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Earnings Call: H1 2025

Sep 9, 2025

Operator

Hello everyone, and thank you for joining the ANGLE 2025 interim results call. My name is Claire, and I will be coordinating your call today. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing * followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press * followed by 2 on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to Andrew Newland, CEO. Please begin.

Andrew Newland
CEO & Director, ANGLE

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to ANGLE's interims webcast for 2025. It's been a very strong half year in terms of major progress in commercialization on multiple fronts. However, there has been strong revenue pressure from adverse market conditions, so it's a balanced six-month period. As you know, ANGLE has developed a breakthrough product for cancer diagnostics, which can be used to help patients get better outcomes by making sure that they have more appropriate treatment and also reduce healthcare costs. We're getting closer to its deployment widely for patients. We've had three major achievements during the half year, which are in relation to large pharma contracts, DNA dual analysis, and cluster buster drugs. I will tell you about those now. First, and very importantly, our large pharma strategy, which we've developed as a way of accessing development funds to progress clinical trials in support of prosthetics, has progressed well.

The idea here is that pharma can fund for their own drug development purposes individual clinical trials and that they can actually lead eventually to a companion diagnostic based on the prosthetics system and wide adoption. As you know, we've had three pharma projects, large pharma projects that we've been working on, and all three of those are successfully completed during the period. The first one, the ESI HER2 breast cancer trial, was very important as it demonstrated in a 200-patient cohort phase two trial that two tubes of blood taken at the same time and processed by prosthetics gave very consistent results in terms of the number of cancer cells present, the circulating tumor cell clusters present, and critically, the expression or absence of expression of HER2 protein. This is the key point: the two time points were different.

Very often we saw that the patient's condition had changed, and this was to be expected because the first blood draw was taken prior to the patient being given the HER2 antibody drug conjugate drug, and the second time point was afterwards. We saw significant changes in some, but not all of those patients. We're currently awaiting access to the clinical data to demonstrate whether or not the changes we saw directly correlated with the patient response or otherwise to the drug. That's obviously what we would anticipate. This trial has successfully confirmed that our HER2 assay, our test for analyzing the HER2 protein on the cancer cells, is very useful for the HER2 drug clinical trials and is likely to be relevant for the selection of the drug for individual patients. That was a big step for us.

The two AstraZeneca contracts were slightly different in nature because we were funded to develop assays for AstraZeneca. The first one was in DNA damage response, which is applicable for multiple cancers, and the second one in antigen receptor, which again is a protein, but in this case for prostate cancer. Both of those assay development projects were successfully completed, and we're now waiting to hear from AstraZeneca and from ESI and Bliss Bio, the owner of the ADC in HER2, about next-stage projects. We have next-stage projects under discussion with those companies. The second major achievement was the development of the DNA dual analysis Illumina end-to-end NGS assay, and I'll talk about that in more detail later, but it was a major achievement during the half year.

The third one, which I'll also discuss later, was the publication in Nature Medicine, a top-level peer-reviewed journal, of the first in-patient trials for cluster buster drugs developed using prosthetics and fundamentally dependent on prosthetics. Post the half-year end, since the 30th of June, momentum has continued, and we were absolutely delighted last month to announce our first large medtech collaboration. Why would a medtech company want to collaborate with ANGLE? The answer is that we can offer them access to circulating tumor cells, intact cancer cells from blood, and if they can move their test across to that and that analysis, then they can do repeat testing. I'll talk more about that, but we're delighted to have secured that collaboration deal with Myriad Genetics, which offers the potential for large-scale commercialization of the prosthetic system. As I said, I'll explain that.

We've built out the pipeline of opportunities with multiple large medtech and large pharma companies, so there are other companies coming down that track. One of the very interesting developments is the development that we've now managed to engage with the NHS in very serious discussions, and that has come since the NHS's announcement on the 30th of May that they were launching something called Blood Test First in lung cancer, where lung cancer patients will have a blood test processed. That is currently to identify whether there are specific treatments that can be given. The advantage of that blood test versus the tissue is that the results from the blood test can be found quicker, so the patient gets treatment quicker. Also, a number of patients, probably about 20%, don't actually have a successful biopsy, so they have no sample to guide their treatment.

