Athenex, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first quarter 2022 Athenics Earnings conference call. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Kaylee Daugherty, Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our conference call. Today, we will provide an update on a Phoenix's business, as well as a review of financial results for the first quarter of 2022. The news release detailing the results crossed the wire earlier this morning and is available on the company's website. A replay of this call will also be archived on the company website. During the conference call, the company will make projections or forward-looking statements regarding future events, including statements about financial, business, and clinical milestones anticipated in the fiscal year 2022 and beyond. We encourage you to review the company's past and future filings with the SEC, which identify specific factors that may cause the actual results or events to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. You can find our SEC filings in the EDGAR database at www.sec.gov or in the Investor Relations section at our website at www.athenix.com. Speaking on the call this morning will be Dr. Johnson Lau, Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Dan Lang, President of Athenic Cell Therapy, Mr. Jeff Yorden, Chief Operating Officer, and Mr. Joe Anoni, Chief Financial Officer. In addition to the management team, Dr. Kurt Gunter, Chief Medical Officer for Cell Therapy, will also be available to answer questions after the prepared remarks. I will now turn the call over to Johnson for introductory comments.

Thank you, Katie, and thank you everyone joining our conference call this morning. Eight weeks ago, on our year-end call, we announced our strategic pivot to focus therapeutic development at Affinex on our differentiated NKT cell therapy platform with first-in-class potential. I'm pleased by our team's rapid progress and execution towards building the foundation for what we envision to be an industry-leading franchise. Promising early clinical data demonstrates the potential for our NKT cell therapy platform to be highly competitive and disruptive to both the current and emerging cell therapy landscape. The significant potential long-term value of our NKG technology platform compels us to make this a Phoenix top priority. And our clinical team is advancing both allogeneic and autologous treatments for solid and hematological malignancies. Our two lead programs QR501 and QR502 are progressing well in Phase 1 dose escalation studies. You will hear much more about this from Dr. Dan Liang shortly. On a corporate level, we continue to work to strengthen our balance sheet and streamline our organization by repaying debt with proceeds from monetizing non-core assets, shrinking our global footprint, and implementing several cost-saving initiatives. As an example, last quarter, we raised $40 million from the sale of our Dunkirk facility, which we deployed towards debt repayment and reinvestment in our cell therapy platform. But we are not done. As part of our previous strategy, we built several highly attractive assets and rapidly growing businesses that can now be monetized to extract maximum shareholder value. We have made significant progress and will make an announcement at the appropriate time. We're still targeting a 50% reduction in operating expenses and expect to see the impact of our actions resulting in tangible cost savings throughout the year as we reduce headcount and wind down non-core operations. I'm also pleased to report that we have continued to grow our APD and APS divisions through expanded partnership agreements with Amcure, a leading global biopharmaceutical company, and Ingenus, an emerging generic pharmaceutical company. Mr. Jeff Yoden will provide more details later. In fact, the APD and APS business has been gaining so much momentum as demonstrated in the first quarter, that we are now raising our target sales guidance from 15% to 20% in 2022 to 20% to 25%. We previously reported on our business decision to discontinue further investment in our oil scuffling platform. However, there are still two ongoing oil architectural trials that could bring potential value and will require limited incremental investment. We continue to follow their progress. I would highlight the Phase 2 I-SPY-2 trial, which is expected to read out in the second half of 2022. This study is being conducted by the Quantum Leap Healthcare Collaborative using Oropracotexel in combination with Dostarumab, plus or minus carbopactin in breast cancer patients in a neoadjuvant setting. Meanwhile, we also had ongoing regulatory interactions with MHRA and are submitting responses to questions received regarding use of oropacotexel in metastatic breast cancer in the United Kingdom. We will look for opportunities to advance this program through potential partnerships or other means. Lastly, our first approved proprietary product, Kesiri, for the treatment of actinic keratosis continues to perform well in 2022. Yesterday, our partner Emerald reported that they are making steady gains, achieving a 3.6% market share in a highly generic market and recording over 32,000 prescriptions generated since launch. They have also made progress on increasing the commercial coverage to over 60% and Medicare coverage was granted and has already increased to over 33% coverage. The guidelines for the management of adenine keratosis were recently published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology and Kassiri received the AAD Guidelines Committee's strongest recommendation. I'm extremely proud of our team's focus in executing on our strategic pivot, and I'm highly optimistic about Affinex's ability to transform into a lean and focused business that is competitively positioned in the growing immuno-oncology sector. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dr. Dan Lang to discuss our NKT cell platform. Dan, please go ahead.