Joining us today on the call from Brii Bio's corporate executive team are Dr. Ankang Li, Chief Operating Officer, and Dr. David Margolis, Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Li recently transitioned from our Chief Strategy and Financial Officer to Chief Operating Officer, expanding his responsibilities to further strengthen operational execution across the organization. Leveraging both his operational leadership and scientific background, he will also support the advancement of our R&D programs while continuing to enhance our operation in China. This transition allows Zhi Hong, our CEO, to remain focused on the company strategic priorities, scientific directions, and long-term development. Meanwhile, Dr. Qing Zhu transitioned from Head of China R&D to Head of Preclinical Science and Translational Research. In this role, she will strengthen the connection between discovery and early clinical development, helping to bridge our early discovery programs from target selection to the clinic. Today, Dr.
Li will begin with an overview of our strategic priorities and corporate developments. Dr. Margolis will then review updates from our HBV programs. After which, Dr. Li will return to review our financial results. We will then open the call for questions. I will now turn the call over to Dr. Li. Dr. Li, please go ahead.
Thank you, Kathy, and thank you everyone for joining us today. 2025 was a year of strong execution for Brii Bio. We made meaningful progress across three key areas, advancing our HBV clinical programs, sharpening our portfolio focus, and expanding our discovery capability. First, we remain focused on advancing our HBV functional cure program, which continues to be our top clinical priority. Throughout 2025, we reported key data, refined our study designs, and advanced our studies toward a registrational development pathway. Our confirmatory Phase IIb ENRICH and ENHANCE studies are now fully enrolled, and we expect to have results in the second half of this year. Second, we progressed our non-HBV portfolio through selective partnering. In July, we announced the licensing and technology transfer agreement with Joincare Group for soralimixin, targeting critically ill patients with MDR Gram-negative bacterial infections in Greater China.
This partnership enables the program to be advanced with a strong regional partner while allowing us to prioritize our resources on our HBV programs and discovery initiatives. Third, we strengthened our discovery platform by expanding our internal research capabilities. This included building new research infrastructure and establishing collaborations that integrate AI-enabled discovery tools into our research workflow. Together, these investments position us to accelerate the discovery of future therapies. With this foundation in place, we expect to nominate key new programs from our discovery efforts this year. Alongside the advancement of our pipeline programs, we remain focused on maintaining strong alignment with shareholder interests. In 2025, the board approved a reduction to senior management's annual bonus arrangements for 2025 and 2026, further reinforcing the linkage between management incentives and long-term shareholder value.
Under this plan, executive annual bonuses will be significantly reduced to approximately one quarter of their original level. We will continue to assess market conditions and take appropriate actions to ensure that management compensation remains closely aligned with business performance, capital market outcomes, and Brii Bio's long-term value creation for shareholders. As I just mentioned, our prioritized HBV program includes BRII-179, a therapeutic vaccine, and elebsiran, an HBV-targeting siRNA. Together, these assets address distinct aspects of HBV biology and form the foundation of our combination approach. In parallel, our collaborator Vir Biotechnology is evaluating elebsiran in combination with tobevibart for the treatment of HDV. Beyond HBV, we continue to evaluate partnership opportunities across our broad portfolio with the Joincare Group collaboration for soralimixin serving as a strong example of a disciplined partnering strategy.
In the next slide, I will elaborate on each of our programs. At the center of Brii’s clinical development today is our HBV functional cure effort. We are advancing this through a combination-based strategy built around BRII-179 and elebsiran, supported by three ongoing phase IIb studies ENSURE, ENRICH, and ENHANCE. In parallel, our collaborator is conducting phase III study of elebsiran in combination with peginterferon alfa for the treatment of HBV. Over the past year, our HBV program received important scientific validation. Results from the ENSURE study were published in Nature Medicine and updated follow-up data from ENSURE Cohort 4 were presented as a late-breaking presentation at AASLD. This milestone further supported the potential role of BRII-179 in improving functional cure outcomes and directly informed the amended design of ENHANCE study.
What is becoming increasingly clear is not only the individual contribution of these assets, but also how they may work together as part of future combination treatment strategies. Alongside our clinical progress, we have significantly expanded Brii’s early discovery capabilities. Under the leadership of our Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Brian Johns, who joined the company in 2024, we made meaningful progress over the past year in building a robust internal discovery platform. We established robust in-house capabilities supported by an experienced scientific team and wet lab operations in both Beijing and Shanghai. Together, these capabilities allow us to translate new scientific insights into potential therapeutic programs. We also initiated a collaboration with OpenBench to integrate AI-enabled structure-based drug discovery tools into our research workflow. This platform supports target analysis, structure-guided molecule design, and early candidate development, complementing our internal capabilities as we continue to expand Brii’s early-stage pipeline.
