Good afternoon, and welcome to the Aethlon Medical First Quarter Fiscal 2026 Earnings and Corporate Update. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jim Frakes, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Aethlon Medical's Fiscal First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Jim Frakes, and I'm the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Aethlon Medical. At 4:15 p.m. Eastern Time today, Aethlon Medical released financial results for its fiscal first quarter ended June 30, 2025. If you have not seen or received Aethlon Medical's earnings release, please visit the Investors page at www.aethlonmedical.com to view it. Following this introduction and the reading of the company's forward-looking statement disclaimer, Dr. Steven LaRosa, our Chief Medical Officer, and I will provide an overview of Aethlon's strategy and recent developments. I will then make some brief remarks on Aethlon's financials. We will then open up the call for the Q&A session. Before we start the business portion of the call, please note that the news release today and this call contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. The company cautions you that any statement that is not a statement of historical fact is a forward-looking statement. These statements are based on expectations and assumptions as of the date of this conference call. Such forward-looking statements are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause results to differ materially from those anticipated in forward-looking statements can be found under the caption Risk Factors in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025, the company's most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q and in the company's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as may be required by law, the company does not…

Thank you, Jim. Hello, everyone. I'm joining you live from the Keystone Symposium Conference on Long COVID in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where last evening, I presented preclinical data in long COVID, more about that in a little bit. First, I'd like to give you our progress in our lead indication in oncology, our Australian clinical trial of patients with solid tumors not responding to immunotherapy with anti-PD-1 agents. We have completed Hemopurifier treatments in the 3 patients in our first cohort. The first patient completed a Hemopurifier treatment at our site at Royal Adelaide Hospital in January, and patients 2 and 3 were treated at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney on June 2 and June 16 of this year. All 3 participants completed the entire 4-hour Hemopurifier treatment without any device deficiencies and no immediate complications. At the prespecified 7-day safety follow-up period, none of these 3 participants experienced a dose-limiting toxicity or a device-related serious adverse event. The second patient enrolled, unfortunately, went on to die from progression of his cancer and can only provide a 1-week follow-up worth of data. An independent Data Safety Monitoring Board known as the DSMB convened on July 11, 2025, to review the safety data on these first 3 patients in the first cohort. Following a closed session deliberation, the DSMB provided Aethlon Medical's senior leadership with a recommendation to advance to our second treatment cohort where patients will receive 2 Hemopurifier treatments during a 1- week period. All 3 of our sites in Australia are actively screening patients for this second cohort. These sites are screening under an amended protocol that allows patients on either monotherapy or combination therapy that includes pembrolizumab or nivolumab. This protocol amendment was performed to reflect changes in standard of care, leaning now more towards…

Thanks, Steve, and good afternoon again, everyone. Let's touch briefly on the financials now. As of June 30, 2025, we had a cash balance of approximately $3.8 million. For the 3 months ended June 30, 2025, our consolidated operating expenses were approximately $1.8 million. That's down roughly $800,000 or 32% from $2.6 million a year ago. Most of the improvement came from payroll-related savings, including the absence of executive severance recorded last year, lower headcount and a related drop in stock- based compensation. We also saw a meaningful reduction in legal fees after transitioning to a new firm and lower scientific consulting costs with the wrap- up of a project. Our general and administrative expenses were modestly lower as well, helped by reduced insurance costs, but we did see an uptick in clinical trial spending as our trial advances. All in, these efficiencies brought our operating loss down to $1.8 million compared to $2.6 million in last year's June quarter, reflecting solid progress in aligning our resources with our strategic priorities. You can find more detail on these expense changes in our 10-Q, which breaks down specific drivers by category. We included these earnings results and related commentary in our press release issued this afternoon. The release also included the balance sheet for June 30, 2025, and the statements of operations for the 3-month periods ended June 30, 2025, and 2024. We will file our quarterly report on Form 10-Q following this call. Our next earnings call for the fiscal second quarter ending September 30, 2025, will coincide with the filing of our quarterly report on Form 10-Q in November 2025. And now I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Operator, please open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Marla Marin with Zacks.

So there's a lot going on. And -- just remind us, I think you said in the press release that the primary endpoint of the study in Australia is safety. And so far, with the first cohort having been treated, it looks like there's no adverse events related to treatment with the Hemopurifier. So it looks like you're on track to meet the primary endpoint. Is that the right way to think about it?

Steve, do you want to take that one?

Yes. So we've passed the first -- it's a 3-cohort study. We've passed the first cohort, an independent Data Safety Monitoring Board made up of experts in oncology and nephrology, reviewed the safety data and said, move forward to the second cohort where patients get to treatment. So we think it's a big hurdle to have passed.

