PDS Biotechnology Corporation

Greetings, and welcome to the PBS Biotech First Quarter and 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief 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. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mike Moyer, Lifesize Advisors. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to PBS Biotech's First Quarter 2025 Results and Clinical Programs Update Call. I am joined on the call today by the following members of the company's management team. Dr. Frank Biduado, Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Kirk Shepherd, Chief Medical Officer, and Lars Bostgard, Chief Financial Officer. Dr. Biduado will begin with an overview of the company's recent progress in its clinical development program. Mr. Bostgard will review the financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2025, and Dr. Shepherd will then join the call to help address questions from our covering analysts. As a reminder, during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our 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 our filings with the SEC, including our quarterly reports on Form 10Q and any report on Form 10K and cautionary statements made during this call. We assume no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements or information. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Dr. Biduado. Frank?

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. It's our pleasure to speak with you again and to provide this brief update on our progress in advancing our clinical programs. The first quarter of 2025 and recent weeks have been a productive period for PDS Biotech led by the initiation of our Versatile 003 Phase III clinical trial of Versimune HPV plus Pembrolizumab. Versimune HPV plus Pembrolizumab is a potential treatment for first-line recurrent and or metastatic HPV-16 positive head and neck squamous cell carcinoma or head and neck cancer. Patients with recurrent or metastatic HPV-16 positive head and neck cancer are difficult to treat and represent a large, fast-growing population in need of targeted therapies to treat the underlying cause of the cancer. It is projected that by the mid 2030s, HPV-16 positive head and neck cancer will become the most prevalent type of head and neck cancer in the United States and Europe. Considering the strength and durability of the clinical responses observed in our Versatile 002 Phase II study, we are excited to get the Versatile 003 Registrational Trial underway and are confident in the potential of the combination of Versimune HPV and Pembrolizumab to significantly improve outcomes for patients with recurrent and or metastatic HPV-16 positive head and neck cancer. We are pleased to announce that new sites, including Mayo Clinic sites, were recently added to the trial and we continue the process of activating additional clinical sites. We look forward to the continued progression of this trial. As we announced previously, the Versatile 003 Trial design includes approximately 350 patients. The two-arm Registrational Trial design has been given the go-ahead by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA. The two arms of the trial include a treatment arm of the Versimune HPV and Pembrolizumab combination versus the control arm of Pembrolizumab only. Patients are enrolled in a -to-1 randomization. Median overall survival is the primary endpoint. The trial design is informed by the observed durability of the clinical responses in our Versatile 002 clinical trial seen over the last year and a half with the most recent data presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology, ESMO Congress, in September. The encouraging patient survival and clinical responses coupled with promising tolerability as seen in the Versatile 002 clinical trial will be the subject of the poster presentation at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, or ASCO. These data underscore our belief in the potential of the combination to be the first HPV16 targeted therapy for head and neck cancer and a significant advancement in the treatment of the growing population of patients with HPV16-positive head and neck cancer.

The

Versatile 003 trial in progress is the first phase 3 trial in the high-risk HPV16 population and has also been accepted for presentation at the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting. Thirdly, Mayo Clinic will present the results of the MC2007-10 study investigating Versimune HPV alone or with Pembrolizumab prior to surgery or radiation therapy for locally advanced HPV16-positive oropharyngeal cancer. All three presentations will be held on Monday, June 2, 2025, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Central Daylight Time during the Head and Neck Cancer poster session. Elsewhere in our pipeline, last week we announced that at the American Association of Immunologists Immunology 2025 Annual Meeting, pre-clinical efficacy and immune response data in mice and ferrets with a novel, infect immune-based universal flu vaccine were featured in two presentations on universal influenza vaccines, including an oral symposium. These studies were funded by and performed by investigators at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIAD, Center for Influenza Vaccine Research for High-Risk Populations. The collaborative approach between NIAD and PDS Biotech allows PDS Biotech to focus our resources on our Versatile 003 clinical trial. In March, we were pleased to announce FDA clearance of our investigational new drug IND application for the combination of Versimune Mock 1 and our IL-12 Fused Antibody Drug Conjugate, -01-AVC, to treat metastatic colorectal cancer. Several highly prevalent solid tumors are Mock 1-positive, including non-small cell cell-1 cancer, ovarian cancer, breast cancer, liver cancer, and others. We are pleased to continue our strong relationship with the National Cancer Institute, NCI, and this Phase 1-2 clinical trial is scheduled to be run under our collaborative research and development agreement with the NCI. PDS Biotech will continue to focus our efforts on progressing the Versatile 003 Phase 3 clinical trial. Now, I will turn it over to Lars for a review of our results for 2020.

