From Atara Biotherapeutics, Inc. It trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol ATRA and is harnessing the natural power of the immune system to develop off-the-shelf cell therapies for difficult-to-treat cancers and autoimmune conditions that can be rapidly delivered to patients from inventory. Please welcome Head of Corporate Communications and IR, Jason Awe. Welcome, Jason. We're looking forward to hearing your update.
Great. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Just a quick reminder, so Atara is the first company to obtain regulatory approval of an allogeneic T-cell immunotherapy. So that was in Europe a couple of years ago in December of 2022 under the brand name Ebvallo. And now we're on track with priority review to get this approved in the United States. We have a January 15, 2025 PDUFA date. So we're about a little over a month to go here. So we're getting very close to that milestone. And we're using that same platform, which I'll talk about very briefly in a moment, the Epstein-Barr virus T-cell for our CAR-T side of the portfolio. So this is with two assets. And the one I'll talk about right now is ATA3219. This is a CD19 targeted CAR-T cell.
We announced in our last quarterly earnings that we have dosed the first patient in relapsed refractory NHL. We're anticipating initial data in Q1 of 2025, and we have another study with that same asset, again, directed towards CD19 and autoimmune. There's two cohorts from that Phase I in lupus nephritis as well as extra-renal SLE, and we're anticipating data in mid-2025, and importantly, we do have cash runway into 2027, which gets us through those key milestones that I just spoke about. I want to talk about just this tab-cel BLA coming up for a moment, so this is a very significant milestone, I should say, for the company, which we've been looking at this for almost 10 years now to get this approved, so we're very excited about this. The BLA is supported by pivotal and supportive data of more than 430 patients across multiple life-threatening diseases.
Very significant 48.8% objective response rate over time. We do have breakthrough therapy designation as well as orphan drug designation for this asset. No approved treatment options are available, and these patients, unfortunately, if they do relapse or refractory to first-line treatment, only have about three weeks to a little over a month of life left, which is a really poor prognosis, so we're really excited about this one. Significant pricing potential with a little over $500 million in estimated peak sales, so it is a significant opportunity. This will be commercialized by our partners, Pierre Fabre, with the same commercial partner that we use in Europe [audio distortion] . Now, our pipeline is built off of this Epstein-Barr virus T-cell platform, so tab-cel or tabelecleucel is based off of this T-cell that can recognize Epstein-Barr virus. We know that it's very safe.
I'll talk about the next slide that we use that for the rest of our CAR-T portfolio. So again, we talked about ATA3219. We also have ATA3431. This is a dual-targeting CAR-T. Targets both CD19 and CD20. As some may know, one of the main sources of relapse, one of the sources of relapse in the oncology side is downregulation of different antigens, CD19 being one of them, just due to selectional pressure. And so by targeting both, you would anticipate or expect incrementally better efficacy. As I talked about, our platform is very unique for solving the allogeneic conundrum. So we're not autologous CAR-T, which is what the seven approved CAR-Ts in the market are, allogeneic. And what that means is that we take healthy donor cells. These are not patient-derived. They're healthy donor cells. We manufacture our product from that.
And all allogeneic companies have to solve for two main things. How do you get these cells in the body without them randomly binding to tissues and causing graft-versus-host disease? And how do you get these cells in the body without them being rejected by the patient? And so we have a very elegant way of doing that, where almost every other company in the space relies on gene editing, taking out the T-cell receptor as well as the HLA complex. We're based off of the Epstein-Barr virus T-cell, and this is just based off of the biology of the T-cell of a natural immune response. These cells only recognize Epstein-Barr virus. They only have Epstein-Barr virus or EBV T-cell receptors. And so that essentially solves for that graft-versus-host disease problem. And the other part of this is just basic organ transplant biology.
We make sure that we use cells that are similar enough, and they look similar enough to the patient such that they don't get rejected outright. So it's the same concept as matching an organ for an organ transplant. And again, we use this platform in over 600 patients to date with no lymphodepletion. And so we take this platform. We said, hey, this is very safe. We've never seen cytokine release syndrome or neurotoxicity. Let's put a chimeric antigen receptor in there. So we did just that. And we've basically manufactured these and kind of evolved these a little bit that, again, we solve for this graft-versus-host disease and allograft rejection problem. And the other main challenge with T-cells is that they get tired. They get exhausted. And so we also use this next-generation 1XX signaling domain. Talked about this in the past.
