Cellectis Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Selectus first quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. Please be aware that today's conference call is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker, Arthur Strill, Interim Chief Financial Officer. You may begin.

Good morning, and welcome, everyone, to Selectus' first quarter 2024 corporate update and financial results conference call. Joining me on the call today are Dr. André Choulika, our chief executive officer, and Dr. Mark Fertini, our chief medical officer. Yesterday evening, Selectus issued a 6K and a press release reporting our financial statements for the three-month period ending March 31, 2024, and a corporate and business update. The report and press release are available on our website at selectus.com. As a reminder, we will make statements regarding Selectus' financial outlook, including the sufficiency of cash-to-fund operations, in addition to its manufacturing, regulatory, and product development status, as well as product development status of its licensed partners. These forward-looking statements, which are based on our management's current expectations and assumptions, and on information currently available to management, including information provided or otherwise publicly reported by our licensed partners, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from those forecasted. A description of these risks can be found in our most recent Form 20F filed with the Security Exchange Commission, SEC, and the financial report, including the management report for the year ended on December 31st, 2023, and subsequent filings selected makes with the SEC from time to time. I would now like to turn the call over to André.

Thank you, Arthur. Good morning, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Last November, we were excited to announce our strategic collaboration and investment agreement with one of the most impressive pharmaceutical companies of the past decade, AstraZeneca, to design and shape next generation of cell and gene therapies. In this agreement, AstraZeneca made an initial investment of $105 million to select this, composed of an $80 million equity investment in exchange of 16 million ordinary shares at $5 per share, and a $25 million upfront payment under the joint research collaboration agreement. This month, we're proud to announce the closing of the additional equity investment of $140 million by AstraZeneca. As part of the additional investment, AstraZeneca subscribed for 10 million Class A convertible preferred shares and 18 million Class B convertible preferred shares in each case at a price of $5 per convertible preferred shares. AstraZeneca owns approximately 44% of the share capital of Selectis and 30% of the voting rights. In addition, the appointment of Mr. Marc Dinoyer and Dr. Tyrell Rivers as members of the board of director of Selectis is now effective. Following AstraZeneca's additional investment, we expect our cash runway to fund operations Into 2026, Selectus will continue to focus its efforts and expenses on advancing its core clinical trials, Bally 01, Natalie 01, and Amelie 01, our wholly owned assets, while building the next generation of genomic medicine to address areas of high unmet patient needs within our partnership with AstraZeneca and within our proprietary preclinical pipeline. We strongly believe that gene-edited cells and gene therapies are revolutionizing medicine across a number of therapeutic areas and will become a large part of molecular medicine in the future. Quarter, we have also announced the appointment of Arthur Strill as Interim Chief Financial Officer following the resignation of Bing Wang. First of all, I would like to warmly thank Bing for the great two years he has been at Selectus. It has been a huge honor and a pleasure for us all to work alongside with him and wish him great success in his next adventures. Arthur has been managing Selectus business development and portfolio management teams since 2020 and most recently led the execution of company strategic collaboration investment agreements with AstraZeneca. Through his past responsibility, Arthur has deep knowledge and detailed understanding of Selectus. He will be of tremendous value to Selectus as Interim Chief Financial Officer as we advance our critical pipeline of assets into expansion and pivotal trials and explore new opportunities. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Dr. Mark Fratini, our Chief Medical Officer, who will give an overview of our clinical trials. Mark, please go ahead.