Q2 2022 Celsion Corp Earnings Call
Good morning and welcome to Celcion's second quarter 2022 earnings call. Welcome to the Celcion's second quarter 2022 earnings call.
My name is Christina and I will be your operator today. At this time, I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded. I would now turn the call over to Monique Casse of LifeSci Advisors. Please go ahead.
Thank you operator and good morning everyone.
Welcome to Celcion's second quarter 2022 earnings call.
Earlier today, CELFION issued
A press release announcing financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2022. You may access that release on the company's website under the News and Investors tab.
With us today are Michael Tarduno, Executive Chairman of the Board of CELCION, Corinne Lagoff, President and Chief Executive Officer, and members of CELCION's Executive Management Team.
Following management's prepared remarks, we will open the call for a question and answer session.
During this call, management will be making forward-looking statements regarding CELCION's expectations and projections about future events.
Generally, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminologies such as expects, anticipates, believes, or other similar expressions.
These statements are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those set forth in the company's periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed, and actual results may differ materially from such statements.
In particular, there is significant uncertainty about the duration and impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as well as the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
This means results could change at any time, and the contemplated impact of these events on CELCIEN's operations, financial results, and outlook is the best estimate based on the information for today's discussion.
Also, the content of this conference call is accurate only as of the date of the live broadcast today, August 15, 2022.
CELCION undertakes no obligation to revise or update comments made during this call, except as required by law.
With that, I would like to now turn the call over to Michael Tarduno, Executive Chairman of the Board. Michael?
Thank you, Monique. Good morning, everyone.
I'm extraordinarily pleased to be here today with Dr. Corinne LeGoff.
Chelsea's new president and chief executive officer.
I'm also here with Jeffrey Church, our Chief Financial Officer, Dr. Nicholas Boris, our Chief Medical Officer, and Dr. Khashid Anwar, our Chief Science Officer.
I'd like to make a few opening remarks before handing the call over to Corinne.
who will be followed by Drs. Boorst and Ann Marver updates and by Jeffery Church for a review of our second quarter financials.
Well, in the past 24 months, your company has undertaken a major transformation.
It's a testament to the quality and commitment of our management and our employees that literally And I have to say, it hurts.
We've been able to rapidly reposition our development focus on what many believe is the future of medicine.
That's immunology and the related immuno-oncology and vaccinology areas of product development.
short period of time and I'd say a nanosecond in the biotech world.
We have strengthened and expanded our technology platforms, strengthened and added depth to our research capabilities and responsibly strengthened our balance sheet.
With our transformational strategy now implemented, the new Celsius is on a runway well into 2025.
We are showing promise with impressive technology platforms and an outstanding and committed group of employees.
The capstone to all of this accomplishment was our announcement of a change in leadership last month.
So without further ado, it is my great pleasure, and on behalf of the Board of Directors,
and after a long and detailed search, to present to you our new Chief Executive and President, Dr. Corinne LeGoff.
Corinne brings to the company an extraordinary sense of accomplishment.
a stellar academic background, experience in both big pharma and biotech, and most importantly,
and very important to the company.
unapproachable values.
We look forward to her vision, her strategy, her drive as she moves the company forward in this most exciting and transformational technology in immunology.
her drive as she moves the company forward in this most exciting and transformational technology immunology.
Thank you very much Michael. It is a great pleasure and a privilege for me to be talking to our investors and analysts today.
I have spent all my career leading large pharmaceutical organizations.
driving corporate strategy, and developing and prioritizing portfolios across many therapeutic areas, notably in oncology and immunology at companies like Roche and Amgen. Most recently I was Chief Commercial Officer at Moderna, where I led the deployment of commercial capabilities.
My background gives me a good vantage point on social and recent developments in immunocauseal vaccines.
I want to spend a few minutes to share with you why I decided to join Cellfion at this present point of inflection for the company.
There are three main reasons. First,
It always starts with people. I am joining a savvy and senior executive team that has pivoted the company following the discontinuation last year of the Starbucks phase 3 program in liver cancer to focus on the development of a very promising plasmid DNA approach with broad applicability in immunology.
In the last three weeks since I joined the company, I had a chance to meet the entire team, and I am impressed with the know-how and expertise of our scientists, and with the focus, the dedication and passion of all our employees.
Second, Celsian is a platform company.
with a unique and very innovative Frames Jackson
I can imagine that over a long-term horizon, we will create a new category of medicines based on our plasmid DNA technology across a broad array of human diseases.
We are studying immunology and infectious diseases.
