Dr. Mark Lowdell
Thank you, RJ, and thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. So a couple of weeks ago, we shared with the investment community our recent positive efficacy data in multiple solid tumor cancer cell lines with INKmune as RJ just alluded to. And as we highlighted in our recent press release on the topic, solid tumors, as RJ just said, are the majority of human cancers and licensed cell therapies currently only focused on the 10% of cancers that are hematologic cancers or liquid tumors. The recent data we've obtained build on data we've had for some years and provide insights into why the company believes that INKmune natural killer cells or NK cells to override the immunosuppressive nature and hypoxia and regulatory cells within the active tumor microenvironment or what the field calls the TME for short. So the interaction of the TME with infiltrating immune cells and with the resident cancer cells drives tumor progression. And it's still to be the reason why most or many maybe all cell therapies are ineffective in that setting at the moment. So these complex interactions have to be considered when designing cell therapies to treat solid tumors with a TMEs hostile because of one, the presence of immunosuppressive regulatory cells; and two, the low levels of oxygen. That's what we call hypoxia. And so we've been doing a lot of our experiments in the hypoxic setting in vitro to see how immune overcomes that environment. So cell therapy has to overcome these impairments to see -- to treat solid tumor successfully. So we've shown that immune converts patients normal resting NK cells into what are called memory-like NK cells. -- and that these target solid tumors even in the presence of immunosuppressive immunoregulatory cells and extreme hypoxia that as I've said, we see in the TME. And the company's preclinical data with human NK cells targeting cancer cells shows that INKmune primes the NK cells from patients and from healthy donors to lies NK-resistant solid tumors from ovarian cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, renal cell carcinoma and most recently, nasopharyngeal cancer cells. So when comparing resting NK cells or NK, which are normal NK cells from healthy donors or patients peripheral blood before treatment with immune, the immune prime cells demonstrated enhanced ability to kill all of these resistant tumor cell lines. So I was fortunate enough to be invited to present these data at a recent conference, the Innate Killer Summit in Europe on October 19. And a video of that presentation is available on the company's website under the Therapies tab or the immune videos or the company's YouTube channel. But in the field of cell and gene therapies, it's becoming increasingly apparent that regulatory agencies such as the FDA require extensive understanding of the mechanism of action of these type of novel drugs before they'll consider licensing them for commercial supply. So getting what's in the field is called a BLA. And all companies in the cell and gene therapy field are heavily science-driven and we are no different in this attempt to better understand the mechanism of action. Now we're very lucky because INmune Bio, the work of immune is based upon data going back to the early 2000s, and we've been focused on the mechanism of action since our first publication in 2006. And our latest data from proteomics, genomics and metabolomics clearly explained how Immune works, and they delineate the differences between INKmune-primed NK cells and NK cells prime with cytokines used by our competitors. The recent video presentation explains some of these very complex data, and I encourage you if you're interested to go and watch them. So in parallel with increasing our knowledge about INKmune mechanism of action, we continue to treat patients and expand our clinical trial activity. 4 patients have received the complete 3-dose regimen so far with complete safety and obviously, in a Phase I trial setting, that's our driving aim. Indeed, the most recent patient was treated on an outpatient basis, which is our planned treatment scenario. And of course, it's a world away from the days of hospitalization associated with current adoptive cell therapies. As I said, all patients treated so far have shown evidence of NK cell activation in Vivo, and we're analyzing the biomarker data to identify those which best predict clinical outcome. The first MDS patient treatment remains well 15 months are post treatment and is enjoying much improved quality of life with only occasional hospital visits. The second patient was a young lady with acute mild leukemia, which had transformed from MDS, obviously, the targeted disease of the trial and with bone marrow failure. In fact, she received 3 allogeneic stem cell transplants and (inaudible) marrow failure. So having been hospitalized for over 6 months due to her neutropenia, after in INKmune she stabilized her blood counts and had neutral recovery, such that she was allowed to discharge from hospital and get home in a month after we treated her. Clinically, she experienced reduced bone pain, which is an indication of a reduction in tumor load. And we're scheduled for a fourth allogeneic cell transplant. But sadly, she relapsed unexpectedly and died quickly earlier this summer, 7 months after treatment with INmune. The third patient treated has chemo-refractory oral low-dose chemotherapy, and het is awaiting a third transplant at the moment. Our most recent patient is a young 17-year old MDS patient, another one who relapsed with acute myeloid leukemia back in 2020 after an unrelated transplant. And again, she relapsed after a second unrelated transplant in 2022. I can't emphasize enough how severely ill these patients are. After further chemotherapy, she achieved remission and was treated compassionately with immune as consolidation therapy in July this year. She showed evidence of improved NK cell function, and she remains well with very low level detectable disease in her bone marrow and awaiting further treatment. So whilst we're very early in the development of immune and being restricted at the moment to using the lowest dose of the drug. So all of these patients have received the lowest dose of 10 to the 8 cells. Our chief investigator, who looks after the trial and has treated all 4 patients, said recently, “all enjoyed improvement in general fitness with resolution of fevers, stabilized or even improved blood counts and were able to give brakes from the low-dose chemotherapy they've been receiving.” Definite improvement in subjective parameters of well-being mood, appetite and indeed clinical performance status. So that encourage us greatly. And furthermore, the trial has now been selected for presentation at the American Society of Hematology Annual Conference in New Orleans in a few weeks' time in December. Finally, we've received approval to widen the trial inclusion criteria to allow patients like the 3 compassionate cases to be enrolled in the trial in the future. Moreover, the second U.K. trial site is scheduled for initiation on the 9th of November after an 18-month delay and a third U.K. trial site is in discussion at present, and I'm doing a presentation there this Friday. The company has also submitted an application to the Greek Medicines Agency to open the trial with colleagues of mine in Athens to speed up recruitment further. In preparation for the increased recruitment into the LAUREL trial in MDS and the ongoing trials in solid tumor indication -- the opening of new trials in solid tumor indications, the company has invested in upscaling the manufacturing process and the validation of that new process to CGMP is now complete, and we're ready for the next manufacturing runs before the end of the year. The combination of the basic research into the mechanism of action, the manufacturing improvements in the clinical trial operations put the company in an excellent position for capitalization of the INKmune product in 2023. I'll now pass the call back to RJ.