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Earnings Call: Q3 2022

Nov 3, 2022

Operator

Welcome to the Medivir Q3 2022 report. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards there will be a question and answer session. I'll now hand you over to the CEO, Jens Lindberg. Please begin.

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

Thank you, and welcome everyone to our Q3 call. You can, operator, please proceed to slide two. Joined in the room with me is Magnus Christensen, our CFO, who will go through the financial numbers towards the end of the call, and Fredrik Öberg, our Chief Scientific Officer, who will walk us through some of the elements of the program today. With that, I think we can move to slide three. Important information, of course. I'm not gonna go through it in detail. You find the presentation on our website, so please access it there for further information. With that said, we can move to slide five, please. Highlights during sort of last quarter. We're gonna divide up the presentation in two parts as we usually do.

We're gonna focus our efforts on our lead asset, Fostrox, but also touch a bit on our overall portfolio of development. With focus on Fostrox for primary liver cancer, a couple of elements. Last quarterly report, we talked about a sort of slow initial recruitment for the Fostrox study, primarily in Europe. We had launched a number of initiatives to pick up the recruitment speed, and we're happy to announce that sort of those efforts that we launched, they have continued to yield results. We're now seeing a very nice progress with regards to patient recruitment in the study in the dose escalation cohorts. We will of course continue our efforts to increasing recruitment speed. We want to drive the study as fast as we possibly can. In a dose escalation phase, there is.

Clearly, we need to clear a cohort before we can move to the next one, but we are also preparing for the dose expansion cohorts. We're looking to add additional sites and investigators primarily in Korea, so that when we open those expansion, we can recruit those patients as quickly as possible. As mentioned previously, we continue our preparations to open an IND in the U.S. next year, and those efforts are progressing according to plan. We of course want to share the data, sort of along the way, and that we generate across the compounds. The SITC conference, which takes place in Boston next week, we will share some further data with regards to Fostrox in combination with PD-1, showing increased efficacy in a non-clinical tumor model. Outside of Fostrox, couple of elements.

Our compound birinapant, which is in combination, dose escalation combination with IGM-8444, that continues to enroll patients. It is now in the fourth cohort with no DLTs to date. We look forward to hearing more about the outcome of that study as we move towards close to end of this year and 2023. Birinapant is the compound that we out-licensed to IGM previously. We also in the last quarterly report sort of talked about briefly the MBLI program, which was licensed by Infex Therapeutics. They are on track to go into clinic either end of this year or in the beginning of 2023.

They have also recently announced that sort of the program, which is named MET-X, has been granted patent status in the U.S. in the last quarter. Also a nice step forward. We can move to slide six, please. Next slide. Just sort of pipeline overview. As you have seen before, and as always, fostroxacitabine bralpamide or Fostrox as we call it, is our lead asset, and that's also where we will spend most of our time from a presentation perspective today. With that, we can move two slides forward, and we can move to slide eight, please. Just a summary for those of you who are perhaps less informed sort of, or less aware of the program.

We believe that we have a unique and first-in-class potential treatment for primary liver cancer. There's kind of three core elements in terms of the value of the compound. There is clearly a significant unmet need and therefore sort of a sizable commercial potential in primary liver cancer where the compound is targeted. We believe, and we will touch a bit more on that, as always, that we have a unique mechanism of action that selectively targets cancer in the liver and then bypasses resistance mechanisms. We're bringing something different to the treatment arsenal in primary liver cancer versus what exists on the market today or what is in late-stage development.

That unique mechanism of action also brings a strong potential for attractive combinations, which is extra important in the world of liver cancer today, looking at how the treatment is developing. With that, let's go to slide nine. As mentioned, in the last quarterly report, we talked about the initiatives that we had launched to accelerate study recruitment, across our sites, and the study is ongoing in Korea, U.K., and Spain. We had amended the protocol, and the key change was we allowed inclusion of patients in the third line segment as well, patients who were sort of fit enough from a liver perspective, but were third line patients. That we have seen sort of provide some additional boost to the study recruitment.

