ORIC Pharmaceuticals is burning through cash at a meaningful clip, with R&D expenses climbing 19 percent year-over-year to $36.3 million in the second quarter, and the reason is straightforward: the company has committed to running a 600-patient global Phase 3 trial across 250 sites in 25 countries. That is an enormous logistical footprint for a company its size, and the $387.6 million in cash it holds as of June 30 reflects both the ambition and the calculated risk behind it.
The centerpiece is Himalayas-1, the newly initiated registrational trial of rinzimetostat in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer previously treated with abiraterone. Rinzimetostat is a PRC2 inhibitor that works through the EED subunit rather than EZH2, a mechanistic distinction ORIC argues reduces tumor adaptability and sustains the benefit of androgen receptor inhibition. The trial randomizes patients 1:1 to rinzimetostat at 400 mg once daily plus darolutamide versus physician’s choice of an AR inhibitor or docetaxel, with radiographic progression-free survival as the primary endpoint and overall survival as the key secondary. A collaboration with Bayer means NUBEQA (darolutamide) is supplied at no cost, which trims trial expenses and signals Bayer’s scientific interest, even though ORIC retains full global rights to rinzimetostat with no license or option granted to Bayer.
The mCRPC landscape is genuinely competitive. The FDA approved Pluvicto in combination with an androgen receptor pathway inhibitor for PSMA-positive metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer as recently as July 31, 2026, underscoring that the prostate cancer treatment space keeps moving. ORIC’s bet is that PRC2 inhibition addresses a resistance mechanism orthogonal to what current AR-directed and radioligand strategies target, which is what makes the abiraterone-pretreated population a logical entry point rather than a defensive one.
Alongside Himalayas-1, enozertinib in first-line EGFR exon 20 insertion NSCLC is approaching a data-dense second half, with monotherapy and amivantamab combination results expected and first-line EGFR atypical mutation data scheduled for ESMO in October. With the cash runway extending into the second half of 2028, the single number to watch is the rinzimetostat program update promised for later this year: it will show whether the Phase 1b dose selection holds up in a broader population before Himalayas-1 enrollment fully accelerates.
Jon Napitupulu is Director of Media Relations at The Clinical Trial Vanguard. Jon, a computer data scientist, focuses on the latest clinical trial industry news and trends.