And we will continue to invest to fully characterize the platform and to advance the technological frontier of blessed with DNA.
At the same time, we will be investigating the addition of new cutting-edge modalities.
to increase the breadth and depth of our pipeline in immunological areas that are adjacent and complementary to our Plan 1 program.
More to come on this topic in the coming quarters.
Third.
The company has maintained a strong balance sheet on investor-friendly terms.
Unique to many biotech companies today that are currently running low on cash.
Celsius has an unfavorable cash position to pursue diligently the current development programs and at the current forecast of spending, the company's operating runway is projected to extend into 2025. It is a great position to be in and Jeff will comment further on the strength of the balance sheet in a few minutes.
So these are the three main criteria that convinced me that CELSCIEN is the right place for me and has a lot of potential for growth.
I know have been with the company for almost a month.
and I took the time to review the programs and the key capabilities of the company.
I first want to thank Michael, who has orchestrated a very smooth position. I am very grateful for his generosity and for his keen attention to answering the continuity of activities currently underway.
I also want to thank the entire executive team for their support.
It is, of course, too early for me to talk about future strategic orientations, but I would like to share a few of my observations to date and put into perspective through the lens of my extensive professional career the potential that I foresee for a technological platform.
Ahead of doing so, I want to highlight that my enthusiasm for the success of Celsius is grounded in my understanding of what it takes to develop a nucleic acid platform.
and in my knowledge of the clinical trends and therapeutic landscapes in immuno-cology and vaccines.
I believe that CELSCON has a very differentiated DNA plasmid technology with proprietary synthetic non-viral delivery systems that are engineered for gene-based therapies, that's a theraplast platform, or for the expression of multiple pathogen antigens in vaccines, and that's the Plasim platform.
Our DNA-based approach is designed to boost the immune response, and our delivery systems are being optimized to improve the stability of the plasmids and to facilitate uptake and trafficking across cell membranes. And this is important. What this means, practically, is that no delivery device is needed. Our solution is therefore clearly differentiated from other DNA-based approaches, very patient-friendly. For more information, visit www.nchsoftware.com
commercially viable. The first application of the platform in immuno-oncology is very promising.
Dr. Boris will share with you in a few minutes the progress of the Gen 1 program in ovarian cancer.
As you know, in preclinical and phase 1 studies, Gen1 has demonstrated poop-off concept in terms of efficacy and tolerability.
I have been watching this film for a long time, while I was at MJED and before at Roche.
IL-12 was always seen as an ideal target for tumor immunotherapy because it is a pleotropic cytokine.
that can activate both the innate and adaptive immune systems.
but it was deemed undruggable because of its systemic toxicity and poor pharmacokinetics.
It seems that Celsius has demonstrated a way to enlist the power of IL-12 to create a potent immune tumor microenvironment.
by making the expression of IL-12 durable and local. And this is truly exciting. And I want to add.
that as a woman CEO , I am committed to making a difference in ovarian cancer, which remains one of the most lethal cancers.
Based on the very early PFS data reported for Ovation II, the potential for targeted therapy approach will need to be explored further.
You know that women with ovarian cancer who test negative for HLD and BRCA mutations have very few options left. They are at risk for early progression and FAP inhibitors are unlikely to work.
in this population of patients.
which represents about half of patients with high-grade serous ovarian cancer.
Demonstrating an advantage for Gen1 would be game-changing.
We will continue to monitor this subgroup, and Nick is looking at the possibility of expanding the current cohort of patients to better inform a registration trial in this unique viral select TREpholstase, which will catalogue datasets of old mammals users across very
We are also evaluating strategic combination therapies with Gen1.
We are planning to start a study to evaluate Gen1 in combination with dual immune checkpoint inhibitors.
Yellboy and Obdivo
in patients with recurrent or persistent ovarian cancer.
Dr. Haidar Mahdi from the University of Pittsburgh has done a lot of work on the modulation of the tumor environment. I talked to him last week, and he's very excited about this phase 1-2 trial, which we would like to start enrolling as early as Q1 next year.
Another interesting combination possibility is with Avastin or Bevacizumab.
We are looking to launch the MRD randomized phase two test study. MRD stands for minimal residual disease or molecular residual disease.
And we are looking at launching this study.
in patients this time with newly diagnosed advanced ovarian cancer, where vesting has shown no improvement in overall survival.
We are hoping that we will be able to confirm in the clinic the benefits that Gen1 has demonstrated in combination with investing in preclinical mice studies.
