Great. Well, thank you, everyone, for being here. I hope everyone is enjoying the conference. I'm Emily West. I'm a Managing Director in our healthcare investment banking group, and I'm joined today with the Zymeworks CEO, Ken Galbraith. We'll go ahead and start, you know, on the Zani priority review announcement recently, and we're looking forward to the update in November. Maybe you can start off with kind of the key focus areas and opportunities as it relates to Zani, as well as how you think about the pipeline and the platform, for the company.
Yeah, that's great. Thanks very much. Yeah, thanks for the invitation to be here. Again, I think with respect to zanidatamab, you know, we made a very key decision in 2022 to choose Jazz Pharmaceuticals as our partner of choice, to help further development and commercialization of zanidatamab, in the territories to go along with our existing partner at that time, BeiGene in Asia-Pacific region. And since we completed that deal at the end of 2022, we've been very pleased with the attention and dedication paid to zanidatamab from both Jazz and BeiGene. And we're quite pleased with the progress we are to date. Right now, we have regulatory reviews accepted on zanidatamab for second-line biliary tract cancer in not just the United States, but also in Europe and most recently in China by BeiGene.
So we're, you know, we've developed this bispecific antibody, zanidatamab in the HER2 space, from the very early days of the idea and the engineering and through development, and bringing on Jazz has just allowed us to have the capital and resources to hopefully optimize the potential of zanidatamab in multiple patient populations. So besides the second-line BTC study, we have a first-line GEA study reading out, top line before the end of this year, which is a bigger patient population, but also an area of great unmet need in the HER2 targeted therapy space. And beyond that, we also see Jazz investing, starting the second half of this year in a pretty significant clinical development program to explore zanidatamab in the metastatic breast cancer setting.
So I think, Jazz and BeiGene are working with us to hopefully optimize the potential we saw in zanidatamab from the very first time that we engineered it. And you can certainly hear the excitement that Jazz has in their fireside chat they did a little earlier today at the conference. They certainly, you understand what that means to, to Jazz's potential of how they can impact patients. And from a financial perspective, something that could eventually, you know, bring in peak sales of up to $2.5 billion was their guidance today into their oncology business. So really excited about the progress we're making with zanidatamab and getting it to market in conjunction with our partners Jazz and BeiGene. In the meantime, we've been spending the last 18 months focused on our 5x5 portfolio outside of the HER2 targeted space.
Right now, we're right in front of the first of five INDs that we have planned for the next 24 months, to bring that portfolio of novel antibody-drug conjugates and novel multispecific antibodies into clinical studies, using the proceeds from the Jazz deal. So we're really excited to broaden out the portfolio of our wholly owned agents, at the same time as progressing zanidatamab with Jazz and BeiGene.
Great. And maybe for the group, reference, can you just remind us, how do the economics and financials work with both Jazz and BeiGene, and how does that kind of change as you move forward with regulatory approvals?
Yeah, so, in addition to an upfront payment we received in 2022, which is the proceeds that we used to end up with a cash balance of $500 million at the end of 2022 to finance this wholly owned portfolio that we were now putting into clinical studies, Jazz and BeiGene now took over all of the further development, costs and obligations for zanidatamab that allows us to then allocate our capital to the remaining portfolio that we're trying to build. Beyond that, we're still entitled under our Jazz agreement to up to $525 million in milestone payments based on regulatory approval of zanidatamab in different markets and different indications. Hopefully that starts soon with BTC under regulatory review in the U.S. and other jurisdictions.
And we, on the commercial side, we're entitled to a royalty of between 10%-20% of sales, depending upon annual net sales, as well as another up to $900 million, almost $900 million in commercial milestone payments based on hitting certain sales targets. So, we're certainly comfortable with the choice we made about partnering with Jazz to add to BeiGene and not commercializing zanidatamab by ourselves. And I think the future financial returns that we will be entitled to based on the ultimate commercial success of zanidatamab, with both Jazz and BeiGene, I think kind of justifies that decision. And we're building a great portfolio behind zanidatamab of wholly owned agents, which is now transitioning from preclinical into clinical studies.
