Rosa Chen: Super helpful if I could squeeze one for HBV. So as it relates to the thrive strive trial, can you give us a sense of the real world prevalence of these immune active chronic HPV patients versus the inactive carriers and how we should think about the data in these populations?
Carrie Huang: Yeah, the reason we are studying these populations is because these populations have kind of the strongest immune response to be able to be in that stage of hepatitis B. However, in these populations, they’re not normally, as guidelines indicated, for treatment. And so these patient populations are a little bit more difficult to find. So in terms of kind of overall prevalence of these subpopulations overall, I mean, it’s a little bit unclear, but this is something that we are looking at specifically in these populations, trying to recruit and find to be able to determine whether we can achieve functional cure at higher rates in these populations compared to your chronic suppressed population.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Stringer of Needham. Your line is open.
Joseph Stringer: Hi, thank you for taking our question. I just wanted to get your updated thoughts on functional cure rates for hbv you mentioned, based on some recent Kol feedback that you believe that 25 plus percent for an interferon containing regimen and perhaps less than that for a non interferon containing regimen would be considered acceptable. Just curious if that’s sort of a minimum bar for success amongst treating physicians or is there a functional cure rate where, say, a certain percentage of docs would. Would use the treatment and would that be higher than sort of the numbers that you’re providing? Any additional color on that would be helpful.
Carrie Huang: Great. Thank you for the question, Joey. Yes, we had an advisory board with many of the leading key opinion leaders within hepatitis back in November, and we did pose this question to them and for them, at least, at best, tier, between 20% and 30% of a functional cure rate would be highly meaningful for them. I think the other piece component to think about in these regimens is whether a regimen contains interferon or not. Interferon sparing regimens are certainly much more tolerable, easier for patients to take, easier for physicians to monitor. So they would likely tolerate a lower functional cure rate to use interferon sparing regimens. If there’s an interferon containing regimen, then the bar is a little bit higher in terms of what they would like to see in terms of functional curates. So it’s hard to really kind of pin down exactly because there’s sliding scales for different factors that you have to consider.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Eric Joseph of JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Eric Joseph: Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. You’ve noted, Carrie, that potential phase three trial in HDV would contemplate using build vertied as a comparator. Can you maybe just talk about sort of the investigator or regulatory feedback that informs that? And if you do move forward with that plan operationally, would you intend to include, include us sites, given the fact that it’s not approved here? And then as a follow up, I’ll leave the question there and I have a follow up to that.
Carrie Huang: Yeah, thank you, Eric, for the question. So, yeah, as I mentioned, we would include bellivirtide as a comparator, even though it’s currently not approved yet in the United States. This would obviously be with our discussions with regulators moving forward in terms of what would be included and the study design of what that would look like. But I think also from, because we are looking globally for this therapy, a lot of payers now will want you to be compared against the standard of care, especially in Europe. So that’s another reason that we would want to be including the liberty as a comparator, because we have a global footprint in this trial. We’ve done these trials before, and even though blivotide is not or may not be approved yet, by a time we start a trial, there are mechanisms in which we will be able to conduct a trial in the US with the liver tide, even if it’s not approved. So that would be the plan.
Eric Joseph: Okay, great. And maybe just as a follow up, coming back to the topic of ALT LFT normalization in HDV infected patients, is the prospect of normalization in cirrhotic patients any more challenging than it is in non cirrhotics? And I guess is there sort of a difference in sort of baseline LFT presence, I guess, that we should be thinking about here between the non cirrhotic and cirrhotic patient population. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for the question. Yeah, no, I think it’s a very good question, and that’s something that we’ll be able to show with our data in terms of, of looking at if there are baseline differences in alt levels, whether they’re higher or lower in cirrhotics versus non cirrhotics, and then also looking at the rate of normalization, our data set will be able to help answer that question for us moving forward.
But I think, as I mentioned earlier, in terms of the antiviral efficacy and then potential impact on ALT, we don’t expect to see significant differences between cirrhotics and non, at least in the CPTA population, but obviously the data set will inform us on that.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Mike Ulz of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.
Michaels Ulz: Good afternoon, and thanks for taking the question. Maybe just a quick one. On the phase one HIV program. I think you’ll have data in the second half of this year. Maybe you can just talk about some of the key points in that, key endpoints in that early study and what we should be looking for, and maybe what would be positive, in your view, to sort of keep that program moving forward? . Thanks
