Belite Bio, Inc (NASDAQ:BLTE) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call August 9, 2023 4:30 PM ET
Company Participants
Tom Lin - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Nathan Mata - Chief Scientific Officer
Hao-Yuan Chuang - Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Basma Radwan - Leerink Partners
Jennifer Kim - Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.
Yi Chen - HC Wainwright & Co, LLC
Bruce Jackson - The Benchmark Company
Operator
Good morning, and welcome to the Belite Bio Q2 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all attendees are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentations. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded and a replay will be made available on the Belite Bio website following the conclusion of the event.
Before we begin, I'd like to bring your attention to the forward-looking statements slide. During this call, we may be making forward-looking statements, please refer to the language on this slide for further reference.
On today's call we have Tom Lin, Chairman and CEO; Nathan Mata, CSO; and Hao-Yuan Chuang, CFO.
With that, I’d like to turn the call over to your host Tom Lin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Belite Bio. Please go ahead sir.
Tom Lin
Thank you, Sarah. Thank you everyone for taking the time to join this meeting. I'm Tom Lin, CEO of Belite Bio. I'll start off by giving the overview and the milestones we have achieved so far. So for those that are new to the Belite story, the drug that we are developing, Tinlarebant, is a novel once daily oral tablet designed to bind to serum retinol binding protein as a means to specifically reduce retinol delivery to the eye. This approach is intended to slow or halt the formation of toxic retinal derived byproducts, which are generated in the visual cycle and are implicated in progression of Stargardt disease and Geographic Atrophy secondary to dry AMD. Belite Bio believes that earlier intervention directed at emerging retinal pathology, which is not mediated by information would be the best approach to potentially slow disease progression in Stargardt disease and GA in dry AMD. So there is a still significant unmet need for both indications. Currently, there is still no approved treatment for Stargardt disease and there are currently no approved oral treatments for GA, which oral treatments are expected to capture a much higher -- much wider market for advanced dry AMD. We have so far received fast track designation, rare pediatric disease designation, and orphan drug designation, which allows us to frequently discuss with FDA of our progress and see how we can expedite the approval of this drug, if we show positive results from our Phase III study. I’d also like to mention that we still have a long patent life with the first composition of meta [Phonetic] patent expiring in 2035 and [Indiscernible] patent extension and with new patents being filed, which will extend the patent portfolio into 2050s.