Provectus Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. (PVCT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Provectus' 2026 Annual Stockholder Meeting. My name is Susan Xu from Alliance Advisors, and I'll help facilitate today's meeting. We'll just give everyone a moment to join before we get started. But a few quick housekeeping rules. If you can hear us clearly, you're all set on audio. And if you're experiencing any technical difficulties, please try dialing in by phone using the details in your webinar confirmation e-mail. During the formal [Operator Instructions] Please also note that today's meeting is being recorded. Before we begin, I'd like to note that the statements made during today's meeting may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements are based on management's current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Participants are encouraged to review the risk factors and forward-looking statement disclaimers contained in the company's filings within SEC. All right. I think we're ready to get started. Dominic Webster, are you able to hear me? Yes, we're good. Okay. All right. I will now turn things over to Ed Pershing, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Provectus Pharmaceuticals to call the meeting to order. Ed, the floor is yours.

Good afternoon, everyone. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Provectus Biopharmaceuticals, I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to those here in Knoxville as well as those participating online today. Thank you for attending Provectus' 2026 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I'm Ed Pershing, Chairman of Provectus Board of Directors and its Chief Executive Officer. We'd like to call the meeting to order and to entertain a motion from Provectus shareholder to elect the Chairman of this annual meeting.

My name is Dominic Rodrigues, and I am President of Provectus member of the Board and a company stockholder. I move that Ed Pershing be elected to serve as meeting Chairman.

You've heard the motion. Is there a second?

Mr. Chairman, my name is Webster Bailey. I'm also member of the Board and Provectus shareholder. I second the motion.

All those in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye. [Voting]

I hereby accept the employment as meeting Chairman. I also appoint Nathan Kibler, the law firm, Baker Donelson, Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz and Provectus outside legal counsel as meeting secretary. Before going any further into our annual meeting, I'd like to introduce the company directors and officers who are here today. Dominic Rodrigues, President, also Vice Chairman of the Board of Provectus; Webster Bailey, Board member of Provectus; John Lacey, Board Member of Provectus. In addition, we have Heather Raines in attendance, CFO of Provectus and Devin Stephens Controller of Provectus is around here somewhere. So I think everyone knows all of us. So pleased to have you here today. We will now take care of preliminary matters before proceeding with the stockholder vote. Directors has appointed Dominic Rodrigues to act as Inspector of Elections. The Board set April 20, 2026, as the date of record for this Annual Meeting of Stockholders. As of this record date, there are 420,279,879 shares of our common stock outstanding, 956,985 shares of Series D convertible preferred stock outstanding and 14,389,027 shares Series D nonconvertible stock outstanding. Each share of common stock entitled to its holders to cast 1 vote. Each Share of Series D preferred stock to cast 1 vote and each share of Series D1 preferred stock to cast 10 votes on any matter to be voted on at this meeting. Under Delaware law, the presence at the annual meeting in person or by proxy holders of a majority of the shares Provectus common stock outstanding on the record date will be -- will constitute quorum. Immediately prior to commencement of this meeting, the inspector of elections has determined that holders of approximately 59.3% of outstanding shares of common stock were represented by proxy at the annual meeting. Therefore, a quorum is present. The meeting is fully constituted and its business may proceed.

Mr. Chairman, my name is Dominic Rodrigues. I'm the Provectus stockholder, and I moved to waive the reading of the notice of the meeting, the affidavit of mailing of the notice, the proxy material and the minutes of last year's annual meeting.

Mr. Chairman, my name is Webster Bailey. I'm a Provectus stockholder and I second the motion.

You've heard the motion to waive the reading of the notice of the meeting, the affidavit of mailing of the notice and proxy material and the minutes of last year's annual meeting. All those in favor or say aye. [Voting]

All those opposed, say no. [Voting]

The motion is carried. The meeting secretary will you please insert the notice of the meeting, the affidavit of mailing of notice and the proxy material in the minute book of the company. At this time, [indiscernible] all stockholders proxies have not yet been returned. Please raise your hand if you have a proxy. [indiscernible] Heather Raines, Chief Financial Officer of Provectus. And Provectus stockholder will come around and pick it up. Any stockholders present today, you are signed and submitted proxies for this meeting do not need to vote today. Your shares will be voted in accordance with your instructions on your proxy card. Now please raise your hand if you did not receive a proxy, or if you received the proxy and returned it but now want to change the vote or if you received a proxy, but did not fill it out and now intend to vote at the meeting. If you feel any of these descriptions, please let the inspector of elections know you would like a ballot by raising your hand. Please mark the ballot as the stockholder votes are taken. If you choose to vote in person, it would be necessary for you to prove your ownership of the company's common stock as of the record date of April 26. Stockholders may submit their ballots until final call for ballots is made. I will report the outcome of the vote of each proposal after all the votes have been tallied at the end of meeting. We have 5 items on the agenda this afternoon. Number one, to elect 4 directors to serve on our Board for a 1-year time; continuing to conduct an advisory vote to improve the compensation of our named executive officers; three, to ratify the selection of CBIZ CPAs P.C. as our independent registered public accounting firm for 2026. Four, to authorize our Board to amend our Certificate of Incorporation as amended by the Certificates of Designation to effect a reverse stock split of our common stock, Series D convertible preferred stock and Series D-1 convertible preferred stock at a ratio between 1-for-10 and 1-for-50, where the ratio would be determined by our Board at its discretion and to make corresponding amendments to to the Certificates of Designation to provide for the proportional adjustment of certain terms upon a reverse stock split; and finally, to authorize our Board, if and only if proposal #4 is approved, to amend our Certificate of Incorporation, as amended by the Certificates of Designation, to decrease the number of authorized shares of our common stock and our preferred stocks by the same reverse stock split ratio determined by our Board. We will now conduct the stockholders votes on these matters during the formal portion of the meeting. After the stockholder voting is completed, we will adjourn the meeting to provide a company update followed by a question-and-answer general session as we have in the past. We will now proceed with the formal portion of the annual meeting. The first item of business today is the election of the members of the Board who will serve until 2027 Annual meeting. The Board has nominated Webster Bailey, Dr. Jack Lacey, Dominic Rodrigues and Ed Pershing to serve serve a 1-year term as directors of the company. The floor is now open for discussion regarding this proposal.

Mr. Chairman, my name is Dominic Rodrigues, I'm the stockholder, and I move to end the discussion and proceed with the vote for the first item of business.

You've heard the motion. Is there a seconder?

Mr. Chairman my name is Webster Bailey, and I'm a Provectus stockholder, and I second the motion.

You've heard the motion to end of the discussion on the first item of business, all those in favor say aye. [Voting]

All those opposed say nay. [Voting]

The motion is carried. Stockholders entitled to vote 1 -- entitled to 1 vote for each common share registered one vote for each Series D preferred share registered and 10 votes for each Series D-1 preferred share registered. If you're voting by ballot, please mark your ballot and hold on to it for now. Any questions with respect to the voting on the first item of business. The second item of business today is the proposal to conduct an advisory vote to approve the compensation of our named executive officers. The floor is now open for discussion regarding this proposal.

Mr. Chairman, my name is Dominic Rodrigues. I'm a Provectus stockholder and and I move to end discussion and proceed with the vote on the second item of business.

We've heard motion. Is there a second?

Mr. Chairman, my name is Webster Bailey and I'm a Provectus stockholder and I second the motion.

You've heard the motion in the discussion of the second item of business. All those in favor say aye. [Voting]

All opposed, say nay. [Voting]

The motion is carried. Stockholders entitled to vote to one vote for each common share registered -- one vote for each Series D preferred share registered and 10 votes for each Series D-1 preferred registered. If you are voting by ballot, please mark your ballot and hold on to it for now. Are there questions with respect to voting on the second Item of business. Item #3. Third item of business today is proposal to ratify the selection selection of CBIZ CPAs P.C. as our independent registered public accounting firm for 2026. The floor is now open for discussion regarding this proposal.

Mr. Chairman, my name is Dominic Rodrigues. I'm a Provectus stockholder, and I move to end discussion and proceed with the vote for the third item of business.

You've heard the motion. Is there a second?

Mr. Chairman, my name is Webster Bailey, and I'm a Provectus stockholder, and I second the motion.

You've heard the motion to end discussion of the first item of business. All those in favor, say aye. [Voting]

All those opposed, say nay. [Voting]

Stockholders are entitled to one vote for each common share registered, one vote for each Series D preferred share registered and 10 votes for each Series D-1 preferred share registered. If you are voting by ballot, please mark your ballot and hold on to it for now. Are there any other questions with respect to the voting on the third item of the business?

Mr. Chairman, my name is Dominic Rodrigues I'm a Provectus stockholder, and I move to end discussion and proceed with the vote on the fourth item of business.

Mr. Chairman, my name is Webster Bailey. I'm a Provectus stockholder. I second the motion.

All those in favor say aye. [Voting]

All opposed say no. [Voting]

The motion is carried. Stockholders are entitled to 1 vote for each common share registered, 1 vote for each Series D preferred share registered and 10 votes for each Series D1 preferred share registered. If you are voting, please mark your ballot and hold on to it for now. Are there any questions regarding respect to voting item of business. The fourth item of business today is the proposal to authorize the Board of Directors to amend our certificate of incorporation as amended by the certificate of designation of the Series D and D1 convertible preferred shares. To effect a reverse stock split of common stock in our Series D and D1 convertible preferred stocks at a ratio between 1 for 10 and 1 for 50. The ratio would be determined by our Board at its discretion and to make corresponding amendments to the certificate of designation to provide for the proportional adjustment terms is now open for discussion on this proposal.

