DiaMedica Therapeutics Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Diomedica Therapeutics First Quarter 2022 Conference Call. A note of 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 risks 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 Notes Regarding Form-Looking Statements in the company's press release, issued yesterday and under the heading Risk Factors in Diomedica's most recent annual report on Form 10-K. Diomedica's SEC filings are available at www.sec.gov and on its website. Please note that any comments made on today's call speak only as of today, May 5, 2022, and may no longer be accurate at the time of any replay or transcript rereading. The America 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 first quarter 2022 conference call. I'm happy to be able to speak with you this morning. I'm joined by Dr. Kirsten Gruss, our Chief Medical Officer, Our CFO, Scott Kelton, is sick today and won't be joining us. I want to start off today addressing the progress in a Remedy 2 stroke trial in which we are studying DM-19's potential to improve the physical recoveries and the rate of stroke reoccurrence in acute ischemic stroke patients who have no current treatment options other than supportive care. Remember, this group represents about half a million patients in the U.S. alone. In the less than two months since our last call on March 15th, We are pleased to share that we have made considerable progress, and I'd like to ask Kirsten to provide a clinical update.

Thank you, Rick, and good morning, everyone. We've continued to make solid progress on site engagement and activation, which will be key to finishing this trial timely and efficiently. As of our last call, we had four hospital sites activated, meaning able to recruit and enroll patients. Today, we have nine sites activated and are on target to have approximately 17 sites activated by June, which is aligned with our corporate target. Equally as important is recognizing that many hospitals have not been able to restore their research teams to pre-pandemic levels. In a situation where the study team is running below staffing capacity, they understand we have concerns over the adequacy of their staff and their ability to manage the study patient after the patient leaves the hospital. This may result in further uncertainty over the patient being able to receive the full three-week study treatment and can be a barrier to the site enrolling a patient that they would otherwise normally recruit. To address this, we've recently brought on a nationally recognized clinical support service firm to assist us in engaging with those study sites that could benefit from us providing supplemental staff resources to support both the recruitment of patients and the management of the patient's participation in the study as they transition from the hospital to an intermediate care facility and ultimately to their home. From the many discussions we've had with study sites, our advisors and others, we understand that staffing at the study site is the number one issue reported as inhibiting research. In providing assistance to additional staff, we intend to minimize the administrative burden on the physician, the study site coordinator, and the rest of the study team.