Earnings Labs

PDS Biotechnology Corporation (PDSB)

Q3 2021 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 10, 2021

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to PDS Biotechnology’s Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. please note, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would now turn the conference over to, Deanne Randolph, Vice President of Commercial Development. Deanne, you may now begin.

Deanne Randolph

Management

Good morning, and welcome to PDS Biotechnology’s third quarter 2021 earnings conference call and audio webcast. With me today are Dr. Frank Bedu-Addo, Chief Executive Officer; Dr. Lauren B. Wood, Chief Medical Officer and Matt Hill, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, PDS Biotech issued a press release announcing financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2021. We encourage everyone to read the press release as well as PDS Biotech’s quarterly report on Form 10-Q, which was filed with the SEC earlier this morning. The Company’s press release is available on PDS Biotech’s website at pdsbiotech.com, and the quarterly report will be posted later today. In addition, this conference call is being webcast through the Company’s website and will be archived there for future reference. Before we begin, I would like to caution listeners that comments made by management during this conference call will include Forward-Looking Statements within the meaning of federal securities laws, including the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve material risks and uncertainties, and the Company’s actual results may differ materially. For a discussion of these risk factors, including, among others, the risks related to COVID-19, the impact such pandemic may have on the Company’s business operations, financial operations and results of operations and the Company’s ability to respond to the related challenges, including those noted in this morning’s press release, please refer to PDS Biotech’s SEC filings. Investors, potential investors and other listeners are urged to consider these factors carefully in evaluating the forward-looking statements and are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Please note that the content of this conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of the live broadcast, November 10, 2021. Except as required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any statement to reflect events or circumstances that take place after the date of this call. Following today’s prepared remarks, we will open the discussion for a question-and-answer session. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Dr. Frank Bedu-Addo.

Frank Bedu-Addo

Management

Thank you, Deanne, and thanks to everyone on the call today. Last year at PDS Biotech, we initiated execution of our oncology clinical strategy, and outlined key milestones that we have plans to achieve in 2021 and 2022. PDS Biotech is still on track to achieve each of these milestones on schedule with audit progression of pipeline programs, 2021 has been an extraordinary year for PDS Biotech. We shared extremely promising interim results of PDS0101 from ongoing clinical trials and this quarter have continued to progress our pipeline programs to its commercialization of what we believe are transformative treatments for cancer. As we begin to see the positive human impact Versamune based treatments are having on terminally ill patients who previously had very few, if any options, our team at PDS Biotech is highly encouraged. We continue our strong relationship with the National Cancer Institute. A key goal of the National Cancer Institute is to make and to promote significant advancements in the treatment of cancer. Last quarter, interim data for the National Cancer Institute led Phase II study, often novel triple combination, including our lead candidate PBS0101 was reported of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, also known as ASCO annual meeting. This clinical strategy is based on an immunotherapeutic combination, targeting a specific molecular marker HPV16 present in six different cancers. This represents a paradigm shift in cancer treatment. As we evolve from treating tumors by location to treatment based on molecular profiles. The strength of the data across all HPV16 tumor types is extra ordinary in immuno-oncology. One arm of this ongoing clinical trial is evaluating the novel PDS0101 based combination in patients with anal cancer, cervical cancer, head and neck cancer, penile cancer, vagina, and vulva cancers who have failed at least one standard of care…

Lauren Wood

Management

Thank you, Frank. And thanks to everyone for joining us this morning. As Frank just highlighted, we have continued to progress both our oncology and infectious disease pipeline since our second quarter call. I will begin with our ongoing oncology clinical trials and our lead candidate PDS0101. VERSATILE-002 is a Phase II study evaluating two groups of HPV16-positive head and neck cancer patients whose cancer has returned or spread. The first group has not been previously treated with a checkpoint inhibitor, also known as checkpoint inhibitor naive patients. The second group of patients have failed multiple treatments including checkpoint inhibitor therapy and are considered checkpoint inhibitor refractory. As Frank discussed during his remarks, this September, we announced that the VERSATILE-002 study had achieved its preliminary safety benchmarks in its first 15 patients. PDS0101 treatment related adverse events generally appeared to be limited to transient, manageable local injection type reactions. Importantly the combination also did not appear to exacerbate known KEYTRUDA related side effects. The achievement of this important milestone in the VERSATILE-002 trial strengthens the evidence regarding the safety of PDS0101 in combination with other agents. Less than two weeks later, we achieved completion of enrollment of Stage 1 for the checkpoint inhibitor naive cohort in the VERSATILE-002 study. As specified in the clinical trial design, enrollment is now paused for the checkpoint inhibitor naive cohort until the earliest achievement of at least four or more objective responses among the first 17 patients in this stage. According to Standard Resist 1.1 Imaging Criteria, the achievement of an objective response requires tumor reduction of 30% or more and must be confirmed on repeat imaging. VERSATILE-002 imaging is performed every nine-weeks during the first year In the first stage of the trial at least four of the first 17 patients in the…

