DiaMedica Therapeutics Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Diomedica Therapeutics for Quarter 2021 conference call. An audio recording of the webcast will be available shortly after the call today on Diomedica's website at www.diomedica.com in the Investor Relations section. Before the company proceeds with its remarks, please note that the company will be making forward-looking statements on today's call. These statements are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in these statements. More information, including factors that could cause actual results to differ from projected results, appears in the section entitled Questionary Statement Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements in the Company's Press Release Issued Yesterday and under the heading Risk Factors in DIAB-Medica's Most Recent Annual Report on Form 10-K. The AMEDICA's SEC filings are available at www.sec.gov and on its website. Please also note that any comments made on today's call speak only as of today, March 15, 2022, and may no longer be accurate at the time of any replay or transcript rereading. The AMEDICA disclaims any duty to update its forward-looking statements. Following the prepared remarks, we will open the phone lines for questions. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Rick Pauls, the America's President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Pauls, you may begin.

Thank you, Julie. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our year-end 2021 business update and earnings call. Yesterday, after the market closed, we issued a press release summarizing our fourth quarter 2021 financial results and providing a general update. At the time, we also filed our quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Both documents can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website at DiMedica.com. I'm joined this morning by our Chief Financial Officer, Scott Kellan, our Chief Medical Officer, Kirsten Gross, our Chief Commercial Officer, Dominic Condari, and our Senior VP of Clinical Operations, Harry Elkhorn. I'd like to begin today with introducing you to our two newest members of our executive team. Kirsten is a board-certified neurologist, experienced in both clinical medicine and drug development. She practiced and taught at the University of Michigan and the State University of New York in Syracuse. She began her work in drug development with Pfizer and has experience working with large and smaller organizations, including heading one of the neurological divisions at Roche, and brings direct experience moving multiple compounds through the clinical and regulatory process in both the US and Europe. Dominic Condari has over 30 years of commercial experience with Genentech, including managing the growth of the Activase or TPA franchise as it became the first approved therapeutic for treating acute ischemic stroke. Dom also provided the commercial leadership for Lucentis, the blockbuster macular degeneration treatment. We're extremely grateful to have both of these individuals join our team, and we thought that you may want to hear from them, from these two, and get their perspective on what attracted them to joining our team. So let's start with Dr. Gross.

Thanks, Rick. So there were three main factors that attracted me to the company. First, the repeat findings from numerous randomized controlled trials described in the peer-reviewed medical literature from Asia consistently demonstrating clinical improvement in acute ischemic stroke patients receiving the human urinary derived form of KLK1. Second, the mechanism of action of KLK1 to selectively vasodilate arteries, and this may improve collateral blood flow to the area of the brain with ischemia, resulting in improved recovery from stroke. In addition, this improved collateral blood flow may also reduce the potential for stroke recurrence from a reocclusion of a blood vessel. Third, that the company took the time to match the PK profile of DM-199, the recombinant form of KLK1, to the urinary form of KLK1 that has previously demonstrated in repeat trials clinical improvement. This would optimize the dosing regimen of DM-199 in stroke clinical trials. So taken together, these three factors are what drew me to the company as they increased the probability of success of a clinical trial of recombinant DM-199 in acute ischemic stroke.