Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us bright and early. My name is Ethan Taylor, and I am an associate in JPMorgan's Healthcare Group. Before we begin, I want to call your attention to the blue button on your screen. This is where you can submit questions to be answered during the Q&A portion, which will occur in the final 20 minutes or so of the event. With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, I'd like to introduce you to today's presenter, Daphne Zohar, Founder and CEO of PureTech Health. We are all excited to learn more about the PureTech Health story. Now I'll turn it over to you, Daphne, to take it away. Thank you.
Thanks, Ethan, and thanks to the JP Morgan team for inviting us to present today. Welcome to everyone who is listening and watching via webcast. We're excited to tell you more about PureTech, and we'll start on slide number two. What drives us at PureTech is our mission to discover and develop new therapies for underserved and often devastating diseases where there are currently limited or no options available for patients. I'm proud of the work that we've done to deliver on that mission, and I'm looking forward to digging into our highly promising therapeutic development pipeline during the course of our presentation today.
We were excited to kick off the year with some great data supporting our lead therapeutic candidate, and we have a number of anticipated milestones and catalysts that are planned for 2022 as we pursue our goal of helping patients that do not currently have therapeutics that address their unmet medical needs. Moving on to slide three. During this presentation, we may make certain forward-looking statements and ask that you refer to our SEC filings available at sec.gov for a discussion of potential risks and uncertainties. All information presented is current as of today, and PureTech does not plan to update this information later unless required by law. At PureTech, we have a unique R&D model that has been successful in identifying, inventing, and advancing novel candidates through our network of scientists, clinicians, and industry leaders before the rest of the world knows about key discoveries.
We're proud of our track record noted on slide four, having now generated 25 therapeutics and therapeutic candidates, of which 17 are clinical stage and two have gone from inception at PureTech through successful FDA and EU regulatory clearances for marketing. Notably, our track record of clinical success outperforms industry averages, as you can see on the right side of the slide. We think that part of that is due to the approach that we take, as seen on slide five, which builds on validated biology and brings an important inventive step that enables key benefits for patients, such as significantly improved tolerability or localized targeting, for example, to immune cells or sites of inflammation. Across our pipeline, there are examples where we take an approach that has proof of human efficacy, but the class has been held back from its full potential by some key issue.
Then we apply our technology to overcome that key deficit to enable a new class of therapeutics to be unlocked. We think this approach has enabled us to have better success rates because one clinical component has been substantially de-risked. A second important point, which you will see on slide six, is that we set up key experiments to de-risk the programs early and are willing to move resources and shut down programs that have mixed or negative results, so that we focus our resources on the programs that have higher chances of success. This discipline is supported by the unique R&D model which we pioneered, and the fact that we are not reliant on any one binary program. That means we have choices about how to spend our time and money, and we are entirely aligned with our shareholders to advance the winners.
That is something that is more difficult to do if a company only has one platform or program. Finally, I'll note that our network of scientific collaborators, which you see on this slide, enables us to identify and co-invent key IP before it's published in major journals. In fact, there have been around 30 papers published in major journals like Science, Cell, and Nature, most of which published after we in-licensed or invented the key technology. Through this unique approach, we've built a pipeline of novel therapeutic candidates that are being advanced both internally, which you see at the top of slide seven, and through our founded entities, which you can see across the bottom of the slide. You can think of our founded entities like partnered programs.
We co-invented and advanced them through initial milestones, and they are now bringing back value to us through equity, royalty, and/or milestone payments. We have a strong cash position, which you can see across the bottom of this slide, with $387.3 million as of September 30, which we expect to fund our operations into the first quarter of 2025. Note that this figure does not include an additional $100 million we generated from the sale of Karuna shares in the November 2021 post period. Our founded entities are also well- positioned, having raised over $1.6 billion in the last few years, 96% of which came from third-party investors. Our mission now is to use these resources to advance our wholly-owned pipeline, which we intend to keep internally owned and which we see as a major value driver going forward.
Now, let's dive into our wholly owned pipeline on slide eight. We currently have five therapeutic candidates in our wholly owned pipeline and one therapeutic candidate that has been licensed out to and is being developed by a partner. LYT-100 or deupirfenidone is our lead therapeutic candidate, which we believe may have therapeutic potential across a range of conditions involving inflammation and fibrosis. Last week, we were happy to announce top-line results from a crossover study comparing LYT-100 to pirfenidone that showed a 50% reduction in the incidence of GI-related adverse events compared to pirfenidone in healthy older adults. We also outlined our plans to advance LYT-100 into late-stage clinical development for the treatment of IPF. We will dig deeper into that update on the next few slides.
