Xencor, Inc.

Good afternoon, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Zencore's first quarter 2023 conference. All participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please be advised that this call is going to be recorded at the company's request. Now, I would like to turn the call over to your speaker today, Charles Lillies from the Head of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. Go ahead, Charles.

Thank you, and good afternoon. Earlier today, we issued a press release with outlines of the topics we plan to discuss today. It's available at www.cencor.com. Providing abbreviated comments on the call is Basil Dekiat, President and Chief Executive Officer. Afterward, we will open up the call for your questions, and we will be joined by Alan Yang, Chief Medical Officer, John Desjarlais, Chief Scientific Officer, John Cush, Chief Financial Officer, as well as Nancy Valenti, Chief Development Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, Zencore Management may make forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the company's future financial and operating results, future market conditions, plans and objectives of management, future operations, the company's partnering efforts, capital requirements, future product offerings, and research and development programs. These forward-looking statements are not historical facts, but rather are based on our current expectations and beliefs and are based on information currently available to us. The outcome of the events described in these forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated by these forward-looking statements, including but not limited to those factors contained in the risk factor section of our most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q. With that, I'll pass the call over to Basil.

Thanks, Charles, and good afternoon, everyone. At CENCOR, we use our array of modular protein engineering tools to create a broad internal development portfolio of antibodies and engineered cytokines in oncology and autoimmune disease. We target novel biologies with our candidate designs, including CD28 co-stim bispecifics, more tumor-selective CD3 bispecifics, and potency-reduced cytokines. This broad portfolio lets us take multiple, simultaneous shots on goal in the clinic and use the proof-of-concept data from our early-stage studies to guide which programs we advance, which we terminate, and which we partner. so that we use our resources on programs with the greatest potential for success and make room in our portfolio for the next wave of XNAB bispecifics and engineered cytokines. We continue to enroll patients in Phase I and II trials across our wholly-owned portfolio of four oncology and one autoimmune XNAB candidates. Last month at AACR, we presented on our preclinical portfolio of XNAB CD28 co-stimulatory bispecific antibodies. which are the focus of our research now and are a very exciting new area in immuno-oncology. XNAB CD28 bispecifics are designed to activate T cells only in the presence of tumor antigen and thereby drive signal 2 activation to amplify and sustain T cell antitumor cytotoxicity. Our poster highlighted our platform's rapid candidate generation and the broad opportunity for CD28, using data from five CD28 bispecific antibodies targeting a variety of solid tumor targets. like CEA, TROP2, and STEEP1. We've initiated preclinical development of a second internal CD28 program with a plan to file the IND next year. Recall that our lead clinical CD28 program, XMAB808, targets B7H3 and is in Phase I. Our next data presentation will be later this quarter when we expect to present data from our regulatory T-cell targeting cytokine, XMAB564, at the U.S. Congress of Rheumatology in Milan. We plan to present updated biomarker data from the single ascending dose study that we initially presented in November 2022. And for my last comment, I'd like to welcome a new member of the leadership team at ZENCOR. Last month, we announced the appointment of Nancy Valenti as our Chief Development Officer. She'll be responsible for all of ZENCOR's clinical activities and will join our CSO, John Desjardins, and me in the scientific leadership of the company. We're delighted to welcome Nancy to our team and look forward to benefiting from her deep expertise in developing drugs like Gizaiva, Poliviv, and Clesta and Hemlibreth. She was in a unique position to see our development programs, technology, and people up close for the last eight months as a member of our board of directors, from which she's resigned, and chose to commit to work full-time here. Welcome aboard, Nancy. Now, with that, we'll open the call to your questions. Operator?