Earnings Call Transcript
Lantern Pharma Inc. (LTRN)
Earnings Call Transcript - LTRN Q4 2023
Operator, Operator
Good afternoon, and welcome to our Fourth Quarter and Year End 2023 Earnings Call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and all attendees are in a listen-only mode. We will open the call for questions and answers after our management’s presentation. A webcast replay of today’s conference call will be available on our website at lanternpharma.com shortly after the call. We issued a press release after market close today summarizing our financial results and progress across the company for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2023. A copy of this release is available through our website @lanternpharma.com where you will also find a link to the slides management will be referencing on today’s call. We would like to remind everyone that remarks about future expectations, performance, estimates and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Lantern Pharma cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by forward-looking statements, including results of clinical trials and the impact of competition. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements can be found in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, which is on file with the SEC and available on our website. Forward-looking statements made on this conference call are as of today, March 18, 2024, and Lantern Pharma does not intend to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect events from circumstances that occur after today, unless required by law. The webcast replay of the conference call and webinar will be available on Lantern’s website. On today’s webcast, we have Lantern Pharma’s CEO, Panna Sharma; and CFO, David Margrave. Panna will start things off with an overview of Lantern’s strategy and business model and highlight recent achievements in our operations, after which David will discuss our financial results. This will be followed by some concluding comments from Panna, and then we’ll open the call for Q&A. I’d now like to turn the call over to Panna Sharma, President and CEO of Lantern Pharma. Panna, please go ahead.
Panna Sharma, CEO
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us this afternoon to hear about our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 results and corporate progress. As many of you have heard me say in the past, computational and AI-driven approaches are increasing their presence and usage at both large and emerging pharma companies for all facets of drug discovery and development. Lantern's leadership in the innovative use of AI and machine learning to transform costs and timelines in the development of precision oncology therapies should yield significant returns for investors and patients as our industry matures and adopts an AI-centric and data-first approach to drug development. 2023 was a transformational year for Lantern Pharma across many measures. We launched multiple clinical trials using our AI-guided drug candidates. We had multiple peer-reviewed publications and posters for our drug candidates and for our RADAR AI platform. Our AI platform advanced, reaching over 60 billion data points last year and now is on the road to reaching over 100 billion this year. With significant and efficient expansion of our clinical infrastructure and operations team, this allows us to efficiently move our trials forward and maintain control over the data and operations of our clinical assets. We are also advancing a very exciting new company, Starlight Therapeutics, which is entirely focused on CNS cancers and an area where there has been no single approved therapy as monotherapy in nearly 18 years. We filed 11 patent applications last year across our drug candidates and our AI platform and we continue to show very strong focused fiscal discipline. Our team has accomplished a lot and is about 24 people today, small but focused and comprised of leaders at every level, high value contributors. They've made significant strides over the past quarter and throughout 2023 across all our programs and also with our AI platform RADAR. RADAR which has guided the rapid and efficient development of three AI-guided drugs into clinical trials at a pace and cost that has traditionally been unheard of in our industry. Our team has been focused on executing our mission of transforming the oncology drug discovery and development process, especially as we bring our clinical stage drug candidates into human clinical trials. Two that are now in Phase I as part of our synthetic lethality franchise and one that is in Phase II. All of our clinical trials now have enrolled and dosed patients and we expect to have data to share with you later this year as enrollment progresses. Our team and many clinicians are particularly excited about and interested in the programs for our first-in-human drug candidates, LP-184 and LP-284, also our unique drug LP-300, which we in-licensed and rescued is aimed at never smokers, who've been impacted by non-small cell lung cancer but have failed other treatment options. Lung cancer among never smokers is a growing problem not only in the US but globally. And we've been successful in moving towards regulatory allowance for commencing our trial in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea where the incidence of non-small cell lung cancer among never smokers is nearly two and a half to three times that here in the US. We also continue to make significant progress on the launch of our clinical stage CNS and brain cancer focused subsidiary Starlight Therapeutics. This is a company that has been largely developed as a result of data, AI methods, and computational approaches to optimize and maximize our insights about a molecule. About a year ago we announced the formation of the subsidiary. We recruited a CMO last quarter in the fourth quarter and now we're preparing to go into Phase Ib to clinical trials. We've also made major progress in developing the next major leg of our discovery efforts which we focused on drug conjugates including antibody-drug conjugates. Specifically we've now engineered a cryptophycin linked antibody-drug conjugate which we're developing in a highly