So, excited about the commercial potential we still have with zanidatamab and excited to see where our agent ends up, as our first approval as a company, potentially this year, as well as focusing most of our own attention and development resources on this wholly owned portfolio of antibody-drug conjugates and multispecific antibodies.
Great. Maybe one other question on Zani, and we'll go through the additional assets in the BTC abstract recently, you know, we saw some really encouraging data, specifically with response rate, overall survival rate, I think objective response rate maintained at 41%. So the data is looking really strong. How is this data going to change how you're thinking about Zani with a BTC strategy specifically, and how you're going to kind of position yourselves in the market?
Yeah, I think the clinical data we've seen, with our first pivotal readout in 2022 within biliary tract cancer with zanidatamab and more recently with the update we gave at ASCO with a longer-term follow-up in the first median overall survival data point, just confirms to us what we had in mind when we engineered zanidatamab in the first place. So I think, you know, there were agents in the HER2 space, primarily in metastatic breast cancer between prior innovations made with Herceptin and Perjeta and Kadcyla. There were others who came along with other approaches, especially in an ADC format. And we designed something that was very unique. It's the only bispecific antibody in late-stage development in the HER2 targeted space.
We designed it with the view that in certain tumor types, in the HER2 targeted space, that the mechanism generated by zanidatamab might be more beneficial, especially in areas where there's heterogeneity, in these tumor types. I think in biliary tract cancer, what we've seen with our latest data is what we expected from zanidatamab, a much higher degree of overall response rates than you might've seen with prior therapies, very quick responses, as you saw in our BTC data earlier on, the median time to response is less than two months, a durable, consistent, and deep response in those who get a response to zanidatamab. In biliary tract cancer, it's monotherapy only.
What we saw recently at the ASCO update is that these durable, deep responses have tended to find a longer duration of treatment, because zanidatamab is very tolerable. So you see very few discontinuations of drug for tolerability reasons. You've also seen this durable response turn into now a survival benefit. We're hoping that with biliary tract cancer, we can repeat that in our GEA studies. Obviously, we've done in our phase II studies; you see the same thing, a high level of response, you know, between 7 and 8 out of 10 patients get a response to zanidatamab, either in our phase IIs with chemotherapy regimen or with a chemotherapy regimen and a PD-1. And you see the same deep, consistent, durable responses to patients of zanidatamab.
And in our phase II data, you can see directionally that that's turning into a prolonged response, prolonged time on treatment, and turning into something that directionally looks like a really encouraging survival response. Obviously, the purpose of the phase III study, which we're running right now, is to confirm in a 3-arm study between trastuzumab and chemotherapy as a control arm, what the benefit might be from zanidatamab chemotherapy chemotherapy regimen and a zanidatamab chemotherapy regimen, including PD-1. So I think what we're seeing in the clinical data set, and we've seen it in BTC, we've seen it in our early GEA studies, hopefully we see it in our HERIZON-GEA-01 study that reads out this year, and we've seen it in our earlier studies, not only in metastatic breast cancer, but other solid tumor types.
We see the clinical data, which demonstrates the mechanism that we had in mind when we engineered this very original bispecific antibody that was trying to compete in a world of ADCs, as we talk about, and it found a place in a particular tumor, particular tumor types where that mechanism's well matched with the difficulties of treating these tumors. I'm hopeful in the wholly owned portfolio that we have with these five agents moving into IND right now, that we're able to do that again. We've engineered some really interesting ADCs and multispecific antibody structures, and we're hoping that the promise that we had in engineering them in a particular type of way, we'll see that in the clinical benefit that we see in these clinical studies, which are starting to begin this year.
Great. And so obviously a lot going on with Zani, a lot going on beyond Zani. And so maybe we'll switch there. You know, we have your 5x5 R&D strategy. So maybe you can share with us a little bit high level how the strategy came about. How do you really go about selecting targets?
