EyePoint Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:EYPT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Nancy Lurker: So let me answer first, I’m going to let Jay take the DME. So first of all, we are happy with our current enrollment rate, we’re on track, we still expect barring any unforeseen circumstances that we will have a readout later this year. Now, again, I just want to — stuff happens so I’m always cautious in making any definitive statements. But right now, we’re happy with where we sit. And Jay, why don’t you take DME?

Jay Duker: So, with respect to DME, we are looking at that trial in kind of a multi-pronged way. I mentioned already that we expect that to be the first trial that uses our state of the art injector. And so we would like to, from a timing perspective, have that injector ready to go with DME. That, again, may or may not be the rate limiting step here there are other factors that certainly go into decisions strategically about when to start a trial and how large, etc. So we’re still kind of working through that. I think we’ll be able to nail down the start time a little bit more later in this year. But right now, it looks like Q4 start and as I said, one of the things we’d like to do along with testing 1901 in DME is literally give it a shot with the new injector.

Jennifer Kim: Okay, and then with PAVIA that — like the timeline has been pretty consistent. Does that reflect anything in terms of what a sustained delivery treatment option could mean for this kind of patient population or I guess the unmet need, it is pretty clear that you need sustained delivery?

Jay Duker: Yeah, I think the time of the reflection and time of getting patients in has much more to do with the type of patient that would enroll in an NPDR trial versus a wet AMD trial number one. And number two is, interestingly, if you’ve got a patient with wet AMD is getting injections, you ask them, do you have wet AMD that you’re getting injections, the answer they’re going to give is yes. If you ask a diabetic, what level of retinopathy do you have, they have no clue. And therefore, it’s a little bit harder for the patients to get interested in the trial and even in some ways for the doctors to identify those patients, because in general even retinal physicians in their office aren’t documenting the diabetic retinopathy scale of their patients.

So it means casting a wider net of the patients to get the appropriate ones. And so, this isn’t new. We said before, it’s probably going to take about a year to enroll the PAVIA trial. And as Nancy said, so far, so good, our moment is going great in the times that we have been talking about for full enrollment and beta read out are still consistent.

Jennifer Kim: Okay, and then my second question is, I think during your opening remarks, Nancy, you mentioned having like, significant optionality in terms of the global pivotal program. Can you go more into that in terms of how you’re thinking about all that?

Nancy Lurker: Yeah, so our goal is to potentially get a partnership with a strategic partner and we are in discussions with a number of them as we speak. So it obviously depends on the data, but really that’s our goal. We want to minimize dilutive financing. And our goal is to be able to go into those pivotals with a partner. These again are large studies, and we can do it ourselves if we need to. But our preference is to partner this with a large pharma or mid to large pharma companies. So the main one, most of you know who those are. And again, it’s going to be somewhat dependent. Obviously, it’s going to be dependent on the readout of our Phase 2 data. So we do expect that anything announced, should we be able to strike a deal will happen in the first half of 2024, a data readout as we said is towards the end of 2023.