United Therapeutics Corporation (UTHR)
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2024 Wells Fargo Healthcare Conference

Sep 5, 2024

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

All right. Welcome, everyone. I'm Tiago Fauth, a biotech analyst here at Wells Fargo. We're joined today by United Therapeutics. We have James Edgemond and Dewey. Thank you so much for making the time, especially this early. So, we can kick things off. Like, it's been quite the run, quite, quite the year for United Therapeutics. I generally like to give you guys some time just broad strokes. How's the business? What are the main drivers? Where do you get a lot of most of the inbounds? And then we have an extensive list of detailed questions to sort through. So, let's kick it off.

Dewey Steadman
Head of Investor Relations, United Therapeutics

Yes, thank you, Tiago, for hosting us, and thank you to everyone in the audience for getting up so early to see us. Before James starts, I just wanted to remind folks that James and I may make forward-looking statements today, and we encourage you to read our latest SEC filings, including forms 10-K and 10-Q, for the latest risks and uncertainties associated with any of those forward-looking statements.

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Great, Tiago, thank you.

Yeah, thanks for hosting us, and we have Harry with us here today, so another United. So to your question about how the business is performing, the business is performing very well, both commercially, the research and development aspects, the clinical trials. And the way we framed it broadly is that there's a real good foundational aspect to the business.

So the commercial business that is performing very well, 20% growth year-over-year, last quarter. The next phase of the business we look at is the innovation phase, and that's where we talk about our clinical trials, both in TETON one and two, as well as Ralinepag ADVANCE OUTCOMES . And so there's this innovation aspect of it.

And then there's a revolutionary aspect to it that Martine calls once in a lifetime opportunity, where we're looking at finding a real kinda cure or an opportunity to fill in this significant shortage of transplantable organs. There's been increasing media attention, increasing activity in that space that we're continuing to push forward as well. So top line, the business is performing very well, and we're very excited.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Perfect. And again, a lot of focus on the commercial business, so let's start to piece that apart. So, PH-ILD has been the bigger growth driver recently for United Therapeutics. You've been close to four years now into that indication, a little less than that. But where do you think you stand in terms of market outreach, in terms of total market penetration? There was a lot of uncertainty on the size of the market early on, right?

Because prevalence numbers were kinda all over the place. You spoke to some academic centers. Their patients are already on TYVASO off label. We spoke to community physicians. There was, like, a lot of unmet need. How should investors think about where you are and where you can still grow that business, do you think?

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Yeah, thank you for the question. You know, it's a great question because we continue to be encouraged around the excitement and engagement by physicians that treat interstitial lung disease, so ILD. And really, they now have an opportunity to treat the pulmonary hypertension associated with ILD. So again, it's encouraging to us to see the engagement in these prescribers.

And when you think about or talk about the opportunity, when you scale it down from a penetration perspective, for us, we think we're about 15% penetrated and growing in this market. But what's interesting is, and maybe it's helpful, is to think about it because you said there's kind of big numbers out there from a prevalence perspective. And epidemiological data would suggest that the penetration rate for us.

There's a wide band in terms of patients that have interstitial lung disease, and as many as 86% of this 230,000 ILD patient population may develop pulmonary hypertension over the course of their disease. However, our research indicates that around 30,000 patients in the U.S. may present with pulmonary hypertension at some time during their ILD and up front at their ILD diagnosis. So we look at the core kinda population of PH in ILD patients as about 30,000 patients. And so with that opportunity, when we look at the penetration rate, that's what we're focused on now.

But another interesting kind of analogy is, if you go back to the time when Martine started the organization, years ago in pulmonary arterial hypertension, again, it was a small patient population that was underdiagnosed. But through education and through awareness, that population in PAH has grown to be over 50,000 treated patients. So when you think about this pulmonary hypertension in patients with interstitial lung disease, we again think there's a growing opportunity here through education, awareness, proper diagnosis, and that's what we're really focused on at this point.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Got it. And again, I think the PAH parallel is an interesting one, and over time, management of those patients gravitated towards large academic centers. When you think about PH-ILD, where are those patients right now? Again, there were no treatment options, so are they all clearly identified and diagnosed? How much is in the academic community? How much is in a community setting?

And I'm working towards a question about pace of new patient adds, right? Like, at some point, there is. There, like, how do you target a broader audience, or is that something that over time is gonna eventually gravitate towards academic centers where you already have a strong footprint in?

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Yeah, so it's kind of a twofold question around things like breadth and depth and continue to grow.

