Lantern Pharma (NASDAQ:LTRN) CEO and President Panna Sharma told attendees at the RedChip AI Investor Conference that the company is using its RADR® artificial intelligence platform to accelerate oncology drug development and to guide clinical trial design through biomarker-driven patient selection. Sharma said Lantern dosed more than 100 patients across its clinical trials last year with drugs the company advanced and targeted using its AI platform, and he argued that Lantern has reduced the average time required to move a drug into human clinical testing by roughly 70% to 80%.
AI-driven focus on biomarkers and trial efficiency
Sharma emphasized that identifying biomarkers associated with response is central to improving clinical trial outcomes in cancer. He described a completed trial involving 63 patients in which RADR-predicted responders—patients with DNA damage repair mutations such as CHEK2, ATM, and BRCA—ultimately performed the best, which he presented as validation of the platform’s predictive capabilities. He also said the company is using RADR outputs to refine inclusion criteria for future trials, which he said can increase the likelihood of late-stage success and potentially reduce trial costs by 30% to 50% by focusing enrollment on patients more likely to benefit.
Pipeline updates and FDA designations
Sharma outlined a pipeline that includes a Phase II trial and three additional trials entering Phase II in precision oncology indications. He also noted Fast Track designation in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and said Lantern has accumulated a significant number of FDA designations for a company of its size.
During the presentation and Q&A, Sharma said the company now has 12 FDA designations, including two Fast Track designations and six orphan designations. He added that the most recent designation, received the prior month, was in adult sarcomas, which he described as a challenging cancer with growing incidence globally. Sharma discussed LP-384 (as referenced in his remarks) as a program showing activity in adult sarcomas and said the drug has produced a complete response in one patient in an ongoing trial, which the company published last year.
Key programs: LP-300, LP-184, and LP-284
Sharma identified near-term clinical catalysts and detailed several of the company’s programs:
- LP-300 (never-smokers lung cancer): Sharma said Lantern used RADR to validate molecular features and model a mechanism involving tyrosine kinase receptor binding in patients with kinase mutations. He said nearly 40 patients have been dosed, and he reported an 86% clinical benefit rate in the trial. Sharma said clinical data from LP-300 is expected later in the month, and later in Q&A he described the readout as likely within roughly 30 days or less.
- LP-184: Sharma said the company used AI to optimize the drug and guide indication selection, arguing that many drugs fail due to suboptimal indication choice rather than poor underlying chemistry. He said Lantern has Fast Track designations in TNBC and glioblastoma (GBM), and is pursuing LP-184 in metastatic multidrug-resistant lung cancers. Sharma said more than 60 patients have been dosed on the drug and that RADR identified PTGR1 as a biomarker correlated with potency, which Lantern then validated in lab studies including gene-editing experiments conducted with Fox Chase. He also said the company completed a Phase I-A basket trial with more than 63 patients, achieved its primary endpoints, and observed a favorable safety profile and promising anti-tumor activity. Sharma cited an estimated market opportunity he believes exceeds $10 billion and said a Phase II trial in metastatic recurrent bladder cancer will be supported by the Danish Cancer Society in Denmark.
- LP-284: Sharma described LP-284 as a follow-on concept developed after Lantern went public, created as a variation of LP-184. He said the company advanced it from concept to manufacturing, clinical testing, and a complete response in a patient in roughly two-and-a-half to three years for under $3 million. He said the company is focusing on non-B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas and expects the ongoing trial to complete later this year, with the goal of licensing the program to a larger pharmaceutical partner.
Starlight Therapeutics spinoff plan and brain cancer focus
Sharma also highlighted the creation of Starlight Therapeutics, a brain-cancer-focused subsidiary generated from insights derived using Lantern’s AI platform. He said the subsidiary has received Fast Track and orphan designations and is advancing a program that has completed Phase I-A and recently received approval for a Phase I-B/Phase II study in both adult and pediatric brain cancers. Sharma said Lantern plans to finance Starlight privately or publicly in the future, positioning it as a focused brain cancer company. In Q&A, he said Lantern has invested about $10.7 million into building Starlight and that the company intends to monetize it, describing the potential valuation opportunity post-Phase II as significant. He also said the Phase II trial for adult recurrent disease has been cleared by the FDA.
Platform expansion and monetization plans for withZeta
Beyond internal drug development, Sharma said Lantern is seeing interest from external partners and collaborators in using its platform, describing the operational challenge of building AI at scale as a differentiator. He said Lantern has equity, IP rights, and development rights tied to collaborations, including equity in Actuate Therapeutics, and characterized the platform as “currency” that can support partnership economics.
Sharma described RADR as an integrated oncology-focused experimental biology platform, noting that the system draws on hundreds of billions of data points and runs hundreds of algorithms continuously. He highlighted two public-facing tools:
- PredictBBB.ai, which he described as an integrated molecular characteristics platform.
- withZeta (withzeta.ai), which he described as a multi-agent, “co-scientist” platform trained for rare cancers and cancer more broadly.
Sharma said withZeta is built on a curated rare-cancer ontology and database and draws on more than 500,000 trials, over 250,000 publications, and 1.2 million “knowledge objects.” He said Lantern has made the tool available publicly and plans to monetize it via a subscription model for users seeking to understand, design, or optimize molecules. During a demo segment, he described features including real-time knowledge graph creation and the ability to export outputs, and he said Lantern’s internal team has used the system to develop seven new drug concepts in 90 days, though he cautioned that he does not yet know whether those programs will advance into clinical trials.
In closing remarks, Sharma provided a financial snapshot, stating that as of the last reported quarter the company had about $12 million in capital, a burn rate of about $4 million per quarter, and funding into Q3. He also said the company had no warrants, no debt, and about 11 million shares outstanding. In response to skepticism about whether RADR provides more than workflow improvements, Sharma argued that Lantern’s number of trials, Phase II activity, and FDA designations demonstrate competitive advantage, and he encouraged skeptics to test the public withZeta platform directly.
About Lantern Pharma (NASDAQ:LTRN)
Lantern Pharma, Inc is a clinical-stage oncology company leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to accelerate the discovery and development of targeted cancer therapies. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Lantern Pharma’s proprietary RADR® platform integrates large-scale genomic, transcriptomic and chemical data to identify novel drug candidates and predict patient populations most likely to benefit from treatment.
The company’s pipeline focuses on molecules designed to address cancers with high unmet medical need.
