Okay, welcome back to the 2024 Stifel Healthcare Conference. We're on the Life Sciences and Diagnostics track. I am Dan Arias. I'm the Life Sciences and Diagnostics Analyst. Happy to have MaxCyte with us this morning. CEO Maher Masoud, CFO Doug Swirsky. Guys, thanks for agreeing to spend some time with us.
Thanks for having us, Dan.
Sure, our pleasure. I think a good idea just to orient folks that might be new would just be to talk a little bit about MaxCyte. What is it that you do? What are you good at? What markets are you serving?
Yeah, absolutely. So, great question. Just a brief overview. So, MaxCyte is in the cell and gene therapy space. And for those of you that don't know, what that means is, for the longest time, if you look at where medicines were produced and developed, there were small molecules and biologics. The last, I'd say, 10 to 15 years, cell therapy's coming about. Cell and gene therapy's coming about, where, in essence, you're taking live cells and you're making the cell itself from a patient in an autologous setting, or allogeneic. Allogeneic means where you take it from a healthy patient. You're creating the cell itself to become a therapy, right? So, it's really something revolutionizing and groundbreaking.
What MaxCyte has done over the last 10 years, but I'd say most of the last seven to eight years, is we have a cell engineering platform that allows us to help therapeutic developers such as the Vertex's and the CRISPR's and the Legend Bios and, you know, Kamau Therapeutics, KSQ. We have a multitude of them. Engineer the cell using our electroporation platform. So, what that means is we have a platform that ends up sending electrical pulses through the cell, allows the cell to become porous, permeable. You can get genetic material into the cell, which then ends up, in essence, you've now created your cell therapy that then goes through a few more manufacturing processes. What's that done for us over the last seven to eight years is we have something truly unique in the industry.
We are a scientific company with this platform, this electroporation platform, that's allowed us to really have the opportunity to work with, right now, 29 partners in the clinic where we sign what we call SPL, Strategic Platform Licenses, that allows us to receive revenue in multiple forms: through annual license fees, through use of our systems, processing assemblies that are used each time patients are being dosed in the clinic, and then commercial, and then also, we have something unique where we participate in the backend economics once a product's commercialized through a royalty. What's that meant for us as an organization is we have a company with a very healthy organization, in the sense of high gross margins, right? If you look at across our revenue line, it's in the mid to high 80s%, depending on quarter and year.
Recurring revenue all the way from research to the clinic and commercial, and really has positioned us for that company to become part of the cell and gene therapy landscape over the next five, 10, 15 years in the foreseeable future. Doug, anything else to add there?
That's perfect. You know, among st the healthcare crowd, most people have at least heard of cell therapy. They're aware of the fact that there's a lot of activity going on, and then when they try to dig into the market a little bit, it becomes obvious that there are different approaches that you can use. One is your electroporation approach, put the hole in the cell mechanically. One is using a viral vector. How does that market split for you when you think about what percentage of the market is one versus the other? And are you seeing one with stronger momentum than the other would be the follow-up?
Yeah, there is. So, overall, as a market, you're seeing there are about 2,100 programs that are in research and the clinic. Roughly about 1,200 in the clinic. About 150 companies out there pursuing cell and gene therapies that have about 1,200 programs themselves that can take from research to the clinic. The split between what is viral and non-viral, so to speak, the viral market is still a substantial portion of that market, about a little bit less than 60%. 60% is viral. Of the 40% of the non-viral, ex vivo, which is where MaxCyte sits, where we engineer cells outside the body, ex vivo, is about 57% of that market.
But what we're seeing over the last, you know, few years, really five years and more so now in the past few years, is a shift away from the viral base to non-viral, a shift away to also ex vivo markets as well for obvious reasons, right? The cell therapies themselves are becoming far more complex. The number of edits you have to make outside the body have increased. We've gone from the initial, what you call your Yescarta, your KYMRIAH, where we're making maybe one edit to the cell. You have companies now that are making four, five, seven, nine edits to the cell, which is lending itself away from the viral approach, lending itself more to the ex vivo, and really lending itself to transfection, which is truly the number one way we can make multiple edits to the cell.
