CRISPR Therapeutics AG (CRSP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
September 9, 2025
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Terence Flynn
AnalystsGreat. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. I'm Terence Flynn, Morgan Stanley's U.S. biopharma analyst. Very pleased this morning to be hosting CRISPR Therapeutics. And today from the company, we have Sam Kulkarni, who's the company's CEO and Chairman. Just before we get started, for important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. Sam, thanks so much for joining us today. Really appreciate you taking the time to be here with us.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsI thought first to start, we'd start on strategy. And so obviously, the company has CASGEVY approved with Vertex, and you have 3 additional pipeline areas in cardiovascular, autoimmune and oncology, which I know we'll talk about. But maybe you could just talk about your priorities, what you're focused on for the remainder of this year heading into next year, and then we can dig into some of these topics.
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesYes. Thank you, Terence, for having us. It's always great to be back at this conference. We're sitting in a very interesting place as a company. We're about 10 -- more than 10 years into the journey as a company to take this powerful editing platform called CRISPR and turn it into transformative medicines. And 10 years out, we have one approved drug in CASGEVY, which I'll talk more about, and we're very encouraged by what we're seeing and how it can change the lives of patients with sickle cell disease and also what it means for us as a company. But we're then sitting on a number of pipeline drugs where we're going to have readouts in the next 12 months. As you said, we have different verticals. We have our cardiovascular vertical where we have -- we're going after important targets like ANGPTL3 and Lp(a) with gene editing in the liver, this is in vivo gene editing. And we also have an siRNA targeted towards Factor XI that kind of was a nice bolt-on to that cardiovascular franchise. So that's sort of one pillar that we're quite focused on, and we're building capabilities. The second pillar is in autoimmune and oncology with the same asset, CTX112, it's a CD19 allogeneic CAR-T. Now I know there have been lots of ups and downs in the allogeneic field, but I think we truly have the best-in-class allogeneic CAR-T that acts just like autologous CAR-T. And in autoimmune disease, I think this could have transformative potential given what we're seeing with the data with autologous CAR-T. And if you can recapitulate that or replicate that with allogeneic CAR-T, I think it's that much more scalable across a number of indications. Obviously, there's a lot of news about in vivo CAR-T, and I'll talk about how that plays out. And again, in oncology, the opportunity remains even after having all these auto CAR-Ts and bispecifics, there are still a number of patients with DLBCL that don't get access to any of the advanced medicines. So we continue to pursue our oncology efforts with CTX112. And then finally, I think as we look beyond that, we have other drugs that we're developing in our diabetes field. There's a publication showing you can actually transplant islet cells into a patient and they can be hypoimmune for several months. And I think we have something that could be very competitive in the diabetes space as well. So all in all, I think we're feeling very good about the pipeline, lots of readouts to come over the next 12 months, and we're, from a balance sheet standpoint, really well positioned to prosecute all these assets.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsYes. Okay. Great. That's a good segue to my next question is just obviously, a lot of different programs you walk through right now. You guys do have one of the stronger balance sheets in the SMID-cap biotech space. But are there select opportunities to partner here? Obviously, you took that approach with Vertex. But as you noted, the company was maybe in a different place when you did that deal. So how are you thinking about the opportunity set on partnering business development here on the forward for a lot of these different assets?