efficient manner with our collaborative partners, academic partners in Germany. I'll talk a little bit more about that later in this call. Our progress across our preclinical assets and our clinical programs has been very focused, very efficient and was in large part guided by our AI platform's latest functionality, capability, and modules. Modules like our antibody-drug conjugate module. We released some exciting data earlier this quarter which we concluded as part of our collaboration with the University of Bielefeld. But in particular in that collaboration, we found that we had excellent control over the cysteine engineered proteins and that allowed us to have great control of the bioconjugation process and we also saw very high potency in the picomolar range across six solid tumors, many of them with huge clinical need. In particular in medium expressing HER2 cancers which is a real unmet need in cancer care Additionally we continue to enhance and develop our AI platform for cancer drug development, RADAR. Our platform we think is revolutionizing the way we model, predict and understand drug cancer interactions, enabling us to advance our newly developed drug programs from initial insights to first in human clinical trials in an average of less than two years and at a cost of under $2 million per program. It's a milestone unheard of in the realm of oncology drug discovery. Our leadership and the innovative use of AI and machine learning to transform costs and timelines have allowed us to bring three molecules to market with teams, costs, and efficiency that is only beginning to make a massive impact. We think year over year we'll continue to make improvements and continue to refine and make our process more efficient, more precise and potentially even more powerful. During 2023 we achieved our goal of reaching 60 billion data points, growing that cancer-focused data more in one year than we had in the prior three years. We expect these massive leaps, these increases in the pace to continue and our team expects to reach over 100 billion this year. And this data growth and data ingestion will be automated. It will free up our team to focus more on intelligent curation and analysis and also on creating upstream engineered datasets from the raw data to solve more specific problems that can make use of generative AI and generative models. This golden age of AI medicine is just beginning and it's being powered by large scale, highly available computing power, massive data storage and additionally it is being fed by healthcare, patient, and cancer data, all of this data which is more widely available at an increasing levels of quality, higher than ever before. We believe that companies that harness these capabilities in biotech and more appropriately really the tech bio industry will become long-term leaders that create massive value for patients, for investors and for our industry. Lantern Pharma is among the leaders in this transformation of the pace, risk and cost of oncology drug discovery and development. This transformation has the promise to not only make medicines faster, cheaper and with increased precision for patients but also to help change the direction of R&D productivity and output in the pharma industry. In the past three years, we have successfully developed and launched 11 additional programs, a testament to the agility, efficiency and groundbreaking nature of our approach. On average, these programs are advancing from initial AI insights to first in human clinical trials in just two and a half years and an average cost of $2 million per program, metrics unheard of in oncology drug discovery. In fact, in a recent study published by Drug Discovery Today, it was reported that nearly half of the 16 largest pharma companies had negative R&D productivity over the last 18 to 20 years, with Big Pharma collectively spending close to $3 billion per drug approval. These are startling figures and they serve as a stark reminder that the traditional model of Big Pharma R&D is not a sustainable or effective strategy and it is not the right approach to improve drug pricing or drug availability. With escalating economic and political pressures over drug prices, it's clear that our industry needs to rethink its approach fundamentally and we believe Big Pharma will increase adoption of AI and computational approaches, data-first approaches, to elevate above this major hurdle sitting in front of us. Now these specific instances of value creation, along with the development of an entirely new company, which will be a clinical stage, Starlight, whose sole focus will be on these intractable CNS and brain cancers, demonstrates that Lantern continues to be at the forefront of a transformative approach to oncology drug discovery. We're reaching speeds and efficiency that we believe are setting new standards in developing cancer medicines. As we continue to accelerate the pace at which we're developing and validating insights that can lead to meaningful drug assets that we can partner, license, or sell in the future, we believe that we're very well positioned to partner these drug assets out to larger companies. At the same time, our CFO David Margrave will cover shortly, we have a very strong cash position, approximately $41.3 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. And we're carefully utilizing that to make meaningful progress in a disciplined manner. We're going after indications that are needed. We're going after studies that help validate insights and we're collecting data that will power our portfolio. We believe our approach is the future of developing cancer therapies, where data can be used to rapidly accelerate programs, de-risk the identification of cancer subtypes most likely to be responsive, use biomarker profiling to figure patient profiles and needs out earlier in the process, and progress these potentially life-changing medicines with economics that have not been seen in our industry. Now let's turn to some of the specific highlights of our financial results during the fourth quarter and for the year 2023. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, David Margrave, who will provide an overview of our fourth quarter financial results.
