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.
spk01: Greetings and welcome to Elaxian Biotech first quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Kovic Davis of Lifesize Advisors. Please go ahead, sir.
spk08: Thanks, Peter. Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining us. I'd like to remind everyone that the following discussion contains certain statements that are considered forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Because forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, they are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results may differ materially. from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, including those risk factors discussed in the company's prospectus filed on November 5th, 2021, and the company's current and future reports filed with or submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference call over to Lars Wigner, the company's president and CEO. Please go ahead, Lars.
spk04: Thank you, Corey, and good morning to everyone. So thank you for joining us for this Evaction Biotech Q1 earnings call. I'm Lars Wigner, Chief Executive Officer of Evaction. With me today is Evaction's Chief Operating Officer Jesper Nygaard Nissen, who is currently Interim Chief Financial Officer. We'll give you a short presentation on our business and results and then open the call for your questions. Let me begin by saying EVACTION continues exciting clinical momentum in the first quarter of 2022, progressing our lead cancer therapy towards a new Phase IIb clinical trial. The upcoming trial will combine EVX01 with MERS-Ketruda for treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma, a condition for which there is significant unmet medical need. We also completed recruitment for the Phase 1-2A clinical trial for our second cancer therapy, EVXO2. And we are advancing this product candidate into a dedicated Phase 2B clinical trial in patients with resectable melanoma. We believe that these are significant steps forward for Evaction in our pursuit to use our existing pipeline of cancer therapies to improve the treatment landscape in melanoma and possible other cancers as well. We are also actively discussing potential partnerships with pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and we are optimistic about achieving solid progress on this during 2022. In January 2022, we received regulatory clearance to initiate our Phase IIb trial of EVX01 with Merck's Gertrude. We plan to have the first patient first visit for EVX01 in the first half of 2022. Also in January 2022, we completed recruitment for our Phase I-IIa clinical trial for EVX02, advancing into a dedicated Phase IIb clinical adjuvant trial in patients with resectable melanoma. We plan to file for regulatory clearance in patients with resectable melanoma by the first half of 2022 and have first patient first visit in by the second half of 2022. The EVX 01, 02, and 03 products all come from our pioneer AI platform, which generate patient-specific cancer immune therapies. We believe that our AI models allow us to identify unique drug targets, which may translate into a higher likelihood of clinical success. We are also progressing on our lead candidate on the EDEN platform, which generate vaccines against bacteria diseases. The program EVX B1 is a vaccine for the prevention of staph aureus in skin and soft tissue infections. We also plan to select our second bacteria product candidate in the second half of 2022. Furthermore, we plan to select the first vial candidate from our Raven platform in the second half of 2022. Outside of the clinic, we announced publications on personalized therapy with EVX01 in patients with metastatic melanoma in the open-access peer-reviewed medical science journal Oncoimmunology. Evaction also hosted a key opinion leader webinar, which acclaimed experts on metastatic melanoma and personalized cancer immunotherapies. This concludes our business and operation update for Q1 2022. I will now turn the call over to Jesper for our first quarter 2022 financial review.
spk03: Thank you Lars. In the first quarter of 2022, we completed a drawdown and received our first tranche of €7 million. or 7.8 million USD gross proceeds from our European Investment Bank loan. As of March 31, 2022, cash and cash equivalents were 31.4 million USD as compared to 32.2 million USD as of December 31, 2021. We expect our existing cash and cash equivalents combined with funds from the draws on amounts available under our EIB loan will be sufficient to fund our operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements through at least the next 12 months. Research and development expenses were 4.8 million USD for the quarter ended March 31, 2022, as compared to 3.9 million USD for the quarter ended March 31, 2021. The increase was primarily due to an increase in employee-related costs as a result of a higher headcount. General and administrative expenses were 1.6 million USD for the quarter ended March 31, 2022 as compared to 1.3 million USD for the quarter ended March 31, 2021. The increase was primarily due to an increase in external cost. Net loss was 5.8 million USD for the quarter ended March 31, 2022 or a 0.25 USD loss per basic and diluted shares as compared to 4.1 million USD or 0.23 USD loss per basic and diluted shares for the quarter ended March 31, 2021. And back to you Lars.
spk04: Thank you Jesper. That concludes our presentation today. Now it's time to open up the call for any questions, and I hand it over to the operator to facilitate this.
spk01: Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the start keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question is from the line of Kevin DeGieter with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Great.
spk07: Appreciate the update today. I guess three questions from us. First, Lars, how should we think about a potential timing for an update on the Phase IIa EVX01, specifically in the context of durability of response for the patients previously dose.
spk05: Thanks. Thank you, Kevin.
spk04: So as you know, we presented the first data readout on our EVX01 Phase I-IIa in July of 21, and we were very happy with the results. We, of course, continue to follow up on these patients, and we will be looking at the durability of the response. We would be expecting within the next half to nine months to actually have that data available. But since, of course, it's durability, it do take time, and, of course, we can't predict that timing as we have had some patients in that study that had very, very doable responses, and, of course, we want to follow them for a significant time period. I hope that answered the question, Kevin.
spk07: Yes. And then our second question really is around the initiation of the UVX-01 Phase IIb study. How should we think about number of sites being opened initially for that study and some of the earlier metrics or targets for pace of enrollment?
spk05: Yeah, good question.
spk04: So we are already very far, as you can probably see from our announcement, with the Australian authorities. We have experience running melanoma trials there, as our EVSO2 trials run there. We're working with the lead sites in Australia. and we expect that we will be starting the recruitment in this first half of 2022. And we'll start out in Australia with multiple sites, and then we'll build on as we achieve regulatory clearance in Europe and the US to open up multiple sites. We're targeting to open up more than 10 to 12 global sites, but we are aiming to work with the larger sites such as we're doing in Australia with the National Institute of Melanoma, basically sites that has a large patient recruitment base. So we expect around 10 to 12 in total of sites across the globe to be able to recruit for our Phase IIb trial. And everything is moving according to plan.
