Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the VolitionRx Limited First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference call will be opened for question. [Operator Instructions] This conference is being recorded today, May 8, 2020. I'd now like to turn the conference call over to Louise Batchelor, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome everyone to today's earnings conference call for VolitionRx Limited. This call will cover Volition's financial and operating results for the first quarter of 2020, along with a discussion of recent activities and key upcoming milestones. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the conference call to a question-and-answer session. Also on our call today is Mr. Cameron Reynolds, President and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. David Vanston, Chief Financial Officer; and Dr. Jake Micallef, Chief Scientific Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that some of the information discussed on this conference call will include forward-looking statements covered under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on our beliefs, as well as assumptions we have used based upon information currently available to us. Because these statements reflect our current views concerning future events, these statements involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Actual future results may vary significantly based on a number of factors that may cause the actual results or events to be materially different from future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these statements. We have identified various risk factors associated with our operations in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly report on Form 10-Q, and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during the course of this call. I'd now like to turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Cameron Reynolds. Cameron?

Thank you, everyone, for joining Volition's conference call today. I especially appreciate it, given the busy earnings call season, and the ongoing pandemic, speaking to which let me first start by addressing how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected operations for Volition thus far. During the first quarter of 2020, we implemented contingency planning to protect the health and well-being of our employees, with most employees working remotely where possible. Our lab in Belgium has remained open with the attendance of our dedicated laboratory technicians who have kept our research and development work on track with our expectations. Many of our small and medium sized studies have already been collected and their samples stored at our onsite biobank, so the trial work underway and planned for the first half of 2020 is still tracking expectations. Regarding our large-scale studies, both the colorectal cancer and lung cancer studies underway in Taiwan are still ongoing with collection. However the study collection in the U.S. with the EDRN has been paused during the pandemic. The overall timing impact of the EDRN collection pause on the study is unknown at this stage, however, we'll provide an update once the study re-commences. Unsurprisingly, we have taken the decision, given the current travel restrictions, to postpone our Capital Markets Day originally planned for June 1 to later this year, most likely in September, and we will announce a new date as soon as possible. We hope to see many of you in person then. For the quarter ended March 31, we did not observe significant impact on our business operations due to the COVID pandemic. However, going forward to the extent the pandemic continue and worsens, we cannot at this time predict the effects it may have on our company in future. The key potential risks from…

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Mark Breidenbach with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, guys. We've got Matt [ph] on here for Mark. Thanks for taking our questions. And Cameron, let me extend my congratulations on the recent progress.

Thank you.

On interesting proof-of-concept data in COVID, and I'm just wondering what you attribute to the high level of specificity. And also whether you believe the Nu.Qs could discriminate COVID from other active infections, which may be increasing nucleosomes in blood presumably?

Yes, very good question. And yes, we were very surprised -- we're pleasantly surprised with the results that came through from this. This was just COVID versus normal controls. That was an exceptionally high result, and we're doing a lot of work now on the prognostic and the diagnostic process. Obviously, a lot of that includes other conditions, which could cause some of the nucleosomes to be raised. We're doing a lot of work on that. Actually it's being run this week and through the next weeks. Our collaborators in Germany and Belgium are very excited with the results that's seen. We're measuring the body's response to the virus, and it's in this case in the nets the NETs, the neutrophil extracellular traps. So we'll see -- all those questions will be answered, but we're just trying to be conservative at the moment. Just we're very excited with what we have. We'll be doing a lot of work reading out in the short to medium term, and we can answer all of those questions, but it was a very good result to start with, and something we will look very carefully at the diagnostic and prognostic value. But I think what's important to notice always in these areas is -- this is a COVID issue, but it's also -- the reaction the body has with the NETs. If it is useful in COVID, it would also be useful in ammonia and the flu, which also have a very raised level of NETs and also kills people through a very similar mechanism. So we can open in this pandemic hopefully and we'll have that information soon. And if it works for that it could work for a long time in the future as well through the other mechanisms. So very exciting, but we will give a full update once we know and that shouldn't be very long.

Okay, great. That makes sense. Yes. So now I guess turning to the clinical grade assays, it sounds like you have eight. Now that has then validated. I'm just wondering whether you think eventually you will probably have to use different combinations of these assays based on the indication whether it's lung or colorectal or other. And then if you could just give us an update when you plan to have finalized panels for the Taiwanese lung trial and the EDRN study? Thanks.