David Margrave, CFO
Thank you, Panna, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll now share some financial highlights from our fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2023. I'll start with a review of the fourth quarter. Our general and administrative expenses were approximately $1.3 million for the fourth quarter of 2023, down somewhat from approximately $1.6 million in the prior year period. R&D expenses were approximately $3.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2023, up from approximately $2.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. We recorded a net loss of approximately $4.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2023 or $0.39 per share compared to a net loss of approximately $3.4 million or $0.31 per share for the fourth quarter of 2022. For the full year 2023, our R&D expenses were approximately $11.9 million, up from approximately $8.6 million for 2022. This increase was primarily attributable to increases in research studies of approximately $2.98 million, increases in research and development payroll expenses of approximately $1.2 million and increases in consulting expenses of approximately $160,000. These increases were partially offset by decreases in product candidate manufacturing-related expenses of approximately $631,000 and decreases of approximately $459,000 in payments to Allarity Therapeutics. During the year ended December 31, 2022, we released an escrow payment of approximately $459,000 to Allarity Therapeutics, and there was not a release of escrow payment amounts to Allarity during the year ended December 31, 2023. Manufacturing-related expenses for the year ended December 31, 2022, were also reduced by $935,000 as a result of a payment we received in July 2022 from one of our service providers in connection with the resolution of a difference of views regarding the service provider agreement. Our general and administrative expenses for 2023 were approximately $6.0 million, up slightly from $5.9 million for 2022. The increase was primarily attributable to increases in payroll and compensation expense and other professional fees. Our R&D expenses continue to exceed our G&A expenses by a strong margin, reflecting our focus on advancing our product candidates and pipeline. For the full year 2023, net loss was approximately $15.96 million or $1.47 per share compared to $14.3 million or $1.31 per share for 2022. Our loss from operations in the 2023 calendar year was partially offset by interest income and other net income, totaling approximately $1.9 million. Our cash position, which includes cash equivalents and marketable securities, was approximately $41.3 million as of December 31, 2023. We anticipate this balance will provide us with a cash runway into at least Q3 of 2025. Importantly, we believe our solid financial position will fuel continued growth and evolution of our RADAR AI platform, accelerate the development of our portfolio of targeted oncology drug candidates and allow us to introduce additional targeted programs and collaboration opportunities in a capital-efficient manner. As of December 31, 2023, we had 10,721,192 shares of common stock outstanding, outstanding warrants to purchase 177,998 shares and outstanding options to purchase 1,091,196 shares. These warrants and options, combined with our outstanding shares of common stock, give us a total fully diluted shares outstanding of approximately 11.99 million shares as of year-end 2023. In November of 2023, we were able to reduce our outstanding share count through the purchase of 145,348 shares of Lantern common stock at a purchase price of $3.44 per share. Our team continues to be very productive under a hybrid operating model. We currently have 21 employees and 3 FTE consultants focused primarily on leading and advancing our research and drug development efforts. We see this number expanding slightly in the coming quarters as we add additional experienced and talented individuals to help advance our mission. I'll now turn the call back over to Panna for an update on some of our development programs.
Panna Sharma, CEO
Thank you, David. As we discussed earlier in the call, we are particularly enthusiastic about Starlight Therapeutics. We brought Dr. Marc Chamberlain on board in the fourth quarter, and he has made significant strides in developing our clinical trial design for both adult and pediatric CNS cancers. We anticipate the launch of the initial adult trial in the latter half of this year, contingent upon obtaining safety and early efficacy data from our ongoing LP-184 trial, which is currently more than halfway enrolled in Phase I. We will provide updates on the progress of this clinical trial in the coming weeks. Starlight’s focus on CNS cancers stems from initial screens that identified cancers showing strong preclinical and in silico evidence of sensitivity to LP-184. This approach was informed by billions of data points, preceding our in vitro and in vivo evaluations. We quickly moved to those observations because the data indicated that GBM and several other brain cancers should respond well, considering their genomic profiles, interactome designs, and the levels of DNA damage repair or PTGR1 we observed in these cancers. To give you some background on Starlight, it is completely owned by Lantern, which is beneficial for our shareholders. We believe it has the potential to positively affect our investors as we monetize this unique asset, including its patents and insights. Starlight Therapeutics targets several