Taylor Crouch
Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead
Thanks, Steve, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll start by noting that we are once again confirming our key clinical development and operating goals through calendar year 2020. We've also improved our net cash utilization for the 2019 fiscal year which along with our cash on hand provides us with enough runway to meet our objectives through fiscal 2020. From an operating perspective, we're making excellent progress in executing the necessary steps for a successful IND and the start of clinical trials. This includes three additional proof-of-concept studies, dose ranging studies, and all the planning that goes along with chemistry manufacturing and controls, as well as good manufacturing practices preparation. Our initial aim is to provide a bridge to transplant with our 3D bio printed human liver tissue patches for patients with end stage liver disease including a select group of patients with inborn errors of metabolism. By implanting our healthy tissue patch in these patients who often have limited treatment options, we want to restore function or offset the deficiencies and enzyme abnormalities related to a specific condition. Ultimately, we hope to delay or reduce the overall transplant in these severe unmet disease areas. As I look ahead to our planned first IND filing in calendar 2020, there are several interim milestones along the way to map our progress. We expect to hold a pre-IND meeting with the FDA in calendar 2019 to focus on the final steps that enable first in human trials. We intend to start our IND enabling toxicity study to support our lead indication in the second-half of calendar 2019. The goal of this key study is to determine reasonable safety for potential use in humans. We'll also aim to conduct additional proof-of-concept studies that support the further development of our NovoTissues to treat end-stage liver disease, and target it in more areas of metabolism. Finally, we plan to continue pursuing orphan drug designations where it makes sense. We successfully received an orphan drug designation for our NovoTissues treatment of Alpha-1-Antitrypsin deficiency in late 2017. Last quarter we submitted a second orphan drug designation application to the FDA, focused on Type 1 Tyrosinemia. In this case the FDA has responded with questions about the predictability of the animal model we're using and whether this is directly translatable to what we might expect to find in human clinical trials. We're evaluating how we move forward to respond to the FDA's comments and depending on the outcome of our internal analysis, we may prefer to wait until we have clinical data before further pursuing this particular orphan drug designation. The potential regulatory designation has no impact on advancing our program toward IND and beyond. And we certainly look forward to availing ourselves of the many other regulatory incentives in the orphan disease, pediatric disease, and regenerative medicine space, throughout the development process. We also continue to believe that our NovoTissues will likely have applicability across a number of indications and as such we intend to explore the safety profile in patients awaiting transplants who have reached end-stage liver disease from a range of pathways. To recap our pre clinical strategy, we're moving forward with a proof-of-concept enablement plan aimed to demonstrate how our healthy liver tissue patches can potentially address a broad range of target indications. Using the same healthy liver tissue construct, we're already successfully conducting studies in animal models in two disease areas. In both A1AT and Type 1 Tyrosinemia, our tissue patch had demonstrated extended retention and robust functionality. In an A1AT model, we've also generated preliminary evidence of reaching some of the insoluble misfolded A1AT variance known as globules that are characteristic of the effects of this disease in the liver. In our Type 1 Tyrosinemia studies, which we published late last year at the liver meeting also known as AASLD, we were able to show an improvement in the median survival rate of treated animals. Furthermore we have initiated several new pre clinical studies during the fiscal third quarter including a number of additional proof-of-concept studies to assess our liver therapeutic tissue performance and to evaluate new treatment modalities. We remain encouraged by our pre clinical results and will continue to communicate our ongoing scientific and development progress through publications and major industry events. As we move closer to our IND filings, our pre clinical studies will focus on optimizing our tissue design, dose ranging and proof-of-concept data in new areas. We're also scaling up our liver tissue patches in anticipation of human dosing requirements. And we're opening up new project in other promising disease areas. In addition, we're advancing our operational capabilities to prepare our chemistry manufacturing and controls plan. Our final objective is to implement clinical scale manufacturing and quality processes well in advance of our first-in-human trials. These steps encompass a wide range of internal functions including documentation, equipment and facilities optimization, process validation and the adoption of stringent manufacturing controls Of note, we received our first clinical grade liver late last year through our partnership with the International Institute for the Advancement of Medicine, IIAM. You'll recall that IIAM is one of the world's leading organizations for the procurement of organs used in medical research and the development of therapeutic applications. And we expect to receive a series of these compassionately donated organs over the next year as we prepare for our first IND and the start of human trials. While we're advancing our liver therapeutic tissue, we'll also continue opportunistically to pursue revenue generating projects that leverage our leading 3D bio printed technology. The Organovo platform includes self procurement from my Samsara division, bioprinter placement and licensing opportunities and custom service agreements and grants derived from our tissue generating and modeling capabilities. We also continue to collaborate with our clients on a variety of custom projects that span from exploring liver disease modeling applications to toxicology studies. For example, in the third quarter, two large pharma clients came back to us with new projects, both of which focused on evaluating a drug toxicity issue. One of our academic partners, UC San Diego, recently shared promising data on the development of our invito non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, NASH disease model, at the NASH-TAG conference in San Francisco a few weeks ago. In short, we induced NASH like conditions in our 3D bioprinted liver tissue model. These diseased tissues were then treated with two clinical compounds where reduction in the disease phenotype namely fat accumulation was observed in each case. This is an exciting step in demonstrating the potential value of a human translational model in developing treatments for NASH, a liver disease that affects millions of patients in the U.S. and worldwide. We're grateful to the National Institutes of Health for supporting this groundbreaking work through their grant and to Dr. David Brenner, Vice Chairman for Health Sciences at UC San Diego, who gave a detailed presentation of these results and the potential for advancing drug development in the NASH space. Our newest board member, Dr. David Shapiro was also present at Dr. Brenner's presentation. I'm pleased that he is engaging his extensive drug development expertise to help us fine tune our first in-human clinical trial design, as well as exploring new and innovative ways to develop the functionality of our liver tissue platform. In closing, we're off to a good start in calendar 2019 with a keen focus on achieving the clinical development milestones that we've laid out over the next 12 to 18 months. I look forward to speaking with you again soon. With that, I'll turn it over to Craig for a more complete financial review.