We're working to add additional investigators and sites, as mentioned, primarily in Korea. We have also sort of stepped up our presence and our engagement, our activity with the trial sites to generate as much sort of engagement and enthusiasm for the study as possible. To take an example of that, we can move to the next slide, please. We have just come back from a trip to Korea where we visited the different study sites that are participating in our study. A couple of notes to make is that sort of clearly the current treatment paradigm is well aligned with sort of the recruitment of patients to the Fostrox study, i.e., both arms, whether it's combination with Lenvima or combination with Keytruda, is attractive to both patients and investigators.

Clearly that's important from a study recruitment perspective, but it's also important from a longer term strategy perspective. Second line which we are targeting as a first step has the highest unmet need. It is the area where the investigators clearly articulate that they are looking for improved treatment options, and they are looking for improved treatment options above and beyond the monotherapies that are there today. HCC is also an area of priority that's clear in Korea and also in other Asian countries due to the high unmet need and the high incidence. Having sites and recruiting patients in Korea, in an Asian population is important both from a patient recruitment perspective, but perhaps even more so for a longer term strategy perspective where Asian markets will be important as we move forward.

One other element, then we can move to slide 11, please. We also mentioned in the last quarterly report that the MSD and Eisai had just announced that there was a negative outcome of the LEAP-002 study, i.e. study combined where Keytruda and Lenvima was combined in first line liver cancer. It was just announced, so we didn't know. We hadn't seen all the data. That data was further presented in detail at the ESMO conference in Paris in September. A couple of notes to make. We were able to go through the data in a bit more detail, and we've also been able to engage with physicians, clinicians, KOLs to understand how do they interpret the data and how will this impact the treatment paradigm going forward. There are a couple of elements that stand out.

One, this negative outcome does cement the combination of Tecentriq plus Avastin as the first line option. That will now be the standard of care in the coming few years. It does highlight the need for other alternative combinations with alternative modes of action if we are looking to improve on sort of what we see either in this first line setting or for that matter in the second line setting. The second part is that the data presented at ESMO from the study outlined a better than anticipated efficacy of Lenvima as monotherapy. That doesn't mean that Lenvima will compete with Tecentriq Avastin in first line. What it does do is that it kind of highlights or cements or strengthens the position of Lenvima as the preferred option in the second line setting, i.e., Lenvima as a monotherapy.

Meaning that sort of the study that we are running, the Fostrox study with either pembro arm or a Lenvima arm, is well aligned with how the treatment paradigm is evolving and finding a treatment option of sort of for example evaluating Fostrox in combination with Lenvima in that second line setting to see if we can improve on the Lenvima monotherapy becomes an important opportunity going forward and something that the KOLs and clinicians are looking forward to. With that, all in all, it does highlight the need for alternative treatment options that bring something different to the treatment arsenal. This is where we truly believe that Fostrox fits perfectly with its unique profile in HCC. Fredrik will talk a bit more about that in detail. Operator, you can move to slide 12 please. Fredrik.

Fredrik Öberg
Chief Scientific Officer, Medivir

Thank you. Clearly as Jens have outlined, there's a big medical need for something new, a new therapy within the HCC space. We believe that Fostrox does provide such a new modality. What is Fostrox? It is a chemotherapy, a nucleotide. There's a good proven track record of anti-tumor activity for these kind of molecules. They do get incorporated in replicating cancer cells to create DNA damage, they create the cell death. But there is some drawbacks of course with systemic side effects. How have we decided to solve these issues? We've done that on the back of experience that we have in treating hepatitis C, so delivering a drug by a prodrug to the liver.

