iBio, Inc. (IBIO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the iBio conference call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Stephen Kilmer, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Let me start by pointing out that this conference call will include forward-looking statements regarding iBio and its business. Such statements are based on the current expectations of management. The forward-looking events and circumstances discussed on this conference call may not occur by certain specified dates or at all, and they could differ materially as a result of known and unknown risk factors and uncertainties affecting the company. Although iBio has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements. There may be other factors that cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended. No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed. Except as required by applicable securities laws, forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and iBio undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by law. On the call today representing the company are Dr. Martin Brenner, iBio's Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer; and Felipe Duran, the company's Chief Financial Officer. With that said, I'll now turn the call over to Martin.

Thank you, Steve. Good morning, and welcome, everyone. My name is Martin Brenner, I am the Chief Executive and Chief Scientific Officer of iBio. With me today are Felipe Duran, iBio's Chief Financial Officer; and Marc Banjak, iBio's General Counsel. We would love to get right into the presentation at this point and share some recent developments. iBio has a patented AI-based technology platform, allowing us to tackle several of today's key challenges in antibody discovery and drug development. To date, we have used our technology platform to build an immuno-oncology and immunology preclinical pipeline and successfully completed the sale of one of our pipeline assets just a few weeks back. Our goal for the future is to expand the scope of our preclinical pipeline by using the fast-growing metabolic disease market as fuel for our AI antibody engine. iBio's infancy was a CDMO with a plant-based protein expression system. In September 2022, after completing the asset acquisition of our AI antibody engine from RubrYc Therapeutics, Felipe Duran and I led the company transformation of iBio into a machine learning-enabled antibody discovery company. Today, we have a tremendous multilayer machine learning technology stack to discover and develop antibodies, a pipeline of 7 preclinical immuno-oncology programs and 5 ongoing R&D collaborations. Among those 5 collaborations is Eli Lilly, one of the top players in the antibody space trusting our technology platform can discover antibodies for hard-to-drug targets. Our technology stack aims to solve several key challenges the industry is currently facing in antibody discovery and drug development. First, we can unlock novel biology by specifically steering antibodies against, so far, undruggable targets with the goal of first-in-class antibodies; or pursue novel interesting regions in already well-validated targets, with the aim of best-in-class antibodies. Secondly, we've paired StableHu, a machine learning algorithm with advanced mammalian display technology, in order to significantly enhance the developability of our leads, enabling us to complete the lead optimization phase in under 4 weeks, which is much faster than the industry standard of 4 to 8 months. ShieldTX is potentially a game changer in creating smart antibodies. Imagine each antibody wearing a mask, keeping it inactive and only when reaching the diseased tissue, the mask comes off, thereby precisely activating the antibody. This precision targeting minimizes the impact on healthy tissue. The potential benefits of the mask are [ maximum ] level. It broadens the therapeutic window leading to more effective and safe treatments, enables the use of drug combinations that are thought to be too toxic and opens the door to pursue undruggable targets due to safety concern. Such benefits puts us in a core position to create best-in-class or first-in-class antibodies. We have successfully translated our technology platform capabilities into a potentially best-in-class immuno-oncology and immunology preclinical pipeline with our most advanced program, IBI-101, being halfway through the IND-enabling phase. The recent sale of our PD-1 agonist program to Otsuka provides additional support for the capabilities of our technology platform. The 5 partnerships signed within the year have the potential of creating significant value and nondilutive funding for iBio. Among our partners are renowned scientific organizations and top-tier companies like the NIH and Eli Lilly, who trust our technology to create antibodies against hard-to-drug targets. It is fair to ask why we are adding metabolic diseases to our strategic goals. This is not an impulsive decision. The acquisition of RubrYc's assets brought with it an immuno-oncology pipeline steering us towards oncology initially, and we've made significant strides there. I have spent 15 years at Eli Lilly, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Merck, doing research in metabolic diseases, including working on several of Eli Lilly's incretin molecules. The collaboration with AstralBio is the catalyst to dive into this area, sparking an expansion of our preclinical pipeline. We early on recognized the versatility of our platform and its applicability across a wide spectrum of indications, especially for the complexities of developing drugs in metabolic diseases. AstralBio brings a robust track record of success, significant biologics experience and deep insights into metabolic diseases, all backed by strong clinical CMC and regulatory expertise. We strongly believe combining our technology with AstralBio's expertise allows us to rapidly build a best-in-class metabolic disease portfolio. The AstralBio team has had multiple successful exits and has a proven track record of bringing molecules into the clinic. With Patrick's vision and his team's expertise, we feel we are adding rocket fuel to our machine learning engine. We have seen the obesity market turning red hot with the approvals of Mounjaro, Wegovy and Ozempic. This market has a potential to grow to $150 billion in sales by 2023. While most companies are focusing on the current class of molecules, we see the need for better tolerated therapies and novel targets, counteracting some of the known additional effects of the incretin class, like loss of lean mass. Most notably, developing drugs with lower dosing frequency and an extended half-life might lead to increased compliance and efficacy, both important to patients and their outcomes. Our collaboration with AstralBio initially focuses on 4 targets in the metabolic field with the goal of delivering the first preclinical candidate before the end of 2024. Our focus will be on targets with validated biology in order to use our optimization technology to steer lead molecules towards better potency, selectivity and lower frequency of dosing. Additionally, we are opportunistically licensing late-stage preclinical metabolic assets to accelerate the time line to clinical development. We will also take a careful look at bispecific antibody formats to rationally design combination products. At this point, I will hand the presentation over to iBio's Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Felipe Duran. Felipe, the presentation is yours.

Thank you, Martin. We will continue to advance our immuno-oncology preclinical assets, while simultaneously seek out licensing opportunities to assist with getting such apps into the clinic and to the patients. We believe our best-in-class or first-in-class immuno-oncology preclinical pipeline of antibodies are ideal candidates for potential partners. There has been a significant number of transactions over the last 5 years, providing promising opportunities for our immuno-oncology preclinical pipeline. With the recent sale of our PD-1 agonist to Otsuka, our existing partnerships including AstralBio, we are confident we will continue to partner with other top-tier companies utilizing our immuno-oncology portfolio and bring nondilutive capital into the organization. In summary, we continue to execute our internal strategic goals laid out since January 2023, and look forward to providing additional updates as they arise. Thank you. With that, Martin, I will hand it back to you.

Thank you, Felipe. And I will hand the presentation back to Stephen Kilmer, Investor Relations, iBio.

Thanks, Martin. Thank you again, everyone, for joining us today. This concludes the call. Operator, you can go ahead and disconnect.