Vir Biotechnology, Inc.

Welcome to VIIRT Biotechnology's second quarter 2023 financial results and business update call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to Sasha Damouni-Ellis, Executive Vice President, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer. You may begin, Ms. Damouni-Ellis.

Thank you and good afternoon. With me today are Marion DeBacker, Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Phil Pang, Chief Medical Officer, and Sung Lee, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that some of the statements we are making today are forward-looking statements under the securities laws. These forward-looking statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause our clinical development programs, future results, performance, or achievements to differ significantly from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties and risks associated with our business are described in the company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Forms 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Marianne DeBacker.

Thank you, Sasha. Good afternoon, and welcome to Veer Biotechnology's first earnings call. I'm Marianne DeBacker, CEO of Veer, and I'm pleased to welcome you all here today. I joined Veer four months ago and every day since I'm reminded of how well Veer aligns with my commitment over the past 30 plus years to bring new medicines to patients. Veer is one of those unique companies that used its ingenuity in the discovery of neutralizing antibody in the fight against COVID-19 and this during the very worst times of the pandemic. This was achieved in just 15 months and brought to nearly 2 million people around the world. Before that, VIIRS drug discovery engine had already yielded an antibody to treat Ebola, now recognized by the World Health Organization for its impact. After four months of learning about VIIRS differentiating capabilities, platforms, pipeline, and strong partnerships I could not be more enthusiastic to lead this team of passionate, driven professionals who always have the end goal in mind, serving patients. Today and over the next few quarters, I will share more about our focused efforts to drive our pipeline and our science forward. We hope you take away an understanding of our strategy, our development program, and the ability to execute. Infectious diseases continue to pose a major threat to global health, economic security, and to society as a whole. Just last month, in talking to a patient living with chronic hepatitis B, I was reminded of the deep personal impact such a disease has on not just the individual, but also on their families and their communities. We aim here at VIIR to address these needs with a broad range of drug candidates and additional data to come this year. First, I want to touch on our recently announced Phase II Peninsula trial, evaluating VIIR24A2 for flu prophylaxis, which missed its primary endpoint. Phil will share more details momentarily. It is important to remember that in the world of drug development and clinical trials, unexpected outcomes are not uncommon. That is exactly why we take multiple approaches and have a broad pipeline. Seasonal flu affects about 1 billion people around the world and claims up to 650,000 lives each year. It is a significant unmet need that warrants our attention. and we will follow the data in guiding our next steps. We do remain interested in this area, and we have VIIRS 2981 as a preclinical candidate, which has a differentiated mechanism of action to VIIRS 2482, covering both influenza A and B, and may be a more efficacious alternative to vaccines. Second, VIIR is working on a potential functional cure for the more than 300 million people living with chronic hepatitis B worldwide. Current standard of care is lifelong therapy, which decreases but does not eliminate the risk of cirrhosis or liver cancer. At VIIR, we aim to achieve a functional cure, meaning allowing control of the virus without such chronic medical therapy. This is akin to remission and further reduces the risk of debilitating disease progression. VIR is focused on regimens, such as combining an antibody with an siRNA designed to stop the virus and clear the infection. We expect a data readout from Part B of our ongoing March Phase 2 trial in the fourth quarter. which we hope will get us again one step closer to a functional cure for chronic hepatitis B. Third, I want to highlight what VIEW is working on to address chronic hepatitis delta, which affects more than 12 million people worldwide and imposes a four times greater risk of liver cancer compared to chronic hepatitis B alone. We know that around 5 to 15% of patients with chronic hepatitis B are co-infected with hepatitis delta virus. And the World Health Organization considers chronic hepatitis delta to be one of the most severe forms of viral hepatitis. Our goal is convenient once or twice monthly injections with transformative efficacy. Initial data from our clinical trial solstice are expected in the fourth quarter. We also expect to report significant progress in the discovery of new drug candidates using our proprietary antibody and T-cell platforms, which are yielding a robust pipeline that is optimized through AI and our unique data science capabilities. Currently, about 90% of our pipeline leverages data science tools. which enable us to discover, select, and develop drug candidates with the highest chance of success of becoming medicines that could benefit patients in need. Going forward, all our antibodies will be optimized using this approach. Still, we'll touch on the preclinical programs that have the potential for IND filings within the next 24 months. Lastly, we have a strong balance sheet that allows us the financial flexibility to fuel our development programs and grow our antibody platform. We are taking measures to continuously evaluate and judiciously allocate this capital to maximize value for our shareholders. As part of this process and under my leadership, we made the decision to phase out our small molecule platform. This is the first step as we continue to advance our core capabilities and scientific pros. The combination of all the strengths we have here at VIIR makes this a very exciting time. I am confident in our ability to advance our development programs and potentially impact the lives of many patients. I will now turn the call over to Chief Medical Officer Phil Pang to provide more details on our pipeline.