Mr. I'm a Provectus stockholder, and I move to end discussion and proceed with the vote on the fourth item of business.

You've heard the motion. Is there a second?

Mr. Chairman, my name is Webster Bailey. I'm a Provectus stockholder. I second the motion.

You've heard the motion to end discussion on this fourth item of business. All in favor, say aye [Voting]

All those opposed, say no. [Voting]

[Audio Gap] the Inspector of Election to summarize his report on the stockholder votes. The Chairman recognizes Dominic Rodrigues.

With respect to the first proposal of the election of 4 directors to serve on Provectus Board for a term expiring at the 2027 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, the results of stockholder voting are that all 4 received the plurality of the votes cast. With respect to the remaining 4 proposals, the results of stockholder voting are that all proposals were approved by the required votes.

Thank you, Dominic. The Inspector of Elections will furnish the meeting secretary with a written report on the final vote count with respect to the matters voted on today, which will be included in the annual meeting minutes. We have concluded the activities and business as the formal portion of today's annual meeting. Before adjourning and moving on to company update portion, I want to express to our stockholders, my sincere appreciation. Sorry, I came close to getting through this. I don't follow rules too closely. Moving on to the company. I want to express to all of our stockholders, my sincere appreciation and the sincere appreciation of all the directors, officers and employees of Provectus Biopharmaceuticals. Your active participation in the stockholder voting process and for your support of our business direction and management. Your continued interest in Provectus is very much welcome and deeply appreciated. If there is no further business to come before this meeting, I ask for a motion for adjournment.

Mr. Chairman, my name is Dominic Rodrigues. I'm a Stockholder, and I move to adjourn the Annual Meeting.

Mr. Chairman, my name is Webster Bailey. I'm a Provectus stockholder. I second them.

You have heard the motion to adjourn the meeting. All those in favor, say aye. [Voting]

All those opposed say no. [Voting]

The motion is carried. The 2026 Annual Meeting of Provectus Biopharmaceuticals is adjourned. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the company update portion of the meeting in just a few minutes. Again, welcome. As always, this is a part of this meeting, we enjoy the most. So we always feel like we've got to be prepared because we never know what direction the questions will come from, but I want to open it up and again express our appreciation for your support out this past year. And just to go back to look, one of the things that I've mentioned in past years, most recently in the 2024 Annual Shareholder Meeting, which when you're trying to fix the broken or basically the absolute edge of collapse. One of the first things you should do when you're evaluating whether you're going to tackle it or not, you set certain milestones to see whether you can actually accomplish it. And due to that on the front end, because it is a way, known that to happen. That is a way to judge your own performance and the performance of those around you is whether you're staying on track. And so if you'll recall, in 2024, I commented about a milestone that I've not mentioned to anyone before starting this journey. And that was to turn the opinion and one of the leading melanoma experts in the world, the most published physician in melanoma care and research in the world to change our opinion, 180 degrees about PV-10. In prior leadership, she had once dismissed it as basically saying, "Yes, I could probably shoot vulcan to tumor and destroy the tumor but I haven't killed the disease." And because of some things I was exposed to in the 1990s, I was familiar with that kind of comment about intra-tumoral therapies. And that was one of the ways. It was a hot topic in the '90s and early 2000s to try to find the right agent and use intra-tumoral therapy. And my attitude has always been from an experience I had talked with an oncologist. I sounded to me like the criticism was just not about intra-tumoral therapy. You just didn't have the right drug agent. You had the right drug agent that I think killed the tumor with elicit a systemic immune response can kill the disease. And so in hearing that, I'll never forget why I'm standing when I heard that criticism has been made. I just thought the industry still doesn't get it if you can find a systemic agent intra-tumoral therapy can be successful. So that was one of those milestones have been invoiced. Others have been -- I was very open about within the team. Dominic knows this, that we wear each other out in our discussions over the years. One of the goals was to get engaged with St. Jude in Memphis, one of the world's leading pediatric oncology centers. And all my colleagues know I've been banging on every door possible for at least 5 years, close to 6 years now. And all those efforts didn't go anywhere, but a phone call from St. Jude -- e-mail from St. Jude to us has created a relationship with St. Jude. And I give credit for the work that Dr. Aru Narendran at Alberta Children's Hospital and the University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine, his work relative to seeing signaling, his in that field caused the MD researcher at St. Jude to reach out to Provectus, and we're now working with St. Jude's in that field of research. And that, to me, was a big step along the way, and you'll see a pattern by the end of my comments as far as these kind of events. Another milestone I had to measure, I hope this is more of a dream was to basically get Provectus engaged with NIH and National Institute of Health because I grew up and my slang term for the NIH was that's the Mac Daddy of all of them. I mean it is the center for research in medicine. And so in August, a group at NCI was associated with NIH reached out to us and because of the government shutdowns and so forth and cut back, the government cutbacks, it was January before they reach back out. They asked to wait. And once they got through that, they reached up to us. And now I'm pleased to say that they are now working in an animal model related to HCC liver cancer. And here's the description that NIH uses because we're working with the NIH clinical center and it is the nation's largest hospital devoted entirely to clinical research. So it really is the Mac Daddy of medical research. And so we're very pleased to have achieved that milestone since our last Annual Shareholder Meeting. Number three, those of you here today, you're sitting in one of the key milestones from the time first interacted with Provectus in their office space going back to the founders, I always felt like it was not adequately secured. If you're really going to change the world in medicine, you better have secure space and you better be extremely consciousness about security in all aspects. And so because of funding and so forth, we've had to be on a very tight budget. But I'm thrilled to have been able to reacquire the former headquarters at PYA that Doug, wherever you're sitting and I tackled in 1991 when it was basically been sitting abandoned for 10 years and restored it, outgrew it in 2009 and across the street and then to get a chance to dive back in concert with the East Tennessee Foundation is a dream come true. And so having a facility like this that accommodate a meeting such as today, and I haven't used the Hilton and also having much, much better security than the company has ever had is a key element if you're going to play in the real world of major medicine. Pardon? Free Parking. Exactly. And that's true. Yes, not all the hassles are going downtown or anywhere else they'd be it. Item #4 was for me, personally, and I think for Dominic, I want to speak for him as far as the milestone was something that was really the most challenging aspect of taking on this effort to fix this company, turn it around and get its medical drug agent out to the world. And that was truly having a much better understanding of the mechanism of action. And most importantly, basically establishing what the real mechanism of action was because there were some aspects of the description of the mechanism of action, even as accountant I knew we were absolutely wrong. And so it was fundamentally important to find out how this molecule works. And to me, this is the most important of all the milestones established for me partially and then in my preparation for leading the company because without such knowledge, it would be impossible to capture the full value of our drug agents both financially and medically health -- for medical health improvements for people around the world. And one of the things we didn't have in starting this journey, we didn't have AI tools. And so one of the things I get Dominic the credit, I dream up questions and ideas and the genius over here on my right, uses multiple AI tools to evaluate, and we explore different ways this drug is working. And without AI, it would have been impossible to be positioned where we are today. I just need to remember the defining moment was in April of last year. While I was out walking late at night, trying to clear my head and we got into a deep discussion about mechanism of action and using AI tools. And it's remarkable and a huge benefit for all of us in this company to watch how those tools have improved over that period -- short period of time and just how much we've learned. And we're still challenging it that Dominic keeps asking me this question. Are we there yet? Because I'm trying to understand 100% of what it does, and I know we'll never get there, but we're getting, obviously, saying we are very, very close. And so for all of the shareholders and wonder why it takes so long? The fastest way to lose something in this world of medical drug development is not know the mechanism of action. And I'll give you one example. This is something we thought a fundamental aspect of this drug is lysosomal destruction and yet the industry is not going to accept that as a target. It's not, so what else, what's your real target. And so because of these efforts, we know so much more about what this molecule is capable of doing. And I've had -- I told the Dominic once after he shipped me some materials, had to read, reread, reread again, trying to grasp we're advancing, I'd say, you can pit 30 of the leading medical researchers in a room lock them in there for a minute and they couldn't come out with some of the connections with the variables of how this thing works. And so that's just an important example. Sometimes you got to have the tools to advance something as complex as this. And so that should encourage all the investors in this company on the kind of progress we're making in that space. And Dominic will comment more about this later. Also I want to share with you milestones to be achieved in the last half of 2026 and then across 2027 as far as goals we have, and we can't guarantee any of this legal counsel. So I'm just telling you, here's the goals and those things we're targeting. Additional new Board members, we realize we need to fill out our board leadership. Rollout of a robust communications and public relations action plan. Key elements of this plan, and Dominic will comment specifically about this one later, it's open science. In the past, we've used the term open source researching, basically using the terminology coming out of the software and IT world, open source software, so we more rapidly advance, and we're formally announcing and establishing that program. It's been in effect. We just didn't talk about that much openly, but it is really paying off. What we've quietly done is really paying off. Another goal that I'm confident will occur in 2027 unless unforeseen events occur, it's a corporate name change. A key element of that is when we uplist, we do not want to be burdened with the historical name of this company. I've known that from day 1 and an investment banker I talked to multiple times a week, keeps telling me you got to change the name. He just said that today on an unsolicited phone call, you got to change the name. Initiating new clinical trials. We understand the importance of developing more data as far as patient outcomes. And last and what everybody is always most interested in and definitely not least, in a focused effort to increase Provectus market value as measured by its common share price that are reflecting the underlying value and potential of our medical drug applications. We are very conscious of our market cap. I will tell you, and I know shareholders never like to hear this, but I've said it multiple years. And I think history will prove it to true whenever we really get this company where it can go is that that's been a very valuable defense mechanism. Stay under the radar and big pharma, ignores you, they figure you'll run out of money or find that your drug doesn't work, and they're not going to pay attention. And so we're -- there's a number of key resources you have to have in place when you start going into that space. And that's been a key area of focus and some of the things I've just commented on are key elements of that. One simple one being the name change. And in closing, I'll share an event that just happened this week, I actually got the phone call on Monday. It's just a simple anecdotal event that really kind of reflects progress has been that I've just spoken about. And that is, you've heard me say every year, the most common phrase I hear repeatedly is it sounds too good to be true. It sounds like snake oil. There is a stockholder that reached out to Dominic and me about 3 weeks ago, had a distant family member, that's battling cancer, a very aggressive form of cancer, not responding, being treated at a major university-based medical center in this country. and the prognosis is not good at all. And because of his knowledge of the drug, he had shared with him about PV-10 materials. And so when the family spoke to their oncologist, what was his first reaction, I quote sounds like snake oil. That was his quote. But to his credit, he said, I'll read about it. He was open-minded enough to read about it. So when they went for a very quick follow-up appointment, he had read about it and said, is there some way that you could connect me with that company? And they had texted me while they were in his office and set up a time for him to call me on Monday. And he was fascinated. He was trying to figure out if we had any compassionate use programs. He was quite verbal in that he would love for that patient to be able to access our drug because they have nothing that works. And they ended up at that appointment meeting the individual because he was septic. He's got a bacterial infection they can't defeat. And so I was also describing to him I work as an antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal agent. And it just -- it was one more, he was unaware of that. He had been focused on the cancer side, but anyway. And the reason why that I think is so important, those that take the time to read about it. We've now published enough information. We've connected the dots to use Dominic [indiscernible] for people. And if they're just curious enough, it is not [ snake owl ], and it's not too good to be true. And so I just share that as a closing thought as evidence of how the world is viewing us differently today than they did June of last year and all the prior years. So thanks for your time and interest.

