Welcome to the annual meeting for INOVIO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Our host for today's call is Simon Benito, Chairman of the Board of Directors. I will now turn the call over to your host. Mr. Benito, you may begin.
The meeting will please come to order. Welcome to the annual meeting of stockholders of INOVIO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. As you know, we are again hosting today's meeting through a virtual online platform, and I want to thank you all for taking the time to join us. Please note that in addition to myself, the following directors are in attendance at this meeting: Roger D. Dansey, Ann C. Miller, Jacqueline Shea, Jay Shepard, David B. Weiner, and Wendy Yarno. I will be acting as chairman of this meeting. Rob Crotty will act as secretary for this meeting, and Will Cox, a representative of Broadridge, will act as inspector of elections for this meeting. Both the secretary and the inspector of elections are present online.
As noted in the notice of annual meeting and the proxy statement previously furnished to stockholders, the record date for voting at this meeting was the close of business on March the 24th, 2026.
The list of stockholders of record of INOVIO as of March 24th, 2026, shows, as of that date, 69,438,100 shares of common stock, including nine shares of Series C cumulative convertible preferred stock as converted to common stock, are entitled to vote at the meeting. On or about April 9th, 2026, INOVIO mailed a notice of annual meeting of stockholders to all stockholders of record as of March 24th, 2026. A preliminary count of the shares represented by proxy at this meeting indicates that the holders of substantially more than one-third of the shares of stock outstanding that are entitled to vote as of the record date are present at the meeting by proxy. Should any stockholder desire to vote online at this time or change their vote previously submitted, please click on the Vote Here button on the meeting website to submit or change your vote.
If you have already delivered your proxy and do not wish to change your vote, you need not vote online at this time.
A quorum exists. Therefore, the meeting is duly convened and open for business. As provided in the notice of this meeting, the first item of business is to elect eight members of the board of directors of INOVIO. The following persons have been nominated to serve as directors of INOVIO until the next annual meeting of stockholders and until their successors are elected: Simon Benito, Roger D. Dansey, Ann C. Miller, Jacqueline Shea, Jay Shepard, David B. Weiner, Wendy Yarno, and Lota Zoth. The second item to be voted upon is the ratification of the appointment by the audit committee of the board of directors of Ernst & Young LLP as INOVIO's independent registered public accounting firm for the year ending December 31st, 2026.
The third item to be voted upon is the approval, on a non-binding advisory basis, of the compensation of the named executives of INOVIO described in its proxy statement for this annual meeting. The fourth item to be voted upon is the approval of the amendment and restatement of our amended and restated 2023 Omnibus Incentive Plan. Since no other matters have been properly brought before the meeting, we will now vote. The polls are declared open at 9:03 A.M. today, May the 20th, 2026. Any person who would like to submit a ballot should submit it at this time through Vote Here button on the meeting website. The polls are hereby declared closed at 9:05 A.M. We will now hear the results of the voting.
Mr. Chairman, the report of the inspector of election covering the proposals presented at this meeting is as follows. Based upon a preliminary tally of the votes cast, the nominated slate of directors has received sufficient votes from the holders of capital stock to elect each of the eight nominees for the board of directors, and such nominees are elected. Also, based upon a preliminary tally of the votes cast, the proposal to ratify the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as INOVIO's independent registered public accounting firm for the year ending December 31st, 2026, has received sufficient votes to be approved. Also, based upon a preliminary tally of the votes cast, the proposal to approve on a non-binding advisory basis the compensation of the named executive officers of INOVIO described in its proxy statement for this annual meeting has received sufficient votes to be approved.
Based upon a preliminary tally of the votes cast. The proposal to approve an amendment and restatement of our amended and restated 2023 Omnibus Incentive Plan has received sufficient votes to be approved. We expect to report our preliminary voting results, or, if available to us on a timely basis, our final voting results on a current report on Form 8-K to be filed with the SEC within four days after the end of this meeting. If not earlier reported, we expect to report our final voting results in an amendment to our Form 8-K within four business days after the final results are known to us.
There being no other business properly brought before the meeting, this now concludes the formal portion of the annual meeting of stockholders of INOVIO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. I will now turn the meeting over to our CEO, Dr. Jackie Shea, who will provide a report on the company's progress.
Thank you, Simon. Good morning and welcome to everyone. Thank you for joining us for our 2026 annual shareholder meeting. I would like to take a few moments today to review the progress INOVIO has achieved since our last shareholders meeting. Before I move on to the details, I'd like to remind you that I will be making forward-looking statements regarding future events and the future performance of the company. I refer you to the documents we file with the SEC, which under the heading Risk Factors, identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from statements made this morning. I am very pleased to provide today a few highlights from the past year and outline our goals for what I believe will be a pivotal year ahead.
Our work in 2025 culminated with the FDA's acceptance of our first Biologics License Application, the lead candidate, INO-3107, under the Accelerated Approval Program. With the target Prescription Drug User Fee Act, or PDUFA date, set for October 30th, 2026, our focus now turns to the potential approval and commercial launch of INOVIO's first product and delivering on the promise of DNA medicine for patients and shareholders alike. Our strategic priorities for the year ahead reflect that focus as we direct the majority of our resources to advancing 3107 through the regulatory process toward potential approval and commercialization. As we highlighted in our first quarter financial results call last week, the FDA has completed their standard mid-cycle review of the BLA with no new significant issues being raised and scheduled the late-cycle review for the third quarter.
