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spk01: Welcome to the Telferra third quarter 2024 financial results conference call. This call is being webcast live via the events page of the investor section of Telferra's website at www.telferra.com. You may listen to a replay of this webcast by going to the investor section of Telferra's website. I would now like to turn the call over to Rafi Esadorian, Telferra's chief financial officer. Please go ahead.
spk05: Thank you for joining us on the call today.
spk02: Today, we announced our third quarter 2024 financial results and associated business updates in a press release. With me today are Vince Angotti, our Chief Executive Officer, and Dr. Shaquille Aslam, Telferra's Chief Medical Officer. Before we begin, I want to remind listeners that during this call, we will make likely make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties regarding the operations and future results of TALF-ERA. Please refer to our press release in addition to the company's periodic current and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a discussion of the risks associated with such forward-looking statements. These documents can be found on our website within the investors section. I will now hand the call over to Vince.
spk03: Thank you, Rafi. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us on the call. First, let me congratulate Dr. Palmer on her well-deserved retirement and at the same time welcome Dr. Aslam to his inaugural Taufera earnings call. Today, I'd like to provide an update on the progress we're seeing in our ongoing registrational trial for Nefamistat and the NEFRO CRRT study. Last quarter, we communicated that large academic institutions were being onboarded. In this quarter, I'm happy to share that we now have a total of five active clinical trial site screening patients with multiple patients already completing the trial. We also expect two additional clinical sites to begin screening this quarter, bringing the total to seven active clinical sites by the end of the year. While we're not prepared to provide specific guidance on the study completion date, several initiatives are in place to improve enrollment at existing sites and to expeditiously onboard productive new sites. In August, we announced that the first patient was enrolled. Note that we don't plan on providing trial enrollment numbers each quarter, but with the execution of our plan to improve enrollment rates and activation of additional study sites, we anticipate the study to be completed next year. As a reminder, the primary endpoint of the mean activated clotting time is measured over the first 24 hours for the patient completing the trial after only 72 hours on CRRT regardless of how long the patient remains on CRRT in the hospital. While a 72-hour trial participation by the patient allows for rapid completion, it also helps reduce the time from trial completion to PMA submission as the study database can be cleaned and locked quickly instead of waiting for many months post-trial. Now, to be clear, the activation of the original sites and early enrollment rates have not met our timing expectations. As a result, we've made changes to certain variables moving forward. I'd now like to turn it over to Dr. Aslam, who has many years of experience as a practicing nephrologist and in trial design and execution, to talk about the status of the nephro trial, his assessment, and the opportunities he's identified for continuous improvement.
spk05: Thank you, Vince.
spk00: So after engagement and discussion with numerous clinicians and natural investigators, we identified opportunities and are working with our current sites to optimize the screening processes and improve patient enrollment. For example, in order to capture patients before they started on CRRT, we are working with the sites to implement automated text notifications sent to the study PI once the doctor enters CRRT orders for the pharmacy. This allows for a window of four to six hours for the PIs to screen and consent the patient before CRRT is initiated. We are also implementing automated report generations from the electronic medical records to identify patients who might be heading towards requiring CRRT. For example, variables such as urine output, kidney function numbers, and certain electrolyte abnormalities, which are usually used as indicators to initiate CRRT. In addition to that, we are also in process of identifying and contracting with the new potential sites, this time with emphasis also on high-volume CRRT sites that have access to a broader ICU population, such as those centers that have large medical ICUs. Based on our learnings from the current sites, we are prioritizing sites with historically short administrative timelines for activation. To further help us with this effort, we are working with a third party that can validate these onboarding times with these clinical sites with additional confirmation from the site investigators and contracting officers. In addition, as part of our continuous improvement, we are consulting regulatory experts to leverage our breakthrough designation to implement potential changes to some study design elements to facilitate study enrollment and completion in the shortest possible time. We anticipate bringing on four additional sites by early 2025. As a reminder, last quarter the FDA expanded the maximum number of trial sites from 10 to 14. Our engagement with additional potential clinical trial sites is occurring through targeted outreach inbound interests, as well as our participation in industry events, such as the American Society of Nephrology Kidney Week 2024. I have always thought there was a clear, unmatched need for an alternative anticoagulant for use in CRRT, and we continue to receive strong confirmation of this need during our discussions with the CRRT experts.