Thanks, Frank, and good morning, everyone. So for the first quarter of 2025, we reported a net loss of approximately $8.5 million or about 21 cents per basic and diluted share for the three months ended March 31. That compares to 10.6 million or 30 cents per basic and diluted share for the three months ended March 31, 2024. This decrease was due to increased benefit from income taxes as well as lower operating expenses. Resource and development expenses were $5.8 million for the first quarter compared to $6.7 million for the prior year quarter. This decrease was primarily due to lower clinical trial expenses. General administrative expenses were $3.3 million for the first quarter compared to $3.4 million for the prior year quarter. Overall total operating expenses were $9.1 million for the first quarter compared to approximately $10.1 million for the prior year quarter. Net interest expenses were $0.6 million for the first quarter which compared to approximately $0.5 million for the prior year period. Our cash balance as of March 31, 2025 was $40 million compared to $41.7 million as of December 31, 2024. You'll recall that on February 27 this year we announced that we had entered into a securities purchase agreement with new and existing healthcare focused institutional investors as well as participation for certain directors of the company. Under that arrangement we raised approximately $11 million upon the closing and with an additional $11 million that may be funded upon full cash exercise of the warrants that were included in the agreement. Also more recently at the end of April we completed a refinancing of our debt with new lenders resulting in the extension of the term to 36 months with the first four months being interest only.

With that operated we can open the call to questions.

Thank you. We will now 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 that your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. We ask that analysts limit themselves to one question in the follow-up so that others can do so as well. For participants using speaker equipment it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Maya Mam Tani with B. Riley Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, good morning team. Thanks for taking your questions and congrats on getting the versatile 003 Phase 3 ramping up. So first on the key to the head and neck new adjuvant data we saw at ACR, could you comment on how such a standard of care changing data set impacts enrollment expectations of your Phase 3 and did we learn anything on the HPV positive tumor set and how maybe checkpoint inhibitors, monotherapy response rate looks like in HPV 16 positive and then I have a follow-up.

Mike, you're referring to the keynote 689 trial.

That's right.

Okay Kirk, I'll hand over to you to start if you have any comments on that.

Sure, can

you hear

me okay?

Yes, we can hear you.

Great. The keynote 689 trial should not affect our versatile 003. The reason is 689 was a study of mainly HPV negative patients. That's because the eligibility criteria of the study had to be that the patients were not eligible for surgery and most patients who are HPV positive at this stage are not eligible for surgery. So that resulted in only 3 to 4% of the patients of the study being HPV positive. So the study was focused mainly on HPV negative patients and not positive.

Kirk, thanks a lot. My answer, that's very important because even if this does become standard of care, there is going to be very little impact on the HPV positive population and it may actually speed up the HPV 16 population becoming the predominant recurrent metastatic head and neck cancer population and this is something that we actually had our steering committee evaluate and give us advice on and their feedback to PDS was even if this neoadjuvant treatment is approved, since very few HPV positive patients are actually eligible for surgery at this stage, there should be negligible impact on the HPV 16 recurrent metastatic head and neck cancer population and that's exactly what we saw as Kirk mentioned, only about 3% of the patients were actually HPV positive. So, Mike, I hope that answered your question.

Yes, yes it does. Thank you both. And then second on this ASCO poster presentation coming up, could you talk to what we should be looking to learn on durability incremental from what you have shown before and maybe if you could comment on just your durability, how might that be tracking relative to also the emerging data from the next generation EGFR targeted therapies. Thanks again for taking our questions.

Thanks, Mike. I'm not going to speak much about the EGFR inhibitors. I think they will make their presentations at ASCO and we will learn more. At this point, we can't say any more than they have currently presented to the markets. We have no additional information on how their programs are performing. But with regards to PDS Biotech and our Versatile 002 trial, as you know, one of the key characteristics of this technology and the product is the durability. On our corporate deck, one of the slides shows how these patients react long term. I think one of the key things in oncology today with the current cytotoxic drugs, including Cetiximab, is you get pretty good responses upfront, good objective response rates. But what we have not seen to date in head and neck cancer and many other cancers is once you are able to achieve these clinical responses, can you maintain these responses long term? That is the challenge. And that is exactly what we see with our burst immune HPV plus cotruda formulation, where the patients who have clinical responses, including stable disease, partial responses, and complete responses, the majority of these patients appear to be maintaining those clinical responses long term. And that has translated also to survival, which is very important. And so as our last presentation at ESMO, as you recall, we presented a 30-month median overall survival. The standard today is approximately 12 months. So really just putting that into perspective, right? Today with the standard of care, if a patient had gone onto the standard of care, which have been cotruda or cotruda chemo, their probability of living 12 months was about 50%. You had a 50% probability of living for 12 months. However, if that patient had gone onto our Versatile 002 trial, they had a 50% probability of living for 30 months or more. Right? That's the kind of durability we've seen in the HPV16 population, which by the way, in some studies that have been performed in public have shown that in head and neck cancer, they found that in HPV16 patients had the worst prognosis for survival once the disease becomes an advanced recurrent metastatic disease, right? Compared to HPV negative and other types of HPV, the HPV16 positive patients had by far the worst survival prognosis. So this is for us is an extremely encouraging result. And what we intend to do is to give an additional update on a more recent data cut on that durability and survival of these patients in

