Hello, welcome to the Transgene conference call. My name is Ben, I will be the coordinator for today's call. Please note this call is being recorded, for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask question at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Lucie Larguier, Head of Investor Relations, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you, hello, everyone. I have the pleasure today to introduce you to Dr. Alessandro Riva, who's just been appointed Chairman and CEO of Transgene. Along with Hedy Benbrahim, we will review today's news and answer your questions. Before I turn the call over to Alessandro Riva, I'd like to remind everyone that today's discussion contains forward-looking statements which are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties.
If you're listening to this webcast via the Internet, you will not be able to ask questions. If you wish to ask questions, please make sure that you join us via one of the conference call numbers that are available in today's press release. With this, I now turn the call over to Alessandro Riva.
Thank you, Lucie. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining today call. I'm sure that you have seen the news today. I would like to provide some additional background, and more importantly, I will available to answer your question. As you have seen, I will be joining Transgene as the Chairman and CEO, effective June 1st.
I've been the company chairman for over a year now. I believe that the company is today ideally positioned to go to the next level. I would like to start by giving you some personal background, as this is the first time I have participated in one of these calls for Transgene. I spent all my career in the oncology space. After graduating from medical school and practicing oncology at University Hospital Milan, I joined the pharmaceutical industry.
At Novartis, I was Global Head of Oncology, Development and Medical Affairs, a position where we successfully brought several compounds to patients. At Gilead, I was the Head of Oncology Therapeutics, where I was in charge of advancing Yescarta, a CAR T 19, resulting in its approval in both the United States and Europe.
In both cases, this consisted in putting in place the right clinical trials and the right patient population with the right clinicians and of course, with the right treatment. More recently, I was a CEO of two biotechnology company based in United States of America, where we were developing bispecific and trispecific and cell therapy in oncology. As a team at Transgene, we are confident today that we are in a particular juncture of our organization, ready to move to the next level.
This confidence is based on the very promising data that is delivered from its immunotherapy portfolio over the last 12 months. I would like to thanks Heddy Benbrahim for his contribution to this achievement by ensuring that Transgene was able to execute in a timely manner and deliver on his strategy. We have a strong therapeutic vaccine franchise based on our core viral vector expertise and two exciting and complementary approaches, namely neoantigen and shared tumor antigens.
For these two assets, respectively TG4050 and TG4001, we are at critical point in the development of these two exciting new therapies for solid tumor that could translate into potential registrational trials. We also believe that we have a very strong and differentiated oncolytic virus pipeline based on our Invir.IO platform.
These novel drug candidates are generating using our patented viral vector backbone that has a key competitive advantage in that it can be administered intravenously. When given IV, the oncolytic virus is safe and goes to the tumor, where it selectively replicates while expressing its therapeutic payload. Intravenous administration, as you know, will significantly increase the utility of oncolytic viruses and the number of patients that could benefit from this new approach.
TG6050, our intravenous oncolytic virus expressing interleukin-12 and anti-CTLA-4 antibody, is already in clinical development in advanced non-small cell lung cancer. As our leading intravenous candidate, it represents a unique opportunity to demonstrate the potential of our oncolytic virus platform. Our confidence in the potential of our oncolytic viruses has not been diminished by AstraZeneca unexpected decision to terminate our research collaboration.
As part of AstraZeneca portfolio review, AstraZeneca decided to return all rights to the product they licensed and other highly innovative pipeline asset to Transgene. AstraZeneca has obtained a U.S. IND for one of these candidates. AstraZeneca has also confirmed that we will be able to share the results of our collaboration via scientific publication or poster presentation.
Given that we were only informed by AstraZeneca of their decision very recently, we are still assessing the best way forward with the return product and the other assets that we have regained. We'll come back to you on our plans for this asset at a later date. This decision has limited impact on Transgene financial guidance, and we continue to have financial visibility until early 2024.
To wrap up, I would like to confirm that Transgene strategy is unchanged, with a clear focus on TG4050, our neoantigen cancer vaccine, TG4001, our HPV-positive cancer therapeutic vaccine, and TG6050, our oncolytic virus expressing interleukin-12 and anti-CTLA-4 antibody, with the aim of implementing potential registrational trials for our therapeutic vaccine. We are fully committed as a team to successfully delivering on this goal, and I'm looking forward to working with the highly talented and committed team in Transgene. We have two poster accepted at ASCO on TG4050 and TG4001, we intend to communicate after the abstract are available on the evening of May 25th.
In the next 12-18 months, we expect to announce a number of important milestones that demonstrate that we are delivering on our plans that are intended to create significant value for patients and also for our stakeholders. With this, I would like to take any questions you may have. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one now on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star two. Just to remind you, to press to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad now. We currently have no question coming through. As a final reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one now.
Well, I have received questions by email. This is Lucie. So I will share them with you, and we'll answer them also. These are questions received from Jamila El Bouhni at Invest Securities. Two questions, first on the transition and second on the end of the collaboration with AstraZeneca.
