MiNK Therapeutics, Inc. ($INKT)

Good morning, and welcome to MiNK Therapeutics Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this event is being recorded. If anyone has any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the conference over to Stefanie Perna-Nacar, Chief Communications Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us today. Today's call is being webcast and will be available on our website for replay. I'd like to remind you that this call will include forward-looking statements, including notes related to our clinical development, regulatory and commercial plans, time lines for data releases and partnership opportunities. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to our SEC filings available on our website for a detailed description of these risks. Joining me today are Dr. Jennifer Buell, President and Chief Executive Officer; Dr. Terese Hammond, Head of Development; and Melissa Orilall, Principal Financial and Accounting Officer. I'd like to turn the call over to Dr. Buell to highlight our progress from this quarter. Dr. Buell.

Thank you, Stefanie. Good morning, everyone. For those new to MiNK Therapeutics, we are advancing a clinically validated allogeneic invariant natural killer T cell platform, one that is fundamentally differentiated in its ability to restore and coordinate immune function across diseases or even an immune failure. And unlike conventional cell therapies, our MiNK iNKT cells are off the shelf. They are administered without lymphodepletion, without HLA matching. And we've demonstrated clinical activity with a very favorable safety profile. MiNK cells are now in Phase II clinical trials in patients with solid tumor cancers and autoimmune inflammatory conditions like GvHD and severe lung disease. Clinically, in cancer, MiNK cells have demonstrated durable survival beyond 23 months with complete remission extending beyond 2 years in heavily pretreated refractory cancers. Cancer is expected with an expected survival of about 6 months. Outside of cancer, we're also seeing clinical activity in patients with hypoxemic pneumonia or otherwise called severe acute respiratory distress, reinforcing the broader applicability of our immune restoration cell product. We're excited to discuss with you today our upcoming trials. We have secured external funding to advance MiNK cells into graft versus host disease with the trial in the activation phase at University of Wisconsin. We have also externally funded a trial in Phase II in patients with gastric cancer with results presented last year at AACR and expected to be presented at a major conference in the first half of this year. And finally, our soon to be enrolling MiNK-sponsored randomized Phase II trial in patients with severe hypoxemic pneumonia or ARDS, a condition that affects approximately 200,000 to 300,000 patients per year. We'll talk more about that in just a few moments. Most importantly, we're doing this with a level of capital efficiency that's really uncommon in cell therapy. We're combining disciplined internal execution with non-dilutive funding through government and institutional partnerships, and we're manufacturing it at scale that appears to be the most efficient in cell therapy at this time. At the same time, we continue to build scientific validation through multiple data presentations and peer review publications, many of which will be out in the first half of this year. Now history tells an important story here on execution. And looking back at 2025. It was a year that we moved really from promise to proof establishing durability, validating our mechanism demonstrating that this platform can be advanced with both rigor and efficiency. In 2022, we demonstrated that our results were really quite durable clinically and biologically. And at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer Annual Meeting in late 2025, just a couple of months ago, we presented updated clinical data in heavily pretreated checkpoint refractory solid tumor cancers. This is a substantial and growing population of patients. These were patients who had exhausted standard options. What we observed was meaningful. Median overall survival exceeding 23 months in combination with commercially available PD-1 therapies, complete remissions extending beyond 2 years, long-term survival across multiple solid tumor cancers, including gastric, thymoma, renal, adenoid cystic cancers and lung cancer. These outcomes matter, particularly in this patient population and importantly, because they have persisted over time. At the same time, we've deepened our understanding of how this is working. We saw activation and expansion of important immune cell populations, dendritic cell supporting antigen presentation, repolarization of macrophages towards pro-inflammatory antitumor states and reinvigorated or exhausted T cells with restored function. We also observed controlled