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Operator
Good evening and welcome to DIDEX International First Quarter Fiscal 2022 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, May 12, 2022. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Ping Rawson, DIDEX Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
Ping Rawson
Thank you. Good evening and welcome everyone to Dyadic International's first quarter 2022 conference call. I hope you have had the chance to review Dyadic's press release announcing financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2022 and the recent company highlights. You may access our release and the Form 10-Q under the Investors section of the company's website at dyadic.com. On today's call, our president and CEO, Mark Imhoffar, will give a review of our first quarter's business and corporate highlights, including a brief summary of our research and business development efforts. Our chief business officer, Joe Hazleton, will join Mark for the business updates. 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 will join for the Q&A session. At this time, I would 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. Dyadic 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 DIATIC's reports filed with the SEC. It is now my pleasure to pass the call to our CEO, Mark Imelfarb. Mark?
Mark Imhoffar
Thank you, Ping. Hello, everyone, and thank you once again for joining DIATIC for our first update call of the new fiscal year. 2022 will be important for the development of Dyadic's business and our technologies. The foundation of Dyadic is our science, and advancement of that science has yielded a broad spectrum of business segments we can apply our technologies and experience to create revenue, profits, and long-term shareholder value. That value will be realized through the ability of Dyadic to help our customers develop more robust and efficient biomanufacturing processes. Dyadic remains laser-focused on our core life science business, where we are starting with infectious diseases. We continue to globally leverage the adoption of our C1 protein production platform to help speed the development and lower the cost of vaccines and antibodies. In our efforts to enhance our capability To drive shareholder value, we are also pursuing potential applications for our technologies in adjacent markets where we have a competitive differentiation. This effort is demonstrated by yesterday's announcement of our new collaboration agreement with a global food ingredients company for the manufacture of animal-free protein products. Over the past five years, we have successfully engineered our CM1 cells to where they are now being used to develop potential vaccines and treatments for a growing number of diseases to advance our life sciences applications. The adoption of C1 in infectious disease is growing, and DIATIC has multiple global research projects which continue to generate positive preclinical enamel data on several C1-produced antigens and antibodies. for hosts of infectious diseases, including influenza, rabies, SARS-CoV-2, Zika, and others. The primary objective of these projects is to validate the application of C1 as a differentiated biomanufacturing platform for developing and producing vaccines antibodies, and other therapeutics more rapidly at higher yields and lower costs for the prevention and treatment of infectious and other diseases such as oncology, arthritis, and diabetes. Earlier this week, we announced successful toxicology data published in Toxicologic Pathology. which demonstrates excellent safety profile and lasting immunogenic response from Diatix D1, DYA100 recombinant protein receptor binding domain RBD COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Since the beginning of this year, three manuscripts have been published in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals, which included scientists and authors from the EU, Israel, and the United States. These publications support that the scientific community is also recognizing the important role our C1 protein production platform may play in preventing and treating animal and human diseases. In furthering the validation efforts for our C1 platform, we intend to file our first in human clinical trial application, CTA, with the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority, SAFRA, to support the clinical safety of C1-produced proteins, including our DY-100 COVID-19 vaccine candidate. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Business Officer, Joe Hazelton, to provide a brief update on the progress of our Phase 1 program.
Dyadic
Thank you, Mark. I'm pleased with the progress that has been achieved this quarter in the Phase 1 clinical program for our DY-AI-100 COVID-19 vaccine candidate. CGMP production and the fill and finish activities of DYAI-100 have been completed. This allows us to prepare the final documentation for the regulatory submission of the CTA, which we're targeting for late June. Pending a favorable regulatory review, we anticipate first dosing of patients in the fall of this year. We are hopeful for a successful outcome to the phase one trial for DYAI-100 in terms of bringing another weapon closer to approval in the battle against COVID-19, while also demonstrating first in human safety for a C1 CGMP manufactured product. As with any new technology for human use, safety is the first hurdle to commercialization. The demonstration of safety in humans for a C1 produced therapeutic will accelerate Dyadic's business development efforts in vaccines, obviously, but also other therapeutic proteins as the results are the platform validation that increases value for our partners and reduces their developmental risk analysis. I now turn the discussion back to you, Mark.