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesYes. I mean we definitely have seen a lot more pharma interest in the last year than in the 2 preceding years. I mean, I think in the 2018, '19 time frame, we saw a lot of pharma interest and it kind of ebbed and flowed a little bit. What we've realized -- we come to the realization that if our cardiovascular assets work, when I say work, they're like best-in-class, they have really good data, and they have autoimmune potential. We may not be able to take all these forward ourselves, not from a dollar standpoint, but from a resource and bandwidth standpoint. And so we have seen a lot of partnership interest, particularly in the cardiovascular area lately. You saw a deal this morning for another important target IL-6 in cardiovascular. And that's, by the way, how we ended up with Factor XI. We were pursuing ANGPTL3 and LPA, and we were talking to a lot of the key opinion leaders about what are the targets that we see that's really interesting. And Factor XI kept coming up. And by the way, the other one that came up a lot was IL-6 in ASCVD. Now LPA is a -- could be a huge blockbuster, a number of people with high LPA and it's recognized that it's very high atherogenic risk. And so there's a lot of interest there. There's emerging interest in ANGPTL3, especially with the recent deal that we saw with siRNA and ANGPTL3 as well. This could be a target that could be better than PCSK9 potentially even for LDL reduction. We'll see how the data all turns out when we put it all side by side, but not just triglycerides, but also LDL reduction. And autoimmune, there continues to be interest. There is a little bit of churn in the space as people -- as pharma companies try to figure out what's better. Is the best solution for a patient in allogeneic CAR-T with the condition that we have right now? Is it -- or is it in vivo CAR-T where there's no conditioning, but you have to do repeat dosing. And I think my belief is allogeneic CAR-T is better. And in fact, especially as we get to gentler conditioning, you see much better elimination of these germinal centers in the lymph nodes in the secondary -- if you take secondary lymph node biopsies, et cetera. And I think there's interest there as well. So long story -- long-winded way of saying that we haven't made any decisions on what we would partner right now, but there is -- continues to be a lot of discussion with pharma. And I think over the next 6 months, I would say, as the cards unfold on our data, I think we're better positioned to decide what we want to partner and what we don't want to partner.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsOkay. Great. Do you see most of the inflection around your own data? Or are there external data points, too? I mean, Lp(a) for example, I know Novartis, everyone is kind of waiting for their study or what other external data points? Or do you think any of these companies are kind of looking to as they think about opportunities?
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesYes. I mean I think that is -- the HORIZON readout from Novartis is an extremely important readout for the space in general. I think that -- and it's one of the reasons we're positioning behind that. I think what we want to do is we want to position our gene editing assets ahead of some of these -- or right around some of these big readouts. And HORIZON trial for Lp(a) will be the first trial where in spite -- we know that with all the population studies that low Lp(a) is better. But does the pharmacological intervention or pharmacological reduction of Lp(a), does that lead to better outcomes or not? That's going to be the first readout. And then what is -- what are all the subsets we're going to see? What does it matter if they have high LPA and high LDL versus low LDL. I think I'm very interested in some of the subset analysis. And I think it will most likely read out positive and the subset analysis will be very interesting. We're positioned ahead of that. And I think that can be a very valuable asset for us. And then as I said, there are trials around Factor XI as well with milvexian and the recent acquisition by Novartis of Anthos. I think that trial will read out next year as well. And those will position us as we begin our Phase II study here.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsOkay. Great. Just one last one on the strategy front. You are talking about the policy environment right now. I'd just be curious to get your take on kind of FDA and genetic medicines broadly, where you think the pendulum stands in terms of your kind of FDA interactions? And are they leaning in on genetic medicines? Are they being more cautious as you think about the framework that they're approaching these therapies through?
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesYes. My take is the leadership of the FDA, Dr. Makary, in particular, are leaning in on genetic medicines. How much that's percolated into all the teams on the ground level is it takes some time. I think, for instance, very close to Peter Marks before as well, and we worked on quite a bit on CASGEVY. The previous regime, I would say the FDA were leaning in -- would lean in more on clinical data but had very high requirements around CMC. And I think that's one of the reasons the entire cell and gene therapy space was a little bit at a competitive disadvantage, which is it costs a lot to develop these assets. And now that we have an siRNA asset, it's almost 3x cost to get to human POC with gene editing versus siRNA, even if it's in vivo. And that's just not a good competitive situation as you have all these competing modalities. But I think this regime is very sensitive to that. And I think there's active work ongoing to both change guidelines and regulations to make it such that they can do clinical trials in the U.S. easily, have some of the CMC requirements be phased where you don't have to do it all in the early going. So that's a very good development. How the current regime is positioned relative to data and how they look at approvals, et cetera, it's an unknown. We don't know yet. There haven't been good case studies where they've had to make a decision one way or another. There will be a few coming up actually in cell and gene therapy. So all in all, I'm pretty encouraged, and there's actually a task force looking at everything quite closely on the regulation side. So the next few months will tell us where we may land.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsYes. I know the commissioner had done these like listening tours. Did you get any feedback from any of those or hear anything from the biotech listening tours?
