Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (NTLA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning and welcome to Intellia Therapeutics Corporate Update Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised, this conference call is being recorded at the company's request. I will now turn the conference over to Lina Li, Director of Investor Relations at Intellia. Please proceed.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Intellia's corporate update call to discuss the establishment of a new universal CAR-T company. Earlier this morning, Intellia issued a joint press release with Blackstone Life Sciences and Cellex Cell Professionals detailing the terms of the venture. This release can be found on the Investors & Media section of Intellia's website at intelliatx.com. As a reminder, this call is being broadcast live and a replay will also be archived on the company's website. Joining me on the call today are Dr. John Leonard, Chief Executive Officer; Dr. David Lebwohl, Chief Medical Officer; Dr. Laura Sepp-Lorenzino, Chief Scientific Officer; and Glenn Goddard, Chief Financial Officer. For today's call, John will outline the strategic rationale and terms of this exciting new initiative. We will then open the call for Q&A. At this time, I would like to take a minute to remind listeners that during this call, we may make certain forward-looking statements and ask that you refer to our SEC filings available at sec.gov for a discussion of potential risks and uncertainties. All information presented on this call is current as of today, and Intellia undertakes no duty to update this information unless required by law. With that, let me turn the call over to our CEO. John?

Thank you, Lina, and welcome, everyone. We are very excited to review today's announcement on the formation of a universal CAR-T company in partnership with Cellex Cell Professionals and Blackstone Life Sciences. This new company extends the reach of our leading cell-engineering platform. We also entered into an agreement with Cellex, which we expect to help us accelerate the development of our wholly owned ex vivo pipeline. Before we dive in, as a reminder, Intellia is designing engineered cells to treat a range of immuno-oncology and autoimmune diseases. At the core of our strategy, we are pursuing a T cell receptor or TCR-based approach. TCRs recognize the most expansive set of tumor targets, including both surface and intracellular antigens. Separately, CAR-Ts have demonstrated clinical utility for a limited range of malignancies. With the formation of the new company, we aim to extend the reach of CARs to targets not currently addressable by standard CAR-T technology. Last year, we entered into a research collaboration and license agreement with GEMoaB, a subsidiary of Cellex, to conduct joint research combining GEMoaB's universal CAR-T technology with our proprietary CRISPR-based ex vivo genome-editing platform. Our goal was to discover and develop next-generation cellular immunotherapies for hard-to-treat cancers and inflammatory diseases. Through our collaboration, we came to the realization that consolidating our technologies would allow us to more quickly and efficiently bring allogeneic universal CAR-T products to patients. For this reason, we are forming a new company with a $250 million financing commitment from Blackstone Life Sciences that will lead the development of autologous and allogeneic universal CAR-T cell therapies alongside substantial added benefits to Intellia through expanded manufacturing capabilities for wholly owned programs. Our CRISPR-based platform supports a full spectrum strategy, which deploys differentiated solutions for in vivo and ex vivo therapeutic applications. Across both applications, the modularity of our approach yields vast opportunity to Intellia well beyond what we could reasonably do on our own, and therefore, confers tremendous optionality in terms of how best to translate these capabilities into programs we can carry forward. Collaborations like this one are a key instrument of our broader corporate strategy, enabling us to more quickly realize the full scope and potential of our technology for patients. With today's announcement, we achieved 2 key goals: one, to realize significant value by combining our CRISPR engineering expertise and differentiated allogeneic technology with UniCAR and RevCAR technologies through the formation of a new company; and two, to strengthen Intellia's investment in core areas of strategic focus, including allogeneic cell therapies and manufacturing capabilities through a preferred partnership between Intellia and Cellex, which will be important to the future of our ex vivo work, supplementing existing development efforts across our in vivo and ex vivo pipeline. Overall, we believe this agreement will create significant lasting value for Intellia, driving the rapid expansion of our ex vivo portfolio and positioning us well for bringing forward differentiated immuno-oncology and autoimmune therapies. Let me begin by walking through the structure of this arrangement and what each party brings to best position the new company from Day 1. Intellia will contribute our genome editing expertise, including a license to our allogeneic cell engineering platform limited to its use with the UniCAR and RevCAR platforms. We plan to share more about our allogeneic solution later this year, which we believe is differentiated from other approaches in the clinic that typically address only graft-versus-host rejection. We are focused on creating allogeneic cells that we believe will not only avoid graft-versus-host disease, but also persist by avoiding elimination by host T cells and NK cells. This approach should avoid the aggressive lymphodepletion and the induced profound immunodeficiency currently employed to address the significant challenge in adoptive cell therapy. The new company will absorb GEMoaB as a subsidiary and inherit its UniCAR and RevCAR platforms and clinical-stage pipeline. For listeners who may not be familiar with the technology, GEMoaB's platform opens up a variety of therapeutic opportunities in settings where the target is a shared antigen expressed on tumor and normal tissue. This approach, which includes the key feature of a switchable mechanism, contemplates a single infusion of the universal T cell component. Notably, this may be activated and reactivated numerous times by a periodic infusion of a targeting module. As a result, we're able to modulate efficacy and minimize on-target off-tumor toxicity. Utilizing this technology, a universal T cell can be directed to any potential CAR target by providing the targeting module separately, either solely or in combination as required by the tumor type or if resistance develops. In addition, the new company will also have access to Cellex's established cell therapy manufacturing capabilities. Blackstone's