Akari Therapeutics, Plc (AKTX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome back, and thank you for joining us for another virtual investor, What This Means segment. My name is Jenene Thomas. I am CEO of JTC IR, and I will be the moderator for today's segment. So today, we are excited to welcome Akari Therapeutics to our virtual investor platform, and I am very pleased to be joined by Abizer Gaslightwala. He is Director, President and CEO of Akari Therapeutics. Welcome Abizer.

Thank you for having me here today.

Before we get started, I just want to inform our audience that Akari Therapeutics is listed on NASDAQ and trades under the ticker AKTX. And during today's discussion, the company will be making forward-looking statements. I encourage everyone to view the company's website at akaritx.com or the SEC's website for their latest filings and information.

Okay. Abizer, we're going to dive right in. So you just received a patent in India for PH1 and related analogs. Why is India strategically important to your IP plan?

Well, great question. And I want to maybe address that in terms of how we think about our spliceosome inhibitor and our antibody ADCs that we want to make moving forward. In particular, this spliceosome inhibitor, we think, has a lot of potential, not only for a Trop2 ADC, which is our lead, but also many other ADCs. And this -- having this payload intellectual property granted in India, is a huge benefit for us as we think about the multiple options of ADCs we can build. And in particular, India, if you look at the status and data on cancer epidemiology, is now the #2 country for mortality due to cancer deaths. So as we think about the global opportunity for our ADC and our spliceosome payload inhibitor PH1, we're excited to have a country like India that have intellectual property as we think about the opportunity, not just for one ADC but for many moving forward.

So Abizer, PH1 is a novel spliceosome inhibitor. Can you walk us through what makes this payload unique compared to traditional ADC payloads like Topoisomerase or tubulin inhibitors.

Sure. Great question. What makes a spliceosome inhibitor unique? Well, in particular, what we think it provides a one-two punch to kill cancer, unlike other kind of payloads you just mentioned in terms of their modes of action. So first and foremost, the spliceosome inhibitor hits the spliceosome machinery in the cell and particularly really important in cancer cells because they need these spliceosome inhibitors to help make proteins that the cancer cells need to grow and divide and continue to proliferate. So we stopped the spliceosome inhibitor from working. That's the #1 punch. So you actually kill the cell because you're starving it from the proteins that needs to survive. But importantly, the second punch of this piece is even more important. It actually helps create what we call these neoantigens or markers to activate the immune system. And so in addition to killing the cell, the spliceosome inhibitor causes the cell to make these neoantigens, which are foreign and the body starts to recognize these immune system to actually then activate the immune system to kill not only this cancer cell but many other cancer cells throughout the body to get a more profound effect. So this one-two punch is unique to our spliceosome inhibitor.

And finally, as we know, this is What This Means segment. So how does the patent issuance in India and other jurisdictions around the world enhance Akari's global [ IPSC ]? And what does this mean for potential partnering or licensing opportunities?

Yes. So as I mentioned earlier, again, having the IP for this payload in a market like India, which again is now the #2 market in the world for cancer mortality and will continue to grow. This is an important commercial market potential opportunity. And as we think about our own development or partnering, we want to maximize the opportunity and value for those partners or ourselves as well. So to have the intellectual property in a key market like this where cancer continues to be a growing unmet need is really critical to unlocking the future value of our payload and our antibody drug conjugates.

So with that, this concludes the virtual investor, What This Mean segment featuring Akari Therapeutics, and I'd like to thank Abizer for joining us today. As a reminder, Akari Therapeutics trades on NASDAQ under the ticker AKTX. And if you like what you saw today, I encourage you to visit akaritx.com for more information on the company and to sign up to follow the company to receive their alerts as well as follow their social channels to stay current on the latest information. And you can also visit virtualinvestorco.com for the latest segments and events calendar. I want to thank everyone for joining and wishing everyone a great rest of your day.