So when we started to get into the ILD market and the PH-ILD market, what we knew is that this prescribing base is pretty well spread out. Right within the community. But the energy and the effort at the start was really focusing on what Michael Benkowitz talks about is depth.

And so we wanted to go to practices and centers that had what Michael called more than three prescribers that have more than three patients. We wanted to get depth and focus and educate those physicians on the opportunity to properly diagnose these patients. So that was the initial focus.

There's a little bit of a transition, because we knew these prescribers were spread out within the community, is now we're gonna focus on breadth. And at the beginning of the year, you've heard us talk about the expanding sales teams.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Yeah.

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

And now we're focused on this breadth aspect because we want to be in a situation where we can educate these physicians to diagnose, and properly diagnose, and then treat these patients instead of referring them to these bigger centers, because these bigger centers in terms of capacity and things of that nature. And so what's important is education in terms of diagnosis and treatment is important to us. So we look at initially depth, in terms of getting an educated base and awareness, and then we are transitioning to also then focus on breadth so that these physicians can treat these patients themselves.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Got it. That's fair. And again, I guess most of these questions comes precisely because of the strong early execution, right? You started out with a pretty bold goal in terms of new patient adds for the first eighteen months. I was skeptical back then. I was proven wrong, the market was proven wrong. And you kept beating that consensus pretty consistently, over the last few quarters.

I'm assuming at some point we can catch up or have a better sense of what the pace of growth going forward is going to be. So how should we think about pace of new patient adds relative to your existing base? Like, what are some of the main metrics in terms of thinking about that curve and how it's gonna look going forward?

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Yeah, well, the opportunity, as you said, is there, and we believe it's there. One of the things that we have recently done, and maybe I'll change the question a little bit, is. Beginning on January one, Michael and his team put in place kind of an expanded commercial team.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Okay.

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

And that commercial team includes sales representatives, medical science liaisons, regional nurse specialists, as well as reimbursement specialists. And the reason why is we saw this opportunity that you referred to, and we continued to see this opportunity. And so it was an opportunity for us to invest in the commercial teams, to be able to go out and educate these physicians.

Beginning January first, they were fully in chair and going out into the marketplace. That build started last fall, that we had talked about. And so the objective here is to support these practices, you know, all aspects of the practice, from the physicians to the nurses, to the patients and to the caregivers, to make sure that they understood TYVASO, they understood the diagnosis process, et cetera.

If you were to take that in terms of us investing those dollars and go back to our revenue growth rates, we think we can continue on these revenue growth rates. In last quarter, top-line revenue grew 20%, and TYVASO specifically grew 25%. And so we're making the investments because we also believe in the opportunity to continue to grow this patient population and really to treat these patients, which is incredibly important to us.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Got it. So, and again, we've published on this. Like, is it fair to assume if you take PAH as a comp, PAH, ILD have fewer competitors, fewer available therapies, why couldn't this be a $3-$5 billion opportunity? Like, well, is it more about the time that that might take to be recognized by the market? Is it more about execution? Again, so far, everything has gone pretty smooth, but we still get some pushback on the long-term value of that.

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Yeah, and for us, we do believe there's a great opportunity. We continue to always talk about execution is incredibly important to us, and I think we've learned a lot since launching into this space. And then we decided to make additional investments as we got better educated, right? To help these physicians treat those patients. It is interesting in your kind of comparison to PAH, when Martine first started the company, there was very few therapies, and now it's a very crowded space in PAH.

So, the opportunity for us in PAH associated with ILD, again, is the only approved therapy in this marketplace. So we do think there's continued growth. As to size or kind of guidance around that, I think it's important for us just to focus on the execution, and let it happen. But, so far, we've been successful, and we think this can continue.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Got it. Fair, fair enough. And again, a lot of questions that we get around potential competition, right? Let's first just talk about the legacy PAH part of the business for TYVASO, because that has been relatively steady. I'm curious, with the DPI introduction, what you have seen in terms of either just patient switching from ADCIRCA to TYVASO? Do you have someone that would have gone to either Remodulin or Orenitram but is now starting on TYVASO? I know it's a smaller piece of the pie, but how stable is the PAH side of the business for TYVASO specifically?