Mark Imhoffar
Thanks, Joe. To expand on Joe's point regarding business development in our vaccine segment, last month we announced Epigen Biotech, DADEC's non-exclusive licensee, received funding from the Indian government to further the development, manufacturing, conduct phase one and two clinical trials of their COVID-19 vaccine candidate produced from C1 cells. In South Africa, our collaboration with the Rubic Consortium is intended to develop end-to-end solutions for vaccine discovery, development, and manufacture for the African market. Tech transfer of the C1 protein production platform is advancing on target and has been substantially completed, and Rubik has already begun engineering and growing C1 cells. DIATIC was the recipient of one of 32 project grants awarded by NIMBL, the National Institute for Manufacturing of Biologics, funded through the White House's American Rescue Plan. Under the NIMBL grant, DIATIC will receive, and has already started to receive, up to $690,000 in funding to engineer a C1 protein production platform to produce two different antibodies, one being a COVID-19 antibody. We have successfully completed the expression phase or the first phase of the project and are currently moving into the second phase to further increase productivity. Dyadic and our C1 protein platform is gaining exposure, credibility, and traction globally within the animal and human biopharmaceutical industry. In addition to our anticipated phase one human clinical trial, with our DYAI-100 COVID-19 vaccine candidate, our further efforts are starting to pay off resulting in several global preclinical and animal trials for vaccines and therapeutic proteins. Of note is the C1 produced COVID-19 monoclonal antibody which has demonstrated broad neutralization protection against Omicron, BA1 and BA2, and other variants of concern, based on recent hamster trial conducted by one of our European collaborators. Since 2016, we have been focusing our research and development efforts to re-engineer our industrially proven C1 protein production platform for use in biopharmaceutical manufacturing, and we are now able to generate C1 cell lines that can rapidly produce stable proteins with desirable properties that can be manufactured efficiently and affordably with the potential to be used to prevent and treat animal and human diseases. From an industrial scale manufacturing perspective, our filamentous fungal C1 cells continue to show the potential for raising the bar on production output, yield, and cost in much less time than mammalian cell lines. We continue to demonstrate that our C1 protein production platform can serve as an accelerator to drug and vaccine development and commercialization by shortening the timeline from preclinical to phase one trials, increasing productivity and improving cost efficiencies. The expected first in human safety data for a C1 produced product is expected to provide further validation of the C1 platform which will enable Dyadic to usher in a new era of lower manufacturing cost and technological achievement into the drug and vaccine manufacturing industry, as well as bolster our existing human and animal health biopharmaceutical partnerships, which I will next highlight. Our major near-term accomplishment include proceeding with the first steps in our collaboration with Janssen Biotech, J&J, and leveraging their financial and other resources to develop C1 cell lines to produce targeted therapeutic protein candidates. While still in the early stages, we can say that the progress in our relationship with J&J is ongoing and on time, and we look forward to advancing our C1 platform recording to meet Janssen's needs. Similar to Janssen in human health, Fivro is a significant industry player in the animal health space. In our ongoing animal health collaboration with FIBRO, we are working to produce specified targeted antigens for development and commercialization of a poultry vaccine. Each of these deals begin to highlight the attention and traction that we are garnering for further advancing the validation and value of the C1 protein expression platform. With Joe Hazleton on board as our chief business officer, we are now able to expand and accelerate new business development opportunities to speed the adoption and use of our technologies across life sciences and other emerging areas, where we can offer potential differentiating advantages over other technology platforms to our partners. I'll again ask Joe to say a few words regarding our business development strategy.
Dyadic
Thank you, Mark. Having spent my entire career in pharmaceutical development and commercialization, I'm honestly amazed at the relatively brief period of time over which Dyadic has built its biopharmaceutical value proposition of accelerated and adaptable development, higher yields, and cost-efficient biomanufacturing. We have the potential to help our human and animal health partners develop vaccines and therapeutics faster, rapidly adapt to market events, and improve the efficiency of their portfolio capabilities in terms of yield and cost. In addition to the further validation of the C1 platform, we're currently undertaking an internal management project to further refine our corporate strategy, business development targets, licensing, and other monetization opportunities within our core verticals. This will enable us to better focus our efforts and resources on both internal and external business development and licensing opportunities with the highest potential to drive value for Dyadic, our partners, and our shareholders. An example of this revised strategy is our intent to run process for our BioBetter candidate, Novilumab, Bristol-Myers $8 billion oncology drug, Updevo. Novilumab was Dyadic's strategic monoclonal antibody product target as the model protein for manufacturing proteins with human glycosylation from C1 cells. Through our developmental efforts for Novilumab, we've established the foundation of the potential for developing and manufacturing monoclonal and other antibodies with mammalian glycosylation. With Novilumab, we've demonstrated and optimized our ability to create stable, human-like, and functional biobetters and new biotherapeutics with improved yields and cost efficiencies from our C1 protein production platform. The preliminary data we've obtained so far supports further clinical development of Novilumab, which we anticipate by running a process that may lead into a phase one human trial together with a partner. As we complete our internal management review, you will hear more about our refocused corporate strategy and associated reorganization plans in the second half of this year. Mark, I turn the floor back to you.