So we'll do what we usually do, which is go through a company update presentation with you. Again, this company is entirely about this incredible synthetic small molecule called Rose bengal sodium. And the 1 thing we've added to this slide as we highlight the molecular is the notion as we progress through different diseases is that it is, we feel now looking at 3 clinical stage programs in oncology, in dermatology and ophthalmology and then probably a half dozen preclinical programs is the idea that this molecule is evolving into what we think is a universal catalyst for the cascade or sequence as it relates to its mechanism of action. So Ed talked about our use of AI. We had or discussed in the last shareholder meeting the fact that we did review as we started to begin using AI tools, we ran an assessment of the 500-or-so cancer papers that were available on PubMed related to rose bengal in cancer, looking for inconsistencies, errors, conflicting statements by the various authors to make sure that from a mechanism perspective, that we had it down. To our surprise, that aggregation of information turned out many more insights into mechanism and no contradiction. And so that obviously continues to build the confidence, which is already at a very great level. But as Ed said, we needed to understand in more detail what was going on with the rose bengal mechanism. I mean, AI to evaluate, assess, review rose bengal and how we will use it in the near future. What's important for us to communicate is that we're not, and I think the cliche phrase is token maxing, this is not about compute. This is about simply using a $20 a month subscription times however, many AI agents we use, sometimes having to simply wait till 5 p.m. when demand is a little bit lower on their systems and servers because what we're trying to do is, and you may have heard this that it isn't necessarily the agents themselves, the so-called large language models. It's your data or your company's data that is what they need to be trained on. And so you can -- as a shareholder or on the outside looking in, you can use in rose bengal sodium, rose bengal and learn more and more, wonderful. Those queries are not the same as ours because we're training the agents we've paid for and use on the data sets, preclinical data, clinical data, specific papers and questions that we are trying to ask. And again, your agent is developing a knowledge base from what you're giving in plus the directions that you want to take it. And so again, it's not compute heavy, it's insight. And so part of what we're trying to do is to understand how do we stand in front of a physician, a medical center, a pharma whomever whether industry or layperson, how do we describe from start to finish such as in cancer we accumulate in the lysosome, the stomach of a cancer cell, Eventually, that lysosome ruptures causing the cell to be blown up all the way to a well-documented systemic immune response or T cell, NK cell, NK T cell level. How do we explain that from step to step to step to steps, 5 steps, and we have and we think -- now again, you can always continue to refine it. But we feel very confident in being able to articulate that and not use a whole bunch of words. And so that's what we can expect to roll out, we hope, in the next few months. We have 3 clinical stage assets. What does that mean categories of disease that we've treated patients, both in terms of the data that we stand upon from the history of the company. The first and the lead asset is the intra-tumoral injection of rose bengal in a saline solution. We all know that. Our shareholders know that as PV-10. From the perspective of the diseases or the indications we're looking at, penile cancer, where primarily you're looking for a cytotoxic effect, you're trying to reduce or diminish or eliminate the cancer, and you're hoping for immune activation on the back end, but primarily, you're trying to maximize tissue preservation because the standard of care is penectomy. That is a great situation, a perfect setting for where this drug should be applied as if it were a version of a scalpel for the surgical oncologist, even though in some cases like this, you have a multidisciplinary team where there's a medical oncologist on the team as well. There are certain other adult solid tumors that we're looking at that leverage the strengths, the specific strengths of PV-10 intratumorally or IL-PV10. One of them is, again, another tissue preservation part of the body where that's really critical. So that's what we want to deploy it for. All of the other strengths that the company has been able to show in historical clinical trials in melanoma and in cancers of the liver all are relevant, but that tissue preservation piece is so critical. And one of the other adult solid tumors that we would look at for -- or are looking at with an academic medical center for IL PV-10 is in a part of the body where the standards of care or the standard of care sort of is if I recall properly is chemotherapy, is radiation followed by surgery. And so again, there is an opportunity where you can clearly define and delineate why or what PV10s clinical rationale for that is, and it just isn't killing a tumor and it just isn't the immune response, there's so much more. And that's how we want to evaluate what we're working for in terms of picking the indications. So Ed mentioned and we're really excited, very excited by this. Our 2 collaborations that essentially both were a result of the data that the company has pushed out, particularly over the last many years, but the data that's been made available to researchers and clinicians around the world. Simply building through all of the presentations through different researchers in melanoma in HCC because that information is valuable. The collaboration with NIH is center for interventional oncology, which sits at the NIH Clinical Center, which, as Ed said, is America's largest research hospital. Now they had been working with the reagent grade, the version of rose bengal that all researchers -- most researchers typically use, the researchers who knock on our door, obviously, use our stuff. But that's the standard. And what they had read and papers that have been put out about PV10. And we're working on it for -- to see how it works and in fact, had even been accepted for a medical conference using their material. And in a joking manner for us, what was funny was that the molecule name that they used or defined was PV-10 which we all know was rose bengal. And so that's powerful. And so they were doing work on their own accord with our agent grade material. We had a series of conversations that were meant for us to inform and to educate them that were interrupted by 2 government shutdowns, which they apologized profusely for the time taken. They did what we will call a pre-pilot study where we shipped vials of PV-10 to Bethesda, Maryland during a snowstorm. They picked it up and literally arrived at the loading dock. And later that day, they applied it to their animal model, which is a very specific model for HCC that they prefer and off they went. And we had a series of update phone calls together with a voluminous amount of e-mails going back and forth to update us and us to give them feedback on what they were seeing, again, on their dime, and we're very grateful for that. And then now we are on the cusp of starting a pilot study with more of these animals, where we will pick up, in our view, relative to the value they bring. And on an absolute basis, a small amount of money, hopefully leading to a much larger program that we hope ends up as a Phase II clinical trial in HCC because -- we've already done a Phase I with HCC and a series of other cancers, metastatic to the liver, and that work would be done under a CRADA, a government contractual construct. But that's an example of of a collaboration where they're bringing tremendous value to the table and are really using their efforts to get up to speed and limiting the -- given our limited resources at the moment, allowing us to push forward in this. And really, what is the goal of that? Because we have a very good sense of how patients do, and I'll talk a little bit about that in a second. We know what happens to patients when they have an injection of their HCC or primary liver cancer tumor or one of half a dozen different tumor types When cancer metastasizes to the liver, the prognosis relative to the primary cancer is horrible. And yet we were able to show through repeat treatments which was one of the advancements we made over the last bunch of years running that study and particularly the use of PET CT that if you could generate a complete metabolic response that appear to be prognostic of survival. And so what they're trying to do, NIH, CIO is trying to robustly describe the mechanistic behavior of PV-10 in HCC. So from soup to nuts, yes, it kills tumor, great, but what's going on. And that's what -- so with that deck information with their logo on it, we can knock on other collaborators doors. We may want to combine that with some other drug agent because it makes sense. And by the way, they're not just researchers. They are researchers at a hospital. So the team that we're working with is a combination of scientists and researchers, PhDs as well as MDs, the head of the group flattered us honored us by taking an update phone call where his team members were on their zooms. And he happened to be in scrubs in the OR because he felt attending the meeting was really, really important, and we were simply blown away by that attendance and that honor to us. Rare pediatric cancer, again, where can we apply IL PV-10 that others may fear to tread. We do not fear how and where we can use PV-10. We need to follow down the middle of the fairway, get our regulatory ducks in order with respect to the IND, expanding the IND. But we're not worried about which cancer we want to tackle. We would love to tackle them all, but we can't and we have to remain focused. But it was, again, having collaborators like Dr. Narendran at the University of Calgary and his team push out work as it relates to a notable signaling pathway called STING. There are other pathways that other scientists consider notable, but there's a large audience of folks who think STING is really important as an important immune pathway in the body. He pushes out a paper an MD PhD, primarily a researcher, he doesn't do clinical work, was made aware of it. He read it. And he asked 4 vials of PV-10 to run in his model because he was kind enough to share a manuscript where he was publishing work using a drug agent that would activate STING to see in this particular rare pediatric cancer if you elevated or better activate this immune