Verona Pharma plc (NASDAQ:VRNA) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Christopher Martin: Yes. Boobalan, thanks for the question. If we look at our market research, what we see is ensifentrine being added to patients that remain symptomatic on current therapies. And I’ll bucket this into two groups of patients, one of the groups of patients that are on a single LAMA or LABA or LABA/ICS- and based on the ENHANCE data, you would say that the next logical choice for a physician to choose is ensifentrine, our data is outstanding in those patients. It provides a new mechanism of action for the physician to layer on to these patient therapies. And we see from a market research significant uptake within that patient population. The second group of patients are patients that are on potentially dual or triple therapy that remain symptomatic.

And we know there’s at least 40% to 50% of these patients that are just having tremendous symptom burden. And when we think about how the physicians treating those patients today, when they come into an office, they’re getting oral steroids, oral antibiotics, dilute and potentially referred for surgery. And so the physician’s options are very limited. And given the benefit to risk profile of ensifentrine, we see physicians also adding ensifentrine to those patients as well. If we think about the potential for what’s the first patient, most physicians will prescribe ensifentrine in, it’s more than likely the latter patient because that patient is in the most immediate need. But as we see in our market research and our conversations with HCPs, their use of ensifentrine moves earlier and earlier into the treatment paradigm because they see the potential that ensifentrine could provide this non-steroidal anti-inflammatory effect that they’ve been really looking for within the COPD classes over the course of the last decade or so.

Boobalan Pachaiyappan: Thanks so much.

Operator: Gentlemen, so far there no more questions from the phone.

David Zaccardelli: Great. So thank you, everyone, for your questions today, and thank you to the patients and health care professionals that participated in the ENHANCE program, enabling us to submit a new drug application to the FDA for nebulized ensifentrine for the maintenance treatment of COPD. We are very excited about the potential of ensifentrine and look forward to providing further updates. Finally, I’d like to thank our shareholders for their continued support and the dedicated and talented team at Verona for their commitment. Operator that concludes today’s call.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.