Dyadic International, Inc.

Q4 2021 Earnings Conference Call

3/29/2022

speaker
Operator
Good evening, and welcome to the Dyadic International's 2021 Year-End Financial Results Conference Call. Currently, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following management's prepared remarks, there will be a brief question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, March 29, 2022. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Ping Rawson, Dyadic's Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
speaker
Ping Rawson
Thank you. Good evening and welcome everyone to Dyadic International's 2021 year-end conference call. I hope you've had the opportunity to review Dyadic's press release announcing the financial results for the year-ended December 31, 2021 and the recent company highlights. You may access our press release on Form 10-K and the Investors section of the company's website at dyadic.com. On today's call, our president and CEO, Mark Imelbarb, will give a review of our year-end 2021 business and recent corporate highlights, including a brief summary of our research and business development efforts. I will follow with a review of our financial results in more detail. We'll then hold a brief Q&A session. Our senior management team, Joe Hazleton, Matthew Jones, and Ronan Shillette will join Mark and I for the Q&A. At this time, I'd like to inform you that certain commentary made in this conference call may be considered forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause dyadic's actual results, performance, scientific or otherwise, or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Diatics expressly disclaims any duty to provide updates to its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Participants are directed to the risk factors set forth in Diatics reports filed with the SEC. It is now my pleasure to pass the call to our CEO, Mark Imhoffar. Mark?
speaker
Mark Imelbarb
Thank you, Ping. Good evening and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, I just wanted to share the team's optimism for what is in store for Dyadic in the year ahead and just how proud we are of Dyadic's scientific and business accomplishments in 2021. While we're still early in the days of seeing what the full potential of synthetic biology holds in the world, we are excited to be part of this future. as we look forward to leveraging our proprietary and patented C1 protein production platform and our other technologies to become one of the leading platforms for synthetic biology production. The synthetic biology market is categorized into the following segments, medical applications, industrial applications, food and agriculture, and environmental applications. In 2020, the medical application segments accounted for the largest share of the synthetic biology market, which remains our primary focus for C1's commercial goals at the protein manufacturing platform. To this end, we are proud to share not only the year's progress with you, but also our 2022 development goals on this first investor update call of the new calendar year. As you know, we have made it clear that it is the company's mission to improve the way we feed, fuel, and heal the world. This year sets new operating milestones for us to hit, while staying true to that mission. What I hope you take away from today's call is renewed focus to our mission and the ability to take it to the next level. We expanded and enhanced our leadership team with the appointment of Joe Hazleton as Chief Business Officer, whose role supports the global commercialization of the company's new and existing business initiatives. including corporate strategy, business and corporate development and licensing. We have put ourselves in a better position to tackle the influx of global partnering requests and interests related to the company's experience and knowledge, coupled with the advancement of our SLEEP C1 platform and other technologies. Additionally, after several years of internal research and development, published preclinical proof-of-concept papers across the industries we are targeting today. We believe we are entering a new period of potential growth, highlighted by advanced testing and development of our C1 protein production platform and our other technologies in the industries that we are using to penetrate some of the largest commercial enterprises in these industries, be it human or animal health, food manufacturing, or industrial endeavors. As we focus our commercialization and development efforts on these core verticals of human health, animal health, and other biomolecules, examples of major accomplishments in advancing the commercial viability of our C1 protein production platform and other technologies have included partnerships with Fibro Animal Health, Janssen, and a multitude of organizations around the world that have been instrumental in fully funding a number of our non-COVID-19 biopharmaceutical programs, as well as helping us to advance our proprietary DY-100 COVID-19 vaccine candidate. We are pleased to note that manuscripts relating to antigens produced from C1 cells showing safety and efficacy