pathway, it would have a better impact on the rare pediatric tumor that he was trying to figure out how to solve a so-called cold tumor. And so again, fabulous, and we're really excited to work with him. The reason we put it under the intra tumoral or the IL PV-10 category is because the model system he used was a mouse STING agonist meaning that the STING agonist would came sort of from -- came from the mouse as opposed to a human version of it. And the way in which it's deployed or tested is intra tumoral. He said to us, look, children, young adults, adolescents who present with this disease don't typically present with tumors that are injectable. Some do, but it would be great if you could deliver this orally or intravenously. So we're happy to raise our hands saying, "Hey, well, Dr. Narendran has done oral work. We've done oral work at -- for bladder cancer. So we're busting at the seams because we would absolutely want to deliver that orally and make it available to all children who have that particular rare pediatric cancer. So that's another example of that. An update on our VisiRose subsidiary, which was a start-up company that we created in conjunction with the University of Miami because the folks at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute were looking for a solution to when topical antibiotics, the first line of treatment, whether you have a bacterial led eye infection, a fungal or parasitic fails then you're effectively SOL as it relates to being able to see. And so they apparently went into the textbooks, which we knew. There was antimicrobial data dating back into the '80s, '90s and they proceeded to use the reagent grade rose bengal and other forms of it to robustly and rigorously go through in vitro work, petri dish moving to in vivo, their choice of animal would be rabbits for that and dropping it into rabbits eye safety and for efficacy. And then eventually going, hey, we have patients and Bascom Palmer in Miami has a -- has basically an ophthalmology and eye emergency room that for the region, folks can -- basically, you drive, fly, however you get there to be admitted and they gave us -- they were kind enough to give us a tour of that and it's really cool. So for that, we are in need to get through that step to then file an IND with FDA that allows you to then test your material in humans. They, of course, have a lot more flexibility to be able to do that because they're simply treating people who are in dire medical need. But we need to have our regulatory house in order. The goal of what we're proposing or will propose as a Phase IIb/III clinical trial, some initial number of patients with the pharmaceutical grade rose bengal in a saline solution, PV-305 with Greenlight, want to presumably check off a few blocks on efficacy, but more on the safety perspective because we're using a different type of rose bengal that we've obviously documented its safety profile that topically in the eye. We've got to run those hoops and then presumably move to a Phase III study against the appropriate comparator which will be at myosin and anti miotic for the eye that was approved, I think, in 1978 and generally considered suboptimal by clinicians. However, that's the only thing that's been approved. Just and as example, as you may know about how this industry works, the second and third line for fungal eye infections are 2 antifungal drugs that are given orally that are compounded into topical applications. So therefore, they have not been approved for use in the eye. But they have been a systemic fungal infections. And so again, yes, it's a very weird situation, but we've got to follow the path. And so we're going straight up against that myosin although, again, the typical approach is your agent plus standard of care versus a standard of care. And why are we excited by that because those same sort of cadre of folks not necessarily Bascom Palmer, but other key opinion leaders and leaders in the ophthalmic space focused on eye infections deemed Bascom Palmer work to be quite powerful particularly the clinical outcomes that they published. And so in doing so, they found funding from NIH to run the study that we ultimately hope to run their shortcoming was they deemed it for whatever reason because the data were certainly available will give 1 cycle of treatment, we'll treat the eye one time with their topical Rose bengal plus their green light. And obviously, we think that makes no sense that we believe you give enough rose bengal or enough PV-10 and eventually good to great things have the potential to happen. And so -- but their data were very useful because for the strain of fungal Fusarium keratitis that we plan to use in our study. It beat the standard of care, but the level of beat was not statistically significant. Two levels of -- 2 cycles of treatment, we're pretty comfortable in believing that we would win that study. Again and again, that wasn't work that was funded by us, nor was any of the Bascom Palmer work funded by us, although in the course of the relationship they did want vials of PV-10 as compounded into PV-305, which we provided them because they wanted to see and work with and play with the real thing. We expect this summer, another study funded by NIH, I believe, to look at bacterial infections using rose bengal and being treated by rose bengal and Greenlight. Unfortunately, it's one cycle. But again, they're continuing to do work on our behalf, and I say that fully tongue-in-cheek. We're anxious to see the data because it will help us model what our study would be to eventually run a trial to expand the label to include bacterial keratitis. And then the story kind of gets better from the perspective of the same folks who ran the original study called REAGIR to test rose bengal and Greenlight against fungal keratitis and parasitic keratitis, decided and found a philanthropic donor who will fund a study that is fusarium fungal keratitis, multiple cycles of cyles of rose bengal,PDT, PAT. And so for us, they're running the same study that we had planned to do. And of course, they are, we think, to give them the benefit of doubt listen to our advice and are doing exactly what we would do as well because we know the molecule. But we are not experts in a multitude of disease areas. And so that's Varier and the Open Science approach that Ed mentioned, the goal is to collaborate, bringing our expertise plus all of the data that we see in half a dozen research program areas to an existing or a new disease area and help them get the benefit of all of that experience. So you all know or may know that Provectus has a third clinical-stage asset, topical PH-10 for dermatology, company has treated prior psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, actinic keratosis. But we needed to do, and we started this in 2017, and expanded it in 2022 to do further. And then continued it in 2025. And where we moved from petri dish to a large animal model, a pig study where we -- where the folks at the University of Texas medical branch in Galveston, who were studying wound healing with PV-10 were really kind enough to give real estate on their large pig to the Rockefeller University to gather some tissue samples of treated and untreated skin with PV-10 in order to understand what was going on. The lead researcher at Rockefeller is not yet ready to roll out his data. He's still trying to comprehend what he's seeing. But what's interesting here, and we'll go back to Ed hammering home that we need to understand what's going on with rose bengal is if you think about the company that was the bell of the ball and rightly so because they've extended the life of pancreatic cancer patients in their study for more than 6 months. They're focused on one target or perhaps variance of one target as a RAS inhibitor, and we can't honestly say that we have one target that PV-10 goes after. It has the potential to be polite. More than one, but in the case of hematology, it's several thousands. And so the whole idea is that when you blow up -- so our target, if you want to know what our target is in cancer, it's the lysosome of the cancer cell. That's our target. Or if that's too hard for some of the industry folks, we just target the cancer cell because by effectively blowing up the cancer cell or blowing up the cancer cell effectively, we generate presumably, thousands of targets, the relevant targets, plural, for the immune system to learn from. Not just one thing. And so anyway, so that's -- so we're not in a position yet to decide the next clinical trial for PH-10 in dermatology because we need to be very comfortable what is the next indication for that program based off of the wealth of data where the computer is sort of breaking down because it's got a lot of data to process and it still can't. And the lead researcher, who is world renown needs to just give us more guidance on what indications should we tackle in dermatology. In terms of early-stage assets, oral PV-10 and for that matter because we do have some internal company data on intravenously administered PV-10. I think you said in some of our communications and documents, oral PV-10 is a game changer, game changer for cancer and is a game changer for every other disease where systemic administration is how you will solve the problem of the disease of that patient. And we want to be clear about how we've run the programs that we have the opportunity to participate in when Ed and I came in 2017. We ran those programs to help fill gaps in information. We ran those programs to generate data that folks wanted to get a better handle on. The lessons learned were continue to give injections of intra-tumoral injections of PV-10, if there is something to inject, do so, if there's nothing to inject, then presumably, there is no disease to inject that I digress. So that's the program. But what we wanted to see was what about survival because as Ed mentioned, huge amount of skepticism by industry and because of the failure of a lot of companies, whether they're drugs, running clinical trials or their drug happened to be approved. What was the immune -- systemic immune response from a local injection even T-VEC, the skepticism of that would be the fact that, well, sure, 30 injections that is needed, but also whether or not they were driving a true immune response. And so we ran the metastatic uveal melanoma program. It wasn't about treating more patients, and it was the combination study with Keytruda in stage III melanoma patients, it wasn't more patients. It was the quality of the outcomes of the patients we treated, and that was the goal. And so as we said, by giving more treatment if they needed it, and they could achieve a complete metabolic response by using PET CT