Instead of these cells getting too excited too quickly, we kind of attenuate that activation signal through the signaling domain so that you get the full activation. It just takes a little bit longer. And so you get less of that cytokine release syndrome or kind of that immunotoxicity, which is inflammatory reaction, which is very challenging. And that really brings up the issues with cytokine release syndrome and the neurotoxicity. And again, what we're looking at here is a very de-risk platform from what we've seen with tab-cel to de-risk antigen target with CD19. And then this less differentiated phenotype and 1XX signaling domain, which help prevent exhaustion and really mitigate this inflammatory response, has been used with other companies in this space like Takeda, Novartis, and Fate as well. So again, these are somewhat de-risked.
And so this is really the first time that all of these different components are put into one cell type and used for therapeutic use. So with that, that's my quick update. And I'm looking forward to any questions. Thank you.
Wonderful. Thank you for that. Yeah, we've got a quick question. Please recap the most important catalysts and milestones in the coming year. It's upon us.
Yeah. So yeah, just quickly. So the tab-cel BLA, like I said, the PDUFA date is rapidly coming. It's only about five weeks away, January 15 of 2025 is the target action date. And then from there, we will be really pivoting as a company as that whole asset is going to be commercialized by our partner, Pierre Fabre. So that whole OpEx gets offloaded from our balance sheet and our financials. And we're just going to be recipients of positive cash flow of significant double-digit royalties and sales and commercial milestones moving forward. And then we're focused exclusively on our CAR-T portfolio. And like I said, the 3219 asset has initial NHL data coming out Q1 of 2025.
And then we'll be anticipating initial data from the autoimmune side of that Phase I trial that includes lupus nephritis as well as extra-renal SLE that does not use lymphodepletion in the mid-2025 timeframe. And then finally, that dual-targeting CD19, CD20 CAR-T, that ATA3431 asset, we're anticipating to have that IND in late 2025, so Q4 of 2025. So it's going to be very exciting in 2025 for Atara.
Wonderful. Good news. Good to hear. And we look forward to following along with your progress and seeing you in the new year.
That sounds great. Thank you.
All right. We'll be right back, everyone. [audio distortion]
Welcome back, everyone. At this time, I would like to introduce Fred Earnest, President and CEO of Vista Gold Corp. Fred introduced Vista Gold to our viewers in September of this year, and he is here today to share some exciting updates about the company. Vista Gold trades on the NYSE American and TSX under the symbol VGZ. Welcome back to the conference, Fred. What's your update today?
Thank you, Anna. Well, you know, it's been. We're coming to the end of a very exciting year. You know, you got a few slides to share with everybody just to help them understand what's happened. For those who may be new to the story, as you indicated, we trade on the NYSE American and the TSX exchanges under the symbol VGZ. At the end of the third quarter, we had $19 million in cash and no debt. And as a corporation, we're building value based on the strengths of our Mount Todd gold project, where we've demonstrated financial strength and technical viability through a feasibility study on a very large-scale development project that was completed and updated earlier this year. During the year, we've completed a 7,000-meter drilling program. Last meters were drilled last night our time.
We are evaluating a project targeting a reserve grade of a gram per ton with an initial CapEx of less than $400 million. That's about a 60% decrease with only about a 50% decrease in gold production. So we're excited about that and hope to be able to make an announcement here shortly. I'll talk about that in a minute. But overall, we're positioning Mount Todd as a leading development opportunity and at the same time exercising the discipline necessary to realize the best value at the right time for our shareholders. So just kind of talking, you know, just to orient people. For those who may be new, the project's located in the northern part of the Northern Territory of Australia, about 250 km southeast of Darwin. It's a brownfields project. It's large scale. It's permitted. It's ready to build.
The picture on the left kind of gives people an idea of what the project area looks like. This is a site that we could construct on the start of the year if that were our intent. So as far as an update goes, this drilling program that we just completed divided into two phases, what we call Phase 1 . This is Batman North. That's the area with the drill holes located here at the north end of the existing pit shell. We drilled 11 holes, about almost 3,000 meters. It defined mineralized boundaries and updated mineralogical information. And the outcome of that, now that we've got all that data and taken a look, we think that that's going to result in a very modest increase in resources for the project, particularly in the north end of the project.
Phase 2 has been drilling on what we call the Southern Cross Lode, where we've drilled 23 drill holes. A little over 4,000 meters have been drilled. We targeted shallow mineralization. What we've encountered is two distinct mineralization styles. If I just go to the next slide here, I can talk about those in a little bit more detail. The near-surface mineralization, anything shallower than 75 meters, exists in sheeted veins. This is a very similar mineralization to what we see in the Batman deposit. We're seeing similar widths of individual veins. Vein densities have been similar. The grades downhole have been similar to what we see drilling in the Batman deposit, for example, what we saw in phase I. We typically in this upper part see coarser grain sediments. They're less solidified, and there's a lower degree of alteration.
