Prescient Therapeutics Limited (PTX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. Let's make a start. Welcome to this Prescient Therapeutics investor briefing. My name is Warrick Lace, I'm the Head of Investor Relations at Reach Markets, and I'll be facilitating the session today. Just looking at the registrations for today's webcast, I can see that there's a tremendous amount of interest in the CAR-T space and what PTX will be pursuing. And also that there's a blended audience of existing shareholders and lots of new investors as well. So certainly, one of the largest audiences that we presented to on a company-specific webcast in a while. The interest, as you would know, comes off the back of Monday's announcement, where Steven and the PTX Board announced their 3 internal CAR-T targets that they're going to be pursuing with their OmniCAR platform. Now what's truly exciting about CAR-T and PTXs' work in the space is that it's as conventional CAR-T is sort of taking off, Steven and the team have got their eyes focused on the next-generation solutions and improvements with a platform approach that allows for collaboration, partnership and licensing while also pursuing their own in-house programs, which Steven is going to be talking to you today. So it's a fantastic opportunity to hear directly from Steven, asking questions. A quick caveat that today's presentation is focused just on CAR-T and OmniCAR. But remember that PTX is clinical stage, foundational assets, PTX-100 and PTX-200 are absolutely part of the picture on an ongoing way. But today, it's just about CAR-T. Again, as much as the purpose about today is to hear from Steven, it's also about giving you the opportunity to ask questions. So simply type your questions into the question box in front of you on your go-to panel, and we will get through as many of those as possible for you today. We expect the presentation to be about 40 minutes, and then we'll get stuck into questions. Just ticking over adviser information in today's presentation is general nature and does not consider your personal circumstances, you need to consider for yourself whether it is appropriate for you, right? Let's roll right into it. Steven, I will give you control of the presentation now. If you just wiggle your mouse around it, it should click on, and over to you.