using the tools available to clinicians that are meant to help define is the treatment working, complete metabolic response led to longer survival. And so we simply ran the program to see and to measure to follow up and to record the extra survival. But in doing so, and I know that there are some questions from shareholders who say, well, you haven't started the clinical trial. Well, we are running the intratumoral programs to generate survival so that we could be able to say, yes, if you give enough PV-10, good things happen. But much like the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute situation where physicians were looking for solutions for patients who run out of them, we were made aware of a situation of a physician who is providing oral rose bengal, reagent-grade rose bengal to cancer patients who had run out of options who were told to get their affairs in order. In some cases, told there's hospice go. And so we were contacted to understand a lot of the research that we had. Much of it is published but want to understand our insight into mechanism, into safety profiles, a very smart physician gathering information to determine is this suitable for his patients. And so for the last couple of years, we've been observing that activity and understanding how those patients are doing, how do they tolerate oral Rose Bengal? How do they do? And so we'll talk more in the future about that. But that has been a powerful amount of information, a powerful activity that has been extremely beneficial to Provectus as we prepare to expand our IND and to have oral PV10. And so what would be a lead indication that we would launch an oral PV10 Phase I program because, again, irrespective of the safety profile, we've got to knock safety and tolerability out for FDA could be pancreatic cancer, irrespective of whether you have a gene mutation or not, could be glioblastoma. We want something tough because we want to get in there, solve that problem, have a great story for mechanism and then welcome the world to waking up to what rose bengal sodium is capable of. We published work on bladder cancer research intravesical and not so much not a great way to deliver PV-10, oral PV-10 unsurprising in terms of how well it turned out, including mice, whether in the single-agent arm or in combination with PD-1, no evidence of disease. That's what oral PV-10 is capable of. And then, of course, I said with the rare pediatric cancer, what's really critical for us is, it's a mere form of cancer, maybe 100 new cases a year. But I'd imagine if we come in and have the opportunity to treat them refractory setting because we will have to start at one of the lower rungs and work our way up. But we're good because if we can get -- St. Jude's cracked the door open. And if we can continue to then march forward where if the data, which Dr. Narendran has already done by demonstrating in the same indication that PV-10 activates STING. So if the St. Jude's searcher is happy with the results. Our hope is that he walks down the hall to his clinical colleagues and says, "Hey, this is a candidate that we should consider -- you might want to consider for a clinical trial." So again, a lot of work to do, but that's the promise where we want to demonstrate something where others fear to tread, with something that is safe because again, we know a lot of a child has cancer these days. And for many of them, there are treatments that will get them into a good place. But then the challenge is, the -- as they were up because of the chemo and the radiation and other treatments they get. And we want to basically try to erase those by not having them deal with the side effects from other agents that they have in the first place. But again, to get into St. Jude's, to be tested by them, we'll see how it goes, but we're really, really excited. Wound healing, you saw, we hope the paper that was published by the University of Texas Medical Branch folks in terms of the opportunity for wound healing, particularly the immune response after 120 days that was generated. There, again, the model system needed to have daily application of Rose Bengal. We just started the relationship where it was day 1. I think day 7, maybe Day 20, they have a model system where, again, they can easily and very comfortably for the animal apply it daily. So there's more work to do, but we're pretty happy with the results of that. As we talked about, we did do some in silico or computer modeling as the first step of drug development for ALS. We are looking at related diseases, and we're very excited by the opportunity again, because of oral or systemically administered PV-10 to enter the neurodegenerative space. But again, focus on what we can do with the programs we've described. We need more resources to go after that but in the background in a very cost-effective resource mindful way to generate data that can explain. And by the way, we are taking the data, preclinical or clinical in each of these different areas. Stuffing it into AI in order to be able to have AI take a nice step back and see what's going on across the board. And as much as in the cancer publication work, are there any inconsistencies across those 500 papers. We're asking the same question, are there any inconsistencies in how the research that we're generating clinical and preclinical, can you scope out a sequence that works in cancer for mechanism that is consistent with derm or neurology or whatever, you still haven't found that. So again, that's what we're testing. And then there are some proprietary projects underway as well that once we have a better feel for how the data look, how the researchers are working on and then we'll be very happy to reveal those 2. Lot of balls that we try to juggle, including, well, you are running clinical trials, you're doing research, but what about manufacturing, which is a key step in all of this because companies have been slapped with complete response letters because of issues with respect to manufacturing their API or their drug itself. And so we manufactured a new batch of PV-10, we manufactured a batch of PV-305 in ophthalmology. So very happy with, again, the consistency with how that work is being done. In terms of corporate development, just to talk through a few steps. In terms of a planned new offices. This has been an incredible place that we hope soon will be Provectus new headquarters. In terms of potential future activities, look, fundraising is a really critical role. It allows us to move further faster and broader. And again, management led by Ed, in particular, we'll continue to invest in the company as and when he can and or down the road may begin buying common stock. And so we hope you pay attention to those activities. As Ed said, look, the Internet doesn't forget. And there was -- we believed it would have been a complete waste of resource to change the name of the company right as we rolled in. In fact, as Ed was interviewing CEO candidates, that was the playbook of one of the more prominent former CEOs who said, yes, change the name, do a reverse split and raise money. Okay, great. What about PV10 and rose bengal sodium, and we really didn't hear much about that. But it is coming close to the time where the company simply just needs to shed that aspect of it. You can still look it up on the Internet. But again, it makes sense now. It didn't make sense those years ago. Our goal aspiration and hope is to do a NASDAQ uplisting at the right time when we qualify and also because that's where the industry looks for good biotech companies to be there. So that would be our goal. And then finally, I know we do ask every year for the permission to consider a reverse split from shareholders. We're grateful for it. But in all transparency, we do it every year because we want to be transparent about it. We've explained in our sub stacks, companies that will do multiple reverse splits to stay on the NASDAQ. Not a great look we will use the reverse split in a tactical situation. It is very strategic, but there's a time and a place to do it. In terms of the Open Science program, our goal in the next few weeks is to a press release that we are now making vials of PV-10 for research use, high-quality pharmaceutical grade Rose Bengal available to research -- qualified researchers anywhere in the world to do research with no strings attached, no hooks, no guidance on where their research goes, no constraints on publication. The goal is we're not afraid of other folks learning more about our molecule. In a few more weeks, we'll talk about an already published paper that was representative of the program of sharing PV-10. And what was great about it was that they discovered that PV-10 caused the immune system to do opposing things. There was actually more than one target. It did more than one thing. It [indiscernible] walked, juggled, ran at the same time. And that's something that, again, is the first kind of research to show that and is representative of what we believe PV-10 is. And so we'll as we grow that program, we'll add more features to a website, an MTA, a material transfer agreement for people to do that. But we expect, again, the NIH program, St. Jude's just examples of us giving PV-10 to qualify and frankly, passionate researchers at great institutions that want to use our drug. We'll continue to follow the appropriate approach for shareholder and investor communications. We know that more communication is better, but you also need more of a balance sheet so that we can follow through. And so -- but we are hopefully plan to do more of that communication, rolling out more of this information and being able to communicate just how special rose bengal sodium is in an objective scientifically driven, reproducible and repeatable way. we always go through our slide presentation and our discussion, the patents, publications, presentations and other achievements and notable activity that the company has done over the last 2 weeks. You'll see here, there are 6 or 7 different categories that we're working in solid tumor cancers, injectable, systemic, pediatric vaccines, blood cancers, the example of just things that we continue to work on with the resources we had. We received a notification. We'll press release it over the next few weeks of another patent application a patent award we received in this case, essentially the equivalent of topical eyedrops, not the ophthalmology Bascom Palmer route where you are applying eye drops with green light. It is just straight up eye drops because again, we don't necessarily think in certain indications that you need the green light that no light or ambient light is sufficient for the molecule to behave. And now I'll turn it over to Ed for the Q&A session.

