Arbutus Biopharma Corporation (NASDAQ:ABUS) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call August 3, 2023 8:45 AM ET

Company Participants

Lisa Caperelli - VP of IR

Bill Collier - President, CEO and Director

David Hastings - CFO

Karen Sims - VP of Clinical Development

Michael Sofia - Chief Scientific Officer

Conference Call Participants

Roy Buchanan - JMP

Dennis Ding - Jefferies

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Arbutus Biopharma Q2 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Lisa Caperelli. Please go ahead.

Lisa Caperelli

Thank you, Jeda. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Arbutus' second quarter 2023 financial results and corporate update call. Joining me today from the Arbutus executive team are Bill Collier, President and Chief Executive Officer; David Hastings, Chief Financial Officer; Dr. Mike Sofia, Chief Scientific Officer; and Dr. Karen Sims, Chief Medical Officer. Bill will begin with a corporate update, followed by Dr. Sims who will review recent data shared at the Medical Congree. David Hastings will then provide a review of the company's second quarter 2023 financial results. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A. Dr. Sofia will be available to address questions.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that some of the statements made during the call today are forward-looking statements, which are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to differ materially, including those described in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, our quarterly report on Form 10-Q, which will be filed later today and from time to time in our other documents filed with the SEC.

With that, I'll now turn the call over to Bill Collier. Bill?

Bill Collier

Thank you, Lisa, and good morning, everyone, and thank you very much for joining us today. Our goal at Arbutus has always been to develop a combination of therapeutic agents that will lead to a functional cure of chronic Hepatitis B. And today we are excited to share with you the continued progress that we've made in advancing this effort. We believe that AB-729, which we will now refer to by its generic name, imdusiran, has the potential to be a cornerstone therapy to functionally cure chronic HBV.

To date we've generated meaningful inpatient data showing that imdusiran appears to be the only RNAi to impact both surface antigen and the reawakening of the HBV specific immune response. And the effects of imdusiran are sustained in some patients even after all therapy is discontinued. We remain impressed with the compelling safety and efficacy profile of imdusiran and look forward to evaluating imdusiran in combination not only with other available compounds but ultimately with our early stage HBV assets that are concurrently progressing.