Joe Pantginis with Rob Capital Partners
Okay, thank you again
Robert Blum, President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you Joe, happy new year.
Operator
Your next question will come from the line of Jason Butler with JNP Securities. Please go ahead.
Jason Butler with JNP Securities
Good morning Robert, happy new year and congratulations on this expanded partnership. Just a question about the prior partnership or the partnership before the expansion. Can you talk about how this expansion of the partnership impacts the other indications you were working on with Astellas and the other indications you were considering for phase 2? I guess another question is, is there a potential still for other clinical trials to begin in non-neuromuscular indications in 2015?
Robert Blum, President and Chief Executive Officer
Excellent questions, we have been executing on plans to consider what would be the non-neuromuscular indications that would be prioritized for CK107 and through the course of that we surfaced together spinal muscular atrophy and some of these neuro muscular indications so it’s not at all to say that were redirecting to these collaboration to the neuro muscular phase rather instead this is intended to be enabling an expansion. We are still discussing which will be the first of the non-neuromuscular indications we may wish to pursue. We have had meetings with key opinion leaders. We have engaged around planning that includes manufacturing regulatory in clinical and the two companies have put together tools in other systems by which we can that in prioritize those indications. We are still very much interested in those indications. We haven’t spoken publicly about which ones would be first and what the timing would be but over the course of 2014, I hope we will have. I am sorry 2015. I hope we will have now time to elaborate on what the potential could be.
Jason Butler with JNP Securities
Great, thanks for taking the question.
Robert Blum, President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you.
Operator
You next question will come from the line of George DelRicco with MLB & Company. Please go ahead.
Robert Blum, President and Chief Executive Officer
Hi George, happy new year!
George DelRicco with MLB & Company
Hi, happy new year and congrats on a good deal as well. A couple of questions for you Fady. You spoke about the PD and the PK relationships that led to this deal. If you can elaborate on that at all. How perhaps 107 is different or superior Tirasemtiv and you also spoke about moving forward to newer compounds. The sarcomere biology is much more complicated than just proponent perhaps by looking at targets other than troponin, perhaps other sarcomere elements that you know maybe able to fund and accelerate development to capture more of the space for drug, potentially drug able space?
Fady I. Malik, SVP, Research and Development
I will answer the first question first and the PK, PD relationship for CK107 is really quite favorable. One of the targets if you will and we were doing the lead optimization of the follow on compound was to improve the potency of molecule in people and pre-clinically we had indications that we were on the right track and the nice thing was to see that in our clinical study that both pre-clinical findings translated very well into humans. They were quite predictive. The pharmacology is the same, meaning that the compound binds to troponin and has the same mechanism of action is Tirasemtiv but the pharmaceutical dynamics a little different because of the improved potency that we have categorized and mentioned in the past.
With regards to other targets in the sarcomere, I mean the collaboration includes many types of mechanisms for activating the sarcomere. I am not really deliberately close of what we are perusing in what time frame but you are right there are other ways of activating sarcomere including other modes of troponin activation even. This collaboration really allows us to continue the execution on those. It should also I guess elaborate that we have focused on fast skeletal muscle, today cell skeletal muscle is another target for us in this collaboration. I think that the possibilities of seeing new mechanism that maybe targeted to different disease types is quite strong.