Thank you, Dominic. This is the part where we open it up. Questions from the audience, how we will do that. I will recognize those in the room that will also rotate. Webster Bailey will be monitoring questions posted for those participating remotely, and we'll swing back and forth and attempt to answer everyone's questions. And so the first hand, I recognized, Rick you beat everyone else here. You've got a quick gun draw.

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No, they didn't find a donor to run our trial, and it wasn't Bascom Palmer. The people who ran the Phase III REAGIR trial were other key opinion leaders, other notable ophthalmologists in the space. they found a donor to run the equivalent of our study. We would have loved them to help pay for our study, but the point being is that they're convinced of the utility of the treatment for eye infection. And so they're continuing to push because funding is not available from NIH under the current administration because they don't want to fund necessarily studies done in other countries. And so they just needed other sources of income in order to fund that because candidly, the incidences of the eye infection in places like India and Brazil are more and there are more of them allowing that trial to enroll. We'll have a couple of sites in the U.S. We -- part of the questions of going back to FDA as part of the pre-IND package would be to take FDA's temperature about what do they think about patients enrolled outside of the U.S. and what is necessary for FDA so that we don't want to presuppose what FDA's views are on the demographic representation of a study.

I want to expand -- use that as an example, expand on the importance of being able to raise funds. We haven't paid freely that clinical work that clinical trial work. But the great frustration is have we been able to contribute towards that or in future circumstance if we want to, so we can't impede on the trial design. And I give you one, if we were involved in the trial design, we would have given the physician, the ophthalmologist discretion to do multiple dosing of rose bengal sodium. And just to give you 1 example, the initial trial, the large trial, all patients, whether it's viral, bacterial, fungal, only received 1 dose. Basically, PV-10 failed in fungal infections. And my reaction when we founded the day we got those results was there's nothing that killed a fungal infection in one dose. Maybe hydrochloric acid, but then you eyes gone. And so a smaller clinic ran the trial of just 14 fungal infection patients and went -- 12 or 14. The only difference was they offer 2 doses. Our immediate question when we saw that, why didn't somebody say, well, if we went 12 or 14 on 2, how about we go 3 doses for other 2 patients and knock those out as well. So you cannot imagine some of the frustrating experiences we encounter in this whole research world.

Ed, real quick. Yes. Yes. Could I correct you, it was parasitic...

You are right -- parasitic. You are right. Excuse me. That's right. I said fungal, which is every bit or even more challenging than fungal.

Because the parasite is borrowing into the cornea as opposed to fungal, which is kind of hanging around the surface. And so that was a positive and perhaps surprising outcome.

Yes. Yes, sure. Before we go to the next question. When the question is asked, if you would repeat it, so listeners could hear it online.

And so the question that was asked, Ed, was by our shareholder was is our proposed Phase IIb/III study being paid for by a donor, and we wanted to just clarify that it isn't. However, they're running a study with this donor funding by someone outside of Bascom Palmer that mimics the kind of work we would do to get to develop a path to approval for that indication.

[Indiscernible]

Do you want to repeat the question, Ed?

I would do it, he asked if there'd be a target date for when the drug would be generally available to the public? So I'll start, Dominic, you feel free to add. There's a 2-phase aspect of that. We are very frustrated. There are -- we know there are many people that would like to access this drug. So one of the things we're exploring, and this is something that's rarely been done is an open in compassionate use program, my term for it is all comers. We welcome the challenge of trying to help patients even in late stage -- end-stage disease. And so that's one approach to this. One of the things we are focused on strategically in clinical trials is pick the right trial with the right provider that accepts guidance such as multiple dosing to where we want to win as quickly as we can because. And keep in mind, you have to segment between intratumoral, oral or intravenous. And so our priorities are oral and intratumorally initially. So that once it's approved, again, there's one way that is available and that is through off-label use number of physicians' care. And so that's going to be the fastest way to broad use of the drug is getting approved in intratumoral in a disease application and then oral. And then we're confident with the information that's out there. There will be physicians prescribing it off-label. And also we're very mindful what would be the next form of cancer would we tackle just speaking of the cancer space. We have a target that we would like to have interim results on a trial in late 2027. And that would -- what we would aspire to, I think, will most likely be in 2028.

It's a process, and we can't really gauge some target date until we know that we have an indication and a pathway to an approval in terms of the stage of clinical trial that then ultimately after if the drug has won that trial, then filing an NDA to get a data. So we can't really honestly frame a target date -- as it relates to the compassionate use program, we certainly aspire to that. We want to run a well run, well documented FDA-accepted compassionate use program but for oral PV10. And we have to decide the stage of patient that is appropriate that FDA would feel comfortable with because we simply can't open it up to everybody early stage, late stage. And so there are a lot of factors that come into play. But fundamentally, intratumoral, we inquired early on in our tenure of practices, what would it cost to run an intra-tumoral PV-10 expanded access program because there was demand for that. And we spoke with one of our investigators at MD Anderson, where they have a lot of experience delivering PV10, particularly to hepatic or liver tumors where the medical oncologist who was our lead researcher would employ the interventional oncologists, much like the folks at NIH to deliver the medicine in the OR. The cost for a patient for every cycle of treatment would be $20,000 to $25,000. So it's clear that intra tumoral presents a real challenge to -- from a cost perspective for the company or the patient to bear as it relates to delivery. However, the reason we call oral PV-10 potentially a game changer is because it's just like any other oral drug you would take. And so it leans itself towards -- it's amenable towards a bold, open expanded access program that is carefully proposed and proposed to FDA and run. But again, that will take time.

And there are couple of key aspects of thinking about that. The experience is not the drug. Clinical trials and research is what drives the profitability of these institutions to Dominic's point, $25,000 almost all that's just related to the...

Nursing staff...

Nursing staff and so it's extraordinarily expensive. That's one of the major roadblocks that exist in this country, the drug development. Candidly, that serves big pharma's interest and it serves the medical industry's interest and go in the right -- we'd love to go. It's basically unheard of as far as an all-comers trial. But here is the important thing. Once we get interim results, if we have the kind of success we anticipate, this -- the stock price will be driven. For those of you concerned about return on your investment, the stock price will be driven off the results of the trials long before the drug is approved. And the most recent example is one of the best examples we can cite in Revolution Medicine published the results of the Phase III clinical trial, pancreatic cancer using the RAS inhibitor drug. Their market cap went from about $4 billion to as high as $35 billion in a matter a couple of weeks and settled right around $30 billion to $32 billion which is an -- that's insane valuation. If you break down the possible uses of that drug, it's limitations and so forth. It's a very limited population it's going to serve. Plus it only extended live 6 months, well, 6.5 --6.7 to 13, 14 months. And then when the cancer adapts that drug, when it mutates, it comes back, but it is there with [indiscernible]. And if you follow the former Secretary of -- former Senator what he's going to and you see just some of the side effects of that in the later stages. We'd love to take on that challenge. But that's just one of the frustrating parts of navigating this industry.

And I feel like. Thank you, Laurence. I think you have to play our general -- General Counsel, Nathan here, channel him by saying to Ed, yes, well, Revolution Medicines wonderful pedigree, VC funded by Blue Blood Biotech venture capital investors based in, I don't know, I don't pay attention in Boston or the Bay Area. And they're not us. They were able to add a great valuation upon which to raise to do raise venture capital rounds, IPO funding or secondaries in the market. But I -- we would take our drug every day of the week and multiple times on Sunday because of what we're seeing. And in particular, again, the lead indication for oral PV-10, there needs to be further internal discussion about that. but we are chomping at the bit. It's the lead indication is pancreatic cancer. Well, part of the anecdotal clinical data that we discussed earlier gives us strong confidence that, that is a indication area that we would relish the opportunity and be honored to treat those kinds of patients.

I'll go just a little bit deeper on this. A great example. We would be here in March still talking about it. The application of that drug in pancreatic cancer, just over 90% -- 90% to 95% of pancreatic cancers present with that mutation, with RAS mutation. There's 3 different forms of it and that's it's effective at targeting. But it's effective only for a limited period of time. They have no other drug approvals. They failed at other efforts, and it goes to a $30-plus billion valuation. That RAS mutations estimated only be present may be as much as 20% of other forms of cancer. What we say about our -- we believe rose bengal -- PVT is agnostic to cancer.

And we'll go into that, and let me push the rabbit hole further. So the valuation that Revolution Medicines is getting is wonderful, great for them. I'm really happy for everybody that works there. The issue for them is going to be how does Wall Street look at however they roll out, whatever the pricing is. And so their NDA presumably should be filed before the end of the year. They'll come out with what their pricing is. And it would seem that, that valuation essentially in a discounted cash flow NPV calculation is assuming that the total addressable market is greater than just pancreatic cancer patients with the RAS mutation or variant thereof. So they're sort of saying, "Hey, so either they charge a really high price based off the pancreatic cancer addressable market or sort of a high price times all potential solid tumors." And again, we've been very frank about our goal of what are we trying to build in a drug development company, how are we trying to build PV-10 is, we hope it's a safe, effective treatment that changes the disease trajectory of a patient. We want -- are very mindful of quality of life during and after treatment, and we want to make the drug affordable and accessible. So that's our full approach to solving the problem of cancer. And over the next many months, we hope to highlight what are -- as we've talked about, what we feel comfortable saying about the true fulsome mechanism of action of Rose Bengal, where the RAS inhibitor is oncogene theory, where there's one particular thing inside the cancer cell that the drug you're trying to go after, otherwise known as a targeted therapy, great for them, wonderful scientists who have worked very hard in that theory and promote those drugs. There's another class of drugs that unfortunately, Provectus kind of ran into as it was running its melanoma studies called immunotherapies. You may have heard of them. where their whole premise is that if there are a few T cells running around a tumor, then releasing the brakes off of the immune system, we're not entirely sure you want to drive a car by releasing the brakes. But nevertheless, that focuses on them. But what happens when the tumor is so-called cold. Does it work for those tumors. Clinical data has shown that it doesn't. We ascribed to a different theory that is soundly based in science, soundly based in data, and we look forward to using that as part of our communications programs. Our shareholders add to the market at large so that folks can see what we're proposing and what we stand behind as we launch these clinical trials.

Other questions? Yes.

[Indiscernible]

You should repeat the question.