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Yeah. So it's, it is, I would say, stable and growing when you add in this aspect of TYVASO DPI.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Exactly

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

On a combination. I mean, it has been a proven, effective therapy for patients in PAH. So broadly speaking, when you think about the PAH business, which I think was part of your question. That is continuing to be very stable and to grow. Again, the therapies that we've had in the marketplace have been very effective and continue to be effective, and I think there's gonna be continued opportunity in PAH, just related to the continued education and awareness.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Got it, and we'll go back to PAH and competition, and then some discussions around that, but let's think about DPI and the since PH-ILD is the longer, the bigger driver right now, a lot of focus on Liquidia, some focus also on Insmed, TPAP.

How should we think about potential competitors in the dry powder inhaler space that are kind of going after what has been a very successful market here, so yeah, let's perhaps start with Liquidia, leaving the legal discussion aside for now, just from a product profile perspective, how do you think that product stacks up, and how do you think you can compete, or how do you think they can take share? Like, how are you thinking about that?

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Yeah, well, we have a lot of conviction in our DPI product in terms of, you know, one, our relationship with MannKind. But two, from a device perspective, we think it's a better device, and there's been our discussion and some papers written on the type of device being a low-flow device. And why that's important is, a patient who has interstitial lung disease has compromised lung function, right?

Fibrosis in the lungs, that makes it very difficult to breathe and is really not reversible. And so, one, the type of device and the design of the device being low-flow allow these patients to actually inhale TYVASO and not have to have a big breath to do it, and it will deposit the TYVASO deep into the lungs.

So from a device design perspective, we feel very confident, and we hear that from patients, and you saw that in some of the transition studies. And so we just think that is gonna be the differentiator in the marketplace. It has other things like easy load, you don't need to clean, it's one breath per session. And so these other attributes that we think will continue to do very well if competition ever does make it to the market.

Dewey Steadman
Head of Investor Relations, United Therapeutics

I think another important aspect of our device versus potential competition is the efficiency at which it delivers treprostinil. Our TYVASO DPI requires 65% less treprostinil than that competitor to deliver the equivalent dose, the equivalent kind of dose on breaths of nebulizer. We also have no maximum labeled dose either for the nebulizer or TYVASO DPI. We do have patients that have gone to very high doses in the BREEZE-OLE, the open-label extension study. We think that the dosing claims made by the competition aren't necessarily truthful or accurate.

In addition, because of the concentration of treprostinil that's used in our device, coupled with the lower treprostinil needed, we actually use a third of the powder, the dry powder, to deliver the equivalent dose. And so, if you have a patient with compromised lung function, like fibrosis, IPF, dry powder is not a natural substance to go into the lungs. And so, you have a natural reaction to that. And if you're putting three times the amount of dry powder into your lungs, four times a day, that could be a the potentially a potential hindrance to use of that kind of product in IPF and other ILDs diseases for PH.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Got it, okay. So in terms of data generated so far, label claims, I think it's gonna be hard to assume that there's gonna be a ton of differentiation, potentially, at least as of now. So I think both of you are arguing some pros and cons in terms of device and all those things. But one of the things you mentioned, if they ever come to market, I think that's an interesting point and questions we've got a few weeks ago.

So again, you just got more three years exclusivity just on TYVASO DPI formulation, and that prevents Liquidia from potentially launching here. So I guess, what's your base case in terms of when you can see a potential competitor? Right now, it will be May of 2025, but there's still some ongoing litigation and there's a lot of multiple layers here, so can you try to disentangle that for us?

Dewey Steadman
Head of Investor Relations, United Therapeutics

Yeah, I have to put on my lawyer hat for this. It is, it's difficult to accurately predict when the competition will arrive. No matter what, we're ready for competition. We believe we have a great product, we believe we have great relationships with physicians and practices and patients. And we're just ready to go. And so whether it comes in May, whether, you know, May of 2025, whether it comes in May of 2026, whether it comes in 2027, at the expiration of the patent that we think is valid, we're ready for the competition. And if anything, in especially in PH-ILD, you alluded to this earlier, the more voices that there are in PH-ILD, the better it is for everyone.

And so there's actually a potential synergy there if the competition is hitting practices that we're not hitting, and there's more conversations about using a DPI device for treating PH-ILD. So it's not necessarily a one-for-one reduction of our opportunity. And an investor yesterday in meetings made a really good point, that it's difficult to bet against a company that has competition coming, because the incumbent always has an advantage.

And this is... I believe the example he brought up was Lucentis and Eylea, and AMD. So, It's actually a really good point. Like, we're here, we're established, we have a great product, and we have some great relationships, and we're ready to compete.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Got it. Okay, and what about TPAP? And again, we haven't seen a lot of detailed data from that product yet, but to be honest, some investors think that that could be the category killer over time because it would be like a once-daily inhaled product. Based on what we've seen so far, what do you think about that product profile? Is that a legitimate threat? And if so, what would be the impact in terms of potential tail value of the franchise? It's still early phase two data, but yeah.