Mark Imhoffar
As Joe alluded to, in these five short years of developing C1 for the life sciences, we can say that through leveraging learnings of the prior use cases for C1, in commercial scale industrial manufacturing, C1 is much further along in its lifecycle development for life sciences than where industrial chill cell cell lines development was within the same timeframe. Based on the continued advances in our science and the corresponding data, we believe that there is significantly more room to optimize the C1 platform. As seen in 2021, our results to date have really stood out as we've been highly effective in gaining industry adoption to further develop the platform for human and animal health with organizations not just in the U.S., but worldwide. We've also focused our efforts in messaging around our core verticals in response to outside inquiries. To further refine and focus our resources and efforts, Joe shared the internal reorganization planning underway, which we expect will, in a streamlined strategic approach, improve value through enhanced efforts in business development, licensing, and corporate organization. At the same time, as a result of the increase in adoption of C-1, we are evaluating new opportunities aligned with our verticals in targeted markets of high potential return. We announced early in the week the initiation of a partnership to develop C-1 for use in industrial food manufacturing with one of the largest dairy product manufacturers in the world. This is with the aim to exploit C1 for the manufacturing of animal-free products. These opportunities underscore the diverse nature of our platform technologies and the potential benefits and commercial opportunities that we look to exploit through 2022 fiscal year and beyond. I want to summarize the opportunity before Dyadic and our shareholders. What we have now is an elegant, refined solution which is simple to deploy and a protein expression system that is highly scalable and can be used for manufacturing across many use cases in the drug and vaccine space for which we have only just started to scratch the surface to date. We believe that our C1 protein platform truly possesses the potential to transform the scalability and speed for which vaccines and drugs can be produced in human and animal health in larger quantities more affordably. These global partnering programs and the others not mentioned on today's call exemplify the partnering successes that we've achieved as a small industry disruptor. The R&D spend these last few years has paid off, and we're now exploring commercial avenues for the use of C1. The demand and interest that we are beginning to see is a culmination of our investment in science. I also want to take the opportunity to highlight the core vision that has driven us to undertake the challenge of transforming biomanufacturing. I truly believe that DIA can help address the functional breakdown and failure in the global vaccine and biologic supply and distribution chain that is evident in healthcare inequity seen across the globe and even here in the U.S. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the inequity and vulnerability of developed and emerging nations alike. This is still a significant global need for a viable solution to address COVID-19 as it evolves to an endemic phase, as well as future potential pandemics. Hopefully, what you take from this call is that we are not only committed and focused on improving the value for the life science industry, which will in turn improve value not just for shareholders, but populations around the globe, but you're also taking definitive action by bolstering our executive team, the reorganization of our infrastructure and strategy in order to prepare Dyadic for commercialization opportunities to enable us to fulfill our mission as a global biotech company focused on further improving and leveraging our patent and proprietary platform technologies in order to improve the way we feed, fuel, and heal the world. Now, I would like to transition to discuss our finances. We entered the year in a strong cash position to support our working capital and operational needs for the next couple of years. This quarter, we generated new revenue streams, including Janssen and Fibra license agreements, and we expect additional license opportunities to generate additional cash through our ongoing business development efforts. The majority of our cash expenditure to support our Phase 1 DYA100 COVID-19 vaccine booster trial are nearly all behind us, making our 2022 cash burns substantially front-end loaded. Therefore, we expect less spending on the internal R&D for the second half of the year. We have previously forecast a cash burn of $10 to $11 million for this year and now expect it to be at the lower end of this range. It's important to note we will not be funding the COVID-19 booster trial beyond phase one. We anticipate that rubric and or epigen will continue to carry on phase two and three clinical trials. Additionally, upon successful human data from our DYA100 trial in South Africa, we attempt to license DYA100 to larger third parties for further development. In addition to the refocused corporate strategy Joe mentioned, Earlier, we are taking several additional steps to reduce costs and reserve cash for the market downturn and potential recession in front of us. I would like to remind you that during every step of transforming the company from industrial biotech to pharmaceuticals, we have focused on flexibility, keeping our fixed costs low, and conserving cash. By outsourcing our research and development to world-class laboratories, rather than building our own facilities, we have kept our employee base very low while maintaining the ability to scale development activities up or down as opportunities or business needs require over time. With that, I would like to turn the call over to our CFO to run through our financials.