in animal models against influenza and SARS-CoV-2 were published in three peer-reviewed scientific journals, including vaccines. We have successfully completed the toxicology study of our DY100 COVID-19 vaccine candidate. a manuscript showing safety and persistence has been peer-reviewed and is awaiting publication in the scientific journal Toxicologic Pathology. These are exciting preclinical studies for us that, among other benefits, demonstrate the safety, efficacy, and the number of other biochemical structures and properties of the SARS-CoV-2 RBD antigen produced from C1 cells. In addition, These publications also demonstrated a novel method to deliver the C1 SARS-CoV-2 RBTE antigen subcutaneously and intranasally, and separately, the utility of the C1 cell protein platform in expediting production of seasonal and pandemic influenza vaccines. We have refocused and improved our active outbound awareness regarding the steady advancement our knowledge for the ubiquitous uses of C1 across 20-plus years of proven industrial manufacturing, which we have begun to leverage as we continue to pivot into biopharmaceutical manufacturing of vaccines, antibodies, and other therapeutic proteins. We firmly believe that these efforts have the potential to revolutionize medicinal biomanufacturing. We've already begun to conduct funded research in areas of agriculture, food production, and metabolic engineering. We remain focused on the application of our C1 protein production platform to address health inequity in middle and lower income countries who are reliant on outside sources of vaccine and drug production or which lack the infrastructure and resources to store and distribute vaccines which require advanced cold storage techniques. While we continue to move our DY100 COVID-19 vaccine candidate into the clinic, we want to emphasize that interest in the C1 platform is happening across numerous other applications in addition to vaccines and therapeutics. And we believe that we will continue to deliver in this arena for years, not only in the US, but through our collaboration relationships in Africa, India, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. As we move these efforts forward, I want to reiterate The dyadic through these partnerships continues to maintain our own IP as we structured our partnerships to include upfront payments, development milestones, and future commercial-based royalty or other forms of earnouts. With this said, let's move ahead in the call to quickly cover some of our recent company highlights, which we have announced in recent press releases. A major win was the announcement of Dyadic's agreement with Janssen Biotech, facilitated by J&J Innovation. We already received Janssen's upfront payment of $500,000 for their non-exclusive rights to utilize the C1 cell protein production platform to develop C1 production cell lines for the manufacturing of Janssen therapeutic protein candidates against several biologic targets. As awareness continues to expand around C1's ability to revolutionize commercial protein expression, we believe we'll continue to see similar agreements to come as we ramp up our team's efforts in new business development, which we expect would in turn trigger future upfront payments, milestones, royalties, or other forms of payments. Additionally, for this particular agreement with Janssen, we will be provided R&D funding for up to 1.6 million euros to develop and assess C1 production cell lines for its product candidates. We recently announced a broadening of our relationship with Fibro Animal Health, a leading global diversified animal health and mineral nutrition company. We've entered into an exclusive license agreement to produce a single specific targeted antigen for development and commercialization of a poultry vaccine. The agreement follows a successful proof of concept development work, including animal trials previously completed by the two companies. The parties expect to continue working on developing additional animal vaccine candidates to be produced from dyadic C1 cells. In December, we announced that we received a National Institute of Manufacturing of Biologics, NIMBL, coronavirus grant under the White House American Rescue Plan of up to $690,000 in order to engineer two C1-derived antibodies. The NIMBL project is off to a good start. This grant is intended to benchmark the speed that C1 manufacturing platform and the advantage we will have compared to current state-of-the-art methods, which could lead to a rapid ability to produce medical countermeasures and vaccines in response to future pandemics. Earlier this month, the company announced that due to a disagreement between the parties concerned in the timing in terms and conditions of the previously announced term sheet with Sorrento Therapeutics for the entry in the license agreement that the parties have mutually agreed to terminate the term sheet effective March 17, 2022. We also sent Louina Bio a termination notice letter related to our license agreement with Louina Bio Novavet in February 22, as they not have been able to raise capital to continue the program. As our