Excellent. And thank you, Warrick, and thank you, everyone, for taking the time to hear about Prescient today during your busy days. Super excited to walk through what this means. There's a fair bit to cover, but I'm going to assume that people know what CAR-T is, where it's basically a way of taking your body's own immune cells, retraining them and -- to recognize and attack the cancer. So just flicking through. Basically, the people who pioneered CAR-T, the University of Pennsylvania recognized the shortcomings of the problems that current generation CAR-T are facing. And this was a deliberate effort by them to help solve those problems by modularizing CAR-T to address a lot of the problems that relate to. In broad breaststrokes in the past is that CAR-T is almost now where VHS tapes were when they revolutionized how we watched movies. In a similar way, we find ourselves here as wonderful as CAR-T is, it's only going to get much better from here and thanks to the guys at UPenn. So overall, when you got a platform that can do great many things, it's about focus. And so, we have described here some primary programs. But rest assured that whilst our aim here is to get these -- to become products as quickly as possible, there's a whole bunch of follow-on programs that are also going to add value. I won't go into those today. And this is the balance that we needed to strike. It is probability of technical success for PTX versus differentiation. And it's a difficult one to strike because if you want to make something that's a very, very high chance of -- or a very low risk of failure, you basically copy other people, and that is going to leave you with a product that's not differentiated. Similarly, if you try to make something that's a little bit too funky and a little bit layering a whole bunch of unknown features to create something that's very, very differentiated, it's going to have a higher degree of technical difficulty. So we believe we've struck this wonderful balance between having something where it's really acceptable technical probabilities that is going to create something that's highly differentiated. And that is how a company should be thinking. I'm not going to go through all of these features of OmniCAR, but this wonderful active modularity that the UPenn guys have come up with is going to enable a whole bunch of these features. I won't go into them. I'm sure you've read them. And what we had to do with a platform that can do almost anything, the discipline was that we basically funneled a bunch of multiple considerations. Firstly, there's a whole universe of indications, different cancers we can look at. Of those, which one of them have validated targets. And by that, I mean, has it been absolutely unequivocally demonstrated that by targeting this little thing on the surface of that cancer that it can result in clinical benefit and often as an approved drug. Then, we whittled it down. Can we make a binder? Are we differentiated enough? Can we improve what is already out there? And at the end of all of that, which features of OmniCAR should we introduce? And can we find an exact patient population that we can target and get approval for? So it was a very disciplined sort of funneling, which is important when you're looking at multifactorial considerations. And it wasn't just Prescient that braved themselves away and looked at this. It was really a multidisciplinary input, and I'm just so impressed by the level of input we've got to buy, and we got from so many different groups. And not just the inventors, but clinicians and researchers and scientists, antibody experts who have nothing to do with cell therapy, looking at the antibody -- the binder component, VCs, and fund managers focused on life sciences and immunotherapy, who bring that real market and financial perspective. And also overlaying that against one of the most detailed landscape of databases that we helped curate, and we manage and it is proprietary to us, looking at all of the known players in the world and what they're doing. So we believe this came up with a really robust well-rounded decision. And it wasn't just the part of least resistance led by a couple of scientists who loved it. It is certainly not that at all. And this is where we came up with. This is just a summary, and I'm going to dive down into each of these areas. We've got an AML program. We've got a solid tumor program, which is a basket, including ovarian breast and gastric and glioblastoma multiforme, which is a common type of brain cancer. So I'm going to dive into each of these in turn. I'm going to start with AML. Now those who know Prescient know that we know AML because we've got PTX-200 in relapsed and refractory AML study recruiting right now. The first thing I'll say, off the bat, and I'll just want to address this, this is not competitive for that program. In fact, it leverages our expertise and our content -- now, content in that program. And that is part of how this came about. PTX-200 is focusing on the high phospho-Akt patients, and this is quite different. This is expression of CD33 and CLL-1. And I think that the challenge I'm going to go into this, this is like an executive summary for AML, but the features of OmniCAR are going to help overcome a lot of the challenges that CAR-T struggled with in the early days against AML. It's a huge market. It's already a big market, $1.5 billion forecast to grow. It's hard to believe in 8 years' time, it's going to go up about 4x to $5 billion, and that does not include any CAR-T because it's early days for CAR-T and AML. It is generally considered that, that could go up substantially again if there was a successful CAR-T