Dewey Steadman
Head of Investor Relations, United Therapeutics

You made the key point here that there's not a lot of data available yet. So we've seen sort of, you know, bits and pieces of data. So we saw, I believe in PAH, PVR data that was interesting, but it was blinded data, so you can't really draw any conclusions, you know, concrete conclusions for blinded data.

No one's gonna cut a billion-dollar check on blinded data. And with their PH-ILD data, I believe they gave a six-minute walk distance improvement that was interesting and clinically relevant, but they did not give a baseline. So we don't know the severity of these patients going into the study.

And we haven't seen PK data, so we're not sure if it's a true once-a-day product, and we also don't know the dosing of this product. They say they get to very high doses of treprostinil, but as we discussed earlier, with the potential competitor coming to market on four times a day, the efficiency of the device is important to understand, and so we can't make comparisons until we have sort of a nebulized reference. And docs will be like that. Will want that, too. So we just don't have a lot of data to really understand that, but obviously, patients would prefer once a day over four times a day.

But again, if it's not exactly 24 hours in the lungs, then you start building up treprostinil over time or the treprostinil pro drug over time, and what kind of safety signals is that gonna generate? And so long-term data, it's important, too. One of the good things about our company is we're very patient when evaluating products, and we wanna see safety and understand kind of the long-term effects of using these products.

And we've seen safety issues with other mechanisms in the space and in the TKIs, most recently, the inhaled ones. And so we just don't know what the safety is yet with this product.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Got it. And again, final question we usually get on TYVASO is related to just generic TYVASO, because theoretically, you have Is it 2026 , March of 2026 ? I'm blanking out.

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

January of 2026 .

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

January of 2026 . Okay. So again, theoretically, someone could launch generic TYVASO, and given that that has become potentially a multi-billion dollar drug by itself, that becomes a lot more appealing versus, let's say, Remodulin and some of the smaller products. So how should we think about that in terms of the conversion to DPI, in terms of the actual nebulizer, the device? Like, we saw some dynamics with Remodulin. Could that kind of play out similarly with just nebulized TYVASO?

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Yeah. Thank you. So there's a couple points to make, and we did see actually an analyst note. We can't kind of validate this, but there was some discussion that a generic was not expecting to come into the market relative to the nebulizer. Again, just something we read and saw in one of the analyst notes. But even if it did want to come to market, one of the unique things about TYVASO and the nebulizer specifically, it is a drug device combination. So anybody coming to market would need to also have a device associated with it, and they would not have access to ours.

And so at this point, we've not heard of anything, but there would be additional things that they would need to do to get the drug and the device approved to be able to come to market on the device side. However, thinking historically about some of the things that we've all talked about in terms of like Remodulin in this space, it is a very unique patient population, and I think over time, we've demonstrated our commitment to the market, our relationships with physicians. And so we feel similar to what we saw with Remodulin, is that we feel, to Dewey's earlier point, very, very comfortable with where we are in the marketplace, our relationship, our products.

But there would be some challenges if somebody tried to come with respect to a device, getting a drug-device approval.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Got it. And I think that's fair. And to your point, Remodulin has been remarkably stable despite availability of generics. There is the device component to it, which insulates the sub-Q part of the business, which historically was about 50%, if I recall correctly.

But even on the IV side, where theoretically you would have off-the-shelf pumps you could use, it doesn't seem like there is a lot of impact there as well, and that's puzzling, in all honesty. Like, why that side of the business has been so resilient overall? Because, again, I think it's t hat's a fairly good comp for what could happen with TYVASO if a generic comes into play.

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Yeah. Thank you. It's, y eah, going back in time, there was a lot of concern and angst around the Remodulin side of the business when a generic form of Remodulin was gonna come to market. But as I mentioned, Tiago, a few minutes ago, it's a very unique patient population, and we have had relationships in terms of investing in this business, relationships with physicians, supply chain reliability.

And if you think about the totality of that, it set us up well in a lot of commentary we received about a lot of the business and Remodulin go away, but it didn't happen and we feel very proud of that because a lot of investments that we've made into the business, specifically on things like subcutaneous pumps.

Just another aspect to it recently that Michael talked about is that years ago, Smiths Medical stopped making the subcutaneous pump.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Yeah.