investment provides external validation from a leading life sciences fund and a $250 million capital infusion, giving the new company a running start to further develop its pipeline, which will include clinical-stage autologous products from GEMoaB with near-term milestones. Finally, the new company will be led by Dr. Andrew Schiermeier, who joined us in 2017 and has served as our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer since 2019, alongside a seasoned management team with decades of experience in research and drug development. We're grateful to Andrew for his many contributions to Intellia, and we're confident he will bring that same brand of steady leadership and strategic vision as CEO. Altogether, we believe this new company is poised to rapidly advance engineered cell therapies for patients. Equally important, I'd also like to emphasize the synergies and benefits this transaction brings to Intellia. First, our collaboration with the new company on the development of allogeneic universal CAR-T cell therapies offers the potential to expand our pipeline beyond our wholly owned programs as we have options to co-develop and co-commercialize 2 assets in the U.S., in key European countries, one of which will be exercised at closing. These options enable us to directly capture value from these programs by leading commercialization in the U.S. We also believe this agreement will offer an opportunity for additional clinical validation of our allogeneic cell-engineering platform, which we will implement in Intellia's wholly owned programs. And for the terms of the agreement, in exchange for a license to our technology, Intellia will receive a significant equity stake in the new company, where Blackstone, Intellia and Cellex will each have equal ownership upon signing. This equity stake allows us to participate meaningfully in the success of the company. And finally, we are especially excited that concurrently, we also entered into a separate preferred partnership agreement with Cellex for GMP cell therapy manufacturing and donor cells to support our wholly owned ex vivo programs. I'll touch more on this in a minute as this relationship with Cellex will benefit Intellia in a number of ways. As we look ahead, this deal just scratches the surface of our ex vivo opportunity. Further, it highlights the platform Intellia has to expand into other cell therapies leveraging our proprietary cell engineering platform. The efforts we've made for our T cell receptor or TCR-based approach have produced a modular cell engineering platform, much in the same way we've designed our in vivo LNP platform. We have the versatility to mix and match across cell types and targeting modalities alongside an ability to introduce the edits necessary for eliciting the desired pharmacology. Regardless of solution, we aim to engineer cells with high yields, optimal cell performance and scalable manufacturing. As we constructed this new company, it was important to us that we preserve the broader prospects offered by our platform. As such, while the opportunity is very meaningful, you can see Rev and UniCARs represent only a slice of our platform's reach. Importantly, Intellia retained rights across a significant and diverse ex vivo landscape from TCRs to standard CAR-Ts where our internal focus remains. We're free to explore therapies leveraging a broad range of cell types and modalities for a range of diseases. In fact, last week, we announced an amendment to our Novartis agreement to convert all the CAR-T targets it had selected through a research collaboration from exclusive to a nonexclusive license. The amendment affords us the freedom and optionality to pursue CAR-T cell therapies against any target as we see fit independently or with partners. This includes advances to our allogeneic work, where having access to the broadest set of tools and targets may be especially beneficial. Concurrently, we were able to negotiate a deal with GEMoaB's parent company, Cellex, that is particularly beneficial to Intellia. This manufacturing deal includes a preferred relationship status and dedicated capacity to support the continued development of our wholly owned ex vivo programs. Cellex is a leading manufacturer for cell products with a fully automated, audited and inspected GMP facility to support worldwide distribution of cell products. We are confident that access to their GMP manufacturing facility will provide dedicated capacity to handle Intellia's additional ex vivo pipeline growth. Additionally, Cellex has large, experienced allogeneic collection centers. Our access to high quality and diverse donor cell banks will be of great value in supporting and accelerating our allogeneic efforts, both for programs developed through our relationship with the new company as well as wholly owned programs developed at Intellia. In summary, today's announcement is very exciting news for Intellia and another demonstration that our full spectrum strategy has very broad applicability. We believe that NewCo and our Cellex agreement will drive significant value for Intellia as they enable acceleration of Intellia's wholly owned ex vivo pipeline with expanded GMP manufacturing capabilities, enhance our own cell engineering capabilities, in particular, our allogeneic approach via access to Cellex's donor cells and extend the reach of our allogeneic cell engineering platform while capturing the value of allogeneic universal CAR-Ts through a meaningful stake in the new company and options to co-develop and co-commercialize 2 products. In the immediate term, for our ex vivo pipeline, we are progressing NTLA-5001, our lead TCR-T cell therapy towards the clinic with an IND or equivalent regulatory filing expected mid this year. Additionally, we are pleased to share that we expect to nominate our first allogeneic development candidate by the first half of 2022. We look forward to updating you on our progress across our in vivo and ex vivo programs as we continue to develop potentially curative genome-editing treatments that transform the lives of individuals with severe disease. Before we open the call to questions, we know many of you are interested in the upcoming readout for NTLA-2001, our lead in vivo candidate, in development for the treatment of ATTR amyloidosis. Given our proximity to the PNS meeting, where we've guided to sharing interim Phase I results, we want to note that we will not be addressing any questions regarding NTLA-2001 or upcoming readout on this call. We look forward to sharing the data with you on Saturday at the meeting and at our investor event next Monday and kindly request that you refrain from using today's call to ask questions on this topic. With that, we'd be more than happy to answer questions about today's announcement or our ex vivo portfolio more broadly. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Salveen Richter from Goldman Sachs.