cancers affecting both adults and children. The five-year survival rate for many of these cancers remains very low despite advances in therapies, with over 500,000 patients globally in our target population. We have already secured Orphan Designation for GBM and ATRT, as well as a Rare Pediatric Disease Designation. Our collaborators include prestigious institutions such as Johns Hopkins, UT Health San Antonio, and the Children’s Brain Tumor Network, which is one of our newer partners. With over 120 types of CNS and brain cancers, the field is extensive. Although 50% of these are typically GBM and other high-grade gliomas, we will start enrolling some of these patients in the early Phase Ia study to establish the maximum tolerated dose. Starlight has the option to pursue many other primary and secondary brain cancers, and we believe that STAR-001 could be a pivotal treatment in the future of brain cancer therapies. As for the trials for STAR-001, the Phase I trial is being conducted by Lantern. The dosage and safety data gathered will support advancing indications for a future Phase Ib/II trial, which will be co-sponsored by Lantern and Starlight Therapeutics. We estimate the global market size exceeds $5 billion, increasing the total market for LP-184 indications in CNS and other solid tumors to about $10 billion to $12 billion. This illustrates our excitement regarding this molecule. We have invested considerable time in understanding its molecular profile, patient response triggers, sensitivity indications, and developing patents for combining this unique drug with other therapies. This is one of the most well-characterized molecules even before entering Phase I, and we are eager to receive Phase I data. We anticipate having data soon that will inform combination trials and CNS initiatives with Starlight Therapeutics. Now, I want to discuss our work on antibody-drug conjugates, a promising yet costly area where we aim to significantly reduce expenses in both early-stage and later-stage development. Earlier this year, we announced our progress in the ADC program in collaboration with the University of Bielefeld in Germany. Much of this work occurred in late 2023 at Dr. Sewald’s lab as part of the Magicbullet Consortium. We advanced our cryptophycin antibody-drug conjugate through proven synthesis and bioconjugation, establishing a preclinical proof of concept demonstrating high efficacy in moderate HER2 expression areas. Our kill rates with this cryptophycin drug-payload averaged 80% across various cancer cell lines, proving to be about 10 times more potent compared to existing ADCs that use a common payload, MMAE. This results in efficient antitumor activity and EC-50 values indicating approximately 50% cell kill in the picomolar to single-digit nanomolar range, even among tougher cancers. We are conducting further studies to validate these findings and importantly, to deepen our understanding of the genomic and biomarker correlates related to payload efficacy. It is crucial to pinpoint what drives that response and how we can replicate it, as well as any other factors to consider when targeting these cancers. We are taking a data-first approach, which we believe will save us time, effort, and funding. This asset has the potential to be licensed, partnered, or even spun out following Starlight. We have several valuable assets pursuing our existing clinical trials that are now in Phase II and Phase I. Additionally, I want to provide some critical informational updates. A key part of our business is to inform and educate the public, the oncology community, and our stakeholders about our programs and efforts. We launched a new initiative called Webinar Wednesday. Our first webinar will feature Dr. Joseph Treat from Fox Chase Cancer Center, focusing on LP-300. Dr. Treat is a leading expert in lung cancers and will host our first session next month. This will be followed by a webinar on Starlight with Dr. Marc Chamberlain, who has extensive knowledge about CNS and brain cancers. Lastly, we will host another webinar featuring Dr. Igor Astsaturov of Fox Chase, dedicated to our LP-184 clinical trial and its application to pancreatic and other cancers, highlighting how our drug appears to work effectively against more aggressive and recurrent tumors. Earlier in the call, I mentioned that our poster for AACR 2024 was selected, focusing on a Phase Ia/Ib clinical trial of LP-284, which will be presented by Jianli Zhou on April 8. This trial is for LP-284, a highly potent DNA-damaging agent for relapsed lymphomas and other solid tumors. We are currently dosing initial patients and expect to onboard additional sites and patients in the upcoming quarter. RADAR continues to grow in size, scope, and capabilities, with ambitions to become a standard for AI-driven drug development in oncology for both early-stage and later-stage patient biomarker and combination therapy identification. RADAR now contains over 60 billion oncology-related data points and is projected to exceed 100 billion by year’s end. Its data scope has expanded to include various classes of compounds, including antibodies and DNA-damaging agents, plus data from clinical studies and preclinical combination studies that define drug interactions and optimal dosages. These data points, along with advancements in automation and algorithms, comprise a functional module in our platform. We anticipate having over eight modules to enhance the precision and efficiency of RADAR’s drug development capabilities. During the second quarter, we will host a Webinar Wednesday to discuss RADAR's near-term roadmap and its use cases, reaffirming that it is the largest and most focused platform for oncology drug development. 