therapy. So this is just based on targeted therapies. Big market getting bigger. But let's have a look at blood cancers. CAR-T in blood cancers. Well, CAR-T has demonstrated its utility was first approved and is still only approved in a certain type of B-cell malignancies. They're called B-cell lymphomas. And so that's where the majority activity is. That was the lowest hanging fruit. And the next cap off the rank was multiple myeloma, which is there 12% of them. And AML is only just emerging and is certainly currently underrepresented, and we believe we are picking this at the right time in CAR-T as an emerging field of interest. But it's not without its challenges with respect to CAR-T. In order for CAR-T to succeed in this difficult disease, it must overcome 3 main categories of safety because these are patients who are super, super sick. Those who have listened to us speak about AML in -- for our other program will know that the life expectancy in the relapsed/refractory setting is still about 4 to 6 months. So they are very, very ill and therefore, their ability to tolerate what can be a very harsh therapy in terms of current generation CAR-T is going to be a problem. The disease rapidly mutates even mid-therapy. And by the week, it can change. And this is a problem with GBM as well, but especially here in AML is it can rapidly mutate. And that rapid disease progression means that even if there were a whole bunch of different current generation CAR-Ts available, guess what? This patient is not going to be able to wait for a whole new cell run for current generation CAR-T. This needs new thinking, and that's where we come in. We're able to address all of these problems, we believe. And once again, we've -- I've said that AML is an emerging field. We're not chasing the crowd with respect to other B-cell cancer -- B-cell malignancies. You can see here with respect to the targets, the things on the surface of the cancer cells that we're looking at, you can see how crowded it is. They're on the left. Look at CD19 and BCMA. There are so many programs focused on this. But if you look at what we looked at validated targets, CD33 and CLL-1, there's only 26 at 33 -- 20 -- 16 programs worldwide looking at CLL-1, only 3 in the world are looking at both. And only one of those is next generation, and that is us. So we believe that this is, again, sort of that differentiation, how do you look different in the marketplace? How are you going to be solving some of the problems that others are doing? And why do you believe that your difference is going to be -- how are you going to be different from 300 other approaches? We don't have that problem. So CD33 is a validated target in AML because there's already been an antibody drug conjugate called Mylotarg approved for that and is currently used. It's expressed on both normal and malignant cells, and it's highly expressed in AML. And same with CLL-1, highly expressed in AML and is importantly on leukemic stem cells. And that is what produces -- they're the cells that left behind that can produce many more subsequent cancer cells, and that leads to relapse. So it's important to look for these targets that are present on these leukemic stem cells. So we believe these are 2 fantastic targets in AML. And again, using the features of OmniCAR, being able to target multiple antigens simultaneously is going to be important to really hit the cancer hard and make sure that there was no room for escape. But we're also able to address it sequentially. We can do simultaneously or one at a time. One at a time could have some safety advantages, and we are exploring both. And this might be a more desirable approach in especially vulnerable AML patients And this is probably a relevant PR. I said there's only 3 people looking at CD33 and CLL-1 in the world, and we're one of them. Another one of them, and I think the only corporate one is a hospital. The other one is Legend. And they're a 4 -- almost $5 billion company. I'm not going to pretend that, that's all due to the AML program. That is not so. They've got a BCMA program that is looking really, really good in final analysis in multiple myeloma in -- partnered with Janssen. And I think it's fair to say that a vast amount of that valuation is attributed to their lead program. But this is a significant program in their pipeline. And it's a current generation, it's autologous. It's in Phase I. And we are next-generation autologous but look at all of these different features. So we are looking at the next generation coming in behind them. So it's not a bad delta when you look at the valuation discrepancy there, but I think we've got a wonderful company to keep there with Legend. So that is AML. And I'm now going to speak about our HER2 program, targeting HER2-positive cancers, including ovarian breast and gastric cancers. Now once again, people who knew of our breast cancer work, that was HER2 negative. This is HER2 positive. HER2 is a marker on the surface of certain cancers. It's also expressed on some healthy cells, but this is the work that UPenn had already undertaken with OmniCAR initially. So we've got a real flying start at this. And what we're looking to do is take this to a tissue agnostic basket study for those who have looked at PTX-100. We're doing a basket study looking at with -- try not to look at the type of cancer it is, but if it's got this particular signature on it, we will add them to the study. We're going to take that same approach that we've learned from that into this. And it's fair to say that the landscape for CAR-T and solid tumors is much, much earlier because current generation CAR-T is really struggling to make the dent in solid