In an additional lung condition, we have an ongoing phase II study of LYT-100 in long COVID-related pulmonary complications, which just completed enrollment, that we expect to read out in the first half of 2022. We're also advancing LYT-100 in lymphedema, for which there are over 1 million patients in the U.S. with no pharmaceutical treatment options. We're in a phase II- A study which will read out in 2022. Importantly, we are one of the only companies advancing novel therapeutic options for both lymphedema and for long COVID. Beyond pulmonary conditions and lymphedema, we are also exploring the potential of LYT-100 in other inflammatory and fibrotic conditions such as myocardial, kidney, and other organ system fibrosis based on clinical data around the use of pirfenidone in these indications.
Outside of LYT-100, we have two oncology programs, one of which is LYT-200, targeting a foundational immunosuppressor, galectin-9, for the potential treatment of a range of cancer indications. The ongoing phase I portion of this study is expected to read out in the first half of 2022, and a maximum tolerated dose has not yet been reached. The second is a preclinical oncology therapeutic candidate, LYT-210, which is designed to inactivate a subset of tumor-promoting gamma- delta 1 T cells, which we are developing for a range of cancer indications. We recently initiated a clinical trial for LYT-300, which is an oral version of allopregnanolone in development for a range of neurological and neuropsychological conditions. Later in this presentation, we'll review some of the upcoming catalysts for our whole pipeline. Now let's dig into the details and data supporting these programs.
I wanna walk you through our lead therapeutic candidate, LYT-100, on slide nine. LYT-100 is a deuterated form of pirfenidone that is designed to retain the potent and clinically validated anti-fibrotic and anti-inflammatory activity of pirfenidone with a differentiated tolerability profile. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or IPF, is an orphan condition. It's characterized by progressive, irreversible scarring of the lungs and a significantly reduced lifespan, with a median survival between three-five years. The current standard of care includes pirfenidone, which is a widely prescribed and efficacious therapy for patients who have IPF. The problem is that pirfenidone and the other approved drug for IPF, nintedanib, both have significant GI-related tolerability issues such as nausea, abdominal discomfort, and diarrhea. Approximately half of patients on pirfenidone discontinue treatment, dose adjust, or switch due to these tolerability issues.
Only about 26% of IPF patients are treated with the current standard of care treatments, despite their proven efficacy. This suggests that a vast majority of IPF patients are not currently being treated and supports the significant need for new tolerable treatment options. There's a substantial opportunity here for LYT-100, which has a highly desirable tolerability and pharmacokinetic profile that we believe really could make a meaningful difference for patients with IPF. For these reasons, we believe LYT-100 has the potential to replace the current standard of care. On slide ten, I'd like to take you through some of the potential advantages of LYT-100 over pirfenidone. LYT-100 maintains the pharmacology of pirfenidone with a differentiated PK profile, enabling improved tolerability.
LYT-100 demonstrated a comparable total exposure to pirfenidone based on PK modeling from prior studies while improving on the GI-related adverse events. We have a composition of matter patent with exclusivity up to 2033, with additional patents on dosing, formulations, and methods of treatment that would further extend the period of exclusivity to 2040. LYT-100 also has the potential for NCE designation and orphan drug exclusivity for IPF and other indications. This is important because there's demonstrated clinical efficacy data with pirfenidone in a range of indications in addition to IPF, but those have not been pursued commercially by the originators. What we really like about LYT-100 is its de-risked clinical profile with a new chemical entity.
It reminds us a lot of Karuna's KarXT, which was a program we co-invented where we knew a lot about the parent compound efficacy, and we added an improvement that addressed tolerability issues and opened up new possibilities. We have other programs in our pipeline that have similar profile, as does LYT-100. Moving on to slide 11. Last week, as I mentioned, we were excited to announce results from a randomized double-blind crossover study in healthy older adults. The study evaluated the tolerability of LYT-100 at 550 mg TID dosing, which based on prior studies, achieves similar exposure levels as FDA-approved dosing of pirfenidone for the treatment of IPF, but with a lower Cmax.