What the NHS is interested in is the DNA dual analysis solution that ANGLE uniquely provides. I'll give more information on that a little bit later. Finally, internally, we've been working extremely hard, and we're making very good progress on accrediting, getting an accreditation for our clinical lab. We're targeting completion of that by the end of the year, and that would then open up the possibility for ANGLE to start offering tests directly for patient management, which clearly would be a major step forward for the business. In terms of the half-year results, in terms of the finances, we have unfortunately been subjected to the challenging market conditions. Market volatility and tariff concerns have actually slowed decision-making, regrettably, at many large corporates that we're in touch with. They're pausing or delaying some of their decisions.

That comes on top of a lack of capital for the smaller companies that we'd like to work with. In both cases, there's been a delay in conversion of pipeline opportunities that we've been developing. The consequence of that is that the pharma revenue is regrettably down on the prior half-year period, and the product revenue is flat. We believe that this is a temporary situation which will resolve itself over time, but at the moment, it's unclear when that will happen. We've been managing our costs very carefully with tight cost control, and we've reduced our operating expenditure by 12% compared to the previous period. Overall, that has slowed down to the comprehensive loss being reduced by 7%. Clearly, for the cash and R&D tax credits position stands at £6.6 million, with the cash runway unchanged into Q1 2026.

Clearly, access to additional funding is a key focus for the business for H2. That funding can come from a variety of different sources. In terms of some more granularity on key developments, our integrated NGS workflow with the Illumina platform is a major step forward for ANGLE plc. It's a unique offer, actually, that ANGLE plc offers the ability to assess both the DNA from circulating tumor DNA, the ctDNA, which comes from fragments from dead and dying cancer cells, which is the standard approach from the plasma, as well as the circulating tumor cells, which we can obtain from the waste product of the ctDNA analysis. The ctDNA providers extract the plasma liquid and they throw away the blood cellular component.

What we've developed is the methodology for resuspending that in a saline, running it through the Parsortix PC1 System and recovering the circulating tumor cells, and they can then be analyzed with the exact same approach of sequencing as the ctDNA. Then you have two analytes from the same tube of blood, which have been sequenced in the same way. As I said, we're the only company that can offer that solution. What we've done in the half-year is we have developed an Illumina end-to-end solution. By that, I mean we start with the Parsortix PC1 System, but then we use an Illumina pan-cancer gene panel and the Illumina next-generation sequencing. That has some really significant advantages. Firstly, Illumina has got worldwide distribution of its products, which means that there is a customer base with their products that can now implement Parsortix.

We don't have to supply a separate cancer panel external to Illumina. Secondly, of course, this increases the revenue potential for Illumina and has got them quite interested in working with us on joint sales. This form of analysis, as you can see from the image here, identifies twice as many mutations, so actionable DNA variants, than ctDNA alone. It is therefore the case that we believe that very, very important information about how the cancer is progressing is missed by circulating tumor DNA. It's also missed by tissue biopsy because the tissue biopsy is a one-time point. What happens is the cancer progresses and changes, and you can't repeat the tissue biopsy. That has stimulated the interest from the NHS.

They are now considering the idea of testing on a large-scale basis whether they can, in fact, get additional actionable information from the circulating tumor cells, which would improve the outcome for patients and importantly reduce the cost of operation. This whole area of getting the Illumina end-to-end DNA dual analysis to work was a major achievement in the half-year. The second major achievement was this first medtech partnership. This is the first of many such medtech partnerships. It is driven by the idea that companies who offer tissue-based tests, now in the case of Myriad Genetics, do that via large-scale clinical laboratories where they offer tests. These companies basically can only do one time point for the patient. They can only do their test when they've got the tissue available. The same approach applies also to medtech companies who sell products.

Their products can only be used at a single time point where there is tissue. This is a crucial limitation on cancer care today, which is that it's all based off, apart from some ctDNA, which has its own limitations, it's all based off tissue where there's only one time point available. Everybody knows that cancer progresses and changes. With Myriad, the idea here is that they are working with ANGLE to see if they can port one of their cancer tests onto a CTC platform. That would then enable them to have, as I mentioned, multiple repeat tests for a patient, so that generates repeat revenue for them. It opens up the opportunity to provide tests for patients who don't have tissue. Quite a lot of patients have a failed tissue biopsy, or alternatively, the biopsy tissue is not accessible. That's two major benefits for them.

The third potential benefit is actually looking at patients before the tissue diagnosis. If you have a test, you can do a blood test without any major impact on the patient. You can do it very early when, in fact, you might not choose to do a tissue biopsy because of the invasive nature of that. Myriad has made a commitment to expanding its offering across the cancer care continuum. We see Myriad as an excellent major partner for commercialization. They have, as I mentioned, a very large-scale clinical laboratory establishment. They are a major player. They have around $800 million in revenue as it stands at the moment. They're an outstanding partner for us to work with for commercialization because they have already got all the market channels in place. We expect to see other medtech partnerships coming through in due course.

The reason I've highlighted this area of targeting metastasis is because the Parsortix system has unearthed some amazing information. The fact that there are large-scale circulating tumor cell clusters present in patient blood and that these circulating tumor cell clusters are absolutely incredibly important in terms of the metastasis of the patient. In fact, the ACTO lab in Switzerland has demonstrated using Parsortix in a mouse model that the cancer is 100 times more likely to spread. The metastatic potential is 100 times greater where there are circulating tumor cells in a cluster than when the same number of circulating tumor cells are separate rather than attached to one another. These large-scale circulating tumor cell clusters have never been seen before the advent of Parsortix. We've previously reported the publications by this group over the last four or five years in Nature.

What they've done is they've stepped forward and we announced in January a publication again in Nature Medicine where they have used the Parsortix system with breast cancer patients to identify patients with circulating tumor cell clusters. They have given them a heart-related drug called digoxin and showed, again, using Parsortix, the ability to separate these circulating tumor cell clusters into individual cells. That same process in a mouse reduced the spread and pretty much stopped the cancer progression in the mice compared to identical mice that didn't have the heart-related drug. There's now a spin-out company that's been set up in Switzerland with the idea of developing a new class of drugs to stop the spread of cancer.

This can only be possible if the Parsortix system is used to identify whether the patient has circulating tumor cell clusters and ensure that the right patients get the drug and then monitored with routine blood tests to see whether they need to have the drug again. We expect that there will be major clinical trials using the Parsortix in order to progress this further. A very exciting development for cancer management of the future, and it's entirely enabled by the Parsortix system. Our system has a lot of evidence behind it, and that continues to build. We now have 46 independent cancer centers in 15 different countries who have published between them 115 peer-reviewed journal publications on Parsortix across 23 different solid tumor cancers. All of these publications are positive. We are now into the phase of commercialization.

As I mentioned earlier, we have had some adverse market conditions which have temporarily slowed the decision-making process at some of the largest companies. However, we have a very major pipeline that we have developed, and we expect to see a whole series of developments coming through in the relatively near term. We're getting started on the Myriad Genetics collaboration, porting their tissue test to CTCs, and we expect to see that expanding over time. We have discussions going with several large pharma companies in relation to multiple projects, and that's being progressed further at an upcoming conference, the World TDX Conference in Boston on the 21st of September, where we have many meetings with pharma to progress these discussions.

We also have engagement with multiple medtech companies who will be at that conference, including some who have declared themselves wanting to do joint sales with ANGLE of potential CTC solutions, marrying their downstream technology and offering that to pharma, which is a welcome addition to our sales approach. The partnership for DNA dual analysis, so this evidence is now beginning to get out there, and we have several molecular companies, both NGS and other molecular downstream analysis companies, looking to partner with us to take that further forward. We expect to see progress in relation to that. We also have some companies interested in partnering with ANGLE in relation to protein analysis.