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesThe listening tours were 90% listening and very little feedback. But off the record, there has been feedback. I think just around the complexity of what's been built on the regulations. I think with cell and gene therapy, we have these guidelines and regulations all overlapping, right? So it's unclear how -- one, what's the primary thing to go by is the guideline or the regulations. And the second is oftentimes with these CBER drugs, too, the therapeutic area teams have come in at a certain point of the drug to help. And so who's primary? Is CBER still primary? Or is it the division of hematology, for instance, that actually makes the decision. I think some of those things are being sorted out, and I would say they're getting decluttered to a certain extent.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsOkay. Great. Maybe we'll move over to CASGEVY. Can you kind of give us an update on the launch? I mean, I think you and Vertex posted sales in the second quarter of about $30 million. You've reached your target of activating 75 sites. And I think about 250 patients have been referred into those sites. And so maybe just talk us through some of the dynamics that brought you there, but also on the forward, how are you thinking about the outlook? I'd say back half is pretty well understood. But as we think about '26, maybe you could just give us some of the puts and takes that we need to consider as we think about the run rate.
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesYes. I mean for those who are not familiar with CASGEVY, CASGEVY is an autologous cell therapy product. We're taking the patient cells. It takes a 2- or 3-day collection cycle to take the cells and send it to our manufacturing facility, manufacture it, send it back and then the patient has to undergo chemoablation and then they basically get the cells and then hopefully, it's a cure for life. I think the sales cycle or the way the commercialization model works is much more akin to medical devices than it is a traditional pharma launch. You're selling a mini procedure in a way. And the same thing happened as in medical devices, let's say, you're getting a hip implant or something else. You kind of get -- you see the doctor, you get measured for it, things are ordered, then you schedule surgery and then you get the surgery. It used to be a lot longer cycle, will get shorter and shorter over time as the centers get experienced. But I'm very encouraged by the fact that we have over 75 ATCs or authorized treatment centers globally, 10 countries or 10 jurisdictions where CASGEVY is approved, very strong payer reimbursement. And if you look at the trajectory of patient initiations or referrals, that's already starting to inflect. And then the question is how long before it starts -- the cell collections start inflecting and how long before the revenues start inflecting. So there's like a 3-part funnel with CASGEVY revenues. One is how many patients are coming in. And it's very clear to me that the demand equation is not the problem. There's a lot of demand from patients. And the word of mouth and everything else that's happening in that population is pretty strong. There's like WeChat groups and WhatsApp groups and all that kind of stuff. Then the question is there's -- it's taking a little time in cell collections. And the reason for that is a lot of patients are opting to do exchange transfusions where they get transfusions for a couple of cycles before they go in and schedule a collection. Some patients are choosing to do fertility preservation ahead of doing the cell collection. And then you get to the cell collections. And after the cell collection, the manufacturing itself is relatively fast. Some patients may require more than one cell collection, but even if it after it's manufactured, there is definitely a patient preference of when they want to get dosed because they have to be in the hospital for 3 weeks or so. And some -- a lot of patients in the U.S. don't want to get dosed in the summer. Patients ex U.S., may want to get dosed in the summer because there's nothing else they can do during that time. So there's definitely some interesting dynamics in terms of how this all goes. But if you look at the secular growth in patient initiations, you're going to see compounded growth for a long time to come, and that gives me a lot of confidence.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsAnd when you look at the referrals into the sites, is it pretty equally spread out? Or do you have kind of like almost like a concentration among kind of the big sites that were involved in the trials? Or is it pretty evenly spread across these?