2023 was a pivotal year for us, with our insights now transitioning to patient clinical trials, marking the beginning of their journey toward becoming significant cancer therapies. The collective efforts and dedication have resulted in a transformational shift for our company, placing us on an exciting trajectory as we aim to improve the lives of cancer patients through effective and economically viable treatment options. Looking ahead to 2024, we have ambitious objectives we want to share, including advancing and expanding our Phase I clinical trial for LP-184, accelerating enrollment in LP-284 for non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas and responsive cancers, and targeting expansion of the Harmonic Trial into Asia. We plan to explore licensing and partnership opportunities with biopharma companies, increase RADAR’s platform data points, and further develop collaborations with various biopharmaceutical companies. Additionally, we expect to progress Starlight Therapeutics into a Phase Ib/II adult clinical trial and potentially a Phase I pediatric trial. We aim to move our ADC preclinical work towards IND development in preparation for future partnerships or a Phase I launch, and we will develop combination programs for all three of our drugs with existing approved treatments, which will be a focus for us in the coming years. Furthermore, we’re enhancing our clinical operations and maintaining disciplined fiscal management. We look forward to providing regular updates through webinars, roadshows, investor meetings, and press releases, ensuring we maintain high communication with all interested parties. I would like to express my gratitude to our team, partners, and stakeholders for their unwavering support as we work toward a brighter future in oncology and tackle real-world issues with high-value AI solutions that enable rapid development of genomically targeted therapies, while also addressing cost and timeline challenges in drug discovery. We believe this positions us at the forefront of a new era in medicine, what I refer to as the emergence of a golden age in healthcare due to AI. I would now like to open the call for any questions or clarifications.
Operator, Operator
Panna Sharma: First question from John. A great question. He asked ADCs have been an important area of acquisition over the last year. And I have heard broadly that in general M&A conversations have picked up for life sciences, have you observed continued interest in ADCs from larger biopharmas?
Panna Sharma, CEO
I want to answer that question. Yes, John, we've seen interest from actually small, midsize, and larger biopharmas in ADCs, specifically in our cryptophycin ADC. Again, it's early, a lot of the M&A deals that we saw earlier this year and some in last year, we're in later stage ADC companies, many of them actually were already clinical. So it is exciting. There is, I think, not a lot of really unique assets in the ADCs. I mean I think most of the payloads, almost 70-plus percent of payloads are all the same. The designs tend to be very clumped together in terms of the category. So I think the novel target and plus perhaps a novel payload, with superior potency, especially in areas that are overlooked, could be of a lot of interest. So I think if you follow the data as opposed to a me-too approach, I think you're going to create something valuable. Great question. And as we get more data, we will explore licensing or partnering the asset out as early as possible. Sure. We've another question from John. We hinted about our RADAR platform moving now from five billion, I guess, a couple of years ago to 60 billion? Yes. We're planning to have a more detailed platform overview day, but the platform has evolved to a point where it can start curating and ingesting data independently. We have gone through what we call campaigns, specifically data ingestion campaigns, where we initially handled this manually. As we developed road maps or templates for data ingestion and understood the data structures and issues, we trained the AI to assist in this process. The AI has learned many standard data sets, conventions, and meta tagging techniques, and is now starting to handle data ingestion itself. This represents a significant evolution for the platform. Additionally, the AI is beginning to parameterize all algorithms and create new ones, allowing our team to step back as the platform grows autonomously. We have also initiated a process to create engineered data from sources that are not accessible to others. This level-2 data will enhance the efficiency and proprietary nature of our insights. We'll discuss this further when we cover our platform. The platform has significantly improved and transformed compared to a year and a half ago, and we expect it to continue evolving. We've another question, this is about our buyback and plans for that. So David, do you want to talk a little bit about what we did last year?
David Margrave, CFO
This was not a buyback program. We purchased shares from two holders because we believed it was in the best interest of the company, beneficial for shareholders, and made sense. We acquired 145,348 shares at $3.44 each for a total of around $500,000. As mentioned earlier in the call, this has reduced our shares outstanding, which we believe is also advantageous for our shareholders.
