Nektar Therapeutics

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Nectar Therapeutics fourth quarter 2023 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Vivian Wu. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Crystal, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. With us on the call are Howard Robin, our President and CEO, Dr. Jonathan Blaski, our Chief of Research and Development, Dr. Mary Tagliaferri, our Chief Medical Officer, Sandra Gardner, our Chief Financial Officer, and Jennifer Roddick, our Chief Business Officer. On today's call, we expect to make forward-looking statements regarding our business, including statements regarding the therapeutic potential of and future development plans for drug candidates and research programs, the timing of the initiation of clinical studies and the availability of clinical data for drug candidates, the timing and plans for future clinical data presentations, the formation, future development plans, or success of our collaboration agreements, The expectations following are corporate restructuring and reorganization, financial guidance, and certain other statements regarding the future of our business. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they're subject to uncertainties and risks that are difficult to predict, many of which are outside of our control. Our actual results may differ materially from these statements. Important risks and uncertainties are set forth in our Form 10-Q that was filed on November 8, 2023, which is available at sec.gov. We undertake no obligation to update any performance statements, whether as a result of new information, future developments, or otherwise. A webcast of this call will be available on the IR page of Nectar's website at nectar.com. With that said, I would like to hand the call over to our President and CEO, Howard, Robin. Howard?

Thank you, Vivian, and thank you for all joining us today. 2023 was a pivotal year for Nectar. We refocused the company's development pipeline on immunology and inflammation with our primary near-term goal to advance RESPEG to meaningful data catalysts in the first half of 2025. RESPEG is poised to be highly disruptive in the biologic treatment landscape for ectopic dermatitis by offering a novel agonistic mechanism. RESPEG is designed to both dampen the inflammatory response and simultaneously restore immune balance by directly expanding functional Treg cells and engaging multiple immunoregulatory pathways in patients with ectopic dermatitis and other autoimmune disorders. Through its unique mechanism, Respec also has the potential to provide patients with superior efficacy as well as more favorable in frequent dosing. There are over 30 million people in the U.S. alone battling this chronic skin condition, and it can greatly impact quality of life and mental health for these patients. We made significant advancements in 2023 with respect to our RESPEG program. Most notably, we regained the full rights to RESPEG from Eli Lilly and now own the program 100% with no encumbrances. We moved to quickly design a phase 2b study in ectopic dermatitis based on the promising results from the phase 1B placebo-controlled randomized study of ResBag, which showed an 83% drop in eczema skin scores after just 12 weeks of treatment. Our phase 2B global study in this indication was launched in October of 23, and enrollment is on track for data readout in the first half of 25. In late 2023, we also began work designing a Phase IIb study in alopecia areata, another area of high unmet need. The study is starting this month. There are approximately 7 million patients in the United States and 160 million people worldwide who have alopecia areata. JAK inhibitors are the primary treatment option for patients with alopecia but have a significant rebound effect with treatment cessation and several black box warnings. Based on the data we generated to date on RESPEG in the skin-related autoimmune condition of ectopic dermatitis, psoriasis, and in patients with cutaneous manifestations of lupus, we believe RESPEG has strong scientific rationale in the setting of alopecia and could have the potential to be a highly differentiated treatment option with a similar remittive effect for this unserved patient population. As I stated earlier, we look forward to the Phase 2b data for our ectopic dermatitis study and for our alopecia study in the first half of 2025. These will be highly meaningful data catalysts for NECR. In addition to RESPEC, we have another important immunology program that we're moving toward the clinic. This is a first-in-class differentiated mechanism in immunology, a TNFR2 agonist antibody, Nectar 165. TNFR2 has been shown to potentiate the suppressive effects and overall functional properties of Tregs, and the program is built on what we've learned through our deep experience with ResPeg and the Treg field and represents a promising mechanism for treatment of autoimmune disease, including multiple sclerosis and ulcerative colitis. We're currently conducting IND-enabling studies with the goal of targeting an IND submission in the first half of next year. In line with our objectives to advance our immunology pipeline, today we announced a $30 million financing that further bolsters Nectar's financial position as we head into transformative data catalysts. Importantly, we're pleased to bring on a new high-quality long-term investor, TCG Crossover, who clearly shares our belief in the potential of ResBank. At a price of $1.20 per share, the transaction represents a premium of over 80% to Nectar's 30-day VWAP. This puts us in a strong financial position and extends our cash runway from our previous guidance, which was the middle of 2026, to now well into the third quarter of 2026. And with that, I'll hand the call over to Jay Z for an R&D discussion. Jay Z?