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesThere's definitely different sites with different productivity. I think if you look at the Yescarta sales at the end of the day, the sites got to a point where they were doing 8 to 10 a month, right, once they got fully used to doing an autologous product. And I think you might see the same increase in productivity over time with the sites. So not only do you have more sites, you're going to have more productive sites. And that's just going to lead to greater and greater throughput of cell collections, and that's the key to dosing patients. There's really not much falloff once your patients get their cells collected to actual revenues, although it takes a little bit of time. So I think that -- those are all very -- those are leading indicators, and they're very positive looking ahead into the next couple of years.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsYes. And where is most of the falloff? Is it from the referral to the cell collection? Or is it from cell collection to infusion? Like meaning which step would a person decide like, okay, I'm going down this path, but then they -- for whatever reason, they make a decision not to. Does it happen upstream? Or does it happen more downstream if you look at it on a percentage basis?
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesYes. Once you get cells collected, I think very little fall off. I think from referral to collections, also, there's been no falloff because we have a pretty strict criteria for what we call initiation or referral. I think by the time they've come into sort of gone through the referral and everything else, they generally have done prior authorization and already get scheduled for collection. So I would say that, that funnel is pretty tight in terms of the correlation between referrals and ultimately revenues.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsOkay. And just 2 more here before we go to the pipeline. The CASGEVY JV profitability, just remind us kind of how you guys have framed that, where you are in that ramp? And then what that means for your balance sheet, I guess?
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesYes. I mean I think our goal as a company is to be breakeven, if not profitable by 2028. And it's something that we've said in the past, too. I think we feel like that's a real possibility. In terms of near-term profitability on CASGEVY, we're not commenting on that. Vertex may do some guidance early next year. But in general, I think with the franchise, one of the things we also realize is that the costs do go down in some areas beyond a certain point, especially as we finish up clinical trials. We have clinical trials ongoing right now for a pediatric population. There's long-term follow-up, et cetera, but some of those costs will start coming down as well. So the true cost of commercialization or the classical SG&A is not as high as people think it is. COGS obviously are higher than a typical pharma launch. But all in all, I think we're happy with how the profile is developing.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsOkay. Do you anticipate an improvement in cost of goods over time as you get more throughput? Or is COGS more of like steady state at this point?
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesNo, absolutely. I think we're -- Vertex is now leading the charge to continue to improve both cost of goods from a cost perspective, but also just making it more seamless, faster manufacturing, faster throughput in a way. So lots of efforts ongoing. We continue to invest. We're all very bullish.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsAnd you mentioned in vivo approaches broadly in the beginning in terms of some of your pipeline opportunities. We do occasionally get questions on in vivo editing approaches for sickle cell beta sale. Just maybe update us kind of your thoughts on how far away those are, if there's any prospects that those could ultimately reach the market.
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesYes. Eventually, I mean, I think the way we see the life cycle, obviously, Vertex and us are very committed to the space. So we're all in, we're doing all approaches. The next step might be gentle conditioning. I think there are a lot of agents out there that have shown tremendous progress on gentler conditioning. These are ADCs where you can actually selectively ablate the long-term hematopoietic stem cells and not ablate the neutrophils, et cetera. So you don't need a much longer hospital stay, it's possibly a 3-, 4-day hospital stay to get these cells transplanted, the side effects of potential busulfan, et cetera. So that might happen in the next 4 years. And I think in vivo HSC editing could be 8 years by the time it's on the market. While I'm very encouraged by the fact that we can actually edit in vivo now in mice and NHPs, one of the things that's really important is you actually want to have a very selective profile. You want to edit only the hematopoietic stem cells and not other cells because for a disease like sickle cell, the bar will be high in terms of off-tissue editing. And I think that work, we're spending a lot of time thinking about that and there are ways to do it. It will just take some time to move through clinical trials.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsYes. Okay. Great. Maybe we'll pivot to the pipeline now. We'll go through cardiovascular first. We were talking a little bit about Lp(a) at the beginning. Maybe, I guess the one update from your program is your data now is coming first half of '26. So maybe just talk to us about what drove that? And then as you look at that Novartis data that's coming out, what are you going to be most focused on there beyond just obviously the kind of primary endpoint? Are there any other nuances as you think about, okay, should we pull the trigger to advance our program further because of XYZ, which we saw from the data?
