Gal Cohen
Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open
Thank you, Anne Marie. Good morning to all listeners in the U.S. and good afternoon to those joining us from Israel. Thank you all for your interest in MediWound and for participating in today’s call. We have made considerable progress throughout 2014 and during the fourth quarter as we continue to execute our strategy as planned. In particular, we made significant progress with our commercial and clinical programs which I will detail for you in today’s call. We have achieved many milestones during 2014 including the build out of a full blown commercial organization and the launch of NexoBrid in nearly all of our target markets in Europe. We also expanded NexoBrid global reach with four new distribution agreements and obtained a marketing authorization in New Zealand. In addition we initiated NexoBrid safety study in pediatric patients in Europe in our EscharEx Phase 2 study. Importantly we received a three year extension of our cGMP accreditation for our productions site following a successful inspection by the Israeli Ministry of Health. Now let me turn to a review of the company’s ongoing commercial progress with our lead product NexoBrid in Europe. As many of you know, we initiated the commercial production of NexoBrid in Europe this year which included a recruitment and training of our on ground field force starting in Germany during the second quarter and continuing with Scandinavia, the UK, CE, Benelux, Italy, Spain, and finally France. I am happy to report and as communicated early this year that we now have a full blown commercial organization on the ground and we have launched NexoBrid in each of our target markets except France and the Czech Republic. Our primary calling point of the burn centers and burn units in each of these countries and as of December 31, 2014 we have conducted trainings at approximately one third of the leading burn centers in our target markets in Europe and we plan to continue our training plan to have most of our target burn centers trained by the end of 2015. More than 80% of the training centers were supplied with NexoBrid and the majority of them already started to experiment and treat patients. For example more than 100 patients have been treated in Germany with dozens more treated in Scandinavia and in Israel. We are also beginning to see physicians treating patients with NexoBrid in the UK, in Italy, in Spain, in Poland, in Belgium and we believe that this global effect will further accelerate in 2015. As we have noted before, the introduction of a new treatment paradigm takes time to integrate into the hospitals long standing routine practices. That said, we have put NexoBrid on the map in Europe this year and have made significant progress towards this end as evident by the fourth quarter revenues which were equal to the accumulated revenues in the previous nine months. Health centers gain more experience and confidence and our market access efforts continue to unfold throughout Europe, we expect sales to build further in 2015. During 2014 we had a significant presence at more than 10 international and national medical conferences for burn specialists where we showcased NexoBrid and highlighted its benefit in both scientific and clinical patients. We see a growing number of physicians from leading centers sharing their hands on experience with NexoBrid at international conferences such as International Society of Burn Injuries, the ISBI and the American Burn Association, the ABA. At important local meetings such as [indiscernible] and even in TV interviews and press releases initiated by these burn specialists themselves. In January we had the pleasure of meeting with the President of the German Burns Patient Association who said and I quote "every millimeter counts" stressing how important it is to reduce the surgical burden of burn patients and preserve their unharmed skin. In addition last week we were pleased to hear that the Head of the burn center in Sweden who happens to be also a former burn survivor himself, gave an interview to the Swedish television, expressing his enthusiasm from the prospect of NexoBrid in burn care. The accumulation of experience with NexoBrid and the growing number of medical reference points in burn centers throughout Europe, we further increased confidence and support our aim to accelerated adoption. In 2015, we will continue to support an advanced burn care by being the gold sponsors of nearly all the European national and regional burn conferences. In tandem we will continue to complete the training of nearly all the targeted burn centers which in turn is expected to increase the use and further adoption. In parallel, we are implementing the market experience [ph] we developed in collaboration with IMH, walking towards obtaining favorable funding across Europe. As most of you know, European market access and reimbursement is a country-by-country process. NexoBrid cost effectiveness enables us to generate sales at the hospital level in most countries without the need for national level reimbursement or pricing approval. To support and enhance hospital level market access efforts, we have introduced our proprietary budget impact tool which demonstrates to hospital administrators the positive economic impact NexoBrid will have on their institution and how it enables them and the hospital to have cost savings. We believe that combined with our compelling clinical data our budget impact tool will favorably influence the stakeholders at the hospital level who are the main decision makers. In addition we have completed the submission of the national level