It's the same approach that is used in Sovaldi, for instance in hepatitis C, but it does have a unique prodrug tail. This prodrug tail enables a lot of really positive characteristics to the molecule. One of the important things is that it becomes orally available. You can dose the molecule orally, and you will by that achieve a much higher exposure in the liver and at the same time minimizing systemic exposure, which is what we want for the chemotherapy. That is why we think that this molecule brings something new to the therapeutic space in HCC, and also provides a very attractive combination partner for other modalities. If we move to slide number 13 please.

The monotherapy study that we have done is really showing us the proof of concept that we were looking for. We're really excited about the fact that biopsies from patients did show a very nice induction of DNA damage in tumor cells, whereas normal surrounding adjacent liver tissue was seen to be untouched. We did not see any DNA damage, which is illustrated in the right hand graph here. Not only did we measure delivery of Fostrox to the liver, but we also saw this selective tumor effect that we were looking for. Of course this is all well and good, but in cancer therapy it's clear that you would need combinations to counter resistance and to increase efficacy.

If we move to the next slide, number 14, we can see the two different classes of drugs that are dominant in the HCC field. Those two are not only the most used classes of drugs, there's also very good scientific rationale and pre-clinical evidence to combine these with Fostrox. On the left-hand side is checkpoint inhibitors, primarily PD-1 or PD-L1 antibodies, that stimulate the immune system. Combinations with Fostrox allows then an increased presentation of tumor antigens because of the induction of DNA damage and cell death. As Jens pointed out, there will be a presentation of a poster at SITC in a week around this pre-clinical data.

The other type of therapy is inhibiting angiogenesis or blocking blood supply to the tumor, in most cases by tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Also in this case there's a very good rationale for combining Fostrox with the TKIs and also preclinical data to support this. As inhibition of blood supply to the tumor increases hypoxia, lack of oxygen, it also increases enzymes that metabolize Fostrox. It will allow for a higher level of active metabolite in the tumor. This has been shown preclinically. We think that the combination will also be more effective than the two compounds as single agents. If we move to the next slide then, number 15, this is an overview.

We believe that we're in the right space with our program right now. We have passed through the monotherapy part, phase I-A and phase I-B. This was a bit broader patient population with liver metastasis, cholangiocarcinoma, et cetera. We're now narrowing it down to hepatocellular carcinoma in this combination phase. As you see illustrated here, we are currently running two arms, one in combination with Lenvima and one in combination with Keytruda. We're in the dose escalation cohorts right now. With the aim of these are to establish a recommended phase II dose for the combinations.

The patient population here is HCC. We're including both second- and third-line patients, so advanced inoperable HCC, and who have failed two or three lines of prior therapy. We include also here, of course, the Tecentriq/Avastin patients who have failed on that treatment. Currently, this study is ongoing in 14 sites in the U.K., Spain, and South Korea. On the basis of the data from this, it's dose escalation, the decision of a correct dose and expansion, we will decide which one of these arms perform best in terms of efficacy, safety, et cetera. Also taking into account the environment, the landscape of treatment of HCC.

If we move to the next slide, this is an illustration of the treatment schedule for HCC. As you see there, we're in the advanced stage HCC patients space. We're initially focusing on second and third line, but of course, looking to expand that in time. These are two areas where there's a great unmet medical need, and we think that Fostrox could make a difference. It's also notable that the space, the advanced HCC space, there will be a lot of patients there who have been experienced or have been treated with immune therapies. This is likely to increase as these therapies are moving into the intermediate stage.

There's likely to be an increased number of patients in this advanced stage who have prior immune therapy experience, but will need something different because they have failed on this therapy. At the onset, the first-line systemic therapy right now seems to be very well established as being Tecentriq/Avastin. Whereas in the second line now more and more Lenvima is the preferred option, but not the only option. These lines then, second and third line, are the initial focus for our combination studies. With that, I will turn the word over to Magnus to describe some financials.

Magnus Christensen
CFO, Medivir

Thank you, Fredrik. Operator, please move to slide number 18. Where you can see the financial summary for quarter three and year to date for this year, which I will briefly comment on. All numbers are in million SEK. As you can see, the turnover for quarter three amounts to SEK 1.1 million and all relates to royalty from Xerclear, and it's higher than last year. Year to date, the figure is SEK 2.1 million, which is lower compared to last year, and last included the upfront payment for the out-licensing deal with IGM related to birinapant.

If you go down, you can see our other external expenses is 11.1, which is highest to date compared to last year, both in the quarter and in year to date, and relates foremost to higher clinical costs for the ongoing Fostrox combination study. Personnel costs is in more or less in line with last year for the quarter. The operating loss for quarter three is 14.6, and it's higher compared to last year. As I mentioned, it's mainly due to high clinical costs, and both in the quarter and in year to date.

The cash flow from the operating activities in the quarter amounts to almost SEK 120 million, which is in line with our current plan. In the end of the quarter, the cash position was SEK 142. According to our current plan and current consumption, we will have a positive cash balance in the end of 2023. With that, I will hand over to Jens.

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

To summarize things, we can move to slide 19 before we open up for any questions. What we've tried to convey today is sort of a continued momentum across the portfolio, clearly with a focus on our key and strategic priority, i.e., Fostrox and the development for liver cancer. As we mentioned, sort of all sites are active, and the initiatives that we launched in the last quarter to speed up patient recruitment has yielded results. We will continue to drive for either even sort of faster uptake. An additional comment is that what we see now is we actually have patients in line waiting to enter the study.

The limitation at this stage is it is a dose escalation phase. That means that we can only include three patients per cohort. We have to wait before we clear the cohort, then we can start including patients again. There's always a potential time limitation in the dose escalation cohort. The good news.

Clearly, it is that when we are able to get to the point of establishing the recommended phase II dose, and we can open up the dose expansion cohort, it's quite positive to see the attractiveness of the study and the number of patients that are waiting in line wanting to enter the study. That we are looking forward, and that should allow us to recruit the dose expansion phase with quite high speed. In addition to continuing to drive the study, as we prepare for phase IIb, opening up an IND in the U.S. will be important, and we've said that the plan is to open it up in 2023.

Meaning we have clearly started the work and the preparations to open that in 2023 is progressing according to plan. As mentioned, then from a strategic point of view, the developments we have seen in the field, as example, lately of the negative outcome of the LEAP-002 study, we can clearly see that it confirms the needs for alternative treatment options. Alternative treatment options with different mechanisms of action, in order to improve on current treatment paradigm. This is where we do believe that Fostrox has a unique position to fit into this. Then outside of the Fostrox program, as mentioned, we continue to see IGM progressing the combination of IGM-8444 and durvalumab.

Now, dosing patients in the fourth dose escalation cohort. As we mentioned, Infex Therapeutics has gained patented status of the MBLI or MET-X program in the US. We are looking forward to the end of 2022 and 2023, and we will continue to drive the program forward. With that, I think we can stop there, and we can open it up, operator for questions.

Operator

Thank you. If you have a question for the speakers, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from the line of Joe Pantginis of H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Joe Pantginis
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Hey, guys. Good morning and good afternoon. Thanks for the update today. A lot of blocking and tackling going on. When you look at the current enrollment efforts, you know, I appreciate all the color you gave on the efforts that you've been doing to increase enrollment. I wanna focus on geographic targeting and potential geographic differences. Obviously the IND in the U.S. should represent a good inflection point. I was curious, you know, how you might look to further focus on the Asian population where liver cancer obviously has a higher incidence and prevalence. Around that question, is there anything that you can clarify or point to with regard to treatment differences in Korea and the rest of Asia?

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

On the last topic, there's always gonna be sort of some differences. With regards to the overall treatment differences, then I would say no. It's very clear that Tecentriq Avastin is the number one option, and I would say that 90% of patients in that first line setting will receive Tecentriq Avastin. When they come out of that sort of treatment option, it seems like Lenvima is establishing itself as the preferred option for a good chunk of the patients. We can also see that there are patients where they would prefer the option of then having...