This is looking at the proteins such as the HER2 and the antigen receptor that I mentioned earlier on in the presentation. There are many different ways that you can analyze these proteins, but you have to have intact cancer cells to do it, and we provide that solution, which isn't otherwise available. The methods can involve immunofluorescence, immunohistochemistry, and FISH, to name a few. There are several companies wanting to partner with us on that. We're hopeful that we'll be able to agree on a suitable clinical study with the NHS soon, which would be then to evaluate the benefits that can come from analyzing circulating tumor cells, first for lung cancer, but then for other cancers. Obviously, the target there would be to generate the clinical evidence, which would be sufficient for the NHS to seek to adopt a solution from ANGLE as a routine solution.

We're a UK company. We're close to the Royal Marsden Group, who's heavily involved in this, and we have a number of benefits that we can offer them over and above their current solutions, which are based from the US ctDNA companies. The NHS is the largest medical market in the world in terms of a single customer, and we believe that adoption by NHS would further drive worldwide interest in our technology. As I mentioned, we're working on our own clinical laboratory accreditation. That's going very well, and we expect to see that complete by the end of the year. In summary, we have a breakthrough technology, and it is capable of transforming cancer patients' outcomes, both diagnosis and treatment, as well as reducing costs for healthcare providers.

We believe it provides the best sample for analysis, and particularly that is now being proven for next-generation sequencing, which is the major area of focus for all the healthcare providers. It's interesting that NGS is getting a lot of attention. The cost of NGS sequencing is dropping, and the sensitivity is increasing. The adoption of artificial intelligence is increasing, and again, that enables patients to be seen that might be missed otherwise, and the cost of AI is dropping. What you actually end up with is the limiting factor is access to the best sample, and we believe that intact living cancer cells taken at a real-time point when the patient blood provides the best possible sample. In terms of downstream analysis, we have got a unique DNA molecular analysis of intact cancer cells married also with the ctDNA, and that gives the ability to look at clonal evolution.

Looking at clonal evolution and how the cancer is changing is the driver to get ahead of the spread of disease, and that's why the new drugs to block cancer progression based on prosthetics are a major development, and that's also why the NHS is now expressing strong interest in what ANGLE is doing. Thank you very much for listening. We'll now move to Q&A, and Ian Griffiths, our CFO, will join me for that.

Operator

Thank you. If you are an analyst and would like to ask a question, please press * followed by 1 on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press * followed by 2. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. We have our first question from Adam McArthur from Cavendish. Your line is now open. Please go ahead, Adam.

Adam McCarter
Director of Equity Research Associate - Healthcare, Cavendish

Hello. Yeah, thanks for taking my questions. I've just got a few. You talked during the presentation about the challenging environment sort of experienced during H1. I just wanted to know if you've started to see any encouraging signs of these headwinds that are beginning to subside at all in the second half of the year. A second question, in the NHS, how do we sort of think about those NHS clinical studies that Parsortix could be incorporated into? This is the opportunity and materiality there. The final question is obviously good to see more of those high-impact journal publications for Parsortix, particularly the Nature Medicine one. Are these types of publications helping in your BD efforts and helping progress with conversations with pharma and the medtech? Thank you.

Andrew Newland
CEO & Director, ANGLE

Thank you very much, Adam. The first comment question was about encouraging signs. Certainly, the Myriad Genetics signing up to go ahead with us was a very encouraging sign. That was a conversation that had been going on for quite some time, and they've taken the decision that despite the conditions, they want to start investing in this. I listened recently to the Chief Executive's presentation of their own results, and they specifically referred to extending their offer into the continuing cancer care continuum. I thought that was a very promising sign. That said, there are multiple others which I would have liked to have dropped by now. Let's hope to see, we'll see some more of them coming through in a similar way.