This is Sonya on for Salveen. Could you help us understand how the switchable CAR-T platform will be incorporated into Intellia's CRISPR/Cas9 allogeneic platform? And also, could you help us understand how the CRISPR/Cas9 platform is differentiated versus the CAR-T landscape?

So Sonya, thanks for the question. Most of the work on the switchable pieces will be done in the new company. So as we tried to stress on the call, products that result from the new company's work or our collaboration with them will be advanced and developed by the new company. We have a CoCo option on 2 of those products. And depending on the particulars of the individual products, we would exercise that at the appropriate time. So they'll be doing the development work, and we'll be in a position to lead the commercialization of that in the United States. Could you ask me your second question again? I just want to make sure, so UniCAR and RevCAR differentiated in the CAR-T landscape. Yes. So I think the helpful way to think about this is many of the CAR platforms that currently exist apply a binding moiety or a targeting moiety on a cell. And those cells are provided, made one by one. One of the, I think, very exciting things about the GEMoaB technology is that a cell can be premade, have a binder or stalk, if you will, present on that cell that will be coupled with a protein infused simultaneously with the patient. And those 2 pieces will come together in the patient, a targeting module interacting with that so-called universal cell. It's that universality where that premade cell can be directed any which way by the particular binder that's infused that gives it, I think, great utility, not only to start a reaction with a patient or treatment with a patient, but because these proteins are provided while the cells are circulating, you can actually withdraw the protein as well, and that is a very powerful way to control potential toxicity. So we think this has utility in manufacturing. We think it has great utility in efficacy. And importantly, we think it's a modality that will take CAR-Ts to tissues that have been very, very difficult to address up until now. And the additional point I would make is that when you bring the allogeneic platform to it, you should have the added ability to not only take these cells off the shelf and treat patients immediately on diagnosis, but we would expect these cells to persist essentially indefinitely in patients once they've been treated.