When we look at our study, pembrolizumab plus Fostrox is also an attractive option for some patients, depending on what response they have seen in that first line setting. It seems like sort of there is a logic to changing the mechanism of action in that second line setting for patients and moving to a TKI monotherapy where Lenvima is the preferred. The one thing that changes whether Lenvima is used or sorafenib is usually a reimbursement topic. There are some countries in the world where Lenvima isn't reimbursed in second line, and there might be a challenge to using it, and then sort of the alternative would then be sorafenib. I think that there's a general sense that the one they would like to use is Lenvima. That seems to be relatively clear across markets. I think from our.

Joe Pantginis
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Sorry, sorry. If I could just interject with regard to the reimbursement, I was gonna bring that point up, so I'm very glad that you did. How you feel that can impact the penetration potential of Fostrox, especially if you're not getting, you know, something like a checkpoint reimbursed.

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

I mean, it's a bit early to speculate on it, in the sense that sort of, what will the world look like from a reimbursement perspective, sort of at the time of approval for Fostrox? I think that one thing we are seeing is that, the PD-1s are moving towards sort of loss of exclusivity. You will start to see that sort of with the TKIs as well. I think that the reimbursement world, the pricing world could look quite different when we enter the market in a few years' time versus what it is today. I think that it's right or wrong, it's not an area of concern I would say at this stage.

I think that the one thing that we do see is that it can play in our favor to some extent or be difficult depending on what it is today when it comes to recruiting patients. In Korea specifically, they do have some challenges sourcing Lenvima in that sort of second-line space. When Lenvima in the second-line space is the preferred option, clearly then Lenvima as part of a study together with a compound like Fostrox adds to the attractiveness of the study and it supports the recruitment speed of the study. It plays a bit in our favor today with regards to pricing and reimbursement challenges sort of three, four. In when we get to market, I would be cautious to speculate on. Okay.

Joe Pantginis
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Got it. Thank you very much.

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

If I then come back to the question regarding Asia, this is one of the reasons why it was so important to have Asian patients and the Korean sites part of the development program in this phase I study. What we have said all along is that we see ourselves taking the compound and the combinations forward towards sort of regulatory approvals, et cetera, in the Western markets, in Europe, in U.S. orphan drug. Asia being different both in terms of markets being different and in terms of sort of the incidence, et cetera, that we've communicated.

We do see ourselves partnering up to drive this forward as we move towards the sort of move into the phase IIb, phase III pivotal space. That is part of the plan, not to do it alone in Asia, whereas in the Western market we do see ourselves sort of able to drive it forward ourselves.

Joe Pantginis
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Got it. Appreciate all the color. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Richard Ramanius of Redeye. Please go ahead.

Richard Ramanius
Equity Research Analyst, Redeye

Hello, guys. I thought I would continue on the same track. Can you comment on the first line established first line treatment in Asia and in Korea in particular?

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

Yeah. The first line treatment in Korea is very similar to all the other countries. My experience is that sort of you can see clinical differences and you can sometimes see a bit of reimbursement differences. When it comes to the primary liver cancer space in that first line, it seems to be very aligned across markets. Whether we talk to the Korean physicians, whether we talk to our other investigators in Spain and U.K. or for that matter when we've engaged with KOLs in the U.S., they all say the same. Tecentriq Avastin has been established as the standard of care. Nine out of ten patients will get it. The risk of bleeding is not as prevalent as may have been thought before.

A sort of basically a majority of patients will get Tecentriq Avastin. The anticipation is actually also when, for example, the AstraZeneca durvalumab, tremelimumab compound is approved, it will not change all that much. It seems like Tecentriq Avastin will be for the foreseeable future, let's say the next two to three years, will be the treatment of choice in first line.

