Liminal BioSciences Inc.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Luminol Biosciences Inc. fourth quarter 2022 results. This is the 4th trimester conference call. At this time all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation we will conduct a question and answer session for analysts only. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance please press star 0 for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday March 16, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Unamdar, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm the Associate Director of Investor Relations and Communications at Liminal, and I'd like to welcome you to our fourth quarter and year-ended December 31, 2022 results conference call. This recorded webcast will be accessible from the Investor Resources page on the Liminal Biosciences website and will be available for replay later today. For those of you dialling in, you can find a copy of our presentation slides on the webcast section of the website or via the conference call portal. Moving on to slide two, I'd like to remind everyone that we will be making forward-looking statements today during the webcast, including remarks or current expectations concerning future developments of the pipeline, the properties of our product candidates and the timing of initiation or nature of preclinical and clinical trials and potential therapeutic areas, or potential of our programmes to address significant unmet medical needs our regulatory plans, financing plans, our company, our financial position, including our expected cash runway, our ability to actively seek and close on opportunities to monetise non-core assets or to continue or comply with NASDAQ listing rules and possible changes in the industry and competitive environment. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and beliefs and on information currently available to us. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including those contained in our updated reports that we filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, and Canadian Securities Commissions from time to time, including our annual report on Form 20F and 6K containing our press release of the results of the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2022, each of which we have filed with the SEC and on CEDAR. That could cause actual results to differ material from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Please note that these forward-looking statements made during the webcast today speak only of our expectations as of today's date and Liminal Biosciences undertakes no obligation to update these statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances, except to the extent required by law. As stated on slide 3, during this morning's webcast, Liminal Biosciences Chief Executive Officer, Mr Bruce Pritchard, will provide a brief summary of our recent achievements and upcoming expected milestones. Mr. Nicole Russo, Chief Financial Officer, will then present the financial and operational highlights for the fourth quarter and the year ended December 31st, 2022. We will then follow with an executive summary and a short question and answer period for financial analysts only. I'd now like to hand over the call to our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Bruce Pritchard. Bruce, over to you.

That's great. Thank you very much for now. Good morning, everyone. We begin 2023 in an exciting position, having met all of our previously disclosed milestones for our GPR84 and OXR1 antagonist development programs. If you could all move now to slide four in the presentation, I'd like to recap some of our key achievements since our last update. So I'm very pleased to be updating you today on all of the continued progress we've made during the last quarter and subsequently to deliver our objectives and accelerate the development of our pipeline. At the end of December 2022, we delivered on our objectives to monetize non-core assets by completing the sale of a non-core real estate asset for a purchase price of 3.175 million Canadian dollars paid in cash at closing. In January, we held a special meeting of shareholders to vote on a 10 to 1 shared consolidation and received approval to implement the shared consolidation, which was implemented effective February 1st, 2023. Share consolidation was primarily intended to bring the company into compliance with NASDAQ's continued listing requirements. Following implementation of the share consolidation in February, the company announced that it received written notice from NASDAQ confirming that the company had regained compliance with NASDAQ listing rules as a result of the closing bid price of the company's common stock having been greater than $1 per share for at least 10 consecutive trading days. In January this year, we made progress on our GPR84 antagonist program by selecting LMNL6511 as our candidate for clinical development. We're continuing our clinical trial enabling work for 6511 and expect to submit a regulatory application to commence first in human clinical trials during the second half of 2023. Ongoing experiments are expected to allow us to select a lead clinical indication for this program in the coming months. We believe that the GPR84 receptor could be an important biological target in several therapeutic areas of interest. GPR84 is broadly expressed and may play an interesting role in the relationship between inflammation, obesity, and diabetes. Our preclinical research combined with published work from other groups indicates a potential role for antagonism of GPR84 in fibrotic disease, including NASH, IBD, and IPF. More recently, 3-hydroxydecanolate, an agonist of GPR84, and a metabolite of decanoic acid was found to be enriched in circulation of obese individuals compared to non-diabetic controls. This was associated with adipose inflammation and increased fasting insulin levels. Consequently, we intends to incorporate biomarker measurements of diabetes and lipids to our planned first in human phase one study of 6511 with the goal of identifying an early indicator of biological activity. We're also pleased to announce that we've added a new drug discovery program targeting the development of a liver safe GPR40 agonist compared to other compounds in development as a possible treatment for type 2 diabetes. Several companies have focused on developing small molecule GPR40 agonists And based on published preclinical and clinical studies, activating GPR40 can enhance glycemic control by promoting insulin secretion that is dependent on glucose levels. We believe that identification of a GPR40 agonist that does not exhibit liver toxicity is achievable and a discovery in medicinal chemistry is ongoing. From a cash standpoint, We've anticipated cash and cash equivalents to fund our near-term development goals into early 2024, with possibilities to further extend that runway with the sale of non-core real estate assets. So in summary, once again, this quarter we've continued to build on our proven track record of delivering on our commitments, and we look forward to building on these key milestones in the months to come, which I'll talk about in a few moments. I'll now hand over on slide five to Nicole Russo, who will talk through our financial and operating results for the fourth quarter and year-end of December 31st, 2022. Nicole, over to you.