Surrozen, Inc. (NASDAQ:SRZN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Craig Parker: So to answer the first part of your question, Yatin, this does seem to be a liver-specific effect while our SZN-1326 is targeting Frizzled5, which is enriched in the intestinal epithelium in ulcerative colitis patients. It is expressed on hepatocytes. So that would be consistent with an effect that’s similar to 043, meaning they’re both hitting liver to some extent. And I think, as to your — the second question, I think, is what — how do we find the therapeutic index? Is there — what’s the likelihood of finding a therapeutic index. And again, I think we have to be cautious about extrapolating too much from the animal models. As I’ve emphasized, I think the robust nature of the response in multiple different animal models for both molecules, the consistency of that response across experiments and across different types of injury, I think is very compelling evidence of the pharmacology and the biological rationale, but I wouldn’t get too focused on the exact doses that we tested in animals.

And I think if this is a Wnt-related effect related to regeneration, in the healthy liver, it may be, and I don’t — we don’t have data to support this hypothesis right now, but it may be that the damaged liver, because there is some active regeneration ongoing will really just display the benefits of regeneration and not these bumps in transaminase, but we’ll just have to see what the data says in humans. I don’t think we have any preclinical data to exactly answer that question.

Operator: Thank you. And this concludes the Q&A session. I’d now like to turn the call back over to Craig Parker for any closing remarks.

Craig Parker: All right. Well, thanks, Josh, and thanks, Surrozen team for joining me, and thank you all for joining the call and for your interest. I apologize that we had a little bit of a phone game for me to be able to hear questions. But thank you again for your participation and look forward to hearing from you in the future.

Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.