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesYes. I mean I think it made sense for us to wait for the HORIZON data. I think the key things we're looking -- first of all, is LP(a), pharmacological reduction of LPAs that result in better outcomes, right? And one of the things that we're looking for from the data -- that data set would be how does the level of baseline level of LP(a) correlate with improvement in outcomes. I don't know what the powering is going to be as you look at people with, let's say, greater than 200 nanomolar per liter Lp(a) versus greater than that or something like that, right? So there's different cutoffs that we want to look at. And that's going to be important. The second is how does -- how do other markers correlate? Like, for instance, if you have high LDL and high LP(a), is that far worse than high LP(a) alone, for instance, and low LDL or normal LDL. And I think those 2 are really important markers I'm looking for. Other than that, I think there'll be a lot to learn in terms of level of reduction needed. Everybody talks about reduction in terms of percentage terms, right? Even Lilly presented their data, and they basically were saying that they're getting 90-plus percent reduction. But it all depends on baseline. I think what is the target you want to get to. With the LDL world, it's very straightforward, just get it down as much as possible. In the LPA world, that paradigm has not been set. And I think at the recent ESC conference, there was a lot of discussion about what is the target on LP(a) reduction. And I think there was always a school of thought that Europeans had a different view versus the U.S. -- American cardiologists, and I think they arrived somewhere in between as to what the ideal target is for LP(a) reduction. So those are all things we'll be watching for ahead of presenting our own data on Phase I.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsYes. And what about -- this is obviously a secondary prevention trial. I know the companies have talked about high-level primary prevention studies as well. How do you think about translatability from here to primary? Because when we talk to the KOLs, they'll tell you that primary is the bigger commercial opportunity, and that's really where you need to get to. So how much read-through is there in your view from this study to primary?
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesTremendous readthrough. Ultimately, as humans, I think we are going to be in a different world where we're going to see risk factors and change of risk factors early on in life. We had this case of a 22-year-old kid who came -- whose LPA levels were like 600 nanomole per liter. That kid's father, uncles all had a heart attack in their 40s. You know this kid is going to have an MI event or some MACE event early in life. And it's genetic. You know that the levels are high. So why would you not reduce the levels of LP(a). And I think that's one example. But the -- and by the way, the administration is super interested in this. I actually did a fireside chat just like this with Dr. Oz, and he's highly interested in LPA. And he's like these are -- as you think about national priority vouchers and things like that, these are national priorities in their mind, targets like LPA, things that are a huge burden to society in terms of not just cost of the health care system, but productivity, et cetera. So then there's -- you take something like Alzheimer's. If you're born with 2 copies of APOE4, if I knew I took over APOE4, I've been doing everything I can to say, how do I prevent this risk of Alzheimer's. You know you're going to get it. It's just a matter of when. So I think we're going to get to a world where people are starting to do these longevity genetic tests now, and you can do these 15 tests and tells you what your longevity score is, for instance. And LPA, Alzheimer's, et cetera, is on there. And you're going to want to change these early on. So the world is going to move towards primary prevention. I don't know what the regulatory framework required would be to get to that point. We just want to make sure -- that's why I think this world is going to change. We want to be -- this is going to be a secular growth space in gene editing. We want to be around to see all those major inflections. But I think LPA will be one of the first test cases for primary prevention.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsAnd the National Priority Review voucher, is that your speculation? Or do you think Dr. Oz is -- there's already companies that are talking to them about that for Lp (a)...