I will discuss our recent discovery progress in more detail on the next slide. We believe our expanded discovery capabilities, including our scientific team, wet lab infrastructure, and AI-enabled platform, as a foundation for the next phase of pipeline development and growth. Over the past year, we operated a translational research lab in Beijing and built a fully integrated discovery laboratory in Shanghai. Together, these sites allow our scientists to move efficiently from early biological insight through candidate design and optimization. This work is supported by a growing discovery team with deep experience across both global pharmaceutical companies and innovative biotech organizations. By combining this expertise with China's strong research ecosystem, we are able to pair scientific innovation with efficient execution in early-stage drug discovery. Our collaboration with OpenBench, an AI drug discovery company in U.S., adds another important dimension to this platform.
By integrating its AI-driven structure-based discovery tools, we are enhancing our ability to analyze biological targets and design potential therapeutic molecules. Taken together, these investments are expanding Brii’s discovery capabilities and positioning the company to generate new programs over time while our HBV clinical work continues to advance. Before I pass this to David, let me briefly touch on our other programs. This includes our HIV candidates and soralimixin. While these assets are not our near-term clinical focus, we believe they continue to retain meaningful potential, and we remain open to partnership opportunities that can help advance them efficiently. For example, through our licensing agreement with Joincare Group in Greater China, it allows soralimixin to continue progressing with a partner that has strong anti-infectious capabilities. We also continue to explore opportunities that could support future development of our HIV assets.
This approach reflects our broader portfolio strategy, maintain focus on areas where we see the strongest near-term opportunity while pursuing the right path forward for other promising assets through selective partnering. With that overview, I will now turn the call over to David to walk through our recent clinical updates in HBV programs.
Thank you, Ankang, and hello, everyone. I'm pleased to walk you through the clinical progress of our HBV program. As Ankang mentioned, our primary clinical focus remains our HBV strategy centers on combining therapies that address different aspects of the disease biology. The two core components of this strategy are elebsiran, our HBV-targeted siRNA, and BRII-179, our therapeutic vaccine designed to stimulate immune responses. By pairing antiviral suppression with immune restoration, we aim to increase the likelihood of achieving functional cure across a broader patient population. To evaluate how these agents may work together, we are advancing three phase IIb studies: ENSURE, ENRICH, and ENHANCE. Each of our three ongoing phase IIb studies builds on prior findings and explores different treatment strategies.
ENSURE evaluates the contribution of elebsiran in combination with pegylated interferon alpha and also explores the role of BRII-179 in shaping immune responses. ENRICH is designed to prospectively evaluate BRII-179 as an immune primer and to identify patients who may be more likely to achieve a functional cure. ENHANCE evaluates a different triple combination approach that includes BRII-179, elebsiran, and pegylated interferon alpha. By running these studies in parallel, it allows us to test multiple approaches, learn in real time from emerging data, and refine our development strategy as we move forward to late-stage development. Let me start with the ENSURE study. During the year, results and scientific analyses from ENSURE were published in Nature Medicine. In addition, we presented updated follow-up results from ENSURE Cohort 4 as a late breaker presentation at AASLD.
Cohort 4 included patients from the previous 835-179-001 study who had received treatment with elebsiran and BRII-179. This cohort allowed us to evaluate whether vaccine-induced immune responses could help to identify patients with a higher likelihood of achieving functional cure. The AASLD presentation focused on the post-treatment follow-up. Among patients who developed anti-HBs responses following BRII-179 treatment, 42% achieved sustained HBsAg loss through 24 weeks post-treatment, compared with only 8% among non-responders. These findings suggest that BRII-179 may play a dual role, both in stimulating immune responses and in identifying patients who are more likely to benefit from combination therapy, supporting its continued evaluation in the ENRICH and ENHANCE studies.
Before turning to these two confirmatory Phase IIb studies, I'd like to highlight a few additional key takeaways from Cohort 4 of the ENSURE study. Many patients with chronic hepatitis B do not achieve functional cure with the current therapies alone. BRII-179 offers a unique ability to help identify patients who can better respond to curative treatment regimens through BRII-179-induced anti-HBs. The identified immune-capable patients, or anti-HBs responders, may have a greater probability of achieving functional cure. Our results from Cohort 4 of the ENSURE study presented at AASLD suggest that even patients with high baseline hepatitis B surface antigen levels who have less favorable treatment outcomes on current regimens have higher rates of surface antigen loss if BRII-179-induced anti-HBs is generated.