MRV rate is potentially a very relevant and novel primary endpoint.
and will be determined at time of second-loop laparoscopy.
The surgically documented MRD rate has the potential to dramatically reduce timelines and costs for novel frontline therapies in ovarian cancer.
The potential utility of MRD using CT DNA as an early point in clinical trials is included in FDA's draft guidance for early stage solid tumor drug development.
and will be investigated in this trial.
The secondary endpoints are PFS, ORR, and surgical response.
This study should be conducted in collaboration with the Breakthrough Cancer Foundation. It is designed to enroll 50 patients at four major cancer centers, MD Anderson, John Hopkins, Memorial Sloane Kettering and Dana Farber.
The protocol has already been approved by the FDA, and we will initiate the sites as soon as we receive our B approval, and we, of course, fully anticipate collecting the study thanks to an equal partnership with the BTC Foundation.
Pushing gears to our vaccine platform.
Here again, I believe in the potential of our plasmid DNA platform because social synthetic polymeric DNA carrier has the potential to facilitate vaccine immunogenicity and can address the limitations that we see with mRNA vaccines.
mRNA vaccines have saved countless lives and have demonstrated their superiority over traditional vaccines in this COVID-19 pandemic. But there is much more to be done.
As we imagine the future of vaccines and the looming threat of future pandemics, we need vaccines that offer durable immunogenicity against winning immunity. We need vaccines that offer broad protection to avoid playing catch-up with the latest valiance.
and that can be shipped and stored around the world without requiring deep freeze temperature. Our technology might be the answer. Gursil will update you on the Placine program in COVID-19, where we're seeking to establish a proof of concept. We have very encouraging mouse challenge data that show neutralizing antibody titers at least comparable to mRNA vaccines and even greater against the Delta variant.
And based on this data, we have begun immunization studies in non-human primates.
We have evidence of immunogenicity. The immune response is not yet optimized, but is very informative. We now know that we have a viable program that gives us confidence that we can continue developing this program, but more work is needed.
Finally, in the last month, I was also able to evaluate our capabilities.
And I can see that the company has built solid foundations in all core areas of its business model. In discovery, early development, clinical development, in technical operations and in CMC.
This is...
impressive for an organization of that size. Specifically, I want to point out
of that size. Specifically, I want to point out that we are setting up
in-house plasmid manufacturing capabilities that are GMP compliant so that we can meet the requirements of let's face clinical trials.
We are obviously planning for success and we are putting our future in our own hands with a development of a cost-efficient and flexible civilization. And flexible civilization.
and we are putting our future in our own hands with the development of a cost-efficient and flexible supply chain.
So I have shared with you my early views of the company and I am sure that you can sense my enthusiasm.
Celcion is in a great position and I am thrilled to be leading the company into the next phase of growth.
With that, let me turn the call over to Dr. Nicholas Boris, who will review recent progress around our Gen 1 immuno-oncology product. Nick? Thanks very much, Corinne. You're joining CellCion at a very exciting time, starting with our Ovation II study, which supplements standard chemotherapy and surgery with our Gen 1 immunotherapy in patients with newly diagnosed advanced ovarian cancer. This Phase I-II study will meet our initial target of enrolling 110 subjects...
typically seen around one year after being randomized. We hope that Gen 1 will prolong that considerably. At this time, about one third of the PFS events have been reported.
In newly diagnosed patients, time to cancer progression depends on genetic makeup of the patient and their cancers. Patients with a certain genetic makeup such as a BRCA or HRD signature mutations do very well when they are given a relatively relatively new drug called the PARP inhibitor. However, as Corinne mentioned, only about one half of patients are eligible. Our work with Gen 1 is focused on the patients who do not get a great benefit from the PARP inhibitors.
Thus far, with only 30% of the data reported, we are seeing the data favoring Gen1. However, this is only 30% of the data and holds no statistical significance at this time.
Gen 1 safety is continuously being evaluated and reported to our data safety monitoring board, and we are pleased that the patients are tolerating Gen 1 well. Most common toxicities related to Gen 1 are abdominal pain, nausea, fatigue, fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. Our next important milestones are to enroll about 130 patients in the trial, share their preliminary data with our medical advisors, which include the GOG partners, who are among the top opinion leaders in the field of gynecologic oncology.
