Atea Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Altea's Pharmaceuticals Second Quarter 2024 Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the formal remarks, we will open the call up for your questions. I would now like to turn the call over to Joneigh Barnes, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at Altea Pharmaceuticals. Ms. Barnes, please proceed.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Atea Pharmaceutical's second quarter 2024 financial results and business update conference call. Earlier today, we issued a press release which outlines the topics we plan to discuss. You can access the press release as well as the slides that we'll be reviewing today by going to the investor section of our website at ir.ateapharma.com. With me today from ATEA are our Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Dr. John Pierre Somadossi, Dr. Arantxa Horga, Chief Medical Officer, Chief Development Officer, Dr. Janet Hammond, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Legal, Andrea Corcoran, and our Chief Commercial Officer, John Vavrica. They will all be available for the Q&A portion of today's call. Before we begin the call, and as outlined on slide two, I would like to remind you that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainty. These risks and uncertainties are outlined in today's press release and in the company's recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which we encourage you to read. Our actual results may differ materially from what is discussed on the call today. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Jean-Pierre.

Thank you, Joneigh. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. The first half of 2024 was marked by strong operational execution and significant clinical progress. We completed patient enrollment in both the global phase 3, standardized 3 study of benifazovir for the treatment of COVID-19, and the global phase 2 study evaluated a combination of benifazovir and rosavir in treatment-naive HCV-infected patients. As you know, COVID is now endemic. And as new variants continue to evolve, they are likely to continue to cause recurrent surges of cases. Following the winter surge of infections caused by the variant JN1, we are now experiencing a summer wave across the U.S., Europe, and global location, largely driven by new KB and LB1 variants. There is a continued unmet need for suitable therapies, leaving the most vulnerable people at risk for severe outcomes from infection, such as the elderly, immunocompromised, and those with underlying risk factors. We look forward to potentially delivering Benifazovir to millions of patients, and we expect to report results from Sunrise 3 in the second half of 2024. Turning now to our Phase II program for HCV. In June, at EASL, we showcase a potential best-in-class profile of benifosbuvir and rizosvir, and the promise of this combination to address the unmet needs of today's HCV patients. The demographic of HCV patients has changed over time. Today, patients take multiple concomitant medications, And those at the highest risk for HCV are also likely to be poorly adherent with their medications. We believe that our combination with the low risk of drug-drug interactions combined with a short treatment duration has the potential to address these unmet needs. We look forward to reporting the full results from our ongoing Phase II study during the fall the fourth quarter of this year. We are currently preparing for the initiation of the Phase III program. I am pleased to report today that we have selected a fixed-dose combination tablet that achieves comparable drug exposure to individually administered benifazovir and rosavir. This new tablet allows us to decrease the daily pill burden from four tablets to two, which is more convenient, obviously, for the patient. This new tablet will be used in the phase three program, as well as for subsequent commercialization. And Aranda will review the data in detail for you. Lastly, with $502 million of cash, cash equivalent and marketable securities at June 30th, we are in a strong financial position to execute our strategy, and we anticipate our runway will extend in 2027. With that, I will now turn the call over to Arantxa for an update on our Global Phase II HCV program.