spk04: I'll hand it back to Vince now.
spk03: Vince? Thanks, Dr. Aslam. Having attended the Kidney Week meeting as well, I'll echo his thoughts on the feedback we received confirming the need for an alternative anticoagulant and reinforcing our conviction in the Nifamistat's potential clinical utility. In summary, we're gaining momentum with the clinical trial and hope to have more information to share on its progress early next year. With Nifamistat, we have a unique product in development and believe the related clinical, regulatory, and commercial risks are low for a number of reasons. First, with the published evidence of Nefamistat's use as an anticoagulant for CRRT for 30 years in Japan and South Korea, we know the product's track record of efficacy and safety, minimizing the clinical risk around Nefamistat. The trial design has been agreed to with the FDA. We're beginning to demonstrate execution of this trial now that sites are screening and enrolling patients. we have a clear regulatory path, including a product candidate with breakthrough designation from the FDA, which provides us with quicker review and response times, as well as increased access to the agency. Lastly, we know there is always commercial risk. We believe this is mitigated given the disadvantages of the products currently being used for anticoagulation during CRRT, namely heparin and citrate. As a result of the disadvantages of these anticoagulants, approximately one-third of the time, no anticoagulant is used during CRRT. This increases the risk of poor dialysis, blood transfusions, and additional harm to the patients. Anecdotally, many physicians continue to tell us that they may use heparin or citrate even though they would prefer not to, but they have no other alternative. I'll now hand the call over to Rafi to provide you some details of our third quarter financial results.
spk02: Thanks, Vince. Our cash operating expenses or combined R&D and SG&A expenses excluding non-cash stock-based compensation in the third quarter totaled $3.5 million compared to $3 million last year. The increase from last year is attributed to the NEFRO CRRT clinical study offset by lower SG&A expenses. Year-to-date September cash operating expenses totaled $11.5 million. Full-year 2024 cash operating expenses are expected to be in the $15 to $17 million range, depending upon the rate of enrollment in the clinical study in the fourth quarter. Cash and investments totaled $11.1 million at the end of the third quarter. It is likely an additional capital injection will be required prior to the completion of the NEFRO study. Our main investor, Nantahala, has expressed their continued financing support as we continue to progress the clinical study. And I'll turn it back to Vince.
spk03: Thank you, Rafi. I'd now like to turn the line open for any questions you might have. Constantine.
spk01: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the number one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the number two. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure to lift your handset before pressing any keys. The first question comes from the line of James Molloy from Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions.
spk08: I was wondering if you could walk through, please, the optimization on the screening. Is there any more granularity on the optimization on the screening that you're doing now to drive enrollment? Congrats on getting seven sites up and running here by the end of the year and 11, total of 11 by next year. And, you know, why the change? I guess, why did this do this from the start? Or were the new learnings that you guys found out as you went, and that's why you said, okay, we're going to make this change here? If you could please walk us through that, that'd be great.
spk03: Yeah, let me start with, you know, part of the question, then I'll turn it over to Shaquille. So I think part of it is, what I think you're asking is, what have you learned and what happened with the current sites? So, meaning the sites that we've had from the initiation. So these sites that were brought to us with the acquisition of the program, those are the ones we have involved now. In many instances, there are well-known, world-renowned nephrologists and others. There were existing relationships. But some of these sites are still working to catch up to the projected enrollment numbers. So clearly, they gave us feasibility forecasts, and they're behind on them. We still believe that these remaining sites are going to be significant contributors, but with expansion up to the 14 sites by the FDA and Shaquille's experience and expertise, we're now focused on the high-volume sites with a broader patient population to accelerate the study completion. And I think it's important to your point on the screening and the broader patient population. Shaquille, can you comment on that specifically?