In addition to our work with Gen 1 as a treatment in patients with newly diagnosed ovarian cancer, we have initiated two important collaborations with major institutions based on emerging science of immunotherapy and the role of IL-12. As Corinne has mentioned in her remarks, we are collaborating with Dr. Haider Magdi of the University of Pittsburgh on combining Gen 1 with dual checkpoint inhibitors in patients with persistent or recurrent ovarian cancer. In other words, we are working with the University of Pittsburgh on combining Gen 1 with dual
patients who failed first-line therapy. This is some very exciting science supporting this study, and we have three centers who have already committed to be a part of it.
We have finalized another Phase 1-2 study evaluating Gen 1 with a vastin that will be executed in collaboration with several major cancer centers. The study has been approved by the FDA and we will be making an announcement in the near future on the details of the collaboration and the start date. The study has been approved by the FDA and the FDA.
In summary, we look forward to completing the Ovation II study this year and reviewing the initial findings with our advisors with the goal of moving into a registrational study. We also plan to initiate two key collaborations in combining Gen I with other immunotherapies to unlock Gen I's full potential.
Thank you Nick.
Our progress with our proof of concept vaccine development programs has been equally impressive.
I'd like to invite Khushi to make a few comments in this regard. Khushi?
Thank you very much, Corinne. It is great to have you on board at these exciting times in the company.
Now, regarding the vaccine program, we have been making steady progress in the development of our Placene technology that is based on a plasmid DNA vector containing multiple antigens of one or more pathogens.
with an optional immune modulating agent.
and a DNA delivery system and an adjuvant.
This DNA-based multivalent vaccine that is administered without the aid of a device or a virus is potentially advantageous over current vaccines in several ways.
including the breadth of immune response, flexibility of the vaccine design, durability of the immune response, shelf life, and manufacturing.
In our preclinical studies, a single plasmid placene vector containing the spike antigen of SARS-CoV-2 alpha or delta variant or a combination of alpha and delta variants elicited strong IgG and T cell responses upon intramuscular administration.
The neutralizing activity of the IDG response was verified in a pseudo lentivirus cell-based assay.
In a live viral challenge study in a mouse model of SARS-CoV-2 previously immunized with our alpha or delta variant vaccine or the combination alpha delta variant vaccine.
was safe and reduced viral burden in lung tissue by over 90%.
demonstrating a robust protection from the viral exposure, confirming our early results from a cell-based assay as mentioned above.
The magnitude of IgG and neutralizing anti response or tcell response.
to single or dual variant vaccines was comparable to a commercial mRNA vaccine.
in pseudo lentivirus assay, the dual antigen vaccine was equally effective against both.
Alpha and Delta variants
However, in comparison, the commercial vaccine was less effective against the highly mutated Delta variant.
These results support our hypothesis.
that a dual variant vaccine has distinct advantages over a single variant vaccine.
The durability studies in mice show the neutralizing antibody titers persist for at least five months.
The study is in progress and additional time points to be collected in the future.
A three-month stability study shows the neutralizing activity of R-placene vaccine is maintained.
at 4 degrees centigrade.
Additional time points for this ongoing study are being collected in future.
Based on this encouraging mouse data, we have begun immunization studies in non-human primates.
Immunization of synonymous monkeys with a single alpha variant vaccine administered as a single booster dose was safe and accompanied with IgG and neutralizing antibody responses that suggest our vaccine is working.
At early time points, the IDG titers from alpha variant vaccine were lower than that of a commercial vaccine administered side by side.
The NHP study is still in progress for collection of the immune response data after a second boost.
In parallel, we are continuing to conduct additional optimization studies for vector design, delivery efficiency, and adjutancy are in progress in an effort to continually improve our vaccine platform.
Corinne?
Thank you, Kiran. Thank you, Kiran. Thank you, Kiran. Thank you, Kiran. Thank you, Kiran. Thank you, Kiran, for that very thorough overview. I'd like to turn the call over to Jeff Church, who will review our second quarter financial results. Jeff? Thank you, Kiran. Details of our second quarter 2022 financial results were included in the press release we issued this morning before the open and in our Form 10Q, which we filed today before this call. Celcion ended the quarter with $48.1 million in cash investments and interest receivable as of June 30, 2022. Adding to our cash position, we...
was $13.4 million, which compared to $7.3 million in the first six months of 2021. It is important to note that this increase was driven primarily by a one-time expenditure in the first quarter of 2022 for the following. Interest expense of $4.5 million related to the sale and subsequent redemption of $30 million of Series A and B convertible redeemable preferred stock and another $100,000 in costs related to the special meaning of shareholders' health.