Yes. So we have eight now. That's exactly right. And that's by far the most we've ever had in this stage because we've been doing this now. So we're doing three or four more per quarter. So it's not just eight. We expect to have, again 12 and then 16, by the end of the year. And you're right, so some of them are good in a range of different diseases in cancers, and we would expect some of them to be better or worse in different diseases and different cancers. So that's the process. Of course, the ones we're going for are the ones that have been shown to be differential in the tissue because that's where we found them from. And I think it's also important to know that we're also looking for new biomarkers using the mass spec work in the Nu.Q Capture program. So there is a lot of evidence of different structures in different diseases and different cancers, and we have developed the assays for them and we'll run them through the trials to confirm all of that, and we're also adding through that our new markets, which have not been shown before that we're discovering through Nu.Q Capture and the mass spec work. So, very exciting. So we'll determine the panels, we are running the smaller populations now into colorectal or lung and we will add to that the medium and large populations. So I would expect to have a very good indication of or have the more very good indication this year for lung and colorectal as we get more and more assays. But we've seen some which work extremely well and we're looking to be -- now that they are working well, we don't think we need a panel of five or…

And then maybe just one more if I can squeeze it in. Do you still think you'll be able to have data from the Taiwanese lung trial at some point in the first half of this year? Or do you think given the pandemic that those timelines might shift by [indiscernible]?

I think it's a reasonable target, but if it ships -- if it slips, it is only a few months, we will have data in the short term, short to medium term. We're reasonably on target, I think. It's never exactly sure with everything, but it's -- I'm not unaware it's delayed now, it could be in the future, but it's -- we are sticking to the target. It's coming up and that's for sure. The main delay was getting the assays developed on the platform and now that we have a lot, we should have that data.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Thank you, Matt. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jason McCarthy with Maxim. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. This is Michael [ph] on for Jason. Sir, I'd like to say -- I have another follow-up question on the COVID test, and really how do you transition this into the triage setting, because based on the data you released, it seems to confirm that you guys can in fact detect nucleosomes being elevated in COVID with high accuracy. But then what do you need to determine in order for it be applied to triaging patients?

Yes, so absolutely correct. So what we showed was COVID versus normal. So that's the first step. If you don't have that, could get anything in the triage. The next step is what we're doing now. We're getting a lot more samples with differential diagnosis and prognosis, those that have proceeded very well, those that have proceeded very badly into ICU, and unfortunately some deaths, and how that relates to competing conditions and other things. So that's all in process now. What the aim is to see. So the body's reaction to the COVID is several fold, you know fever, antibodies, but also NETs which are what we can detect with our assays because it's chromatin based. It's the last line of defense, if you will. The body throws out -- the white cells throw out the NETs to trap the virus physically, which is a good defense mechanism, but like anything if there's too much of it can cause a lot of problems. So, we're getting very high signals in some of the COVID positives. We will do analysis now to see what that's from and if it is from the NETs and we can detect it, which is what we're looking to do. See how early we could have told someone that they're going to be getting into trouble from the coronavirus through the body's immune response, which is what we detect not the virus itself, but the body's response. And in this situation, it is the body's response which actually causes the mortalities with the NETs because it clogs up lungs and some other organs, if there is too much of it. And if you think of it that way, like a fever, the body has fever, and it's good to kill the virus. If it kills…

Thank you. And then actually two; just switch over to the Capture program. It seems like there's going to be a lot of data this year, and assuming that that comes and expected for, you know, the sequencing immunoassay mass spec data. Then once you have that, what are the next steps. I know that you're seeking some licensing opportunities for 2021. So could you give us a little bit of color on what those might look like and where this technology is -- where you're looking to position this to be applied?

Yes, that's a good question, Michael. So Capture program, just a quick refresher. We didn't discuss it a lot on this call, because we had say much else going on, but that's progressing very, very well as well. We will have a lot more updates on that soon. But what we can tell you now before the updates, which will be soon, what it does is capture or pull out the nucleosomes preferentially from whatever structure we have the antibody for. So one big use for that is pulling out long from short nucleosomes, which short nucleosomes 147 basepairs have been shown to be much more common in the cancer. So you're looking to enrich with some of the -- with the nucleosomes, enrich the DNA and the nucleosomes from the cancer, that could obviously be very helpful in our assays. If you can clear out some of the background noise, you always get a better result. And we think that could be extremely helpful in the sequencing business because there is such a problem -- they have a lot more problem with background than we do, because the nucleosomes are a lot more common than mutations in the DNA. So it can be extremely helpful we think either in a clean out step before our assays and we're doing that work. We're also doing work on concentrating the DNA and sequencing as you say. If we can show that we can concentrate the nucleosomes in the DNA and that increases the validity of screening, that's a massive licensing opportunity for anyone in this space. And as I mentioned before, once you have the nucleosome, you can also do mass spectrometry which in very simple terms is -- you smash it apart and look exactly what was there. So it's…

Thank you. And then there is one more from me. It looks like there's going to be a lot of progress in 2020 of that moving forward towards the market commercial prep for three years and a number of studies. So how should we look at expenses going forward? Should we anticipate the higher run rate that we saw in the first quarter continue throughout the year or how should we look at that?

I think for the moment we're actually tracking what -- we are at our long-term target, which is $1.2 million, $1.3 million a month. If you look over the last 12 months, the first quarter is always higher, because we have D&O, and it's a lot of annual expenses that come out early in the year, and this quarter we also had the Octamer purchase, which is obviously a one-off. So we may end up doing more work, but at the moment we are tracking a 12-month average. It is definitely lumpy between quarters for those reasons, but I don't think it's going to be raising a lot. And if it is, we'll update it next quarter. But certainly for these summer months until the next quarter, until we update, I think we're looking to track our long-term average.

All right. Thank you very much, Cameron. I'm looking forward to the progress. Stay safe guys.

Thank you, Michael. Yes, it's exciting times.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Bruce Jackson with Benchmark Company. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good morning and thank you for taking my questions.

Thank you, Bruce.

So if we could just talk for a moment about the veterinary program, you brought out the proof-of-concept data. What work remains to be done with that program. Do you still think it's going to be the first product out the door? Is the commercialization strategy still going to be possibly so lab developed test? And then if you could also maybe as a follow-up run through the rank order of the pipeline in terms of how they might be launched?

Yes. Thanks, Bruce. Good questions. And Vet is a very important part of what we do and make sure it doesn't get lost in all the other news. So yes, the proof-of-concept data was very, very encouraging, and those cancers were picked by the Texas A&M Vet team because they're very important and it's about a third of all dog cancers. So it was extremely good to see those results. And it actually mirrors what we know from those cancers in humans. So all in all, it's a really good validation of what we do by an independent group, and it's what we've been working for with robust reliable assays. We shipped in the assays and we were working with great partners. You know what questions are needed in the vet clinic, obviously we don't and they do. So it's been a really good network and marriage of our two abilities. So, yes, so we've had the point of contact -- point of care data, and that was on the plates. The plates we would ship to them, that was the most simple format, as you know. They currently have an idea [indiscernible] our magnetic bead platform, which will be operational soon, and then they can run up. We only have a few assays now on plates which is why running [ph] down a few. We have, as you heard, eight now on the plates and on the magnetic beads, and we're going to have a lot more soon. So that would be running a lot of assays through a lot more samples to have a lot more stored up, and for other cancers and trying to get bigger patents rather, I mean it was quite remarkable results just for those single assays and that's what we had on the…

And then, after we get the vet tests launched in the human -- on the human side, which assay do you think is going to be the first one to reach the market?

So the human side, well, we say, if we do find something clinically useful in the COVID, it would pretty certainly be that because the approval process is really shortened because of the pandemic, but again that's unknown, but we will know I think in the short to medium term. If not, I think the most likely one is the triage, which will be [indiscernible] on schedule for the end of next month, and we're running it through some triage trials. So far is the lung and colorectal, it is tough to tell, we're running medium to big trials in both of those. We'll see what's the clinical use and what's the panel, which comes out from those, but we're doing a lot of work in both of those as well. And also I think the highest results we have regarding detection is actually been the blood cancers, which we had data on which has also been good. So we're now working through what's the clinical question that's best answered and the trials for that. So the short answer is, if we can find something clinically useful from COVID, it's likely to be the first because the assays are ready and it's a very short approval process, given the nature of the pandemic. Second to that, would be the triage. And on top of all that, we'd have the vet side. And I think we haven't done a lot of work on the research kits in the last few months, we've been so busy with everything else. But I think as we start to aggressively published, I wouldn't be surprised if that really saw pick up as well. I think there's a huge push now in the epigenetic space and we really are at the heart of it and I think we could -- we've shown really good efficacy now in cancer, in humans and dogs. We've shown utility potentially very strongly in COVID. Collaborators are doing work in pregnancy and pre-eclampsia and lung diseases and other things. It's truly showing epigenetics to be incredibly important in a lot of different things. So there'll be a lot to talk about over the next 12 months.

