Aptorum Group Limited (APM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Sure. So for those who don't know what non-small cell lung cancer, it's a form of a subset of lung cancer, and usually, non-small cell lung cancer is considered to be a highly unmet and highly fatal disease. And the reason for the various mutations is that cancers constantly mutate themselves, especially when it's being stimulated by therapeutic agents. So as we apply more chemotherapy or other types of treatment, typically, cancer cells are able to respond and able to evolve and develop resistance to these chemical agents as a result. So as a result, many non-small cell lung cancer patients, for example, will go through, over a couple of years, different forms of mutations, different generations of mutations of the lung cancer cells, and you'll be basically reaching towards the end of its life where the non-small cell lung cancer cells itself are resistant to basically all the available current therapeutics in the market. So as a result, the patients' mortality is extremely high if the cancer cells are able to mutate to that latest generation. So for example, as you can see in some of our presentations on our website, one of the typical mutations is called EGFR. EGFR mutation is currently now upcoming to what we call a fourth-generation mutation, which is currently a highly unmet mutation class of non-small cell lung cancer and typically entail a very high mortality rate for patients. And these are the areas where Aptorum is very excited to now announce our own drug design and drug discovery process to target these what we call highly unmet latest generation mutation of these cancer types. And we have 2 core focuses and one of them is a what we call next-generation inhibitor, which is an approach towards targeting the mutation as well as supplement it and basically increase in efficacy potentially by combination with protein degradation approach to supplement the efficacy of the next generation inhibitors. So you see that on our website, there are currently 2 focuses of Aptorum, targeting a next-generation inhibitor, potentially in combination with protein degradation approach to target these types of mutations including EGFR mutations and ALK mutations in their final -- latest generation of mutations as our next generation of clinical drugs available for these diseases.

Hey, Darren, let's go back to that pipeline. Earlier, you mentioned RPIDD. That's R-P-I-D-D, which stands for rapid pathogen diagnostics liquid biopsy technology. Recently, you announced -- Aptorum announced that Aptorum Innovations Holding Limited, your subsidiary company, had commenced the clinical validation of this molecular-based technology for the diagnosis of pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites. Please describe the validation and its possible implications.

Sure. For those who don't know about our RPIDD technology, it's basically our next generation liquid biopsy based approach towards infectious disease diagnostics. And for those who don't know what liquid biopsy is, we're basically using a small blood sample to perform genetic sequencing analysis on what we call an untargeted, unbiased basis towards identifying the type of infectious disease that are currently affecting the patient's body, which is evident through the genetic materials inside the blood sample itself. It's a very exciting project. We believe that it has a major impact to disrupt the first-line diagnostics technology that are currently available in the market right now, which is typically blood culture, which people are fully aware that they are actually very often inaccurate, ineffective, and takes a long duration to generate the results as well, because it basically involves growing the cells in a laboratory space. So we believe that actually RPIDD is a very exciting technology that could potentially replace this first line of diagnostics that are currently used in the market, and also is able to pick up a much more deep and complete data range of the potential infectious disease. And this includes both DNA, RNA, virus, bacteria and no infection inside the blood based on the genetic materials available through the blood sample.

Darren, to briefly review, you've given us a very exciting pipeline. You've given us a product that you're already commercializing. Now in summary, let's wrap it all up into an essential value proposition. Why should investors take an interest in Aptorum Group right now?

I think this year is a very exciting year for Aptorum. As I said, we are already in a clinical stage of biopharmaceutical company. We have multiple shots on target, including our ALS-4 MRSA molecule program, which is about to start the Phase II clinical trials, as we said, subject to an IND clearance, as well as our SACT-1 also looking to embark on to what we call Phase Ib/IIa human clinical trials for initial readout of its efficacy in the United States, also subject to the IND clearance. So all of this is going to happen on this side of the year, in 2023, as well as our validation process in our RPIDD technology, our human clinical validation, which is ongoing at the moment, where we are yet to announce the very exciting results of this particular technology in the later part of this year once we get it ready to start the pre-commercialization stage over the course of 2023. And on top of that, we have our women's health menopause supplement, which are currently in commercialization stage and shortly will be available for distribution in major countries, including Europe and Asia, as well as hopefully later this year in the United States as well. So hopefully, we'll be able to bring these very exciting products into their respective clinical stage very, very shortly, hopefully, subject to our ongoing preclinical work of those products.

It's a great story, Darren. Thank you for sharing it with us today.

Thank you. It's nice to be here.