Ping Rawson
Thank you, Mark. In addition to the financial results I will be discussing now, you can find additional information in our Form 10-Q, which we filed earlier today. Our cash, cash equivalents, and the carrying value of investment-grade securities as of March 31, 2022, including accrued interest, were approximately $17.5 million U.S. dollars compared to $20.4 million on December 31, 2021. R&D revenue for the quarter increased to approximately $534,000 compared to $461,000 for the same period a year ago. The license revenue recorded in the first quarter of 2022 of $115,000 was in connection with the Philborough ABIC and Jensen agreements. Cost of the R&D revenue for the quarter increased to approximately $405,000 compared to $391,000 for the same period a year ago. The increase in revenue and the cost of R&D revenue for the quarter was due to higher amounts for individual projects compared to the same period a year ago. R&D expenses for the quarter decreased to approximately $1,343,000 compared to $1,808,000 for the same period a year ago. The decrease primarily reflected the winding down of activities of CRO and pharmaceutical quality and regulatory consultants to manage and support the preclinical and clinical development, as well as a decrease in CDMP manufacturing costs as the company moves toward its anticipated Phase I clinical trial of our EYA 100 COVID-19 vaccine candidates in the amount of approximately $165,000 and our other internal research project of $300,000. GMA expenses for the quarter increased by 6.6% to approximately $1,656,000 compared to $1,554,000 for the same period a year ago. The increase principally reflected increases in insurance expenses and the business development and investor relations expenses. Other income for the quarter was $250,000 compared to zero for the same period a year ago. The other income recognized in the first quarter of 2022 was related to a settlement payment we received from the termination of a proposed license and collaboration. Net loss for the three months ended March 31st, 2022, was approximately $2,492,000, or $0.09 per share, compared to $3,295,000, or $0.12 per share, for the same period a year ago. With that, I will now ask the operators to begin our Q&A session. Dr. Rona Shalit and Joe Hazleton will join Mark and I to answer the 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.
Operator
Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach your equipment. Again, press star one to ask a question. We'll take our first question from the line of John Vandermosen with Zax. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
John Vandermosen
Thank you very much. And good evening, Mark and Ping. How are you guys doing?
Mark
Good. How are you, John?
John Vandermosen
I'm doing well.
Mark Imhoffar
Good, John. We also have Joe here with us, too, and Ronan.
John Vandermosen
Oh, great. Yes, that's right. Joe, I'm sorry. I forgot you. No worries. So on Epigen, you know, have they received the grant funds yet for that trial from the Indian government, and are they enrolling patients? I wasn't quite sure, you know, kind of where they are in that. Can you update us?
Mark Imhoffar
Yeah, they've received the first tranche of the money, and they're starting to move things forward.
John Vandermosen
Okay. Okay. And will you let us know when they enroll first patients? But, I mean, that's a pretty big, you know, achievement, I think, you know, having... Yeah.
Mark Imhoffar
Yeah, once they get to that point, you know, we'll be happy to do that.
John Vandermosen
Okay. And then, you know, when you look at your portfolio, I think I've got about 30 different active collaborations in there. And you, I guess, you know, multiply, I guess, the probability of their success And, you know, the size that they could be, what are the top three, you know, in your mind when you think of it that way that, you know, investors should be thinking about?
Mark Imhoffar
Well, I think number one, of course, we're in the life science industry for vaccines and antibodies, other therapeutic proteins. So, you know, Janssen, J&J is obviously a key player, one of the top five companies in the world in that space. So we're just starting the, let's say, the second go-around with Janssen, but the first go-around with this new project and a collaboration and license agreement. So, so far, so good. It's on time. So that would be one certainly that's very important for us because it comes along with it potential milestones of significant numbers, seven figures. And ultimately, in the end, you're looking at potentially nine-figure payments up to nine-figure payments per product. So it can bring us a lot of cash. a lot of recognition, a lot of science, because not just the money they're putting in, which is this funding project is up to 1.6 million euros. They're putting in resources on their own internally, you know, refining the product, technologies, purification, potentially trials, and then obviously in the clinical human trials. So that's a major opportunity for us. And by the way, that's opened up the doors and opened up the eyes of a variety of other big players who now recognize that, This technology may be here today, but it might not be here tomorrow. Then on the animal health, you've got Fivro. Fivro is one of the top 10 animal health companies. So they've already run two chicken trials. successfully with the product we developed with them for poultry, and they're working on other products in the pipeline as well. And of course, if you talk about the most recent deal, you know, you're talking about a company that's involved in animal ingredient products that's one of the largest in their space. So we think that the technology of those three and many others that are going on that we haven't shared because of their names and confidentiality, I think are going to lead us along the golden path to not only providing the world with a better solution to speed the development of all the cause of drugs, but to create value for our shareholders and increase our shareholder value and bring cash up front and milestones and payments, and also on new discussions we're having with other companies.
