ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd. (NASDAQ:IPA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jennifer Bath: Yes, that is a great question and it’s been a little bit of each. So even the launch of the initial program with BriaCell took longer than we expected because of that latter scenario where they came back in and they said – we actually have some different things that might be interesting for us to research. And through the discussions we all realized, that there were some very interesting avenues to research that might enhance the probability of success in the program. We have also had for instance, another smaller company that was at the table and negotiating on the AI aspect of the program. Who then all of sudden thought they might actually want to go with the Talem route and take a look at some of the assets already existing in Talem, and just kind of internally in their own decision about which direction to go took more time than we had anticipated while they kind of went back and forth, trying to determine exactly what it is that they would like to specifically move forward on.

More so on something that’s a done deal where they know what they’re getting or something that is more exploratory around a particular target that they know they have an interest in. And in the particular case of that one, we’re still working with them and they’re continuing to look at two different options, but it might be both, it might be one. And then as far as the overall kind of overarching theme, you hit the nail on the head, legal is always takes longer than everyone anticipates. Our legal team is on the standby and has been able to move really quickly and has our Director of Business Development, Tim Miller. And so, we’ve been pretty impressed with our turnaround times, but oftentimes, yes, things get held up with legal counsel and other places.

While they’re redlining and getting their comments in and there are times that we wait well over a month to get a draft back that has their legal account suggestions.

Swayampakula Ramakanth: Okay understood, understood. So as you talked about Talem, and certainly Talem has a deep pipeline, how are you planning to develop some of these drug candidates? And also how far would you and the Board be willing to develop these before out-licensing to drug developers or you kind of partitioning a certain portion of the pipeline that you feel you can handle it versus some that can be given away on out-licensing. And I’m just trying to understand, how we should be thinking about that subsidiary?

Jennifer Bath: Yes, so like Talem philosophy on this is very similar to what it has been all along, which is, it’s really not our aim to move these particular programs through to IND enabling in vivo study for clinical work. That really we feel our true value inflection is to be able to show mechanism of action or functional activity that provides evidence to suggest that the molecule does what we believed it would do and therefore might have the beneficial impact in treating the disease that we are targeting, and enable the partner to take the product on from there. And really from that, what we feel is really beneficial for our investors is that one we’re not taking on the larger expenses that begin to be incurred in the IND-enabling studies and beyond.