced by that personal interaction. But that is a place where we can invest more. I think we will see, but it is absolutely a place where we are committed to learning. Of course, our regulatory teams and our development teams are using it for medical writing and filing and all of that kind of stuff.
Yes.
That just makes life simpler. I do believe we can be unique on the commercial side.
Fantastic. Jamie, thank you so much for your time today.
Thank you.
We are really excited to see what 2027 brings for Kailera with all those exciting catalysts. It has been really helpful to hear from your vantage point as a Chief Commercial Officer how this market might evolve and how you can play in it.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone.