Hello, everybody, and welcome to AdAlta's webinar today. Thank you for joining me. Over the past year, we've been working very hard to transform our company's strategy and pipeline, and we're now poised to realize the results of that work, and we can see the goal very close ahead of us. The purpose of our entitlement offer is to ensure that we can realize that opportunity and kickstart a very exciting growth opportunity for our company. I'll make around 15-20 minutes of prepared remarks today. That'll be followed by a Q&A session, and you're able to ask questions through the Q&A function available through your browser. As I mentioned, over the past year, we've been focused on transforming our company's strategy and building an exciting new growth pipeline.
As a result of that, I will be making some forward-looking remarks today, and they will be subject to the usual disclaimers. Our company is focused on cutting-edge technology to bring new therapies and new therapeutic approaches to debilitating and fatal diseases. Our east-to-west cellular immunotherapy strategy is our future, and we are poised now to secure the first project and the first financing in our AdCella subsidiary in order to create a new and sustainable growth trajectory for the company. This strategy involves us in licensing next-generation clinical-stage cellular therapies from Asia, leveraging our unique skills and our Australian ecosystem, and a novel business model to create a leader in cellular immunotherapies for solid cancers. The opportunity is bridging the gap between where Asian innovation and innovators have been able to deliver their technology and the needs of Western biopharmaceutical companies.
Bridging that gap, we believe, creates a significant value inflection point through a series of capital-efficient, short-investment horizon assets. The east-to-west strategy, of course, builds on our history of innovative drugs developed through our i-body platform, and in particular, the two most valuable assets that we have in our pipeline: our first-in-class antifibrotic protein, AD-214, and our discovery stage pan-strain inhibitor for malaria. Those two projects are in the active phase now of being commercialized and monetized to generate a return on investment. We are in the middle of our renounceable rights offer. As we speak today, the offer closes next Wednesday. We are raising almost AUD 1.3 million at AUD 0.003 with half an attaching option per issued share.
Those funds will be used to advance our first CAR-T product in licensing transaction and first financing transaction into our east-to-west cell therapy subsidiary called AdCella, as well as advancing our existing business development initiatives for AD-214, WD-34, and other strategic options that the company has in front of it. Let me turn briefly now to our east-to-west cell therapy strategy that is the key to AdAlta's growth. Cell therapies have transformed outcomes for blood cancers in particular since they were first approved in 2017. The technology involves collecting a patient's own immune cells, engineering them in a laboratory so that they can now find and fight cancer, and returning those cells back to the patient so the patient's own immune system is now primed and turbocharged with a living drug from which cancer can no longer hide.
The outcomes in blood cancers have been nothing short of spectacular, and this has created a whole new era of immunology or immunotherapies for cancers. The rationale for our east-to-west cell therapy strategy is summarized on this page, recognizing that while existing cell therapies are targeting blood cancers, more than 90% of all cancers are solid tumors. The cell therapy market is projected to grow from the AUD 2-AUD 3 billion of sales it represents today to over AUD 20 billion by the end of the decade, and more than 50% of that is going to come from solid tumors. We've seen in the last year the first approvals of cellular immunotherapies against solid cancers, demonstrating that the technology has started to mature to the point where solid cancers are within reach. Importantly, Asia, and in particular China, are leading the way with innovative cellular immunotherapies.
More than 60% of all the clinical trials in cellular immunotherapies are happening in China today. More than 40% of developers of these amazing products are located in China today. That is an incredible innovation pool that we are able to access and tap into. What does AdAlta and our AdCella subsidiary bring to the table here? This is not just a collection of interesting assets. We bring genuine competitive advantage to this space. That means we believe we can offer a sustainable competitive position for growth. Firstly, our network is not just into Asia within the same time zone as the rest of the region, but also into Australia's clinical and manufacturing ecosystem. Many people do not realize that the first CAR-T cell immunotherapies administered in commercial clinical trials outside of the U.S. happened in Australia.
I was part of Cell Therapies Pty Ltd, our leading contract manufacturing organization at the time those products were coming through preclinical development. We also deliver as many CAR-T cell products per million of population in Australia as is happening in the U.S., and that's five times the penetration in other markets. We have a genuine, experienced, and high-quality ecosystem for the delivery of these innovative therapies in Australia. Using a disciplined asset selection model, we are able to cherry-pick, if you like, highly differentiated assets that already have clinical data in solid cancers. We are not working with preclinical assets that have cured mice. We are working with assets that have already been administered to humans and have demonstrated safety and signals of efficacy. We're offering a unique value proposition to our partners that helps us acquire and access these assets in a cost-effective way.
We know that our Asian partners need to generate first Western data in order to maximize their value or their value proposition to Western buyers. We also know that Western buyers are hesitant to go through the effort to extract knowledge, intellectual property, supply chains, etc., from Asia into an environment that they're familiar with. We are taking on that challenge, and in doing so, we believe we're adding significant value to those assets, both for our partner and then making it easier to transact with Western biopharma companies. The business model is capital light, particularly for AdAlta, which is operating as the management of these assets. We use third-party investment directly into AdCella to fund the development of these programs, and each investment is a finite investment to a single clinical trial over a three-to-four-year period.
After that time, we can start to recycle that capital, assuming success into future projects. That makes the business model scalable and replicable across multiple assets. Importantly, we have the first three assets under term sheet and exclusive negotiations, and I'll talk more about the uniqueness of those assets a little later on in my remarks. We are well on track to secure our initial pipeline. The business model is illustrated on this page. Essentially, we are in licensing market-leading assets from across Asia. We have very low acquisition costs because our value proposition is to invest to move the manufacturing to Australia and conduct that first phase I clinical trial in return for a share of the economic value of the asset.
That work happens in Australia, where we can leverage our R&D tax advantage, and from there, post that phase I clinical trial, funded with third-party or leveraged with third-party investment, we're able to then on-license that program to larger biopharmaceutical companies. What are these programs likely to be worth? Obviously, that will depend on the market at the time, but you can see from this slide that over the last three to four years, there have been some very active transactions of phase I cellular immunotherapy assets, and they're transacting in the vicinity of $90 million upfront and +$650 million in terms of total asset value. Importantly, we know that 72% of the top 25 oncology pharma companies have invested in these autologous T cell immunotherapies in the last five years.
I mentioned at the start that we are poised to see rapid growth and evolution of our strategy. We've been working on this program for over a year now, building our networks of manufacturing, strategic arrangement with Cell Therapies Pty Ltd, seed investment in collaboration with SYNthesis BioVentures, and building out our team and our pipeline of assets. As of today, we have completed technical and on-site due diligence on the three assets that we're currently negotiating, with minor adjustments to the timelines, the sequencing of those assets, and the financial milestones associated with the findings of due diligence. We're on track to secure the first of those assets in the middle of this year. On the financing side, we have a commitment to seed financing from SYNthesis BioVentures. That is subject to co-investment and other closing conditions, which we're working to meet now.
We have ongoing discussions with a number of global financial partners with the objective of securing substantial financing for at least one, if not all three assets. We anticipate securing the first asset in the middle of the year, commencing technology transfer in that first asset later this year, and entering one new program into clinical trials every year from 2026 onwards, which leads to a first exit around about 2028. The assets we're looking at are highly differentiated and significantly de-risked for cellular immunotherapies. This is a busy slide. It's available on the presentation that has been lodged with the ASX. In summary, the key things to look at on this slide are firstly, the size of the markets. These are all solid cancers with more than 1.5 million relapsed and refractory patients around the world every year.
These are all first-in-class and/or best-in-class assets. They all have a degree of differentiation. All the blood cancer products involve the introduction of what's called a chimeric antigen receptor. This is a synthetic receptor able to target a particular antigen on the cancer. In the case of solid tumors, we're going to need a little bit more than that to overcome barriers to tumor penetration and cost of goods where the efficacy is likely to be not as high as it has been in blood cancers. In the case of the first asset, for example, it's what we call ARMOD. This product not only targets a specific antigen on the cancer, it also secretes its own what's called checkpoint inhibitor molecules to overcome immune suppression in the tumor microenvironment. It also uses non-viral vector transduction technology.
That's a long, complicated way of saying that it's a lower-cost method of manufacturing. It also uses a very rapid 30-hour manufacturing process, which is capable, therefore, of turning around the product for a patient much faster than is done by the standard 9- 10 day processes today. That's important when a patient's disease is progressing. In the second case, the advantages this product brings is technology that enables it to be administered without having to do chemotherapy before each dose. It can compete with the patient's own active immune system in order to expand within the patient's body. This means that this drug has the potential to be multi-dosed. We can make more than one dose at once. This is an alternate way that people believe is going to be important to addressing the challenge of solid cancers.
The final product we're looking at is the first product ever to achieve an IND, investigational new drug approval, from the U.S. FDA for this particular target. It also has a short four to five day manufacturing process in the process of being implemented. You can see that all of these patients have between 9 and +30 patients of experience so that we have evidence that these have signals of efficacy and we understand the safety profile and how to manage that safety. A highly differentiated pipeline that is attracting interest from private larger investors offshore to invest directly in these assets, helping to leverage the AdAlta founding shareholding in our AdCella subsidiary. Quick recap now on our existing assets, starting with AD-214.
