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J.P. Morgan 42nd Annual Healthcare Conference 2024

Jan 10, 2024

Harry Pearson
Investment Banking Associate, J.P. Morgan

Thank you for joining us this morning. My name's Harry Pearson. I'm a member of J.P. Morgan's investment banking team. I'm pleased to welcome you all to Liquidia Corporation's presentation and Q&A, joined by Dr. Roger Jeffs, the CEO, Mike Kaseta, CFO, and Rusty Schundler, General Counsel. We'll give a presentation, followed by Q&A. Take it away.

Roger Jeffs
CEO, Liquidia Corporation

Wonderful. Thank you, Harry. Everybody can hear me okay? Yeah, so we're delighted to be presenting. This is our first podium presentation for Liquidia at JPM, and I think it signals an inflection moment for the company as a whole. I'm joined today by Mike Kaseta, our CFO, Rusty Schundler, our GC, Rajeev Saggar, our CMO, and Scott Moomaw, our Chief Commercial Officer, and I'd also like to welcome the board members of Liquidia that are here today as well. These are the regular forward-looking statements. I encourage you to read those and look to our filings for certain risks and uncertainties related to the stock and things I may or may not say today. We are very excited about the acceleration and the progress that we're making at Liquidia, at the company.

Our mission is to develop patient... best-in-class therapies for patients with pulmonary hypertension, and we've- we feel we've made significant strides towards that mission statement. Strategically, we're positioned to drive significant market presence in a rapidly expanding PH market across our three verticals, what we call the three Ps: PRINT platform technology, products, which includes the pending approvals for Yutrepia and our pipeline asset, L606, which we licensed in this past year from our partner, Pharmosa, which is a twice-a-day sustained-release formulation. With regard to PRINT platform technology, and I want to spend a little bit of time here, everything that we do in the pulmonary hypertension, hypertension space is gonna be accelerated by the way that we use our nano-molding technology to produce precise, uniform particles of precise shape and composition.

These particles, we can really fine-tune into the appropriate range of the appropriate segment of the respiratory range to maximize deep lung delivery. Yutrepia, as you may know, it has PH approval, tentative approval for PAH, and for PH-ILD, we, in two weeks from today, we have a PDUFA date for that, which we're also seeking tentative approval. That approval, if granted, will be gated by a market exclusivity that United Therapeutics has, that ends in March. We also have a treprostinil for injection. It's a generic form of Remodulin, that we are the commercial partner with our partner, Sandoz. And I talked to you about the sustained-release formulation, but those are the three verticals where we're trying to maximize our business platform. So what are the markets, and what do they look like?

PH and PH-ILD are highly attractive markets, and I'll break down and if you don't know what pulmonary hypertension is, it's increased pulmonary pressure from vasculopathy in PAH or scarring of lung tissue in PH-ILD, results in right ventricular hypertrophy and eventually death for these patients, so a severe, rare disease with continuing unmet need. In WHO Group 1, there's 40,000 patients treated today, roughly. Three-year survival is better. It's 75%. Five-year survival is about 50%, so still a lot to do there. Four mechanisms of action, 14 branded therapeutics, and over a $5 billion market opportunity if you just look at pulmonary hypertension alone. Of that, about $2.7 billion is in what we call prostacyclin or the prostacyclin mimetic components of that.

That's the market we're going after, both what's inhaled, what's in oral, and then also maybe infringing on the Remodulin franchise by having a durable therapy like Yutrepia. WHO Group 3 is a different beast. It was first approved in 2001, a study in WHO Group 3 patients with ILD for nebulized Tyvaso. It's PH associated with lung disease. In this instance, I'm showing that there's about 60,000 prevalent patients, which we can distill from academic research, syndicated academic research. Three-year survival is very morbid, 35%. Five-year survival is even worse, about 14%. Currently, the only available option to these patients is inhaled treprostinil, both in a nebulized and DPI format that United Therapeutics offer.

If you look on the right-hand curve, prior to 2021, the approval of PH-ILD, in 2022, the approval of the DPI format, Tyvaso was fairly static, about $400 million per annum, and you can see it's inflected a significant amount of revenue growth, and at the end of the third quarter, they reported $1.3 billion run rate across the nebulized and DPI format. So those are the markets that we're gonna enter into. If you look at that more granularly, here's their... They broke it down for the first time, rapidly increasing demand for inhaled treprostinil. Really, the value proposition, though, seems to be porting to the DPI formulation, which we have with, with Yutrepia. So again, stagnant through 2021, ILD came to market, and then in 2022, the DPI.

