Raymond J. Tesi
Analyst · BTIG
Thank you, David, and thank you everyone for joining the call. As is our practice, I will arrange my remarks to highlight the takeaways from the fourth quarter and subsequent period, we'll then move to Q&A. Starting with XPro. During 2021 we provided extensive detail of our clinical programs in Alzheimer's disease including the results of the Phase 1 trial and the design of our Phase 2 programs in Mild AD and MCI or Mild Cognitive Impairment, a prodromal form of Alzheimer's disease. The Phase 1 trial exceeded expectations. The study showed that XPro 1 milligram per kilogram once a week as a subcu injection, decreases neuroinflammation in patients with ADi, that's capital A, capital D, small i. ADi is the term we have coined for patients with AD -- with Alzheimer's disease who have biomarkers of inflammation and neuroinflammation. The Phase 1 trial demonstrated downstream benefits of decreasing neuroinflammation, including decreased neurodegeneration, or nerve cell death, improved synaptic function, arguably the most important target in Alzheimer's disease and remyelination. We’ve provided anecdotes of improved cognition in the Phase 1 trial but definitive evidence of the effects of XPro on cognition in patients with ADi awaits the results of the blinded randomized Phase 2 trials. The company understands it must deliver clinically relevant data in these trials. We have presented detailed descriptions of the ADi Phase 2 trials previously. Here I will highlight the two unique aspects of those trials. Both use enrichment strategies to enroll patients, and both use EMACC that's capitalized E-M-A-C-C, to test cognition. EMACC stands for early Alzheimer's disease cognition composite. EMACC is ideally suited to measure cognitive changes in patients with MCI and mild AD. EMACC is a highly sensitive index of cognitive change, composed of validated neuropsychological test measures. EMACC is psychometrically better suited to the early and mild range of illness, than measures such as ADAS-COGs. ADAS-COGs suffers from a floor effects, which means that 9 of the 13 elements are at a ceiling effect, which means that 80% of the MCA patient, MCI patients basically perform them flawlessly. This renders ADAS-COGs insensitive to measuring changes in performance in these early AD populations. Finally, EMACC is being used by other companies in AD trials, and we believe it will become the standard endpoint for cognition in clinical trials in this group of patients. Put simply, EMACC is the best tool for the task. I believe that many of the failures of AD drug development in the past have been partly caused by the use of the historically crude measures of cognition. Enrichment strategy is a term coined by the FDA and is commonly used in oncology trials. Enrichments means that the use of biomarkers to select patients for a clinical trial to match their disease with the drug therapy. Basically you're slanting the trial to success. Our CNS trials are enriched for patients who have neuroinflammation. This distinct ADi subset equals about half of the Alzheimer's disease patient population. The ADi enrichment strategy provides trial design advantages that improve efficiency and decrease risk. Because dementia in patients with ADi progresses both rapidly and reliably, I'll repeat, rapidly and reliably, the clinical trials are shorter and smaller than trials that do not use enrichment strategies. Combining findings from publicly available databases, such as the ADNI database out of the USC, with data from our Phase I trial that showed that the response to XPro happens quickly in patients with mild, we designed the MCI and mild AD trials to last three or six months, respectively. Please refer to previous press releases and webinars, and the website for more details. The mild Alzheimer’s Phase II trial is actively screening patients. We will announce when we have treated our first patient. The MCI trial will start in a few months and we remain confident that the top-line data will be reported in the first half of '23 for the MCI trial, the second half of '23 for the mild AD trial. In 2021, we contributed 8 presentations at the two of the most important medical meetings for Alzheimer's disease: the AAIC and CTAD. We expect 2022 to be equally productive. In three weeks’ time, INmune Bio is part of at least four presentations at the upcoming AD/PD meeting, the largest Alzheimer's meeting in Europe. We expect to maintain our high profile at the AAIC and CTAD in '22. One of the bigger advantages of XPro to target neuroinflammation is that XPro can be used to treat a wide variety of neurodegenerative and neuroinflammatory diseases. We have announced a Phase 2 trial on Treatment Resistant Depression funded by the NIH -- partially funded by the NIH. This third Phase 2 study with XPro will be initiated