Welcome back, everyone. We have an update from Vivani Medical Inc., trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol VANI, and through leveraging its proprietary NanoPortal platform, develops biopharmaceutical implants designed to deliver drug molecules steadily over extended periods of time, with the goal of guaranteeing adherence and potentially to improve tolerance to their medication. Happy to welcome its CEO, Adam Mendelsohn. Welcome, Adam. What's your update today?
Thank you, Anna. It's a pleasure to be here with everyone today, and we have had a very exciting last couple of months since we first presented at this conference. And first, let me just remind everyone that's here what we are up to at Vivani Medical, which is developing a six-month GLP-1 implant for chronic weight management and also for diabetes and potentially other indications as we proceed.
I think everyone is probably familiar with the GLP-1 revolution that has happened, and we are excited to be working on providing an option that can make it easier, more convenient, and potentially more tolerable for people to stay on GLP-1 therapy so that the weight that has been lost with GLP-1s that are on the market or are being developed can hopefully continue to stay off over the long term so that people can experience the health benefits for a much longer period of time, as well as provide value to insurance companies to ensure that costs of some of the health consequences can be avoided. The major challenge that we are looking to position this product to address is really people not staying on therapy long term.
With semaglutide, which is the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, after a year, only about 40% of people actually stay on therapy, which was a dramatic advance over the older generation weight loss drugs, but there is a lot to be improved. And what happens when people discontinue treatment is the weight comes back pretty quickly, and a lot of it comes back as fat. And so we really want to avoid this kind of starvation response that seems to happen when GLP-1 therapy is off-boarded. And we are excited about what a miniature implant like what we are working on may be able to do to provide an option for a segment of the population that would prefer and/or would benefit from the ability to not have to worry about taking frequent administration to stay on treatment.
I think what I mentioned when I first presented here was that we were planning to initiate our first-in-human trial, which we're calling LIBERATE-1. I'm very happy to announce that the study has been initiated late last year. In addition to that, we've already started the run-in period. There's an eight-week run-in period with semaglutide injections that the subjects will experience prior to receiving either an implant, the marketed once-weekly exenatide product, Bydureon, or the next step up in the titration schedule for semaglutide for an additional nine weeks so that we can measure changes in weight, we can measure pharmacokinetics, we can measure tolerability, and gain some really critical information to help us help inform further development, hopefully confirm that the excellent performance that we have observed in animals is translating into humans.
This could be a very important study for not just progression of the exenatide GLP-1 implant further in development, but also demonstration of the platform delivery technology, which we call NanoPortal, of which this is the first study, the first time this type of technology will be in humans. So we're very excited about that. And just a reminder of the progression of this clinical program, which we call NPM-115, which is the six-month GLP-1 implant for chronic weight management. We only announced this program just over a year ago. We reported some really excellent weight loss data in obese mice just under a year ago. We announced initiation of screening and enrollment last month, and this month we have had the first subject entered into the run-in phase with semaglutide. The number of subjects are beginning that now, so enrollment looks like it's happening pretty well.
We expect the results of this study to be available this year, probably around the middle of this year. So look forward to sharing that update with everyone as it becomes available. Also as a reminder, so now our NPM-115 program is in the clinic. We are also intending to evaluate this GLP-1 implant for patients with Type 2 diabetes. That will wait for the results of this first study so that we can have a more precise study design.
We're anticipating the next study to be a dose-finding study in which we identify the minimum dose needed for maximal weight effects from our GLP-1 implant and looking to ultimately identify the dose that we would want to pursue in a third potentially registrational trial to pursue an approval, while also making sure that we evaluate the product in patients who have Type 2 diabetes so that we can make this available for those patients as well, and as a reminder, we do have a semaglutide implant in our pipeline and a partnership with an animal health company that is addressing the growing needs of companion animals, cats and potentially other animals that could benefit from this kind of an approach to helping make sure that they get their medicine.
So in conclusion, as a reminder, we are a biopharma company developing these miniature drug implants primarily aimed at addressing medication non-adherence and potentially tolerability. These are very large, unmet needs, and we think our product may be pretty uniquely suited to address them. Our lead program is a six-month GLP-1 implant under development for chronic weight management. The first-in-human study has been initiated with data expected in the middle of this year. We have a robust pipeline, and we think that 2025 could be a transformational year for the company. And I'll look forward to sharing updates about that with you as we proceed. So with that, thank you very much for your time. And I think if maybe there's time for a question or two.
Yes, thank you. Question about the NanoPortal. If you can talk a little bit more about that, and is it licensable for other products?
Yeah, so the NanoPortal is what we call the drug delivery technology that consists of an array of titanium oxide nanotubes that can control the release rate of drugs, and yes, it is licensable for other products. We own the products that are currently in development, although we do intend to try to apply the technology more broadly across a wide range of chronic diseases and look forward to engaging in potential partnership discussions as we proceed in development.
Last question for you. Who is your target market? Who are you targeting specifically?
Yeah. So our initial entry point we anticipate being people that have already lost weight on a GLP-1 treatment and would prefer and/or benefit from being able to maintain that weight loss long term with an option that doesn't require taking a daily pill or a weekly injection. And as we think about that, there are about 10.4% of women who are on contraception that are on an IUD or an implant, about half-half. And so we believe that there is a segment of the population that is likely to choose this type of an approach if and once it becomes available. And really, it's that segment that we think is our first target.
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for this update, and we look forward to continuing on with these updates in the future.
Yes. Thank you, Anna. Thanks, everyone.
All right, everyone. We'll be right back.