If you look at the growth, the green bar is the DPI. Now, the DPI accounts for about 65% of the inhaled treprostinil revenue. Only 35% remains with nebulized Tyvaso. You can see the DPI's cannibalizing nebulized share as well. So while all that looks good, and the CAGR is impressive, the real-world reality is a little bit different. So here's a. And I'll try to make sure I get these numbers right. Here's a prospective study from the National Jewish Health that was published, or abstracted at the PHPN Symposia in September. National Jewish is one of the largest and best pulmonary centers in the world. It's a very capable expert in the treatment of patients with PH-ILD.

They treated 26 patients that were naive to prostacyclins, so never experienced prostacyclins, but their disease demanded an increase in therapy, so they put them on inhaled treprostinil in the DPI format. They also started 22 patients that were transitioned from Tyvaso nebulized to Tyvaso DPI. Of the 26 that started, 18 discontinued in the naive subset group, so 69%. Of that, the main reason was clinical worsening and cough. In the naive group, or the transition group, 22 started, 11 DC'd, or 50% discontinuation. So of the 18 DCs in the first group, 11 went back to nebulizer. Of the 11 DCs in the second group, seven went back to the nebulizer. That tells you it's not the drug. So they're going back from Tyvaso DPI back to nebulized formulation. So why is that?

I think it's because they couldn't deliver the dose appropriately to the patients and titrate the dose to effect. So that's the real first real-world experience from a large prospective cohort of patients. The time on therapy, on average, was between three to six months, so it didn't take long for the therapy to fail. So that's the market opportunity. You see, you see there's a preference for portability and DPI use versus nebulizer, but the sustainability of the therapy, at least the way this one center used it, was not that impressive. So we think Yutrepia is gonna provide a much more attractive option. And why is that? So it's the first and only product candidate using our PRINT technology. If you look on the left, we can reliably with high fidelity PRINT 1.3-micron MMAD particles.

It's in a trefoil shape, which mimics the natural form of pollen, and it's free flowing. But what you also see here is no aggregation or clumping. The particles remain independent, which is critical. On the right, this is a publication from one of our scientists in-house from 2012, where we looked within the respirable range, the respirable range is 1 to 5 microns, and we looked to see if we formulated particles at 4.6 microns or 1.3 microns, which is what Yutrepia is. Look at the different distribution, and you can see on the right that the 1.3 microns performs beautifully. It goes to the distal airways, fills the lungs, and less deposition in the upper airway and throat. That's what you want when you have a dry powder formulation. We have, again, the history of what we did.

How did we get this drug approved? It was through a 505(b)(2) pathway. We showed comparable pharmacokinetics. We have a tablet formulation of 79.5 micrograms, which is comparable to nine breaths of Tyvaso, and everything now is, is viewed as breath equivalents. Like, how do you match the Tyvaso nebulized breath equivalent? So 79.5 for us matches a nine breath equivalent of Tyvaso given four times a day. We studied 121 patients, both naive or, and/or transitioned from Tyvaso, and we've been continuing to treat patients since 2017, now with the longest duration of therapy of 5.5 years. We are seeking we have a PH-ILD indication, which we filed for approval, an amendment for approval over the summer.

The due date is January 24th, so two weeks from today, we'll get an answer on that application, hopefully. And critically, that application requires no additional clinical work, although we're beginning to do clinical work in PH-ILD to better inform our dosing strategy. What we've learned, at least in PH patients, through this open label extension study, is that as patients progress over time, so here it's showing two months, 12 months, 24 months, the dose is on the left, and the comparable breaths of Tyvaso is on the right. The target breath dose is that gray bar, nine to 12 breaths. That's what's in the indication label for Tyvaso and Tyvaso DPI.

You can see over time, the blue bar is median dose, that we're at 15 breath equivalents , and at 24 months, 51% of patients are above 132.5 or 15 breath equivalents of Tyvaso, with a max dose now at 30 breath equivalents . This is completely changing the therapeutic profile of inhaled treprostinil. So these are at levels in terms of dose, that have never been seen before. This is the clinical value and utility of Yutrepia. So the four elements that are critical to our success and why this will drive significant share are that it's a portable therapy, it's tolerable, it's titratable, and durable. So simple, pocket-sized device, convenient storage.