Most of you will recall, have been following the company for some time, that fibrosis is a disease involving scarring of internal organs that ultimately leads to organ failure. It affects almost every organ system in the body. We are developing AD-214 as a novel approach to fibrotic diseases, starting with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis or lung fibrosis, where the existing therapies have poor efficacy and debilitating side effects, yet still generate in excess of AUD 4 billion in sales a year. There's a desperate need for better outcomes for these patients who are facing essentially a death sentence with an average survival of less than five years from diagnosis. Kidney fibrosis is probably the next indication for this drug, which is a AUD 10 billion market in its own right.
We've developed AD-214 as a first-in-class molecule with preclinical efficacy demonstrated in multiple animal models of disease, two phase I studies successfully completed, clinically viable dosing regimens demonstrated, and a strong IP portfolio. Our priority now is to find third-party investors and/or licensing partners in order to fund the phase II program and unlock the value we've created in this product. Transactions in this space are also encouraging. There are a dozen transactions over the last five years or so, the most recent one being in January this year when Eli Lilly licensed Media Therapeutics' antibody drug for a novel pathway in IPF for $99 million upfront. Transactions in this space are taking longer than we had hoped, and we thank our shareholders for their patience in that regard. We continue to have active interest in this molecule.
We now also have, through our East-to-West cellular immunotherapy strategy, a plan and a program to advance independently of the monetization of this asset. Finally, turning to our WD-34 i-body as a potential breakthrough in malaria. This is a product or a drug candidate that was discovered in our collaboration with La Trobe University a year ago. It is not something we would develop ourselves, but it is something that offers a new paradigm potentially for malaria treatment. There are still over 600,000 deaths from malaria every year. It is now re-emerging in Europe and the U.S. that have been malaria-free for decades, if not longer. There are new markets in related tick-borne diseases such as babesiosis that is emerging in the northeast of the U.S.
The market for anti-malarial drugs is over AUD 900 million, but it's limited by their poor efficacy, the cost of those therapies in emerging markets, the rapid development of resistance, and inconvenient dosing regimens for small molecules, strain-specific effectiveness of antibodies, and vaccines that typically have less than 40% of efficacy and protective effect. WD-34 is the first antibody-like molecule that's demonstrated high-potency inhibition of malaria infection across multiple strains of the malaria parasite. The opportunity, therefore, is to create a long-acting pan-species or pan-strain prophylactic, where a single dose with three to six months of protection is a game changer for deployed personnel and travelers, as well as providing the potential for seasonal prophylaxis for children in endemic malaria regions. In the last quarter, we received our first inquiries about potentially licensing and on-developing this asset, which is why we've now put it formally into our asset list.
Looking at the team, we have assembled a team of highly skilled, highly credentialed folks, mostly now on flexible contracts to variabilise the costs that enable us to advance both our East-to-West Cell Therapy strategy and scale that rapidly, as well as progress our fibrosis and other programs. In summary, our East-to-West Cell Therapy strategy is now poised for growth, leveraging our regional and business model advantages to be a force multiplier for our Asian partners. With the first three assets under exclusive due diligence, we're on track to deliver the first of those assets towards the middle of the year. We have AD-214 and WD-34 available for partnering, representing additional value potential sitting underneath our East-to-West Cell Therapy strategy. We have an experienced and globally reaching team ready to help us deploy these technologies and strategies.
Right now, we believe in attractive valuation that supports the current entitlement offer, which we will be using to ensure that we can secure that first asset in our East-to-West Cell Therapy strategy and continue to advance the strategic options in front of us for our other assets. A copy of this presentation will be lodged on our Investor Hub after the call, but my contact details are available here as well. With that, I will pause and see if we have any questions that are appearing. I do not have any questions in the Q&A at the moment, but I will leave the call open for a few more minutes to allow people to ask their questions. Okay.
The first question we've got is, how does AdAlta expect to establish material equity in the East West strategy given the extremely low market valuation of the company? A great question. One of the reasons why we created the AdCella subsidiary was to ensure that we had access to both public and private capital in order to be able to finance this program without having to completely recapitalize AdAlta. AdAlta today is the sole shareholder in AdCella, and it owns the founding shares in AdCella. Once we finance the initial programs, we would anticipate that we will retain a material shareholding within AdCella by shares estimated somewhere between 30%-50% when they covered us on this previously. I think that's not an unreasonable sort of expectation. The actual financing transactions will confirm that.
At the end of the day, for no further investment from AdAlta, we will hold that founding shareholding in AdCella. Assuming that then gets reflected in AdAlta's share price, once that visibility is to the value of that asset and that business is fully clear to our existing shareholders in the capital markets, we have the option of doubling down through AdAlta investment or continuing through that third-party investment. The next question is, shareholders have been told for 12 months that there are 21 interested parties to fund the phase II program for AD-214. Why haven't we been able to sign a deal? Great question and a question that the management team and I, as well as our shareholders, are disappointed we haven't been able to complete one of these transactions. The first point to make is that this is a competitive space.
