Verona Pharma plc (NASDAQ:VRNA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Dr. David Zaccardelli: Yes. Our general cadence for that development would be getting through the formulation development activities, which takes some time because you want to see the durability of the formulation. That’s nothing new in drug development. And we’re — that work is ongoing. With regard to challenges, I think it’s nothing that we know other than getting the work done and having the data to support the plan forward, we believe the formulation can work, but we need the data to support that. We need to make sure that the dose delivered for both ensifentrine and glycopyrrolate, when co-formulated is where we want it to be. So there’s a lot of technical aspects in a formulation, the chemistry, the dose deliver, the particle size generation, all of that work, which, of course, we’ve done previously with ensifentrine, we need to do with the combination.

So that work will be ongoing. And that’s why it puts us in looking at a clinical trial in the second half of 2024.

Dipesh Patel: Got it. And final question. How should we think about R&D expenses moving forward? Specifically, what will the remaining R&D expense relate to?

Dr. David Zaccardelli: Go ahead, Mark.

Mark Hahn: Yes. Thanks for the question. So I think in the very near term, you should expect R&D expenses to be fairly limited because we’re not running any clinical trials. As we get into the back half of next year, they should go up marginally. These Phase II programs that we’re talking about are not in the same scope that you used to seeing ensifentrine during our Phase III program. They’re much smaller. So the expense levels will be back more like Verona had in the 2019 time frame. I think single-digit, low to mid-single-digit quarterly R&D expense for the foreseeable future until we get to a Phase III program.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Dr. David Zaccardelli for any closing remarks.

Dr. David Zaccardelli: Great. Thank you, everybody, for attending today’s call. We appreciate your support, and we look forward to updating you in the future at conferences. Have a great day.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may all now disconnect.