Yeah, so at the end of 2022, with the proceeds from the Jazz partnership and having the ability to allocate capital to the rest of the portfolio, but beyond zanidatamab, we, we set out to, to build a, a portfolio of, of 5 unique agents. And we did it with the view in mind that we're both accomplished developers on the antibody-drug conjugate side, but also on the bispecific or now multispecific antibody engineering side as well. We want a portfolio that showed our capabilities in R&D on both aspects of what we work on inside the company. So on the ADC portfolio, we decided we would, we would pick a proprietary payload, which we have, called 519, a very particular linker strategy, and find 3 relevant targets that we thought would show the promise of our particular idea of how to design ADCs for the next generation.
All three of those will be going to the clinic this year and next year. It gives us our own little portfolio of ADCs with different targets, very concentrated in gynecological, lung, and GI cancers, intentionally. But I think some idea, and there's still some diversity in that portfolio, but we like that idea of crafting a portfolio of ADCs as opposed to focusing just on one. And we can prove a few things with the diversity between those three. On the other side, we had two different ideas or formats in mind for how to improve T-cell engagers, which we've worked on for a long time in my career and trying to find a way to make them more efficient and more durable as agents. We had two different formats in mind.
One was a 2 + 1 format to try and improve activity through binding by using two binding sites on the TAA and also with a low affinity CD3 as one format that we thought would improve T-cell engagers. On the other side, the idea of doing a trispecific antibody where we build a CD28 co-stimulatory factor into the CD3 and the TAA. We wanted to find a way to move at least one product from each of those ideas we had or concepts we had about improving T-cell engagers' efficiency and durability into clinical studies. We came up with a strategy of five agents, which we think allowed us to explore our potential as both engineers of next generation antibody-drug conjugates and our thoughts on how to go beyond a traditional bispecific T-cell engager into something more.
We're really excited that we're on track now. We're actually a little ahead of schedule, of putting all five of those agents in the clinical studies in the next 24 months. Then the clinical data will confirm to us, hopefully, that we've done a good job in how we thought about these agents, how we engineered them, how we built quality to every aspect of how we develop these up to clinical studies, and then be able to understand what their potential could be, in the marketplace against other potential agents in development and standard of care to really dramatic, try and dramatically improve the standard of care for patients at the earliest line of therapy we can, likely in combination with other agents and with the, the hope that, you know, survival benefit is everything.
Trying to improve that survival benefit for patients and indications we've selected, which have tended to have a bad prognosis and therefore some of the lowest overall survival rates on a five-year basis, when you look at, at data available in the United States. Excited about showing our potential in our new organization. Behind the 5x5 , there's a, a rich substrate of additional agents that we could work on with more novelty, more diversity, more value, both on the ADC product modality, the T-cell engager product modality, and a little bit beyond that. So I think the 5x5 for us is just a start. And I think beyond that, there's our ability to create additional agents, which can move into the clinic, and probably a, an R&D productivity rate of, of two new INDs per year annually from 2027 onward.
We've been working over the past 18 months as well on that portfolio and developing it, identifying the agents we want to move forward and pushing them forward so we can meet those timeframes.
Great. A lot going on. Maybe with 171, you touched on briefly, you know, you've shown data kind of in these multiple configurations. Anything else you can share with us about how kind of the two plus one was selected and how that decision was made?
Yeah, and I think, you know, I know ADCs, you know, have gotten all the headlines the last two years, probably, because of transactions that might've occurred around those, and additional approvals in ADCs. I think what we're finding now is that T-cell engagers as an approach, at least among KOLs, is becoming something that's much more interesting because of some of these innovations that we're making to try and improve activity and improve tolerability at the same time. So we had this concept that we could use this idea of trivalency in an antibody and try and see how we could use those binding sites, in a certain geometry to try and do that.
And so we were looking for a target that would be really interesting to understand that this 2 + 1 format, which means, you know, 2, 2 of the, 2 of those points are going to be used to bind to the, the TA of interest and then a low avidity CD3 and a brand new, structure for us. So mesothelin has been a, a well understood target for a long timeframe. It's, it's very strong expression profile. It's a biomarker of interest in a wide range of indications, not just in gynecological cancer and lung cancer, but also into GI cancer, including pancreatic. So it's been a target of interest. It's been difficult to develop an ADC product format against mesothelin. Other approaches have been tried. There are some CAR T in development.