Okay, so you feel good about the direction that the overall market is heading in from a technology perspective or from an approach perspective. If I think about the 2023, 2024 journey for MaxCyte, there are a lot of companies in my space for whom P&L performance has been dictated by the end market environment. You guys are certainly one of those. Can you talk a little bit about where you've been in your biopharma customer base, the trends that have taken place? And ultimately, what I would lead to is this three-key number that you saw for cell therapy revenues was up 40%. What do you think that that says about cell therapy activity in the space?
Do you want to take that, Doug?
When you start and I'll chime in.
Sure. I mean, if you look at where it's going, so obviously that bodes well for us, right? You see that progression that we've made this year compared to last year. You're also seeing the funding environment come back as well overall for the space. 2023 was a very tough funding environment. 2024, we're seeing that space start to come back. And we've seen that healthy progression throughout the year. We had consistency in Q1, Q2, Q3. We have every reason to think Q4 will be very healthy as well. So that's holistically what I feel about the overall space itself. Doug, how would you like to comment on that?
I think the market has improved. I think we're in a better place. I feel much better about where the company is this year versus when we sat here last year. I think we've had a good financial performance across, you know, if you look at, for instance, the utilization of our single-use disposables, the processing assemblies, that's been very strong across all the end markets that we serve.
So just to talk to 4Q a little bit, since Maher, you kind of alluded to the end of the year. I don't think the numbers imply sequential improvement from 3Q. In fact, at least by the consensus number, I think you're down $500,000. So logically, I understand your approach has been a conservative one for the year. It's sort of, you tell me whether this is a wrong assessment, but it's like, let's get our feet back under us. Let's put out numbers that we can hit. But if I'm thinking about the momentum that you're referring to, how do you feel about 4Q given Maher's comment on sequential improvement across the year?
Well, we feel really good about how 4Q is shaping up. I mean, we sat and we had our call a couple of weeks ago. We do take a conservative approach. I think we've been much more disciplined in how we think about the business, how we model out what the expectations should be for the year. And I think that we've started to do that because last year, obviously, we had some challenges, right? It was a very difficult market in predicting where we're going to end up, you know, what proved challenging. We've taken a conservative approach here. I think as we sit here two more weeks into the quarter versus when we reported, I feel, you know, even more confident that we're going to be able to achieve for what we set and exceed that number.
When you think about the company, I mean, a lot of this, to your point, Maher, has to do with the fact that you have biotech companies that struggled to raise money. They have now done a decent job raising money this quarter, or at least this year anyways. So that should translate to better demand for your products. I guess the question I would have is, are you seeing better demand from the companies that have financed this year, which sort of says, hey, once we get some money in the bank, we're able to spend it? Is it more financing went on, but when I think about where the revenue came from, it isn't necessarily aligned that way?
Do you want me to take that or you take it?
I mean, I think it's a mix, but.
It's a mix. I mean, I will say this. What we're seeing this year is those companies that have programs near the clinic are able to get financed. We saw that with two customers, two SPL partners now. So companies like Kamau Therapeutics, Be Biopharma, were able to have products near the clinic. We're able to get financing, you know, for those programs to take them into the clinic. So I hope that gives some kind of, you know, flavor to what we're seeing here. I mean, the funding environment overall was mostly public. Public funding was very healthy in the year. On the private side, it's been more so those companies that are about to get into the clinic, they're able to get the funding.
Okay. But I don't want to put words in your mouth. For 2025, the assumption would presumably be that some of the activities that we saw on the financing side in 2024 start to translate a little bit more robustly. Or would that be, you know, incorrect for one reason or another?