Mark
Thank you.
Operator
We'll take our next question from the line of Robert Smith with the Center for Performing Investing. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Robert Smith
Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. So the Janssen collaboration, the recent setback to them in the marketplace on limitations of their vaccine, does that do anything to the movement of your work with them as far as timeline?
Mark Imhoffar
No, we're not doing anything with them in the vaccine space anyways. It's about antibodies and therapeutic proteins. But I will tell you, I was just at a vaccine research conference in Washington, D.C. a couple weeks ago, and if anything, their setback is our fortune because we have a platform technology that can help them, not saying that they'll expand what we're doing, but that possibly that is greater now than it was before for two reasons. Yeah, that was my point.
Robert Smith
That was my point that I was trying to look at. That's a possibility.
Mark Imhoffar
Yeah, Robert, it's not just a setback that they might have had. It's also the understanding of the power of our platform and the data of the platform and the DY100 vaccine candidate, the fact that we can rapidly produce, which we've showed not in Wuhan, but Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Omicron. We have, I think we've noticed in today's press release, we've done a trivalent and a multivalent animal study with one of our collaborators already. So we're on the path to really make a difference. So we're just hoping that one of the big pharma companies steps up to the plate after our phase one clinical trial and we finally demonstrate in human beings what we all know is likely that the product produced from C1, the proteins, are going to be safe and effective.
Robert Smith
Yeah. Mark, I'm thinking along the lines also of my follow-up that the... the variants as they come with such speed and that would be a positive for you in the way I'm thinking because you also have a more rapid possibility of development. So, is that accurate as well?
Mark Imhoffar
Yeah. So, I think that actually, You know, if you take politics out of the equation, we're in the driver's seat to do a lot of wonderful things to help combat the pandemic today and future vaccines and drugs tomorrow and possibly even future pandemics. But yes, we can reprogram the cell lines very quickly. But more importantly than that, not only do we reprogram them quickly, we do it in a way that's regulatory friendly. And then we can pump out a lot of product very quickly at flexible commercial scales. So to give you an example, and I think if you look at my World Vaccine Conference presentation, I don't know the slide number, but, you know, at two grams per liter of this, for example, the Wuhan, which is where we're at in terms of our R&D, we can produce 2 billion doses of that in a 60,000 liter fermenter in five days. So, you know, that covers all of North America very quickly. If you're in Australia and New Zealand and you've got 30 million people or Canada, you can do it in a 600-liter fermenter in a few weeks or a month. So depending on where you are in the country, we can send you a FedEx few-day delivery, and we've done this for our, you know, with Syngene, with Rubik, with Epigen. We just FedEx you a frozen vial, and you can then start running it in your fermenters. So if you have a CGMP microbial standard fermenter, we fit in that environment. So that's what makes Epigen very interesting. They've got a very modern plant that I think they finished in 2019. Unlike a lot of plants in India, this plant is very modern, was just built. So they can pump out a lot of product very quickly. But just FedEx and the cell line that we stabilize and produce in VTT in Finland. And in a couple of days, you've got it and you're off to the races.
Mark
Thank you.
Operator
We'll take our next question from the line of Tony Bowers with Intro Act. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Tony Bowers
Hey, Mark. Congratulations on the progress, and Joe, welcome to the team. I'm thinking that disrupting markets is always a tough thing to do, and I'm imagining that you're going to find a greater open-mindedness perhaps overseas as you broaden your collaborations into India, South Africa, and Are you finding that that is indeed the case, that you can, in those places, short-circuit regulations and avoid the not-invented-here mentality of a U.S. industry that has kind of enjoyed the way they've done things for many years?