spk07: Great. And then just lastly from us, then we'll join the queue. Can you provide an update on EVX03, particularly in the light of the comments that you're advancing, you know, O2 into 2B study. How should we think about future investment into O3?
spk04: Yeah, both are based on our DNA technology. And to be pretty clear, they are both DNA based on the Pioneer platform. And we're currently getting data on both programs. Our EVXO2 just finalized the And also, we also recently, actually yesterday, announced that all manufacturing processes are actually run according to the plan, which is quite an achievement for a company making personalized medicine and unique products for each patient. We are thinking about if we want to speed up EVX03 in the light of the EVX02 data. And we are receiving data on both these programs on a continuous basis. So as soon as the final design is finalized for the Phase IIb, we will be sharing that with the market. But we're quite happy, actually, with the progress of EVX03. In our preclinical model, it seems to be even more powerful than EVX02.
spk05: Thanks for taking our questions. Anytime.
spk01: Thank you. Our next question is from . Please go ahead.
spk02: Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I have two questions. First one, yesterday you announced the production of EVX02 update. Could you provide more color on what was achieved? What is the production timeline? And maybe you could update us on EVX03 as well.
spk05: Thank you, Ahu. Excellent question.
spk04: Yeah, so EVXO2, as many on this call are probably aware, is our DNA technology. We already successfully set up personalized manufacturing process for our peptide technology in EVXO1. EVXO2 is a different process. We are actually already now capable of manufacturing dedicated and personalized medicine in 10 to 12 weeks. with the DNA in our first trial. We expect that we will continuously improve the speed. This is of course super important in the planning of our EDX02 and 03 future trials because the manufacturing process needs to be controlled and fast to have a high likelihood of success in the clinic. So we're very happy with actually being able to manufacture for all patients in our trial. So it basically creates a foundation and experience to be able to execute well on a phase 2b with both EVXO2 and potential EVXO3.
spk02: Very helpful. My second question is on the personalized immunoID Next platform. I know you plan to implement that. When are we expecting to see data and maybe a bit more color? What it would include would be very helpful.
spk04: So just to clarify, around the AID platform, our prediction platform, right? Did I hear correct?
spk02: ImmunoID, I think that's for the biomarker part. That's what I understand.
spk04: Yeah. So as we also shared previously with the market, based on the microenvironment and expression profiles around the immune systems, Our AI system is actually capable of selecting which patient will actually react to immune therapy, both hours and checkpoint inhibitors. That's what we've seen with the data we have had available from our current clinical trial. That's, of course, not a huge number of patients. So what we're doing now to validate this, because if we can validate this, we definitely have a product that the world has been looking for for a very long time. And that's basically our plan is quite simple. So first of all, we will, of course, be collecting data for our existing trials and future phase 2B. But we're also working with different groups that are already running clinical trial where we get a lot faster access to that data already. And that we expect to materialize during this year. So the minute we have enough data to validate this on a larger external database, It's, of course, something we're looking very much forward to both publish but also share with the world as a lot of diagnostic companies have been looking for technologies like this.
spk02: Sounds great. Thank you very much for taking my question.
spk05: You're welcome.
spk01: Thank you. Our next question is from Thomas Fladen with Lake Street. Please go ahead.
spk06: Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Just two for me. Now that the enrollment is complete in EVXO2, you know, optimistically, when do you think would be the first time we could see a data readout on that?
spk05: So that we expect to be able to share next year.
spk04: As you know, this is in the adjuvant melanoma setting, which really means we're looking for relapses, right? That's people that actually after operation and receiving our therapy together with the standard of care, how many actually relapse. That do take some time in this setting, so we will have to follow the patients for a number of months before we start getting events so we can share interesting clinical data What we will be sharing and already have been sharing and also will share more data around will be the safety, immunological profiling, et cetera, and are people actually reacting to the therapy by creating a strong T cell response, which we've seen in patients so far, but we still, of course, have patients that are going in and getting the therapy. So in 2022, more immunological safety data, clinical efficacy, we expect to be able to share that on this cohort of patients in 2023.
spk06: Great. And then with respect to the regulatory submissions for 01 in the EU and the US, could you just give us some sense of which one will be first and when we might expect those?
spk04: Yes. So we're not guiding on exact dates for it, but I can share with everyone that the process is moving according with what we planned. We are expecting first in EMA and start it up in Europe, and then FDA. And high-level timelines would be one of these for basically each quarter. So two to three months apart, we'll start up the new sites and new jurisdictions for that trial.
spk06: And then finally, the legal proceeding with SSI around CAF 09 is Could you just maybe provide some color around that if there's any material risk to the conduct of the studies?
spk04: No, there's not. So this is a minor part of one of our program, our EVX01 program, which consists of the Pioneer platform, our peptides, and then we use CAFO9 as an adjuvant for this therapy. The only discussion we currently have around SSI We already have a license to CAF09, so it's not really something that will block any of our expertise, regardless of how this actually ends up. What we are not agreeing on is who has the inventorship on using CAF09 broadly in high dose. So it's a small part of that. We're a bit surprised that they went in that direction, but of course we also believe happy that our inventions are so attractive that other people want to grab it. But it will have no impact on our EVX01, not previous collaboration or the Phase IIb, or our possibility to utilize this commercially, regardless of the outcome, as we have a license to CAF09 already with SSI.
spk06: I appreciate you taking the question. Thank you so much.
spk05: No problem. Thank you.
spk04: I think this concludes the Q&A session for today. I'll hand it over to the operator. I want to thank everyone for your time.
spk01: Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
Disclaimer