We use a low-resistance, pocket-sized inhaler, one here, proven device both in COPD and asthma, that physicians and, and patients are gonna be very comfortable with. It's a Plastiape device. You just twist it, open the capsule, hold the capsule, pierce it, close it, close it, and then two breaths. You're done. Just and that's the therapy. Do that four times a day based on your dose. We've shown that it's tolerable. That's why we're achieving the breath equivalents that we're achieving. So with inhaled nebulized Tyvaso, the ceiling, the target dose is nine to 12, but patients have really struggled, and I'll show you some data, to get above that nine to 12 breath threshold.

And we do it with a low-resistance DPI, and the reason we can use low resistance, and this is gonna be important from a marketing standard, is because the particles are free-formed, monodispersed, and not agglomerated. You saw the pictures. The competitive DPI molecule is not that. It's aggregated 'cause it's spray-dried onto a what's called an FDKP backbone. That's a co-opted technology from their inhaled insulin program. Because of that, it clumps. You need a high-resistance device to break that up, and then, that takes more energy in a patient population where the number one symptom is shortness of breath. So probably not ideal for what you're trying to achieve. We've shown it's titratable.

Again, I showed you the curves where both the median dose and the max dose are increasing admirably over time, and then we're trying to prolong the treatment. Again, it'll help the patients, and it'll help from a revenue curve the longer we treat. So our goal with this type of profile is to be the best-in-class and first-in-choice prostacyclin. And what does that mean? So that means we're not just gonna try to take the inhaled market. We're gonna go after the oral market. So when a physician decides to add a prostacyclin in pulmonary arterial hypertension, they add Yutrepia, and then we'll delay the time for the need for a more onerous parenteral therapy.

So dose matters, and again, I think this is well-published data, and it's across all routes, but I'll just show you specifically for inhaled treprostinil, first in PAH, and then I'll show it to you in PH-ILD. So this is a retrospective analysis of 5,000 patients, so a large survey sample from between 2009 and 2018. And it showed that if you got to 12 or more breaths in this data cut versus 9 breaths, you had a delayed transition to IV or sub-Q therapy, greater persistence on therapy, and slightly improved survival rates. At the bottom, though, you'll see only 25% of patients, this is real-world data, were titrated to greater than twelve, greater than or equal to 12 breaths four times a day of Tyvaso. So with a nebulized formulation, it's been very hard to achieve satisfactory doses.

That's the limitation of inhaled treprostinil. In PH-ILD, similar story. So this is from the registration study for which PH-ILD was approved for in nebulized Tyvaso and then bridged, but for Tyvaso DPI. This time, the data, the data cuts are nine breaths, so greater than or equal to nine breaths. You can see on the left, if you got to nine breaths or more, more clinical improvement in the red and less clinical worsening in the blue. On the, the primary outcome measure, six-minute walk distance, same thing. Better outcome, the higher the dose, particularly prominent as you got above into the 10-12 breath range. So we're excited about that 'cause dose matters, and we have the therapy that can deliver the highest and most effective dose, we believe. And that will be manifest in our product labeling. So it's...

If you look at the products, people say, "Well, how do you differentiate?" We're gonna differentiate on formulation. So the PRINT technology formulation allows the use of a low-resistance device, which is easy for the patient to use, so it's highly user-friendly. Our label will encompass these higher doses. So if you look down to the dose titration described in the label, this is from our original submission. It included doses up to 24 breath equivalents of Tyvaso. The competitive molecule only has 11-12 breaths as their target indicated dose. So we'll differentiate on the most critical aspect of the utility of a prostacyclin and an inhaled prostacyclin, in particular, as you've seen, by dose, and we'll do it with a low-resistance device.

Our product requires no refrigeration during the product lifetime and no loss of powder or required device orientation to deliver. So if you drop the device, no spillage. Theirs is more sensitive and could spill drug if dropped. I'll talk briefly about the legal, just to frame it. In the Q&A, Rusty's here, so he can answer questions on process. So we had a Federal Circuit Court decision in, on December 20th that affirmed the invalidity of the 793, 793 patent, that the the PTAB decision. That decision will override the previous district court decision. So now, in aggregate, all three patents that were asserted against us, that were Orange Book-listed, we found not-- we found no claim that's either valid or infringed.