increases in cytokines, such as interferon gamma, IL-2 TNF alpha, consistent with the productive immune response without systemic toxicity. The takeaway for us is very straightforward. The durability we're seeing clinically is supported by a coordinated immune activation state. This is not a single pathway effect, and it's what defines MiNK iNKT cells as our platform, and scientific validation beyond oncology, we asked how this biology goes beyond cancer. This year at the Keystone Symposia, Dr. Terese Hammond, our Head of Pulmonary Critical Care Medicine, presented human data showing significant depletion of iNKT cells in patients with end-stage idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. This is important evidence of immune deficiency in patients with immune dysfunction. And when you see that forward, the path becomes really clear, Restore was missing. This is how we're approaching expansion, follow the biology, validate in humans and then move into clinical execution. And we've taken this approach in patients with hypoxemic pneumonia or ARDS. This is a very serious condition. It's growing in prevalence and incidents and is affecting currently approximately 200,000 to 300,000 patients annually with a mortality rate of 30% to 40%, and no approved disease-modifying therapies. In our Phase I/II trial in this particular population, we dose critically ill patients with respiratory distress. These patients were on mechanical ventilation and/or VV ECMO. These patients are consuming substantial resources in our ICUs, and our results showed that we can get the cells into patients in community hospitals. We can dose to 1 billion cells without deleterious tax. As a matter of fact, the cells were tolerated quite well. We not only did not see cytokine release. We, in fact, dampened pro-inflammatory signals or harmful inflammation. We observed prolonged survival. 70% of patients alive compared to 10% of patients within hospital controls. We observed that these cells could locally modulate immune function in the lung and they can restore function of lung tissue, specifically endothelial function and improved oxygenation in these patients. We saw rapid excavation. We saw patients coming off of the most severe life support,. We saw that these cells also not only cleared infectious pathogens, but also we saw a reduction in the onset of secondary infections. This is important because secondary infections are often the cause of death for patients in the ICU. As a result of these findings, we are now well on our way to announcing the first dosing of patients in our randomized Phase II study that's designed to expand to a Phase II/III study. This is a global program, it's designed very efficiently and its planned to launch with our colleagues at top centers in Ukraine and in the U.S. These are real-world environments that we are able to reach because of the practicality of our approach. We have an off-the-shelf therapy with a favorable safety profile and no requirement for complex infrastructure. We're working very closely with the Ministry of Health in Ukraine and the U.S. FDA to advance this program. With dosing starting imminently, we expect an initial clinical data in the second half of this year. These are very rapid trials. This will be our first randomized controlled study in pulmonary diseases designed for clinically meaningful and regulatory aligned end points. We believe this will enable MiNK to pursue rapid development pathways. Now in other disease settings, we've spoken to you about our graft versus host disease program already. We've shared more detailed foundation of this program and the study design, in fact, and our intent is to help patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, where more than half of the patients have graft failure and GvHD. We plan to not only improve engraftment success but prevent acute GvHD. The study is important. It's garnered the support of 2 distinct sources of nondilutive funding. The NIH NIAID STTR award supports the development of preclinical and translational work while the Mary Gooze Clinical Trial award directly fund the clinical trial execution at the University of Wisconsin, including patient enrollment and trial operations. The clinical trial is in final review with the university with clinical initiation targeted for the first half of this year, we believe we'll be dosing very soon. This structure allows us to advance into immune-mediated diseases in immune-tolerant settings without incremental capital burden, it's disciplined expansion, it's funded, targeted and aligned with our platform. Nondilutive funding is part of how we operate. In 2025, we secured multiple sources of nondilutive capital funding, including NIH funding, philanthropic support and consortium funding through Steve -- further most recently, which includes approximately over $1 million to get into our IND-enabling studies and meaningful