And actually, just another question. Which cancers would you target first? Or do you have a sense for, I guess, which broad cancers you would target with this?

We're going to leave that to the new company as it moves forward. GEMoaB, pre-joining into the NewCo, has presented some data in leukemia. But as things go forward, the new company will be best able to give you the details you're looking for.

The next question comes from Liisa Bayko from Evercore ISI.

I'm hoping you can just maybe review sort of the sort of strategic advantages of having NewCo versus kind of one more diversified company, and why you kind of chose to split off?

Thanks for the question, Liisa. Really comes down to the fact that as we look at the technology that's flowing out of our research group and look at the multiple things that we could pursue, the range of opportunities exceeds our ability to execute solely within the company. We're very excited about our full spectrum genome-editing approach. And as you know, we're going to be in a position to share information on the first clinical data here soon. But also on the ex vivo side, there's a multiplicity of cell types and opportunities and modalities that we've enabled by virtue of an incredibly productive research group. So as we think about how to advance some of these areas, we've concluded that by working with various partners and different business arrangements, we're able to get the benefit of our science, the resources from others and hopefully get to a very, very synergistic sort of situation. So here we are now in a position where we think we'll have a leading, access to a leading CAR-T platform that essentially will leapfrog the other modalities that are out there. So it's a powerful way to proceed.

The next question comes from Maury Raycroft from Jefferies.

So I was wondering if you could talk more about the separate agreement with Cellex, the terms behind that. And I think during the prepared remarks, you mentioned Cellex could help with in vivo, too. Just wondering if I heard that right, and if you can elaborate on how Cellex could be used for the in vivo programs at Intellia?

Thanks, Maury. Yes, just to clear it up, we mentioned that Cellex will be primarily positioned to help us on the ex vivo side of our programs. So strike the in vivo impression that you may have had. Yes. So Cellex, as you may know, is a part of this group in Germany and the owner of GEMoaB. This is a leading source of manufactured cell, engineered cells with demonstrated success. They make GMP material, supply for other companies as well. So they're truly experts at what they do. They're going to support the new company as it goes forward. But beyond that and something we're incredibly excited about is separately, we've reached an agreement with Cellex to help source products for our own ex vivo pipeline as we move forward. As you know, engineered cell therapy, particularly with some of the approaches that we're taking, can be very complicated and having access to demonstrated expertise like the Cellex team really gives us the confidence that we need to have to be able to advance our pipeline in the ex vivo setting very aggressively and with the confidence that we'll be able to supply whatever needs that, for whatever programs we embark on. So it's a great opportunity for us.

Got it. That's helpful. And is there anything additional you're saying about the terms between the separate agreement with Cellex?

No, not at this time, Maury.

Okay. Okay. And then I was also wondering if you can talk more about Intellia's allogeneic approach and maybe the status of this approach. And generally, what was shared with partners in order to get the additional validation of your allogeneic approach?

Well, we've worked closely with the partners, as you might imagine, and they've been able to see in some substantial detail what we're going to present at a subsequent date. Today is not that day. And I think the nature of the investment that Blackstone is making speaks to their enthusiasm for what we're bringing forward, along with Cellex, who interacts with multiple different companies in this space. So without going into details, we think that we've got something that really leapfrogs where the state of the art is. And for those people who have dug deeply into it, they're very, very excited about what they've seen. So we'll be in a position here to talk more about it as the year goes on. And I'm sure you may have noticed that we've said that we'll have our own allo development candidate in the first half of next year as well. So things are moving forward very, very aggressively on that front because we think it's a major advantage for the company.

The next question comes from Gena Wang from Barclays.