This is important because higher Cmax levels correlate with increased incidence of adverse events. The results were that approximately 50% fewer subjects treated with LYT-100 experienced GI-related AEs compared to subjects treated with pirfenidone, while maintaining similar exposure levels compared to pirfenidone. We also saw a clinically meaningful reduction in the incidence of neurological adverse events. Based on these data and data from our multiple ascending dose study, we believe LYT-100's differentiated profile will have reduced GI adverse events and as a result, potentially improve patient compliance. The longer patients can stay on the drug at the approved dose, the more efficacious we believe the drug will be. A previous clinical study comparing the lower dose of pirfenidone than the FDA-approved dose noted a dose efficacy response.
Whether doses higher than the marketed dose can achieve increased efficacy has not really been explored in patients with IPF. In the upcoming dose- ranging study, PureTech plans to investigate LYT-100 in IPF patients at a dose with a higher total drug exposure than the currently approved dose of pirfenidone in addition to the same dose to see if higher exposure results in improved efficacy. In the meantime, our second multiple ascending dose study is ongoing and has not yet reached the maximum tolerated dose. Importantly, LYT-100 retains the pharmacology of pirfenidone. On slide 12, you'll see the preclinical POC that LYT-100 retains both the anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic properties of pirfenidone.
For example, on the left, LYT-100 reduces pro-inflammatory cytokines like TNF-α, and on the right we can see the anti-fibrotic effect of LYT-100 in reducing TGF-β dependent increase in collagen. On slide 13, we'll review our IPF development plans. Guided by our clinical advisory board that includes the world's leading expert in IPF clinical development, and based on additional data generated from our robust LYT-100 clinical program and recent regulatory feedback, we will advance LYT-100 into late-stage clinical development for the treatment of IPF, beginning with a dose ranging study initiating in the first half of 2022, with top line results expected in 2023. The dose- ranging study will enroll approximately 250 treatment naive IPF patients to evaluate LYT-100 efficacy relative to placebo. The study will also compare LYT-100 tolerability and efficacy with pirfenidone.
The primary endpoint will measure the rate of decline in FVC for LYT-100 compared to placebo over six months. We also plan to investigate LYT-100 in IPF patients at a dose with a higher total drug exposure than the currently approved dose of pirfenidone to see if higher exposure results in improved activity. We intend to capitalize on efficiencies of the 505(b)(2) pathway for our IPF development plan, and we believe that the compelling efficacy data from the upcoming dose ranging study, together with a phase III study both in IPF patients, could serve as the basis for LYT-100 registration for treatment of IPF in the U.S. We're also delighted to have Dr. Paul Ford join our team to oversee the LYT-100 development program in IPF.
Paul is an experienced clinical pulmonologist and has built and advanced programs from early to late stage development, including overseeing over 1,000 IPF patients in clinical trials. Moving on to slide 14, where we can see a summary of our clinical-stage oncology program, LYT-200, which targets a foundational immunosuppressor galectin-9 for the potential treatment of a range of cancer indications. Our preclinical data suggests that galectin-9 could be significant both as a therapeutic target for a range of cancers and as a cancer biomarker. Galectin-9 is a particularly interesting IO target, given that it is a tumor- secreted factor that affects multiple immunosuppressive signaling pathways simultaneously through interaction with a number of immune cell receptors. Such receptors include PD-1 and TIM-3, for example, as well as others.
LYT-200 is currently being evaluated as a single agent in the first stage of an adaptive phase I/II clinical trial, as seen on slide 15, which is expected to read out in the first half of 2022. Pending those results, we intend to initiate the phase II expansion cohort portion of the trial, which is designed to evaluate LYT-200, both alone and in combination with BeiGene's tislelizumab or chemotherapy.
We also have a second oncology program, LYT-210, a pre-clinical therapeutic designed to inhibit tumor-promoting Vδ1 T cells, which we are developing for a range of cancer indications. On slide 16 is our third clinical stage therapeutic candidate, LYT-300, an oral version of allopregnanolone in development for a range of neurological and neuropsychological conditions. An injectable formulation of allopregnanolone, brexanolone, is approved by the FDA as a 60-hour infusion for the treatment of postpartum depression.
Though that method of administration has significant limitations, using our proprietary Glyph technology platform that directly targets the lymphatic system and avoids first-pass metabolism, LYT-300 is designed to unlock the validated biology of allopregnanolone to potentially offer a new oral treatment for a range of conditions where there is significant unmet patient need. LYT-300 is currently in a phase I trial, with results expected in the second half of 2022. As we advance to slide 17, you can see that in addition to our 6 fully owned therapeutic candidates, we are fortunate to have powerful lymphatic and inflammation platforms that enable oral administration and more direct targeting to immune cells and sites of inflammation.
