Fate Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:FATE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

And number three potentially reduce the intensity of chemotherapy conditioning that is delivered to patients. So we do think we can have a very differentiated safety profile and deliver significant clinical benefit to patients. And again, I think that’s relevant across lines of therapy as there are no curative therapies for myeloma. With respect to financial, let’s turn it over to Ed.

Ed Dulac: Yes, the majority of the $16 million as I outlined in prepared remarks will occur in the first quarter with respect to severance and other employee termination-related costs. Some of that will be covered by the wind down of the Janssen collaboration as well. So that will also be occurring in the first quarter. What remains then is sort of the rhythm of the business afterwards. And as sort of we indicated, while we have this continued a number of programs or earlier generation iPSC derived NK-cell programs, we do have follow-up particularly for patients that are ongoing in response to both FT516 and FT596. And so we will follow those patients for up to an additional year that will require both human resources as well as financial resources to do that. So, a lot of that benefit from a financial leverage perspective, cost savings perspective will come in the second half of the year and work its way through the remainder of 2023.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Tazeen Ahmad with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Tazeen Ahmad: Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks so much for taking my question. Pretty simple one for me. Should we expect any clinical updates to be presented at medical conferences this year? And if so, which of the programs that you have spoken about could be up for updated data this year? Thanks.

Scott Wolchko: I think the guidance that we will give with respect to data disclosures, we will probably give that guidance at the May call. We obviously are just getting our feet under us with respect to executing on our 576 and 892 studies. And so I think in the May call, we will be in a better position to outline the cadence with respect to the data updates for those clinical programs.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Schmidt with Guggenheim. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst: Hey, good afternoon. This is on for Michael. Thanks for taking our questions. What clinical learnings did you gain from your experience in solid tumors with 538 and 536? What type of enhancements do you think will be necessary to be successful in solid tumors? And do you have more confidence in T-cell based therapies in solid tumors or NK-cells after your initial experience? Thank you.

Scott Wolchko: So, unfortunately, our experience with NK-cells in solid tumors is fairly limited. We have dosed patients with both FT538 at low dose levels. We also in combination with monoclonal antibody, we also dosed patients with FT536, a CAR NK-cell product at very low dose levels. And we have limited patient experience. I do believe NK-cells will play a very important role in solid tumors. We have €“ in any solid tumor experience with our CAT NK-cell programs we have seen anti-tumor activity in the clinic, but as we have noted, if you look at for instance, the product candidate FT825, which is a T-cell product candidate. That product candidate, in addition to being a T-cell has additional synthetic controls built into that, which were specifically designed to overcome some of the challenges with solid tumors.