No, I mean, we haven't gotten to 2025, but that's the hope here, right? Is that it should start to translate into healthy growth over 2025.
Yeah, because it's hard to say on the way down that it's because of financing on the way up that.
Yeah, financing won't have an effect.
Dan, we've always said that, you know, seeing robust growth in processing assembly sales was going to sort of be a good signal for, you know, for the instrument side of things to come back. You know, we're hoping for that to manifest itself. Logically looking at where the calendar is, that would be next year.
Yeah, right. Okay. Okay, so since you brought up instrumentation, across the life sciences space, instrumentation sales are not robust. This is not the most robust CapEx environment we've ever been through. Can you talk a little bit about the numbers behind that, Doug, if you have them? And then I guess the follow-up to that would be, I think lease activity is actually pretty decent, or at least better than outright sales. How would that compare? And who is leasing your instruments? My sense is it's the SPL partners, but I'll let you talk a little bit about what that looks like.
It's predominantly SPLs. That's where the leases are. There's a few research licenses or leases out there, but it's almost entirely SPLs at this point.
Is there an economic case around leasing that changes the way in which math, you know, if there were to be more leasing activity? And I guess a question embedded in that would be, what percentage is lease versus sale if you have these numbers that I'm kind of just throwing at you at your fingertips?
Yeah, no. So the majority of our placements are sales right now, right? For obvious reasons. Until a company's ready to get into the clinic, they're purchasing our systems. So the vast majority are sales. Now, that being said, as we begin to have more of these SPL customers, eventually that trend will start hopefully migrating over to more leases. We haven't disclosed how many of the placements themselves are, you know, actual leases. We have that number. But the majority are sales right now for obvious reasons, right? 706 placements overall, 723, I forget, top of my head, placements. Those are majority sales. Also, that number includes the fact that we sell into the drug discovery market. We're using our system not to engineer a cell, to transfect a cell to produce proteins, right? So those are part of the actual instrument placement itself.
But the vast majority right now are sales. But the lease number is also increasing over time as well, which makes sense. We have 29 now. Last year we had 23. So that number is beginning to increase as well.
Okay. Do you feel like the drug discovery portion of the business has the same level of predicted consistency to it in 2025? I mean, I think when we were talking before about your momentum into 2025, we were largely talking about cell therapy customers. But, you know, on the other side of the model, just that you're trying to make sure that you don't lose sight of one thing or another, how would you gear us towards thinking about that smaller piece of the business, but relevant?
I think this company is predominantly oriented around the opportunity in cell therapy, and so it's not to dismiss the, you know, the valuable economics we receive on the other side of the house, but I think the focus is really on cell therapy. We need that market to be healthy. We can't untether ourselves from that. That's why we're encouraged to see, you know, some signs of life out there that things really have improved, I think, last year. For instance, you know, destocking was a real phenomenon that you just didn't see this year. You see people coming back and ordering PAs again. You know, the drug discovery side has been a little bit, you know, hard to fully understand how that business has been. There's been a little bit of noise in how we've reported those numbers.
There's been some, you know, the VLx sales to some early adopters, you know. It was confounded year -over -year comparison in that space. I think drug discovery is still pretty healthy.
Okay, so that could be a kind of hold-serve type business in 2025 while cell therapy does the heavy lifting in the model. Is that a fair characterization?
Stability is there. That's right. It's stable, and it's been stable over the past few years as well. We've never had a lot of growth in a drug discovery line. It's been stable. I think it's fair to say we're seeing stability come back to that. Even this year, we saw, if you exclude out the VLx, it's had growth over last year in terms of the revenue line as well. So there's solid stability in the drug discovery line.
Just going back to your comment on SPLs, how would revenue growth or just activity look within your, those are your most dedicated customers, right? Those are the true believers. They're putting your systems to work in a major way. If I leave aside the milestones and royalties that we'll touch on in a minute and just think about overall usage of the MaxCyte systems, how does that look and how does that sort of portend for 2025? Because there's a small biotech financing conversation and then there's a larger biotech or pharma conversation. I think people are sort of looking for comfort, quite honestly, in both of those buckets.