Among the 18 anti-HBs responders in Cohort 4, 42%, or 8 patients, achieved sustained hepatitis B surface antigen loss at week 24 post-treatment. Notably, 50%, or 4 of these patients, had baseline levels of hepatitis B surface antigen ranging from 1,500 to 3,000 IU/mL when they were admitted in the prior study. This data suggests that responses to BRII-179 via an anti-HBs response may lead to a sustained surface antigen loss even in patients with high baseline surface antigen levels. With this takeaway, I'll turn to the two confirmatory phase IIb studies. The ENRICH study builds directly on these observations and is designed to prospectively validate this enrichment approach. In this trial, patients receive BRII-179 as an immune primer before beginning combination therapy with elebsiran plus pegylated interferon alpha.
The goal is to determine whether patients who develop immune responses following BRII-179 treatment have a higher likelihood of achieving functional cure. This study also allows us to further characterize the immune profile of chronic HBV patients and better understand which patients may benefit from the most intensive combination therapy. The ENHANCE study takes the next step by evaluating a differentiated triple combination regimen that includes BRII-179 plus elebsiran plus peg interferon alpha. Two cohorts in the original protocol evaluate whether adding BRII-179 to elebsiran and peg interferon provide additive or synergistic benefits. Informed by results from Cohort 4 of the ENSURE study, an amended cohort was added to explore whether BRII-179 priming may allow for a shorter course of pegylated interferon alpha treatment.
In this cohort, patients receive elebsiran plus BRII-179 for the first 24 weeks, after which BRII-179 will be replaced with peginterferon alfa together with continued elebsiran administration for an additional 24 weeks. The goal is to maintain strong efficacy while potentially reducing the overall treatment burden for patients. Taken together, ENSURE, ENRICH, and ENHANCE explore complementary dimensions of our combination strategy. This integrated framework allows us to evaluate immune priming, patient selection, and treatment sequencing as part of our integrated development approach. By generating data across these complementary studies, we aim to define an optimized combination regimen and inform decision-making as we progress towards a registrational study. Looking ahead, we expect several important milestones for our HBV program this calendar year. We plan to report additional long-term follow-up data from ENSURE study in the coming months.
We also expect both the on-treatment and off-treatment follow-up data from both ENRICH and ENHANCE studies to be available in the second half of 2026. Together, these data will help define the role of combination therapy in achieving functional cure and guide our next stage of clinical development. With that, I'll turn the call back to Ankang to review our financial results.
Thank you, David. I will now briefly review our financial results for the full year of 2025. As a reminder, all financial figures I will discuss today are denominated in RMB unless otherwise noted. In the year ended December 31, 2025, our revenue increased to RMB 18.6 million from 0 for the last year, primarily attributable to the upfront payment received under an intellectual property license and a technology transfer agreement entered into with Joincare Group. Our other income was RMB 68.8 million for the year, representing a decrease of RMB 72.6 million or 51.3% compared with RMB 141.4 million for 2024.
The decrease was mainly due to lower bank interest income of RMB 35.6 million, reflecting declining interest rates on USD and Hong Kong dollar time deposits, as well as changes in income recognized from PRC government grants. We have maintained a strong cash position. As of December 31, 2025, our bank deposits and cash and cash equivalents were RMB 1,941 million. We expect our current cash to support our operations beyond 2028. Meanwhile, we effectively controlled our operational costs through disciplined pipeline prioritization and organizational streamlining while maintaining continued investment in core programs and discovery during the year. As a result, our research and development expenses for 2025 declined by 14.8% to RMB 212.9 million from RMB 249.8 million in 2024.
The reduction reflects decreases of RMB 21 million in third-party contract costs and RMB 16.2 million in employee costs. Administrative expenses were RMB 199.5 million for the year, declining 28.5% compared with RMB 153.2 million in 2024. The decrease was mainly attributable to lower employee costs through organizational optimization and adjustments to our senior management compensation framework to better align management incentives with long-term shareholder interests and business performance, as well as our continued cost control measures. Our solid financial position allows us to continue to advance our HBV clinical programs while expanding our discovery capabilities. Over the past year, we have built the scientific infrastructure and internal expertise needed to support our next phase of growth.
As these efforts mature, we expect to begin introducing new programs emerging from our discovery platform and to further define our development strategy around them. This approach allows us to advance our lead clinical assets while building the foundation for the next generation of pipelines. This concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open the call to your questions. Kathy, please go ahead.
Okay. Thank you, Ankang. We will now open the line to Q&A. If you have questions, please click Raise Hand in the webinar controls, and we will prompt you to unmute yourself. Okay, we have Roanna from Leerink Partners. Hello, Roanna. You can speak now.
