Cameron Reynolds
Analyst · JonesTrading
Thank you, Andy, and good morning, everyone. 2025 is a pivotal year for Volition as we focus on commercializing our groundbreaking Nu.Q platform in the human diagnostic market. As reported previously, we are in confidential discussions with over 10 companies, and I'm very happy with progress on many fronts. We are at various stages of negotiation across our different pillars, ranging from due diligence to tech transfer to evaluation of clinical samples to term sheet discussion/completion, and also to the contract finalization stage. Fantastic to see things moving through the funnel, albeit obviously confidentially at this stage. Notably, these are not small companies. The combined market value of seven of these companies exceeds $600 billion, underscoring the significant global strength, potential reach and impact our technology could achieve through such partnerships. Our goal is to secure multiple licensing agreements in the human diagnostic space, mirroring our successful strategy in the veterinary space. With diverse deal structures, all with ongoing revenue, and some to include large milestone payments. Our strong clinical evidence supports the broad applicability of our Nu.Q technology in critical areas such as cancer and sepsis, including as a biomarker of interest to epigenetic drug development, an ever-expanding area of focus for big pharma. Cancer and sepsis diagnostics alone represent a combined total addressable market opportunity of approximately $25 billion annually, offering substantial revenue opportunities for Volition, and our future partners. As a reminder, all the pillars are founded on materially the same [ nucleosemic ] technology, which is effective in both cancer and sepsis for both human and animal health uses. Volition is a company powered by Nu.Q, and focused on one thing, measuring chromatin fragments in circulation. This one thing is the basis of all our pillars. We now can measure nucleosomes on around half a dozen different established collaborators' platforms. The broad applicability of what we have developed is, I believe, totally unprecedented. Now taking each pillar in turn, I will start with cancer, a space which is certainly hotting up given the recent Exact, Freenome deal. We are making significant strides in the commercialization of our cancer diagnostic pillar. From a licensing perspective, I'm very pleased to report that two major companies are currently in active negotiations, and have either commenced, or planning to commence the evaluation of our innovative Nu.Q and Capture-Seq technologies, with first results anticipated within the next quarter, two incredibly exciting projects to look out for. Furthermore, our pivotal final lung cancer screening study in Taiwan is progressing rapidly. And I'm delighted that the National Taiwan University Hospital, NTU, team will present interim analysis at the European Society of Medical Oncology Congress in October. Positive findings would position our Nu.Q test for inclusion in the national lung cancer screening programs, representing a potential market exceeding $1 billion annually across Taiwan, U.S., U.K. and France alone. And this could be implemented relatively quickly in several countries where Nu.Q Cancer could be made available as a lab developed test, an LDT, with no need for further regulatory studies. But we may seek a combination of LDT and regulated products in different markets. As Andy discussed, we are also making strong progress with other potential use cases for Nu.Q lung cancer. In particular, as an aid to personalized care by way of treatment selection and in detecting minimal residual disease. We are also making significant headway in the commercialization of Nu.Q NETs. The first prong of our Nu.Q NETs commercial strategy is to leverage our granted CE-marked product approved in the EU for any NETosis-related diseases. Just as a reminder, Volition's chemiluminescent immunoassay, clear version of the CE-marked Nu.Q test, for NETs is run on the IDS i10 automated analyzer platform from IDS, a subsidiary of Revvity. I'd like to thank IDS for their collaborative supportive approach. We are currently selling this product, both directly and in conjunction with IDS, to institutions for use in the very wide range of clinical applications where NETs plays a critical role. In a very significant commercial milestone, we recorded our first revenue from sales of our CE-marked Nu.Q NETs automated product in Europe in Q1 of this year, and sales have continued in the second quarter. This is our first revenue generated from a regulated clinically-approved product in humans. We are very excited that 11 hospital networks in 5 countries have placed orders and are currently assessing its clinical utility in a range of NETs applications with the intention, we believe, of integrating it directly into their routine patient care. In addition, we are in discussions with more than 10 other hospital networks with several evaluations anticipated to start in the second half of this year. In short, a number of hospital groups, in a number of countries, are buying our CE-marked products with a view to using it clinically in a diverse range of NETs-related uses. We're absolutely delighted with the level and breadth of interest that we have seen in the past few quarters, and we continue to receive more inbound inquiries. This is a great outcome for Volition. Customers buy kits, generating not only revenue but also clinical data for a very wide range of NETosis use cases in humans. The CE marked sales are one of the two-pronged approach of Volition's Nu.Q NETs sales. We expect that our CE marked test will start to be used in routine clinical practice with patients next year in EU and then expand to use worldwide through the expected global out-licensing in NETosis, the other prong of our strategy. Licensing discussions are progressing well with several potential licensing companies, who already successfully completed the tech transfer of our asset onto their platforms. As Andy outlined, our extensive clinical evidence supports the use of our Nu.Q NETs technology in a critical area, sepsis. But our negotiations and potential licensing agreements reach far beyond sepsis to other NETs-related conditions. The total addressable market for the testing and monitoring of sepsis intensive care patients alone represents a $1 billion opportunity annually, offering substantial revenue opportunities for Volition, and our future partners. We believe the total addressable market of our Nu.Q NETs assay could be in excess of $10 billion annually, as the use cases expand far beyond sepsis. The range of potential clinical use cases where NETosis plays a role is extremely broad, equating to a mix of potential market sizes from small to very large. There is clearly wide unmet clinical needs driving these evaluations. NETs are a key