Value Dossier [ph] in France and the implication for products Italy and Belgium and certain CE countries. We are also facilitating the inclusion of NexoBrid in local hospital formularies in the UK and in local and regional hospitals in Spain. We expect to complete such market active processes on the individual hospital, at the regional hospital, and at the national level during the second half of 2015. With the ground work laid, we remain confident in our ability to demonstrate both the clinical and the cost effectiveness of NexoBrid in treating severe burn patients. Throughout 2014 we made considerable progress advancing our international commercial strategy. We recently announced the signing of a new physician agreement in Mexico in addition to the three we signed in 2014 in Argentina, Russia, and South Korea. We continue our efforts to expand the reach of NexoBrid in Latin America, in CIS, and in Asia-Pacific regions and hope to have even the first marketing authorization in one of these geographies in 2015. We are executing our commercial strategy for NexoBrid according to plan and are confident that with time NexoBrid will become the standard of care for severe burns as we see more and more centers moving from awareness to interest, from interest to use, from use to ordering and reordering. Turning now to our clinical development program. In addition to expanding geographically we are seeking to expand the NexoBrid label. Towards that end we commenced our Phase 3 pediatric study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of NexoBrid as a treatment for severe burn in children. During 2015 we plan to have all the study sites open throughout Europe. As part of the protocol it does effect in monetary board, it is planned to be convened after the recruitment of 50 patients. To assess the data and recommend whether to expand the study population to include infants and toddlers below the age 4. We await such event with great anticipation as unfortunately many of the burned children are young infants. You could benefit from a more minimally invasive modality since the surgical approach is very demanding on such small children. We recruited more than 110 children in past clinical studies and the effect on those treated with NexoBrid in terms of eschar removal, surgical burden, and long-term course medicine function were even greater than in others. Turning now to the initiation of our Phase 3 program for NexoBrid in the U.S. As previously reported, we completed all the preparations for starting the study in 2014 and we are practically waiting for the IR big clearance to commence the recruitment. Since we need to report the results of this study also to the European Medicine Agency, the EMA as a post approval commitment, we share the U.S. protocol with EMA. Subsequently EMA directly approached the FDA to discuss the study protocol. Following these discussions, the FDA sought the advice of a U.S. burn expert which is what we have been suggesting for several years now. The FDA has since sent us further recommendations that govern the design of the study. Under the current proposed protocol, the FDA has now agreed that eschar removal shall be the only primary end point and shall be tested against the weak arm which is expected to be a placebo hydrogen. This change to a single primary end point of eschar removal is expected to be less of a challenge giving the positive results in our past Phase 2 studies conducted in U.S. And will allow us to reduce the number of patients recruited to about 175 from the original 200 patients. In addition, the other two previously primary end points of surgical burden and long-term cosmetics can now be assessed at a secondary efficacy end point and as a non-priority safety end point respectively. And evaluated as before against the standard of care. As a result of this modification, we expect to be in a position to have top line results on the primary and secondary end points in the first half of 2017 and the long-term follow up of 12 months and 24 months in the first half of 2018 and 2019 respectively. Following this requested amendment, with the product available to severe burn patients in Europe and subject to favorable results in the acute phase end points, we consider to discuss with FDA the possibility of submitting a BMA after the recruitment of all the patients and analysis of the acute phase; primary, secondary, and safety data. And thereafter to supplement the 12 month and 24 month long-term follow up safety data when available. So while amendment may have held the initiation of the US study, it may actually further increase the study probability of success and possibly accelerate our time to filing. Looking beyond NexoBrid, our phase 2 clinical study of EscharEx for the treatment of chronic and hard to heal wound is ongoing. EscharEx is based on the same technology as NexoBrid so we believe that its development programs tend to significantly lower risk when compared to other phase 2 programs. We base this belief on the wealth of clinical data as well as the preclinical toxicology and manufacturing control data that was gained in the development and approval of NexoBrid. This allows us to focus on the clinical development of EscharEx to expedite time to market which will continue to open additional clinical sites in June 2015 and to report the top line results from this trial by the end of 2015. We are looking forward to advancing EscharEx in this large and growing market with significant unmet medical needs. With that overview of our progress let me turn the call over to Sharon Malka, our Chief Financial Officer for a review of our financials. Sharon?