Matthew Hill

Management

Thank you, Lauren and good morning, everyone. I’m very excited to have recently joined PDS Biotech. Well, technically, it is only day 18 from me here as CFO. I have known Frank and some of the Board members for five years. I have been following the company and in success as a shareholder, and a supporter of the technology. Frank has put together a top notch team has had great preliminary clinical data results and with upcoming milestones. PDS Biotech is ready to take the next step in its evolution. For me, the successful company is one with the solid science and Frank in great time and the rest of the team have taken the measured methodical approach to the science. And when I was able, I jumped at the opportunity to join the Company. With my background, I’m glad to have a chance to contribute to the team’s success leading the Company’s financial strategy in the next phase of growth. Now let’s turn our discussion to review of our financial results. For the third quarter of 2021, we reported a net loss of approximately $7 million or $0.24 for basic and diluted share as compared to a net loss of approximately $3.9 million or $0.21 per basic and diluted share for the three months ended September 30, 2020. Research and development expenses increased to $3.7 million for the three months ended September 30, 2021 from $2.1 million for the three months ended September 20, 2020. The increase of $1.6 million was primarily attributable to an increase of $0.7 million in personnel costs of which $0.5 million was stock compensation costs, and $0.9 million in costs related to clinical studies. General and administrative expenses increased to $3.2 million for the three months ended September 30, 2021, for $1.8 million for the three months ended September 30, 2020. The increase of $1.4 million is primarily attributable to an increase in the personnel cost of $1.6 million of which $1.0 million was related to stock compensation costs and $0.4 million was severance. This was partially offset by decrease in professional fees of $0.2 million. PDS Biotech’s cash and cash equivalents at September 30, 2021 were approximately $69.7 million. With our current plans, we have over two years of cash on-hand, we will continue to manage our cash prudently to maximize the return investments to invest both our oncology and infectious disease programs. The appreciation of our share price since the beginning of this year, along with a significant increase in the average daily trading volume has greatly improved liquidity for existing and future shareholders. Thank you for your time today. I would like to now turn the call back to Frank for final remarks. Frank.

Frank Bedu-Addo

Management

Thank you, Matt and Lauren. I would also like to sign our extremely diligent and innovative team here at PDS Biotech and all of our clinical partners for their continued dedication. The expertise and creativity demonstrated by our teams and collaborators continues to enable execution of our highly ambitious preclinical and clinical development strategies. I would also like to thank the patients who are the reason why we have dedicated our lives to this work. Our continued positive results and pipeline advancements this year have driven significant shareholder value. Year-to-date PDS Biotech is among the highest performing stocks on NASDAQ. We still have significant upcoming milestones if achieved we believe we will continue this momentum. The groundwork has now been laid for the execution of multiple programs across the PDS Biotech pipeline into 2023. We have secured the financial runway and partnerships to work towards the achievement of our value creating milestones. In the short-term, we expect to receive top-line data for multiple PDS0101 trials between the fourth quarter of this year and first half of next year. We expect completion of recruitment of the National Cancer Institute led trial addressing second and third line treatment of anal, cervical, head and neck, penile, vaginal and vulvar cancers in the first quarter. We also expect preliminary data from our VERSATILE-002 trial by the first quarter of 2022. Preliminary data from our MD Anderson led Immuno Serve trial is expected during the second quarter of 2022. Interim data from the PDS0101 molecularly targeted immunotherapeutic approach, demonstrated clinical efficacy in all the advanced HPV-related cancers studied to-date. We continue to progress towards additional milestones. We have multiplied shareholder value and demonstrated the potential of the Company and technology in the forefront of immuno oncology advancements and we are impacting patient’s lives. We look forward to sharing with you our future accomplishments as milestones are achieved. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please begin our question-and-answer session.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our first question comes from the line of Louise Chen with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please proceed with your question.