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Now there's been, what we understand, at the specialty pharmaceutical distributors, their initiative to transition patients that are currently on subcutaneous pump to Smith's pumps, but they're not doing a refurbishment aspect, and so they're gonna transition them to our own Remunity pump. Another aspect of the business that we think Remodulin will continue to be stable going forward and grow.

There's some interesting data points around the growth since the generic came to market, and it continues to perform very well both domestically and internationally. I think it goes back to the premise of just as Dewey talked about, being an incumbent into the market, having established relationships and really commitment and conviction to support these patients, which is extremely important for a really life-threatening progressive disease.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Oh, no, that's fair. Let's talk about Sotatercept, the boogeyman, PAH. Again, argument here from investors is basically Sotatercept is gonna come to the market. That's gonna lead to prostacyclin discontinuation or delay, and if you treat early enough, it may even prevent patients from progressing at a rapid pace. Pretty early in the launch to say if any of that has played out. How would you handle that argument?

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Yeah. So it is early. But what we've talked about on the last earnings call and kind of what we've seen is the use of inhaled product has been basically consistent with what it was studied in the clinical trial. And you have 70% of the patients on some background prostacyclin. So nothing different at this point that we've seen. And again, I think it's continuing, as I understand it, to be used as expected. So we haven't seen any impact to the business at this point.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Yeah

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

if you've heard anything.

Dewey Steadman
Head of Investor Relations, United Therapeutics

And what we've heard from the field, at least, 'cause I spent the day with Michael Benkowitz, our president, yesterday, is that it's definitely not having an impact, that doctors are in the U.S. are prescribing consistent with how the STELLAR study was run, where 70% of patients were on a concomitant prostacyclin therapy.

The long-term criteria data that was presented in January of this year seemed to correlate with that as well, where you're seeing kind of patients move around on therapies. You're seeing some up titration, you're seeing some down titration of prostacyclin. You're seeing some escalation of therapy, where patients are going from, like, a TYVASO to a Remodulin.

You're also seeing downscaling of therapy, where you're seeing, you know, patients go from Remodulin to, like, TYVASO or something like that. Patients are kind of moving around. I think net-net, it's neutral to even modestly positive for us over time, because you—if anything that helps patients live longer- will keep patients on our therapy for longer as well, because you don't remove therapies generally in PAH therapy.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

No, that's fair. Do you think the frontline data is positive for Sotatercept could change that dynamic? Because, again, if you have a patient on double oral, maybe instead of going to a prostacyclin as a third line of option, they go to Sotatercept, that could delay patients starting a prostacyclin. Like, is that a fair scenario, and could that actually push out revenues? Like, how should we think about that data and the potential impact to the PAH business?

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Okay. It's certainly years away from the data, so it's kind of hard to predict when that would happen. And I think there's still some data to be learned around some of the adverse events and some of the bleeding aspects. If they were to move it up, that potentially could scare some patients away from trying a new therapy. If it did happen in the long term, could it be kind of a blip? It could be, because it would just maybe push a prostacyclin a little bit later.

But ultimately, what happens in this progressive deadly disease is what we see is patients do end up on a prostacyclin. But again, I think, Tiago, that's years away from the last time I looked at the trial. So I think that's kind of a wait and see. But I think at the moment, I think we feel pretty good about, as Dewey said, about how we're handling any competition that comes to market at this point, just because of the conviction in the products and things that we offer to patients.

Dewey Steadman
Head of Investor Relations, United Therapeutics

It's important to remember, too, that when this data comes out a couple, several years from now, what's our business gonna look like at that point? And if we hit with TETON study, and I hope you're gonna ask TETON questions soon.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Yeah.

Dewey Steadman
Head of Investor Relations, United Therapeutics

You know, the profile of our business will be dramatically changed, and all the questions and all the focus is gonna be on IPF and how many patients have we added on therapy and things like that for IPF, and so the Sotatercept blip that may happen, it's gonna be sort of just a rounding error at that point.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

No, I think that's fair. Like, the legacy PAH business just became a little less important as a growth driver over time.

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

I think that. To be clear, PAH is incredibly important for us. It's what our company was founded on. But it's.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Absolutely

Dewey Steadman
Head of Investor Relations, United Therapeutics

The revenue dynamics there, yes. But, we will always be focused on PAH.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Got it.

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Yeah.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

I do wanna talk about IPF, right? So again, pretty compelling proof of concept, but the questions that we generally get on that is basically, how similar is that patient subset, patient population, and INCREASE actually resembles a typical IPF trial patient, right? So how much overlap is there? Basically, the question here is: How can we actually translate or feel comfortable that what we've seen so far with TYVASO and IPF can be replicated in any way, shape, or form in IPF? Super low probability indication overall, right?

