AbCellera Biologics Inc.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Abcelera's full year 2024 business update conference call. My name is Tamia, and I will facilitate the audio portion of today's interactive broadcast. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1. Please press star 0 should you need assistance during the call. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Trent Steinmark, Abcelera's Chief Legal and Compliance Officer. You may proceed.

Thank you. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Abcelera's 2024 Full Year Earnings Call. I'm Trent Steimart, Abcelera's Chief Legal and Compliance Officer. Dr. Carl Hansen, Abcelera's President and CEO, and Andrew Booth, Abcelera's CFO, are joining me on today's call. During this call, we anticipate making projections and forward-looking statements based on our current expectations and according to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Our actual results could differ materially due to several factors outlined in our latest Form 10-K and subsequent Forms 10-Q and 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Abseller is not obligated to update any forward-looking statements, whether due to new information, future events, or otherwise. Our presentation today, including our earnings press release and SEC filings issued earlier today, are available on our Investor Relations website. The information we provide about our pipeline is for the benefit of the investment community and is not intended to be promotional. As we transition to our prepared remarks, please note that all dollars referred to during the call are U.S. dollars. After our prepared remarks, we will open the lines for questions and answers. Now I'll turn the call over to Carl.

Thanks, Trinh, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Today, I'll review the progress we made in 2024 and discuss our priorities for 2025. 2024 was a year of significant change at Accelera. In late 2023, we decided to transition from a platform and partnership company to a clinical stage biotech. Accordingly, over the past 18 months, our focus has been on building our internal pipeline and completing investments in our platform, while at the same time, improving efficiency and maintaining a strong cash position. Through the year, we achieved the following milestones. We advanced two programs, ABCL 635 and ABCL 575, which are now positioned for CTA filings in Q2 of this year. Behind these, we are advancing a robust pipeline of internal programs and discovery. We completed our move into our new headquarters and are on track to bring our clinical manufacturing facility online in 2025. Importantly, We expect significant investments in our platform and facilities to be complete in the first half of this year. We are reducing the new discovery partnership activities. In the first part of 2024, we engaged in two new partnerships and expanded one existing collaboration. And finally, we closed the year with over $800 million in available liquidity and are in a strong position to execute on our strategy. As we enter 2025, I believe we are in a unique position. We are nearing completion of a multi-year build of our facilities and workforce. We have a demonstrated competitive advantage in the creation of therapeutic antibodies, and we have arrived here with over 800 million in liquidity. Over the coming years, we will use our capital and our technology to create and develop a pipeline of wholly owned and co-owned drug development programs. From here, the most important strategic question is how do we allocate our time and our capital to build our pipeline? How do we choose which programs to work on? Where do we double down? Where do we stop investing? And when do we partner? In choosing programs, we are explicitly indication agnostic. We're open to all opportunities where we perceive an unmet need and an outsized chance of succeeding in the clinic and in the market. We assess this by answering four central questions. First, do we have conviction in the science? Second, do we see a large unmet need in commercial opportunity? Third, is there a case for strong differentiation so we can win in the market? And lastly, is there a clear development path? At this stage, we are particularly focused on finding those opportunities where, for a limited amount of cost and time, we can get proof of concept and build conviction in our programs. In the perfect world, we would build a portfolio where every program scores highly on all of these different criteria. The reality is that every program has its strengths and its weaknesses. and these need to be weighed together. With that framework in mind, I will share how we think about our first two programs, ABCL635 and ABCL575. ABCL635, which is our lead program, is for an undisclosed target and indication in the area of metabolic and endocrine conditions. This is a program that we are particularly excited about because it scores well across all four dimensions. First, from the pathway side, This is a target that has been well validated both in preclinical work and in the clinic with small molecules. Accordingly, we believe that if we can achieve sufficient target engagement, it is likely to be both efficacious and