Earnings Sentiment

Sentiment Analysis of the earnings transcript to help figure out if there are any bullish or bearish sentiments that could be gathered from it. We're doing ML and AI based analysis on the earnings call to get some more insights.

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Sentiment Distribution

   

Earnings Call Transcript Word Cloud

     

Bullish Statements during Earnings call

Statement
So we believe this drug, 5 milligrams daily, is effective to achieve what we want in the retina with these very mild and well-tolerated AEs
We have some baseline demographic data from those subjects that shows actually very favorable balance in terms of the prognostic factors that would be predictive of disease
It's also important to note that in our treatment overall, this has been very well-tolerated
Financially, cash-wise, we're doing pretty well
When you have that and you're reducing the treatment burden so significantly with an oral once a day, I think patients will flock to this oral once a day treatment because it's going to be superior in terms of benefit to the patient, in terms of reducing treatment burden and reducing any potential risk to their ocular health and safety
We also just recently completed our Phase II study in Stargardt disease and presented very promising and positive results at AAO last week
That's exactly what we are going for because it gives us an opportunity to interrogate this whole early intervention differentiator, which is what we believe our drug will be able to do
This is phenomenal, in fact, it's never been reported before
We've also just recently presented positive 24-month treatment results from our Phase II, which Nathan will be presenting the results later on
So I think everything is turning out very well in terms of the baseline value, in terms of the baseline demographics for this Phase III Stargardt study
With an oral therapeutic that achieves the same level of efficacy that is a 20% slowing of lesion growth with a very clean systemic safety profile and no potential for adverse ocular ease that would be permanent, such as the occlusive retinobasculitis that's been documented in rare cases with the Apellis drug
And you can see here that there's a very nice correlation between the increase of Tinlarebant in blood and the decrease of retinal binding protein 4 in blood until we withdraw the drug at month 24, and you see a very rapid reversibility over about 28 days of drug cessation
So far, we have been granted fast-track designation, rare pediatric disease designation, and orphan drug designation
So we see there another potential market opportunity for us because they cannot use their drug effectively in our subjects
We believe that early intervention directed at emerging retinal pathology, which is not mediated by inflammation, will be the best approach to potentially slow disease progression in Stargardt’s disease and Geographic Atrophy
Yi Chen Thank you very much
Jennifer Kim Thanks
Nathan Mata Thank you
Nathan Mata Thank you
Basma Radwan Thank you so much
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
So it's very overwhelming and surprising that even the drugs approved for GA, most ophthalmologists still wouldn't prescribe it
That's why the Q2 expenses was much lower than what we expected because he didn't have the milestone
       

Bearish Statements during earnings call

Statement
The second observation being once those incident lesions are formed, we have a slowing of the growth rate of those lesions compared to natural history
These kids will be losing vision over two years
That is, our lesion growth being about 50% lower than what was published in the ProgStar studies
I mean, so if we look at the approved drugs for GA right now, you're not getting anything better than about a 20% treatment effect on slowing lesion growth, and you're not getting much of a visual acuity benefit, and you have a significant safety risk
Under our treatment regimen, that chromophore will only be slowly supplied to the cone photoreceptors, so there will be a delay in their timing to attain maximum bright light sensitivity
So until you get outside of 10 letters, there really is nothing clinically significant to say about the data, but it's important to note that there is stabilization while we are, in fact, slowing lesion growth, as I've showed you in the previous slide
They will not, those drugs would not be effective in early-stage disease, which is one of our differentiators, because there's no inflammation in early-stage GA or early-stage Stargardt
That's why we had to delay the milestone for being fully enrolled from Q2 to Q3
I mean, have $2 million lower given we don't have those milestone for the DRAGON to continue in the following quarters
So it's important to note that this phenomenon, what we're seeing, the slowing of lesion growth, is statistically significant at every time point that we've measured
So the finding that they're not converting from the early autofluorescent lesion type to the atrophic lesion type is actually very profound
This is significant because although this study was not powered for treatment efficacy against vision, it is important to see stabilization over 24 months because these subjects will, in fact, lose vision annually over time
On net loss, we had a net loss of $10.9 million compared to $2.4 million for the same period last year
But moving forward, it probably will go down to less than $2 million
That's necessary in order to meet the requirement for the endpoint, which is slowing the growth of atrophic lesions
So the fact that we're slowing lesion growth and also stabilizing vision is a very important finding
It's important to note that these subjects are reporting as mild, and of course it's transient
So it's not that significant
So we don't really expect this high expenses moving forward
   

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