Hello everyone. Good morning. My name is Malone, and I will be your operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome you to Imunon's Third Quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Following the speakers prepared remarks; there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Kim Golodetz. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning everyone. This is Kim Golodetz with Alliance Advisors IR. Welcome to Imunon's third quarter 2024 financial results and business update conference call. During today's call, management will be making forward-looking statements regarding Imunon's expectations and projections about future events. In general, forward-looking statements can be identified by words, 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 statements can be guaranteed and actual results may differ materially from such statements. I also caution that the content of this conference call is accurate only as of the date of the live broadcast, November 7, 2024. Imunon undertakes no obligation to revise or update comments made during this call, except as required by law. With that said, I would like to turn the call over to Dr. Stacy Lindborg, Imunon's President and Chief Executive Officer. Stacy?

Thank you, Kim, and good morning everybody. I'd like to begin by noting that Michael Tardugno, the Executive Chairman of our Board; and Khursheed Anwer, our Chief Scientific Officer are both on the line and will be available for Q&A. David Gaiero, our Interim Chief Financial Officer will review our financial results following my remarks. Let me start with the punch line and a groundbreaking milestone for Imunon. On July 30th, we announced the results from our large randomized Phase 2 study OVATION 2, which has the potential to set a new standard in cancer research. This large randomized study involving 112 newly diagnosed patients with advanced ovarian cancer, not only exceeds expectations, but also marks an unprecedented achievement in oncology, an improvement in median overall survival 11.1 months, nearly a year compared to the standard of care, a clinically meaningful and unprecedented improvement in first line treatment. For women who weren't administered PARP inhibitors in the Imunon arm, the median overall survival was not yet reached at data lock, indicating that more than half of the patients in the Imunon arm are still with us with some women approaching the five-year mark since trial initiation. Importantly for those receiving at least 20% of the planned IMNN-001 doses, survival increased by a remarkable 17 months. These outcomes are particularly significant in a patient population that has not witnessed an advancement in frontline therapy, which extends patients' lives for over 25 years. More crucially OVATION 2 is the first study ever to demonstrate an improvement in overall survival in this context. For a deeper dive and to better understand these outcomes, I encourage you to visit our ovarian cancer R&D Day presentation from September 18th, which is available on our website under the News and Investors tab and then scientific presentations.…

Thank you, Stacy. Details of Imunon's third quarter 2024 financial results are included in the press release we issued this morning and in our Form 10-Q, which we filed today before the market opened. As of September 30, 2024, Imunon had $10.3 million in cash and cash equivalents. With our continued focus on strategically managing our cash, while continuing to advance our programs, we expect our capital resources to fund operations into the third quarter of 2025. Research and development expenses were $3.3 million for the third quarter of 2024 compared with $2 million for the third quarter of 2023. The increase was driven primarily by increased clinical spend related to OVATION 2 and the PlaCCin trial. General and administrative expenses were $1.7 million in the third quarter of 2024 as compared with $1.9 million in the third quarter of 2023. Our net loss was $4.9 million or $0.34 per share for the third quarter of 2024, as compared with a net loss of $3.5 million or $0.37 per share for the third quarter of 2023. Turning briefly to financial results for the first nine months of 2024. Research and development expenses were $9.4 million for the first nine of 2024 compared with $7.7 million for the first nine months of 2023. The increase was driven primarily by increased clinical spend related to OVATION 2 and the PlaCCin trial. General and administrative expenses were $5.6 million for the first nine months of 2024 as compared with $7.3 million for the first nine months of 2023. The decrease in G&A expenses in the first nine months of 2024 compared with the first nine months of 2023 was primarily driven by decreased employee-related expenses and decreased professional fees. Our net loss was $14.6 million or $1.39 per share for the first nine months of 2024 as compared with a net loss of $14.6 million, or $1.64 per share for the first nine months of 2023. With that financial review, I'll turn the call back to Stacy.

