Alaunos Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:TCRT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

So we’re very excited. We also have a higher dose level you may recall because of the safety profile should be rather favorable. The targets we’re going after these driver mutations by definition are at the core of the heart of the cancer and do not appear on healthy tissue cells like some of our other TCR competitors that are targeting different targets. So we believe we have a superior target in our driver mutation with our TCRs going after these targets that are only in the cells of the cancer. And therefore we can use higher doses and we believe that will lead to greater efficacy.

Thomas Flaten: That’s great. I appreciate the color. And the enrollment target that you have of 12 to 15, can we assume that, that would be achievable with the current stable of TCR? So the 12 or does that imply that you’re going to add a few more during the year in order to hit that enrollment goal?

Kevin Boyle Senior: I tell you, we feel very confident with the number of patients that we’re seeing in our pipeline. Any additional TCRs are just building towards the future, building towards our goal of multiplexing. So as a reminder, anytime we add a TCR we can absolutely use it to start treating patients right away. But we’re very confident with what we see right now with the engagement of our PIs at MD Anderson that with our Phase 1 we will be successful in treating the required number of patients. And we’ll do so in a very expeditious manner. And we have our own manufacturing capacity with our own employees being able to execute on that, being able to manufacture multiple products at the same time and what’s nice with this as well with the cryopreservation, Thomas, is we’re able to start manufacturing now earlier in the patient’s journey.

So we can manufacture products. It can be waiting in the freezer for when unfortunately, if a treatment fails a patient. We can then take that product that we made early in 2023 and then fuse that patient when they’re ready. So it’s really a very important enhancement that we made. We believe we’re going to end up with more fit cells by taking the earlier in the patient’s journey. We can manufacture that product, cryopreserved the cells and then be ready for that patient when unfortunately if their failure — if their current therapy fails them.

Thomas Flaten: Excellent. And then just one final one, just a segue off of manufacturing. I believe that Abhi said during the call that the goal was to reduce the manufacturing timeline from 26 to 15 days. I was just wondering if you could comment on what’s required to hit that goal and over what timeframe we might expect to see you guys kind of whittle that timing down?

Kevin Boyle Senior: Sure. And I do think Abhi hit some of the aspects, the kind of three aspects within that we’re working on in addition to reducing costs. But Abhi, why don’t you go ahead and talk to Thomas today?