Richard Ramanius
Equity Research Analyst, Redeye

Okay, concerning the LEAP-002 trial, one of your conclusions was that Lenvima it supports using Lenvima in the second line, which makes sense. What do you think about pembrolizumab? Would that perhaps be like a reasonable third line then after Lenvima?

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

Yeah. I think that'd be a logical conclusion to that data set. I mean, it was quite clear that sort of the two key interpretations was really that sort of, okay, well, while the combo data looks good, it's still a negative study, so the impact is Tecentriq Avastin is cemented in first line, and the Keytruda Lenvima combo will be difficult to take forward. But two, it was that element of the Lenvima monotherapy. It does look quite good, so therefore sort of positively surprised and therefore it seems quite logical to use it sort of then if you come out of Tecentriq Avastin. Even then considering that, I mean, it's still a first line study where Lenvima showed good.

It wasn't a second-line patient population. To go back to the pricing discussion, where we see then potential reimbursement challenges for Lenvima in second line is based on the fact that their studies are in first-line and not all reimbursement agencies will be liberal to allow then the second-line reimbursement. From a clinical viewpoint, it seems relatively clear that it has strengthened physicians' belief that Lenvima is the best TKI and is a good treatment option for patients coming out of Tecentriq, Avastin.

As I mentioned earlier, and now I've become a bit long-winded, we do see I mean, sort of in the Fostrox study, we do see that there is also attractiveness of using pembrolizumab plus Fostrox in the second-line space, and this is also with patients coming out of Tecentriq Avastin. There can be different patient, kind of patient types where they would see the one perhaps more attractive than the other. Plus also the fact that not everyone will receive Tecentriq Avastin the first line. Some will maybe get Lenvima in first line as well, and then the need in second line is different. So there's room for both, but perhaps slightly preferential on Lenvima in that mono second-line option clinically today.

Richard Ramanius
Equity Research Analyst, Redeye

Yeah, 'cause in other cancer types you might diagnose people based on the PD-L1 content in the tumor, so perhaps could you do something similar in liver cancer?

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

Yeah. I mean, sort of could be, but I think we haven't seen, I don't know if Fredrik wants to comment on it, but there hasn't been a lot of traction or movement in that direction.

Fredrik Öberg
Chief Scientific Officer, Medivir

No, I mean, you're right. This has been one marker. Tumor mutational burden has been another. There's been gene expression profiles that have been suggested. We haven't really seen any clinical impact in the HCC space yet for selecting patients. I'm sure that the companies with the PD-1 checkpoint inhibitors are working hard to come up with such biomarkers.

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

Maybe I'm taking this a bit too far now, but I'll Fredrik alluded to it earlier, or he alluded to it. He was sort of quite clear that when we now go through those escalation and those expansion, then there comes a time when we sort of there needs to be a decision on which combination do we think we should take forward into a phase IIb sort of regulatory phase. Then the data in and of itself will be important, but we will also need to sort of evaluate what's most suitable from a clinical perspective, from a treatment paradigm perspective. This we will continue to follow, and things can look different in a year's time.

I think today, then it would be fair to say that perhaps the most logical combination to explore first would be the Lenvima Fostrox combination if we were moving into, or when moving into the second line space, considering what sort of the current treatment paradigm looks like and the feedback we get from physicians. Whereas a sort of a combination with a PD-1 would perhaps be, from a Fostrox perspective, more interesting to explore not from a PD-1 combination, but from a triple combination, potentially sort of moving into a first line space.

When we get to that point, we need to sort of evaluate both the data, but also it's kinda what's strategically sound and where do we go with what combinations is best for second line, and is there an option to possibly sort of start moving towards first line as well? Because clearly the earlier you treat, the better, the better opportunity to improve clinical benefit for patients. But now I gave a lot of details.

Richard Ramanius
Equity Research Analyst, Redeye

That's interesting to hear. Continuing with my last question about Xerclear. So far you've only reported revenue SEK 2.5 million in net turnover, which I suppose is mainly from Xerclear. Is that the figure we could expect in the coming years? 'Cause it's lower than compared with earlier years.

Magnus Christensen
CFO, Medivir

Hi, it's Magnus here. Thank you for the question. Yes, the trend is going down, as the patent is run out of life. We have the agreement that we have today is a certain number of years with each country when the product is doing a market entry. It will go down, downhill, I would say, and the trend has been very clear the last couple of years, the trend is going down. That's correct.

Richard Ramanius
Equity Research Analyst, Redeye

Yeah. Thanks. Those were all my questions.

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

Thank you, Richard.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Klas Palin of Erik Penser Bank. Please go ahead.

Klas Palin
Analyst, Erik Penser Bank

Thank you for taking my questions. Hi there. My first question would be, as your recruitment rate is picking up, do you expect to finalize the dose escalation or the dose expansion phase this year or early next year? Is it possible to give some indication on that perhaps?

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

I think it's what we've said previously, and we've said all along, our ambition is to establish a recommended phase II dose this year. Clearly with the speed we have seen, sort of that has allowed us to sort of keep that ambition. That's why I mentioned sort of the at the moment we could include many more patients much faster practically than we are able to in the sense that we now that we're in the dose escalation cohort, there is a maximum of three, and then we need to wait and see before we're able to open up the next cohort.

There is a risk of screen failures and then sort of the drag. Is it possible to give the exact date? No. Are we keeping our ambition? We always keep our ambition in with regards to doing it as fast as possible. This year, can I guarantee that it happens on this side of the new year?

Klas Palin
Analyst, Erik Penser Bank

No.

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

That I can't do. I mean,

Klas Palin
Analyst, Erik Penser Bank

No.

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

It depends a bit on yeah. But it's

Klas Palin
Analyst, Erik Penser Bank

Well, that's not what I'm looking for either. Just to understand the pace and that you're sort of in line.

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

Yeah.

Klas Palin
Analyst, Erik Penser Bank

just a question for Magnus, I guess. Given the slower recruitment rate during the summer and so on, how much has that affected the cost side in quarter three?

Magnus Christensen
CFO, Medivir

Thank you Klas for the question. For quarter three, it hasn't affected so much to be honest because the pace of recruitment has been better now. Of course, as we mentioned before in quarter two, the recruitment pace was a bit slower than we planned to. The pace is, it's as Jens said, I mean, we have patients now queuing up for getting a slot. We are very positive that the pace will continue to be very good.

When we do the assessment, how long the cash position, how long we have the money will, of course, depend on we have made a number of assumptions, how many patient we need in, how many cohorts, how long the patient treated in the both in the phase Ib of cohorts and an expansion phase and so on. We are certain we will have money according to current plan at the end of 2023, which is very positive for us. At least 12 months from this date.

Klas Palin
Analyst, Erik Penser Bank

Yeah. Sounds good. Thank you so much for taking my questions.

Magnus Christensen
CFO, Medivir

Thank you, Klas.

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

Any more questions, operator?

Operator

Just to remind everyone, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. There are no further questions at this time. Please go ahead, speakers.

Jens Lindberg
CEO, Medivir

Thank you. Please move to slide 21, and then we can conclude the call by just calling out that in terms of upcoming activities we mentioned previously today, we do look forward to presenting additional combo data, the non-clinical combination data at the SITC conference in Boston next week. Upcoming investor conferences. We're presenting at the Redeye Life Science day on November 24, Erik Penser Healthcare Day, December 1, and then also Redeye's Fight Cancer Day in 2023 in the near-term perspective, or before next quarterly report. With that, thank you all for dialing in and listening to our presentation. Thank you all for your questions and have a good rest of the day.

Operator

This now concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. Participants, you may disconnect your lines.

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