John, I have a few questions regarding the GEMoaB switchable on and off CAR-T. You mentioned a little bit about half-life and the internalization of soluble adapters. Can you give any more color on specific molecules or modules you can give example?

I think we'll leave the details of that to the new company as they go forward and talk about the technology and the targets that they want to pursue. You may recall, Gena, that I mentioned that there is some information publicly available. We can get that to you after the call here today. But what's exciting is the RevCAR, UniCAR technology is in the clinic. We've seen clinical data. GEMoaB has demonstrated that not only is there activity, but there's reversibility when the protein is withdrawn. So the basic notion of what it's designed to do, I think, has been amply proven in the clinic. To extend a little bit, I think, with what's behind your question, I would expect that individual targets will have some of their own particular attributes and the targeting modules can readily be designed that speak to the particular needs of that target. And that will be the work of the new company as it goes forward.

Okay. And I think they did share some like CD33 PSCA and also partnered with Bristol on CD123 and a PSMA. So is it fair to say that all these targets will not be your initial 2 options?

I think we'll save that question for later as the programs progress, and we'll give more color as we go forward.

Okay, John. And then last question, like you have option of 2 assets. Beyond the 2, do you have, like is there a limit how many assets you can have an option?

The deal includes 2 CoCos. And we can always collaborate and have other arrangements as we go forward, depending on what we see. And we'll be working closely together with an active scientific collaboration so there's ample opportunity to expand as necessary.

The next question comes from Mani Foroohar from SVB Leerink.

Two quick ones. First, I want to make sure I heard it correctly. When you talk about the split of economics, is the right interpretation that the equity interest in this company is split equally in thirds between yourself, Cellex and Blackstone? And then secondarily, I guess, also a financial question. As you are accessing Cellex's existing infrastructure, expertise, manufacturing skills and resources, how should we think of that as impacting any CapEx spend? Are there sort of financial obligations you have in terms of build-out of capacity? Or is it something that's going to flow through COGS in the future once you guys have cell therapy products that are commercial? Just how should we think about the accounting implications and the CapEx implications of that partnership?

So Mani, thanks for the question. I'll do the easy one on the equity. It is, as you said, shared equally amongst the 3 parties, and we're really excited about that because it gives us a really significant opportunity to participate in the success of the company as it goes forward. And that, in addition to product rights, we think is just a wonderful arrangement that closely aligns our interest with the success of the company. With respect to the Cellex manufacturing and infrastructure, et cetera, Glenn, maybe you can add a little color, too.

Sure. Yes. Hey, Mani. So there will be no kind of significant CapEx investments required by Intellia. It's one of the nice parts of getting this preferred manufacturing relationship with Cellex, the infrastructure is already in place. And then I think the other thing to note is, just when we think about our runway and guidance, this deal is not changing that in any way. And then in terms of accounting implications, we'll come back in our next quarterly filing and give more detail on that. Obviously, once the deal closes, officially, we'll work that through with our auditors and get that properly disclosed.

The next question comes from Jack Allen from Baird.

I was hoping you could speak a little bit to the timing of this transaction. When did the initial idea for the formation of this new company occur? And how quickly did we proceed from the ideation to this announcement this morning?

It's an interesting question. What is the gestation of this whole exercise? I think there's different aspects to it. One is and probably most basic is, we've tried to position ourselves in a way that we could have an ex vivo platform that was broadly applicable from the get-go. And so technology generation and having that be as broadly based as possible has always been key. Probably the closest starting point to this particular deal was the collaboration that we struck with GEMoaB over a year ago, where our scientists and their scientists encountered each other at a meeting, and we've built on that. And we saw what we thought was a platform that had incredible potential clinical utility. As they came to know us, we did a collaboration with a couple of targets. Our scientists worked very closely together. They learned about our allogeneic capabilities. And at that point, it became very apparent what was possible. And so we put our minds together, created something that we thought we were both very, very excited about, and together took that to Blackstone, which you can see their response. So it's one of those truly synergistic kind of relationships that puts you in just a different place from where you were previously, so very, very exciting for us.

The next question comes from Luca Issi from RBC.

