Good morning, and welcome to the Arcus Biosciences Incorporated Virtual Stock holder Meeting. I would now like to introduce our first presenter, Terry Rosen.
Good morning. I'm Terry Rosen, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Arcus. Very happy to welcome you to the Arcus Biosciences 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. The meeting will now officially come to order. The time is now about 8:35 on Thursday, June 3, 2021.
And the polls are now open for voting on all matters to be presented. Before we proceed with the formal business of the meeting, I'd like to introduce you to the members of the Board and the business team who are with us today. The other members of the Board who are in attendance in this webcast today are Juan Haiyan, Jen Forgier, Kate Walbert, Dasanu Kinnego, Dave Laffey, Pat Machado, Meredith Parsi, Andrew Perlman, Mike Quigley, Antonio Rudis. The other offices of the company in attendance via teleconference today are Bill Grossman, our Chief Medical Officer Bob Yeltz, our Chief Financial Officer and Carolyn Tang, our General Counsel. Carolyn Tang will be serving as the Secretary of this meeting and Ken Guernsey will be serving as Inspector of Elections.
I would also like to introduce Richard Ramfro and Rachel Lou of Ernst and Young, the company's auditors who are available to respond to appropriate questions. Guests to the meeting will not be able to ask questions. For stockholders who have joined the meeting using their 16 digit control number, To ask a question, click on the Ask a Question prompt on your screen to submit your question or comment online. We'll answer questions submitted that are germane to the full agenda of the meeting as and if we have time. Please submit your questions now to make sure they're received in a timely fashion for our review and response.
We now proceed with formal business of the meeting as set forth in your notice of annual meeting and proxy statement. Will the secretary please report at this time with respect to the mailing of the notice of the meeting and the stockholders' list?
I have at this meeting a complete list of the stockholders of record of the company's common stock on April 9, 2021, the record date for this meeting. I also have an affidavit certifying that on or about April 20, 2021, a notice of annual meeting with stockholders of the company was deposited in the U. S. Mail to all stockholders of record at the close of business on April 9, 2021.
Ken Grundy is hereby appointed Inspector of Election for this meeting. He has taken and subscribed the customary oath of office to execute his duties with strict impartiality. We'll file this oath with the records of the meeting. This function is to decide upon the qualifications of voters, except their votes and when balloting on all matters is completed to tally the final votes. Will the Secretary please report at this time with respect to the existence of the
forum? As I've been informed by the Inspector's election that proxies have been received for $63,409,611 of the 70,991, 112 shares of common stock outstanding on the record date, which represents approximately 89% of the total number of outstanding shares. This constitutes a quorum for the meeting today and we may now carry out the official business of meeting. If you have already submitted your vote by proxy and do not wish to take your vote, you do not need to vote now and your show should be voted as previously instructed. If you intend to vote and have not already done so, you must now for it to be counted.
If you have not voted, I encourage you to vote online now.
There are 4 proposals to be considered by the stockholders at this meeting. The first item of business, the election of directors to serve until the 2024 Annual Meeting and until his or her successor is elected. The nominees are Terry Rosen, Jennifer Jerrick, Kathryn Faulberg and Mike Quickley. The second item of business today is the ratification of the selection by the Quadrant Committee Board of Directors, Ernst and Young as the independent auditors of the company for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2021. The 3rd item of business today is the approval on an advisory basis of the compensation of Marcus' named executive officers.
The 4th item of business today is the preferred frequency of stockholder advisory votes on the compensation of ARGUS' named executive officers. That was the final proposal for today's meeting. The Secretary will now describe the voting CCHVs.
We will now review if there are any questions submitted about the proposals before we close the polls. As a reminder, we will only review and answer questions at this time that pertain to the proposals.
There are no questions on the proposals.
Thank you. The time is now 8:40 and the polls are now closed for voting.
May we have the results of the voting?
Based on the preliminary voting results, the proposal to elect Terry Rosen, Jennifer Jarrett, Kathryn Falberg and Mike Quigley as Directors of the company is carried. The appointment of Ernst and Young as independent auditors for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2021 is ratified. The approval on advisory basis of the compensation of the company's named executive officers is carried. First frequency of stockholder advisory votes on the compensation of the company's named executive officers is determined to be 1 year. A full tally of the final votes will be published in the current report on Form 8 ks, which will be filed with the SEC on or before June 9, 2021.