this action. Due to recent changes in how large brokerage firms like Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade vote discretionary shares held by them in various customer accounts, it has become extremely difficult, if not impossible, to secure this voting threshold. Many small cap, largely retail stocks are facing this same issue. Excluding these one-time expenditures, cash use and operations was approximately $9 million in the first half of 2022 with projected cash utilization for the
$900,000 or 19% increase from 5.2 million reported in 2021. Research and development expenses were $3.2 million in the second quarter of this year, a planned increase of $600,000 from the $2.6 million for the comparable period in 2021. The increase in research and development was primarily due to costs associated with the development of Gen 1 to support the Ovation II program, as well as preclinical development activities.
which was discontinued in the first quarter of 2021. Other clinical regulatory costs were $1 million for both the second quarter of 2022 and 2021. General administrative expenses were $2.9 million in the second quarter of 2022, which compares to $2.6 million in the same period last year. The increase was primarily attributed to higher professional fees, largely legal fees to defend various suits filed after the announcement in July 2020.
$5,000, and this compared to $400,000 in the comparable prior year. This decrease was attributable to the payment of early termination and end-of-term charges to Horizon Technology Financial Corporation in June 2021 totaling $235,000. The company entered into a $10 million loan facility with Silicon Valley Bank in the second quarter of 2021 and used $6 million from this facility to retire all the outstanding indebtedness.
with Horizon, which carried a much higher interest rate. With that, I'll now turn the call back to Corinne. Thank you, Seth.
In closing, I would like to thank everyone for joining us today, and I look forward to providing exciting updates in the quarters to come. With that, I would like now to open the call for Q&A.
If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment.
Again, press star 1 to ask a question.
And we'll take our first question from Emily Bodnar with HC Wainwright.
Hi, thanks for taking the questions and welcome to Team Curran. Maybe I'll start with a question for you and then I have a few follow-ups, but as the new CEO , maybe discuss if you have any updated goals for the company and the pipeline and if you plan to put more of a focus on vaccine development given your background at Moderna. Thanks.
Well, thank you very much, Emily. Yes, so as I said, you know, for now it's a bit too early for me to start talking about strategy and future plans for the company. But as you might have heard during my written remarks, you know, I'm very enthusiastic about the plasmin DNA platform and what it has to offer, both in immuno-oncology and in vaccine development. So we definitely…
We'll wait for the data to turn out, obviously, both with the ovarian cancer program and the COVID-19 proof of concept program. But more to come in the next quarters for sure, Emily.
Okay, great. And then just a follow up, could you maybe discuss if you're going to have any other data updates on the Ovation 2 study this year and what that might consist of? And then on the vaccine program, obviously the major vaccine players are beginning to evaluate boosters with the newer COVID variants like the Omicron variant. So maybe just talk about how you think your platform could compete with that and if you plan to evaluate newer variants in the clinic.
with the mRNA vaccines that are currently marketed.
But maybe, Khushi, do you want to add to what I'm saying here?
Yeah, I mean, I, I agree, Corinne, that this platform is for proof of concept and we're using SARS-CoV-2 for that purpose. Since the reagent is available, there's a regulatory path, but our intent is to develop a platform not to compete for SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. I would also like to mention a point that as you are following our vaccine program for about...
maybe just under two years or so, we have been talking about going after multiple variants from a single plasmid or multiple antigens. And now it's great to see that, you know, the commercial players are also going after SARS strategy. And hypothesis has been pretty much consistent with how the vaccine field is going. But clearly, as Corinne said, we're developing platform technology using SARS-CoV-2 and no intent to directly compete.
However, down the road, if we do intend to use it as a booster, we don't rule that out for SARS-CoV-2.
intend to use as a booster you know we don't rule that out for SARS-CoV-2.
Thank you, Kirshid. And on your first question, Emily, I'll ask Nick to comment on the availability of new data for the Gen 1 program. Yes, thanks very much for that question. As we mentioned in our prepared remarks, we're currently collecting the data. We have about 30 percent of our primary endpoint data that's been collected. And our plan is to put that all together and analyze it in front of our GOG partners. And that we plan to do sometime in the fall.
And once we get some direction from the partners, I think that the company may be interested in sharing that with the investors.
Okay great, thank you.
from Kumar Raja with Brookline Capital Markets.
Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations Corinne on joining the team.
So first with regard to the Ovation trial,
What should be expected in terms of the upper limit in terms of the number of patients that would be enrolled in the trial? Will you be stopping enrollment probably end of September or how should we think about that? And next, with regard to the planned phase one, two trials in combination with the checkpoint inhibitors, how should we think about sequencing there and what are your expectations in terms of the safety profile with the combination?
and depending on the enrollment rate, reaching 130, which would give us a much more robust data platform to look at, that would take perhaps another three months or so, again depending on the enrollment rate.