Louise Chen

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. Sorry about that. So congratulations on all the progress this quarter. I had a few questions for you. So, could you give any more color on the economics for your NCI TARP collaboration and what is the market opportunity here that you see? Second question I had for you is, can you elaborate more on your universal flu vaccine, I know you talked about it on your call. But how does your technology broadly compare to others in development, because there are a few projects here on the universal flu vaccine front. And then, can you provide any more color on PDS0103 and your rationale behind this MUC1 target. Thank you very much.

Frank Bedu-Addo

Management

Louise thanks for those questions. So, let’s start with the NCI. So, with the NCI and the licensing of the TARP antigen, a lot of that has to specifically redacted by the National Cancer Institute specifically, but this would be a typical licensing agreement with reasonable economics. And with regards to the market opportunity for the TARP program, I think as Lauren mentioned, and this is present in three very large market cancers, actually two very large market cancers, breast and prostate, as well as AML. So with AML, for example, there are approximately 20,000 cases annually in the United States and TARP is reportedly expressed in 100% of these patient’s tumors. With prostate cancer in the United States alone, we have almost 175,000 cases annually and the TARP protein is expressed in about 90% of these prostate cancers at all stages of the disease. And with breast cancer, again, we have more than 270,000 cases annually in the United States alone. And TARP is expressed in about 50% of these cancers. So, when you look at these cancers the market opportunity is significant, the unmet need is extremely significant. And so we see significant potential for the PDS0102 program just based upon the need and the size of the markets. And with PDS0103 again, we are looking at the MUC1 related cancers, and the rationale for this approach is MUC1 as you know has been steady in cancer vaccines over the last decade or so, the initial approaches to evaluating MUC1 have not been successful. Now with the PDS0103 programs, there are two very significant differences between what has been done in the past and what is being done today with PDS0103. First of all, the specific antigens, so what we are using are not the native MUC1 antigens,…

Louise Chen

Analyst

It does. Thank you very much.

Frank Bedu-Addo

Management

Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Leland Gershell with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.

Leland Gershell

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.

Great, good morning. Thank you. And glad to hear on your continued progress. Frank, couple of questions for me, first on the NCI trial with the pause, it sounds like timelines are still intact, but just wanting to know if there is any further color you can provide on what may change as that trial resumed, would it be a change in simply contend forms or would there be anything that might be more involved. And then also want to ask Matt. Obviously, you have got a couple of years of gap, but just wanted to ask with respect to our modeling on R&D expense, how we might want to think about that for 2022, just given the various programs that you are deploying capital in two versus this past year.

Frank Bedu-Addo

Management

Okay. So Leland I will answer the first question and then I will hand over to Matt to address the cash runway over the next year or two. So with the NCI program, I think what Lauren expressed is the extent of our knowledge today, if they have assured us said that this is purely administrative, it is an updating of the patient informed consent, we have been informed as of last week that that had been completed and it is working its way through the administrative process of the National Cancer Institute. The patient’s currently on the trial also receiving treatment on schedule and nothing has changed. And once that update to the informed consent is approved and be given the green light, again, nothing will change. It is just that informed consent document that will be provided to the patients that would have that requested updates included in it. And so, as of today, we do not expect any delays to the timeline that we proposed initially, we are still on schedule to complete recruitment during the first quarter of next year. So as of today, everything is still on schedule and based on our discussions with the National Cancer Institute, they do not appear to have any concerns that they will encounter any delays, they have assured us that this is an administrative process that is working its way through the various departments of the NCI. And hopefully, they will get started in there in the near-term. So I will hand over to Matt.

Matthew Hill

Management

Good morning, Leland. Thanks for your questions. Good questions. We were looking at and I will walk you through it so that you can back into R&D. So essentially, we have got two years of cash on hand, that means at least nine quarters of cash on hand. You can assume that that is going to be - the burn of cash will be weighted more in 2022. We had about $3.3 million worth of administrative expenses in Q3. You can expect that to increase slightly and level off and then the difference in the cash burn will be R&D costs.

Leland Gershell

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.

Terrific, okay that is very helpful. Thanks very much for taking the questions.

Frank Bedu-Addo

Management

You are welcome, no problem.

Matthew Hill

Management

Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Emanuela Branchetti with H. C. Wainwright. Please proceed with your questions.

Emanuela Branchetti

Analyst

Good morning, everyone. And thank you for taking my questions. With regards to PDS0102, I was hoping you could tell us more about your thoughts in the past forward, are you thinking about prioritizing indication that has prostate cancer over the other. So where could you potentially beginning with the baskets sided. And related to this question, obviously, you have the NCI data in prostate cancer, but could you remind me if clinically one indication stands out as the most promising at the moment?