in 2022. Other diseases remain on the horizon, but more of that in future. Before getting on to INKmune, I want to highlight the exciting research using INB03. INB03 is a DN-TNF program focused on oncology. And I'll remind you that was our first Phase 1 clinical trial several years ago. Mucin 4 or MUC4 is a proteoglycan expressed on the surface of many solid tumors. Roxana Schillaci has discovered that MUC4 is a biomarker for resistance to immunotherapy. Data with INB03 presented -- data using INB03 in breast tumors expressing MUC4 have been presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in 2020, 2021 and the publication list is long and growing. Those posters and publications are available on our website. Why is this program important? We believe two of the biggest trends in cancer immunotherapy is resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitors and inhibitions in trastuzumab based therapies. Resistance to checkpoint inhibitors is about the immunobiology of the tumor microenvironment. INB03 appears to make cold tumors hot and may convert a tumor resistance to checkpoint inhibitors to one that is sensitive to checkpoint inhibitors. The expanding role of trastuzumab based therapies is following on two parallel tracks. And I have to say this is one of the more exciting innovations in the last six months. The first track is that trastuzumab based drug conjugates or tras ADCs, the most prominent being an HER2, are being used a lot. The second is the expanding use of tras ADCs low expressing HER2 new tumors. The breast cancer expansion in low expressing tumors more than doubles the number of patients who may benefit from tras ADC tumors. In breast cancer -- in animal models MUC4 expression prevents binding of trastuzumab to HER2 new making them resistant to therapy. Muscular expression is driven by soluble TNF. So when you give INB03, MUC4 expression decreases, and the tumor becomes sensitive to therapy. Resistance to tras ADC is now being reported in patients and we expect this conversation to continue and expand over the next year or so. Additional data will be presented at this year’s AACR and our presence at San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium will continue. The third -- in our opinion the third big trend in oncology is the increased importance of NK cells. And this is a great segue into our INKmune program. One clear difference of our INKmune program compared to other NK programs is that we do not give NK cells. I repeat, we do not give NK cells, but aim to improve the function of the abundant NK cells in patients with NK, with cancer. INKmune is a universal off-the-shelf therapy with cost effective manufacturing that activates the patient's own NK cells. I say that again, we believe the patient's NK cells have tools -- have all the tools they need to kill the cancer, but they lack the signals necessarily to initiate that process. Most case patients have plenty of NK cells that just don't work. INKmune changes the patient’s innate resting NK cells into memory like NK cells. Memory like NK cells are the cells that matter because they're the NK cells that kill cancer. It's possible to make memory like NK cells from cytokines, but this requires a triple cytokine cocktail of IL-12, 15 and 18. Because this combination is too toxic to give to patients, this conversion must be done ex vivo in a [test tube like] process that is costly and logistically complex. In 2021, we transplanted INKmune from bench demand where patients with hematologic malignancies had been treated with INKmune. What have we learned? First, INKmune is safe and well tolerated. Each of the patients received a single course of INKmune that is three, simple and intravenous infusions over a two week period. INKmune has given us an outpatient and does not require premedication, conditioning therapy or extra cytokine therapy. INKmune is simple. It can be used in any center that treats cancer patients. INKmune performed better than expected in patients, a high percentage of the patient's resting NK cells are converted to the cancer killing memory like phenotype, the only NK cells that matter in patients with cancer. The patient's memory like NK cells killed NK resistant cancer cells in a laboratory assay. That's to say, it's one thing to change the phenotype. It's another thing to make sure that those cells now kill type cancer. Before treatment, the patient's NK cells did not kill cancer. After INKmune, they do. Finally, both the increase in memory like NK cells, and the cancer killing lasted for many weeks. We call this therapeutic persistence. In the MDS patient, therapeutic persistent lasted at least 12 weeks. That's at least 10 weeks longer beyond the last infusion of INKmune. This is promising. The scientists crave that how are the patients doing. Of the three patients treated, two significantly improved with INKmune. The patient from the high risk MDS trial shows decreased lapse, decreased transfusion requirements, and improved performance status. Before treatment, he was in bed for half the day as an ECOG 2, now he is ECOG 0, living a normal life and for him a normal life means playing [badminton]. The young woman with a failed bone marrow transplant with relapsed AML remains hone to stable disease after a course of INKmune. She may still need a second transplant but the urgency surrounding that decision has been mitigated. The third patient, a young man who has failed two bone marrow transplants to the AML remains in the hospital. This week the high risk MDS program has been purely viewed by the UK National Cancer Research Institute, Myelodysplastic Syndrome Expert Group. This group has accepted the trial for listing on the UK National MDS Trial site. The NCRI scheme is unique to the UK, no proven system exists in the U.S. The NCRI classification allows centers to refer patients to the -- to existing UK trial sites for treatment under the existing program. Without this national listing, the patients must be treated in their local healthcare facilities. There's no ability to refer patients elsewhere. This, we hope will improve enrollment. We also hope that this added validation and exposure to the expert centers that the process entail will provide more patience for the clinical trial now and in the future. Professor Lowdell's team continues to dig deeper into how does this work and why is this better than cytokine questions. In 2022, his team will release data at meetings on these questions. Now to the elephant in the room, why have clinical trial enrollment been slowed and delayed? I promise the company recognizes the problem. The main delay in the Alzheimer's disease Phase II trials has been due to XPro drug supply. Because of COVID-related supply chain issues, new XPro was not available until January 2022. This was a four month delay. Every element of the Alzheimer's disease Phase II program was affected by this four month delay. Now we have 25,000 doses of XPro on hand with another 40,000 doses of drug in the process -- in process, so to speak, that will support for future and further development in Alzheimer's treatment resistant depression and beyond. The XPro drug supply problem is behind us. But the consequences of that delay is the delayed start dates. To make up lost time, we have engaged in international TRO with deep experience in managing Alzheimer's disease trials. We plan to open 45 sites in the mild AD trial and 25 sites for MCI, 85% of the sites will be enrolling both trials. We have hired two additional employees to supplement our existing team to speed site initiations. Finally, we have made an important change in the MCS -- MCI trial. Bear with me for this on a moment. Last year, we committed to positioning XPro for accelerated approval in Alzheimer's disease, if Lilly followed a Phase II accelerated approval regulatory path with donanemab, their promising anti-amyloid therapy. The CMS decision on January 11th made it clear that Phase II programs will most likely be required. This decision impacted our development plans. We have altered the design of the Phase II trial in MCI. It will now be a two arm trial, previously it was a three arm trial, comparing 12 weeks of 1 milligram of XPro to placebo. 60 patients enrolled in a 2:1 ratio. There will be no patients enrolled at 2 milligram per kilogram. The elimination of the 2 milligram per kilogram arm allows us to eliminate invasive diagnostic and biomarker assays that were going to be barriers so to speak to enrollment. The trial endpoints, the statistical power, none of the other elements have changed, and none of the elements of the mild AD Phase II trial have changed. The time from first patient to enrolled, to the last patient enrolled in the MCI trial should be improved with the elimination of these invasive tests. In summary we expect as we have in the past, that the Phase II trials in MCI and mild AD will report top-line data in the first half of '23 and the second half of '23 respectively. That is the MCI trial report in the first half of '23 and the mild AD trial report in the second half of '23. INKmune equally frustrating. I mentioned one benefit of the NCRI classification, is that centers can refer patients to clinical sites outside of detachment area. The second benefit is, it allow other experts centers in the UK to join the program as a clinical site. We hope to NCRI classification in largest pool of eligible patients for this high risk MDS trial. We are also looking to expand into sites outside of the UK. Our goal is simple, get 8 additional patients enrolled by the end of 2022. With that, I will turn it over to David Moss, our CFO, to review certain financial items.