Going on to your next question in regards to combining Gen1 with immune checkpoint inhibitors. So this is a new area for Gen1. The way the study is designed is that we're going to have a safety run-in of Gen1 in combination with a standard dose of the checkpoint inhibitors that were found to be safe. And then we'll escalate the dosing according to the safety signals and hopefully announce a safe dose early next year after we start the trial.
Okay, and in terms of the.
A safety profile with Avast inwards the expectation there. Thank you.
In terms of a safety profile with Avastin, we do not anticipate any overlapping toxicities. As you know, with Avastin, you worry about blood pressure change and cardiovascular. Also, as we try to emphasize with the key advantage of Gen 1, this is a local regional applied treatment. So Avastin is IV. Gen 1 is given intrapartineally.
So there's little drug-drug interaction to be anticipated. So again, we're following a very similar course as with our other studies. We're going to start off with a safety run-in to look at the initial patients from a DSMB point of view, establish a safe dose, and then continue the study from there.
Okay great, thanks so much.
Okay great thanks so much.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 at this time.
We'll take our next question from David Bouts with small cap research.
Hey, good morning everyone and thanks for the update this morning. So I've got two questions about the Placene technology for the first one. When do you anticipate the next results from the non-human primate study and what types of data should we expect at that time? And then in addition to COVID, what are the other indications of the company considering for applying the Placene technology to?
Thank you very much David for your questions. So I'm going to ask her to comment on on both of your questions. But let me before I let that question answer, let me say a few things about the development of the platform. Obviously, we are developing the pressing technology as a platform. COVID-19 is a proof of concept. So, you know, you are right to ask questions about possible other antigens besides COVID-19. COVID, would you like to take the questions?
We have a very solid mouse data. There's also evidence so far from this NHP study that a vaccine is immunogenic. We would like to further, and also in terms of neutralizing antibody has been elicited, we would like to further show that it protects the animal against the vital challenge, life vital challenge. So evidence of immunogenicity, some durability data.
protection against the virus. These are the things we would like to show. And as you know, that NHP studies are kind of stepping stone towards human clinical trials, and there would be enormous accomplishment to demonstrate that. Along the side in our preclinical level, we will be continuing to show stability shelf life at four degrees centigrade and also durability in from our mouse study complementary to NHP studies.
And the second question was any additional pathogen. Exactly, I mean, that's a great question because we're not married to SARS-CoV-2. It's a proof of concept pathogen we picked because of the pandemic. But clearly, since our vaccines are designed in a way that it can have different antigens, but also molecular.
boosters, molecular adjuvants. So certainly we could go after more difficult to handle pathogens such as HIV, RSV, where maybe additional components such as, you know, epitopes, immune epitopes will be perhaps more important than just an antigen. Monkeypox is another pathogen that, you know, we could test our technology that's being developed with SARS-CoV-2 to go against some of those pathogens.
And it depends, you know, how the, I mean, these days the pandemics would come, many epidemics, we will take a case-by-case basis, but certainly difficult to treat, difficult to develop vaccines such as RSV and HIV would be one of the target monkey pox. And flu, of course, you know, every year we have four variants of flu vaccine, and so that's an ideal candidate for putting multiple variants of a flu vaccine into a single vaccine that's also a potential target.
So, David, if I can comment further, you hear here that, you know, obviously, sky's the limit potentially, but what we are doing first is that we continue to work on the formulation of the platform so that we can optimize the immunogenicity of the vector and the persistency. As I said in my remarks, we are trying to develop what could be the future of vaccines. So, thank you.
All right, great. I appreciate you taking the questions this morning.
Thank you.
If there are no further questions at this time, I'll turn the call back to the company for any closing comments.
Thank you. I'll close out this call. I hope all of you on the line try not to be very informative.
It certainly represents
As you can see, the commitment to our research, I call it palpable. I hope you feel it too.
I'll remind you that our fundamentals are strong as Karen pointed out in getting stronger.
Under her leadership, we expect the future to hold great promise for patients, for the medical community, for our shareholders.
And we look forward, I look forward to participating in these calls with the management team.
And my promise to you is that we will keep you informed on our future developments.
and the progress of the company. It is very, very exciting.
transition to what we believe is the future of medicine.
under this terrific leadership.
So, thank you all very much. I hope you have a wonderful day.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.