Sure. Thank you. So the question is, if we advance the NIH work from its current state into a Phase II clinical trial is a reason to believe that they would pay for that? I think there would be some cost sharing and we don't know yet. And we're being blind. We've already talked with them about a Phase II clinical study. The -- and the beauty of working with NIH is that we get to ask their clinicians how do you see this PV-10 fitting into the treatment ladder for HCC what's the type of patient population, should we combine with the standard of care. So we sort of have everything in an entire basket by working with them from the researcher through to the clinician who can lead a clinical trial. And so we don't know how much -- presumably, we will have to contribute some portion, a large portion of clinical trial as we would running any other clinical trial that's sponsored by Provectus but the fact that we can get there we can stand shoulder to shoulder with the folks at NIH is a great validation and not sure it's hard to put a price on that aspect of the relationship as it progresses to that hopeful stage.

In other words, it'll be easier to raise money if we're doing a clinical trial at NIH than anywhere else. The second aspect of that on the very first call, we didn't know how much they studied the molecule. We've been blown away because every time we had a conversation, we realized they've studied it more and more. And they actually, they're interested in exploring other cancers if we're successful in this HCC. And we're confident we'll be.

And let me build on what Ed was saying, not only were they interested in potentially exploring other cancers with introducing us to other departments within NIH that can further explore co-cat, identify, characterize the molecule, that's great.

And yes, if you think about what it's coming in before, the fundamental thing we have is to understand how this drug works because nobody believes you could do this. Nobody. And if you merge in, we're going to have an enormous greater credibility if we bring our knowledge about the mechanism of action, combined with their knowledge, I don't know how you get a better good housekeeping seal of approval of that.

And one last thing to build on what Ed said earlier, they are incredibly receptive to our feedback and our ideas and our opinions of how the molecule is. The e-mails are long and challenging, but they're open to our ideas without necessarily dismissing it out of hand without following up. And so it really is a collaboration. So a wonderful relationship and we can't wait for it to move to the next stage.

We've got a very passionate online here. There are still 71 participants just for those who are counting. A couple of questions. I'm going to kind of lump some together because they're pretty similar. A couple of questions are surrounding our current cash position. How much cash does Provectus have available today? What is our monthly burn rate? How many months do we have left? And where will the next $5 million to $10 million come from? so Do you want to take that one?

Let me start with we're still here today. And if you ask the question in that framework, we're not on the NASDAQ. Our goal is to be around -- we're moving as fast as we can. Things are driven by fundraising, but we're here today.

Yes. I'll jump in. I won't. I'll be very specific. Our cash is always tight. Our burn rate is about $250,000, and that can range from $225,000 to $275,000 which is petty cash compared to drug development companies. An update on fundraising, I've got a verbal commitment from an individual focus with -- that individual who's recently afternoon have a commitment of $1 million. I've been in discussions with the wealthy individual, who has voiced interest in investing as much as $5 million. I spoke with an institution that is initially -- they're evaluating the deal just right now and they talked to $2 million to $3 million. None of those are promise. I'm getting ready to do more trips to the west part of the country. And there's some promising, very promising leads there. We've been working -- I've been working on strategy for raising capital. It dates back 5 years. And if that materializes -- that will free up a significant amount of capital, including for myself, technology identified. Fortunate to be called about approximately 5 years ago and just to be open about it. It's about to go -- it's scheduled to go public as an IPO sometime in the next few months, and that will free up funding as well as some other individuals who believe in this drug got into it as well. And so the goal is to raise $20 million to $25 million in the coming months -- 12 months. Hopefully, it will be in the next 6. And there is interest in more sophisticated investors, a lot of them are passionate about hearing that they're very interested in helping to find medicine such as this. And one of the biggest obstacles for those when they go and talk to their investment advisers, investment advisers keep it because we're not on the NASDAQ, it sounds too good to be true. It sounds like cycle, and they won't take the down town to get an education. And our attitude is bring anybody to the table you want to bring MD, PhD. we'll go through it, but that's a fundamental reason why I'm so passionate about mechanism of action because it's what we're doing great about AI, matter that I'm not MD or PhD. Toe to tote with anybody they bring into the room and back it up with what we've done. And with this mechanism of action, I don' think in the early years it would have mattered what credentials we brought to the table. Nobody believed in. Now only people who believed in it are the ones it's more of an investment in trusting the people involved than it is in the trusting the science. And I think that will change now as people start to realize, we're not crazy. -- the mechanism of this drug is satisfying and is very, very real. And I have a phrase that everyone's tired of hearing. They'll be studying this molecule long after I leave this earth. That's how capable it is.

And then I'd just build on what Ed said in terms of answering that question, Webster, to say we're trying to raise money and manage the cap table of the company, we raise money in a respectful way to the common shareholders. And it's a question of managing dilution. We are approached daily with opportunities to invest. We have been around the block enough to understand the potential terms of those things, and it's a quick delete on the e-mail or delete on the voice mail. So we're trying to manage the capitalization of the company as we raise the money. And again, just speaking to class base. We don't have $500 million on the balance sheet because it looks good. And if you want a company like that, please buy those shares. We know exactly what we have. We have a team that has made sacrifices, is incredibly passionate about what we're trying to do, who we're trying to serve and we feel comfortable that we'll be around. We think we'll be around and we're going to work to be around.

I'll close with this. For me, this trying to start -- we're first line about the molecule in fall of 2005, and I remember turning to Doug joking one of our other colleagues who we left a building. My first reaction was, if this drug it does is the perfect agent for tackling breast cancer. That was my first assessment. With a qualifiers, if will do what they claimed it will do. If you look at what is potential, I'm more confident than ever this drag will transform medicine. It will transform cancer care. I'm betting you need cash. I can come up with, and I'll continue to pass that every day. And so its mechanisms, I can say we -- as much as we know, I feel like we're 90-plus -- 95-plus percent, understanding it. But I bet there will be things revealed years from now that we don't recognize, the complexity of what it does upon loss [indiscernible] and we got the business third generation of what we were working on, they are reread, reread again in your mind. You can fit 30 of the best physicians in the room, and they have never made all these connections in no way.

And that's cancer. And we have clinical programs in 2 other areas and preclinical programs where we're trying to see if the mechanism of action for those disease programs matches and is consistent with the thoroughness that we've been able to suss out for cancer. And so there's a lot more work to be done beyond cancer. But of course, we've got to focus and do what we need to do.

And 1 more point I'll make just -- the journey officially started in getting control of the Board in April of 2017, but actually started on for me, personally, especially on the morning of July 14, 2016. So I'm coming up on the tenth anniversary. And if you tell me then we will still be year-to-date, as tough as this has been, I'd say no way. But I also would say, we've been -- raised the money we have. It's and -- and there's -- and this isn't trying to sugar coat anything, I can say, flat out. Good Lord has a plan for this drug. That's my belief. Having to go slow and having limited dollars and having great stewards of every dollar, we've learned so much that we have never been discovered had we had a pile of money. Typical research work that's being done would have taken us down rabbit holes and a lot of stuff we've never been discovered. And we had have made some real mistakes too. And if you have any doubts about even the most elite research centers making fundamental errors, I'll take many trials run with one dose -- is it kind of literally, a defining moment occurred the first International Cancer conference I attended in New York. I'm sitting on the third row from the back in this huge auditorium. I know the guy happens to be sitting on my left. I spotted him, so I sit beside him, I have no idea. I just said hello. The third presenter, renown Cancer Conference, is sitting up presenting about his research. I'm sitting here just like this, and I'm looking at is about fourth or fifth slide and I said, speaking to the guy on my left without turning to him and said, I don't have to have a PhD in statistics to know that drug is going anywhere. It should have been shut down today. Literally, that's the most quote. The guy on my right without looking at me just said [indiscernible] works to keep things shut out, and keep resources tied up because as long as you are tying up those resources. That means at their process that they pay, that means a company like this can't get it affordably. And that's how this game is played. So I'm a little passionate about us, I'll show that.

I don't know when to interject. Again, several questions. I'll try to make our way through them as best as we can quickly. Is there an update on the penile squamous cell trial.

We are hoping to receive FDA clearance of the program in the third quarter. If and when we do, we will let shareholders know.

Thank you. Another quick question for Bascom Palmer. Do you know how many patients have been used in their rose bengal work?

So they have treated probably about 140 at Bascom Palmer. But if -- but of course, Bascom Palmer's physicians have become alumni at other locations, other universities and other folks around the world in India, Brazil, Mexico are using the approach. And so it's hard to pin down that number, but we heard up to about 500, but we have not been able to confirm that.

Could you please expand a little bit more on the Rockefeller Foundation research.

Yes. We could spend a long time talking to you about the Rockefeller University work. It has been repeated from when he started looking at keratinocytes in a monolayer in a petri dish. So one of the core elements of our skin at Keratinocyte that's an artificial setting. He then -- it was great collaboration with the folks in Texas. He couldn't run a large pig study in New York, health folks there would have shut him down. And so it was wonderful that the folks in Texas enabled that work. And so that was much more representative pigskin being a great proxy for human skin when you're looking at dermatological testing. And so all we'll say right now is that essentially the computer broke down because of the amount of data in terms of not the gigabytes of data there were that, but it was the complexity and the multiplicity of what he was seeing in terms of what was being -- what was going up, what was going down, how many were going up, how many were going down. And I think we want to be respectfully opaque about this because it's important for the investigator to wrap his head around what the data say. And when then we are able to then ask so great and what is the indication you think this data initially support, so I think that's sort of the good -- how I limit my comments until we have something more formally that we can share with shareholders in the market.

