Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.All right.Good afternoon, everyone.Thank you for joining our third day of our Piper Sandler Healthcare Conference.Really excited to be featuring the team from Aligos Therapeutics.We have a lot to cover over the next 25 minutes.Let's get started.Maybe a great place to really start is talking about your hepatitis B program, as you've really shared groundbreaking data at the liver meeting that really caught the attention of many KOLs in this space.I guess the first question here is, on a high level, what were some of the key takeaways that were really groundbreaking in the space of hepatitis B that you presented?
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So first of all, thank you for inviting us to this fireside chat.We're very excited about the-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
data we presented at AASLD.This is the first time that a capsid assembly modulator-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- has been shown to demonstrate activity in what's called the second mechanism, and that really involves, blocking the uncoating-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- of the viral, core or capsid.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
and releasing the relaxed circular DNA-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... into the nucleus that-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... replenishes the-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... cccDNA.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
The reason other earlier molecules hadn't shown effects there is because it requires a concentration-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... something like 100 times-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... higher than the primary mechanism, which involves blocking the production of the mature virion.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
There's different markers we can look at.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So for the primary mechanism, we look at HBV DNA-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... and HBV RNA, and we had already shown-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... that our drug was a very potent-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
...DNA and RNA inhibitor.In fact, doses ranging from 10 milligrams-3 milligrams-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... 300 milligrams-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... we had the same effect-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... saturation of the DNA and RNA response.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
What was interesting, though, in our trials, we showed the higher doses-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... had effects on the secondary mechanism.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
What we showed at the AASLD meeting-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm..
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... was log reductions.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm..
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... in HBV surface antigen, log reductions in HBe antigen-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... and log reductions in HBV-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... core-related antigen.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
That is direct evidence-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... that we're interfering with the cccDNA.And this has really been the goal of-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... capsid assembly modulators from the beginning-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... of when they went into the clinic.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
But we are the first capsid assembly modulator to show these marked log reductions.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... in all these HBV markers, so I think people were very excited.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
The other thing that's interesting about the data that we presented is that our drug was equally effective as either a monotherapy-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
or in combination
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... with the nucleoside analog-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... entecavir.That's important because there may be a regulatory path-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... or there is a regulatory path open for us to get the drug-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... approved as monotherapy.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Team, at what junction can you engage with the agency and really ask, which would be groundbreaking to have the first to have innovation in the first-line therapy?So,
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah, so,
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
When are you planning to engage?What, how soon could you come back to us?
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So we-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
to discuss next steps?
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
We have the data set now-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... to talk to the FDA.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
This is the data set we just presented.And we'll be engaging with the FDA-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... over the first half of next year.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
We hope to have feedback-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... on that in that timeframe.When we have that feedback-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... we'll report it.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Okay, and based on what you've seen in the KOL work that you've done, what is the likelihood, given this groundbreaking data, that they could sign off on a-
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
We think it's very high.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
The primary reason we think it's very high is the FDA guidance-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... for HBV says that if you can, give your drug as monotherapy-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... you can get it approved, with the primary endpoint being chronic suppression of HBV DNA.So we would look for a label that had a primary-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... indication of suppression of HBV DNA, with superior claims-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Right.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... on antigen reduction.So Nucs,
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... do not-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... improve antigen status.One very important endpoint that we're starting to see is we had, patients-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... very close to the lower limit of detection-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... of HBe antigen.In fact, one of the patients-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... is HBe antigen negative, and HBe antigen negativity is a positive prognostic-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... indicator for a better outcome.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... in HBV.So patients who are HBe negative-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... have a better, or slower-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... progression of their disease than patients that-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... are HBe positive.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
There's a lot of clients who have obviously not looked at the regulatory path of the monotherapy arm since there's been no innovation done.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Could you maybe remind us, like, let's—the first question is, would you be asking for a phase II, a phase IIb study, or could you jump directly into a pivotal?And if you could just maybe remind us what the size of those studies are, and we talked about the endpoint-
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
... and duration on-
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah, yeah.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
... that they would, you need to show.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So it's likely the FDA will ask us to do a phase IIb study.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
It would be unlikely that-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah..
