[Before] Global Healthcare Conference, it is my pleasure to now introduce Carl Hansen, CEO at AbCellera. Just a reminder that this will be a 20-minute presentation with five minutes of Q&A. For the Q&A portion, please speak into the handheld microphone that will be brought to you.
All right, thank you, everyone, for coming today. It's a pleasure to get to update you on AbCellera. I think the company is at a very interesting time, and we've got a terrific setup for real value creation over the next few years as we start to build our own pipeline and bring some new antibody medicines to the clinic. The regular disclaimers, and first, to give you some background as to where we come from. So AbCellera was founded back in 2012, and for the first decade, the company was largely focused on building capabilities for the creation of new antibody medicines.
So we have put in place a fully integrated solution to go from a concept through to the beginning of clinical development, and we have done that by combining technologies from biology, from engineering, from computation, and combining that with infrastructure, with highly skilled teams, and with both proprietary and non-proprietary technologies integrated together. That engine was built over 10 years through a business model that was focused on partnerships. So from the early days, AbCellera was focused on providing an exchange of access to technology for consideration upfront in the form of upfront payments, as well as a stake in downstream products. Over the last 10 years, we have worked with over 40 partners, including many of the most innovative companies in the space, companies that have built a reputation for being leaders in antibody discovery, such as Lilly and Regeneron, Gilead, and others.
Through that work, we have worked on over 100 therapeutic antibody programs. As part of that business model, we were paid upfront for the work, and we also kept a stake in the downstream success of those molecules, typically in a model that includes both milestones for entry and progression through clinical development, as well as a low to mid-single-digit royalty percentage in the shared success of those molecules as they move forward. As of the end of Q3 of this year, we have started 95 programs that include that downstream component, and so we have assembled what is essentially a diversified financial asset on the future success of those molecules as they move into the clinic. To date, we have 14 molecules that have advanced in the clinical development.
All of those are either moved into the clinic and then now terminated, including two molecules we did on COVID, or they are continuing to move forward but are still in phase I. For the first four years as a company, we were very much focused on a volume emphasis on that deal. So we were, pardon me, over the last four years, since becoming a public company, we were focused on first expanding the volume of that partnership business, so working on doing more transactions. And over the last few years, we have moved towards emphasizing a deeper stake in programs and co-development, and most recently on transitioning towards being a clinical development company.
Last year, after a setup that we had put in place for about three years and working on internal programs, we made an explicit decision to move the company to focus on applying the capability that we've built over 10 years on advancing an internal pipeline towards clinical development. After 10 years, we are now nearly complete on building the platform, and the major investments that remain are focused on completing our GMP manufacturing facility. Most of the investment there will be done over the first quarter of next year, and that facility will come online at the end of next year. At that point, we have now put in place what we believe to be the world's most advanced platform for the creation of antibody drugs, and we have done that while also managing to maintain a strong liquidity position.
So as of today, or as of the end of last quarter, we have approximately $900 million in liquidity. That includes just under $700 million in cash and $200 million in committed government funding, non-dilutive funding from the Canadian government. Our strategy now is to take that world-class capability and take that liquidity and turn it into a pipeline of potential blockbuster drugs. The most important question for us to answer and for investors to ask over the next few years is, if you have the capability and liquidity, what is your criteria for selecting targets? Where will you invest, and where will you double down as you start to build this pipeline? When we look at opportunities for therapeutic development, we are first taking a strategy that is not focused on a specific indication.
Rather, we're looking broadly, and we're looking for ideas that have good answers to four fundamental questions. And the first question is, do we like the science? So is the target well validated? Do we have a high conviction this will work? The second, is there a large commercial opportunity, an unmet medical need? Third is, do we have a good case for differentiation, meaning that when we finally get to the market, will we be competitive versus other solutions that are there? And finally, is there a clear path for the development? For development, of course, you need to have the indication. You need to be able to access the patients. And for us, in particular, we're emphasizing indications where we can get a lot of information about the success of a molecule in the first trial.