part of a broad range of clinical conditions and our aim is to become the NETs company worldwide, by partnering with the very best companies, hospital networks and governments. On a personal note, in the near future, I firmly believe that level of NETs is something we all should be tested for regularly by our simple, low-cost test. I, knowing what I do about the importance of NETs, in so many conditions, would get tested with my regular blood work regularly. I foresee a time in the not-too-distant future when the level of NETs in your system is measured as a standard health check. The level of interest in using Nu.Q test is notable. Clinical use cases include coagulation, cardiac issues, renal disease, trauma, burns, autoimmune diseases, organ transplant, pregnancy management and, of course, the biggest being sepsis. We are at different stages of the out-licensing process in humans and negotiations with a range of companies and are very excited about the progress. We look forward to announcing our first deal soon. Next up, Nu.Q Vet. Expanding the global reach of our Nu.Q Vet Cancer Test remains a key priority, enabling vets worldwide to improve canine cancer screening and outcomes. Our supply agreements with leading industry players, including Antech, part of the Mars Science & Diagnostic Group, FujiFilm Vet Systems and IDEXX are instrumental in achieving this. To further accelerate revenue growth and ensure consistent delivery, we are focused on central lab automation. In March, FujiFilm Vet Systems extended their contract with us to validate and then implement a centralized automated platform for the Nu.Q Vet Cancer Test using the IDS i10. I'm delighted to report that the Fuji team have made great progress this second quarter in validating the test in- house and are on track to launch the automated platform in the third quarter. This is the world-first for us, and we believe that it will significantly enhance turnaround times and throughput to meet increasing demand. We believe the automation of central labs is crucial to accelerating our growth rate. And this has become a particular area of focus for us. We aim to get our large customers automated so that they can easily and effectively handle the much larger numbers of tests that will result from having our tests in annual pet wellness panels. Importantly, this automated platform is the same technology utilized for our human diagnostic products, the Nu.Q Cancer, Nu.Q NETs and Nu.Q Discover, highlighting the inherent synergy and efficiency of our core Nu.Q technology. Our fourth and final pillar, Nu.Q Discover. Our Nu.Q Discover tools provide drug developers and scientists with the range of rapid epigenetic profiling assays across preclinical and clinical development pathways for discovery to market ready. Nu.Q Discover is built on proprietary nucleosome quantification technology. It is a valuable research tool for R&D professionals working within the field of pharmacoepigenetics studying the epigenetic basis for variation in response to drugs. The Nu.Q Discover pillar spans activities as diverse as supplying research-use-only kits, either directly, or via our U.S. distributor, DiaPharma, through providing services such as sample processing on-site in Belgium or California. Either with assays or our recently announced high throughput screening method. It also spans collaborations with drug developers utilizing our assays, as a surrogate endpoint, or pharmacodynamic marker, with a specific drug in development. Nu.Q Discover is now serving over 20 clients worldwide, accelerating disease research and drug development across multiple therapeutic areas. We have seen growing demand for our Nu.Q assays as exploratory biomarkers in third parties multinational clinical trials with multiple global clients placing repeat orders. The largest of these projects has projected revenue in hundreds of thousands of dollars for ongoing longitudinal Phase I/IIb study targeting completion next year. We are delighted to support the pharmaceutical companies' clinical efforts in developing new drugs for the treatment of large unmet clinical need. Pharma companies are using Nu.Q assays as exploratory biomarkers today. And if when they advance to companion diagnostic use, this could translate into high-value, multimillion-dollar long-term partnerships. The evidence to support this pillar has expanded significantly this quarter, not only with the publication of a peer-reviewed paper demonstrating the Nu.Q platform's versatility across biological samples and disease models, but also the issue of three application notes. Interestingly, we're also actively exploring co-marketing partnerships to meet the demand of our Nu.Q Discover platform we are seeing worldwide and hope to be able to sign such a deal with a large industry player in the coming quarter. Our robust pipeline and ongoing service expansion suggests continuing strong Nu.Q Discover revenue growth this year. In drawing to a close, I would just like to reiterate that 2025 is about ensuring licensing deals are signed in the human space and we're making very good progress on this. There is strong and broad interest in potential out-licensing and/or supply agreements for both Nu.Q NETs and our oncology portfolio, with the range of commercial discussions progressing well with large companies. Discussions are also progressing well with several national lung screening programs. I believe we are close to signing our first, hopefully of many, out-licensing deal in the human space. This will make a major milestone in our company's path to commercialization and the implementation of our business model. These next few quarters are hugely exciting for our company. I think it is very fair to say that we have now developed a technology platform that has already been a breakthrough in vet oncology. And we are demonstrating how we can also make a significant contribution to both human oncology, and sepsis diagnosis, and treatment in addition to supporting pharm-epi drug development. We now have evidence to support the use of our Nu.Q platform across a range of clinical applications with high unmet needs. It is low cost, robust and reproducible. Now we need to commercialize our technology as quickly and as well as possible, to make our technology accessible worldwide. When successful, this will clearly support our mission of saving lives and improving outcomes of millions of people and animals worldwide. Our strategy to achieve this has been to raise as much non-dilutive funding as possible, ramp revenues, reduce expenses and sign commercial deals with large industry players. Completing commercial deals for the human indications are the final part of this long journey to complete our mission and we remain focused on achieving that objective. Thank you for joining the call today. We very much appreciate it. And we'll now take your questions. Operator?