double-digit downstream economics. This further collaboration is particularly important, not just for the nondilutive funding to support IND-enabling development of a really important target of prime targeting ITC, but for what it represents strategically. This program was selected as 1 of the first within the further consortium, an international pediatric oncology initiatives supported by Cancer Research Horizons, and Great Ormond Street Hospital, reflecting external validation of both the maturity of our platform and its potential and high need setting such as pediatric cancer. The collaboration advances our frame targeted TCR engineered iNKT program combining a well-characterized tumor antigen with our iNKT platform, which is designed to bridge innate and adaptive immunity and coordinate broader immune responses within the tumor microenvironment. And importantly, the program structure to generate rigorous comparative preclinical data across multiple pediatric tumor models to support data-driven candidate selection and advance to first-in-human studies. From a strategic standpoint, the model allows us to advance the next-gen program in a high-need indication with nondilutive capital. It also allows us to leverage leading academic and translational experts without building that infrastructure or expanding it internally. MiNK gets to retain meaningful double-digit downstream commercial participation, and we preserve the platform flexibility through a nonexclusive structure. This is simply not a funding mechanism. It's really a way to expand the platform, derisk early innovation and create long-term value while maintaining capital discipline. So taken together, these sources of capital have enabled us to advance clinical programs and expand the pipeline and generate translational data while preserving shareholder equity. It's deliberate, and it's a repeatable part of how we're building MiNK. And on the financial discipline front, we're doing more with less. We strengthened our financial position over the year with our cash increasing to about $13.4 million from $4.6 million and our operating cost decreasing nearly 40% over the course of the year. The key takeaway is that we've increased cash while reducing burn and continuing to execute on important programs. With the scale and complexity of the work we're now undertaking, including randomized clinical trial execution, multi-program advancement and increasing external engagement, we've strengthened our financial leadership. We recently appointed Melissa Orilall as Principal Financial Officer. Melissa brings deep experience in financial operations planning and disciplined execution including her work at the Whitehead Institute and in corporate banking. Her focus is on ensuring that our capital allocation, reporting and operational execution is tightly aligned as we advance through this next phase. Now on our expanded pipeline. As I've mentioned, we continue to advance our PRIME TCR NKT program by non-dilutive funding. Further, our MiNK-215, which is our CAR iNKT program targeting stromal resistance is very important. We've continued to build our translational data set on this asset as we responsibly bring it into IND enablement. These currently do not have a specific near-term catalyst, but we would expect to be announcing some within the next 3 to 5 months on our 215 program. And as our data set has strengthened, we have seen increased external interest in 797 and iNKT biology. Some of you have actually reached out to me specifically about third parties who have announced the combination of 797 in their clinical trials. And as I've mentioned now publicly, MiNK has not formally announced any of our strategic collaborations yet. We -- a strategic partnering does remain core to our strategy, and we plan to continue to keep you apprised as these developments ensue. What to watch for in 2026. This year, we are focused on some substantial and measurable milestones which are really quite exciting. In the first half of 2026, as I mentioned, we expect to initiate our randomized Phase II, Phase II/III ARDS hypoxemic pneumonia study and the activation in dosing in our GvHD trial. In the second half of the year, we do expect to have initial clinical data from both of those programs. not only representing our first randomized data set in pulmonary diseases, but also early immune and translational readouts in GvHD as well as in lung disorders. In parallel, during the first half of '26, we'll continue to build scientific validation through multiple data presentations and review publications extending the data sets presented at SITC and Keystone. And taken together, these milestones are designed to generate clear interpretable data that informs our next steps, both in development and in potential regulatory and strategic pathways. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Melissa to review our financials. Melissa?

