Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jack Allen from RW Baird. Your line is live.
Abigail Gray: Hi. This is Abby on for Jack. On the updates as it relates to the Eterna partnership and development of hypoimmune cells for neurological indications, we’re hoping you might be able to provide some additional color surrounding what sorts of indications you might be going at in neurology and what drove you to this?
Brian Culley: Thank you, Abby, for that question. I think it is comfortable to say that a hypoimmune cell line offers some potential advantages in indications where rejection is of greater concern than in the eye or in the spinal cord. That is not to say that a hypoimmune line couldn’t still be utilized in places that are immuno-privileged, but that is not necessarily what we have in mind in trying to generate that line. I don’t think at this point, we’re at a position to say anything more than there are indications that might be good opportunities for a cell transplant approach for which having a hypoimmune line makes a lot of sense. I can obviously point to what people have seen in type 1 diabetes. And I think some of the NHP data, non-human primate data, coming out of a similar company down the road from us, I think is quite evocative.
So this is part of a larger strategy of utilizing and relying on our process development expertise, and thinking about where this technology will go. Because I find it difficult to imagine that the only place we can get these extraordinary clinical outcomes is in the setting of the eye and even specifically utilizing RPE. I think that this field will reveal itself to have and harbor other opportunities. But they might be more easily addressed using a hypoimmune line than a line where you have risks of rejection. And I should probably note that we have approximately 100 person years of exposure of our non-hypoimmune lines with OpRegen, and we’ve never had a single case of rejection. That’s not to say that it is a non-zero possibility. This is biology and it’s complex.
But our approach here is to have staged investment from the later stage, such as the Phase 2 program with OpRegen, all the way back to very early stage cell line development, which is what we’re doing via the alliance with Eterna, which by the way also includes more of a strategic gene edit that has a very specific purpose in an as yet undisclosed indication.
Abigail Gray: Wonderful. Thank you. And then as a follow up, you had mentioned type 1 diabetes. I was wondering if you could kind of comment on your thoughts about the initial proof of concept as it relates to their/BlueRock’s program in Parkinson’s.
Brian Culley: I love it. I think that it helps to validate a replace and restore strategy. I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen. I must acknowledge I’m not an expert in type 1 diabetes. Our company, as you know, is much more neurologically oriented. But I do think that the mechanistic principles, which underlie their work and our work, share a lot of common features. And that is exactly why we are looking for affordable ways to expand the scope of our platform and how it gets deployed.
Abigail Gray: Wonderful. Thank you so much.
Brian Culley: Thank you, Abby.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Kristen Kluska from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is live.
Kristen Kluska: Hi. Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask if you’re aware or seeing any new trends as it relates to enrollment in general, not specifically asking you to comment on OpRegen, in light of some of the advances we’ve seen over the last few months. So on one hand, these therapies are available now. But then on the other hand, perhaps those that were excited to try these may be looking for other options given some of the safety issues that have come up.
