A - Dr. Daniel Vitt
Analyst
Yes. Thank you, Jessica, and a warm welcome for today's call also from my end. It's a great moment for the Immunic team today, especially considering the short, but intense history of the company. Immunic has three products in development: IMU-838, an oral drug candidate targeting intracellular immune metabolism via the interesting target DHODH, which is currently tested in four clinical Phase 2 trials is the front runner of the program. On top of the EMPhASIS trial in multiple sclerosis patients, IMU-838 is currently actively tested in ulcerative colitis, primarily sclerosing cholangitis and since June also in COVID-19 patients leveraging the broad spectrum antiviral activity of IMU-838 through DHODH inhibition. But let us focus on today’s topic, the unblinded top line data from the Phase 2 clinical trial in relapsing-remitting MS. Multiple sclerosis is a lifelong disease. And unfortunately the majority of MS diagnosis are emerging in the second and third decade of life. Therefore, persistence and compliance are very important factors for helping patients with MS. Commonly used treatments have shown substantially rates of treatment discontinuation. At Immunic, we have focused our development efforts to address those needs of patients, which are kind of easy, convenient, and safe therapies that allow them to avoid treatment interruptions. There are a couple of therapies approved for treating different forms of stages of multiple sclerosis. In 2016, the overall global market size was around $22 billion. Currently there's no specific guidance on which therapies or medications are used in which sequence, typically treatments are escalated over time considering assistant high MS disease activity on the treatment of base medications, risk of long-term immunosuppression, patients preferences or risk perceptions, and overall safety, and of course, tolerability aspects. We believe that currently under medical need to be an oral base medication for MS patients with balance of good safety/tolerability/convenience profile combined with a robust clinical activity. Based on the mentioned currently limitations of available treatments, IMU-838, is intended to be a selective once-daily oral medication for relapsing-remitting MS patients with a well-balanced combination of favorable safety and convenience profile with robust clinical activity, which has a convenient safety profile of an oral drug without to adverse events disturbing social activities, and in particular having no or low PML risk, as well as offering long-term treatment duration through less risk for discontinuation, and high patient compliance. For doctors, we're targeting robust clinical activity combined with easy on and off dosing, few monitoring requirements and no black box warning for hepatotoxicity. And with this, I would like to hand over to Andreas for the more interesting part of this presentation. So Andreas, please show us the data.