tumors that you'd expect in -- that we've seen in hematological tumors. And that's because solid tumors, they're buried within the tissue. It's protected in its own tumor microenvironment. It's difficult to get the cells to a certain spot. Bottom line is it's a lot harder when -- with solid tumors than it is blood cancers, and that's why current generation CAR-T has struggled. And the field is a lot -- it's emerging there. Again, this is where we're at the front of that wave. But in solid tumors, the key issues, and it's the targets, trying to find things on the surface of the cancer cell that are specific to a solid tumor. In blood tumors, in blood cancers, this is relatively -- it's much easier. There are certain markers on the surface of those cancer cells that are not present in healthy cells. With solid tumors, it's not only a cut. It's a very widespread, there is expression on cancer cells and healthy cells. So you have to be careful. You're not going to target healthy cells, and that leads to safety. Trafficking, that means getting these cells to the site that you need because it's not sort of spread out throughout the blood. It is perhaps buried within certain tissues in the body. How do you get the T cells there. And the TME that's the tumor microenvironment. The tumor microenvironment is a protective environment that the cancer creates around it to make sure that the cancer survives the attack of the immune system. This is a bad thing when it comes to fighting cancer. So we've got to address all of these issues, and we believe once again, that OmniCAR is able to address them. Unlike blood cancers, the targets in CAR-T for solid tumors are much more evenly researched. There's a great number of them. There's almost 100 of them. Different ones being studied now, and I've listed some of them, the more common ones there. We believe HER2 is an ideal place to start for us for several reasons. Firstly, it's one of the most well-studied and understood targets in cancer that's created drugs like Herceptin, and it's therapeutically validating. In fact, Roche/Genentech created a whole franchise around exploiting HER2 being present on cancers such as breast cancer. There's also a very, very large difference between the expression -- the amount of HER2 on a cancer cell versus a healthy cell. So that big difference is -- helps your therapies make the distinction between a healthy cell, which it doesn't want to target and a cancerous cell, which it does want to target. This is going to be important in solid tumor. And it's got a high level of expression, which is correlated with anticancer activity. Importantly, for people that actually have drugs like Herceptin that eventually fail, they fail for quite an interesting reason. They may still express HER2 on its surface, yet it's developed -- the cancer has developed a mechanism to avoid the effect or to escape the effect of Herceptin, but they still may express HER2 on the surface, which is a perfect target for CAR-T because we don't really care if it's resistant or not. If that's got that little marker on the surface, we can attack it with a T cell, and that's the ultimate payload is a cytotoxic T cell. The advantages of OmniCAR in CAR-T, unlike blood cancers where you have that sort of one-and-done approach, I think there is a great deal of skepticism out there that a single infusion of a CAR-T cell is going to be sufficient for a solid tumor, again, for all of the reasons that we mentioned before. Some people think it's going to take several administrations, which with traditional CAR-T, and it's so expensive and so labor-intensive is almost prohibitive. But with OmniCAR, we can do this because it's modular, and we can give persistent stimulation and get the most out of this T cell infusion by simply injecting the binder on an ongoing basis. We've got some other things that we're not going to disclose right now that are going to affect -- that are going to help us get these cells to site and address that suppressing tumor microenvironment when we get there. And it also builds upon the really encouraging data that UPenn has already generated with an anti-HER2 OmniCAR who have demonstrated great in vitro, in vivo efficacy. Massive, massive market opportunity in each of these cancers. The numbers sort of speak for themselves. But as I mentioned before, we're going to take a basket study approach like we did with 100. Very large patient populations. HER2 is correlated with bad outcomes. And we believe that I'm trying to narrow it down there, the number of cases, the proportion at HER2 positive and the number of new cases a year that would be HER2 positive, they're still a very, very, very large market opportunity there for this one therapy that would be applicable to this basket of cancers. And there's a lot of people who are exploring HER2, most of them with current generation HER2 CAR-Ts, and they run into the same problems that I mentioned before, trafficking, TME, those sorts of things. It's a little bit invidious to compare ourselves to those. But let's look at next-generation. There's a number of -- Prescient is a next-generation CAR-T company. You've heard us mention Xyphos before. They were acquired by Astellas at the end of 2019 for a large amount of money. Them, and Calibr, their next generation, and they are in discovery stage. Of the next-generation CAR-T players looking at HER2, we are the most advanced. We are the most advanced, and Xyphos was taken off the table for $665 million. So once again, this shows you how we're nicely placed in this field, not only a differentiated product, but differentiated in terms of our stage of development. Lastly, I'll talk about GBM, glioblastoma