Beigene Ltd (NASDAQ: BGNE) stock fell 5.68% on January 3rd, 2019 (Source: Google finance) after the company announced that on December 31, 2018, the Compensation Committee of BeiGene’s Board of Directors granted restricted share units for an aggregate of 44,910 American Depositary Shares to 123 new employees under BeiGene’s Amended and Restated 2018 Inducement Equity Plan.

The Amended and Restated 2018 Inducement Equity Plan is used exclusively for the grant of equity awards to individuals who were not previously employed by BeiGene or one of its subsidiaries as an inducement material to such individual’s entering into employment with BeiGene or one of its subsidiaries, pursuant to Rule 5635(c)(4) of the NASDAQ Listing Rules.

The restricted share units will vest 25 percent on each anniversary of the grant, subject to the employees’ continued employment with BeiGene or one of its subsidiaries. The restricted share units are subject to the terms and conditions of BeiGene’s Amended and Restated 2018 Inducement Equity Plan and forms of award agreements covering the grants.

Meanwhile, BGNE announced that the first patients have been enrolled in two global Phase 3 clinical trials of its investigational anti-PD-1 antibody, tislelizumab. These trials are evaluating tislelizumab combined with chemotherapy as potential first-line treatments in patients with locally advanced unresectable or metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma, and in patients with unresectable, locally advanced recurrent or metastatic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC).

The global, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 3 trial is designed to enroll 720 patients with locally advanced unresectable or metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma. Patients will either receive 200 mg of tislelizumab or placebo combined with platinum- and fluoropyrimidine-based chemotherapy, the standard chemotherapy treatment, intravenously once every three weeks.

The co-primary endpoints will be progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). Secondary endpoints include overall response rate (ORR), duration of response (DOR) and quality of life (QoL), as well as safety and tolerability.

Moreover, BGNE announced that updated clinical data from an ongoing Phase 1A/1B trial of tislelizumab, an investigational anti-PD-1 antibody, were presented in an oral session and a poster at the European Society for Medical Oncology Immuno-Oncology (ESMO-IO) Congress, being held December 13-16 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Data presented at ESMO-IO included updated results from an analysis of tislelizumab in 17 patients with UC. At the time of the data cutoff on August 31, 2018, median treatment duration was 4.1 months (0.7-30.4 months), with two patients still on treatment.