ZIOPHARM Oncology Inc

Greetings and welcome to ZioPharm Oncology Inc. fourth quarter and fiscal year 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A 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. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Adam Levy, Executive Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Omar. Good afternoon and welcome to the ZioPharm Ecology Conference call and webcast to review results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31st, 2020. This afternoon, we issued our financial press release, which is also available in the investors section of our website, ziopharm.com. For informational purposes, we have also included in our webcast a set of slides to accompany today's commentary. These slides can also be found on our website. Today's press release also contains several other corporate updates which will be discussed by our speakers. During today's call, the company will make a number of forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the potential therapeutic candidates in our development pipeline, regulatory status, financial information, and business trends. Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties. you can see a summary of our forward-looking statement disclosure on slide two of the materials we posted today. Joining me today to give some prepared remarks will be Dr. Lawrence Cooper, Mr. James Wong, Ms. Heidi Hagen, and Dr. Rafael Abafa. Please refer to slide three for an overview of the topics we will cover during these remarks. First, Lawrence, James, and Heidi will briefly share their perspectives on the leadership transition. Second, Heidi will share a business overview including our financial summary and strategic capital allocation priorities across our programs. Third, Heidi will highlight some additional details on our IND clearance announced today for our library hotspot TCRT program. Fourth, Raffaele will provide a summary of upcoming clinical milestones and share additional details on our upcoming R&D day. We will then open the call to your questions. Slides four, five, and six feature our next three speakers. That's a lot to cover, so let's get to it. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Dr. Cooper. Lawrence, please go ahead.

Thank you, Adam, and welcome, everyone. This is going to be an atypical quarterly call and one that is somewhat bittersweet. As you likely saw in the release today and effective today, Heidi Hagan will be stepping into the CEO role on an interim basis. I would like to spend a few moments sharing my perspective. I joined ZioPharm almost six years ago with a vision to bring new hope to children and adults suffering from the devastating impact of cancer. As a physician, I witnessed this devastation all too frequently, and to me and others, the Sleeping Beauty technology, when combined with the power of T-cells, offered an opportunity to develop a new type of cellular therapy, one with almost limitless possibilities. but the initial vision was just that, a vision. We had to work tirelessly as a team to bring that vision to the clinic. Now that the clinical development path for our technologies appears launched, I am leaving to enable the company to pursue a path towards commercialization. In the past three months alone, we have received IND clearance to enter the clinic for both our CD19 RPM CAR-T technology in Taiwan and our library hotspot TCRT program in the United States. Adding to the previously cleared INDs for our allogeneic RPM CAR T utilizing healthy donors and the IND for personalized TCRT at the NCI, we now have a compelling suite of our key technologies in the clinic. And our controlled IL-12 is perhaps the furthest along, where we continue to seek a partner for future development, including potential registrational work. I am thankful to have led an exceptional team under which Xyopharm has grown to be an independent and fully equipped clinical stage company. I leave the company in an incredibly strong position. Before I close, I want to specifically express my gratitude to all my colleagues at Xyopharm who came with me on this journey. We dare to dream big, and those dreams are becoming reality. I wish James, Heidi, the board, and this amazing company, and my fellow shareholders well. You're in good hands, and I look forward to a smooth transition. Now, I would like to hand the call off to James Wong, our Executive Chairman. James.