So we've passed the substantive bar of what we wanna do, and we think from this point forward, for PH, it's more of just a process issue. How do we to turn the tentative approval that we have to a final approval? For PH-ILD, there is a second Hatch-Waxman lawsuit that was filed. So when we filed the amendment, we had to recertify against the Orange Book-listed patents. 793 was still in play at that time. Obviously, that will go away with the recent ruling. And the 327 patent, which we think is really. We don't believe will. We know it won't cause a regulatory stay, so it won't trigger a regulatory stay because it was not Orange Book-listed at the time of our original NDA application.

So it's more, you know what, that would just be more of a legal case around what that patent is, and we've press released on Monday what we think about that patent. The next steps then from process, we're gonna ask the district court to set aside the existing injunction. In fact, we did that on December twenty-sixth. We have the briefing schedules ongoing, but by January twenty-third, and Rusty can talk about the details, the case will be fully briefed and in Judge Andrews's hands to release the existing injunction, and then it's just determined by his own sort of schedule as to when that will happen. In parallel, we're already in dialogue with the FDA on figuring out how we move the tentative approval to final approval.

So they're aware of the affirmation in the Federal Circuit, and we're just trying to work with them now, especially with the pending tentative approval for ILD in play also. How do we get both done, and on what timeline? So the other question is, when will you be ready to launch? We're ready now, so that's the good news. So we have 50 sales reps that we onboarded in October. They're very scientifically fluent and commercially capable. They have 10 years of rare disease experience on average, and about 60%-70% of them have direct PH experience, as you can see from companies at the bottom. If not, they're superstars from the rare disease field and are used to these high-touch patients and how to promote and sell into this space.

As I said, we put them in the field early. That was a bit at risk, but we wanted them trained and ready to go, and Scott's had his team ready to go since January 1st. So again, ready today, we're just waiting on the final things to happen from a process standpoint. We also, in 2023, strengthened our pipeline. I won't spend a lot of time on this one as we begin to get more data, but if you look here, it's basically liposomal encapsulated treprostinil. The liposomal encapsulation extends the product PK from four hours to 12 hours, so it sets up for a twice-a-day versus four-times-a-day regimen.

It has a seven times lower Cmax, which is good, so you've extended the PK curve, so having a lower Cmax should improve the tolerability profile, and we match on AUC to infinity when you do the proper PK comparisons. We've got this license with very strong proof of concept data. So there was an existing open-label, ongoing study that there's 20 of the 60... That study is enrolling now. There's 20 of those 60 patients are in. Some have gone past one year, some are already at the 25-27 breath equivalents . So tolerable, titratable, durable. So the key hallmarks of Yutrepia seem to be porting to the twice-a-day formulation, and when you think about Yutrepia and DPIs versus nebulized, we did four things: improved portability, tolerability, titratability, and durability.

The one thing we didn't change was regimen. Still four times a day. L606 changes that fifth paradigm, so that's the value proposition here. We're gonna start in that study, those plans by the end of this year. It'll go through its regular, you know, 18-24 months enrollment. There's a precedent pathway. We'll just do the same study that United did for Tyvaso nebulized, the INCREASE study. Six months to get the patients through the study, three months to analyze, one year for review and approval. So we think roughly four years from start, we can get to goal. Low-hanging fruit, there's precedent knowledge that PH, in PH, that inhaled treprostinil will work. We've just got a longer-acting formulation of that. So excited about that, and it also will be highly portable.

It's using a modern, breath-actuated nebulizer, much different than what the current inhaled treprostinil format looks like. We had an FDA Type C meeting in December. We got agreement with the agency that the comparability bioavailability was done when we acquired the program. There are ongoing open-label safety study I've talked about, which is informing dosing and how we'll design the algorithm in that patient. And then there was agreement that a single placebo-controlled study in PH-ILD, which we'll do globally, will suffice for both PH-ILD and PAH approval. And the beauty of doing it in PH-ILD, there'll be no background therapy, so we just have to beat placebo, which should be a pretty low bar. And finally, very well capitalized. We've been very active in the past month.