partners' needs and business focus has changed over time, we view these terminations as an ongoing part of our business. However, both Janssen and Fibro are great examples of how our years of hard work in the research and development of C1, as well as renewed business development efforts on multiple fronts, are bearing fruit. For those who have followed the company over the last several years, all indications have marked a certain maturity in our development life cycle. as we move towards the company's technology from proof of concept to partnering and collaboration towards commercialization and feasibility studies to first in human trials. Moving on to certain of DIATIC's ongoing global collaborations. We entered into a technology transfer and license agreement with South Africa's Rubic Consortium, who have already begun working to develop end-to-end solutions for vaccine discovery, development and manufacturing for the African market. This arrangement includes C1 COVID-19 vaccine technology transfer and licensing agreement, a potential funding pathway for a C1-manufactured COVID-19 vaccine to progress to Phase II and III clinical trials. Establish a co-development basis for research, developing, and manufacturing multiple other products, vaccines, in addition to DY-100. An intention to reduce African independence on foreign vaccine suppliers. In coordination with CR2O, Paracel, and Rubic, we are preparing for submission of a clinical trial application, CTA, of our DYA-100 vaccine candidate to the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority, or SAFRA. We have identified WITS clinical research, a division of the WITS Health Consortium, BTY Limited, as a potential site for carrying out the DYA-100 phase one clinical trial to validate C1-produced proteins are safe in humans, and further accelerate the global C1 platform adoption. This clinical trial will also serve as a proof of concept for other next-generation variant COVID-19 vaccine candidates. It's important to note that WITS has experience carrying out COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials in South Africa for big pharma. While many on the call may be familiar with the FDA's clinical testing phases and drug approval process, We wanted to take some time to discuss the process for South Africa it's important to note the importance of partnering with the consortium in South Africa rubric in which. Not only from a regulatory partnering perspective, but also from a trial design perspective, especially amidst. the evolving landscape of COVID-19, including the disease, infection, and transmission rates. The shift now has been away from treating COVID-19 as pandemic, but rather controlling and managing infection and transmission rates, as well as symptom severity in the absence of the ability to control how COVID-19 variants evolve. This is the primary reason why global regulatory guidelines around COVID-19 vaccine development is still evolving. That said, our partnership with the WITS and the consortium in South Africa give us unprecedented access to leading institutions and R&D scientists who have been at the very front lines of testing and developing current COVID-19 treatments. including Pfizer's current COVID vaccine, AstraZeneca and others. That is in the marketplace in South Africa today. Current data suggests that many of the so-called first generation vaccines remain highly effective against existing several of the variants of concern. However, the Omicron variant and subvariants being potential exceptions, particularly against severe disease. However, it's possible a new variant will emerge that may overcome the current vaccine-induced protection to some degree, with the emergence of the Omicron variant only highlighting this risk. The C1 cell protein production platform can effectively support the global immunization strategies that are needed against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. The company can rapidly insert receptor-binding domain variant genes into the same C1 cell line, same genotype in approximately 60 days. Thus far, in addition to the original Wuhan SARS-CoV-2, the following variants have been successfully produced from C1 cells, the Alpha UK, Beta South Africa, Gamma Brazil, Delta India, and already we have the Omicron B11.529. One of the commercial goals of DIATIC is to demonstrate effective capability to rapidly produce different combinations of multivalent COVID-19 vaccines, which could protect against several variants of concern at once. We continue to work with Syngene in India, a major global contract development and manufacturing organization with a headcount of over 5,000 employees. Syngene International is an integrated research development and manufacturing company providing scientific services. It conducts early-stage research, preclinical and clinical trials, drug substance and drug product manufacturing and development, biologics manufacturing, and other services. The company serves not only the pharmaceutical industry, but the biotechnology industry, nutrition, animal health, and consumer goods and special chemical industries. Our discussions with Syngene