Thank you, Jen. During 2025, we executed an at-the-market facility in a disciplined manner, ending the year with a cash balance of $13.4 million. Since year-end, we have raised an additional $3 million through this program, extending our runway through 2026 and supporting key clinical milestones. Our net loss for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $2.6 million or $0.56 per share compared to $2.5 million or $0.62 per share for the fourth quarter of 2024. For the full year, net loss was $12.5 million or $2.93 per share compared to $10.8 million or $2.86 per share in 2024. These results reflect continued focused investment in advance in our agent 797 clinical programs while maintaining disciplined control over our operational steps. I will now turn the call back to Jen for closing remarks.

Thank you so much, Melissa. Thank you all for being here. I think just in closing, I'll just reiterate that for us, if you just step back, the story is pretty simple. In 2025, we demonstrated durability. We showed mechanistic validation of our technology as well as human disease relevance. Those data have now set the stage for what we're doing going forward. In 2026, we're executing on an important randomized controlled clinical trial as well as signal detection and clinical advancement in very important disease settings, including GvHD. We'll be generating clinical data and publicizing that very quickly and advancing towards potential paths for regulatory approval. We have multiple readouts planned in the first half of this year with data from our upcoming trials and preliminary readouts in the second half of this year. We're excited and I look forward to your questions. I'll now turn the call back over to the operator.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Emily Bodner with HC Wainwright.

A couple for me. Maybe starting with the Phase II pneumonia and ARDS study. Could you kind of talk through how many patients approximately that trial is going to be? And what the appropriate control arm is here? And then you also talked about development in IPF, but it sounds like it would need to be a separate trial. So maybe just talk about how you're thinking of these different indications.

Emily, thanks so much for your question. Absolutely. While we have not publicly posted the program in hypoxemic pneumonia, what I'm going to share with you is that currently in the disease population that we're pursuing, there are no approved therapies. Patients are treated with standard of care. This is the same state that we were in when we conducted our Phase I/II trial establishing the dose of these cells in this population of patients. What we've demonstrated is that patients are predominantly treated with steroid therapy with, of course, anti-infectives, antifungals, et cetera, but really physicians' choice in this disease setting. So we have 2 things that are really important. One, we've already observed and presented that these cells appear to be quite active in restoring immune functionality and clearing pathogens, independent of steroids being on board, which is unique. Many times, there's a concern about immunosuppression with steroid use, standard of care steroid use, and we're not observing that. So these cells appear to be sort of steroid-resistant. They're building to modulate immune function clear pathogens in the presence. We will be looking at physicians' choice as effectively standard of care as the cells will be added on top of standard of care versus the cells alone. And a critical piece of this is Doctor Terese Hammond is leading up our pulmonary disease programs. She's also clinically still seeing patients in the ICU to boarded in pulmonary critical care, neurocritical care medicine and has been treating patients with this disease profile for now decades of her life. For us to be able to have such a thoughtful leader on this program and such an informed clinician, it gives us a real opportunity to position these cells and to bring them forward into the patients who we believe they will be most effective in. And taking the cells plus or minus standard of care, gives us not only the differentiation of the cells, the added potential of the cells, but also maybe paradigm changing for these patients in the ICU.

Great. And maybe -- sorry, just one more. On the second line gastric cancer trial, could you just remind us the status of that and when we may be able to see efficacy data from those studies?

You will be seeing some efficacy data in the first half of this year at a major conference, which we'll be announcing relatively soon. And we're excited about that. But I did not answer your question about IPF, and this is, of course, a very important pulmonary fibrosis end stage in particular, is another disease setting. It's effectively in immune-related condition. We've demonstrated that with our human data, and it's a substantial opportunity for us to develop the cells in IPF. We have some important preclinical observations as well as some new human data demonstrating that this is a pathway where we believe the cells can bring benefit. You're going to be hearing more about the design of that trial and the development path as we advance over the next couple of months. We will very likely host a special meeting in this disease setting. We have selected scientific advisory boards, have informed clinicians in this space and have developed a program to advance. We'll be very responsible, though about how we're going to be funding that program, so you'll hear more about that relatively soon.

Our next question comes from the line of Mayank Mamtani with B. Riley Securities.

Appreciate the comprehensive update. Just on the last point on IPF and even GvHD, what target patient population, Jen, you have in consideration and wonder what differentiating aspects to some of the recently approved anti-fibrotic, anti-inflammatory approaches you aspire to have the cell therapy you position against? And then I have to ask some of the IL-15 MiNK cell combination trial launching on ct.gov. Could you help us understand how and what this 30 subject kind of total exposure would inform what you are looking to independently do with -- it looks like the randomized controlled trial in the ARDS setting. I was not sure if the populations that you're exploring are overlapping across those combination and randomized trial settings. So if you could clarify that, that would be great.