We're prioritizing indications where we get conviction on a program in the shortest amount of time, spending the least amount of dollars. Now, when you look at all these criteria and you start to fill a pipeline, it's typically the case that not all of these boxes get checked. Normally, when you're looking for opportunities, there are some parts that are stronger than others. We have built a large preclinical pipeline, and this past year announced the first two programs that are moving towards clinical development, and that will be CTA filings, which is the Canadian equivalent of an IND, in the first half of next year. The first one of those, which was announced, is a program, ABCL575. This is a follower, a best-in-class follower against OX40 ligand for indications of atopic dermatitis and other I&I conditions.
To date, we believe that we have a molecule that has best-in-class properties and that has potential for differentiation over the lead asset, amlitelimab, from the perspective of dosing. So we are designing this molecule to have at least three-month dosing, if not six-month dosing. That molecule, as I mentioned, will enter into clinical studies next year, and we expect to have that data readout in the early part of 2026. For ABCL575, we may well have an interim data on human PK, which is one of the more important parts of that program. The second program is one that we haven't announced yet. It's ABCL635. ABCL635 is targeting an indication in the area of metabolic and endocrine disorders.
It's a molecule that is focused on, or it is a drug that is targeting a multipass transmembrane protein target, an ion channel and GPCR, which is an area where AbCellera has built strength over the past few years. It's a program where we believe we will know a lot about that molecule when it reads out in early 2026. This is a program where we love the science. We believe there's a clear case for differentiation, as it would be a first-in-class antibody therapy. There's an unmet medical need and a market opportunity we estimate to be above $2 billion. It's a program where we believe that we would be able to effectively take this one through development and perhaps all the way through to registrational trial.
So for us, critical milestones next year in transitioning from a platform partnership business to a clinical development company starting next year, and key readouts in 2026 for the first two assets, ABCL575 and ABCL635. Behind that, we have a large preclinical portfolio of more than 20 programs under development. It is our intent to bring out additional development candidates to build that pipeline at a rate of anywhere between one and three a year, averaging two a year over the next five years. Within that portfolio, there's a heavy emphasis on being able to generate antibodies against multipass transmembrane protein targets where there's clear validated biology and where traditional approaches using antibody methods have been unsuccessful. Beyond that, as I mentioned, critical milestones over the next couple of years are the entry of the first two clinical assets and then readouts starting in 2026.
In a nutshell, AbCellera, after 10 years of working on building a capability, has completed laying the foundation for developing our own drugs. We have a platform that allows us to respond to just about any therapeutic opportunity in the antibody space. We have done that while preserving just under $1 billion of liquidity, and we are now focused on making good decisions to take that capability and take that liquidity and turn it into a pipeline of highly differentiated assets. That is a story that we believe is going to play out over the next few years, and we're excited to enter into the clinic and to move those molecules forward. With that, I will open it up for questions.
I'll bring over the microphone to anybody else with questions. Please.
Just on the pipeline diversification of royalties, you referred to them as financial assets. Is the thinking to eventually monetize them as they sort of come to commercialization to support the pipeline?
Yeah, we've had some discussions about that. The reality is that that pipeline is still very early. So there's 95 programs where we have some potential stake. It's a challenging portfolio to put value on because it's difficult for us to provide good disclosure about the status of those assets, and the frequency and the chance of them moving forward to the clinic is yet unknown. We have conviction that there's real value there. Our experience has been that in the market, it's very difficult to get value for an early-stage pipeline like that. So at some point, if we thought there was a good offer being made and we thought that it was worth more than the pipeline, or at least was fair value, we'd consider that, but right now it's too early.
Any other questions?
Can you just elaborate on the differentiation of the platform and the antibody development capabilities? The industry is sort of pretty CapEx-heavy. There's people like Evotec comparing that to some new paradigm-changing thing going on.
So the question, if people didn't hear it, is to sort of elaborate on the differentiation of the platform. I get this question a lot. So people are often looking for what is the single technology or the thing that gives you the definitive advantage. That's not really, I don't think, that reflects the reality of making drugs. So there is to go from an idea to a molecule that actually has the function you want and the developability requires that you bring a lot of different technologies together. Our core platform to begin with at the company was a single-cell screening platform that let us do a much deeper search of immune systems. We have, over the last 10 years, built around that a suite of technologies upstream and downstream.