We believe that these platforms will power potential future candidates for the internal pipeline, like LYT-300, as well as opportunities for non-dilutive funding through partnering non-core pieces of the platform, which we have done- already and expect to do more of. In summary, as you look across our wholly-owned pipeline and our founded entities on slide 18, we believe this is going to be an exceedingly catalyst-rich year, which includes multiple value drivers across our wholly-owned pipeline and our founded entities. With at least five expected clinical study initiations, including the LYT-100 dose ranging study for IPF and 11 expected readouts, including readouts from LYT-100 in long COVID and breast cancer-related lymphedema, and our phase I data from our anti-galectin-9 cancer immunotherapy candidate. We're really excited about the progress we've been making across our pipeline and also about these important upcoming catalysts.
I'm joined by our President and Chief Business, Legal & Operating Officer, Bharatt Chowrira, and Chief Medical Officer, Julie Krop, today for any questions. I'll hand it back over to you, Ethan.
Excellent. Thank you, Daphne, for the terrific presentation. We now turn to the Q&A portion of the event, and our first question is: Can we expect your current wholly owned assets to remain in-house, or could they be the basis of future founded entities?
Our strategy has evolved such that the default is that we'll be keeping our wholly owned programs in-house. As they progress, we're gonna be selecting which programs we're gonna take all the way forward through to commercialization. The ones that we don't decide to advance to commercialization, sort of our non-core programs, could get, we could sell them, we could put them into a founded entity, or stop development. We're gonna be really prioritizing our wholly owned pipeline and keeping those programs internal.
Great. Thank you. Our next question is, apologies if I butcher any of the names here, but what precedent has been set for the use of deuterium within other therapeutics?
Well, I'd love to have Bharatt answer that since he was involved in the development of the only other deuterium-modified product that's now on the market and is very successful. Bharatt, would you like to take that question?
Yeah. Modifying deuterium is, you know, has been attempted several times, you know, over the years, and it really depends on the type of molecule that you wanna modify. The beauty of deuterium modification of small molecules is that, with these, simple, modification of or replacement of, a standard hydrogen with a heavy hydrogen, which is deuterium, you actually maintain the pharmacology of the molecule, but you get a differentiated, pharmacokinetic profile as a result of this, deuterium modification. As Daphne mentioned, there is one approved, deuterium-modified, drug in the market called AUSTEDO or, deutetrabenazine. It's currently approved for the treatment of movement disorders in Huntington's disease and tardive dyskinesia. Teva is marketing that, and this was developed, you know, at my former company.
Similarly, as Daphne mentioned, LYT-100 is a deuterated form of pirfenidone. There are a few other molecules in development with deuterium modification, but the only approved product right now is deutetrabenazine.
Terrific. Thank you. Our next question is a three-part question. Why are you moving forward with TID when your other studies evaluated BID? Are you seeing something with BID that concerns you? And does TID versus BID matter in a real-world setting?
Thank you. I'm gonna have Julie, our Chief Medical Officer, take that one.
Yeah. Thank you. So we did a number of different studies comparing pirfenidone to LYT-100 and establishing the equivalent exposure dose. What we found was at the BID dose versus the TID dose, we were able, in the TID dose, to get a lower Cmax, which we, as Daphne mentioned, believe is really what's driving the adverse events. With the TID dosing, we're able to you know, maintain the same schedule as pirfenidone, which is taken with meals. That's somewhat of an advantage of the TID dosing, is that it's taken with you know, at the same time as meals, which makes sense.
We don't believe that there's going to be a significant difference between the BID and TID, but for us, the most important component is minimizing adverse events, and that was most beneficial with the TID versus the BID.
Great. Thank you. How feasible is it to enroll treatment-naive patients in a placebo-controlled randomized setting, and why not enroll treatment-experienced patients?
I'll ask Julie to answer that one too.
Okay. We're going with treatment-naïve patients for the first dose ranging study. The reason really is that we want to make sure that we avoid any potential for selection bias of patients that may be on standard care and just not doing well. We believe that it's, you know, very possible to enroll these patients. Of course, we'll be going to many centers, not just in the U.S., but around the world.
Thank you. What will be the primary endpoint of the study, and how is this statistically powered? What does success look like?
Julie.
We'll be looking at the rate of decline in FVC over the 6-month period as our primary endpoint. That will be compared to placebo. We will also be on secondary endpoints, looking at comparing it, the rate of decline compared to pirfenidone, as well as looking at tolerability profile. But the statistical powering will be based on the difference from placebo in rate of decline.