Frank Bedu-Addo

Management

Yes Emanuela, thank you very much for that question. That is a really good question. And lots of consideration has been given to this specific question within PDS. And I think based upon our approach to risk mitigation and potential for success, based upon the fact that the National Cancer Institute has performed the clinical trial in prostate cancer specifically and shown this antigen, top antigen to be immunogenic in these patients and actually provide anti-cancer benefits to the patients very lightly with this specific program will very likely start with prostate cancer. That has not been finalized yet, but that is the direction in which we are heading or it is more likely to go by different based upon the current data available to us and what the NCI has already demonstrated in these patients.

Emanuela Branchetti

Analyst

Got it. Thanks you for that. And so, if this is the case would you be able to start with a Phase II since you, I believe you already have Phase I data from the NCI?

Frank Bedu-Addo

Management

Yes. We believe that in this case, very likely based upon the fact that we already have data in humans with Versamune and the protein, the top antigen has already been in humans. But we may have to do it a very - we can do a combined Phase I/II, where we demonstrated the first few patients that could safe and transition seamlessly into the Phase II trial. But I will hand it over to Lauren to confirm this for us. Lauren.

Lauren Wood

Management

Yes. Thank you, Frank. That is exactly our expectations that because of the prior human experience with TARP peptides, specifically in the prostate cancer setting that we would be able to do a combined Phase I/II study with very limited immunogenicity and safety confirmation before proceeding into Phase II aspect of studying the agent. The other reason for going into prostate cancer is, as Frank previously highlighted, we know TARP is expressed in approximately 90% of prostate cancers. Since it is only expressed in 50% of breast cancers, we anticipate that the agency - the FDA might require co-development of a companion diagnostic for breast cancer indication. Again, another reason for us to target going into prostate cancer initially.

Emanuela Branchetti

Analyst

Yes. That makes sense. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question from line of (Ph) with Alliance Global Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hello. This is in representation of Jim Molloy. So congratulations on the progress made this quarter and regarding the HPV triple combo, maybe please talk about a little bit more of the data that you need to see in this trial in order to apply for a non-location specific tumor type. And regarding this trial as well, maybe please talk about the number of patients that you need to see or are anticipating in this child by the next intern and ASCO for the upcoming year 2022? And my last question is just regarding all your partnerships. So besides Merck, do you have any plans to bring on any other partnerships to partner your Versamune platform? Thank you.

Frank Bedu-Addo

Management

Thanks a lot. So, quite a few topics here. So, with the initial data, though, the preliminary data was generated in two patient types. The first one were the HPV - sorry, this checkpoint inhibitor naive patient population, and with these patients, typically what you see is approximately a 15% to 20% response rates with a standard-of-care, without the checkpoint inhibitor. So, that is what you were comparing to. And the statistical analysis will be done based upon those specific patients. So, we needed to achieve three out of the first eight positive responses as the benchmark for continuing the study. And as you know we have achieved five out of the first six. So the efficacy rate in the checkpoint inhibitor naive arm is much, much higher than has been generated before in any trial with a specific patient population. On the next second arm of the trial to see about waking patients who are in addition to chemo and radiation also failed, checkpoint inhibitor therapy. Now, as you may know, with this patient population, these patients have extremely few options available to them. And the response efficacy rates in this patient population is somewhere between the range of 5% to 10% maximum, so very few drugs have any effects on a very small percentage of these patients. And we are seeing response rates around the 50% range with these patients. And so what we want to do now is even though these patients are still being recruited and still being evaluated, we will be having discussions with both the National Cancer Institute and EMD Serono who owned the two other agents that I have been evaluated in this triple combination. And we would, we would like to have a discussion with the FDA to find out from the…

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes. Thank you so much.

Frank Bedu-Addo

Management

Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session, and I will now turn the call over to Frank Bedu-Addo for closing remarks.

Frank Bedu-Addo

Management

Thank you very much. So thank you very much to all of you for your continued interest in PDS Biotech. We believe that 2021 will continue to be an exciting year for the Company. We have multiple ongoing clinical trials with PDS0101 in various advanced HPV-associated cancers, and we are preparing to advance additional products into the clinic. We appreciate your ongoing support in this pursuit. For more information about the Company and our ongoing clinical trial, please visit our website at pdsbiotech.com. Thank you very much again.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This will conclude today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation.