Eva Privitera : How important is getting HDV to undetectable levels granted that the regulatory bar is the two log decline?
Phil Pang: So I think that the answer to your question is certainly getting to undetectable is a higher bar than a two log decline. I think that there is good clinical data suggesting that undetectable correlates well with clinical outcomes. And I think that as I mentioned before with the current therapy it’s about 12%. So I would say that that 12% of course happens after a full 40 weeks of therapy. And the question is, can we meet or do better than that given the fact that we have been following our patients for a much shorter period of time. So I think we’ll just have to wait and see what AASLD has to say and let the science speak.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Stringer with Needham & Company.
Joseph Stringer: Just a quick one on the HIV program, Phase 1 readout. What type of day did you plan to announce from that the second half of next year? And what will give you confidence or what would you need to see to proceed the next steps in that program?
Marianne De Backer: Phil, do you want to take that one?
Phil Pang: So as you noted, Joey, it is a Phase 1 study. It is an immunogenicity study in healthy volunteer here. So the primary endpoint is obviously safety plus immunogenicity. And so the answer is, as we expect to have an understanding of, one, is the insert, which is obviously an HIV insert immunogenic, the amount of CD4 and CD8 T-cell responses — rather CD8 T-cell responses against the cassette. Then the next question is, if we do what type of T-cells are we creating? Are we creating what we are calling effector memory T-cells, which are really T-cells that are very special that reside in the mucosa, they are ready to fight, they don’t need to multiply before they can have impact. And then third, if possible, to understand what type of HLA restriction they have and whether or not, for example, they will be restricted by MHC-E, which is something that would be a very unique immune response which might be harder for the virus to overcome.
So all those are things we are looking for in our immunologic readouts. We are planning initial data from those immunologic readouts next year.
Marianne De Backer: And then maybe just to add that, you know, the HCMV based vaccine or what we call the T-cell platform, I mean, learning those initial data for HIV will also really be helpful in guiding us for our next investigational T-cell vaccine that is focused on the HBV.
Operator: I will now turn the conference back over to Dr. Marianne De Backer for closing remarks.
Marianne De Backer: Thank you, operator. And thank you all again for your time and attention today. To close, I just want to leave you with these couple of takeaways. First, we continue to make progress on our clinical programs, and you can expect new data from our ongoing Phase 2 chronic hepatitis B and chronic hepatitis delta clinical trials, to be presented on November 13th. Second, we are expanding our strategic focus beyond infectious disease first to offer immune diseases and immuno-oncology. We are also pioneering the discovery of RNA delivered monoclonal antibodies, thanks to the help and new funding from BARDA. And lastly, the $1.7 billion in cash and investments that we have available to support the advancement of our hepatitis B and delta clinical trials and our core antibody platform, yet, additionally, it enables us to evaluate complementary external opportunities that strengthen our existing platforms and pipeline.
So thank you again, all of you for joining us today. We really appreciate your time and your interest in Vir. Operator, you may end the call.
Operator: Thank you all for joining. This does conclude today’s meeting. You may now disconnect.