multiforme. This was maybe the first solid tumor to show some promise with CAR-T. Traditional drugs kind of have trouble crossing what's called the blood brain barrier, which is protective of the brain, but an active T cell can actually cross this blood-brain barrier, which makes CAR-T an interesting approach. But the early promise of CAR-T and GBM was met with a little bit of frustration. The early response has led to relapse and -- which means the cancer comes back relatively quickly, and GBM can be a very aggressive cancer at the best of times. So we're going to be looking at 2 targets there, HER2 and EGFRviii as well as another undisclosed target that we're going to be -- that we'll be able to disclose in the fullness of time. And we're going to be only 1 of 3 CAR-T programs looking at multiple antigens in GBM. And why is this important? Well, this is down to -- this is not us saying this, this was published just last year, and it is one of several papers talking about this. Looking at CAR-T and GBM, when you're looking at a single target, we're confronted with the fact that GBM, the actual tumors themselves, they've got a lot of -- they've got a heterogeneity. So they've got lots of different targets on them and they're plastic, which means these things change very, very quickly. They evolve and that allows some escape. And when you have escape that means escape is when a -- even one cancer cell is left behind, and it goes on to relapse. And if you just -- you simply shed that antigen and another one comes on, then you're left with the effects of the CAR-T therapy, but none of the efficacy of the CAR-T therapy. So this study here concludes that single antigen targeting will fail to completely eradicate the brain tumors resulting in relapse. So we have taken that to heart and think, well, how can we be different from other CAR-T GBM approaches? And it is -- 2 are better than 1. So we're looking at HER2, which is an 80 -- we're leveraging our experience in the prior program I just mentioned, but HER2 is present in 80% of GBM, and EGFRviii is in 45%. Now either one of these -- when you study either one of these alone, the results aren't so good, but the thought is that by targeting both of them, you're going to get a durable -- a strong effect and a durable effect. And we're also looking at another target that I can't disclose, which is perhaps even better than those 2. So the advantage here that we're doing multiantigen targeting. We're again using persistent stimulation, that's something other CAR-T therapies cannot do. They're sort of a one-and-done approach. You have a one-off infusion and you hope that it gets to where it needs to get to and works the way you hope, but we get a chance to persistently stimulate these T cells as if there was another infusion. And we've got these other programs here that are using the features of OmniCAR to address this trafficking and that immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. There's 41 programs overall in CAR-T looking at GBM, which might make it seem crowded. 16 are in the clinic already. And -- but of those, the number of those looking at multiple antigens, only 3 of which we are one. And we are the only corporate there. The other 2 are at a not-a-profit institute in China. So that leaves us pretty well one of -- the only corporate looking at multiple antigen targeting in GBM. So we've got a very, very busy development plan ahead of us, and we've just had a kickoff meeting today, which was fantastic. We've resourced ourselves up for this and continue to do so. And it is summarized here. This is an aggressive work plan. I think some people might look at this and be tempted to say, look, the rubber hits the road when you inject a patient, and with traditional drugs that is the case because really, it's about clinical data trumps all other data, except when you've got a platform like this. And I would invite you to think differently. And certainly, I feel quite vindicated by our discussions at JPMorgan and BIO and BIO Europe at the end of last year. People are looking for evidence, even preclinical that these systems can do what they hope it can do. So we can add an enormous amount of value along this journey. And I think as much as me saying, so you look at a company like Xyphos, which was preclinical like us getting snapped up for a big amount because they were able to demonstrate that they could do what's said on the label. And as soon as you do that, you become relevant to so many people, it's not funny. So we'd invite you not to think of this as a product. We can add a tremendous amount of value along the journey. So that is that. So in summary, we've got 3 targets in-house, targeting -- they are all highly differentiated. We believe OmniCAR is going to create a real advantage for these that really help make them work where others have stumbled. And either -- any one of these programs, I think, could be an absolute belt, and we're well-resourced to carry those in-house. But remember, this is just what we're conducting in-house. This does not take into account the things that we can do with external parties with any other program. And we're going to be very busy, and it's going to produce a lot of opportunity to interact with you, and you'll be able to see sort of firsthand the progress and the value it creates for the overall platform. A win in any one of these indications along that journey is really going to be a win for the overall platform. That's the other thing I would add. So that is that. I guess, I'll hand back to Warrick to field the questions. We got through a little bit quicker than I'd like to. So apologies if I went through a little bit fast.

