ABOS - NASDAQ

Hello, and welcome to Acumen Pharmaceuticals Q3 2024 Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Alex Braun. You may begin.

Thanks, Tawanda. Good morning, and welcome to the Acumen conference call to discuss our business update and financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2024. With me today are Dan O’Connell, our CEO; and Matt

Thank you, Dan. As a reminder, our third quarter 2024 financial results are available in the press release we issued this morning and in our 10-Q, we will file later today. As of September 30, we had approximately $259 million in cash and marketable securities on the balance sheet and continue to expect that cash runway to last into the first half of 2027. R&D expenses were $27.2 million in the third quarter. The increase over the prior year was primarily due to the increased spending to support the ALTITUDE-AD trial. G&A expenses were $5 million in the quarter, roughly flat to the same period in the prior year. This led to a loss from operations of $32.3 million and a net loss of $29.8 million in the quarter. Our net cash burn in the quarter was approximately $23 million, which includes the impact of $2.5 million in net interest income, $2.4 million in noncash stock compensation expense and the impact of expense accruals. I’m very pleased with our ongoing execution in the third quarter. We have the resources necessary to support our Phase II study and advance a subcutaneous formulation of sabirnetug. We are dedicated to capitalizing on the opportunities ahead to benefit patients, caregivers and shareholders alike. And with that, we can open the call for Q&A. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our question comes from the line of Paul Matteis with Stifel.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Tom Shrader with BTIG.

Yes. Dan, this is Jim. As you say, I think that what’s important to us is preserving the statistical power and integrity in the study. And so given the pace that we’ve been able to enroll a study and because of the regulatory issues that Dan highlighted, we think it’s important and most effective to continue to study the completion and read out the data at the end.

Yes. And just maybe 1 other quick thing just to emphasize the comment Dan made about ARIA reporting. Obviously, this is an important finding for sabirnetug, but this is a blinded ongoing trial, and we really won’t -- we can’t disclose any results regarding ARIA until the end of the trial when we’re unblinded. And so that’s our plan as far as ARIA goes.

Our next question comes from the line of Jason

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Pete Stavropoulos with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Yes. Thanks, Dan. And no, it’s a great question. And obviously, I guess, one that we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and talking about. So we’ve targeted this patient population for people who have mild cognitive impairment, MCI or mild dementia when you cross that line to dementia with demonstrated Alzheimer’s pathology, in the case of our study that is based on amyloid PET or CSF. We did not have any specific requirement for tau pathology although, as you know, that the field is watching that carefully. One of the major things that we talked about was that the data and some of this data is actually very recent, would suggest that it’s patients who are earlier in the disease course and at an earlier stage based on biomarkers and their pathology that have a better response to the drugs that have read out in these larger Phase III studies. One of the things that we looked at in our Phase I study actually is that our amyloid PET readings were sort of a hybrid between a visual read and just based on an SUVR measure, but the visual reads were important, and we did have quite a few of those. And what that does is it pushes your average amyloid load, your SUVR lower because I think the human eye is just more sensitive and you can pick up people who are positive, but it wouldn’t come across with an SUVR. So as these data have emerged and we realized based on our Phase I data that using a visual read tends to give you less at least amyloid pathology we think that’s a good thing. So we really feel like from a clinical standpoint, we’re doing what is kind of standard in the field now as we identify people with MCI or mild dementia, but from a biomarker standpoint, we would anticipate seeing people with relatively low amyloid plaque loads based on their SUVR. So obviously, we’ll get the data at the end of the study, but we think we’ve dialed in the inclusion, exclusion criteria is about as well as you can based on the current state of knowledge.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m showing no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to Alex for closing remarks.

Great. Thanks, Tawanda. Thanks to everyone who listened in today. If there are any remaining questions, always, please feel free to reach out to us at the company, and have a wonderful day.