the Versatile 002 trial. Thank you, Frank. You're welcome.

Our

next question comes from Joe Penguinis with HC Wainwright. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. So I want to ask two nuanced questions regarding your two lead programs and part of it you've already started to discuss. So first, with Keynote 689, you know, when you're comparing it again, it's apples and oranges. Even though I think from a perception standpoint, there are some, I guess, investor, you know, comparing apples to oranges here, you know, at least from a perception standpoint. So I'm just curious, how do you view the learning curve here? And does it apply at all? And I don't think it does, you know, to physicians' impact in being able to want to participate in Versatile 003?

And

then

I have a follow up.

No, no, to date, and I'll ask Kirk to give his opinions on that. But to date, we have seen very strong enthusiasm from the investigators and the key opinion leaders in actually participating in the Versatile 002 trial. I'll ask your hand over to Kirk to give any comments before I get back to continuing my answer. Kirk, any comments on interest in the trial based on Keynote 689?

Yeah. The response was very brisk and all the same from our steering committee, which are the experts in head and neck cancer, that Keynote 689 does not apply to HPV-positive patients. And this is even before they saw the data broken down, which we saw at the AACR. And sure enough, when we saw the data, as Frank had mentioned, I mentioned earlier too, only 3% of the patients were HPV-positive because it's not appropriate to treat these patients with surgery upfront. So it's been discussed a lot with our investigators and especially our steering committee that this should not affect our patient accrual at all. And we're very fortunate that we have a number of Versatile 002 investigators with us now who have experience with this drug and are very excited for 003 to get started.

Thanks a lot, Kirk. So Joe, so along those lines, I think very importantly, I think that the oncologist and the key opinion leaders in the space really understand that there are very few people who are going to be HPV-positive who will be eligible for that neoadjuvant treatment. And one of the things you can see in relation to that is that even at Mayo Clinic, one of the studies that we will be presenting at ASCO has to do with utilizing our versamine HPV plus cotruder in that neoadjuvant setting for HPV-16 positive patients. And one of the key things that the KOLs mentioned on our last KOL call was that their very strong recommendation for this combination based upon the tolerability that we've seen in the patients today would be to rapidly move it into that earlier stage setting, which would be locally advanced head and neck cancer. Right. So we've already seen the experts in the field based upon the promising results that we've seen in Versatile 002 take that combination to start evaluating it in this patient population who will not be really impacted, who may not get any benefit from the keynote 689 since the HPV positive. Can we take our combination and apply now to those patients who may not be eligible for surgery but can go on this neoadjuvant treatment with our combination? So we see a significant opportunity for this combination there too.

Great. I appreciate that added color, Frank and Kirk. So my second nuanced question is your newly or IND approved, you know, MUC-1 program. So I wanted to do a little bit of historical perspective to where we are today and especially your program. I want to focus on the antigen itself. You know, this has been a key target, I mean, MUC-1, you know, for immunotherapy and or cancer vaccines for more than two decades now. And there have been some, you know, pretty high profile failures with this target. So I want to just get a little more sense again from you guys, you know, why are you differentiated here? And I guess, can you describe interest, you know, from sites to participate knowing this history? Thanks a lot.