In terms of the NHS side of things, what that's generally speaking about is the fact that they are adopting the “Blood Test First” in lung cancer patients for 15,000 patients per year. Interestingly enough, they literally do throw away the blood cells, and that's quite a compelling argument. You're throwing away the best part of the sample. With Parsortix, we can analyze that. I guess we'll start off with a pilot study first, and if they like it, we can expand. The good thing is they don't even have to take an additional tube of blood to address this. Ian, you can add to this if you wish to, but in terms of the publication side, absolutely, we use these peer-reviewed publications to drive business development.

We have a medical writing team that packages that information, and it forms a lot of the interaction that we have with prospective collaborators and customers.

Ian Griffiths
CFO & Director, ANGLE

Yeah, and I'd probably add to the encouraging sign a couple of things. One is increasing sort of awareness of the need to incorporate multiomics into oncology. Multiomics, just for clarity, means not just DNA, but adding in RNA and protein information. If you look at Illumina in particular, the way they're developing their next-generation sequencing is they can already do RNA, and the sensitivity and cost points are improving that all the time. They're also introducing a new protein solution as well. Obviously, we've got the perfect sample to fit with the Illumina equipment. The other thing is in discussions, obviously, we produced data earlier in the year on the dual analysis, and that's generating a lot of interest because I think people are quite surprised how much additional DNA information we're finding with ctDNA, not just, you know, what the ctDNA produces alone.

There's quite a lot of interest around that complementary nature, but the fact that there's a lot of additional data.

Adam McCarter
Director of Equity Research Associate - Healthcare, Cavendish

Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Ian. Appreciate that.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Edward Cham from Senior Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Edward Sham
Equity Research Analyst, Singer Capital Markets

Hi both. Congratulations on all the operational progress despite the tough sector headwinds. I've got a few questions. If I could just first start with your large pharma contracts, because you've obviously completed in the first half the three contracts with ESI and AstraZeneca. I was just wondering how much visibility do you have in converting those into further contracts? Can you give me a sense of the wider pipeline? Are you seeing strong traction across pharma, or is it more medtech?

Andrew Newland
CEO & Director, ANGLE

In terms of the visibility on the new contracts, regrettably, we don't control the timing of these large pharma, and they will tell us when they're ready to do whatever it is that they want to do. That's a bit of a challenge. We are seeing increased wider interest from large pharma, and we have a very strong roster of meetings at WorldCDX. This includes pharma that we've been dealing with for some time. We have been called on by several large pharma to provide them with, essentially, they call it an RFI, a statement of what we can analyze from CTCs and how that works and how much we would charge them for that. We do know that there are multiple players at these large pharma who are actively considering adoption of our solutions.

What we don't know is when they might decide to jump in and also when those studies would start. Basically, there is mounting evidence and a mounting interest, but we've got to get it converted.

Edward Sham
Equity Research Analyst, Singer Capital Markets

No, that's really helpful. Thanks. Maybe just on the Myriad Genetics collaboration, can you just outline the key milestones and importantly how the economics would work if that was to be commercialized at scale? Just kind of give me an idea, would ANGLE's revenues primarily be through services, or is that also driving Parsortix sales and consumables as well?

Andrew Newland
CEO & Director, ANGLE

We gave an announcement in relation to the work with Myriad. It was a bit light on details, and that's because they don't want to disclose some of those bits of detail. I can talk in principles. Initially, we are being paid to provide some direct services to assess our sample going into their test. Some of that work has already been done, and now we're looking at various different modifications which may improve the outcomes. That's paid-for service work. Assuming that progresses, what I would anticipate is there'll be more paid-for service work in terms of clinical trials to actually assess how well a circulating tumor cell (CTC) test does against the tissue biopsy test. Beyond that, implementation would involve us selling them a whole lot of Parsortix PC1 System machines and setting up a, they would have to set up a Parsortix laboratory.