have centered on advancing a commercial framework and planning around the use of C1 cell protein production platform, and our other technologies as an in-house option to traditional CHO and other cell line manufacturing offerings for manufacturing vaccines, antibodies, and other therapeutic proteins. In 2020, the company entered into a non-exclusive technology usage agreement with Epigen Biotech of India, who plans to conduct clinical trials in India using dyadic C1 cell protein production platform to produce their COVID-19 vaccine. Epigen recently procured the approval for funding from the government of India to move forward towards vaccine production technology across early stage phase one and phase two human clinical trials. In order for Epigen to receive the government funding, it must contribute approximately 25% of the funding from other sources. During 2021, the company also expanded its influenza vaccine collaboration with the University of Oslo. Scientific results included having mice vaccinated with C1-produced AMHE2 hemagglutinin, California 7, 2009, combined with an adjuvant, ASO3, challenged with a lethal dose of 5LD50 of the homologous influenza A H1N1 showed no clinical signs, no weight loss, and the mice were fully protected. Other mice trials are ongoing as we speak, and others are scheduled, with C1-produced antigens, influenza, and SARS-CoV-2 with Oslo University. A part of inbound inquiries, we have highlighted the launch of our biomolecule development In order to demonstrate that our industrially proven C1 cells can be engineered to manufacture therapeutically viable and commercially useful cannabis compounds, including cannabidiol or CBD and its precursors using synthetic biology. As acceptance for therapeutic uses for cannabinoids continue, we are demonstrating C1's potential to manufacture pure synthetic cannabinoids for commercial use potentially cheaper and more effectively as compared to conventional methods using hemp and the marijuana plant cannabis sativa. This is just another example how we are starting to apply synthetic biology to engineer C1 cells to help improve, develop more efficient bioprocesses for a number of potential applications. And with this, I'll turn the call over to our CFO to run through our financials, Ping Razen.
speaker
Ping Rawson
Thank you, Mark. In addition to the financial results I'll be discussing now, you can find additional information in our Form 10-K, which we filed earlier today. Our cash, cash equivalents, and the carrying value of investment-grade securities as of December 31st of 2021, including accrued interest, were approximately $20.4 million dollars, compared to $29.2 million last year. Research and development revenue for the year end December 31st, 2021 increased to approximately $2.4 million compared to $1.6 million last year. At December 31st, 2021, the company recorded the 500,000 upfront payments received from the collaboration and the license agreements with Jensen as deferred license revenue. Cost of R&D revenue for the year-end December 31st, 2021 increased to approximately $1.9 million compared to $1.4 million last year. The increase in revenue and cost of the R&D revenue was due to a number of larger research collaborations conducted in 2021. R&D expenses for the year-ended December 31st, 2021 increased to approximately $8.4 million compared to $3.9 million last year. The increase primarily reflected the cost to manage and support preclinical and clinical development as well as CGMP manufacturing costs as the company moves toward its anticipated Phase I clinical trial of the YAI-100 COVID-19 vaccine candidates. in the amount of approximately $5.1 million, offset by a decrease of $621,000 in other internal R&D costs. G&A expenses for the year ended December 31, 2021, increased to approximately $6.7 million compared to $6 million last year. The increase principally reflected increases in legal expenses insurance premiums, and other outside services offset by reductions in business development and investor relations costs. Interest income for the year ended December 31st, 2021 decreased to approximately $52,000 compared to $447,000 last year. The decrease was primarily due to a decrease in interest rates and yield on the company's investment-grade securities which are classified as held to maturity. For the year ended December 31st, 2021, the company also recorded a gain from the sale of investment in DDI in the amount of $1.6 million. Net loss for the year end December 31st, 2021 was approximately $13.1 million or 47 cents per share, comparing to a net loss of $9.3 million of $0.34 per share last year. Our cash position remains strong for 2022. We expect our cash burn for 2022 will be in the range of $10 to $11 million. With that, I will now ask the operator to begin our Q&A session. Dr. Ronan Shillette, Joe Hazelton, and Matthew Jones will be joining Mark and I to answer your questions. Each caller will be allowed one question and one follow-up question to provide all callers an opportunity to participate. If time permits, the operator will allow additional questions from those who have already spoken. Operator?