Fantastic. Thank you, Steven. What we'll do is kick off with a few questions. Why don't we just get straight to Chimeric. All of a sudden, the ASX has a CAR-T sector...

Two company constitute a sector.

Yes, a number of people have just asked for your view on the listing of Chimeric on Monday. What it means for CAR-T, generally? And just how PTX is thinking about life moving forward with a competitor in the race?

Yes. Look, the glib answer would be that this is about Prescient, and I'm not really going to comment on another company's program. But I'll actually stick my neck out and say that I warmly welcome Chimeric as another CAR-T company there. So I think anything that helps build awareness of CAR-T is wonderful. They've got a single product, and it's -- but it is in the clinic. In many ways, we're a little bit -- a little bit -- for want of a better term, complementary. They're a single product, we're a platform. They're in the clinic, we're preclinical. So their current generation, we're next-generation. We've got a GBM program, whereas they have as well to a single target versus dual target. But look, if someone wanted a piece of pie today and a piece of pie tomorrow, I'd really encourage them to look at both companies. Why wouldn't they will be producing clinical data, while we'll be demonstrating next-generation type of features that we think are going to be important for GBM. So I warmly welcome their admission to the ASX and wish them every success. I can tell you that Christine Brown, the co-inventor of that is a lovely lady and as a genuine leader in CAR-T and GBM, and wish them all the best.

A couple questions in -- from John. Just wanting to know about the -- sort of the financial components around the UPenn deal. Could you just describe the licensing arrangement that you have with UPenn on OmniCAR?

Sure. The financial terms are confidential at UPenn's request. So I can't unilaterally disclose that, but it comprised an upfront fee, and there are development milestones, milestone fees that we must pay them as well as ongoing royalties from any resultant products. So we've got worldwide exclusive rights to the platform. The actual SpyTag/SpyCatcher system that it employs was developed by Oxford University, and we've got a license from them as well, freedom to operate for any CAR application. So whilst that might sound confusing, think of it like this, we've got the sports car from UPenn, but the engine was from -- is from Oxford.

Right. So Joseph, just asking if -- in terms of any discussions to license out OmniCAR to third parties, any discussions in progress? Obviously, nothing has been announced, so nothing material, but any nibbles?

So we've -- I'm not going to speculate. That'd be irresponsible. But we've had a lot of interactions since we acquired the asset, even in the earlier days. At BIO, BIO Europe at the end of last year was especially encouraging. We just had -- we just finished JPM last week. I can tell you that there are a couple of things. These things do take time, and especially when you were trying to solve problems of CAR-T that involves a degree of sensitivity when you're telling someone in a very diplomatic way that their approach is not optimal. People don't like to be told their babies aren't beautiful. So it takes a little bit of time getting them comfortable with the potential of this that doesn't rubbish their approach. But what we've also found is that there's a whole group out there of potential parties that we didn't even consider were partners that are absolutely potential partners. And they include people who are not even in CAR-T. So the people who are not in CAR-T might be companies developing, let's say, antibodies, and they've got no ambitions to be -- I don't want to be a first mover in CAR-T, but they've got a huge library of antibodies and they're selling them and making great money. And we turn up and say, would you like it if we were able to life cycle, manage your portfolio and by tagging those, we can turn them not just into CAR-Ts, but into next-generation CAR-Ts without you having to go back to formula, how would you like that? Well, you can imagine the conversations that's leading. So we're having very encouraging conversations there, making the right noises. They do take time. We've got a full-time BD person based in the U.S. because I can't travel. Dan Shelly, he's an absolute gem. He just presented at the Onco Cell Therapy Summit yesterday late last night. So he got invited for a speaking slot where we're talking about OmniCAR. So yes, we're doing all of the right things and I remain very encouraged that we've got a very relevant asset to a great many people.

The platform approach, I guess, is what's different. And it's -- it maybe -- takes people a bit of work. You encouraged them to think differently about the platform approach versus sort of a single asset company. When you look at this slide we are now, the macro work plan that does look quite aggressive and busy, I think you described it as. In terms of sort of cash in the bank and funding this pipeline, Steven, what does that look like?

Yes. I think we're very comfortable. So we've got, what, $18 million, $19 million cash in the bank right now. A lot of this work is going to be conducted in Australia, where we've got -- getting credible leverage with our R&D tax rebate and don't have a currency headwind. So I'm delighted with that. You can -- well, I think it's going to be a blend of institutional and corporate service providers and collaborators, but we'll be doing this effectively in-house. So we can have our -- we can control costs and timetables. So we've got enough for the foreseeable future, absolutely. And this doesn't take into account any grant funding, which I'd be hopeful we'd be able to leverage.