We've raised $126 million since reporting Q3 earnings. So in the, if we close the third quarter with $76.2 million in cash, we added $26 million in an equity raise, including $11 million from insiders, some on our board. Added $20 million from a HealthCare Royalty revenue interest finance agreement, just topped up on that. And then importantly for us, we raised $75 million via PIPE with a fund related to Patient Square Capital here in San Francisco. So we feel, and this is a critical aspect here, that if we're able to launch in both PAH and PH-ILD in April, that this funding will bridge us to profitability. So we're ready to launch, and we look forward to questions as we try to rewrite the future of these patients with pulmonary hypertension. Thank you.

Harry Pearson
Investment Banking Associate, J.P. Morgan

Great. Thank you, Roger. I think, I might start off with one question, then we'll hand it over to the audience. Could you expand a little bit more on the, the process to getting final approval and launch in PAH and then also in PH-ILD?

Roger Jeffs
CEO, Liquidia Corporation

Yeah, so I'll turn it over to Rusty, because that's mostly in his... the process of that is in his hands.

Rusty Schundler
General Counsel, Liquidia Corporation

So as Roger pointed out earlier, we have two ongoing Hatch-Waxman lawsuits, and I'll touch on each of them. In the first one, which is really the one that's gating our ability to get to market, that was the original Hatch-Waxman lawsuit that they filed. They asserted three different patents against us. With the December Federal Circuit decision that we received, we now have Federal Circuit affirmed decisions that we don't infringe any valid claims of any of those patents. So substantively, we feel like that first Hatch-Waxman lawsuit at this point is resolved. It's now process. So the process is, we need to, one, go to the FDA and seek final approval, and two, we think we're gonna have to get Judge Andrews to rescind and set aside the injunction that he issued at the end of the trial.

Again, substantively, we don't think there's an issue. You know, in fact, we had asked him for a stay of the injunction before the Federal Circuit decision, about a week before that decision came down. He denied the stay, but he denied it on grounds that he wasn't gonna speculate as to what the Federal Circuit was gonna do. At this point, there's no question what the Federal Circuit's gonna do. They did it. He also said, as part of that opinion, that it was his view that if we did get an affirmance at the Federal Circuit, that we'd be able to launch our product. So we think he's already signaled what he thinks the answer is. Again, we just have to go through the process.

So as Roger said, on December 26th, we filed our opening brief, asking him to set aside the injunction. Their response brief is due a week from yesterday, so next Tuesday. We'll get a reply the week after, on January 23rd, and at that point, as Roger said, it's in the judge's hands. You know, we anticipate we'll get a decision relatively quickly on that, because we do think this is top of mind for him. The second lawsuit, we don't think is a gating issue for us on any of the indications. They again asserted the 793 patent, with which December's decision, we don't think is really an issue in that lawsuit at all anymore. In fact, we filed, as we announced on Monday, a motion to dismiss, to dismiss all claims related to that, that patent.

The other patent, the 327 patent, I think there are a couple things that are important to point out about that. First, as Roger noted, there's no 30-month stay. A 30-month stay, by statute, it has to be a patent that was submitted to the Orange Book before the original NDA was filed. There's no question the 327 patent was not submitted to the Orange Book before our original NDA was filed. What that means is that United Therapeutics would have to affirmatively get the court to issue a preliminary injunction for them to have to be able to interfere at all with our ability to launch in PAH and PHLD. In order to do that, they've got to convince the judge that they're substantially likely to succeed on the merits.

You know, as we've been saying, you know, we pointed out this patent was coming last June. We've talked about it on our earnings call. As we've said all along, we think there's substantial prior art before this patent, and we think there are gonna be significant challenges to United Therapeutics upholding the validity of that patent. We started showing some of our work in what we filed on Monday, and we press-released that, pointing out at least some of the prior art. But I'd note that's not all the prior art that's out there. This was a patent that application they filed in 2020, meaning everything prior to 2020 is prior art. That includes the 793 patent, which covers almost the same thing.

The other thing to keep in mind is the 327 patent, what that's really covering is physicians treating PH-ILD patients with Tyvaso in accordance with the Tyvaso label, and doctors have been doing that for more than 10 years. Rajeev Saggar, our CMO, when he was treating patients, he was treating patients with Tyvaso, PH-ILD patients with Tyvaso. So again, we don't think there's anything in that patent that's anything new, and certainly not new as of 2020. We anticipate that they will seek a preliminary injunction, but we feel confident that we've got the prior art, that we'll be ready for, ready for that assertion of a preliminary injunction.