I really, our pipeline and our book of business is really strong, and so it's just a matter of, you know, what those sales cycles look like, you know, and how they've been elongated, as you alluded to, you know, during, you know, the tighter availability of capital. I think things are improving, and so we're not going to guide 2025 now, but, you know, I think we're well underway in terms of having a good fourth quarter here, and we think that gives us some optimism for next year, and, you know, we hope that momentum continues.
Yeah. I would never ask you for a guidance comment in November of 2024. But what I would ask you about is the quarterly cadence of 2025 and how that could evolve. And you can answer this any way you like. If I think about numbers for next year and I think about the momentum that you're talking about the business having, I ask myself whether when you take apart the quarters that actually lead to a consensus number, there could be a step up of about $1 million implied very simplistically to get to $38 million. So $8 [not/9] million, the $9 million, $9 million, $10 million, $10 million to $11 million. Again, not asking for guidance here, but is the business on a trajectory that you think you could endorse a $1 million sequential step up each quarter?
I think endorse is a strong word. I think, does that sound like crazy math that couldn't be supported by our business? I think it certainly could be supported by our business, you know, if the market continues to improve. That's how we would think things would manifest itself. We don't expect, you know, again, not guiding for 2025. We don't know exactly how things are going to go. But if we look at the business and the recovery here, you would expect it to, you know, we don't have any seasonality that we're projecting. So it's going to be just the recovery in the market that's going to imply that certain quarters are going to be better. And it's probably just going to be, you know, probably it would look similar to what you're suggesting. It's just a question of what the magnitude is.
There's also noise between quarters, so we'd say, because sometimes you get, you know, you're in June and it becomes July in terms of a sale.
Right. Right. Normal course of just sort of order patterns and customer behavior, et cetera. But like at a high level, there's nothing sort of offensive about the logic that would suggest that like you could be sequentially better each quarter next year, similar to the way that you have been this year.
I hope we will be because that would just imply that the market's growing and we're executing, you know, in an improved environment.
Yep. Okay. And then maybe just thinking a little bit about some of the things that are driving interest or driving activity in the space. This year we had the first autologous CAR T get approved for a solid tumor to a life sciences and diagnostics guy like myself. That seems meaningful as far as market dynamics go. Do you see it that way? Is that something that you think is sort of a watershed moment at all, or at least important to the customers that are thinking about MaxCyte products?
No, it is. It's very important actually, because for the longest time, if you think about it, this space has gone after blood cancers, which is a little bit. I don't want to say easier. There's nothing easy in this industry. But so the solid tumor kind of has been, if you want to call it that, you know, can you really go after? And we're seeing that as well. We have one of our customers, KSQ, that has their own TIL program going after solid tumors as well. I think that as a watershed moment, right, where now you see the industry being able to go after those very tough indications in the past we're not sure we can go after. It's kind of also done something else. So solid tumors is a kind of that watershed moment.
It's also, you see where the space is going, it's also going more outside the oncology space, right? You're seeing it head into rare diseases, heading into autoimmune diseases, right, which really has an enormous patient profile compared to, obviously, solid tumors is big as well, but compared to just blood cancers. And that bodes well for us for many reasons. One is as we begin to go more into the solid tumor or also into the autoimmune disease, especially for autoimmune disease, you want to have a safer profile of these therapeutics. And that's where it lends itself even more so towards non-viral therapies as well, right? Electroporation, the way we do it and with our scientific support is done very safely. You don't have the same immunogenicity effects also, or, you know, in terms of, you know, possibly going with viral or carcinogenic effects going viral.