Thank you for your questions. I just -- I want to make sure that I have them correct because you did cut out for just a moment. But I think on the randomized ARDS trial, the patient populations will be identified as hypoxemic pneumonia. There's a very specific global ARDS definition system that allows us to be very specific and selective about this patient population. So they will be selected and identified based on their oxygen into very quantifiable way of interrogating this as well as important organ function state. . So we will put a detailed eligibility criteria on clinical trials. And this is another program where we are going to be announcing very soon upon the announcement of the launch of the randomized Phase II as well as the dosing and GvHD. We'll be hosting a very special R&D meeting that will allow you to talk with our experts, our clinical development experts as well as review a deep dive of the programs and the eligibility of these patients. So in ARDS, there have been some -- there are currently no approved therapy. So this becomes standard of care, becomes really a physician's choice in this disease setting. There are no functional cell therapies in this setting. What we've been able to observe in our early-stage development is that ourselves really persist, and that they are not vulnerable to steroids, and that allows the cells to continue to modulate immunity in this setting. We observe that. We see we can administer the cells, 1 billion cells tolerably. We observed that the cells are in the peripheral system for some time, a number of days before they then home very specifically to lung tissue. We've been able to use a special technique that allows us, particularly in ventilated patients to take samples from the -- within the lung tissues called the bronchial is the assessment that we can test in order to interrogate the immune cell, the local immune modulating capability of the cells. It gives us 2 opportunities in addition to just radiologically looking at what's happening clinically for within the patient's lungs, we can start to see clearance of pathology, clearance of some inflammatory markers, you could see this radiologically. But then also when we really dig into lung tissue, we're able to see what is actually happening. In these patients, we see the substantial pro-inflammatory signatures. And what we've publicly disclosed, and we'll be publishing even more this year in the first half will be some of the anti-inflammatory signals that we see here in this population of patients. So we're really dampening pro-inflammatory signals. We're eliminating fungal infections. We're eliminating some gram-negative bacteria, which is a major problem. And this becomes an even more substantial problem in some Austria regions like a war zones or places where we will be studying these cells where multidrug-resistant organisms are a substantial problem. Given that we've already been able to demonstrate, not only with our clinical trial that we published on but also through emergency use that we've continued to help patients with, we've demonstrated that we can really do an impactful clinical activity and modulate some of these multidrug-resistant organisms, clearing them from patients with some of the most severe critical illnesses. This is such an important part of the work that we're doing right now. So you'll hear more about the eligibility of these patients, and I'm going to invite you specifically to talk with some of the experts in this disease setting. So I think that with a longer way of answering the simple question on standard of care and what will be adequate controls, which would be really just physician choice in this population.

I appreciate it. And I don't know if I missed that, or my question was cut out. If you could address the combination approach with the IL-15 agonist that trial, that launched on clinicaltrial.gov, what was and how is that different than the study that you just referenced?

Mayank, thank you -- thank you very much. The study that I've referenced is the MiNK-sponsored randomized Phase II trial that we have not yet posted on clinicaltrials. We will be doing so. It's currently in review. The study that you're referring to, and I'm grateful that you brought it up, I received a host of inbound inquiries about this from investors as well as from regulators. And I want to be very clear that MiNK has not formally announced any collaboration or any clinical trials with the IL-15 superagonist. And I think that's an important thing to understand. We will -- if we are to advance with these types of strategic collaborations, we will be very public about doing so. So at this time, strategic collaborations are really important to MiNK, and we have a number of discussions that are actively underway not only for clinical trial combinations, there's a lot of excitement about 797 but also for broader strategic collaborations as well as minority financial investments in the company. None of which have we publicly disclosed at this time. We will do so when the -- during the appropriate time.

At this time, we have no further questions. I will now turn the call back over to Dr. Jennifer Buell for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thank you all so much for your participation today.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Have a pleasant day.