Absolutely. Getting back to the COVID-19 data that you showed this morning with the proof-of-concept data, was that the NETs assay that you were referring to or was it another one? And then you said there were two Nu.Q assays that were being evaluated. So...

Yes, we're publishing and we're also patenting. So I mentioned which two assays they were, but yes, I worked incredibly well in this aspect, and the other one, I mean 86 is still incredibly good as you see, and they do different things. So we've got a lot of work to do. Our collaborators are working at a lot of other markets as well for these same purposes in clicking trials. The same combination [indiscernible] work the different questions, prognostic as well as diagnostic. The PCR is a great test as you know. It is very accurate, but it has its issues. So they're working to see how it can work in a lot of different ways. There is a lot of clinical questions now being thrown up because of COVID beyond just the straight diagnostic question, and it appears very much that the NETs are a very big part of what does the damage to your body. And obviously the NETs very much related to chromatin, I mean it is chromatin that is spewed out. So that's what our assays appear. It's all cutting edge now. So we'll publish that. I think there'll be a lot of papers published in the future on how our assays and can be determining all the NETs in the process, but we are working right now and we'll update a lot in the short-term.

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jason Kolbert with Dawson James. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, guys. Thank you. Pretty good run down. But I just want to pick up on some of the questions that have already been asked. When you talk about the COVID assay and detecting the NETs, my understanding of what you're saying is that you can detect what the body's immune response might be and it might be a predictor of who's going to get into a cytokine storm that's going to result in potentially candidates for ventilators. And so it could be used as a prognostic to determine where there would be benefit for a viral knock down like remdesivir. And if that interpretation is correct, I'm wondering whether there is discussions going on with therapeutic developers, so that they could use the assay prognostically to determine which candidates would be best for therapy and what the timing of that therapeutic intervention might be?

I'll give a quick answer, and then if Jake has anything more to add he can as our Chief Scientist. We're doing a lot of research and I can't talk about too much of it now because obviously we are -- some of it's confidential to make it public in the process, but there's a lot going on. And I think we could be very helpful in the areas you mentioned, but we will -- anything that we actually finalize will announce once it's completed. Jake, do you have any more to say on them.

Only that the work is ongoing. And if the assays do indeed turn out to be prognostic, then they could very well be used in the scenario that you described, where we're not really at a stage where we can say that yet.

Okay. But that -- I mean, that's the true differentiator, right, because there are a lot of good assays that will determine COVID presence, but there are very few assays that can determine magnitude and/or predict kind of the response, because that's the whole game, right. There are a lot of people who will get COVID and have no symptoms, and there are other people that get into real trouble. So being able to delineate those two to me seems like you have an incredibly differentiated product if that turns out to be the case. Is that how you're looking at it too?

That's exactly how we're looking at it. Yes.

Exactly, right, yes. But I think with the nature and the size of potential is...

I was going to say that what we're measuring although we get superb detection for COVID that's not actually our goal at all. And what we are measuring, as Cameron was saying is not the COVID itself, but the body's response to the COVID, and it is an over response and one aspect of that is the cytokine's ghost [ph] storm that is the cause of the complications and it is that that we're measuring. And so, we're very successfully measuring that. And whether that is clinically useful in the way that you describe is something that we're investigating now.

Yes. I mean, we all under -- the implication for that are huge. So have you had any early discussions or any contact with people on the COVID task force or [indiscernible] or BARDA, I assume those channels are open to you.

Yes, we have been very active. We've been looking at this for several months. And given the size of the opportunity and how much we can help, we're just trying to be conservative until we are certain exactly what we can do, but all the things you described is exactly what we've look to do. And we've been in communication with the authorities as you mentioned in the U.S., as well as in Europe, as well as in Asia because if you can have a prognostic it's incredibly useful. And as you said, there is really nothing out there currently in this space. And as Jake has mentioned before, it's also potentially very useful in pneumonia and in the flu which caused millions of hospitalizations every year as well going forward; [indiscernible].

Right. With the same kind of cytokine storm associated with it, I think.

Exactly. Exactly, yes.