So really it kind of, it's that watershed moment that cell and gene therapies have a much broader application than just blood cancers, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it does. Do you feel like the FDA has its hands around the proliferation of activity and the way in which scale-up needs to take place and the way in which manufacturing needs to take place? Because it's been very obvious to me anyways that there's this enthusiasm that needs to be matched with feeling like we have our, like we have this thing understood and that we're not going to get to a point where there's some disconnect between the science and what's good for patients or just how you're manufacturing things. How, as a life sciences tools provider, are you seeing the way in which the industry is being overseen and the way in which companies are feeling like the path for the FDA is the right one?
Yeah. So, you know, it's kind of anecdotal, but I bring up something in the sense of Scott Gottlieb, the former FDA commissioner, was at a meeting on Mesa just a few months ago. And he was talking about how basically cell and gene therapies are really the path for the future, right? And the FDA has a focus on that as well. I do think there's still some more work to do as an industry, right, to bring down also the manufacturing cost, to bring down the patient timeline in terms of manufacturing timeline. But you can tell the FDA is there. You can tell from speaking with KOLs and just the industry as a whole, other CEOs. The path through the FDA is not going to be a hurdle for cell and gene therapies. In fact, you see a few things that I consider green shoots.
The FDA has considered a few phase I trials. Seeing the significant response and clinical efficacy in phase I, they've accelerated the timeline to say you're going from phase I, we've seen clinical effects, we're not going to consider that a phase III trial. That wasn't the case so much in your traditional small molecules and biologics, so if anything, I see those green shoots as the FDA being more accepting of cell and gene therapies to get through the clinic into commercialization, and there's a reason for that. You can see efficacy far earlier in the clinical process than traditional therapeutics in the past.
So as I mentioned, if you see clinical response in a phase I, without really any safety issues, it seems as though the FDA is open and willing to take that into that next pivotal stage rather than have to go through a traditional phase I, phase II, then phase III.
Yeah. Okay, so they're doing a decent job sort of keeping up, so to speak, and not letting the concerns around scale-up hold back the clinical progress, I guess that would be one way to put it.
That's exactly right.
Okay.
That's exactly right.
Okay. Maybe just thinking a little bit about your SPL partners. I mean, when we, you know, when we first started doing work on MaxCyte and thought about the business and how interest from our investors would evolve, it was certainly the base business can be exciting for the next couple of years. And then as these SPL milestones layer in, that's an additional thing to get excited about. Exa-cel was approved. That feels like a bit of a watershed moment, but I would love to hear your perspective on just how things have gone there. I mean, I think the dosing has been slow from a patient perspective, but it is sort of a proof of principle. And I know it's hard to have the tools company talk about what the pharma, biopharma company is doing in pretty much all circumstances.
But I'd love to just hear what you think about how things have gone for you.
Absolutely. So I'll mention for us and then also Doug, feel free to weigh in here. Let me take a step back. So you're right, that was a watershed moment. That was, you know, for Exa-cel and then CASGEVY is what it's now named under Vertex's approval. We took all of 2023 to really make sure that we were ready for that launch. We had all the systems in place. We could support Vertex as their tools partner to ensure that we have systems, processing assemblies, regulatory completely shored up, quality shored up. But I do think what you're seeing from Vertex, and Vertex has spoken to this, what they've done with CASGEVY this year seems like they've laid the foundation for the future of CASGEVY. They've ensured that they have treatment centers now expanding. They call them ATCs, where now they have up to 45 ATCs.
They want to have 75 ATCs. You've seen them be able to collect, you know, cells from patients on a growing basis. We went from five patients collected then to 20, and I think at our last quarterly call, they said they have 40+ or 40 patients' cells collected. Seems like that's growing as well, so they've learned that patient journey, how to actually end up making sure that they have patients go through that cycle of having blood collected all the way to manufacturing. They've also taken this year, it seems like, which makes perfect sense, to really shore up that reimbursement process. They've talked about themselves, how they believe that, you know, they have reimbursement issues resolved in North America and Europe.