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... we could go to phase III-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... at this point.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Even though we have 48-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... week dosing, I think the patient population is probably too small-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... at this point.Phase II studies typically are something like 30-plus-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... patients per arm.And this would be a monotherapy.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
We would probably compare it-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... to standard of care, one of the nucleoside-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... or nucleotide analogs.The primary endpoint-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... would be, suppression of HBV DNA.We would be looking at secondary endpoints-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... on antigen suppression, HBe antigen-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... seroconversion, and negativity....ALT
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
normalization, that's a liver test that tells us how much-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
inflammation is occurring in the liver.And then a lot of experimental endpoints-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
In the study, looking at biomarkers.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- and probably to add a number of patients-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
that would have paired biopsies.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So that we could directly quantitate-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Right.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- cccDNA, we could look at, HBV transcripts-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Importantly, look at the integration events.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Because we believe that by suppressing-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- viral replication to the level we are, by suppressing cccDNA-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... we're going to have less
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- integration occurring, and that's also an important part of the pathogenesis-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- of HBV, because the integration is-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- thought to be involved in carcinogenicity of the virus.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
You know, that's very helpful.Obviously, the sign-off of the agency to move forward to a monotherapy study is a very stock-moving event, and a lot of clients will be very, very eager to look forward to that, and we look forward to all your communication.But there are also additional data catalysts, right, from this.So if you could just maybe talk about, you guys have really done a great job at every liver meeting to have data.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
What is your hope for EASL to present?And, you know, what should investors be looking for as what's the type of data we will get, and what will they be seeing, you know, with the continued suppression of viral load reduction?
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So we'll have data flow,
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... on this actually at 3 major meetings.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
this year.Well, first, the APASL meeting-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... which is the Asia-Pacific, Society for-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Study Liver Disease.We'll be doing updates-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... to what we did at AASLD.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So you'll see, similar data-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... but some longer duration,
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... dosing and, more endpoints.I think the exciting data, that we'll present at EASL-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... will be the longer-term-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... monotherapy data, both in HBe antigen negative-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... and HBe antigen positive patients, and so we hope to present that at EASL.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Obviously, we don't know yet if those have been-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... accepted, but generally speaking, we would, we would think that we would get acceptance of that.Then on into the fall, we have AASLD again.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
We would be presenting data close to 96 weeks, right?
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
For the combo cohort.So that gives us a long safety-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... profile for the compound, more data on the reductions in the antigens-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... more data on whether patients lose-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... the antigen-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... or not.So that's all important data that we'll be seeing.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
And then maybe another data point that I think we should also discuss is how initially, you know, you had considered partnering this asset, which then led into maybe keeping it in-house-
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Right.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
... and led to a very successful, private placement-
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Right.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
... transaction last month.Could you maybe talk about sort of what the sequence of events were and what happened?Because I think that's another very important data point that-
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah, so,
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Like, strengthen.Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
At this point, you know, hepatology is actually a small number-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... of treating physicians-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... compared to, you know, other indications.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
It is something that we can take pretty far-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... on our own, and even to approval.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
And you know, my favorite example of that-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... is the Vertex-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... who did this with HCV-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... and launched an HCV drug-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... very successfully, HCV protease inhibitor.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Built their company based on that and then-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... acquired another company-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... which got them into the cystic fibrosis-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... space.Not that we're gonna go into cystic fibrosis-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Right.Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... but it's just, you know, what they could do with that leverage.So, at this point, you know, we would think about, perhaps global partnerships-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... regional partnerships.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
But likely, keeping the U.S.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.That's very helpful.Now, maybe the next half, would love to talk about your THR-β that's entering the clinic in Q1 with key data in the fourth quarter.I think, the everyone is very much...As the study is up and running, what is, what's left to do, like, between now and kicking off the study over the next quarter?
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah.So we're finishing up-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... manufacturing-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... of the drug.We'll be submitting the-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... phase II protocol to the FDA-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... soon.There'll obviously be discussions with the FDA-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... about the protocol.I think we're really pleased to have, Matt-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... working very closely with Stephen Harrison, who has a lot of-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... institutional knowledge about clinical trials.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... and NASH and things involving biomarkers-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... study conduct, inclusion-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... exclusion criteria, sites-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... that enroll and other sites that don't enroll-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... and CROs that manage these sites.So, having Dr. Harrison on board has been tremendous-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... for us.And so it's really now very logistical-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... implementation-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... on our part.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
No, that's great.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Matt, maybe for investors who haven't looked at the DAC or, or looked at the design, just briefly capture sort of the design of the study, like how many doses or dose ranges-
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
is being tested.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So first, I wanna say what the premise-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... behind our molecule is.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
You know, like in HBV, we came in later-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... with our beta thyroid agonist.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Our whole premise of our company is, we build better molecules-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... with our experienced chemistry team.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
And what we did, just like we did in HBV-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... what we did in the beta thyroid space was we looked at the competitor compounds-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