In communications around the mid-cycle review, the FDA reiterated their intent to schedule an informal meeting to discuss the potential review issue they raised in their file acceptance letter related to 3107's eligibility under the Accelerated Approval pathway. We have indicated to the agency that we are eager to discuss this with them as we believe that 3107 meets the requirements for Accelerated Approval eligibility. Concurrently, we've been advancing our commercial readiness plans in anticipation of a potential product approval. While the majority of our resources are focused on 3107, we're continuing to strategically drive progress across our pipeline using the power of partnerships to advance our other promising candidates and research. Turning now to our top priority, INO-3107, our DNA immunotherapy in development for treatment of recurrent respiratory papillomatosis, or RRP.
RRP is a rare HPV-related disease that is estimated to affect approximately 14,000 people in the U.S. based on available epidemiological data. It's characterized by persistent wart-like growths called papilloma that primarily grow on the vocal cords and in the respiratory tract. Surgery is still the standard of care, and patients undergo numerous surgeries to treat their disease. While there is now an improved immunotherapy on the market, it doesn't work for every patient and includes additional surgery as part of its dosing protocol. The very intervention the immunotherapy is designed to prevent. Patients, doctors, and advocates in the RRP community have been clear. Every surgery matters because every single surgery poses a risk of irreversible damage to the vocal cords and entails financial, emotional, and social costs.
There remains a high unmet need for additional treatment options that reduce the need for surgery, and options that work for each patient will be critical to changing the treatment paradigm for this disease. We designed 3107 with the goal of reducing surgeries in mind, and we believe it has the potential to become the preferred treatment option for RRP based on the efficacy and tolerability results we have observed to date, as well as its simple, patient-centric treatment regimen that, unlike our competitor's product, does not require surgery during the dosing window. As a reminder, we completed a phase I/II open label trial of 3107 in patients who required at least two surgeries in the previous year. Every surgery performed after day 0 was counted against the efficacy endpoint in our trial. We also conducted a retrospective trial to assess the longer-term treatment effect.
The key takeaway from these two trials is that we saw a statistically significant reduction in surgeries in the first 12 months following treatment, and that clinical benefit continued to improve beyond that initial first-year period into year two, with half of the patients requiring no surgery in year two. The potential clinical benefit demonstrated in our phase I/II trial is one of the key reasons we believe that INO-3107 fulfills the criteria for Accelerated Approval Program. Based on published FDA guidance, when there's already an approved product, eligibility for Accelerated Approval Program depends on a candidate's ability to provide a meaningful therapeutic benefit over existing treatments and its ability to meet a remaining unmet need among patients.
We strongly believe that 3107 meets both of these criteria based on demonstrated efficacy and improved safety profile that does not include required surgery during the dosing window, and a differentiated mechanism of action that provides the ability to treat patients who may not be adequately served by existing therapies. In our ongoing market research, these characteristics, efficacy, tolerability, and a simple patient-centric treatment regimen, are also what we believe will position 3107 to become the preferred product for patients and their doctors. In our ongoing conversations with the RRP community, we've seen that both patients and doctors are motivated and receptive to new treatments, which indicates that this market continues to have significant unmet need and commercial opportunity.
We've been gathering these insights, along with key learnings from the launch of our competitor's recently approved product, to optimize our own commercial plans as we prepare for a potential U.S. approval in 2026.
Moving now to a pipeline update. We continue to see great potential to advance DNA medicine across our pipeline and have several potential near and midterm catalysts. With our resources focused primarily on 3107, partnerships will continue to be a key part of our strategy to advance our other promising candidates. Focusing on our new collaborations, we announced in February of this year a collaboration with Akeso to evaluate our immuno-oncology candidate, INO-5401, in combination with their novel dual checkpoint inhibitor as a potential treatment for glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive form of brain cancer. The study, which builds on our previous promising research in GBM, will be part of an innovative phase II adaptive platform trial sponsored by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Partnerships will also be an important part of our strategy to advance the next generation of DNA medicine technology.
That includes a collaboration with The Wistar Institute, AstraZeneca, and clinical investigators at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania to advance DNA-encoded Monoclonal Antibody or dMAb technology, which was studied in a phase I proof of concept trial published in Nature Medicine in October of last year. The data demonstrated the technology's ability to durably and tolerably produce monoclonal antibodies, a complex protein within the human body. Our DNA-encoded protein or dPROT technology builds on this research, aiming to enable additional types of proteins to be made within the body to treat diseases caused by missing or defective proteins. We presented promising preclinical work on factor VIII production for treatment of haemophilia A. We are actively seeking partnerships to advance additional rare disease targets, including Fabry disease and hypophosphatasia into clinical evaluation. Turning now to a brief financial overview.
With the majority of our resources focused on advancing INO-3107 toward approval and commercial launch, an ongoing commitment to financial discipline has been core to our strategy. To that effect, we continue to reduce our total operating spend for all of 2025 by 23% when compared to 2024. That trend continued in the first quarter of 2026 when operating expenses decreased by 13% compared to the first quarter of 2025. We finished the first quarter of 2026 with $37.7 million in cash equivalents, and short-term investments. We completed a public equity offering in April 2026 that provided net proceeds of approximately $16 million. With these combined resources and based on our current operating plans, we estimate our cash runway to take us into the first quarter of 2027.
To conclude, we are excited about the upcoming milestones, including the potential to bring our first product to market and introduce the first DNA medicine to the United States. Above all, we're motivated by the opportunity to deliver on the promise of DNA medicine for RRP patients. We believe that every surgery matters, every patient matters, and every patient deserves access to additional treatment options that work for them. Thank you for your ongoing support and commitment as we work to fulfill INOVIO's mission and unlock the promise of DNA medicine for patients and shareholders alike.
This now concludes the meeting. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.