Then obviously they've expanded the patient profile as well by going after a patient population for sickle cell disease in the Middle East as well. That bodes well. It seems like this year they've done everything that a therapeutic company should do to ensure that first year, second year, you've prepared for the launch appropriately. And it seems as though, you know, they're ready for that next phase of that patient journey where they're having more patients come in and with reimbursement not being an issue, safety obviously is not an issue for those. We have patients who have been on this from the clinical trial phase over five years now, having taken CASGEVY, and they're still considered sickle cell disease free with no side effects whatsoever. I think that bodes well for that future patient population also for CASGEVY.
For you, is it as, you know, simple, so to speak, as to say that if they are successful in expanding their patient population, getting patients treated in new geographies, new indications, that your revenue line associated with that should move in the same direction?
That's a fair assessment, yeah.
Okay. One of the questions that I get from a lot of folks is, how do I translate one to the other? Because to our point before, there's sort of an information mismatch.
Yeah, it shouldn't be really. It mimics. If revenues for CASGEVY goes up, what we receive on the economics also go up as well.
Okay. And activity-wise for this year, you're at six SPLs. That's three more than you normally set, well, than you kind of guide to, so to speak, as far as the expectation for any one year. So that seems like it sets you up nicely for 2025, but the stage of clinical activity is always a question. Do you think that what's taking place this year can be meaningful for next year, or is it a 2026 situation more than anything else?
Yeah, in terms of the number of SPLs, you know, we guide three to five because, you know, there's a lumpiness associated with this. These are conversations that take place over a long period of time before an SPL is entered into. So we're very pleased with how we did this year. I think next year, you know, we'll probably guide three to five just because that's what we think is sort of the sustainable number. It could grow, you know, to speak to, you know, part of your earlier question about, you know, we want to continue to grow core revenue. We had a good, at least getting back on a growth trajectory this year. It was modest.
But, you know, to answer your question about SPLs, you know, the goal here is that we continue to increase the number of SPLs we have so that we can see a less lumpy and growing number for revenue from SPL, SPL program-related revenue, which would be the milestones, which will be the royalties. And so we're just going to continue to execute on the business. We think there's opportunities to add the next, you know, approved, you know, SPL product would be, you know, late 2026 or 2027 and multiple opportunities for that time period. So that's just the focus here. We're going to continue to execute on core and build that SPL business so that we can create a more stable and growing revenue line under that.
That's right and the reduction in lumpiness is strictly a function of broadening over a more diverse number of SPLs, or do you think that you, as you demonstrate your value, will be able to sort of build in, smooth out the revenue streams with the customer?
It's more SPLs, but it's also the maturity of the 2029 we already have.
Okay.
As there are more of those that reach that commercial stage or that late clinical stage, I think you'll see an opportunity for those numbers to smooth and have a more predictable growth pattern.
Okay.
Exactly. It's a combination of both because those in the cell therapy space itself comes back. They'll have more programs themselves that they want to take into the clinic. And then those are other programs that are going to be utilizing our system as well. So it's a combination of both.
Makes sense. How would you compare the aggregate value of the pre-commercial milestones, milestone revenue that you've talked about in the past to those prior levels? I mean, I think I remember $950 million was sort of a number around the IPO period. That helps people at least understand what was sort of embedded in that base of activity once it moved to a later stage. I don't recall you having updated that number in recent past, but I would love nothing more than a directional comment.
We have updated that number. I think it's in terms of, you know, when you, to me, it's a biobuck number. You know, it's every SPL, the number of potential programs that we provide under each of those SPLs, you know, what's that milestone structure look like? That adds up to a pretty big number here. It's like, you know, around $2 billion.
Yeah. This is non-risk adjusted.
Not risk adjusted, and it's.
