Arbutus Biopharma Corporation (NASDAQ:ABUS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

William Collier: Yes. I think the best way to think about that. And in our corporate deck, we’ve kind of laid out the trial designs for both the interferon and the VTP-300 studies. So we’re going to be in the phase where some of the patients have received VTP-300 or the placebo. And therefore, that’s the type of data that we will be sharing later this year. We won’t be able, just because of the length of the study, report end of treatment data or follow-up data. So it’s going to be somewhere — if you look at Slide 18, somewhere in that kind of dark red phase where patients are receiving VTP-300 or placebo.

Thomas Yip: Got it. Thank you so much again, for taking my questions.

Operator: Our next question comes from Keay Nakae with Chardan. Your line is open.

Keay Nakae: Yes, couple of questions. .

Lisa Caperelli: Keay, we are unable to hear you.

Keay Nakae: Yes, sorry. Can you hear me now?

Lisa Caperelli: Yes, little better.

Keay Nakae: Okay. For the one patient who was off treatment and then met the criteria to restart, how long were they able to stay off treatment?

William Collier: Can I get back to you on that, Keay? I don’t know that I have that information immediately at my fingertips.

Michael McElhaugh: Bill, I have that available if you’d like.

William Collier: You do, Okay. Go ahead.

Michael McElhaugh: Yes. So the one patient that required restart because of the protocol-defined criteria, discontinued follow-up week 36 after — 36 weeks after they stopped all therapy.

William Collier: Yes, yes. Thanks, Mike. Slide 13 in the deck. So there’s a little asterisk at the bottom.

Keay Nakae: Okay. And then for Mike, for mPRO, as you take that into the clinic, once you get beyond safety and want to evaluate it in patients who may have the virus, what might that study look like? What would be maybe a targeted course of therapy daily like a 5-day, like a ? Maybe give us some thoughts about that.

Michael Sofia: Yes. Thanks again, Keay. So I think the — we haven’t really sort of communicated what our clinical development plan is going to be. But you can imagine based on what some of our competitors have done in the field. We would be looking at potentially readouts that would look at viral load decline. They could look at reduced hospitalization. One of the things that we’re really quite interested in as we go forward is, does this molecule or ultimately, our combinations produce any effect on reduction in symptomology or potentially pre-exposure prophylaxis. So those are the kinds of things that we’re targeting in sort of mapping our clinical development plan. And eager to get those started as soon as possible.

Keay Nakae: Okay. And then once you have the second compound ready to go into the clinic, how soon would you evaluate it as a combo therapy, at least in terms of safety?

Michael Sofia: Well, I mean, we could do some preclinical assessments and look at combination safety. And we do a lot of that, sort of in, let’s say, in the preclinical environment. Once we get our second molecule nominated and move through IND-enabling studies, we’ll do our Phase I compound with a single agent, and we have to certainly based on previous developments in , we’ll have to show that it works and is safe by itself. And then as rapidly as we possibly can, assuming we — all those DUCs line up, we’ll get it into combination. But right now, we’re looking at, hopefully, a fairly short, early clinical development program because of the short duration of therapy that you need to show some kind of antiviral effect. And that hopefully will accelerate our ability to get into combinations.