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesWell, Lp (a) is one example, but I know there are a lot of companies talking to the regulators to see what the National Priority Voucher really means because there are elements of national competitiveness in there, what the target means for the American population. And I think it's not 100% clearly defined what they meant. But I think these types of targets do make sense from what we're hearing, which is reducing overall cost of health care, right, is a national priority. American competitiveness, getting ahead on certain medicines ahead of other countries, and obviously, all the unmet need for patients, et cetera. Not to say that Lp (a), we haven't heard anything directly on Lp (a), but those kinds of things seem to fit with what we've heard.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsOkay. Great. Maybe before we get to ANGPTL3, I wanted to go to your Factor XI because again, I think this is a newer program for you. But maybe just from a strategic side, first talk to us about the decision to go into RNAi or siRNA here with this given your platform in kind of CRISPR and how this aligns with that platform?
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesYes, absolutely. As I said, the origins of looking at Factor XI was we were quite enthusiastic about Lp(a) and ANGPTL3. We were having a lot of discussions with different key opinion leaders. And we always have -- when [indiscernible] dinner with them, we'd ask them what else are you interested in? What else is interesting in the target space? And Factor XI came up a lot. People said, look, there hasn't been much innovation in the clotting anticlotting space for a long time. It's similar to what happened in LDL. You had this dead period of like a decade where not much innovation happened after these big CTEP trials that failed. Everybody got out of it. And then there was like this -- now there's a boom in terms of lipid management happening right now from an innovation standpoint. The same thing that happened in the anticlotting space. And the other one that came up was hypertension. There's all of a sudden new renewed excitement in the hypertension space that after sort of a decade where there wasn't much happening. And so we looked at Factor XI and said, this is not something on gene edit, right? They want to permanently reduce Factor XI. But the holy grail of preventing clots and everything else is you want to prevent clotting, but you want to not have bleeds because those -- you could be on Factor Xa after surgery and then you like hit something in the shower and you have a nose bleed or something like that, and you could literally end up in -- you could die or you end up in the ER because it's uncontrolled bleeding, right? And these bleeding events happen, and some of these are external bleeding events. Others are internal bleeding events that could cause other complications. And so Factor XI is very interesting. You get APTT levels above 2 on a sustained manner with this siRNA. And we found this siRNA, this is a former Arrowhead CSO who founded this company with sort of the next-generation backbone modifications and siRNA that lead to durable 6-month effect. And a lot of the Arrowhead drugs right now are on a 3-month dosing schedule. I'm sure they're working on longer term, but the siRNAs were moving towards potentially even once a year. It's that durable. It's all the modifications that are being made. And so if we have a -- and what we have -- we got with this deal from Sirius is a Phase II-ready asset. The Phase Is -- 2 Phase Is have been completed. The Phase II is starting now in a TKA study at total knee arthroscopy, where we're comparing with the low molecular weight heparin to see if you can prevent clotting post surgery with one injection that's done presurgery, and you don't have to worry about it for 6 months. And what are the bleeding rates associated with that, right? And so that's really -- this study is a key sort of leveler. It will tell you where you stand versus milvexian, asundexian or other siRNA or ASOs that are in the space or antibodies, which we have from both Novartis and Regeneron now. All in all, I expect excitement to only keep going up with this target.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsYes. What -- I mean, how do you think about that long half-life because on one hand, it's good from an adherence perspective. But on the other hand, if there is some issue with bleeding, like how do you think about that as the trade-off if you do need to like, for example, like my father is on warfarin, for example, had a surgery, he had to go and he had to come off of the warfarin. So how do you think about that trade-off?