Dewey Steadman
Head of Investor Relations, United Therapeutics

Yeah. So it's important to remember the INCREASE study was looking at pulmonary hypertension in patients that have ILD, including IPF. And so there were patients that had IPF as well as pulmonary hypertension that presented at the INCREASE study. When we took a subset of those patients that just had IPF, we actually saw lung function improvement in those patients.

It was a secondary safety endpoint. But PAH patients generally have close to normal lung function. The issue that they have and why they present as short of breath and blue lips and deoxygenated is because the pulmonary hypertension actually prevents or hinders the ability of the lungs to diffuse oxygen into the bloodstream, and so they're not getting oxygen.

So on the surface, like, without doing any testing, a PAH patient and an IPF patient may appear similar, just because they're short of breath. But the shortness of breath for an IPF patient is due to the fibrosis in the lungs hindering the elasticity of the lungs and the ability to actually take in air, so to see lung function improvement using a quote, unquote, "vasodilator," is very interesting because it's, that means that treprostinil is doing something besides vasodilating to improve lung function in those patients. And we have some preclinical research, some in vitro research, publications that show treprostinil is anti-fibrotic in nature.

I think that the combination of what we saw with lung function improvement, with the preclinical work that showing that treprostinil is anti-fibrotic, gave us enough justification to go ahead and pursue the TETON study.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Got it. And in terms of, again, background therapy, powering assumptions, because you had a relatively pretty compelling data from a relatively small sample size. So the transferability, what's the actual, like, product profile they expect to get in TETON? Have you disclosed any powering assumptions? How many patients are gonna be on background therapy? And based on the INCREASE data, is that concerning? Just trying to think of risks around those trials.

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Yeah. Good question overall. I think many questions in there. I think one of the ones for us to think about is, like, background therapy, for example. Within the study design, we certainly patients that going into the trial can be on background therapy for two products in our market or not, and we're kind of agnostic really to whether they're on background therapy or not.

Because we think at the end of the day, as Dewey described and laid out, we ultimately think there's an opportunity to improve forced vital capacity in these patients, which would be a significant improvement as a disease-modifying therapy than currently for the two products on the market.

So the opportunity that we see in terms of the addressable market, which is probably over a 100,000 patients just in the U.S., with the same potentially internationally, for us, is why we pursued this initially in terms of looking at the opportunity and going back to what Dewey outlined, some of that data that we saw in the INCREASE trial.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

I know we're running out of time, so I just want to squeeze in, like, a quick xeno question there, but it's mostly around timelines, right? I know that there aren't a whole, whole lot of comps for preclinical, what, like, FDA necessarily wants to see. So what's the latest for xeno heart, xeno kidney? Do you still expect to go into humans in 2025 ? How should we think about some of those timelines?

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

In the interest of time, and we have all the data that we need right now to meet with the FDA for our 10-gene xeno kidney program. And we're scheduled to meet with the FDA in the Q4. And so we'll learn a lot from that meeting because we did do and we'll have the data that they requested, and if that meeting goes well, I think we're still expecting to be in human clinical trials in 2025 . But this meeting is very important.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Got it. And how should we think about value for the Xeno program? Like, I think there's no one that will contest the unmet need or just the numbers from a TAM perspective. I think where investors get tripped up is, what's the product profile? How much can you actually charge for that? Because it kind of depends on what that could look like. So can you give us some quick pointers on what are some of the frameworks that we can use to try to assess the value of the opportunity?

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Yeah. The opportunity is the same that we actually laid out earlier this year. And, to frame it, there's 400,000 to 500,000 people on dialysis currently. Our opportunity will be really limited by our capacity to produce manufactured organs overall, because it is 400,000 to 500,000 patients on kidney dialysis, today.

And from a kind of a pricing standpoint, it's a curative therapy, so it could be some of the- like some of the gene therapies, that are currently in the market, although maybe less price- less aggressive pricing around it, at this point. But significant opportunity, and no different approach than we talked about earlier.

Tiago Fauth
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Got it. Okay, and we've run out the clock, so but we've had a couple more, but we'll get to them at a later point. So I appreciate you guys.

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Thanks for hosting us.

Dewey Steadman
Head of Investor Relations, United Therapeutics

Yeah.

James Edgemond
CFO and Treasurer, United Therapeutics

Thank you.

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