Okay. So now trying to put in perspective on preclinical data, an extremely high metric, 98.5% of extracellular vesicles were removed in simulated treatment. But now we're looking at actual treatment in a clinical study. Those -- The kind of data that we should expect to see, I mean, I don't know, it would seem to me that, that number in a laboratory setting is not really what we should expect to see out of this study with actual participants, patients who are ill. Is that not the way you're thinking about it?

Yes. No, I think you're tracking perfectly, Marla. What's in the lab is not -- what the proof is in the pudding is in what happens in actual patients. So hopefully, soon, we'll have our data from the first cohort from the Grau lab? And what matters ultimately is the reduction in actual -- from patients who have been treated.

Okay. Great. And switching now, Jim, I have a question for you on -- you've really, really done, I think, as much as you can do to try to cut expenses here. It doesn't seem that there's any more that you can do. The decision to not move forward with the trial in India, strategic as well as possibly some element of cost containment, but more so strategic. Have you thought in terms of what that implies for you right now in terms of -- obviously, you will need cash again at some point to continue funding clinical research. But have you thought about what that means for you in terms of timing?

Well, like every development stage life science company that doesn't have its products approved for sale yet, we will need to continue to raise money, but hopefully, eventually with strategic partners rather than financial investors. But we'll see what the appetite is going forward. As you say, the India decision was far more about the potential delay in getting approval to move forward into the PMA phase than the savings, even though the savings are nice.That was not the main factor. And I must say, Marla, I was the driving force behind doing the Indian trial. The nephrologist has done a great job for us in the past, and they're great. But one advantage of India was that all of the previous viral trials we did. We got off the ground very quickly. They did a good job. That's not the case anymore. They have many new regulations. They're much more like the FDA in terms of bureaucracy, and it was just far slower bureaucratically than the Australian trial. And it just didn't make sense to potentially hamstring the company for 1 to 2 years waiting for that trial to conclude. It just -- that put me over the edge with the decision.

I get it. That makes sense to me. And also, you've talked in the past about one of the attractive factors about conducting clinical research in Australia is the cash tax rebate. I don't think there was any similar -- I mean, I think expenses are relative to conducting research here in the U.S., costs would have been lower in India, but there wasn't anything comparable in terms of a rebate.

You are correct. We have that nice tax rebate in Australia. I think it's still 43% or thereabouts. I don't believe it's changed. And there's no rebate like that in India. So while the cost would have been lower by the hospital, I'm not sure, it might have even pencil lower in Australia after factoring in the rebate.

The next question comes from RK with H.C. Wainwright.

I have a couple of questions. The first question regarding the Indian trial itself. I'm just trying to understand what was the reason to having set up -- in the first place, setting up a parallel Indian trial as that was going on in Australia. And the second question is, does -- do you think -- I know the first cohort is done and one of the physician scientists is actually doing analysis with regards to -- I'm assuming the extra vesicular -- the efficacy itself is what he or she is looking for. But have you -- or do you think you can speed up the enrollment in those 3 centers? Or are you trying to get additional centers in Australia so that you can add more patients if you wanted a larger data set to make the decision for the next development stage.

Steve, do you want to reply?

Sure. So first, on the EV and T cell data, we've actually accelerated the time lines to try to get data back from the Grau lab quicker, and they have been very responsive. So like I said, I'm hopeful that there'll be some early data in September. To your second question, we're doing multiple efforts to try to speed things up. One is we're following prescreening logs from all 3 active sites. We're keeping in close contact through our CRO with our activity. We are actively recruiting plans for 2 additional sites, again, to augment enrollment. And three, we are looking at a couple of different types of initiatives. To help enrollment. one is the use of what's called clinical trial liaisons. The other is with social media campaigns. So yes, we are actively turning over every rock to look for ways to speed up enrollment and think that those will pay dividends.

Okay. So do you think when the Grau lab gets done with the analysis, will you be able to put out some sort of press release or talk about it? Or do you need to wait for the -- all the 3 cohorts to be done before you start talking about some of that efficacy data.

Well, so my feeling is we will have -- we'll be able to make some observations from this first cohort. But remember, it's only a single HP treatment. And we do not know -- that's why the dose-finding component is part of it. We don't know if you need 1, 2 or 3. So the trial, the jury really won't be out on the dosing until we're done with all 3 cohorts. So again, we'll be able to make some observations, but I want to -- I truly want to see what the dose response is, what the treatment effects are from each individual cohort.

As Steve noted in his remarks, RK, our current expectation is that we'll be able to present those remarks or observations rather in September.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jim Frakes for any closing remarks.

I'd like to thank you again for joining us today to discuss our fiscal first quarter results. We look forward to keeping you up to date on future calls. Thanks again. Goodbye.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.