We felt, given the nature of the biology understood in mesothelin and this issue of understanding that there is low expression in normal tissue, compared to tumor, that you need to make sure that you can be very specific about high and medium expression levels that exist in tumor to avoid this low expression that exists in normal tissue. So we felt this two plus one format would be. mesothelin would be an interesting target to try to prove our point, which is by having two binding points on mesothelin necessary to engage the CD3 is a way to differentiate and to get the T-cell activation engagement where you want it. And there are other approaches people are trying and tumor-activated mechanisms.
We just thought this is a very, simple, but, but elegant, process so that, it's required to bind two mesothelins to be able to engage CD3. And again, that doesn't happen in the low expression. It's targeted to happen in the medium high expression. Therefore, there's hopefully, some belief, at least preclinically, that we can show that we'll get much more engagement, in the tumor than in normal tissue and expression. And, and I think there's also an issue with mesothelin where there is a soluble mesothelin, because of shedding. It has only one binding site. So therefore, this dual binding site avoids this issue of engaging the soluble mesothelin, which I think has caused some of these issues of folks trying a similar approach. So mesothelin is a very, has been a very intractable target. It's a very important target. It's meaningful on a broad number of indications.
It might be perfectly suited to proving our concept of a 2+1 format, T-cell engager, providing a benefit where other structures have not been able to. And we're excited to put that one in the clinic this year and understand in clinical studies whether we confirm what we've seen in preclinical data, which shows more activity and a better tolerability profile.
Great. And on the ADCs, yeah, I think you've touched on this a little bit, but you're taking a different approach to what we've seen in before in the clinic using kind of a novel proprietary payload. Maybe can you talk through a little bit of the rationale on the approach there, the different in difference in design features and what it means for efficacy and tolerability?
Yeah, I think, I think the whole industry of ADC developers learned a lot from the DXd portfolio that's been developed, originally by Daiichi Sankyo and then in conjunction with their, their two partners. I think we, we watched that and we understood that. We did a complete pivot on our concept of a next generation ADC and how they should be designed a couple of years ago. The results that you're seeing now of these ADCs going to the clinic is a result of that. Again, we, we took the approach of going towards a modestly potent but proprietary topoisomerase I payload. We think camptothecin analogs are really the payload of the day, but we think reducing the potency beyond what you might see with repurposed drugs like exatecan was important.
A very simple linker strategy that designs in a specific amount of instability into the linker to allow us, you know, a certain predictable amount of bystander killing effect was important. And then the one thing we added on our own, which we thought was another innovative step, was because we're protein engineers at heart, we think there are improvements that could be made on the antibody optimization and characteristics that would be more effective in delivering an ADC's payload into tumors. And so we focused on that as a place that we could make a difference, and be differentiated.
So if you look at the antibodies that we've selected and optimized for all three of these ADCs, you'll find that they have properties not just related to binding to specific target, but internalization and tumor penetration is really important to payload delivery where you want it to the target tissue. So if you look at our folate receptor alpha ADC, for instance, which is the first one going into the clinic this year, ZW191, and if you look at the data we put out at AACR in preclinical models where we sequenced all the antibodies on other folate receptor alpha ADCs, you'll see that nothing internalized or penetrates tumors as well as the one we have on ZW191, in the models that we've tested head to head. So if internalization and tumor penetration is important to effective payload delivery in an ADC structure, we think it is.
Our clinical data will tell us that. Then I think, that innovation we've made and built into all three of our ADCs. So hopefully if we're right about that, we'll be able to find a more effective delivery of payload and maybe pick up some additional activity and efficacy, but not at the cost of tolerability that you would see by doing other things with the payload and linker to try and generate activity there. So we focus on that for a couple of reasons. It's the one place we can make a difference that maybe others have not focused on, and we're well suited to do that, in both monobinding and in the future in biparatopic and bispecific binding ADCs. But also we, we have this thought process of ADCs being effective combination agents. So really replacing chemo regimens, but working with standard of care, not as monotherapy.