Got it. Thank you. What other indications can you go after with LYT-100? Where is the clinical data with pirfenidone?
I'll just answer in a high level and then ask Julie or Bharatt to weigh in. What's really great about pirfenidone, it has been explored in other indications, and there's proof of efficacy in humans and other indications. As I mentioned before, we're currently pursuing pulmonary conditions like IPF, long COVID, and then also lymphatic flow conditions like lymphedema. But we're also looking at myocardial and other systemic fibrosis. Basically, you know, what's great is we have a lot of data that we can base our decision off of. We haven't yet guided as to what other indications we'll be exploring. I'll ask Bharat and Julie if they want to add anything to that question.
Only to say that, you know, this is another example of a molecule that has the potential to have this pipeline within a product opportunity where in a single molecule, across different indications, and they're all quite independent in terms of the value proposition, you know, from lung to cardiac to kidney and other, you know, fibrotic conditions. We have a potential for a broad, you know, application of this program.
Thank you. Tell us about LYT-200 and the ongoing phase I study.
Julie.
Yeah. LYT-200, I think, is a really exciting molecule because it's novel and has the potential, I think, to be combined even with other, you know, anti-tumor agents. What galectin-9 really is a target that's focused on a pathway that is associated with immunosuppression of the tumor. It's in the same pathway as PD-1 and TIM-3, other, you know, well-known validated targets of immunosuppression for cancer. For the phase I study, we're really focusing on solid tumors, all-comer trials for solid tumors, looking for activity of the molecule and then picking, you know, based on that, selecting a dose as well as the indications that we planned to take into phase II. We're going to have data later this year, and we're very excited about this program.
Thank you. What potential advantages could LYT-300 offer over other products?
I'm going to ask Bharatt to answer that one.
Yeah. You know, it's very well known that natural neurosteroids like allopregnanolone, which is a potent GABA- A agonist, and in a number of neurological conditions, you know, the GABA- A agonism can have a significant potential benefit from a biology perspective. People have been trying to advance allopregnanolone as a therapeutic. One of the major challenges with allopregnanolone and other neurosteroids is that they're not orally bioavailable. There is a product that has now been approved in the U.S. for postpartum depression, which is brexanolone, that's a 60-hour IV infusion. That, you know, has limited its, you know, adoption.
We applied our Glyph technology platform that allows you to bypass the first pass metabolism and enable oral bioavailability of allopregnanolone. We have demonstrated this in preclinical models including non-human primates, where we see a very good bioavailability of allopregnanolone. We are currently in phase I clinical trials, and we expect to have data later this year to not only validate the approach for allopregnanolone but also to validate this approach of creating these prodrugs using our Glyph technology that allows you to bypass first pass metabolism and achieve oral bioavailability. By making it orally bioavailable, allopregnanolone now can be potentially advanced for a range of neurological indications, including epilepsy, seizures, depression, and other conditions. That's the advantage of creating an oral form of allopregnanolone.
Thank you. As a follow-up question, are there any particular disease indications, neurological ones, that will be prioritized for initial development?
I'll take this one. We're looking at a range of different conditions from epilepsy conditions. We're looking at some other movement type disorders, essential tremor, and some other things. We're also looking at neuropsychological conditions, anxiety types of subsets of depression. We still haven't announced what indication we'll be moving forward with, but we have a lot of choices.
Thank you. With COVID-19 infection becoming an endemic, what is the opportunity in long COVID?
You know, it was interesting because we started hearing reports sort of early on in the pandemic from pulmonologists that we were working with about these persistent pulmonary complications post recovery. We wanted to explore whether the anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic profile of LYT-100 could make a difference. You know, the opportunity is very large because even after milds COVID there are these reports of persistent pulmonary complications. We really wanted to see if we can make a difference. We've just completed enrollment of the study. It will be reading out in the first half. It's a new condition. You know, it has some similarities to conditions where pirfenidone has efficacy, but it is, you know, it's pretty novel.
We're very much looking forward to the results of that study. I don't know if anybody wants to add anything, Julie or Bharat.
Yeah. I think, you know, patients with severe COVID are having long-term complications at a very high rate. Almost a third of patients end up with ongoing inflammation and then fibrosis subsequently. Many of those patients will have ongoing dyspnea and even requirements for oxygen. We see this as a, you know, significant opportunity to help patients that right now really just don't have any other options.
Terrific. Thank you. As deuterated versions of pirfenidone LYT-100 could they have applicability in IPF? And what can you tell us about your plans?
