Longeveron Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Longeveron 2026 Second Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. If you would like to ask a question today, 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 to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to Derek Cole of Investor Relations Advisory Solutions. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Rachelle. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to review Longeveron's 2026 second quarter financial results and business update. After the U.S. markets closed today, we issued a press release with financial results for the second quarter, which can be found under the investor section of the Longeveron website. On the call today are Stephen Willard, Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Joshua Hare, Co-Founder, Chief Science Officer, and Executive Chairman of the Board, Dr. Nataliya Agafonova, Chief Medical Officer, Devin Blass, Chief Technology Officer, and Marie Washburn, Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our press releases and risk factors discussed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which we encourage you to review. Following the company's prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions from covering analysts. With that, let me hand the call over to Stephen Willard, Chief Executive Officer. Steve?

Thank you, Derek, and thank you all for joining us today. This is an incredibly important and exciting time for the company. Longeveron is approaching a series of potentially transformative milestones across our four stem cell therapy development programs that have the potential to redefine the trajectory of our business. As a reminder, we are developing laramester cell in poor indications with high unmet medical needs, hypoplastic left heart syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, Pediatric Dilated Cardiomyopathy, and Age-Related Frailty. We have focused on our development activities to prioritize our most important near-term catalyst, the data readout from ELPAS-2, our Phase IIb clinical trial evaluating laramester cell in HLHS. We expect to report that data readout in mid-September. Our approach to stem cell therapy development has garnered external recognition and validation with encouraging data from our clinical trials having been published in Nature Medicine and Cell Stem Cell. Additionally, as you hopefully saw in our announcement yesterday, published clinical trial results which indicate laramester cell increases six-minute walk distance in patients with age-related frailty were the basis for our selection as a finalist for the XPRIZE HealthSpan competition. XPRIZE HealthSpan is a seven-year, $101 million global competition to revolutionize the way we approach human aging. We are extremely humbled to appreciate and appreciate to have our stem cell therapy laram estrus cell recognized in this manner. We believe that we are the only publicly traded company to receive this honor. XPRIZE team applications were rigorously evaluated for scientific merit and clinical readiness to identify the best, most feasible and safe approaches to increase human healthspan. The milestone two awardees, out of more than 600 applicants across 58 countries, were selected as finalist awardees. The XPRIZE criteria was that finalist awardees must present a single or combination therapeutic approach that demonstrates feasibility and potential to restore or preserve muscular, cognitive and immune function lost to age-related degradation by at least 10 years with the ambitious goal of 20 years and deliver their therapy in one year or less in adults age 50 to 90 who are free of major or life-threatening disease and disability. The top milestone two award-winning teams each receive $1 million to advance their therapeutic approach into the final phase of the competition where teams will conduct coordinated clinical trials through 2029. The grand prize will award up to $81 million to the winning team. We look forward to the next chapter of the competition as we continue to develop our stem cell therapy that we believe has the potential to have a significant impact for patients and their families and extend healthy life. We believe the strength of our historical clinical data external validation of our programs, and hopefully the ELPAS II data provide Longeveron with ideal timing to explore potential development and commercialization partnerships. We believe that leveraging the commercial infrastructure, capital resources, and global reach of established pharmaceutical partners represents the most efficient pathway to unlock the full value of our assets. and it's been a very exciting time for LaramestroCell, the patients we serve, Longeveron and our shareholders. With that, I will turn the call over to Dr. Agafonova, our chief medical officer, to touch on our clinical development programs. Nataliya.