Meet Actinium Pharmaceuticals: Fly exclusive interview with CEO Sandesh Seth

Actinium is developing targeted radiotherapies to deliver cancer-killing radiation with cellular level precision

In an exclusive interview with The Fly, Actinium Pharmaceuticals (ATNM) CEO Sandesh Seth talked about the company, its pipeline, upcoming milestones, and much more.

RADIOTHERAPIES: Actinium Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company developing targeted radiotherapies to deliver cancer-killing radiation with cellular level precision to treat patients with high unmet medical needs through lead product candidates, Iomab-B and Actimab-A. These radiotherapies are intended to improve outcomes in patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia, or r/r AML, from treatment with therapeutics or from undergoing a bone marrow transplant.

“We take this technology that combines radiation with a way to deliver it to cancer cells. And we use that technology to make products that are very effective at killing cancer. Radiation is used in about 50% of all cancer treatments but the problem with getting external beam radiation is that a lot of cancers happen very deep inside of the body or are all over the body and you can’t target them very effectively. You can only do so much with external radiation. So, what we do is take that cancer killing power of radiation, we couple it to these targeting agents and find the cancer like a missile seeks its target and then we nuclear bomb the cancer. We break the DNA and prevent mutations from happening. This is a very effective and safe way of targeting cancer. The safety translates to very few side effects compared to chemotherapy,” CEO Sandesh Seth explained to The Fly.

MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR OPPORTUNITY: Actinium’s lead product candidate, I-131 apamistamab, or Iomab-B, has been studied in over four hundred patients, including the pivotal Phase 3 study of Iomab-B in Elderly r/r AML, or SIERRA, trial for BMT conditioning. Topline data from the SIERRA trial are expected in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Discussing the potential market opportunity for this product, Seth highlighted that it should be viewed "in stages: what we are approved for first; then you can move into earlier lines of treatment." "Most cancer killing drugs will start out in that relapsed refractory population and over time they will migrate to earlier lines of therapy and earlier stages of the disease and with that the market opportunity becomes very large. So, with Iomab is the same thing. We’re starting out with a population of patients that currently is not transplantable; they die in about 3 months. Overtime, because this drug targets something that is widely expressed in all blood cancers and it has been in several proof-of-concept trials, we can expand the label first in AML to younger patients, earlier lines of treatment, and then also in other diseases, ultimately leading to a multibillion-dollar market opportunity," the executive added.

ACTIMAB: Actinium has a second product candidate, Actimab-A, that has been studied in approximately 150 patients with AML, including in ongoing combination trials with the chemotherapy regimen CLAG-M and with venetoclax, a targeted therapy.

“Actimab is again radiation. Radiation just kills everything in its path. AML is characterized by many mutations and most of the drugs today – because they target one or two mutations or are they non-targeted like chemo and produce side effects and you have to limit the dose – all produce relapses. The opportunity here is with Actimab to combine with other regiments and extend life in a very meaningful way,” Seth said.

UPCOMING MILESTONES: Actinium’s CEO told The Fly that Iomab has “lots of milestones coming up.” “We will file the BLA end of this year and hopefully if everything goes well with the FDA, we’re looking at approval next year and then launch. We also have a low dose version of Iomab called Iomab-ACT program and we’re doing a proof-of-concept trial with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the NIH. We’re looking at this low dose to replace chemotherapy before any cellular therapy.”

MOST ANALYSTS BULLISH ON THE COMPANY: Discussing the company and any misconceptions by the Street, CEO Seth noted that Actinium has “five or six analysts covering the company and most of them have gotten the story right and are very bullish on the company. But there is one analyst who has a very poor understanding of the company and the others analysts have even said, ‘our colleague got it wrong.’ On balance, the vast majority of people understand the value proposition for these patients and the value proposition that Iomab has.”

"Meet the Company" is The Fly’s recurring series of exclusive short interviews with Executive Officers to offer a deeper look inside the company.

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