Thank you. That's really exciting. And on the veterinary side, and this is also on the human side, the ability to determine kind of the source of the cancer, help me understand on the veterinary side, what the sequence of events are? Patient brings in their dog and the veterinarian either determines there is a GI-related or other-related tumor, but they may not know, unlike a human right the dogs don't talk. So the ability to who isolate back, what type of cancer it is, how far advanced is the diagnostic library that will allow you to kind of link those to? So what I'm -- the question I'm really asking is beyond detection, it's source and library matching right. Now, of course that has huge implications, not just for canines, but in ethical diagnostics too, and I just want to make sure I understand that connection.

So just a quick answer to that, and I think it's probably good to hook you up with our vet team because they -- no one on this call is a vet expert, and that's why we work with Texas A&M because they understand the clinic very well and the processes. So, we're relied on them very heavily to tell us what clinical questions, what are the different cancers and what the clinical process would be for each of the -- and it is different from the vet hospitals to a vet lab to single vet hospitals, and they're working on that a lot. As for the epigenetics in the human space, Jake can go through that with you, but it's -- as we talked about a lot, there are a lot of epigenetic structures on the nucleosome, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. There is lot been shown to be different in different diseases and different cancers and then tissue, which is what we've been following, and now we're looking at our own markets through domestic commentary. But we thought the process we've gone through is that -- that works all being done by others on what targets to look for on the tissue. We've been really optimizing our platform to make sure we can measure all of those, which is what we've done and just coming through now. And now were going to be using a lot of those assays to try to get the differences between the different cancers as well as just detecting the cancer themselves. And we've seen some differences. There's a lot of similarities with some assays between the cancers, which makes sense. And there's a lot of -- we're looking now for assays in our growing library, which are differential between the cancers, which are definitely others. So we've got to work to work out a good panel to detect that cancer and also something which differentiates from other cancers and other competing conditions, which is also very important, of course, and that's the work which is ongoing now which is why we'd like to have a lot of assays, so that we can really try to differentiate as well as just discriminate.

Right. So, and the mass spec is really just an internal tool that helps you build the library, so that going forward on a volume basis that just becomes a digital comparison if you will. Is that correct?

Jake, do you want to answer that?

Yes. Domestic really has two uses. One is that we can look far and wide for which markets really are different on the nucleosomes in different cancers as opposed to looking in what other people have found in the literature in tissue. We can really investigate what's different in the blood as you say a discovery tool. And the second possibility, and at this stage, it's very, very early, but in the future, it could in itself become a diagnostic tool where instead of looking at the panel of three or four nucleosomes, and to see where that panel is characteristic of lung cancer or colorectal cancer and so on, we could conceivably be looking at a panel of dozens or even hundreds. And at this point in time, it's far too early to say that that we can or would do such a thing, but in principle that's possible and it's all covered by our intellectual property.

Well, I'm just thinking in terms of throughput, right. It's hard to have throughput when you involve a mass spec. So I'm just for now, what I'm doing is I'm compartmentalizing the mass spec as kind of the internal research tool to help build a library.

[Indiscernible] but also confirms markets that we say there from the antibodies and the recombinant controls are also definitely there. So it's a confirmatory as well as exploratory. But yes, for the next foreseeable future, that's absolutely correct.

Okay. And just I want to close, and I know Michael Okunewitch mentioned this, but I just wanted to make sure I have a handle on the timelines for Nu.Q. There is so much going on, but if I -- if what I understand you're saying is that we should be looking for more incremental data throughout the rest of the year, triage next London, the colorectal study and then some of the hematological assays towards the end of the year, is that right?

Yes. And if you look at the presentation we have, on Slide 6 and 7, there is all the targets for all the different areas from the assays, the trials, the vet and the Capture. There's two pages of them just to be accurate; if you want to refer that that we've kept that up to date.

Really, really professional breakdown. Thank you very much. I'm excited to see as the platform and the company matures, particularly given COVID. I mean this really has the potential to kind of in the words of our President, be a game changer. So it is exciting. Thanks.

Thank you very much. We are excited too.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Nathan Weinstein with Aegis Capital. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning, guys, and thanks for taking my question. So if perhaps you can just remind us about the Octamer acquisition that you closed early in the quarter? And what was exciting to you guys about that and then has integration turned out as expected?

Actually, it's funny. We planned this obviously in the last few quarters of last year. We got to know Dr. Schomburg quite well from our Science Advisory Board, and part of having a very robust platform was having a very good control which is the recombinant nucleosomes, and there are very few people in the world who can make them well. It's very cutting edge and very new, but it's a really key part of the level of robustness that we currently have. So, we've thought about this a lot and we want to control our entire supply chain, which given what's happened since then, it certainly wasn't what we predicted, but it's been very helpful to be having the key components that we have under our control. So the main purpose of it all was to inherit that company's ability to make recombinant nucleosomes which is the control in all the things we do, in the vet assays, in the human assays, in the Capture program and everything and the antibodies. So optimum age that makes excellent nucleosomes, and we've been consuming them. So part of licensing, we're doing our own products obviously, with a big part of what we want to do going forward is licensing because there is no way if epigenetics is a tenth as widespread as it seems to be to us, it is applicability. We're not going to be out to do at all as a small company or even medium company. So we will start licensing. And we've always had the vision to license, but if we can license where we grant the rights to use our intellectual property, which we have a huge amount of now, but also provide the consumables, the nucleosomes and the antibodies. We can keep a good track…

Thank you. And then, perhaps just one more from me. If we think about the supply chain that leads to your assay, just any disruption there from COVID, and just in good times does that tend to be a lot of vendors and easy to get the supply that you need?

So the fantastic thing with our process unlike sequencing and all the other things circulating tumor cells, it's actually, I mean, it's been a lot of work, but it's a very simple in its heart. It's the antibodies and the nucleosomes controls on magnetic beads, which are made by dozens of companies. So, we aim to be manufacturing in our facility the key components for when we start producing products and licensing ourselves. There are some supply chain issues because obviously we're looking at dozens and dozens and dozens of nucleosome targets. So we don't manufacture our nucleosome in it until we've got some utility and develop our own antibody. So we have been -- we still buy some antibodies, we still buy range of things from different groups. So as I said, there have been some of those that have been held up a bit. We've typically as part of what we do try to find at least two or three suppliers for all key components, so that we're not clogged up. But there have been some disruptions. So the things have been coming slower and there has been like with everyone in this crisis, but it hasn't had a major impact on operations because we're doing a lot more ourselves, and we've tried to have a few different suppliers. And eventually things do -- it has been a bit slower during this crisis but suppliers do tend to supply even if there is a bit light. So we would be trying to think ahead and order larger amounts in the areas we're not producing ourselves.

Cameron, thanks so much.

Thank you. Thanks, Nathan.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Anita Dushyanth -- excuse me Dushyanth with Zacks Investment Research. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good morning. Congratulations on the progress. I just have a couple of questions also on the COVID in the veterinary space. Just to have a better understanding of how the COVID product would go through the regulatory pad, could you discuss the next steps, and what you're doing there? And also considering this pandemic could subside temporarily and there is a talk that there is a possibility of recurrence maybe couple of times later in the season. How do you sort of expect to rollout this into the market, maybe there is some lumpiness in certain quarters, and then it's kind of the later?

Yes, absolutely. So the next steps, we're doing a lot more clinical work. So the assays as we've seen discriminate extremely well between COVID and normal patients. Now we're going through several samples from the same people to see what the outcome was and how early we could predict that outcomes obviously. And we have some very good clinical partners who have collected samples for this for a lot of different questions, I mean, including that. So well, the next step is to see where the discrimination we found could be useful along the lines that we've talked about. So that's all in process, and they're collecting a lot. And now that we have had very good proof-of-concept data, they're getting keener and keener obviously because as Jason mentioned earlier, it's potentially a massive use to the clinic if we can show what we're looking to show. So, that have been extremely helpful and quick in getting us samples and running. So these are not being run ourselves. We don't run an infectious lab. So we cannot -- we don't have the protection for our staff to be running them. So these are all being run in the hospitals where the COVID is being treated and detected, so we've been shipping them kits. So again, it shows the robustness of what we do, the fact that we can ship kits and they can run them. It's otherwise would be very difficult to have done it ourselves, because we don't run a lab that can run infectious samples. So the next steps to see the value in all the things we're looking at, if we can find something that is useful, we will look to launch a product in the clinic in Europe that will meet a CE mark, which are…

Great, that was helpful. Thank you. And regarding the veterinary space, does the hemangiosarcoma and the lymphoma, are they specific to certain breeds in the canines and are you also looking at the detection in other animals?