There are multiple, as is with all licensing transactions for all drugs. There are a number of competing assets out there. As you can see, while there have been a dozen transactions over the last five years or so, that results in around about two to three per year. Just because we have an asset, we still have to convert the buyers, and the buyers are looking at all the alternative options available. The range of responses we're getting from companies that have elected not to pursue a transaction range from, because this is a first-in-class molecule targeting a novel mode of action, we'd really like to see clinical data in patients. Unfortunately, that's a catch-22 because we can't get that data without the phase II study. That just goes to the risk appetite of some of these companies.
Others have various individual reasons that they have raised for not progressing. Some relate to preferences around routes of administration. Some relate to preferences around presence or absence of antidrug antibodies. In one case, for example, we were in the middle of discussions with one company about to go into our data room in the middle of last year. They pivoted their entire corporate business development efforts to weight loss drugs, did five transactions over the next six months, and then in February, they phoned us again, sorry, in March, they phoned us again to say, "Oh, what are you up to with AD-214? We'd like to restart discussions this time in renal." We are at the mercy of, to some extent, the business development strategic priorities of other companies as well.
The short line is that there are a variety of reasons why we haven't been able to execute a transaction. Some of them relate to the position of where the molecule is up to. Many relate to specific corporate issues or priorities within our partners. For those that have dropped out, we've continued to add new partners into the mix. We continue to have a pipeline as people cycle through. As you see from that example I just talked about, there are companies who are coming back to us at later stages once their priorities are reset. Will a capital raised in the current entitlement offer be sufficient to advance one of these assets to commercialization? The short answer is no. The cost of a phase I clinical trial for a CAR-T asset is obviously much greater than the AUD 1.4 million we're raising.
This financing will ensure that we have the funding available to complete the negotiation of our contracts to secure the financing directly into AdCella to enable us to secure the first of those assets. Each asset will probably take significantly more than AUD 1.4 million or AUD 1.3 million that we're raising. We do have a number of active conversations going on with the global investors, Asian investors, Australian investors in the AdCella subsidiary. We remain very confident that we'll be able to secure the financing to do that. It's just going to take us a little bit longer given the volatility in the global capital markets that have changed and slowed down some people's pipelines and diligence processes over the last three or four months. There's a question around, is there a top 15 pharma company still interested in our asset? I assume that's in AD-214.
We generally don't disclose the nature and the mix of people looking at our pipeline. They do, though, range from large pharmaceutical companies down to mid-tier specialty pharmaceutical companies that focus, for example, just on rare diseases, as well as a number of venture capital firms that have looked at the asset or are looking at the asset with a view to putting that into new companies that they're creating to bolster their pipelines in this space. At this point in time, I can say that there is a top, I better say top 20, just because I'm not sure exactly where they sit, pharma still interested in our asset. That's not the only way to get this deal done. I think if you look at Dimerix, for example, recently, they've done very attractive deals with other than top 15 pharma companies.
Question, does the company believe that a deal for AD-214 is vital for AdAlta's viability? The short answer to that question is no. The reason we've been developing our East-to-West Cell Therapy strategy was twofold. One was because we wanted to have a plan for what happened after AD-214. Two was because we wanted to have a plan for what happened if AD-214 ultimately wasn't partnered or took much longer to partner than otherwise would have been possible. We know that as a listed company, our future is dependent on having a robust pipeline of clinical stage assets with regular news flow to help drive interest in the stock and then multiple potential value realisation points. Prior to East-to-West Cell Therapy strategy, we really only had AD-214.
We had also realized that our discovery programs using i-body technology were simply not going to deliver in the sort of timeframe that was necessary to provide resilience behind AD-214. That was why we ceased internal discovery R&D in February this year and redirected our efforts behind the East-to-West cellular immunotherapy strategy. We are viable. We are sustainable. We can drive growth without a deal for AD-214. I would dearly love to do that. I know there are a large number of patients around the world who would love to see AD-214 in a phase II program as well. Very good. Thank you, everybody. There being no further questions, I will draw the webinar now to a close. We thank you for your attendance and your interest in our company. We are very excited about the future potential of our East-to-West cellular immunotherapy strategy.
We continue to have the potential to create upside to that strategy through AD-214 and WD-34. We are really, really excited about just how close we are to realizing our ambitions for that East-to-West Cell Therapy strategy. We are genuinely within touching distance. We are grateful for the support of all the participants in our entitlement offer so far and to come to enable us to take that final step to grasp this wonderful opportunity. Thank you very much for joining me today.