Hello, my name is Dirk Thye, and I'm the CEO of Quince Therapeutics. I wanna tell you about the transformative acquisition that we recently completed of a company called EryDel, which fast-forwards Quince to a late-stage biotechnology company focused on rare disease therapeutics. This acquisition is the culmination of an extensive search and highly disciplined diligence process, where we targeted a large number of scientific platforms and products, which could allow us to forward integrate our company into later stages of development and drive value creation for our shareholders. Our acquisition of EryDel achieves all of those objectives, and Quince is now advantageously positioned with a highly differentiated biotechnology platform, compelling clinical data, a strong balance sheet, and sufficient funding to complete a pivotal phase III study of our lead asset.
Assuming positive results, subsequent submission of a New Drug Application, or NDA, to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. With EryDel, we acquired a fascinating technology, which we refer to as Autologous Intracellular Drug Encapsulation, or AIDE. This is a unique drug and device combination platform designed to deliver a therapeutic encapsulated inside of a patient's own red blood cells. This provides many potential advantages related to pharmacokinetics, biodistribution, lack of therapeutic degradation, or immune stimulation. This process is distinctly different from standard cell therapies such as synthetic or engineered cells, and distinct from typical blood transfusions, which utilize other people's red blood cells for administration to the patient. Our proprietary AIDE process is designed to fundamentally alter the ability to administer small or large molecules or even proteins in a manner that's otherwise impossible without encapsulation through this AIDE process.
The AIDE technology platform has been utilized to create a lead phase III asset called EryDex. EryDex is the corticosteroid dexamethasone sodium phosphate encapsulated into the patient's own red blood cells. Our lead indication for EryDex is a rare neurodegenerative disease called ataxia-telangiectasia, or abbreviated as A-T. A-T is a very serious and devastating rare childhood genetic disease that at a young age leads to neurological problems, infections, and subsequent cancers, and ultimately to a much too early death. EryDex, using the AIDE device platform, is designed to treat A-T patients approximately once per month. The AIDE procedure is performed at the bedside by taking a small amount of blood from the patient, processing it with the AIDE device, and ending with approximately two tablespoons of the patient's blood encapsulated with dexamethasone sodium phosphate.
The process takes about 2 hours from beginning to end, and the patient can leave and perform other activities while it's taking place. Then the patient returns to the bedside, and we reinfuse the approximately 2 tablespoons of their own blood, but these cells are now encapsulated with dexamethasone sodium phosphate. Over time, the phosphate group is cleaved by intracellular phosphatases, and then active dexamethasone is slowly released from those red blood cells and into the patient's bloodstream over the course of about a month. In an earlier study for AT, which by the way, was the largest previously performed with 175 enrolled patients, the results suggested that EryDex could be highly effective and safe for the treatment of this terrible disease.
In that previous study, EryDex was administered once a month for 6 months and showed very encouraging signs of slowing the neurodegeneration seen in A-T patients. Importantly, while avoiding the typical side effects associated with chronic corticosteroid therapy that you would typically see over this period of time. This therapeutic has been given to several patients in a compassionate use study for more than 10 years and about 50 patients for approximately 3 years, without any notable chronic steroid-related side effects. With the knowledge gained from our prior A-T study, we're now in a strong position to aggressively move forward with plans to initiate a phase III pivotal trial. Starting in 2024, we plan to enroll for the primary analysis population, approximately 86 A-T patients between the ages of 6 and 9 years old.
Our protocol design has been reviewed and agreed upon by the FDA through the Special Protocol Assessment process. This gives us confidence that we have a very sound clinical and regulatory approach, and under the Special Protocol Assessment, if the trial is positive, then a single pivotal trial can provide sufficient data for potential approval by the FDA. In addition to EryDex, our AIDE technology platform can be used to encapsulate a wide variety of small or large molecules or even proteins. This allows a unique process of drug delivery designed to optimize the therapeutic potential of these compounds. In the future, we expect to design and share a variety of additional follow-on indications for EryDex, as well as a pipeline of new discovery programs using the AIDE platform.
Lastly, and importantly, we're in a very good financial position relative to many biotech companies these days, and that we have sufficient financing to complete our pivotal trial and evaluate the success of the resulting data. Thank you so much for the opportunity to tell you about Quince's compelling story. Please visit our website to learn more. Use the contact page to request additional information, and thanks again for listening.