spk00: Absolutely. We have taken several initiatives to improve our screening, and number one has been site engagement. So we have visited all the sites, and we are constantly in communication with the sites, the PIs, and other site staff to review their screening activities. And during this process, we also recognized that sometimes these PIs are not always present in the medical ICUs. They're not around 24 hours a day, and some of these patients are missed during the time when orders are put in the pharmacy to start CRRT and the actual CRRT procedure begins. So that's about a window of four to six hours. So what we're doing with these institutions is that work with their IT departments and do an automated text notification to the PI that goes off once the doctor enters the pharmacy orders for CRRT. So that gives them a four to six hour window during which they can talk to the primary team as well as patient's family and consent the patient. So this way patients is actually captured before the CRRT procedure begins. Instead of having somebody already on CRRT and then trying to talk to the family and physician for study enrollment which becomes a little bit difficult. The other thing is to help these physicians identify patients whose kidney function is less than normal, and they're not really requiring CRRT at that particular moment, but their numbers over subsequent days are shown to be deteriorating to the point where you think that they're going to need CRRT in a few days or a couple of days after their kidney injury starts. So I think those are at least two examples which help us optimize the screening process. So I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah.
spk03: Shaquille, I'm going to ask you to take it a step further. Why don't we provide to Jim a little more granularity, maybe on where we've seen now and learned about screening failures. What are the two most common, and how do we navigate those and believe those are going to be on affecting the commercialization of it moving forward? I think that additional information would be helpful.
spk00: Absolutely. Thank you. So our current sites, they have a little bit heavy emphasis or maybe tilt towards cardiothoracic ICUs and as well as cardiac ICUs. And so there's a lot of patients, there are a lot of patients who require CRRTs in those ICUs. However, the challenge is many of these patients, their kidneys fail because their heart function is very poor. And they end up requiring some kind of heart function support. And that typically is done with ECMO or it's done with left ventricular assist devices. And those patients are actually treated with heparin. And once they are on heparin, which is a systemic anticoagulant, there is really no reason for them to be on NIAD. The second problem in this patient population that we have noticed is there are a lot of patients who have postoperative bleeding issues. Now, these are the patients who have active bleeding and physicians would obviously not want them on any blood thinner. But at the same time, these are the patients who will be perfect candidates for NIAID once it's approved. Because it's a regional anticoagulant and you actually want to give it to patients who cannot be treated with systemic anticoagulants such as heparin. So although this is because of safety reasons and because we are in process of proving to the FDA, that the NIAD will not impact your systemic coagulation parameters, those patients currently are being excluded from the study. And that represents one of the biggest chunk of patients who are actively bleeding who cannot be enrolled in the trial. But in fact, that's a big commercial opportunity for us because those are the patients who would be perfect to get NIAD.
spk03: So, Jim, while it's been proven overseas, to Shaquille's point and all the data, they want to see it in the U.S. patients that it has that short half-life and that it's regional in nature. And so that was a limitation in the study that won't be a limitation once approved.
spk08: Great. Thank you. Then two quick follow-ups, then I'll hop back into the queue. Obviously, it's been approved for over 30 years in Japan. And how much does that Is any of that learning and safety data admissible to the FDA as we go forward? Or how are they looking at that? And then on the end of 166 for the trial, you know, the 11 sites by next year, maximum 14 is about 10, 15 patients per site. Do you think, you know, obviously that will be spread out evenly across all the sites. Are there a handful that are going to bring in, you know, a vast majority? Or is it more widely dispersed among the, you know, 11 to 14 sites?
spk03: Yeah, why don't we start with your first question on the XUS data. So they did take that into consideration when the study design and the N, et cetera, was developed. As it relates to submitting it with the package moving forward, I'll defer to Shaquille on that.
spk00: Right, absolutely. So we submitted previously the data from Japanese adverse events database data. And so there aren't really any significant safety concerns with NIAD. So some of them which have been reported, they were really for systemic indications because in those countries, it's also approved for acute pancreatitis as well as DIC. And in those cases, it's given systemically, not in a circuit like CRRT. So based on that data, the overall adverse event rate was close to 1%, and none of them were really serious other than very, very low incidence of hypersensitivity reactions. So the FDA understands that there is a long track record of safety in humans on this compound. In addition to that, they also wanted us to do studies, animal studies, preclinical work, because previous work was done a while, while back, and they wanted a fresh look at multiple exposure levels in at least two species, which is very typical for early drug development. And those studies have been done as well, and we'll be submitting that data to the FDA as well. So overall, I think the safety package will be quite convincing.
spk04: we will have more human safety data than most of the compounds that are submitted for approval.