Roger Jeffs
CEO, Liquidia Corporation

And again, that's specific to PH-ILD, won't interfere with what we're doing in PAH in terms of launch.

Speaker 5

Assuming no preliminary injunction.

Roger Jeffs
CEO, Liquidia Corporation

Sorry, would you just mind in the microphone?

Speaker 5

Assuming no preliminary injunction, are you willing to launch at risk in 2024?

Rusty Schundler
General Counsel, Liquidia Corporation

Yeah, at risk.

Speaker 5

In PHLD?

Rusty Schundler
General Counsel, Liquidia Corporation

Yes. So what we've said consistently is we'll make that decision at the time that we're preparing to launch. But if we look at and survey the patents that are out there at that time, and we don't think there are any valid patents that have been issued at that point in time, we're not gonna hold back our launch for a patent that we think is invalid.

Speaker 6

And then similarly, if there's some way you can't launch in PH-ILD, would you consider just launching in PH and then waiting until PH-ILD is resolved?

Roger Jeffs
CEO, Liquidia Corporation

Yeah. We're gonna launch the product as soon as we're able. I mean, our goal is to get this therapy to patients. We've been waiting a long time to do this. There's a demand curve that I think warrants that we get there and get there soon, and you can see potentially that the current existing therapies are problematic, and that we can improve upon that. So as soon as we're able to launch, as I said, we're ready to launch. We have the sales team in force, sales aids, marketing materials, everything's ready to go as soon as we have freedom to operate.

Speaker 6

Thank you.

Speaker 7

Yeah, I just had a question. What drove the, what drove the timing of the ILD amendment? Why didn't you, why didn't you file earlier, I guess?

Roger Jeffs
CEO, Liquidia Corporation

Some of it was just to see. Really, nothing drove it. And again, what's really driving it is the back end. Market exclusivity expires at the end of March, so we worked from that point backwards, and we wanted to have a decision in, you know, in hand through it. Again, what's gonna happen on the 24th, if the agency agrees, is they'll give us another tentative approval and add PH-ILD to the tentative approval indication. So it's really just trying to get ahead of that timeline, nothing specific about trying to do anything clever.

Speaker 7

All right, so it was just coincidence that it was close to the PAH, the patent?

Roger Jeffs
CEO, Liquidia Corporation

Like I said, we worked backwards.

Speaker 7

Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

Rusty Schundler
General Counsel, Liquidia Corporation

Just to be clear, for them to have gotten a 30-month stay, that patent would've had to be submitted to the Orange Book before the original NDA, not the amendment, and again, the statute's very clear on that point.

Roger Jeffs
CEO, Liquidia Corporation

Question?

Harry Pearson
Investment Banking Associate, J.P. Morgan

I guess maybe one follow-up question. Oh, sorry, is there? I think there's one more in the audience.

Speaker 8

How are you guys thinking about pricing? Is this gonna be a premium product, priced at parity or a discount to Tyvaso?

Roger Jeffs
CEO, Liquidia Corporation

Yeah, Mike, maybe you've been managing that. You want to talk about it?

Mike Kaseta
CFO, Liquidia Corporation

Yeah, so obviously, it's one of the areas of launch that we've been thinking about and strategizing and, you know, having a lot of discussions about. You know, we're not gonna divulge our specific pricing strategy. I think our goal from day one has always been to make sure that patients have choice. Patients haven't had choice in 20 years in this space, and we wanna make sure that patients have the option to be able to get our product. And, you know, we're committed to that goal, and, you know, that is top of mind in all of our thinking. We have great relationships with the payers. We've had, you know, discussions with them over the last couple of years. They've obviously ramped up and are aware of the situation.

You know, we are, like I said, our main commitment is to patients in PAH and PHILD, and we're gonna do what we need to do to make sure that they have access to our product.

Roger Jeffs
CEO, Liquidia Corporation

We've had top-to-top conversations with the leadership at the payers already.

Speaker 8

What is the strategy of the new PH-ILD study?