We looked at the pharmacological deficits-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... compounds, and I would say they fall into three categories.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
One would be potency.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
In that potency, I also include the alpha/beta-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Selectivity ratio.Then it would be exposure.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
It's not enough to have a potent compound-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
if you don't get the right exposure.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
The last would be any potential for drug-drug interactions.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
What we did was improve on-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Every one of those aspects.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So we have the most potent-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
beta thyroid agonist that's ever been in the clinic.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
You can see that based on our dose range-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
-which is, micromolar, sub-nanomolar-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Dosing.And then, you could see that in the PK improvement-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
and the fact that we're giving the drug once a day.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
We don't have to give the drug every other day.We don't have to give the drug twice a day.The fact that we've dialed out a lot of the-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
...CYP inhibition and different liabilities of the other drugs.So that's kind of the premise, that the better potency-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
the better selectivity, and the better PK is gonna
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
-lead to greater efficacy.What we're gonna do in the phase II study-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
This study a range of doses.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
There'll be either 3 or 4-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
arms of dosing compared to placebo.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
We're working now with Dr. Harrison and-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- eventually the FDA-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
-to think about what those doses are gonna be.We have an idea-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
-what they're gonna be.They would, they would be again, in the sort of ranging between around 0.3 milligrams, sorry-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... 0.3 micrograms, 300 micrograms, up to almost 1 milligram.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Is there in the study...And it's a 12-week study, right?The change.And these patients are identified based on NITs to have NASH, right?Is there a way, based on the NITs, to quantify and see like whether they would fall into like more the F1, F2 population, or more like-
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Mm-hmm.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
... an F2, F3?Like, will you kind of get a sense for, at the end when you report the data, like, is this a representative population of a typical phase 2b or slash-
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Well, it definitely will be a representative-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
population based on the inclusion
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
-exclusion criteria.We aren't doing, biopsies-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
-in the study, so we won't have-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... biopsy-confirmed-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
fibrosis, but we will have FibroScan-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
which gives us some indication of that.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Okay.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Some of the patients may have historical biopsies.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
The key to remember in this study is it's not, the endpoint is not paired biopsies-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
It's MRI-PDFF.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So, knowing where they are-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
is somewhat important.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
-because we want a representative population.We also don't want to have-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Anybody with clinical cirrhosis-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
On the study.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
or advanced disease.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
But it isn't as important as a study that would-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
have paired biopsies.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah, no, that's...But there will be some F ones included by the NIT-
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
-analysis, right?
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah, there is.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Like, there's no way to, like-
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
rule them out based on the
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
No, that's right.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
It'll be a mixture of F1s to F3s.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Okay.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
But there is a requirement for a certain percentage of fat in the liver to-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Okay.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
be on the study.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Have you guys disclosed what the MRI-PDFF minimums are to get in?
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
No, we haven't disclosed them.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Okay.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Look, what we want to do is wait for the FDA approval-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
of the protocol
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
and then disclose the protocol.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Got it.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
It'll obviously go up on-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
-clinicaltrials.gov.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
So I think once the data becomes available, you know, a lot of investors are gonna look for, you know, very much the results and specifically MRI-PDFF.Could you maybe talk about, you know, obviously you know the competitor data, but like, and we also saw that maybe, A, what do you want to see in MRI-PDFF to establish best in class?And then, B, maybe remind investors who weren't at AASLD, the NIT data that was presented for the class of THR-βs, how it really has a high predictability to pathological response.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah, so that's a great point.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So, so not for all classes-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... of drugs, but-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
-for beta thyroid agonists, reduction of fat-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... as measured by MRI-PDFF-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
-is a good, surrogate predictor-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... of improvement in liver histology.And I, and I don't think that that's gonna be translatable-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
to other classes
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
of drugs.I think it's just translatable right-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
-to this class of drug.So, and what we saw at AASLD and prior to AASLD is that this is a clearly dose-responsive indication.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
The greater the exposure, the better the potency, the more reduction-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... in fat you're seeing.And more reduction in fat-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... was clearly correlated with-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
improvement in liver histology.And so people had focused previously on this, 30% reduction in fat.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Really, it's when you get to 50%, 60%-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... 70% reduction in fat-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
is when you see these really marked improvements
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
in liver histology-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
-NASH resolution and improvement in fibrosis.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
What we hope to see on MRI-PDFF is, on average-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... a greater % reduction in fat.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm, mm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
And then looking at these different categories, we'd like to see a greater percentage of patients-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm, yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
at the 50%
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... mark, rather than the 30% mark.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.So when you look at, but in our, a lot of these, and as I recall, with like, for instance, resmetirom, like maybe I think more than 50% of the patients had more than a MRI-PDFF greater than 50.So like, to be best in class across like more than 30 and more than 50, MRI-PDFF changes, like, how much better do you need to be?Is it like, is each incremental 5% difference?
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So it gets, the slope is very steep.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So, Matt, maybe you-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah, I was going to say, that's an important point, is that the slope is very steep.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
When you go from a 30% improvement-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
- to a 40-50-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
- the percent histologic improvement-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
It goes up quite dramatically.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Okay.
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
So it's really a continuous variable.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
So the more you defat-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
In every given patient, the more histologic improvement you have.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
I see.