Panna Sharma, CEO
Great. Thanks, David. Another question. What is the timing for selecting a narrower Phase II indication? I think, again, we allow data to guide the decision process. So as we get the data from the first set of patients, which is about 35 patients in the Phase Ia may go slightly over that. We'll see what the data suggests. We certainly have ideas based on our in silico findings, our in vivo work, and our animal model work. And so hopefully, it will support or validate or nullify. But data is everything. So we'll see what the data suggests about the narrow indications. We think, clearly, we see that tumors with DNA damage repair deficiency seem to be very sensitive. So we think that will probably be one of the indications that it may be a Pan-tumor indication. We've also seen that tumors with high levels of PTGR1 above a certain threshold, roughly around 4.2 times, what's in a normal cell, also tend to be very sensitive. So if this continues to hold up throughout the trial, those are two very good kind of hallmarks of a characteristic for the indication. We may go after some targeted indications. If we see that things like pancreatic and triple-negative breast cancer are even more sensitive and we see that there's a clear need, and we think we can do a focused trial, they'll obviously bubble up to the top. So we'll see what the data suggests. And then we'll take a look at it commercially what is the most efficient way to bring the drug to market. Next question is, do we intend to create further value by creating other companies? Yes, that's a great question. We believe Starlight is quite unique because no other company is exclusively focused on a breakthrough new molecule for CNS indications. This has generated significant interest from both pharmaceutical companies and biotechs. The drug has a strong track record in its ability to effectively target GBM cells as an alkylating agent. In fact, the only drugs that have shown efficacy in eliminating these cells are alkylators like nitrosoureas and TMZ, while others have had limited to no effectiveness. We are positioned within a drug class that has historically been effective, and our drug appears to preferentially target cancer cells rather than healthier cells. It seems to have better bioavailability and penetrates the blood-brain barrier more effectively than TMZ. Additionally, it doesn't seem to be affected by MGMT and shows potential in various other brain cancers. This presents a unique opportunity for us, as we have AI insights guiding us to not just one indication but a range of them. As a result, it was crucial for us to pursue this initiative independently and delve deeper into it. If we identify similar opportunities, we will definitely explore them. We believe antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) might be one such area. In our initial efforts on our ADC and in another promising area involving fragments, we aim to achieve even greater precision against specific targets using fragment-drug conjugates (FDCs). We've initiated some preliminary exploratory work in this field with cryptophycin and other picomolar agents. We're leveraging our ADC module to identify targets, discover unique attributes in those targets, and classify both late-stage existing antibodies and early-stage options where we can streamline processes and reduce costs. FDCs could play a pivotal role in that future. We are also focused on identifying the right agents that provide optimal drug-to-antibody ratios and enhance kill rates, such as comparing cryptophycin to MMAEs, which demonstrate significantly better kill rates on cancer cells. If we believe we can sustain this with a select group of indications, we could see this idea potentially leading to a successful spin-out or an early partnership. Another question is around business development opportunities. We are exploring business development opportunities in three areas. I prefer not to discuss deals until they are finalized, since there’s no benefit in generating excitement around potential opportunities in the pharma industry. We are in conversations with various companies, but this doesn’t guarantee any deals. Let me outline our deal ideas we are currently working on. First, we expect to announce partnerships with other biotech companies, utilizing our platform in exchange for certain rights to their drugs or development efforts. Our platform can help these companies reduce timelines, decrease risks, and optimize their portfolios. The second area we are exploring, albeit gradually, involves big tech companies. These companies seek unique platforms to offer as cloud-based services to biopharma, academic, and research groups. We envision RADAR being integrated as a platform for these companies, allowing access to various modules as a service, such as drug combination or blood-brain barrier penetrability. The third area encompasses traditional partnerships, licensing, or selling assets or programs to big pharma. We believe that data can generate significant interest from big pharma, and we plan to support trials, keep options open, and share data and results. Currently, we have around 11 to 12 ongoing programs, increasing the likelihood of licensing or partnering opportunities with several of them. I want to take a moment to personally thank our team for their efforts in preparing for these calls and providing information. We have shared a lot of updates in our press releases and slides, and we will be hosting a series of webinars this year. The first few have already been scheduled, and I encourage everyone to participate. We are excited about our future, as we have multiple ongoing trials and promising programs ready for market or potential partnerships. Our platform is also expanding, entering a new phase in the AI landscape. We are now developing new generative AI capabilities for molecular optimization and target selection that weren't possible a year ago. Overall, we are growing, maintaining fiscal discipline, and have sufficient cash to execute our plan and achieve milestones for partnering, selling, or licensing our portfolio. Thank you for joining me this afternoon.
David Margrave, CFO
Thanks a lot.
Panna Sharma, CEO
Thank you, David.