speaker
Operator
Thank you. If you'd like to be placed in the question queue at this time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, please ask one question, one follow-up, then return to the queue. As a reminder, that's star one to be placed in the question queue. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question today is coming from John Vandermosen from ZACS. Your line is now live.
speaker
John Vandermosen
Hello, good evening. First question is on the animal health side of things. You know, we all know that that's a faster route to get things approved, and I was wondering if you could remind us, Mark, just what is required to... get something approved once the companies decide that they want to take it forward?
speaker
Mark Imelbarb
Well, I think every company is different, of course, but they would run the animal studies. In the case of the fibro poultry study, they've already run two out of the maybe three animal studies that they would run. And obviously, they saw the excellent results, which is why they entered in the license agreement. So from there, they would then have to go and file for a regulatory approval. And depending on the different countries, there's different timelines for that. And then through the regulatory approval process, then they would have an approval, hopefully, that would come up. And then they would be launching their product, case of Fibro, to Global Animal Health Company. so they'd have to register in a variety of countries all over the world. So depending on where they would first apply for that, they would leverage that application and regulatory filing in the other countries. So it's kind of rollout country by country all over the globe, in their case, as a global company.
speaker
John Vandermosen
Okay. And looking at the DYA I-100 Phase I trial, What's left there to get done before it can get, you know, before you can get started? And I know you have it potentially going on in a number of different countries, which may have different timelines there. But what do you see on that that needs to get done, I guess, you know, for the U.S. specifically?
speaker
Mark Imelbarb
Well, let me turn you over to Joe Hazleton, who's our Chief Business Officer, who's handling the regulatory process on that. So, Joe, it's
speaker
Joe Hazleton
Absolutely. So as you're aware, our initial CTA application is in South Africa. So pending approval and data from the phase one study in South Africa, we would then turn to file an IND in the United States with that data. And then, again, that would take potentially anywhere from six months to a year to get that filed and pushed through and move on to our end-to-phase-two meeting pending a successful meeting or successful resolution with the FDA regarding our IND status. So that would be the option for us as we move from South Africa to the United States.
speaker
Mark Imelbarb
But we would also have the ability to go to different countries, which we probably would be doing even in advance of that, in addition to South Africa and potential other countries. Our partners in South Africa, Rubic, or WITS, would be handling the regulatory filings on the phase two, phase three in their own countries and on their own continent. And then, of course, in India, Epigen, if they move forward with this new grant that they got from the Indian government, would obviously handle all the regulatory filings and approvals for this country of India, which you know is over a billion people alone. I think there's 1.3 billion people in Africa and 1. some billion people in India. So probably between the two of those continents, I'm not quite sure, but my guess is that somewhere around 20 to 30% of the world population.
speaker
John Vandermosen
Okay, great. And Joe, welcome aboard. Good to hear your voice. Thank you. Thank you for the questions.
speaker
Operator
Thank you. Next question today is coming from Paul Rosenbaum. from SWR Corporation, your line is now live.
speaker
Paul Rosenbaum
Thank you. For the size of your company, and I applaud you for this, you've taken a very aggressive stand on many issues. And so my question to you is merely an observation, no criticism intended. It just seems to me from everything I've read and everything I've heard, You're probably 18 months away at best from commercialization. So please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm just asking that question. I'm just curious.
