Clearside Biomedical, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Clearside Biomedical first quarter 2024 financial results and corporate update conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host, Remy Bernarda, Clearside Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call today. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that during today's call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements. Various remarks that we make during this call about the company's future expectations, plans, and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the risk factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2023 that was filed March 12th, 2024 and our other SEC filings available on our website. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent our views as of today. and should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date. While we may elect to update these forward-looking statements in the future, we specifically disclaim any obligation to do so even if our views change. On today's call, we have George Lozesky, our Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Victor Chong, our Chief Medical Officer, and Charlie Dannen, our Chief Financial Officer. After our formal remarks, we will open the call for questions. I would now like to turn the call over to George.

Thank you, Remy, and good afternoon, everyone. As we near the midpoint of 2024, I'm excited with the progress we have made to date, which has positioned ClearSight for an important year. Recently, we added two key positions to our team who are having an immediate and meaningful impact on our organization. In March, we welcomed Dr. Victor Chong as our Chief Medical Officer. Victor is a well-respected, board-certified retinal specialist with more than 25 years of experience advancing drug candidates through all stages of development, including the development of ranamizabab and aflibirzeb for wet AMD. Most recently, Victor served as Global Head of Retina at Johnson & Johnson, and prior to that, he was Global Head of Medicine in Retinal Health at Boehringer Ingelheim. Victor's extensive experience is extremely valuable as he spearheads our product development activities led by the upcoming Odyssey data analysis and the planning for our CLSAX Phase 3 program. Victor will be discussing these shortly. Last month, we also added seasoned biotech executive Tony Gibney to our board of directors. Tony has a deep understanding of the biotechnology business and combined with recent and relevant ophthalmology experience at IbericBio, where he was Chief Business and Strategy Officer. Tony has broad expertise in collaborations, finance, and M&A that will help guide our strategic and business development initiatives as we explore future value-creating opportunities at ClearSight. These personnel additions are important as we continue to build on our leadership position in supercoroidal delivery. Our SES microinjector technology has been used in thousands of injections in the clinic, and continues to demonstrate a strong safety record that includes no cases of endophthalmitis to date. As the pioneers in delivery to the supracoroidal space, we are proud of the breadth and depth of our pipeline that includes our internally developed assets as well as those from our collaborators in a broad range of retinal diseases. With that, I'd like to now introduce our new Chief Medical Officer, Victor Chong, who will provide his perspectives on joining ClearSide and our programs. Victor?