So the tolerability profile of ADCs needs to improve in order to move to an earlier line of patient care and to combine with standard of care. And that's where we think the place is that you can really make the biggest benefit for patients in the broadest populations is by thinking about these as combination agents. So tolerability becomes a much more important factor when you think about combination versus monotherapy. So we're really excited to understand if we've engineered that right, have that concept and philosophy right. It's on all three of our ADCs, with a similar payload and linker strategy, similar idea around optimizing antibody for characteristics specific for an ADC structure to drive activity. And ZW191 will be the first one.
And then we've got two other ADCs going in the clinical studies next year, ZW220, which is our NaPi2b ADC, and ZW251, which is our GPC3 ADC for HCC.
Great. And you mentioned it a little bit. So, ZW191, the folate receptor alpha program, some of the preclinical data has seemed really promising in these low expressing tumors. Anything you can share more about how you're specifically thinking about how you would approach it in the marketplace with the program and what kind of the real opportunity could be for patients?
Yeah, we're really excited about the preclinical differentiation we've seen in the models. And we've released some additional data at AACR recently, just around, at least in preclinical models, we seem to have a range of activity and expression levels that's not been seen with other folate receptor alpha ADCs. And we've used some of them as benchmarks. On the other side, if you look at the GLP non-human primate toxicology work that we did, which we summarized at AACR, you'll see that we're getting to levels of tolerability that's not really been seen in anything that's been generated other than maybe the DXd portfolio. And we seem to be beyond that a little bit.
So at least preclinically, we're seeing evidence of what we wanted to engineer these ADCs from both a breadth of activity at multiple different expression levels of multiple tumor types, and also with a tolerability profile that looks fantastic and beyond what we probably expected when we designed it. So for us, we need to find clinical settings in the folate receptor alpha targeted space that will allow us to confirm this in clinical studies, but then also take advantage of the characteristics that we might have that differentiates us from other folks who are developing other ADCs against the same target. So what we engineered this specifically to explore the breadth of potential clinical settings where folate receptor alpha might be an important biomarker.
So we'd like to explore that breadth in multiple tumor types, and we'd like to be able to, we designed it to be able to work in different expression levels, not just in high or high medium, not just in a, in a more isolated case of ovarian cancer or platinum resistant ovarian cancer, but in the breadth of all the indication where folate receptor alpha is important, whether it's heterogeneity, whether it's different expression profiles in all these tumor types. We want to explore that in phase I to understand in a clinical setting whether our human data in phase I can confirm, you know, the promise that we see right now in the preclinical models we've done, which clearly differentiate us from the others who are developing similar folate receptor alpha ADCs, whether they're topoisomerase I payloads or non-topoisomerase I payloads.
Obviously we, we think this one payload is the choice. That's why it's on all three of our ADCs. But we're really excited about the phase I confirming that aspect to us, because we certainly see it in the preclinical data. We've seen it confirm that in the clinical setting.
Great. Maybe on ZW220, competition has actually seen some setbacks. And maybe could you talk about how you think ZW220 can be kind of differentiated relative to the competitive landscape?
Yeah, so obviously, NaPi2b is a well validated biological target. It's well understood. There've been two previous attempts from sponsors, first Genentech and then Mersana to try to develop ADCs against that target. It's a really interesting target both in gynecological cancer and in lung cancer. So it's something that we were really interested in. I think we learned a lot from the two predecessors who both developed ADCs, neither of which made it to market. I think we learned a lot about them. Obviously, what we're developing in terms of payload, linker strategy, and the antibody is quite different. So I think we've learned a lot from the other two. The biology is better understood because of their efforts to try to develop an approved ADC against that target. And we use that in how we design, you know, our own structure.
