Arbutus Biopharma Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Arbutus Biopharma Corporation fourth quarter and year-end 2020 Financial Results and Corporate Update conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Pam Murphy. Thank you. Please go ahead, madam.

Good morning, and thank you for joining the Arbutus Biopharma Fourth Quarter 2020 Conference Call and Webcast. On the call today are Bill Collier, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Gaston Piccio, Chief Development Officer, Dr. Michael Sophia, Chief Scientific Officer, and Dave Hastings, Chief Financial Officer. Bill will begin with a summary of recent accomplishments and upcoming events and a review of Arbutus' 2021 corporate objectives, followed by Gaston, Mike Sophia, and Dave Hastings, who will provide clinical, drug discovery, and financial updates, respectively. Please note, Gaston will be using a few clinical slides, which can be viewed on the webcast. After the speakers, we'll then open up the call for Q&A. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that some of the statements made during the call today are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding expectations, timelines, and clinical results for Arbutus's proprietary HBV pipeline and COVID-19 preclinical research efforts. The company's 2021 objectives is an expected cash use and cash runway. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause their actual results to differ, including those described in our most recent annual report on 10-K, quarterly report on Form 10-Q, and other periodic reports filed with the SEC. I would now like to turn the call over to Bill. Bill?

Thank you, Pam, and good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. As I approach my two-year anniversary with Arbutus, I'd like to use the next few minutes to summarize the progress that we have made and why I believe that Arbutus is well-positioned to execute on our mission to develop a cure for people with chronic hepatitis B, as well as advance new proprietary therapies to treat coronaviruses. First of all, and as Gaston Picquier will describe in more detail, Our lead product, AB729, a subcutaneously delivered RNAi agent, has demonstrated the potential to be a cornerstone drug in future HPV combination regimens. We've reported in 2020 a significant body of compelling safety and efficacy data from an ongoing phase 1a, 1b clinical trials. And this data strongly supports our plans to initiate two phase two trials for 729 in combination with one or more approved or investigational agents in the second half of 2021. In addition, Arbutus and Assembly have initiated screening of our proof of concept phase two clinical trial combining 729 with Assembly Bioscience's capsid inhibitor, vebicorvir, and a nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor. Secondly, we've completed the IND CTA enabling studies for AB836, our next generation oral capsid inhibitor. 836 is from a novel chemical series which we believe is differentiated from competitor compounds and offers the potential for increased efficacy and an enhanced resistance profile. We expect to begin the phase 1A, 1B clinical trial for 836 in the first half of 2021. Thirdly, as Mike Sophia will describe, we have a number of active drug discovery efforts in the HBV field, as well as discovery efforts for potential oral therapies to treat coronaviruses. Given our experienced chemistry and biology teams and the investments we're making in the oral PD-L1 inhibitor and RNA destabilizer programs, we believe these programs have the potential to lead to future proprietary combination regimens to treat HPV. Furthermore, we're confident that the proven expertise in virology that resides within our discovery team could lead to new oral therapies to treat coronaviruses. And finally, as Dave Hastings will describe in a moment, we have a solid financial position with a cash runway that now extends through the third quarter of 2022 and a demonstrated track record of efficiently raising capital. So with that, let me now turn the call over to Gaston Picchio, our Chief Development Officer. Gaston.