This concludes the formal portion of today's meeting. This meeting is now concluded. We will now make a presentation regarding the company's recent business and then entertain questions from stockholders. As with most presentations, the following discussion contains forward looking statements, which are identified by the use of words such as will, may, expect, could, should, in other words, denoting future events and our actual results may differ materially from those discussed here. Additional information concerning factors that could cause such a difference can be found in the company's quarterly report on Form 10 Q for the period ended March 31, 2021, and the annual report on Form 10 ks for the year ended December 31, 2020.
Please feel free to submit questions now.
So thank you for calling in. And let me start off by saying a little bit high level about our business vision. The company has a world class discovery engine and a big part of what we do since we started the company is to focus on combinations of valid agents and they can meet the cures. The other important aspect of Marcus is we have every intent of becoming a fully integrated independent biopharmaceutical company. So we have 5 molecules in the clinic right now and they target 3 of the most important and very highly pursued immuno oncology pathways.
These are all mechanisms that are very ubiquitously involved in cancer and we think represent great opportunities for the company as well as for patients. So we have 2 molecules that we consider essential backbone therapies, actually 3 molecules, 2 targets. 1, anti PD-one and then 2, anti TIGIT molecules. And finally, the 2 molecules that perhaps are more differentiating within our current portfolio are AV-nine twenty eight and AV-six eighty, which target the adenosine 2 receptors and CD73, respectively. We also have very robust discovery organization with a number of early stage programs ranging from just beyond concept to molecules that will be entering the clinic later this year.
So 2021 really is not only a pivotal year, but I would say it represents a transformational year for ARCUS. We're really pushing forward those molecules in the clinic that I spoke with you previously about AB-one hundred and fifty four and AB-three zero eight on the anti TIGIT front, AB-one hundred and twenty two, our anti PD-one antibody and then AB-six eighty and AB-nine twenty eight. We've always talked about combinations being important. And if you look at the trials that we're running, you'll see we're speaking with our feet virtually every permutation of those based on biology associated with various cancers is in development. We have 6 randomized trials ongoing right now with preliminary data from the 70s expected in 2021.
We feel those would be critical in perhaps blowing open this adenosine field for both Arcus and the broader field as well. We're also advancing our small molecule programs. And in fact, AB-five twenty one will be a molecule that targets HIF-two alpha that will be taking into Phase 1 later this year. And then as a company, we're very well positioned to really control our own destiny. We have very substantial human infrastructure and we have a very strong cash position as well as great partnerships.
This slide illustrates the number of trials that we're currently running for a medium stage company is really quite a broad program. This is very much enabled by our partnerships and is allowing us to very aggressively leverage and pursue the full opportunities in our pipeline and as you can see across a wide range of very important cancer targets. The year is going to be loaded with very meaningful readouts that started as early as January with ARK8. We showed very promising results in frontline pancreatic cancer. We have an upcoming readout in the interim analysis in the clinical trial we call ARK7 that is focused on both our anti TIGIT antibody combination with anti PD-one therapy as well as that doublet with an adenosine pathway modulator.
That will be the 1st data set that includes 3 molecules of that class. And ARK6 and ARK9 are 2 further studies relating to AB928. So when we think about ARK7, ARK4, ARK6, ARK9, it really represents what will probably be the most compelling data sets for that adenosine receptor blocker field. As I mentioned, our partnerships are very enabling. They give us a great opportunity to expand and accelerate our programs.
We've talked about these over the years. We have phenomenal collaboration with Gilead Biosciences that enables us on all sorts of funds. We've had a long term collaboration with Taiho, where their rights are focused on Japan and a few other Asian territories. And AstraZeneca is prototypical of a type of collaboration that we see ourselves doing more of in the future. In this particular case, under the umbrella of our relationship with Gilead, This is what will be a study targeting Stage 3 lung cancer where AstraZeneca currently has a standard of care dervo.
And in this particular study, we'll be looking at the combination of dervo plus our anti TIGIT AB-one hundred and fifty four and that's anticipated to start later this year. With that, I'll thank you all.
There are no further questions at this time. The Arcus Biosciences Incorporated Virtual Shareholder Meeting has now come to an end. Thank you for attending, and you may now disconnect.