speaker
Mark Imelbarb
Yeah, so mostly commercialization is not coming from Dyadic. It's coming from potentially Janssen, Fibro, or other collaborators. It's their products that we're getting paid fully funded R&D with a margin on top of that to develop those products and the candidates for them. And then they'll be picking up the cost and expense of moving those forward. The goal here and the key here is to do what we did in the industrial biotech sector, where we raised over $37 million in upfront access fees before milestones and commercialization. So, in that particular case, you had Amigoa Bioenergy, where we got $15.5 million. and income from just biofuels in the industrial space there, $6 million up front from BSF, $2 million in R&D research development funding, and a million-dollar milestone. So I think it was somewhere between $8 million and $9 million that came in from that. And then we had Codexys and Shell put in $10 million for the biofuel for non-exclusive rights to limited markets. So we expect this year to be able to start bringing in some of those upfront access fees where we bring in the money and the cash to reduce or eliminate the burn. In the case of the industrial side, some of those years we had no burn at all when we got a big payment in. So that's the way we're moving forward to try to monetize the businesses, have them prove out the technology in certain cases, other than the DYA-100. We also have the Novilumab, which you know, which is a bio-better of Adivo, which we've been developing, and a cannabinoid technology, another primary metabolite technology that we're looking to out-license to bring in revenue as well. But I appreciate you asking that question.
speaker
Paul Rosenbaum
No, and I do, and as a shareholder, I'm particularly interested when I talk about commercialization as a shareholder as to the bottom line of the company and when do you expect to find those revenues in the future. Again, it was an observation, no criticism intended.
speaker
Mark Imelbarb
No, no, I don't take it as criticism, as I mentioned. We've already gone down this path on the industrial side. In that case, we also made enzymes and filled them in 35 countries around the world. As we mentioned, we are now getting approached and starting to work towards our non-compete with DuPont ended on 12-31-2020. So we're working now towards leveraging this technology back into the industrial world as well because people are reaching out to us. And I say stay tuned for some of those potential opportunities to start moving towards commercialization and announcements.
speaker
Operator
Thank you. Our next question today is a follow-up from John Vandermosen from Zax. Your line is now live.
speaker
John Vandermosen
Hello there again. I had a question on the NIMBL grant. Does that $690,000 there fully cover all the related work that you're going to do for the project, or does DIATIC have to contribute some to that as well?
speaker
Mark Imelbarb
No, it's fully funded with a little margin for us.
speaker
John Vandermosen
Oh, great. And then has that work started yet, or what is the timeline on that?
speaker
Mark Imelbarb
Yeah, I think I mentioned in my, you know, today on today's call that it's already moving forward. It's actually very, very fast. We've already developed two of the, you know, both of the different antibodies. So the goal there was to see how fast we can create these antibodies and then see how far we can push the yield and productivity. So it's already moving. It's already into its probably halfway through it is my guess right now. Somewhere in the neighborhood.
speaker
John Vandermosen
Oh, great. And then those revenues, I guess this one is for paying. Are those going to be recognized as revenues over, I guess, the 2022 year? Or how should we think about that? Are those counter R&D or something like that? How should we look at that?
speaker
Ping Rawson
It will be part of the revenue because it's a grant and we follow 606 in terms of revenue recognition. most of them will be in 2022. It could be, depends on how the project is going. It's a 10-month project, so certain things may fall into next year.
speaker
John Vandermosen
Okay, great. Thank you.
speaker
Ping Rawson
Thank you.
speaker
Operator
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Robert Smith from the Center for Performance Investing, your line is now live.
speaker
Robert Smith
Thanks. Thanks for taking my question. With the COVID-19 pandemic, virus continuing to evolve, what is your approach in the development of the vaccine? I mean, how do you look at this?