Roger Jeffs
CEO, Liquidia Corporation

Yeah, so principally. So really, there's been no prospective DPI study with inhaled treprostinil in this space. So for us, we thought it would be the right thing to do, is to try to study the drug in that patient population for which we are seeking approval. So it's really just to better inform dosing. And the, and what we want to learn there is, what's the pace of titration in PH-ILD with Yutrepia, and how does that compare to the pace of titration for patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension? Because they have a comorbid lung disease, it is possible they could be a little bit more sensitive to dose increase. And not that they won't tolerate it, but you may have to go a little bit slower.

Cause everybody wants to tweak and tune the dose to maximum effect, so you get maximum benefit with minimal side effects, so the patient feels better. They come into your office, they're short of breath, fatigued, miserable, so they wanna feel better faster. So really, that study, we're gonna now, for the first time, put Yutrepia into a PH-ILD patient and see, do they behave from a tolerability standpoint like a PAH patient, or do we need to go a little bit softer? So that's all we're trying to do. We think that... Personally, I think the product profile's gonna be the same in both populations, but we're gonna, we're gonna test that theory. It's open-label data, so we're gonna have a good, hard look at it, and we'll present that data as it accrues over time.

So I think it'll inform a lot of things and hopefully contradict what the experience that's being seen at the National Jewish Health, where there's clear issues. They're not getting to an effect that warrants that those patients wanna stay on that drug. They're coming off. We're gonna do the research to make sure that doesn't happen with Yutrepia.

Harry Pearson
Investment Banking Associate, J.P. Morgan

Any other questions in the audience? I think one follow-up I just had, and Roger, you touched upon this briefly, is about the cash runway. Mike, I wonder if you have any color you wanted to add to that, about how you feel about that.

Mike Kaseta
CFO, Liquidia Corporation

No, thanks for the question. You know, I think, you know, over the last couple of years, maintaining strength on our balance sheet has always been important to us. And I think we feel today, as Roger talked about, the $126 million that we raised, we've never been in a stronger position. It has afforded us the opportunity to onboard our sales force, have them hit the ground running. We've been building commercial supply since the beginning of 2022. So we have the sufficient commercial supply for what we anticipate to be the first years of demand, and we are accelerating that production. So we feel very confident, as Roger said, you know...

If we're able to launch, let's say, by April in both PAH and PHILD, we think our current cash, as it stands now, can, you know, bridge us to profitability, and we'll not need to, you know, access capital markets unless we chose to.

Harry Pearson
Investment Banking Associate, J.P. Morgan

Fantastic.

Roger Jeffs
CEO, Liquidia Corporation

Yeah, and it's—I mean, I think the thing is, it just... We have the proper amount of fuel to really fire on all cylinders, on all things we're trying to achieve. So across the three verticals of platform, products, and pipeline, we now can spend away and maximize the value of the product. That's what we're trying to do, 'cause it's gonna benefit patients and benefit other stakeholders, obviously.

Harry Pearson
Investment Banking Associate, J.P. Morgan

Sure, Ryan.

Speaker 9

Thanks. I guess a question for Rusty. Can you just review one more time? Can you de-link PAH from ILD to get a full approval on PAH first, or what are the mechanics of that?

Rusty Schundler
General Counsel, Liquidia Corporation

Yes, so I think that's part of the dialogue with the agency. Again, from our perspective, though, first of all, if somehow they got an injunction on PHILD, yes, ultimately we'll be able to decouple the two. I think the specific sequence over the next three months is what we're talking to the agency about with the regulatory exclusivity that goes until March 31st. So that's part of the dialogue with the agency. But from our perspective, again, you're talking about a couple weeks here or there, probably. So again, it's part of the dialogue, though.

Roger Jeffs
CEO, Liquidia Corporation

But that's the exact logistics that we're trying to say, like, what's the best opportunity for us to convert the tentative for PAH to full? And then once you decide on PH-ILD, what's the implication of that favorable decision, and how we then, you know, how do we then convert that?

Harry Pearson
Investment Banking Associate, J.P. Morgan

Great. Well, if there are no other questions, any last remarks? Otherwise, I think we can wrap up.

Roger Jeffs
CEO, Liquidia Corporation

No, so we appreciate your time and attention, even those online. Thank you for listening in, and we look forward to working hard and providing the value we all seek. Thank you.

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