We'd have quite a lot of product sales. Every single sample, of course, would then need a Parsortix cassette as a consumable. We currently charge $300 a cassette for that purpose. That's on the specific test we're working on at the moment. They have a whole series of tests, and if the first one's looking good, there's absolutely no reason why they wouldn't do all their tests in a similar way. We'd expect to see them wanting to get closer and closer to ANGLE. What I just described in terms of the sort of revenue flows being multiplied out by multiple different tests.

Edward Sham
Equity Research Analyst, Singer Capital Markets

Thank you. That sounds like a really great opportunity. Maybe just one last question on costs and runway. You've highlighted your cash runway goes into Q1 2026. I was just wondering, beyond that, you've mentioned your alternative sources of funding. I was just thinking, what can you do now? Realistically, can you take further cost out of the business, and what do you think your cash burn is going to look like through to the end of the year?

Andrew Newland
CEO & Director, ANGLE

Ian, do you want to cover that one?

Ian Griffiths
CFO & Director, ANGLE

Yeah. Obviously, we are, and you've seen that from the half year, we are continuing to try and manage our costs tightly. Certain spend has been sort of poor, certain costs being cut back. The nature of us being a regulated industry and having to have the sort of capability and capacity to deliver on the projects, deliver on the milestones means there's a certain level of underlying spend. We're focused very heavily on that milestone delivery. That can in itself be one of the potential sources of funds. As we highlighted in the interims, there's a variety of sources of funding that are available to us. It's not just the revenues, but there's also commercial milestones, licensing, other income from collaborations and with industry partners, as well as debt and equity funding, which is what we've historically done with the company.

We've flagged, you know, we will need to raise additional funding through one or a combination of such sources. We know there's challenges on the AMR and biotech sector, which are well documented. Our focus is very much to generate the milestones, generate the contracts that show that we're making that commercial progress to secure that support.

Edward Sham
Equity Research Analyst, Singer Capital Markets

That's really helpful, Ian. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Just a reminder, if you're an analyst and would like to ask a question, please press * followed by 1 on your telephone keypad now. We currently have no further audio questions. I will now move on to our text questions. Our first question is from Frank Gregory from Trinity Delta. He asked, "Following up on Adam's question, what can you tell us about the state of discussions with large pharma and large medtech companies?

Andrew Newland
CEO & Director, ANGLE

Frank, thanks for the question. I think I gave a fair amount of information on that. We're talking to large pharma. There's multiple large pharma involved and across a variety of different drug categories. Just to recap, the protein analysis, which is what we've done so far for pharma, such as HER2, antigen receptor, and the DNA damage response proteins, those are all things that have to be done by looking at cells and looking for expression. They cannot go elsewhere for that. There is therefore quite a lot of interest, particularly from antibody drug conjugate companies, because the antibody drug conjugate attaches to the cancer cell via the protein. If that protein is not there, then it won't work. As an example, AstraZeneca's drug in HER2 is a HER2 antibody drug conjugate. It is prescribed currently based off tissue biopsy.

If the patient is HER2 positive or HER2 low, then they'll be given that drug as a second or third-line therapy, and that can be three, five, or even more years after the tissue biopsy. There is published independent data that shows that up to 40% of the HER2 status will have changed in that timeframe. This is mirrored across all the different proteins, and that's why the pharma are interested in that. The second interest for the pharma is in relation to the DNA dual analysis. Our pitch there is that the circulating tumor, so some of the pharma are adopting circulating tumor DNA analysis in their clinical trials. Our pitch to them is you're missing out on information which might be critical in your clinical trial by not analyzing the circulating tumor cells in the blood cellular component. That is beginning to gain traction as well.