On the first aspect, the question is, why this choice, the choice of the transition now when it could have maybe better understood by the market if it had occurred a few months within the launch of the first pivotal study? We do the rationale of giving a more U.S.-oriented orientation with the leadership, having regulatory and marketing experience is completely understandable. Wouldn't the transition have been more obvious with at least one clinical pivotal study underway?
Is there also a desire to give Transgene's work more international visibility, in particular regarding investors, who are shareholders in competing companies in the personalized vaccine field and who have a good reputation or messenger RNA, for instance? How do you from an HR point of view, how do you anticipate the possible challenges in terms of corporate culture and multiculturalism, with a U.S. versus France, approach? Alessandro.
No, I just would like to, first of all, to say that, you know, I'm a European, you know, based in the United States of America, and that, you know, I worked for many years, in Europe, and namely in France at Rhône-Poulenc Rorer Aventis before Aventis became Sanofi. I think I'm very familiar with the European French culture and the way, you know, we operate, in Europe and in France.
Of course, you know, because of my experience in the United States of America, I also have this side, you know, on my background that I think is important also to create a culture that is international, very diversified, which ultimately, you know, will serve, you know, the purpose of developing, you know, new agents for cancer patients.
That's number one. Number two, Transgene or Transgene in English, perhaps, you know, has been, I would say since the beginning, an international company, right? As we speak, we perform international trials and centers are not only in France but also in Europe. We are approaching also United States of America.
I don't see any problem from a, you know, from a cultural perspective. In terms of the timelines, I guess this was the first question, you know, of the decision on the change of the leadership team, of the leadership. What I would say that the board of Transgene felt that it is important, you know, to have a change in the leadership. Now, because Transgene is in a particular juncture of the journey where, you know, the company has really to take the challenge of the competition, and as to accelerate significantly the development of the compound.
Therefore, the board felt that, you know, the company needed a leader with a more comprehensive experience in drug development, in bringing compounds to patients, in assessing the strategic rationale also of our portfolio and therefore to prepare the organization to the next level. That's essentially the rationale that the board discussed, and based on that, they made the decision. I guess perhaps these were the three questions. There was another one?
Yes. There was another one on international visibility, but I think-
Yeah. I answered that.
You covered it already.
Yeah.
Second aspect was on the end of collaboration with AstraZeneca. AZ launched projects with several players on the IL-12 target, several of which were aborted. To your knowledge, are there still ongoing projects around this IL-12 target in AZ's preclinical clinical pipeline? If so, what type of approach? Another point, is licensing this OV, for which you regained the right to another industrial company, one of the options considered?
I mean, the first question, of course, cannot be answered for the simple reason we cannot speculate on what AstraZeneca is doing as we speak. You know, we don't have access to this information. The second answer, the second question, I would say that this is an opportunity, right? We will reassess internally, you know, the asset that are being returned by AstraZeneca, and we'll put those assets in the context of our oncolytic virus pipeline.
We will determine whether, A, we want to keep in-house. B, whether we would like to offer, you know, the possibility to out-license those compounds or others, because our pipeline in the oncolytic virus is very comprehensive to other companies. This is something that we'll keep you updated about, right? Certainly it is a possibility that we will consider.
I received another question by email, but is there questions in the room? Not so far. A question from Arnaud Benoit-Didal from Financière de l'Arcturine. Why don't you split the CEO and chairman position as it was a good governance practice?
I mean, the board as I said, you know, decided to make a change in the leadership and in the CEO position for the reason I just mentioned. In that context, you know, they assessed my candidacy as current chairman of the board. Therefore, they felt that the synergy between the two roles, the chairman of the board and the CEO was, you know, a good thing to have at this juncture of Transgene. That's the reason why essentially the board decided to recombine the two roles together and to give these two roles to me.
Of course, you know, the board will continue to monitor the governance on a regular basis, and will make sure that we have everything that guarantee the independency of our board, including of course, you know, the assessment of the performance of the CEO. Of course, we will keep you updated on this matter.
I have no question in my end, on my end. I think there's one from Brandon Folkes. Ben?
Indeed, we have one question here coming from Brandon Folkes, calling from Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just one from me, and I apologize if this has been addressed, as I have been hopping between a few calls. Do you get the work back from AstraZeneca that they've done on oncolytic viruses? If so, will that trigger perhaps a review of sort of your priorities within oncolytic viruses? Would you ever take the work AstraZeneca has done and maybe develop it in-house if you saw value yourself? Thank you.
Yes, thank you. Thank you for the question. The answer is yes and yes, right? Yes, we are going to have all rights and data back from AstraZeneca, you know, including, you know, the fact that they already submitted an IND to the Food and Drug Administration. They have the approval from the FDA and also everything that they've done, you know, in the context of the collaboration. We are going to regain everything, right?
We are going to reassess internally, you know, the next step, you know, on this portfolio coming back from AstraZeneca, including of course our own portfolio. We'll set up priorities very soon, and we'll communicate to you in a timely manner.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
There are no further question. I will hand you back to your host to conclude today's conference.
Okay. I would like to thank everyone for the question. Lucie, the team and I remain available to answer further question down the road. I look forward to meeting with you in person in my new role, where I am focused on taking Transgene to the next level. Wish you a very good weekend, and talk to you soon. Thanks. Bye.
Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.