speaker
Mark Imelbarb
Yeah, so it's a good question, Robert, and it's one that is constantly evolving, right? But if you remember, our primary goal of doing DY100 is to demonstrate safety and efficacy and potency of proteins produced from the platform to open up the doors to big pharma, biotech, government agencies, and speed adoption and use of the platform. That's our primary purpose. However, In addition to that, to your point, we think we might have an ideal booster vaccine because your body is already recognized from the different variants. And as I mentioned in this call, we've made not only the Wuhan, we've made Alpha, we've made Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Omicron. And we can very quickly do that, as I mentioned. Within 60 days of getting the gene synthesized, we can have a stable cell line that becomes your master cell bank for production and protein that can be used for animal studies, preclinical studies. And to be honest, our conversations with the Paul Ehrich Institute in Germany is we can pop out one gene, put them one in. If we don't have to change the adjuvant, we don't need a new tox study. And I think, as I mentioned earlier in this call, we have a publication coming out, which if you're a toxicologist, I think you'll find that not only do we have excellent safety of the protein, but we have longer persistence than the other vaccines that they've looked at. So our goal here is not only for our own vaccines, but we have people approaching us and talking to us about running other studies on their vaccines using C1. So we sort of opened the door off the pandemic to the speed at which we can do things, at the yield at which we can produce things, at the low cost, the easy tech transfer. So we're going to take a multivalent approach, I think, on our own, is our current thinking, where we would take maybe Wuhan, Delta, and Omicron as a blend. And I would say stay tuned because we probably have or will soon have animal data showing those results.
speaker
Robert Smith
Thank you. And my follow-up concerns the Janssen agreement. So can you give me some color on what the succeeding steps in the Janssen program would look like and the particular timelines that they might have shared with you in their own progress?
speaker
Mark Imelbarb
Well, first of all, the Janssen Agreement has opened up the doors and opened up the eyes of a lot of other pharmaceutical companies to recognize that this technology is may or may not be here when they want to use it. And so, between the first in human data, safety, efficacy, and protection, with Janssen and the other deals we have going, I think that, you know, that's an eye-opener for, I think, the industry in general, kind of like what happened in the industrial side. Again, BASF, Shell, Avango, and then DuPont took the exclusive license to the industrial biotech business. But the Janssen deal itself is currently for a limited number of proteins. So the upfront cash payment and their potential seven-figure payment, they can go from an X number of molecules to Y with that first seven-figure payment. We're now working on two different proteins, one being an antibody. The other one we're not sharing because that wasn't in the one we put in our 8K filing. So that's moving along. That's already started. Keep in mind, we've already done business in the past with Janssen. This is them coming back now and focusing on the success they saw before on a couple different molecules to then be able to bring this technology in-house. The goal here is to get it, demonstrate success with what we're doing, them to bring it in-house, them to do the purification, do the trials on their own. to use it to discover and develop magnitude times, numbers of things that they already have today. And all those things come along with either low-figure milestones, seven-figure milestones, mid-figure, or nine-figures per product potentially on the back end. And the timing is unknown at this point of when and if we'll be receiving some of those milestone payments, commercial payments, Right now, we're receiving the funded research and development, which is fully funded with a margin. And also, we already received the first $500,000.
speaker
Operator
Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over for any further or closing comments.
speaker
Mark Imelbarb
I want to thank everyone for joining us on tonight's call. We hope you've come away with a greater sense of DIAT-X's many achievements in 2021, in addition to the renewed focus on broadening the commercial potential of the company's C1 cell protein production platform and other technologies for animal and human health, including vaccines, food, and other industry protein manufacturing challenges, which C1 and other technologies can help address. Even though the company remains under CDA and is just not possible to disclose all the potential prospects, we are currently gaining traction with. We also hope that you leave with a sense of the magnitude and breadth and scope of industries that we are working with. With each partnership and licensing agreement, we believe that we are just one step closer from making a breakthrough that will someday hope to transform and revolutionize the biomanufacturing industries very broadly that we have targeted. With a conservative development approach and sensible licensing strategy, we are also well-positioned to brace for and withstand the current pressures early-stage companies in the healthcare space are facing today. Lastly, our strong IP protection and ownership will allow our shareholders to participate in the intrinsic value creation that Dyadic has proposed. Thank you once again, and we look forward to keeping you updated on our progress along the way. And we'll see you on the next call.
speaker
Operator
Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.
Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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