Can I add here? I think what it shows is, it shows the TAM. It shows directional growth, right? So I, you know, it's not necessarily a $2 billion number, but we updated from $950 million to $2 billion. It's non-risk adjusted in the sense of, but it shows that the, forget about $2 billion for one second. As we sign more SPLs, there's more opportunities for us to receive for commercial milestones as well. So it shows directional growth with the company as well, with the SPL growth as well.
Yeah, and I would argue that it shows what a post-2021 view of the market is when.
Exactly.
It is biobucks, but there were a lot of big biobucks numbers being thrown around then. There's a little bit more of a sober view, I would say, on just what is likely to be attained maybe in the next couple of years. I'm sure it's still capable of being a number that makes everybody excited when they think about the out-year opportunity. But, you know, I'm always curious whether a really hard look at that number would have you thinking differently about it.
Yeah. I mean, just go back to the answer I previously made. You've got, you know, 2026, more likely 2027 to get those next approvals. And obviously the larger milestones come from, you know, later regulatory events than, you know, earlier milestones. So I think it's, you know, it's not going to be this incremental jump next year. We haven't guided for milestone revenue for next year. But, you know, again, where we see those programs going, it's more 2026, 2027. We're going to continue to add to the SPL pipeline in the meantime.
Okay. One minute and a half left. I want to hit on two quick ones. Competition and then gross margins. Competition, when we did our initial homework, there wasn't a lot that we saw that seemed like it had the capability that MaxCyte has, but there are other products that I guess are used on the mechanical side. Lonza has a product, Thermo Fisher has a product. We came across a company called Kytopen. Are there other approaches that you guys have on your radar screen as at least being worthy of keeping an eye on? So that's maybe a Maher question.
Yeah, absolutely.
And then, Doug, gross margins, you know, they were in the high 80s at one point, I guess is the high watermark. Is there a path back to something like the mid 80s as your revenue line does presumably what?
I mean, I feel comfortable long-term guiding towards mid-80s or above. You know, for using the facility, you know, getting the most out of that because there's a lot we can support multiple commercial stage entities, you know, partners, customers from that facility. If we get to, you know, if we're turning the crank a lot more, we potentially approach some of the high water margins that we had. But I think mid-80s is the way to go. We provided a non-GAAP adjusted measure there to make sure people understood what those margins are from the core business when you take out SPL revenue and you take out, you know, some, you know, non-recurring adjustments for some inventory write-off we did.
Let me speak to the competition as well in the last few seconds here. So in terms of the competition, the names you mentioned, obviously this hasn't changed. The same names that we've talked about in the past as well. We give something many of these companies don't give, right? We give the high level of efficiency of editing, high level of cell viability. We give a de-risk commercial platform. We talk about this. Our goal is to get companies from research to process development to the clinic with a commercial process, even when you're at the research phase. That's what we can give that the competition can give. There are other modalities as well. Lipid nanoparticles are another way you can do transfection. I like to see it as an expansion of the overall cell and gene therapy space, not necessarily competition for us.
There are many scenarios where you're using LNPs for knockouts of certain genes and then you're using MaxCyte to knock in the gene, right? The electroporation platform. Sometimes even with viral and MaxCyte, there's complementary aspects. We have a few of our customers that are using MaxCyte to knock out the DNA of interest and then using AAV6 cassette to knock in the DNA of interest. So really I see the other transfection steps as an expansion of the total addressable market for us. And these are complementary technologies, not necessarily always competing technologies, if that makes sense.
Okay. I think it's final seconds here. I'd say that, you know, we've got the best platform out there. We've seen folks even switch in the clinic, early stage clinical development, switch to our platform. So we feel good about where we sit competitively.
Okay, so competitive issues, not really something that you're overly worried about right now.
No, we focus on. We're doubling down what we do best. We're a scientific company with a platform that backs our scientific know-how.
Gentlemen, appreciate the time.
Thank you, Dan.
Early Thanksgiving, happy Thanksgiving wishes to you guys, and we'll talk to you soon.
Appreciate it. Thank you, Dan.