Francisco J. Silva
Analyst · Maxim
Thanks, Rob. For the benefit of those who are new to the BioRestorative story, I would like to take a moment to summarize our developmental programs. Our lead clinical stage candidate BRTX-100, is a novel cell-based therapeutic engineered to target areas of the body that have little blood flow. The product is formulated from autologous or a person's own cultured mesenchymal stem cells collected from the patient's bone marrow. The safety and efficacy of BRTX-100 in treating chronic lumbar disc disease, or CLDD, is being evaluated in an ongoing Phase II prospective randomized, double blinded and controlled study. A total of up to 99 eligible subjects will be enrolled at up to 16 clinical sites across the United States. Subjects included in the trial will be randomized 2:1 to receive either BRTX-100 or placebo. In a recent presentation that I gave a few weeks ago as part of the Clinical Innovations track at the International Society for Stem Cell Research or ISSCR 2025 Annual Meeting in Hong Kong, I reviewed very promising blinded data from the first 36 subjects enrolled in the Phase II trial. By the way, that number of subjects was up more than twofold since my previous presentation at ISCT back just in May. To help put the preliminary binding results in perspective, the FDA is requiring at least a greater than 30% improvement in function in the Oswestry Disability Index, or ODI, and a greater than 30% reduction in pain on the visual analog scale, or VAS, in determining whether the clinical trial will be allowed to proceed and ultimately gain BLA approval. Thus far, BRTX-100 is doing much better than that as I presented at ISSCR. Over 74% of the subjects showed greater than 50% improvement in function by 52 weeks. Over 72% of the subjects reported greater than 50% reduction in pain by 52 weeks. And combined, greater than 50% improvement in both ODI and VAS measures was achieved by a meaningful portion of subjects across all time points. From a safety perspective, again, no serious adverse events or dose-limiting toxicities were reported between 26 and 104 weeks at the target dose of 40 million cells. The data presented at ISSCR was meaningful and demonstrated a strong signal towards safety and efficacy and has helped us in connection with an increased enrollment rate. In fact, I am pleased to report that we are now more than halfway through enrollment of our 99 subject enrollment goal. In addition, again, based on the positive preliminary data, we intend to meet with the FDA in connection with a proposed Type B meeting in order to accelerate the regulatory pathway towards the BLA license of our BRTX-100 candidate. This is really exciting news, and we hope to be in a position to discuss further in the coming weeks. Moving to our core preclinical metabolic program, ThermoStem, we are developing cell-based therapy candidates to target obesity and metabolic disorders using brown fat or fat-derived stem cells to generate brown adipose tissue or BAT as well as exosomes secreted by the BAT cells. BAT is intended to mimic naturally occurring brown adipose depots that regulate metabolic homeostasis in humans and is involved in weight loss. While further work is needed to fully understand the mechanism of action of thermostat and its impact on weight loss, we have not seen nor do we expect the same negative secondary effects of GLP-1 pharmaceuticals, such as loss of muscle mass and negative cardiovascular effects. As awareness of the promise that our ThermoStem-based BAT holds for the treatment of obesity and related metabolic disorders continues to grow, it is important that this potentially game-changing opportunity is well protected, both for us and any current and our future potential licensing partners. Accordingly, we have been methodically building a comprehensive portfolio of issued patents that cover the U.S. and international markets. And we are pleased to see our previously reported substantive discussions with an undisclosed commercial stage regenerative medicine company with regard to a potential license agreement for our ThermoStem metabolic disease programs are continuing. While we cannot provide interim progress updates and will provide any assurances that we will come to a mutually acceptable agreement, we are committed to closing the loop on this as soon as practical. With that, I will turn the call over back to Lance.