Have there been any distinct negative outcomes that we've run across so far? And is there a negative component that we are keeping in mind as we move forward in developing dosage.

Sure. I mean there's 2 ways to answer that question. In terms of negatives, well, we disclosed the FDA filed all of our paperwork, but we had a serious adverse effect in a patient in the uveal melanoma program because unbeknownst to the physician, they had, had a prior kidney surgery that limited the ability for the kidney for that amount of because there was some extravasation, the Rose Bengal or PV-10 injected into the tumor gets -- got pushed back out and circulated through the system and their kidney could not excrete that amount of the drug that goes to the kidney for excretion. Rose bengal leaves the body pretty quickly relative to other drugs. You've heard half an hour half-life within the day. Generally speaking, most much of it's gone. Most of it, the vast majority of it is excreted via the liver through bile. A small amount has been documented to exit the kidney, and this patient did not have the ability to excrete it in an efficient manner. And so there was some transient photosensitivity and they had to be hospitalized from what is normally an outpatient setting procedure to inject P-V-1-0 into a hepatic tumor and then come back in 4 weeks or the next cycle of treatment, if you need it. So that would be a negative. There was an early SA as it relates to vasculature that was wrapped up in the tumor. And so the injection of the tumor grade can get down, starts to then unlock or open those vasculature and there's bleeding that the physicians were unprepared for but that can be knowing those. So there are aspects of that. Dosing is always a great question. And for us, and it may sound cute, we kind -- in an oral PV-10 study, we are going to need to understand what is the so-called maximum tolerable dose. That's kind of how you run these early-stage clinical trials to sort of give an amount to the patient to see when do they get sick. And what was interesting about the anecdotal clinical data that we referenced before is it's teaching us preparing us for when we design that first oral PV-10 study for cancer and then later for other diseases, how dosing those -- in terms of negatives, Ed is famous for saying, well, the molecule hasn't disappointed us yet when we venture into new disease areas, and that remains a common thread in the work clinically and preclinically that we've done across probably a dozen disease areas.

If I can add just 2 additional comments. Dominic knows so much he's way up here, so I always try to bring it down here for people. And that patient is MD Anderson is a tremendous explanation, Dominic and you set it for it. She accumulated iodine, and became toxic and they treated her, cleared the iodine accumulation and she is fine. So just sad thing that it was totally unexpected, it was undisclosed preexisting medical conditions from a prior surgery. There is another very low percentage of people indiscernible] that have some sensitivity usually minimal reaction [indiscernible] And 1 more piece of information about, a second example, that patient was among the first 5 patients treated in San Diego by Dr. Paul, what Dominic, 15 years ago.

Yes.

And he never expected to see the drug kill the tumors so rapidly. So they are not prepared for internal bleeding and basically what it was is called the tumor was dying so fast, you don't realize cancer cells can basically replace healthy cells in a blood vessel. So as you peel that cancer cells, suddenly the blood vessels erupt, he had internal bleeding and they couldn't save him, an elderly male patients. And we've talked a lot about that patient because I think he had an adverse impact on a lot of the decisions that made years ago. I've always agreed they should have pursued liver much -- they just basically didn't pursue that anyway. So that -- there's been no reason other than the patient he mentioned the MD Anderson even approaching.

Ed, we're reaching close to 6 o'clock.

Yes. One I'll make this quick. Also, several of these questions that I'm not going to read been answered previously during the presentation. So for those of you online who question because we already covered that previously. Are there any future ideas or combinations with other anticancer agents on the horizon?

Well, the company has done a lot of combinations with -- let's just stick to cancer, radiotherapy, checkpoints, 1 checkpoint, 2 checkpoints combination with chemo. So it plays well with other drugs. I think the answer to your question is a function of what disease indication we choose and what's the standard of care. If we're forced to combine with a drug because it's standard of care because that's how most studies are done with the new agent entering that arena than so be it, but our goal is obviously to -- the cure for cancer is going to -- or the recipe for the cure for cancer is going to have a number of ingredients. We think PV-10 is going to be a major one, but it may necessitate that we combine with an agent to run a clinical trial in a particular cancer setting and stage of treatment.

I would just add a quote on that. I can think of a few specific things we discussed strategically to expand the capabilities, it's the Dominic's point about recipe for cure. No single agents won't cure everybody. So there's different things we discuss, and we only think of a very unique potential use of a low-cost material that we might find effective at some future date, we have the resources to explore further.

Ed, do you want to do closing remarks?

Yes. With that -- one more I can't ignore my longtime partner, Doug. This is the last question. We've taken a lot of their -- let me answer this way. Okay. Well, he was asking -- Doug was asking, do we foresee a possible event that may be interesting right now, but it could trigger a recognition of this drug and clamoring for, as an example, it may be a recognition that there would be -- the country would be clamoring for it. And so legal [indiscernible] if I go too deep into this, first opinion. I'm not going to speak to a time frame, but I think it could be highly likely that would happen. Maybe a relatively early report on clinical trials. I know we spend a lot of time strategizing about how we create that event. I hope we create it. I got the question earlier today Wednesday, almost every week from someone. Have you talked to Robert Kennedy yet? Have you talked to this person, yet? Have you talked to that person? If you're going -- and so that could be the type of event. And to have we talked to at Robert Kennedy yet? No. I was approached -- i was contacted about 3 months ago by the potential investor who was very interested in what we're doing. And he had an avenue for me, he was confident he could get me introduced to Robert Kennedy. And he was very disappointing when I tried to explain to him. Yes. And believe me, we've worked on several avenues to go to the right people. And the most common one right now, people identify Robert Kennedy. I would say there's at least 2 others. But the timing has got to be right. And I'll give you a simple example. I think everybody here can identify with it. The last thing I want to do is create a huge reaction of interest in this drug, if we're sitting here with almost no cash. So if you encourage people to invest, encourage them because. I promise you, I have no interest in creating a power storm about this drug when we're sitting here with less than $500,000 in cash. I mean we're below that. We're sitting at less than $100,000 today. And so that's one of the reasons for this rolling raises very focused on trying to raise that range of money because when it happens, we're in a whole another league about what we have to manage. I'd tell you we plan communication strategies, defense strategies, I'm not even going to go down some of the things. I'll give you one example. I can point to something in my office right now that I've been trying to explore ways in which we can outreach country in the world if we have to in communications rapidly. If we ended up in a battle up against big pharma, somehow trying to force this into a sellout or trying to disparage what we're doing. Because I promise you, you have no idea how brutal it can be. You have no idea. I mean it is -- I've got phone calls, you can't imagine, are people warning me. And people I've never even met saying you all realize what you're up against? And so, Doug, I believe that all the goods we have it. And let me give you an example, and I'll shut up after this. Here is the prime example. I had a pathway right in to choose to offer. I've said this before, to meet with the President on COVID. I knew we had to be bulletproof because I already knew the stakes that were going on over vaccines. And you go back to the history of vaccines and the money pharmas made and so forth and watching it transformed from what it when I was a kid, when I first got into health care consulting to what it is today, it is a money printing machine beyond anything you can imagine. It's compromised doctors like you cannot imagine. And so it had to be bulletproof. And this isn't a political statement. It's just reality. When Trump lost the election, and I heard he is being appointed in certain key positions in FDA, my comment to Dominic Rodrigues is, we wouldn't make it back to Knoxville, Tennessee, if we went in there and showed what we had. Just think about it. The media, don't forget the media, the top dogs have 3 of the biggest investment firm in the world. Try BlackRock, try Vanguard, look at their ties to the media, look at their ties to news, look at what they did to ivermectin, the drug I remembered reading about when it came out in 1992, the history of it, what it meant to the world, and they destroyed ivermectin. [indiscernible] ivermectin, what are they going to do to bunch of us with no credentials. And so -- and now they find in May of last year, researchers in Italy using a simple computer because Italy -- excuse me, Europe has been devastated by a post-COVID situation. Their health systems are just in tatters in a lot of ways. And so if you look at what transpired and for them to study over 250,000 different agents against COVID and COVID mutations and what did they do? They found 4. But the bottom 2 were not effective against mutations. Top 2 and the #2 is -- #1 as rose bengal sodium. It was our work, number one. And yet we would have been destroyed as we've taken on delivering a therapeutic because we would have been standing in the way of these major pharma companies in the media and everyone out literally making hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. But I believe that will be -- I think it's highly possible that, that could be what really lifts up the stock and then empowers us to raise even more money for better defenses. Yes. Thank you. If I said anything in pause certainty, I misspoke because this is about us, as you get. So thank you, Nathan.

Yes. So I want to thank everyone for coming. Thank, everyone online. Susan, if you want to just wrap things up. We appreciate your helping guiding us through this call. and we look forward to meeting you next year at the Annual Meeting, but look forward to all of the intervening work that we do in sharing that with you. Thank you, everybody, again.

Great. Thank you, everyone, for joining. Thank you. We appreciate the continued interest in Provectus and thank you to Ed, Dominic and the rest of the Provectus team and shareholders for your time today. If you have any follow-up questions that weren't addressed today, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected]. This concludes today's meeting. Thank you so much, and have a great rest of your day.