Julie, just asking, when you're thinking about sort of current generation and next generation, could you put a sort of a time line to those? What are the next couple of years look like for PTX in terms of getting next-gen out and about?

This -- it's right in front of us. That's what this slide is. So you don't -- it's not like -- does not mean to sound right, but it's not like releasing a next-generation phone where we've enhanced some features and just release it. So we've got to demonstrate these next-generation features. And when I say next generation, this is not like, here's a bespoke customized CAR-T therapy that each patient's one is got to be made. It takes 22 days to make it and you infuse it once, and it does what it does and you hope that it's efficacious. This is modular, it's controllable, it's flexible, it's like a Lego set for CAR-T. So this, we believe, is next generation. Those construct testings and those biophysics things on this studies actually going to be really important. That's why I've put a star there at the end of those significant milestones for these things to do what they say they're going to do before we even start doing the IND-enabling work is going to be enormous. And these are the sorts of things that get presented at conferences and get published. We would hope to do the same.

Question in from Alex. Maybe just talking about the broader ecosystem around CAR-T. How supportive is the federal government? And any other sort of worthy or noteworthy organizations that are supporting the progress of CAR-T?

Federal government in Australia is very supportive, and they've been supportive of places like the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute for them to increase their capabilities in this space. So yes, federal government is very supportive of CAR-T, but there is also a recognition there that this is just the beginning. Does any government in Australia or anywhere else want to be -- turn this into a logistics exercise where it still takes the best part of a month to treat a single patient and cost $0.5 million to do so? Probably not. So -- but it is almost like where heart transplants were in the '70s. It was a massive, massive exercise, hugely expensive. But look, it got better and better and more efficient. Similar here, even with current generation therapies, they're learning to do things a little bit quicker and a little bit cheaper. But we really need in the whole system now a stepwise change in how that's delivered in order for it to reach the patients that we want to. And I know for a fact, I've spoken to big pharma companies that say, we can't touch this. We can't touch CAR-T unless we've got the ability to offload -- to deliver several hundred thousand doses per year. Now with current CAR-T, it's just -- you just can't do it. There are -- current facilities are tailored for a certain number of patients. It's -- they're all in intensive care, they're all getting a blood draw and getting bespoke blood. The things that are going to make a stepwise change in your off-the-shelf cell therapies, and we can work with those and things like OmniCAR, which are a plug-and-play. These are the things that the field is gradually working towards to deliver -- to drive down the cost per patient and to bring this to many more patients.

Okay. I've got a bunch more questions that are sort of looking very technical.

Yes, I'm happy to take those offline if its...

Yes, I might leave the very technical ones for direct responses. Just in terms of maybe where you feel OmniCAR is different to some of the other multi-target or multi-capability CAR-T programs. Is there one area where you think CAR-T stands out as a differentiated platform?

Yes. So Xyphos, again, was a similar type of approach to us. So they had a modular approach. They were the ones acquired by Astellas. So it's Astellas now. And there's another company -- another institute in California called Calibr. And we've got our eye on the landscape. We know it very well. The inventors of OmniCAR actually wrote the landscape paper and are the experts in this whole field of modularity, which is called universal immune receptor. So it gives me comfort that the people who write the review papers for the landscape are the inventors of this. But how are we different? Without going too technically, we are the only covalent system in the world. So these other attempts rely on what I call protein-protein interaction. So they come on and they come off. Now when you want -- when these things bind together that, the T cell and the binder, you want them bound. You do not want those in a patient going on and coming off, going on, coming off. That is -- that creates safety issues. And also for those who technically mind it, it becomes antagonistic. All of a sudden, you have a proportion of CAR-T cells that are unarmed and those that remain armed, guess what? They're now competing for antigen with the unbound targeting ligand. You do not want that. We are the only system in the world that's covalently bound, which is chemistry speak for -- once it's bound, it's bound. It's like -- it doesn't come off. So we've got the only system in the world that can do that. It's very important.