It's obviously a new area because we've only just developed it. That is the subject of a lot of the conversations in the WorldCDX. Hopefully, that's a little bit more information on the pharma relationships. In terms of the medtech, we've got several big medtech product providers who offer molecular or protein-based testing solutions, which are sold worldwide, but they don't have access to a repeat sample. Those people are beginning to talk to us about implementing a CTC solution, which could be sold to their customers. Also, there's quite a lot of interest in working jointly to get sales from pharma. That would help us a lot because credibility of a very big company that they already do companion diagnostics with in tissue, wanting to work with ANGLE would obviously be a credible offering to the pharma.

Operator

Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Frank. How long and complex is the selling cycle into these partnership discussions?

Andrew Newland
CEO & Director, ANGLE

Sorry, I missed that. Could you repeat the question?

Operator

How long and complex is the selling cycle into these partnership discussions?

Andrew Newland
CEO & Director, ANGLE

That's very variable. What's happened is that the selling cycle has been longer than anticipated for the reasons that I said, that these pharma are delaying commitments to various different things. Generally speaking, you're looking at a six-month engagement before you can actually get into the sale because you're providing information to the pharma on the specific data from, it was an earlier question, but data from the publications, for example. We sometimes do some pilot work ourselves, so we have to submit a lot of data to be considered before they then decide to go forward.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Nigel Burke from Cavendish. Basil highlighted the unique potential of prosthetics in cluster cells a while back. What is new now, and how might this be commercialized?

Andrew Newland
CEO & Director, ANGLE

That's a great question. Thank you very much, Nigel. What is new is that they have actually used the Parsortix PC1 System with breast cancer patients to identify circulating tumor cell clusters. They have dosed these patients with the heart drug digoxin, and they've showed that the circulating tumor cell clusters separate into individual cells. This is a completely new way of trying to approach cancer therapy, to reduce the competence of the circulating tumor cells to actually grow somewhere else and cause a secondary cancer. The reason that's significant is because well over 90% of patients who die, die from the metastatic spread to secondary cancer sites. That is caused by the circulating tumor cells in clusters landing somewhere else and growing.

They demonstrated in a mouse model that if this heart drug is given, then the circulating tumor cell clusters disaggregate in the mouse, and the mouse does not then succumb pretty much at all to the cancer. It doesn't spread and kill the mouse. The hope is that will translate to cancer patients. Normally, there would be quite a big risk associated with the transfer of a mouse model across to a human model because there are a variety of differences which mean that it might not be successful. This first step showing that they have been successful in disaggregating the circulating tumor cell clusters is incredibly important.

The second element is that there was work done in the mid-1980s, so in 1985, the first large-scale study was done looking at breast cancer patients and trying to work out differences between the ones who had a successful outcome and the ones who didn't. What they found was that actually a good factor for a better outcome was relating to having a comorbidity of a heart condition. Can you believe that? If you've got cancer, you'd be better off if you have a heart condition. You're more likely to survive your cancer than if you don't have a heart condition, which is patently absurd. Nobody understood that in the '80s and late '80s when this was investigated in detail. They then sort of gave up on it.

Now, of course, when we now know that heart drugs disaggregate circulating tumor cell clusters, there's the possibility that that's the reason why we're seeing the progress in the mouse model. The spin-out company is now working on some other drug targets very similar to digoxin, but with greater potency for CTC cluster disaggregation and basically less side effects. That's super exciting because it could likely lead to a lot of work with prosthetics on clinical trials, which we can obviously enable and make money out of. As and when it potentially comes to market, the prosthetics is an absolutely crucial element. It would have to be used with every patient on multiple time points.

Operator

Thank you. We currently have no further questions. I will now hand back to Andrew for closing remarks.

Andrew Newland
CEO & Director, ANGLE

I would like to thank everybody for their support. It's obviously very disappointing that we didn't deliver higher revenue lines. We're hopeful that this will change, and it will change as we get our large pharma and our large medtech collaborations moving forward. As I mentioned, our clinical lab will open up the potential for us to actually start providing tests for patients. There is a very, very strong demand from the medical world and patients for this approach. The fact that the NHS has started engaging with ANGLE is, I believe, a very strong positive. Thank you very much for your support. Have a good day, everybody.

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