Thank you, Dave. As I mentioned during our last quarterly call, we've taken a number of steps to conserve cash and align our critical needs with available capital. The pace of Phase III will depend on several factors, including access to capital and patient recruitment. But at this point, we are targeting a regulatory readout by the end of 2029. Financing the company is necessary to achieve success. At this junction, and as Dave pointed out, our cash runway accounting for costs associated with starting the trial in Q1, extends into Q3 of 2025. We are able to raise funds from our ATM facility and would look for a more substantial raise with investors who see the value of IMNN-001 in ovarian cancer. Our seasonal COVID-19 vaccine trial is on track to read out before the end of the year, and we are actively pursuing acquisition license or partnership for this asset to provide non-dilutive funding. Our TheraPlas technology underpins IMNN-001 and this may likely may have an application to other oncology indications such as pancreatic and colon cancers. These remain interesting areas to pursue should we have the financial resources to do so. Before I open the call to your questions, I want to remind you of the power of our technology. IMNN-001 allows durable therapeutic and dose-dependent production and release of IL-12 into the tumor microenvironment. The lack of toxicity shows its advantages over other approaches to IL-12, such that the ability of IMNN-001 to achieve well-tolerated and durable dose levels of IL-12 along with other anticancer cytokines could usher in the first immuno-based gene therapy for ovarian cancer. I want to leave you with the following thoughts. We may have in our hands the first and only immunotherapy that's effective for the treatment of ovarian cancer. We've…

I’m sorry.

There we go. We hear you.

I don't have any questions but I do have just a short comment here. First thanks for sharing a remarkable and very optimistic update. In this short tenure of yours at the company, we've seen the organization be laser-focused, streamline and delivering results that by any standard of measure suggest a significant investment opportunity. I believe that we can all agree that the future of Imunon is bright and that together with our shareholders, Imunon will deliver on its mission to have a meaningful impact on patients' lives. So with that, I'll return it back to the operator, who can open it up for questions.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from David Bautz from Zacks. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning everyone. Stacy thanks for the overview this morning. It was very helpful. My first question is about the Phase 3 study upcoming. What percentage of advanced ovarian cancer patients are on PARP inhibitors? And are you going to try to match that percentage in the study? And I guess kind of the second part to that question would be are there any other treatments that you're going to be looking at in combination with your therapy?

David, great to hear from you. Thank you for the question. And as you reflect on the data that we've shared even on this call about patients with PARP inhibitors, we think that the Phase 2 trial shows very similar to what we can expect in the general community. So the practicing community as well as what we'll see in Phase3. So, we saw about 40% of patients receiving PARP inhibitors in our trial. We think that could go up as high as 50% in Phase 2 the trial worked very well in terms of balance and randomization, but this is something that we are carefully thinking about from a design perspective. Women that have HR deficiency, which includes BRCA mutation, have been shown to benefit from PARP inhibitors and that is a component that we will discuss with FDA and plan to bring into our design so that we can ensure there is balance. It is a group that had differentiated efficacy. And right now that is the plan for treatment. Your second part to the question was are there other treatments that we're considering. We are going to have this very explicitly included in our protocol. And again we'll discuss this with FDA and we'll get their feedback on our protocol.

Okay. As far as financing the study, so you're ready to launch with the capital that you have right now. Is this going to kind of be a finance as you go? Are there thoughts to do a huge financing? How are you kind of thinking about that right now?

That's right. And you heard very correctly, our cash runway includes fully burdened with launching the trial everything that's required to get the trial up and running and with a good pace of patients enrolling. And in terms of fundraising, the goal is to fund the trial in full and we want to do this with investors that are aligned with the long-term impact for patients and our strategy. We know this will take time. And we're currently looking at the best and investor-friendly means to fully fund the study.

Okay, sounds good. Appreciate you taking the questions.

Thank you, David.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kemp Dolliver from Brookline Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Great. Good morning and thank you for tang the questions. I'm going to have two questions. First on 101, you mentioned you've started BD activities, are you at a point where you've had their CDAs in place? Or are you still in the very early steps?