Just on this slide, Nevill, was wanting to know who was on the surfboard? Picture of you, Steven?

I wish, mate. I wish. It's all of us.

Margaret was just asking in terms of sort of OmniCAR, is there a -- what's the thought on products or programs that you get away in OmniCAR? Is a trade sale an option there? Or what -- how are you thinking about sort of programs that get developed of OmniCAR?

Sure. For the individual programs, was, for example, the AML program, what you do with that. Well, yes, you get to a certain -- and you're able to license that or sell that or license it by jurisdiction or who knows whether it be -- wouldn't it be wonderful to be in a position where you can actually hold on to some of that and be administering that ourselves that through a place like Peter Mac and have a place like Melbourne become a cell therapy hub where you can get patients from around Australia and Southeast Asia come in and get your treatment at Prescient. That would be nice. But so -- and again, this is about the opportunity to create products and hold on to some of it, but we don't have a European strategy. We could -- our license to Europe. We don't have a Japanese strategy. We could out-license to Japan, et cetera, et cetera.

Yes. You mentioned scientific papers. Just now, David, just asking how important will the publication of sort of scientific report be all raising awareness on OmniCAR? And what do you think the time line is for OmniCAR to get there?

I think we're sort of 12 months away from that. I think it's somewhat important, and you don't want to be publishing everything, unless you disclose our secret herbs and spices, right? So you have to be cognizant of that, but I would love for us to be presenting posters at a couple of select relevant industry events to help build awareness with KOLs, Absolutely.

Maybe just a second last question, and it's from Fred, and he's just wanting a cheeky little question on PTX-100 and 200. Any update or comments on those before we sort of round out the OmniCAR CAR-T discussion?

They're going ahead as planned, which is good as per our update at the end of last year. The only thing I would say with PTX-100, we've confronted with a good problem, which is that we needed to sort of slow down recruitment because we need to manage our drug inventory. Why? Because patients are staying on drug longer -- a lot longer than we expected. So we're doing another manufacturing run of that now, and we have to sort of manage patient recruitment. But no, everything is going along well with those. Thank you very much.

Yes. I mean, when I think back to this time last year, PTX was all about the PTX-100 and 200 and people were very energized and excited about those programs progressing. And when you look at the company now, there's a whole bunch more going on. So this -- the story has certainly evolved and developed and been added to. And CAR-T is just, as I said earlier, just exploding an exponential party. So very, very exciting that PTX has got the next-gen version of this. Maybe just sort of a concluding words, Steven, what's -- what do we need to be looking out for in the next few months from you in terms of where you go with these programs?

Yes. Look, I would -- now we've got a flag to salute with our 3 OmniCAR programs, so you can look forward to -- it doesn't spit out news immediately, but I think there's a lot of opportunity to look at what's going on in the landscape there as well for each of these indications, which is going to be informative for the shareholders. But we've got more activity, not less across the company. So PTX-100, 200, our cell therapy enhancement programs, which I've not even spoken about on this call, which are going along quite well, had a good chat with Phil Darcy at Peter Mac over Christmas and just after -- just at the start of this year, we're very happy how that's coming along, and there will be an opportunity to speak about that. And again, just on progress on this eventually as we're able to disclose it. But in the meantime, we can do our job in informing people at the size of the prize and the work plan and what other people are doing. And there's lots to like. I'm very happy. I'm very, very happy.

Very, very good. Thank you very much, Steven, and thanks to everybody, for their time on the call today. We'll be sending a recording around of this presentation to go over. There was a bit of -- a lot of new content there. And then there's technical questions here, which we will pass on to Steven and come back, particularly to you, John. And again, thanks very much for all the time and interest today. Please leave any further questions that you may have. Let us know what you think of the presentation. And any questions you have, and we'll make sure we incorporate those into future presentations. So we'll leave it here and enjoy the rest of your day. Bye.