Matt Foehr : Yeah, I think I can give you a little color there. Of the 12 new partners added last year the majority were biotechs and these are companies with — well-funded companies who are bringing a program forward. We have a high standard for what we count as an active partner and an active program. And we have some really interesting biology that I think excites our scientists and have the impact and potential for impacts on health in interesting ways. So that is an area our team is continuing to be excited about. In terms of how many are leveraging our various technologies, it’s really a mix, right, in terms of what attracts partners to our platform. One is the flexibility to use on the chicken, say for a program where that is an ideal approach.
But at the same time some of those new partners may also be using OmniRat or OmniFlic as well. So it really is a mix and partners do value the fact that they get access to multiple technologies when they take a license with us. And we can really have a deeply scientific dialogue and pair the technologies with their needs, not only from a scientific perspective, but also from an operational perspective in terms of what works best for them.
Steven Mah: Okay, great. And then if I can sneak one last one in, this agreement with mAbsolve, could you give us a sense of the deal structure on that is? Is it like a joint venture? Or is it just a strict licensing fee? And are they eligible to receive any milestones or royalties from you?
Matt Foehr : Yeah, I’ll give you a little more color there of it at first. Well, first I’ll answer the economic question. There’s no downstream economics to mAbsolve. It’s a license agreement, where we’re able to exclusively license their STR FC Silencing technology to our partners with antibodies that are generated with the OmniAb platform. And then there’s no downstream to mAbsolve. Now stepping back a little bit, just to give a little more color on that it’s — obviously the FC-mediated immune effector activities are important, are really an important part of an antibody’s natural function. But in many therapeutic antibodies those interactions are not desirable or can lead to adverse effects. And obviously, there are a variety of approaches to eliminate effector function.
But they have a lot of limitations. So we were impressed with the STR Fc Silencing Platform that mAbsolve developed. It was recently described in detail in a PLoS ONE paper, but it delivers from what we see as the most truly silent FC mutations that have been described to-date. And therefore it has the potential to improve safety and efficacy for therapeutic antibodies and FC fusion proteins. And so now it’s something we can offer to our partners downstream. So hopefully that gives you a little bit more color.
Steven Mah: Yeah, that’s helpful. Thank you. And apologies for the mix-up on the new partners.
Matt Foehr : No problem at all.
Kurt Gustafson : Thanks Steve.
Operator: Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Puneet Souda from SVB Securities. Please go ahead.
Puneet Souda: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions, Matt and Kurt. So first one is on, maybe if I could ask a high level question on, obviously the small biotech funding is a major question out there. We are seeing that from the companies that provide tools and capabilities to the small biotechs. Sort of maybe give us a view of what you’re seeing from your perspective. How are you including that in your calculation for the year? And if you can, I’m wondering if you can talk about the programs sort of for the full year. I know you talked about ion channel partners were slightly down. But you also talked about clinical attrition remains very low, which is a positive in my view, but wanted to — wanted you to just calibrate us on what’s going on among the small biotechs? Is that something you’re considering into your calculation for the full year?