spk03: And I think the second part of your question, Jim, was on the N of 166 and how would it potentially skew as it relates to the distribution across sites. Some of the initial sites we expect to be lower, while the more recent sites that are coming on board or have recently come on board And the additional sites we're anticipating in the first half of next year are expected to contribute more than the first few. And they're just, again, as Dr. Aslam mentioned, they have different patient profiles and ICUs they're pulling from, and that's why. Medical ICUs versus a cardiothoracic ICU or potentially a surgical ICU. The medical ICUs, the large ones, will produce more patients for the CRRT. Great.
spk07: Thank you for taking the questions.
spk05: You're welcome. Thank you, Jim.
spk01: Your next question comes from the line of Ed Arnesy from HC Wainwright. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hi, good afternoon, everyone. This is Thomas. You're asking a couple of questions for Ed. Thank you for the kind of questions. So for the nephrosiarity study, can you discuss the percentage of patients who are screened and subsequently successfully enrolled? And then can you discuss any initial feedback from either patients or physicians?
spk05: I'm sorry, can you repeat the second portion of the question, Thomas?
spk06: Sure. Just wonder if you can share any feedback from patients who are enrolled or physicians who are on site with experience in the studies.
spk03: Yeah, sure. So as it relates to the first half of the question on percentages versus screening, I mean, it's fluctuating all the time depending on the particular site. So it's difficult to give you any real cadence on that. I think an important aspect of your question on the feedback from the physicians is, well, Shaquille, why don't we have you comment on the completers and anything that you can garner from their experience, realizing that we don't know if it's a placebo or an ephemera stat patient.
spk00: Yes, so all enrolled patients completed uneventfully and the titration again, you know, was not a problem. Physicians really had a very easy time titrating it to target ACT, you know, at least in patients with the ACT did change. So, so far the feedback from physicians has been very positive. But it's a blinded study, so there's only so much, you know, we know or can reveal.
spk03: And I think I'll just, again, reiterate one more time, Thomas, about, you know, when you're asking about the screening, again, really there's two things we've learned. And, again, it's the patients who are actively bleeding are excluded. Well, in the real world, we expect those patients to be our ideal candidate because of our regional nature and remaining in the system. or the device. And secondly, many of the patients today are coming from the cardiothoracic ICUs or the surgical ICUs where they're requiring to be on systemic heparin, and that's an exclusion criteria for us. Obviously, you don't want them on two different blood thinners.
spk05: Understood.
spk06: And then also for the After CRT study, just wondering, given the guidance to complete the study in 2025 and, you know, very short treatment duration, can we also expect data also next year as well?
spk05: So you're asking, yeah.
spk03: So I think, look, that would clearly be our goal. When you're looking at a 72-hour completer and a 24-hour completer, average mean ACT reading with these patients, I think it's important to understand that even from the time of completion of the study to submission of the PMA we mentioned is short. We expect it to be two or three months max because we'll have the data all along. It'll be cleansed, organized, analyzed, and the database will be locked. So that would certainly be our goal.
spk06: Got it. And then perhaps one more question from us. In the press release, it was mentioned that there are opportunities to further improve patient screening enrollment. So just wonder what measures we have planned to accelerate enrollment.
spk03: I think those further opportunities are the ones we mentioned as it relates to Shaquille's description on the alerts he's having for the physicians on site to get the patients early, to get the identification of the patients early, the further consideration of the new sites we're putting on with the larger general medical ICUs.
spk02: And I think I'll just add, there's other activities that we're currently evaluating in the study design and things like that that we're not prepared yet to disclose. But there's some other things we're looking at, as we mentioned in that press release. We're just not ready to disclose what those are yet at this point.
spk06: Third point. Okay. Understood. Thank you again for taking our questions. Looking forward to progress for the network CRP study in coming months.
spk05: Thanks, Thomas.
spk01: There are no further questions at this time, so I'd like to turn the call over to Vince and Gaudi for closing remarks. Sir, please go ahead.
spk05: Thank you, operator.
spk03: And we continue to be excited about the opportunity with Nifamistat and its impact in CRRT moving forward. We remain committed to driving long-term shareholder value, specifically through the execution of the NEPHRO trial. And importantly, we remain hyper-focused on our cash spend. So please feel free to contact us after the call if you have any additional questions. And we certainly look forward to sharing our future developments and progress. Thank you.
spk01: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you very much for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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