Really great question, Joe. Well, I'll start by saying that very similarly in HPV-16 positive head and neck cancer, cervical cancer over the last 20 years, there have also been some very high profile failures. Right? However, with our technology, we now see that for the first time we have a technology and product that has now had really strong data, very durable responses in moving into a pivotal registrational trial for the first time. Right? There have been many failures in HPV-16 positive cancer over the last 20 years. Right? So the reason I'm giving you this analogy is it's important to recognize two things, not only the antigen, but the technology, the technology that is able to now perform the immunological function that the previous technologies had not been able to perform. That is very important in being able to activate the right immunological signaling pathways and also more effectively present those antigens into the right presentation pathways. So having a strong antigen doesn't get you very far. If it can't be effectively presented and the right immunological pathways also activated, both have to go hand in hand. Right? So now moving from where we've demonstrated that this technology can do this effectively in head and neck cancer with the HPV antigens, we're now moving on to the Mock 1 after this proof of, solid proof of concept that we've generated today. With the Mock 1, these are novel antigens, agonist, what we call agonist epitopes that have been designed by the National Cancer Institute. And what they have, what these antigens have been designed to do is to be much more immunologically potent than the native Mock 1 antigens. Therefore, having a much stronger ability to activate the immune system to recognize Mock 1 as a foreign agent. And what we have now done is now taken our first immune technology, combined it with novel or more potent antigens to facilitate their presentation to the immune system and to facilitate the training of the immune system to recognize them as foreign agents. And then also activate those trained T cells to now be a lot more potent in attacking and killing the Mock 1 positive cancers. Right? And so really we have to look at it in the entirety of what's really happening here. The antigen alone does not do much to guarantee you or to generate an effective antitumor response. And what we're also doing in the study is combining it with our IL-12 fused antibody drug conjugate. And so with the IL-12, we have demonstrated also with our HPV programs that by targeting the tumors and really driving the IL-12 away from the circulating blood, but into the tumors, which is the tumors are the required site of T cell activation. Right? So by being able to get both our T cells and the IL-12 into the patient's tumors, we've also demonstrated significantly enhanced survival and antitumor responses. So the goal is to apply this combination again to Mock 1. Now this program is being performed as part of our collaboration, collaborative research and development agreement with the National Cancer Institute. Right? So this is a program where the first trial is going to be a single site study and that's going to be done by the NCI. And this collaboration also allows us to focus our resources and efforts on running our Versatile 003 program.

Frank, really appreciate that detailed explanation and looking forward to see initial data. Thanks a lot.

You're welcome.

Our next question comes from James Malloy with Alliance Global Partners. Please proceed

with your question.

Hey Frank, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Just a quick follow up on 003. Have you guys announced the enrollment of the first patient yet? Did I miss that? Or what's the expectation on that? And then any anecdotal comments from the docs on enrollment and how sort of that's proceeding or how the conversations are going with the potential enrollees?

No, we have not made it public how enrollment is going. So as you know, James, once the sites are activated, the sites actually have a number of internal processes they will undergo followed by screening of patients. So the patients have to be screened. That's part of the process of getting all these patients into the trial. This process is occurring as we continue to activate more sites. And the goal is to hopefully eventually get to a steady recruitment state. Also, as you know, the larger sites such as Mayo Clinic take longer to activate and get going. So our goal here is to update the markets when we have a much better idea of how enrollment is going and when we are able to approximately estimate when we're going to get to that interim data readout point. So we will provide more updates when we have much better insight into how the recruitment rates should be and when we'll get to those data readout points.

That makes sense. Just starting the trial. I'm trying to guess that yet, I guess. And then maybe on a mechanistic looking at the print for the OPEX for the quarters, is this sort of the level we should expect going forward or you expect that to kind of ramp up going through 25, 26?

Lars, I'll hand it over to you for that.

Hey, Jim. This is Lars here. Yes, we don't currently provide financial guidance, but I think it's fair to say that we're happy the trial has been started well the way it has. And as you probably are aware, we do tend to see a bit of a higher spend in the first couple of quarters as we get the zero up and running. So I think without giving you any specific numbers, I think we see a relatively stable in terms of the trial spend going forward.

Great. Thank you very much for taking the questions.

There are no further questions at this time. I would now

like to turn the floor back over to Dr. Frank Biduodou for closing comments.

Thank you, operator. In closing, we are very pleased to have initiated the VersaL 002 Registrational Trial this quarter. This study is the first Phase III clinical trial specifically in the growing population of HPV-15 positive head and neck cancer. We are excited based on the strong VersaL 002 results and our fast track designation about the potential for versamine HPV in head and neck cancer. We expect to provide updated results from our ongoing Phase II VersaL 002 study at ASCO in a couple of weeks. Our engagement with investors and clinical investigators has validated our approach and the long-term opportunity that we believe the HPV-16 targeted immunotherapy presents in the HPV-16 positive head and neck cancer indication. We look forward to keeping you updated on our progress and thank you very much again for your time and support. Thanks a lot.

This includes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.