Mark Imhoffar
Yeah, and by the way, I think those are, Tony, very good comments. The answer is yes. We're finding, obviously, an abundance of people overseas that are interested. And we have a lot of people we could provide the technology to. For example, in India, there's a lot more people than just Epigen and Syngene. I don't know if you know, Syngene is owned by Biocon, the largest biopharmaceutical company in India. And Syngene themselves is a multibillion-dollar company. So these guys are very large, very big on their own right. But, yeah, overseas we're doing that. But I'll tell you, big pharma is waking up to some degree. I think not only for Janssen, I think, you know, they recognize that there's a new sheriff coming in town and it's going to take some time, but it may not be here long enough. If you think about our industrial biotech space, we had Abengoa Bioenergy, non-exclusive license, Shell Oil, non-exclusive license, BASF, non-exclusive license, combined over $30 million in upfront fees, and then potential milestones and royalties down the road. And then DuPont recognized we were going to enable the world with a platform technology that they didn't want to happen, and they came up with $75 million in cash. So the pharmaceutical industry, hopefully, is a little wiser and a little quicker to the game, but As you know, they're more conservative. But, yes, we're finding more interest overseas, but we are finding interest domestically, not just from big pharma, but from governmental agencies, from the NIH, NIAID, from BARDA. So there's a possibility to expand this, even in America, in ways that big pharma may not like but may have to deal with.
Tony Bowers
Yeah, terrific. Look forward to hearing more about your strategic plans. kind of reprioritization with Joe. Great, thanks. Good luck.
Operator
We'll take our next question from the line of Louis Sutterston, private investor. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Louis Sutterston
Hi, Mark. Congratulations on all the good work you're doing. My question is obviously about cash. We've talked about that before. You indicate it'll be at the low end of the range, which I guess would be around $10 million. But of course, if that happens at the end of the year, you'll only have about $10 million left, a little over $10 million left. So I guess the question is, your front-loading cost at this point in time, by the end of the year, do you expect that you will have probably closed some of these things? I know you're going to get two $5 million payments from Janssen if they accept your protein. Do you think that by the end of the year, you'll be positive cash flow on an ongoing basis?
Mark Imhoffar
That's the goal and the objective. So we're in discussions with a variety of people and have other discussions on how to get upfront cash to do exactly to your point so that at the end of the year, we're not having to slow things down. But as I mentioned, we have this flexible burn rate because we don't have our own infrastructure of research and development people. We used to have 40 what I call gene jockeys in our own lab in Holland, which we sold off with DuPont. We work with VTT in a flexible way where we can turn on and off those researchers. And all the projects that we have, other than our own internal, are all fully funded. And part of the fully funding actually has some revenue to us. So we can reduce the things we are doing if we need to, but our goal and expectations are we won't have to.
Louis Sutterston
Okay. Let me follow up. I guess I get one follow-up, I guess. The question is about Janssen itself. You say we're on track with the work we're doing on Janssen. Do you think that we'll be during the next, what, eight months, we'll be in a situation where they will, you know, if they like what they say, they'll have accepted the proteins and made the first two $5 million payments?
Mark Imhoffar
Honestly, Lou, I can't really tell you what Janssen is going to do at this point, but that's the goal and objective. Then if Janssen doesn't do it, we're working on other people that hopefully will. They may force Janssen to decide that they want to do it or that may go away.
Louis Sutterston
Okay. Thank you very much for commenting on this.
Mark Imhoffar
No, no, thank you.
Mark
Once again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1.
Operator
If there are no further questions, I'll now turn the call back over to Dydex CEO, Mr. Ema Farb, for closing remarks.
Mark Imhoffar
We have exciting prospects for 2022 and beyond as we continue advancing our first in human clinical trial application, CTA to South African Health Products Regulatory Authority, or SAFRA, to support clinical safety of C1-produced proteins. The areas in which we can apply our platform technologies has accelerated even in the past 12 months. We've brought in Joe Hazleton as Chief Business Officer, who has experience and leadership capability to manage and advance the inventory of existing potential deals and collaborations to develop and execute internal pipeline opportunities and to further our expansion of life science partnerships. As such, our optimism and dyadic remains high as we're now seeing the fruits of our labor pay off. We continue to draw interest from large industry players within biopharmaceuticals and otherwise, as well as from a growing number of other markets. Thank you once again for joining us in today's Q1 2022 conference call, and we look forward to keeping you updated as we advance our commercial and scientific initiatives across the companies and our collaborative programs. We also look forward to seeing you on the next call, and I hope you keep an eye out for our periodic updates.
Operator
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your line at this time.
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