And so we feel like we’re well positioned, and we’re excited about the initial feedback we’re getting from partners.
Puneet Souda: Super, thank you guys.
Kurt Gustafson: Thanks, Puneet. All right. Looks like the next question is coming from Steve Willey. Go ahead and unmute your line, Steve and we will take your questions.
Stephen Willey: Yes. Can you guys hear me okay?
Kurt Gustafson: Yes, we can.
Stephen Willey: Okay. Great. Thanks for doing this. I know Kurt, and I guess, Matt, you guys have spoke to some of the attrition that was seen, I guess, earlier in the year. And I think Kurt you mentioned that you’re now starting to see some delays to some of your partner programs. So just wondering if you could comment a little bit on the delay side and I guess, where in the trajectory of clinical progress you’re seeing these delays occurring?
Matthew Foehr: Yes. I’ll comment, and Kurt can fill in, Steve. A couple of things going on. One, as programs approach what we call that preclinical phase, which our hurdle for preclinical is quite high from an industry perspective. We only put something in that preclinical bucket if it is in pre-IND studies and the partner has confirmed an intent to file an IND and go into clinical trials. And I think that’s where — despite the fact that we started the year with the expectation of three to five new clinical starts this year, and by the end of Q3, we’d already reached five. So we’ve seen that progression. That said, the mix of programs of those five was different than we anticipated, one of which was a Roche program, exciting from a medical and scientific perspective, but because it was a grandfathered license doesn’t carry economics with it.
So the mix has been a little bit different. And as we get into the details of those 14 preclinical programs that are really pre-IND, and are approaching first clinical trials, there are, I’ll say, subtle differences from — and what we mean by delays in different programs, right, where maybe there’s — it’s taking more time or they’ve decided to re adjust their manufacturing plans for the first clinical trial, that kind of thing. So we’ve seen some of that with some of the smaller players. It’s always difficult to say what’s exactly driven by macro factors or not, but we feel it’s best to just be transparent about how we’re seeing the pipeline develop. We’re very excited about the growth in our programs that are approaching the clinic, but each one has a slightly different, I’ll say, story behind it.
We did see early in the year, as Kurt referenced, some therapy area realignment by a big pharma partner, and that can either be driven by macro factors or could potentially just be an internal factor as well. It’s somewhat difficult to know exactly. So hopefully, that answers your question.
Stephen Willey: Yes, it does. And maybe just — I guess, as you’ve kind of rolled out OmnidAb, I’m just kind of curious as to what are the applications from partners that you’re seeing the most interest in right now? I guess, is it on the radiopharma side, I guess, as an alternative scaffold to peptides? I think the imaging part that Bill talked about is really interesting. Is it against highly conserved targets where obviously, OmniChicken helps? Is it against these multivalent targets like TNF receptor, family members that require this ligand multimerization or whatever to the agonized? Just curious as to kind of where the industry interest is right now on the single domain applications.
Matthew Foehr: Yes. Difficult for us to say, specifically, obviously, for the programs that are in progress just for partner confidentiality reason. But obviously, this is opening new markets for us in many ways. As you say, radiopharma, blood-brain barrier, application for antibodies. But Bill and Todd, maybe you guys want to add color?
Bill Harriman: Yes, radiopharma definitely is one in certain situations where an ADC might not be as appropriate. We get a lot of interest in the single-domain antibodies for creating novel multi-specifics because that’s really a unique thing you could do with them. Since they’re so small you can tether two or three or four of them together in various ways. You can really sort of titrate the amount of focus you have on a particular target, so you could have three — two or three single-domain antibodies for one target and then one against the other. So this modularity really is driving a lot of interest. So these new modalities. And I think that’s — and that can be applied to known targets and in some cases, well established targets that are then being combined with a novel target, for example. So all sorts of different combinations. But I think that most of what we’ve seen so far is it’s driving on this modularity and multispecific applications.
Todd Pettingill: Yes, there’s not a lot I would add on that front. There’s CAR-T usage and then delivering different particles or different proteins to different areas of the body. I would just add, though, there really has been a lot of partner interest over the last ever since we started making it clear that Omnidab was available. If you go to these scientific conferences, single-domain antibodies are all the rigs. A lot of people are talking about them. There’s a lot of different areas of focus that they can be used in. And people really see the value in not only the combination of being able to generate an antibody, but in the ecosystem or I guess, in the host of a chicken. A joke I make with people at these conferences, is I say, I’ll look at any law man in the face and say, we can make a way better antibody than you because really, it’s just — it’s just a game changer that we can do the same format but in a different species.
