One test of NextCure’s China foray

NextCure investors will soon find out whether their company made a smart move last year to lock in Simcere’s CDH6-targeting ADC SIM0505 for just $12m up front, with first human data from this project to be unveiled in the second quarter. That was already on the cards, but NextCure on Friday revealed that the results would include not only Chinese patients but also those from the US part of the phase 1 study, who were enrolled after June’s licensing deal. However, NextCure’s problem is money, and its preliminary 2025 year-end cash balance of $41.8m is expected to last only until the first half of next year. As such the company might be thinking of using SIM0505 data as the basis for a fund raising. Less promising is a delay to proof-of-concept data for NextCure’s other recently licensed asset, the LigaChem-originated B7-H4-targeting ADC LNCB74; these results have slipped from the first to the second half of 2026 as the company awaits data from additional patients, enrolled after a November 2025 protocol amendment that allowed higher dosing. Given the crowding around B7-H4, and the relative hope behind CDH6, SIM0505 might be the more promising of the two assets.