Congrats on the deal. Two questions, one is a technical question, the other one is on valuation. So the first one, it looks to me there are 2 school of thoughts when it comes to allogeneic CAR-T, one where you essentially delete CD52 and the other one where you delete beta2-M. Wondering if you can comment on whether NewCo is philosophically more camp A versus camp B. And then the second, obviously, the NewCo's value, the $750 million. Can you just give us some directional color on how did you come up with that number?

Yes. Well, first of all, I'd say we're more camp C, which is, as we were trying to make clear in our comments, the approach requires neither the profound lymphodepletion, which is often used in knocking out MHC, for example, or the profound immunodeficiency that's imposed in some of these patients by the CD52 route that you took. We think that those have been advances for patients and clearly help people with leukemia, but this is a far more complete sort of approach to allogeneic sourcing that does not require those steps and allows persistence and it's by just a very different approach to finding cells that are not going to be rejected by the patient's immune system. The particulars of that, again, we're not going to go into today. That's something that we'll provide some more information as the year goes by. With respect to valuation, Glenn, do you want to say a word or 2 about that?

Sure, yes, just a little bit of background. So we're not giving details around the valuation. But I will say, just think about GEMoaB and Intellia and what we're bringing to the table here. It's a clinical stage company. We've got early clinical validation of one of the platforms, and we're bringing in our allogeneic platform. So there was a discussion, obviously, with ourselves and Cellex when we approached Blackstone, and I think the 3 parties very quickly got to a valuation that we all felt comfortable with. But we're not giving any sort of details as to how we got there.

The next question comes from Silvan Tuerkcan from JMP Securities.

I just have a quick question about your agreement that you amended with Novartis last Friday. Was that a step, so you went from exclusive to nonexclusive, I believe, please correct me if I'm wrong here. Is that something you had to do to get this deal done? And could you just maybe talk a little bit more about what led to that change in the amendment? Congrats on the deal.

Thank you. You're correct. It went from exclusive to nonexclusive. That was not necessary to do this deal. It's nice to have with respect to this deal. But what we're particularly excited about is the broad applicability to essentially any CAR target that now permits us to pursue. And just to say a word about that. We're very excited about what CARs can do. You'll remember, as we said in our comments, that T cell receptors, we think, have just incredible promise in the immuno-oncology space. And so as we go forward, we think we're in a great position to have the broadest access to the broadest range of modalities, targets and ways to go after cancer writ large. So it's a very, very exciting week for the company.

The next question comes from David Nierengarten from Wedbush Securities.

A couple of quick ones for me or maybe longer ones depending on how you answer. But first off, kind of what inspired you or GEMoaB, I mean, to approach each other or who approached whom first? And I guess I'm curious what, if there's any additional IP the joint company might require, if it was the manufacturing that really attracted you or the manufacturing capabilities of GEMoaB that attracted you to them first or if they approached you on developing an allo approach with your CRISPR technology. I'm just kind of curious how that evolved. And then the second part of that, if you feel that this is a completed joint venture here or if it would require additional IP or other technologies to advance the programs.

David, there's a lot of choices in there. I'll try to, no, it's okay. It's a lot to take in. I really credit Andrew and our immunology team who have had, for some years now, a very, very forward-looking and broad-based approach to think how we could apply genome editing to the immune system and lymphocytes in general. And we've, you will have seen in other venues, been talking about the toolkit that we've been creating that permit cells to be edited essentially almost without limit. And by that, I mean, any substantial number of ways to knockout genes, to add functionality, to transduce cells and to do that in an incredibly high level along with multiplexing base editing. We can do it all, and that's really exciting. And so we've positioned ourselves, as we go forward, in a way that's meant to be very, very broad minded as we look for opportunities to apply those technologies to biological approaches that we can enable by our work. And encountering the GEMoaB team, scientists coming together as they share the work that they do, we were very impressed with the logic of the system that they had built, the functionality that they had created and struck up a relationship where we're going to help each other fulfill that. Again, during the course of that work, as they learned more about us and what we could do, this notion of bringing the 2 companies closer together and applying the allo approach emerged from that. And so, again, it's one of these examples where there's true synergy, where allo was missing for them and this kind of universal approach was something that we didn't have access. So it was just a wonderful way to move forward. With respect to intellectual property, the 2 companies together are in a very, very strong position to do what they need to do. The NewCo will have its own identity and will grow and mature and expand its IP base, and we look forward to that. But in terms of the core mission and what we set it up to do, it's ready to go. And we expect to build on the clinical activity that's already underway here very, very aggressively. So watch for updates as they proceed.