That's probably a function of greater distance from the Yinberrie intrusive. However, and what's really exciting for us is the deeper mineralization, that mineralization that we've encountered deeper than 100 meters below the surface, where we've encountered a different type of vein. They're wider veins. They're more distinct. There's not as much other vein material around them. And these more distinct and wider veins and mineralized assemblages, we're seeing better grades over wider distances. For example, in the first part of the drilling program, results that we've announced to date, we've reported in one hole half a meter at 50g per ton. That gives us a grade thickness of 25 g per ton meter. Another hole had one meter of 12.57 g. Another one had 2.3 meters of 7.93g. And then we had another hole about halfway through the program that had a meter at 25.89 g per ton.
You know, this is really exciting. This is a different style of mineralization than what we see in the Batman deposit. We're trying to figure out the geometry of these high-grade intercepts and establish connections. But we now believe that with additional drilling, that these deeper intercepts and thicker intercepts and higher-grade intercepts represent an opportunity for potential higher-grade underground mining in the future. So this has been very exciting to see something different than what we typically see at Mount Todd and what we've drilled predominantly in the previous 70,000 meters at the Batman deposit. The other thing that I alluded to is the start of this new feasibility study. You know, Mount Todd is a large, high-quality gold deposit and one of the most attractive mining jurisdictions in the world. And we've designed a project that's very large, 50,000 tons a day with a CapEx of $1 billion.
But we are on the cusp of starting a feasibility study in which we're going to be targeting a significant increase in our reserve grade. We're targeting a gram per ton. We plan to accomplish that by raising our cutoff grade. As I indicated previously, the initial CapEx that we're targeting is about a 60% reduction. That results from having a project that, throughput-wise, is about a 1/3 the size. Production that we think we can achieve on that size of a plant is in the range of 150,000-200,000 ounces of gold per year. We'll continue to incorporate things that reduce our development risk, like contract mining and third-party power generation, while maintaining the opportunity and the optionality for expansion.
In summary, what we're really trying to do is develop and demonstrate that Mount Todd is an especially attractive ready-to-build development project with all of the permits already in place, and as such, we're positioning Mount Todd for value creation while we exercise a discipline strategy to realize the best value. In other words, to complete the transaction that rewards our shareholders, so that's, you know, in just a nutshell, that's the update, and I'm happy to take any questions that people might have.
Great. Yes, a few questions for you. If you could comment on the timeline for production taking into account the smaller-sized project.
Absolutely. You know, we're anticipating that we'll have this feasibility study for this 150,000-200,000 ounces per year project completed by mid-year next year. Let's operate on the premise that we're going to complete a transaction by the end of the year. And we're completely open to what that transaction might look like. I think that a decision could be made to build Mount Todd by the middle of 2026, and that we're looking at an 18-month construction period, so that's the timeline.
Devin asks if you can speak to your company's current burn rate and how much runway you have with your existing capital.
Yeah, like I said, we've got $19 million in cash. Our fixed costs for maintaining Mount Todd between corporate and our costs in Australia are about $7 million a year. We're winding up the drill program. There'll be a couple of hundred thousand dollars or so that hit the books from that in the first quarter of next year, and then the cost of the feasibility study, which we're guessing will be a little bit more than $2 million.
Esther mentions, Esther might have missed this statement, but do you own the water rights? Can you clarify that?
We have, at Mount Todd, we're water harvesters. We have a dry season and a wet season. During the wet season, we receive about 1.3 meters of rain. We have the permits and authorizations in place to capture and store the water that we will need for the operation. So that would be our water use permit.
With Mount Todd, your strategy is to find a partner to help build that. Is that still your strategy in which you'd be willing to sell the project and/or the company?
We're looking for a transaction, Anna, and whether that's a corporate level, a project-level transaction, or whether it's the formation of a joint venture to develop the project, what we want at the end of the day is to create value for shareholders. We are open to consider any option that leads down the path of value creation.
If you move forward with a feasibility study for an alternative scale project, how long might it take to complete, and when would you expect to announce the results?
Yeah, we anticipate that we'll have this study completed by the middle of next year. It'll be, we'll leverage off of the immense amount of work that's already been completed for the previous feasibility study, and we anticipate that we'll be able to announce results in the first part of the third quarter.
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for this update. And we look forward to following you along in the new year. And happy new year to you, Fred.
Happy new year to you.