Yes. So dog cancers are a little different from human so far as -- because the inter-breeding, I guess particularly you have types of dogs of varying breed so much more prone to specific cancers. So yes, I will go through the breeds, because that's a vet question, but there, I'm very specific; so a lot of cancers in a lot of different breeds of dogs. It's very common to get one particular type of cancer. Often, over half the cancers in a particular breed are one particular cancer because of the inbreeding. So it's something which is actually quite breed specific which is actually very helpful because then you if you know we have cancer at a certain breed, you can have a very good guess at what sort of cancer it is. And that's again issues which the reason we've used vet schools to double this work has obviously been very specific knowledge there, which is not in -- currently in Volition, but very much in Volition veterinary in Texas. So they targeted cancers, which very common in the breeds they see a lot and very common in dogs overall, so that it could be very clinically useful. And that's why they chose the cancers which we looked at. And it is extremely encouraging to see business combination that we did so early in the program. This is really the first shot at it and it was very encouraging. As far as other animals go, anything with DNA has this very similar nucleosomes. So we've had preliminary discussions on a range of other animals, but we thought the Nu.Q vet process. Let's go through dogs, launched the first production and then we look at the other animals. But the most obvious ones are kept obviously. Because obviously, some agricultural is logical uses as well, but that's really a next year story, while we get dogs through the process. And then at the other item was on. But there is -- if we launch successful products in the dog space, there is no reason to think we couldn't do it in a wide range of other animals because they will have the same problems, they will get cancer and they will have the same nucleosomes. So it's something, which has a potential very large values for all those areas, but that's something we'd really start to look to license out even from the vet subsidiary, because there's a lot of work in all of those things, but it would be the same platform. So it could be done very quickly with groups that are very specialist in those other animals and that will all be in the process in the future.

And I presume that you're possibly after launching this by the end of the year you're looking at other cancers in dogs or so?

That's correct. They've collected in Texas, a range of different cancers in different dogs. And so the process forward is not just more assays in these cancers, which obviously would be helpful. It's good. If you can have a panel of two or three, which is even better than these then obviously it's -- each assay doesn't cost a lot or take a lot of blood. So you add more assays if you can get better discrimination. So they're in the process of doing that and also the process of looking at other cancers, and we expect some data on that in the short to medium term. And then do bigger trials and launch products in those as you get them. Yes, it's very important to remember how common cancer risen in dogs and how dire the current situation is in detection of cancer in dogs because as Jason mentioned earlier, it's very tough to ask a broad questions. It is very tough to scan an animal because they move, they won't stay still obviously, and human proteins don't work, you know the most for obvious reasons. So it's an even more dire situation in diagnostics of animals than in humans. So, potentially a very, very big opportunity and one that we're very happy with the partnership we have with Texas A&M, because they really know what they're doing in the vet space, and we're providing the assays and the know-how from the epigenetics side, and they are providing the veterinary knowledge. So it's a very good union.

Yes. Yes, thank you. And lastly, regarding the cancer studies that are going on in human population, so geographically also the population is exposed to different types of cancers. So do you plan to sort of license and partner in different regions.

Yes, absolutely. So, very good question. So we want to become experts in epigenetics and the assays and intellectual property. We're launching our own products because we think we can do that with what we have and the trials we're collecting. But I think that's going to be -- the epigenetic space is going to be far too big for one company to launch products in all those areas. As I mentioned, all the different cancers as a lot of other diseases are showing a lot of big epigenetic component, even COVID which is a virus because of immune response. So I think this can be very, very important in a lot of areas. So the first revenue will come from our own products. And -- but I think we aim to layer in more and more licensing and key to that is keeping control of the key components ourselves which we can sell and also keep control of to really ascertain, what's the volume of sales from the licensees. So, we're building a roll up for our first products but also to be very aggressively licensing. And I think the licensing will become a bigger and bigger and bigger share of what we do as it becomes say widely applicable in a lot of areas as we expect. And so will aim to launch the first few products and then really aggressively license.

Great, thank you. Thank you for that.

Thank you.

That's all from me. And good luck on the releasing data.

Thank you. Hopefully, we can be helpful in a lot of areas. Thank you, Anita.

Thank you. We have no additional questions at this time. So I'd like to pass the floor back over to management for any additional concluding comments.

Thank you very much for coming on the call today. I know it's a difficult time for everybody. And we really appreciate your interest at this very difficult pandemic time. And I really look forward to all the milestones for the rest -- for the next few months and the few quarters. And I look forward to speaking to you on the next earnings call. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Once again, we thank you for your participation. And you may disconnect your lines at this time.