We're really excited about, again, the specific topoisomerase I payload that we have on that ADC, being our ZD06519 proprietary payload. We're excited about the linker strategy we have. And I think we're really interested in the antibody structure that we have in place for that ADC. And we're hopeful that with the configuration we have on that ADC, we'll be able to find activity where the two previous agents did not, and with a tolerability profile that is much better. And if you look at our preclinical models that we've been working on for ZW220, which is going in the clinic next year, you'll see that our preclinical models will confirm a good tolerability profile activity, which is really interesting and compelling. We've decided to do that one in a DAR4 configuration as opposed to DAR8.
We always develop both, and then we make a decision at the end as which one to take forward. So we decided to use a DAR4 as opposed to DAR8 and folate receptor alpha, might give us a little bit more tolerability and be able to dose up into an effective range. And we've also decided there to mute the Fc on that antibody with folate receptor. We left it active. We think that'll, it'll probably provide a little more activity. And I think in the NaPi2b ADC, we decided we would mute the Fc and not bring in some other activity. That's one thing we learned from the predecessors who were working in this area that that might be important for this particular target and not folate receptor alpha.
So we're really excited that this might be helpful to similar patient populations of folate receptor alpha, at least in gynecological and lung cancer. It is a different type of target. It's got a different expression profile. It will differentiate us a little bit from the, from ZW191 because the DAR is different and how we deal with the Fc is different, a little bit of diversity there in, in our choices. And again, quite excited about looking at that as a combination agent and combination standard of care that might be appropriate, either in gynecological or in lung cancer.
Great. And maybe ZW251. So a novel approach here, kind of using an ADC targeting GPC3. What can you say kind of in terms of how the approach was picked and what your kind of expectations are for the program?
Yeah, on this one, we were looking again for, you know, the opportunity for a well understood target. Obviously, GPC3 is a very interesting target in HCC. Many developers are working on approaches against GPC3 because of the level of expression in these patients and it being just a strong target of interest. Most folks are doing it with other product modalities, being a lot of CAR T, T-cell engagers. Now you're seeing radioligand therapy. Our approach was to try and find a way to have a chemo-like regimen be available for these patients. And obviously, chemotherapy is not indicated in this patient population just because of the nature of the liver and how crafty it is in dealing with that. So we know preclinically that it can be effective against HCC. We just haven't found a way to do this in patients.
We think the concept of an ADC being a targeted smart chemo regimen might be something interesting in this patient population. We still think the best benefit for patients can be in looking at a combination of standard of care. Standard of care right now is A plus B with PD-1 and VEGF. The idea of giving the possibility of a smart chemo regimen to be used in combination with those agents in a very early line of therapy for this patient population could be significant to the potential survival benefit. Many of the other therapies which are being worked on against this target are really monotherapy approaches. They can't be combined as readily with other agents. We think that's important.
So we were looking for a, a target of interest that was a significant unmet need where providing a, a regimen that's not yet currently available, but doing an ADC format might be really interesting, to study in this patient population. And so we're really excited to look at a completely different product modality against a target that's quite busy with lots of other different types of approaches. But we think this might be the right approach for a combination strategy for this patient population. So really excited. It's obviously a more narrow set of indications than mesothelin or folate receptor alpha or NaPi2b, but it shares the traits of being, you know, a very strong expression profile, a very well understood biological target, and really excited to get that one into clinical studies next year as well.
Great. You know, so kind of a unique set in terms of internal capabilities, in terms of ADCs, bispecifics, trispecifics. Do you see really an opportunity here to expand beyond oncology for Zymeworks?
Yeah, it's really interesting. Like we, you know, have a tremendous amount of substrate in our group to develop, you know, even more innovative biologics for oncology. On the ADC side, all these three ADCs are putting in clinical studies this year and next year are monobinding. We've done a lot of work around biparatopic, bispecific binding ADCs. I think that's interesting. This is a single payload ADCs on the next three. We have been working on dual payload strategies as well as the next generation payload beyond camptothecin analog. So our oncology portfolio is rich. But we have done work in the past using our platforms, especially our bispecific platform in areas outside of oncology, including in autoimmune, inflammatory, and dermatology. So we have had a history of working there.
We have some opportunities to progress some programs that we think follow on along some of the, some of the interest right now and looking at broader target coverage for some of these particular disease areas where we've seen single agent, single target, therapies be very effective, but they do hit an efficacy wall. They do progress. So there's a thought that a broader universe of target coverage in a single biologic that might get you into multiple pathways could be the way to break through that, that efficacy wall that we seem to be hitting in multiple patient populations in all of those areas. So we've been working in this area for a while. We haven't talked a lot about it.
We've been trying to be focused on oncology, but we do have some assets which are differentiated, which are multispecific, which we think might have a place in this currently emerging theme of looking at multispecific biologic structure to get broader target coverage. And so we're really interested in moving some of these programs forward towards the clinic, and at some point describing that to people as to what we have and what the strategy is with autoimmune that might be different than oncology and why those two things may fit together more obviously than you think. We have an R&D day planned in Q4, and we'll probably wait until then to talk a little bit more about that strategy.
By then, we'll have, you know, hopefully a lot more progress in the rest of our business with Zymeworks and zanidatamab and the first two agents going in clinical studies from a whole new portfolio. It might be appropriate to describe not only what's next for us beyond the 5x5 , but how that scope might get broader than oncology, and why that might be really important for patients and might work well within the Zymeworks structure.
Great. What about, maybe a minute on partnerships, strategy? Any perspectives on how you think about partnerships with the 5x5 assets?
Yeah, I mean, having done this for 37 years, you know, there's a lot of great medicines that we developed in biotech that we would not have been able to get to market in, in the breadth or the speed, to patients that we would have liked without the partnership of, of, pharmaceutical companies in our sector who tend to have greater resources sometimes, the ability to put more capital against opportunities, and obviously have commercial infrastructures in place to get these medicines to patients sometimes more quickly than we can in biotech. Our biotech's ambition is to eventually become a commercial company. And I, I understand that because you can end up getting, you know, increased profitability for the innovation that you make. I think partnerships are important for us. They're certainly important for Zymeworks and zanidatamab.
You know, we would not be progressing zanidatamab as quickly on our own as we can with Jazz and BeiGene as partners. And so I think perspective as well. I would expect with all the things that we have available to patient populations, we will have to strike, probably a series of partnerships to allow us to continue development, fund that development, and commercialize. What's different with, with now with zanidatamab with the 5x5 is we'd like to be a partner in that. So we would like to be a continued co-developer. We'd like to be a co-commercialization partner with those people who want to join, collaboratively with us and move some of these agents forward.
So I think you will see us look and evaluate a number of different partnership structures that allows us to move all of these great agents forward towards the market, but in a way that's different than we did before, which hopefully keeps more of that innovation value for our own shareholders. I think fortunately in ADCs and in T-cell engagers and certainly in autoimmune as well, all those areas are in high demand from potential partners for unique differentiated assets that certainly have a whole host of those, which gives us possibilities for different partners. I think we'll start to put that in place.
I don't know if it's this year, but over the next couple of years, we'll put that partnership structure in place that allows us to move forward, but also keeps, you know, a good share of the value of the innovation that we're making inside our company for our own shareholders, and be mindful of that.
Great. And maybe one last question, cash runway. So you've guided to the second half of 2027. What is that getting you through? Is that getting you through kind of the IND phase for all of the 5x5, or what can you share on the runway?
Yeah, fortunately, since we completed the Jazz deal in the end of 2022 and focused our capital on our wholly owned portfolio , we haven't really had to worry much about a balance sheet, which is a nice position to be in. Fortunately, we've been very scientifically disciplined on what we work on, invest in, and also very financially disciplined about the cost structure in the company that we undertake and the obligations we take on. So we're still in a really good financial position. So we have a cash runway right now that runs out into the second half of 2027. So we don't talk a lot about balance sheet and cash runway in the company. We talk about discipline financially, discipline scientifically, and then I think the cash runway will take care of itself.
We obviously have lots of optionality moving forward about how to replenish the balance sheet to continue to fund the great R&D organization we have that's emerging and accelerating.
Great. Well, thank you very much for the time. We really appreciate it, and I hope everyone enjoys the conference.