Yeah. Definitely we're pursuing IPF, and I think we described that a little bit in the presentation and some of the follow-up. Is there some aspect of the development in IPF that you'd like us to dig deeper into?
I'm sorry. The question didn't specify other than maybe like long-term studies or plans.
We're kicking off a registration enabling program now with this dose ranging study, and we believe together with a phase III study, should the results be positive, could be sufficient for registration in the U.S. for IPF.
Thank you. PureTech recently consolidated Alivio, including preclinical LYT-500 for IBD. Please tell us about this technology and LYT-500.
Yeah. I'll say a little bit about it, and then I'll ask Bharatt to add some information. The Alivio platform enables targeting of inflamed tissue. It was developed in the lab of Bob Langer and Jeff Karp. We had originally put it into a founded entity, and we were developing both a platform and then also specific product candidates. We were just really excited about what we were seeing there. We were able to bring in this program as a wholly owned program, and we think there's a range of opportunities. One of the programs is partnered, but I'll ask Bharatt maybe to talk a little bit more about LYT-500.
Yeah. It's an exciting technology. It allows you, for the first time really to target sites of inflammation, in, you know, especially in the GI tract. One of the indications we are interested in advancing this technology for is inflammatory bowel disease, and specifically UC indications. When Alivio was advancing this technology, as Daphne mentioned, it originally came out of Professor Bob Langer at MIT and Professor Jeff Karp at Brigham and Women's. This technology allows us to create, you know, different routes of administration a range of molecules from small molecules to biologics to other molecular entities.
We have focused on LYT-500, which is an oral formulation of a potent IL-22, which, you know, most of the anti-inflammatories out there only deal with the underlying inflammation and not really address the effects of inflammation that could create mucosal barrier damage that can lead to other complications. We are advancing IL-22 to heal the mucosal barrier damage at the same time and combine it with a potent anti-inflammatory so that you have this one-two punch, which is, you know, it treats the underlying inflammation as well as address the mucosal barrier damage with IL-22 in an oral dosage form, which is quite exciting.
We are, you know, running a number of preclinical models, and we are advancing that, and we should have some preclinical proof of concept data later this year with that LYT-500 program.
One of the most attractive features just to add is that it will, you know, not only be orally administered, but it will stay locally, and so you'll have very low concentrations systemically of these agents to limit toxicity.
Thank you. Beyond these assets, could you please discuss your other discovery platform and what kind of indications this platform could potentially unlock?
Yeah. We have a few different platforms that focus on the ability to orally administer therapeutics to target immune cells and sites of inflammation. Some of the programs build on our expertise in the lymphatic system. One of the ones that I think would be really interesting to mention is our Orasome platform, which enables oral administration, for example, of expression systems like messenger RNA. There's a range of applications, and we just had some exciting preclinical proof of concept there. We think that this could be a very important platform. Bharatt, do you want to say a few more words about the Orasome platform?
Yeah, you know, people have been trying to achieve oral administration of biologics like peptides and proteins and monoclonal antibodies. That we believe, you know, if we're able to crack that, you know, problem, then it would be, you know, what people consider the holy grail of biologic therapeutics, where you can actually imagine, you know, a patient taking a tablet for a monoclonal antibody, and your body actually then makes the protein of a therapeutic protein of interest, and then it gets into circulation and, you know, and acts to treat the disease, underlying disease.
That is the big promise, and we are advancing Orasome technology that we have demonstrated, as Daphne mentioned, in preclinical models that we can achieve an oral administration of an expression system. In the small intestine, the protein encoded by this expression system is made, and then it enters the circulation through the lymphatic system, and we can measure the levels of proteins in circulation. That is a really important validation for us. We are now advancing this technology to a number of other preclinical models and different types of expression systems as well as different proteins that we want to express in the preclinical models. We'll have more to say in the coming months. Really exciting, potentially very disruptive platform.
Great. Well, I believe that brings us to the end of our presentation. Daphne, I don't know if you have any concluding remarks, but I want to thank everyone for their time today. Really appreciate the presentations. Fascinating.
Thank you so much, Ethan. We appreciate the opportunity to present at JP Morgan, and we're really excited for this year. Thank you.
Thanks.
We are clear. Thank you very much, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Ethan, thank you.
Of course.
Appreciate it, and to the technical team here, I don't have your names, but thank you, everyone.
Oh.
Yeah. Bye.
Take care.
Enjoy the rest of the conference.
Thanks.