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesWell, that's the beauty of siRNA. You can just supplement with factor or other ways, too. And that just reverses it, right? With antibodies, it's actually very hard to reverse it, if you have, with the Anthos and the Regeneron antibodies, this once-a-month dosing. But if you have a complication, I don't know what their strategy is going to be, but it's actually hard to reverse it because even if you add factor, it still binds to it. With siRNA, you don't have that complication. So it is actually a beautiful setup, long-acting, but has reversibility. And I think once in 6 months is probably durable enough. I don't think you need to get to once a year in this setting. In fact, you probably don't want to because you want to see your physician every 6 months.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsYes. What -- and then I guess the other question that we get a lot more so for the oral Factor XI is read-through from the various programs to each other. And so as you think about, I think Bayer has guided to seeing some data for their program, asundexian later this year in secondary stroke prevention. Again, similar to the Novartis question I asked you earlier on Lp(a), like what are you looking for in that data set to maybe give you confidence in your program or inform trial design? Because TKR is always, like you said, like kind of proof of concept, very quick readout, easy, but you typically do it versus Lovenox or something. But for these bigger Afib ACS, SSP, I think there's still a question about like what people want to see from these bigger studies. So what are you focused on?
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesWell, I think 2 factors of asundexian, which is one is there's a lot of controversy about they had their own proprietary assay for asundexian, how much target engagement were they getting, right? And I think when you're going after -- with the small molecules, you're going after the activated Factor XI, so not Factor XI itself. And so there's a notion that by the time the small molecule acts, you already have an activated Factor XI that started to cascade through Factor Xa. And so with the siRNA -- advantage of siRNA is you're actually preventing Factor XI from even being formed, so you don't have Factor XIa. So you may get a very different target engagement with Factor XI siRNA versus the small molecules. And I think the current thinking in the field is that milvexian may be a stronger binder than asundexian. So milvexian readout is going to be very important. But that said, I think one of the things that these big pharmas were trying to do is directly go up against the Factor Xa inhibitors, which are amazing drugs, right? I mean our goal is not necessarily to beat them and show that Factor XI is better than Factor Xa drugs in all these indications. But there is a significant population of people that are ineligible for DOACs. They just can't take DOACs for various reasons. And in all those patient populations, Factor XI is a beautiful solution. And I think there's different reasons for why they're ineligible, but that's one setting. The second setting is, I think in cancer-associated VTEs and sort of venous thromboembolism indications, definitely, this is the only solution that actually makes sense versus DOACs. And then there are patients that have multiple complications like warfarin, like you mentioned with your father. There are actually people who are -- who genetically can't take warfarin, for instance. It's a very complicated space. And patient by patient, depending on what other drugs they're on, this could be a very low burden drug they can add on to everything else they're taking.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsGreat. Maybe just -- I think we've got 1 minute left. So just on any last catalyst you want to highlight quickly of the other programs that we should pay attention to before you end?
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesYes. I mean I think CTX112 and allogeneic CAR-T, this is the only allogeneic CAR-T that has shown expansion levels of -- to show up to 50,000 copies per microgram. That's sort of the traditional currency which you measure cell expansion. So autologous CAR-Ts, Yescarta and Breyanzi and others, they get to that 50,000 level copies per microgram and some slightly less, some slightly more. All the other allogeneic cell therapies, whether it's NK cells or T cells have gone to about 5,000 copies per microgram. And CTX112 with the edits that we've made is the only one that gets to autologous-like expansion without the same side effects of CRS or ICANS. It's -- actually, it's a really great asset. We're developing in autoimmune diseases. And all the data from Georg Schett indicate that you could get 99% ablation of B cells, but it's the last mile that counts. You want the last mile ablation in the germinal centers that are formed by these B cells. And if you don't do that, the disease is going to come back. And I think that we have confidence that our asset could get to that 100% reduction, which will be very powerful in autoimmune disease.
Terence Flynn
AnalystsGreat. Well, thank you so much, Sam. Really pleasure and best of luck.
Samarth Kulkarni
ExecutivesAll right. Thank you very much.
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