And just to make sure, I mean, there's no additional like right to first refusal on a third program or anything like that?

No. The core deal is we have rights for 2 CoCos, which we're quite specific about. There was an earlier question, we can always do additional deals. There's nothing that precludes that. But with the way this is currently set up, there's 2 products that we would have access to.

The next question comes from Tony Butler from ROTH Capital.

John, simple question. Leadership, I assume, sits in Cambridge. Does all research sit in Dresden? Moreover, do some Intellia researchers actually move over to NewCo, I guess, in a separate facility? Can you just speak to how that actually physically will work out?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Tony, and it's an important one. You're right. The company will be based here in Cambridge. Andrew Schiermeier, as we mentioned, will be the Chief Executive Officer of the company. And one of our senior scientists will join him. The bulk of the work is currently taking place in Dresden, Germany. There's a team of approximately 50 people or so who have brought the company to the point where it is. We have a scientific collaboration where Intellia scientists will work hand in hand with the GEMoaB scientists or the NewCo scientists, if you will. And we have agreements in terms of what that looks like, what the extent of the work, and it's all much directed at bringing some of these products forward. I believe Andrew will build out a team here. The idea is to have the company have a German background with a strong American accent, if you will. And it's a way of accessing the American markets, having a clinical presence here in the U.S. and moving forward as it progresses. So Andrew, I'm sure, will give more details as the company unfolds exactly what his plans are and the growth and operational plans. So stay tuned for that.

The next question comes from Yanan Zhu from Wells Fargo Securities.

Congrats on the deal. So first of all is, my first question has been partially answered in your camp C remark. I was just also going to ask, because there are technologies out there that uses expression of HLA-E to achieve persistence and also others are using beta2-M knockdown as opposed to knockout, is the camp C again totally free of those elements and totally normal? Can you comment on that?

Yanan, thanks for the question, and I understand you're following my logic. Well, if it's not A and it's not B. And other people are doing this. Maybe it's that. You know what, I think it's best just to wait for a more complete disclosure. And when you see what we're doing, I think, it will make complete sense to you, and you'll see why we're so enthusiastic about it. The bottom line is that you don't need to contrive systems to get to a good system that matches and allow cells to be taken off the shelf and persist, which we think is critically important for function. And at a later point here this year, you'll be in a position to know exactly how we do that. So thanks, and I appreciate your attention to the detail.

If I may, a follow-up to that on a different, from a different angle is that you're partnering with GEMoaB presumably because of the properties of their CAR-T approach because you do have a lot of choices when you consider going forward with the CAR-T approach. There are so many CAR-T modalities out there. But I guess, do this choice of not only switchable, but also you're able to turn the system off, is that an important consideration for you? I.e., is your novel allo approach, the persistence is so strong that being able to turn off the CAR-T is actually an important consideration in your choice in choosing your CAR-T partner?

Thanks for the question. I don't think of it that way that we need to modulate the effects of having an allogeneic solution. What the GEMoaB approach brings is the ability to, again, target a cell against anything at the beginning, and I think that's important for initiating therapy. But if one chooses targets where the malignancy and normal tissue share a target, which is irrespective of your CAR modality, you'll then have crosstalk, if you will. You want to be in a position to get the benefit of the activity of the CAR and then be in a position to withdraw the activity of that lymphocyte if you do have toxicity. And that has nothing to do with the allogeneic approach. And that capability has been demonstrated by GEMoaB. And we think it's a wonderful advantage that they have relative to any of the other CAR-T modalities that we've seen.

This concludes our question-and-answer session as well as the conference. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.