Whitehawk Therapeutics said two real-world analyses support protein tyrosine kinase 7 (PTK7) as a durable antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) target in patients with pretreated, EGFR wild-type non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The analyses found that PTK7 expression in lung adenocarcinoma remained largely stable after chemotherapy, immunotherapy, chemoimmunotherapy and tyrosine kinase inhibitor treatment, with less treatment-associated variation than several late-stage ADC targets, including MET, PD-L1 and ITGB6. PTK7 levels were generally consistent across tumors with or without other actionable genomic alterations, including KRAS G12C, ALK and MET alterations. A separate analysis found that PTK7 expression was not independently associated with real-world overall survival or progression-free survival in patients receiving second- or later-line therapy, supporting its use as a target-engagement biomarker rather than a prognostic marker. Whitehawk said the findings support further evaluation of HWK-007, its PTK7-directed, next-generation ADC, in an ongoing Phase 1 trial covering non-squamous, EGFR wild-type NSCLC, platinum-resistant ovarian cancer and endometrial cancer. The data were presented at the IASLC 2026 World Conference on Lung Cancer in Seoul and arose from a previously announced collaboration with Tempus AI.