safe. Second, we believe that this program would address an important unmet need with a significant commercial opportunity. In our estimation, there is a total addressable market of at least $2 billion in annual sales. In terms of differentiation, ABCL635 has the potential to be a first-in-class antibody therapy. We believe there is potential for differentiation in terms of the safety profile, and we believe that a product that is a once-monthly subcutaneous injection will be preferred by patients. And lastly, this is a program where a clear development path and well-established biomarkers exist. At the end of our phase one trial, we expect to have a clear view as to whether or not we are engaging the target and whether it's likely to work as a therapeutic. We plan to disclose the target and the indication for abcl635 at our next earnings call. Our second program, abcl575, is a non-depleting OX40 ligand antagonist. This is a program following amlatilumab, which is a molecule that's now in phase three by Sanofi in atopic dermatitis, and it's also being evaluated in phase two for several other indications. In phase two, amlatilumab has demonstrated efficacy that was comparable to Dupixent in atopic dermatitis at a clean safety profile and a longer duration, albeit with a slower time to the onset of that effect. With this precedent, we have high conviction that ABCL575 will also prove to be efficacious and safe. There's clearly a large commercial opportunity here. Atopic dermatitis is already north of a $10 billion market. with biologic penetration in the single-digit percentage range for the patient group. We also know that for Dupixent, there's approximately a 20% of patients that discontinue, so that even as a second-line therapy, this represents an attractive commercial opportunity. Although there is also Leberkizumab from Lilly, Levery targets the IL-13 pathway and therefore has nearly complete overlap with Dupixent's mechanism of action. For this reason, For patients that proceed to second line, having a distinct option like an ox40 ligand antagonist is attractive. Beyond atopic dermatitis, there's a good case to be made for the development of ox40 ligand antagonists across many autoimmune conditions. As I mentioned, amlitilumab is currently being evaluated for celiac disease, asthma, HS, alopecia, and others. We view success in these trials as potential upside that support the proposition that Oxford ligand will emerge as a dominant class in treating autoimmune conditions. As compared to amlitilumab, the main differentiation thesis for ABCL575 is a combination of high potency and excellent biophysical properties, making it amenable to a high concentration formulation and an FC that is engineered with a YTE mutation to provide extended half-life that supports less frequent dosing. We view this as a modest case for differentiation, but one that could prove more or less important, depending on what happens in ongoing trials with amyotilumab and the profile of other early stage Oxford ligand antagonists that are currently in late preclinical or early clinical development. From a development perspective, there's a clear path and we expect to have a CTA submitted in Q2 of 2025. We expect the first readout for safety and PK in 2026, which is at the same time as ABCL635. In summary, We view ABCL575 as a program with low scientific risk and a large potential market opportunity across multiple autoimmune indications, but a program with risks associated with being in a competitive space with modest differentiation. With ABCL635 and ABCL575 on track for entry into the clinic in 2025, we expect to complete our transition from a preclinical platform and partnership company to a clinical stage biotech. Behind these programs, we have a robust portfolio of more than 20 preclinical programs that we view as having the potential to become highly differentiated assets. As we focus our activities on our pipeline, we are reducing our new partnering activities. In the first half of 2024, we added two additional partnerships with Biogen and with Aramark and Viking and expanded our collaboration with Lilly. Subsequent to the close of Q4, we entered into our first significant partnership based on our TCE platform with AbbVie, who we first began working with at the end of 2022. We see our TCE platform as a source for internal programs and as a basis for future partnership activities. And accordingly, we will continue to seek collaborations in this area. Looking to 2025, we are focused on entering the clinic and bringing our manufacturing capabilities online. Our priorities for the year are, first, to initiate phase one clinical trials for ABCL635 and ABCL575. Second, to nominate additional development candidates for CTA-enabling studies. Third, to complete platform investments by the end of the second quarter. And fourth, to start activities in our new clinical manufacturing facility. In terms of key milestones, we expect to see the following to occur over the next 18 to 24 months. CTAs and clinical starts in 2025 our first two clinical readouts in 2026, and the election of, on average, two additional development candidates per year. And with that, I'll hand it over to Andrew to discuss our financials. Andrew?