Hello. Morning, everyone. I have a couple for you. First on the HBV studies. I know a couple of them completed enrollment, and I was curious, could you help frame your expectations for the data for the ENRICH and ENHANCE studies? What do you hope to see to potentially go forward into phase III?
Thank you, Roanna. I would like to invite David to answer your question.
Yeah. Thank you. We expect that data will be emerging over the course of this calendar year, which will give us greater insights into a potential path forward. The ENRICH study specifically is looking at an approach that replicates or somewhat replicates what we observe from Cohort 4, which is the potential for immunologic priming or immune modulation from prior treatment of 179. In that study specifically, what we would be looking for is in those patients that were treated with 179 that we're able to identify a subgroup of patients where they had a good immune stimulatory response from 179, and that translates to a higher rate of response. From the ENHANCE study specifically, we're looking at two strategies.
One is whether or not the addition of 179 can yield a surface antigen loss rates above and beyond the ENSURE study. The ENSURE study, of course, looked at the double combination of peg interferon and elebsiran, and now we have the addition of 179. It's a very good head-to-head comparison whether the triple combo can outperform the double combination. There's a very easy relative comparison there. We would be looking for something in order of a 10% or better response from what we saw in ENSURE. Kind of in brief summary, we're looking for subpopulations where the immunostimulatory response shows an enhanced outcome. We're looking at the contribution of 179 above and beyond elebsiran plus peg alone.
Of course, we're putting that in context with the competitive landscape, specifically the performance of bepirovirsen and the [xalnesiran] programs to make sure we remain differentiated and can find a differentiated population. That will inform progression later this year.
Yep. Okay, great. Super helpful. Wanted to ask a bit, you're talking about your expanded discovery capabilities, sounds really interesting. I was curious, what type of candidates or therapy areas do you think you wanna explore with this additional discovery work, if you're able to share?
Sorry, Roanna. Your voice broke for about five seconds. Can you repeat that question?
Was asking about the expanded discovery capabilities, what type of candidates or therapy areas you might focus on with this work.
Okay. Thank you. We have expanded beyond just infectious disease. We are looking at, you know, more chronic disease and more common diseases with unmet medical needs. We haven't disclosed any specific area yet. We will share that information later this year.
Okay, great. Last question. Any updates on your partnering strategy for non-core assets?
Sure. We continue to explore partnership for our HIV program and also as China rights for soralimixin. I think, you know, we are still talking to a few parties and if we have more definitive progress, we'll certainly share that with you.
Okay, great. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Thank you, Roanna. If there are any more question coming up, please click the Raise Hand on the webinar controls, and we will prompt you to unmute yourself. Before we are waiting for more questions coming in, I actually collect some questions from the offline. There was a question that actually is quite related to the one who Roanna just asked, that this question is that we saw the Chinese biotech plays a more important role in the global drug innovation infrastructure, and the BD deals surged recent years. Now Brii has also expanded its discovery pipeline. What's the development strategy of Brii on its discovery programs? Will the company carry on the program to the late stage development by itself, just like the HBV program, or try to find partnership in an earlier stage?
Thank you, Kathy. Yes, we are aware that more BD transactions were coming out of China and obviously, it's recognized that China has a greater ecosystem for early discovery and also early clinical development that will allow programs to be quickly progressed at a very efficient cost. We are trying to fully utilize the efficiency and also the ecosystem in China as we are operating both the US and China. That's the reason why we have built our lab in both Beijing and Shanghai, and we're expanding our discovery effort in China. Also, we have been working our platform and new discovery programs internally for almost two years now. We do expect that we will start to see programs moving towards clinical development later this year.
I think with that, we certainly hope that we will be able to realize value from some of these programs through partnership. We are also open to continuous development, carrying out development by ourselves. It's really depending on, you know, whether we have the expertise, clinical expertise and how we view the market potential in China versus ex-China. From financial perspective, the company definitely has sufficient cash to support the development of our own programs into clinic and into later stage. That's a decision we need to make case by case. Thank you.
Thank you, Ankang. As there were no more questions coming in, and this will conclude the Q&A portion of today's call. Now I will turn the call over to Ankang for the final remarks.
Sure. Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining today's call. It's a pleasure to see that you are continuing to supporting us and the company, as I said, has invested greatly into our early discovery in the past year. We believe this will really create a great opportunity for the company to extend our pipeline and to create long-term value for the investors. Our HBV program will produce important data later this year, and we hope this will be able to inform us of our next stage of development. Stay tuned. I hope, you know, we will share more exciting news over the year. Thank you again for your support.
Thank you all again for joining us today. We look forward to keeping you updated on our progress. Please feel free to reach out to us in the meantime with any further questions at ir@briibio.com. Goodbye.