Yes. So, it's premature to offer in-depth comments around the partnership opportunities that we are pursuing, but as you would expect us to do we have appropriate feelers out. We're working with some very professional people in this regard and we're awaiting our data from the proof-of-concept study and I guess one point I really want to make is that we are very intent on ensuring that any ownership ordeal really reflects the value of our product and the platform and we do not intend to fill it for a bargain.

Great. Thank you for that. And the second question relates to the Phase 3 trial and previous comments that you're expecting you'll have some interim readouts. Is that still going to be the case?

Yes. We've given a lot of thought, we very carefully designed the Phase III trial with seeking expertise outside the company. Part of having a thoughtful design is I'm really looking to maximize the likelihood of success for a registration trial assuming that it is effective which we believe we have very strong confidence based on our data. It's also to allow a thoughtful design I think in Phase III where you have a fatal illness is to allow early reads on data that could allow for an early submission for a subgroup and also for the overall trial. So, we have given a lot of thought to this. We have very sophisticated input from positions that know this field very well and we will be talking about these design components with FDA. But it would very much allow us to align interim decisions for the trial that are really in the best interest of the product and patients long term, but also with investors that we're talking with.

Great. And are there -- obviously you're finalizing the details, but fair to say that the $50 million cost estimate you've given previously is pretty reliable at this point?

Yes. We've done really -- very thorough top to bottom estimates and continue to come back with what we think is a really imminently fundable trial and a number that is very attractive when you compare to other trials of this magnitude in the oncology world. So yes, we remain very confident in our estimates.

Great. Thank you so much.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from James Molloy from Alliance Global Partners. Go ahead.

Hey guys, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I wonder if you walk through some of your expectations coming out of the end of Phase II meeting and what would sort of be a good bad or equivocal meeting with the FDA? And then any thoughts that you could share with us in advance of that where you hope to expect the Phase III trial design to look like sort of enrollment time lines and potential interim cut points that we could be looking for? And then the last question would be, would you be able to characterize the partnership environment for either PlaCCin or perhaps even for IMNN-001? I imagine you're getting interest from a larger pharma for that asset as well. Thanks.

Thank you, James for the question. Let me see if I can take through them. So expectations for the end of Phase II meeting as is common in the industry of course we'll plan to go through our OVATION 2 data which is really the foundation of our Phase III trial. And one of the key goals is to discuss the proposal for Phase III. As I described earlier there's been a lot of thought that's gone into our proposal that we've shared with them, we've chosen to select the definitive endpoint of our primary endpoint overall survival. And we expect that will be the endpoint of the trial. But we of course will come out of that discussion really seeking their advice and input. The inclusion criteria that ticked through a little bit in the prepared remarks are very similar to Phase 2, and we really do look forward to a constructive conversation with them. Your second question, I guess was related to timing. So you can clarify if you had something else in mind. But we are planning by having the end of Phase 2 in this month we are intending to have the protocol, pulled together by the end of the year and everything that is between that and the first patient enrolled occurring in Q1 of next year. So we've done a lot of work in advance to allow for a successful activation of the study and to be able to move quickly. The last was characterizing the partnership environment. And we've been very intentional to not get ahead of ourselves given that we know that these discussions the data that will come out of the 101 trial will be very important and we do not yet have that in our hands. So it's a little premature to talk about the environment. We've really been engaging with people who would be key with making introductions or furthering conversations that we think will be the most fruitful for us. And we share your view on that these are likely to also lead to TheraPlas as well as discussions and remain open minded to continue to think about the best investor-friendly means to propel our company forward.

Great. Thank you for taking the questions.

Thank you, James.

Thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to the management for any closing remarks.

Thank you for your questions guys. And as we work in providing new treatment options for women with ovarian cancer and this progresses, and we seek an opportunity to partner and further the development of our vaccine platform. We remain very excited about reporting data from our ongoing clinical studies in the coming months. And we look forward to keeping you appraised of our progress. Thank you for joining us today and for your interest in Imunon. Have a great day.

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.