So, immunization technologies, protein biochemistry, transgenic animals, the screening platform, protein engineering, functional assays, robotics, developability, and now putting the last step of CMC and GMP. So, there's a lot of pieces coming together. The differentiation really comes from building this with both proprietary and state-of-the-art technologies and then building up the know-how and integration over time to succeed in programs where others have failed. And if I was to go back to one of the slides I showed, this first 10 years of the company where we were working in a partnership mode, often with some very enabled partners, and those partners come to you only with the very difficult programs.
One of the biggest benefits of that long build, like really a decade of building capabilities, is that that partnership business showed us where the weak points are in current technologies and forced us to bring solutions to them. So at this point, it's not the case that we will succeed at any target that someone throws out, but I do believe that there isn't a discovery program where we don't have an advantage over others. And sometimes that matters on difficult targets. Other times, it may not matter where other technologies are up to it. I mean, that's kind of a broad answer. Is there more?
No.
Okay. Do we have any more questions?
For your internal discovery programs, where are you sourcing this from? Are they from your own? You sat there and thought, "We're going to do that," or are they coming in from outside?
You're talking about the internal programs?
Yes.
So there's a combination. There is a minority of the programs that have come through co-development engagements. So we work with smaller biotech companies typically that either bring novel target biology or they bring a technology that allows us to make a molecule as differentiated. So a good example of the latter is a recent collaboration we have with a company called Prelude where we're working with a company with small molecule expertise to make a new class of ADCs called degrader antibody conjugates. So that's a small portion of the portfolio. The rest comes from really two areas. One is where the biology is well known, but where it has traditionally been difficult to develop antibodies and sometimes also small molecules.
A great example would be a GPCR or an ion channel target where there's clinical validation that this will work, but the molecules have fallen down either because of toxicity or lack of specificity, and an antibody would provide a good solution. So there's a relatively large set like that. There's also targets in the ion channel class where these are targets that you don't have to be particularly insightful to know these are high-value targets. They've been known for a long time, but undruggable. And then the third or fourth area where they're coming from is an effort we've had going for some years in T-cell engagers, which is combining a very broad panel of anti-CD3 antibodies with a bispecific platform and a suite of functional assays to make T-cell engagers for applications in autoimmunity and oncology.
Those programs, I think, are a step behind some of the others, and probably the next development candidates are going to come from the GPCR ion channel portfolio, as well as perhaps one from a co-development.
Any more questions?
Hello again. Leading question here, Carl, but over the years, we've seen the success rate from preclinical to approval of antibodies going up. With a platform like yours, where you have a huge number of candidates, you can really cherry-pick the best one from efficacy and tox profile. Would you expect to see a higher probability of success going through your pipeline versus what we'll typically model when it comes to risking assets?
Probably the success defined as getting to a drug, which is what matters.
Yeah, getting to a drug.
Getting to a drug, I think that I would, so certainly, we intend to beat the averages in the industry with what we're doing internally, or we wouldn't be doing them, and there's a couple of reasons why I think we will succeed there. One is we have built the front end of the platform for scale, so we have a broad portfolio from which to pick. The second is by being able to solve problems others can't, we can go after biology that is relatively well validated, but that is not so competitive that it's no longer worth pursuing. I think that's one of the really big opportunities. One of the things I've said before, and I do believe it, is that if you want to really create value in this industry, you need to do one of two things.
You have to have a novel insight, so come up with some new biology, or you have to go after known biology that other people cannot reach, and if you don't do that, you're typically playing in a very competitive space. That's maybe a little too simple because you can innovate in development, but at the early stage, that's probably true, and by having the ability to solve problems others can't, we've got some assets, both 635 is a good example. We have some behind that where the biology is very well validated, and we've turned it into a technical problem, and then if you pick the right ones, you learn a lot in phase I, so if we get that right, then I think we can have a much better success rate, and that's the name of the game right now, obviously.
Any final questions? Thank you very much.