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
You want as much as you can get.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
It's not like it's a categorical variable-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
- where you hit 50%, and then it kind of flattens out.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
It's very steep, from 50 all the way-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Matt Dusci
Chief Scientific Officer, Aligos Therapeutics
up to 80-90% reductions.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah, and, I think the other thing that I wanna focus you on is the pathogenesis-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- and why the beta-thyroid agonists are important.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Essentially, we think of a NASH patient, or MASH, I should now say-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... patient of having hypothyroidism-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
in the liver, and that's because there's a metabolic defect that actually produces an inactive form of T3.And therefore, there's no-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
hormone there to-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- to bind to the receptors.What's really happening then in that, hypothyroid liver-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
is not just fat storage, but the conversion of fat-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
to lipotoxic species.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
MRI-PDFF is not-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- measuring those specifically.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
I think that's really important-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- to focus in, because this is why we believe that, a liver tropism, a liver targeted drug, like a beta-thyroid agonism-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- is gonna affect the disease state-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
outcome in NASH very differently than a drug that just reduces fat.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
In the liver.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
No, that's, that's very helpful.Team, obviously, there is next year, you know, we have the first approval for the class, right?For the THR-β class here on March twenty-sixth, upcoming.And like, as you guys are...Like, how are you thinking about, you know, in terms of how should the launch- should the approval and the launch be a translation- like, translation to your stock as well, or should they be not correlated?How do you foresee the success and the class building awareness?
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Well, certainly-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- getting the approval in NASH, is-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
de-risking the
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
this class of drugs.It's also de-risking NASH-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
per se, right?
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Because we have not seen approval of NASH.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So, it's good for the field, it's good for patients.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
... and ultimately good for us.I think, you know, from where we sit-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Matt and I share this opinion.I think it's highly likely that-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
the FDA is gonna approve
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- the drug.And that's, again, a breakthrough for the field-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
and important for-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- us, and, and-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- most important for patients.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
I'm sure that, you know, there's also a strategic interest on this class, right?As that it's been validated-
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Right.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
in NASH, and let's say it leads to also the first approval, you're gonna have quite a bit of optionality in regards to partnership interest on this.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
So the first question is, like, is there enough evidence to actually contemplate partnership before the data, or no, like, ultimately you would see the value to be higher, to weigh to your phase 2, establish further the clinical differentiation and product profile, and then really wanting to transition this product into-
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Yeah.So, I think classically, you would have better valuation-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
for the program
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- after the MRI-PDFF data.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Having said that, I've seen a lot of times when there's a first-in-class approval and-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
drugs coming along that have better pharmacological properties, there's exuberance-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- around the class.And people feeling like: "Oh, if I don't get this now, I'm gonna lose it.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So there could be some interest-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
look, we have an ongoing dialogue with-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- potential partners on all-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- of our programs, which I think is important because, you know, many investors might not know these deals take 6, 12-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
18 months to do.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So having that relationship-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Having that ongoing dialogue is very important.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
You can't just show up one day-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- with your data set.So we
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- continue to have those dialogues.And, you know, if there's a partner that-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
makes us an offer where we feel is warranted.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
the value they're offering-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Is warranted, then we would consider that kind of offer.On the other hand, we're not gonna give this thing away.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.Right.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
So we would wait for data-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
and very fortunate to have just raised-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- $92 million.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Thankful and grateful to our investors for that.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
and it gives us the firepower-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
to really bring both the-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- this drug, as well as the HBV drug-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- to fruition.Should also say, in the minute that we have left-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
We also have a coronavirus protease inhibitor.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- that's largely being funded-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- by the NIH.And that's an exciting program-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
because it's active against every coronavirus.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
This is highly differentiated-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
- from the protease inhibitors that are more specific to SARS-CoV-2.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
I think the importance of this is that it's not if we're gonna have another-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Mm-hmm
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
coronavirus jump from animals to humans.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
It's when.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
This drug will likely be active against any new variant that comes from animal species.We have a rich pipeline-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
At our company, a lot of value creation-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
over the next year.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Probably the most important year-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
for the company.Everything we've done has been leading to-
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Yeah
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
What's gonna happen this year.So quite excited about what's... this year.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
No, I think as you noted, you have a very, very busy 2024 with-
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
We do.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
Some very major inflection points.As I said, I sat here last year with many of my companies who were at a low valuation, and within a year on data and achievement has changed substantially.So, like, this, that's why this is the beauty of biotech.So we're really excited for an amazing 2024, and just wanna say thank you on behalf of all of us here at Piper Sandler for being part of our conference, and I can't wait for a great year for you next year.
Lawrence Blatt
Chairman, President, and CEO, Aligos Therapeutics
Thank you.
Yasmeen Rahimi
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler
