UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

 

FORM 10-Q

 

(Mark One)

For the quarterly period ended March 31, 2020

OR

For the transition period from              to             

Commission file number:  001-36327

 

Neoleukin Therapeutics, Inc.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

 

 

360-1616 Eastlake Avenue East

Seattle, Washington 98102

(Address of principal executive offices, including zip code)

(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code): (206) 732-2133

 

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

 

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.    Yes  ☒    No  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files).    Yes  ☒    No   ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act. (Check one):

 

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act.  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act).    Yes  ☐    No  ☒

As of May 4, 2020, there were 38,485,042 shares of the registrant’s common stock outstanding.

 

 

  

 

 

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Neoleukin Therapeutics, Inc.

Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q

For the Quarter Ended March 31, 2020

INDEX

 

Except as otherwise indicated herein or as the context otherwise requires, references in this report to, “the Company,” “we,” “us,” “our” and similar references refer to Neoleukin Therapeutics, Inc. (formerly Aquinox Pharmaceuticals, Inc.), a Delaware corporation. The name “Neoleukin” is a registered trademark of the Company in the United States.  This report also contains references to registered marks, trademarks and trade names of other companies that are property of their respective holders.

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PART I. FINANCIAL INFORMATION

 

NEOLEUKIN THERAPEUTICS, INC.

Condensed consolidated balance sheets

(Unaudited)

(In thousands of U.S. dollars, except per share and share amounts)

 

 

The accompanying notes form an integral part of these condensed consolidated financial statements.

 

 

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NEOLEUKIN THERAPEUTICS, INC.

Condensed consolidated statements of operations and comprehensive loss

(Unaudited)  

(In thousands of U.S. dollars, except per share and share amounts)

 

.

The accompanying notes form an integral part of these condensed consolidated financial statements.

 

 

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NEOLEUKIN THERAPEUTICS, INC.

Condensed consolidated statements of cash flows

(Unaudited)

(In thousands of U.S. dollars)

 

 

The accompanying notes form an integral part of these condensed consolidated financial statements.

 

 

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NEOLEUKIN THERAPEUTICS, INC.

Condensed consolidated statements of stockholders’ equity

(Unaudited)

(In thousands of U.S. dollars, except share amounts)

 

 

 

The accompanying notes form an integral part of these condensed consolidated financial statements.

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NEOLEUKIN THERAPEUTICS, INC.

Notes to the condensed consolidated financial statements

(Unaudited)

 

1. Nature of operations

Neoleukin Therapeutics, Inc. (“Neoleukin” or “the Company”) is a biopharmaceutical company creating next generation immunotherapies for cancer, inflammation and autoimmunity using de novo protein design technology. Neoleukin uses sophisticated computational methods to design proteins that demonstrate specific pharmaceutical properties that provide potentially superior therapeutic benefit over native proteins. 

The Company commenced operations in Canada in December 2003. Aquinox Pharmaceuticals (Canada) Inc., a corporation formed under the Canada Business Corporations Act, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Aquinox Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a Delaware corporation formed in May 2007 (“Aquinox”). On August 8, 2019, upon the merger of Aquinox with Neoleukin Therapeutics, Inc. (“Former Neoleukin”) pursuant to an Agreement and Plan of Merger dated August 5, 2019, Former Neoleukin merged with a wholly owned subsidiary of Aquinox. Upon completion of the transaction, Aquinox was renamed Neoleukin Therapeutics, Inc.

The Company’s head office is in Seattle, Washington.

2. Summary of significant accounting policies

 

(a) Basis of presentation

The accompanying unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements are presented in United States (“U.S.”) dollars and have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (“U.S. GAAP”) and pursuant to the rules and regulations of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) for interim financial information.  Accordingly, these consolidated financial statements do not include all of the information and footnotes required for complete consolidated financial statements and should be read in conjunction with the audited consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes included in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 12, 2020.

In management’s opinion, the unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements reflect all adjustments (including reclassifications and normal recurring adjustments) necessary to present fairly the financial position as of March 31, 2020, and results of operations and cash flows for all periods presented. The interim results presented are not necessarily indicative of results that can be expected for a full year.

(b) Use of estimates and assumptions

The preparation of consolidated financial statements in conformity with U.S. GAAP requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and the disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the consolidated financial statements and the reported amounts of expenses during the reporting period. Significant areas requiring estimates include valuation and recognition of stock-based compensation, amortization and depreciation of property, plant and equipment and intangible assets, and pre-clinical and other accruals. Actual results could differ from those estimates.

(c) Leases

At contract inception, the Company determines if the contract is a lease or contains a lease. Operating leases are recorded as operating lease right-of-use assets, operating lease liabilities and non-current operating lease liabilities. Finance leases are recorded as finance lease right-of-use assets, finance lease liabilities and non-current finance lease liabilities.

Right-of-use assets and lease liabilities are recognized on the lease commencement date based on the estimated present value of lease payments over the lease term.  To determine the present value of the lease payments, the Company utilizes its estimated incremental borrowing rate based on information available at the lease commencement date as the rate implicit in the lease is not readily determinable.  The right-of-use assets are recorded net of any lease incentives received. Variable lease cost primarily includes building operating expenses as charged to the Company by its landlords.

For leases of office space with a lease term of less than 12 months and which do not include an option to purchase the underlying asset, the Company has elected to recognize the lease payments in the statement of operations on a straight-line basis over the lease term.  

For leases of office space, the Company has elected to not separate the lease components from the non-lease components.

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(d) Accounting for stock-based compensation

The Company has issued stock options and restricted stock units (“RSUs”). The Company measures the cost of services received in exchange for an award of equity instruments based on the grant-date fair value of the award. The cost of such award will be recognized over the period during which services are provided in exchange for the award, generally the vesting period. The Company accounts for forfeitures as they occur. All share-based payments to employees and consultants are recognized in the consolidated financial statements based upon their respective grant date fair values.

The Company estimates the fair value of options granted using the Black-Scholes option pricing model. This approximation uses assumptions regarding a number of inputs that requires management to make significant estimates and judgments. The expected volatility assumption is based on industry peer information and the Company expects to continue to do so until it has adequate historical volatility of its common stock. Additionally, because the Company has no significant history to calculate the expected term, the simplified method is used to measure the term.

The fair value of each RSU is measured using the closing price of the Company’s common stock on the date of grant.

(e) Net loss per common stock

Basic net loss per common stock is computed by dividing net loss by the weighted-average number of common stock and pre-funded warrants outstanding during the period. The pre-funded warrants are included in the computation of basic and diluted net loss per common stock as the warrants are fully vested and exercisable at any time and for a nominal cash consideration. Diluted net loss per common stock is determined using the weighted-average number of common stock outstanding during the period, adjusted for the dilutive effect of common stock equivalents, consisting of shares that might be issued upon exercise of common stock options and restricted stock units. In periods where losses are reported, the weighted-average number of common stock outstanding excludes common stock equivalents because their inclusion would be anti-dilutive.  

(f) Fair value of financial instruments

The carrying amounts of certain of the Company’s financial instruments, including cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, receivables, accounts payable and other liabilities, approximate their fair values because of their nature and/or short maturities.

At March 31, 2020, and December 31, 2019, the Company had $118.2 million and $40.0 million in money market funds, respectively. Money market funds are level one financial instruments as they are valued at fair value, which is the closing price reported by the fund sponsor from an actively traded exchange.

(g) Recently issued and recently adopted accounting standards

In December 2019, the FASB issued ASU 2019-12 “Simplifying the Accounting for Income Taxes.” The objective of the standard is to improve areas of GAAP by removing certain exceptions permitted by ASC Topic 740 - Income Taxes and clarifying existing guidance to facilitate consistent application. ASU 2019-12 is effective for fiscal years and interim periods beginning after December 15, 2020. The Company is currently assessing the impact of ASU 2019-12 on its financial statements.

3. Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash

Restricted cash, included in long-term other assets in the condensed consolidated balance sheets, includes a $0.5 million cash deposit the Company maintains with its bank as collateral for the irrevocable letter of credit issued to its landlord under the New Seattle Lease (as defined in Note 4).

In the condensed consolidated statements of cash flows, the restricted cash balance of $0.5 million (December 31, 2019 – nil) is included with cash of $21.2 million (December 31, 2019 – $103.1 million) and cash equivalents of $118.2 million (December 31, 2019 – $40.0 million) for presentation purposes.

4. Lease liabilities

The Company has a lease agreement for approximately 6,272 square feet of office space in Seattle, Washington, for the Company’s principal executive offices, a laboratory for research and development and related uses. The lease became effective on September 23, 2019, commenced on October 1, 2019 and expires on October 31, 2021, unless terminated earlier. The Company is also responsible for the payment of additional rent to cover the Company’s share of the annual operating and tax expenses and utilities costs for the building.

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The Company has a new lease agreement for approximately 33,300 square feet of office space in Seattle, Washington, for the Company’s future principal executive offices, a laboratory for research and development and related uses (the “New Seattle Lease”). The lease commenced on January 15, 2020 and rent obligations are scheduled to commence on December 1, 2020.  The lease expires on December 1, 2028, with the option to extend the lease for two five-year terms. The lease provides for a tenant improvement allowance of $8.0 million, which is included in the base rent, and an optional additional tenant improvement allowance with a maximum amount of $1.5 million, which will result, if elected, in additional rent amortized over the term of the lease. The Company will also be responsible for the payment of additional rent to cover the Company’s share of the annual operating and tax expenses and utilities costs for the building. In January 2020, the Company issued an irrevocable letter of credit in the amount of $0.5 million for the security deposit, in accordance with the terms of the lease.

The Company has a lease agreement for approximately 10,946 square feet of office space in Vancouver, Canada, which commenced on November 1, 2016 and expires October 31, 2021, with the option to extend the lease to October 31, 2026. In addition to the basic rent, the Company is obligated to pay for taxes, operating costs, utilities, additional services and other amounts.  

The Company has a finance lease liability for laboratory equipment which expires June 2023. The Company is obligated to make five annual payments for an aggregate purchase price of $0.3 million. All rights and title will transfer to the Company upon receipt of the final payment.  

As of March 31, 2020, and December 31, 2019, the Company’s operating lease right-of-use assets were $10.3 million and $0.8 million, respectively. The Company’s finance lease right-of-use assets were $0.3 million as of March 31, 2020 and December 31, 2019.

The components of the lease expense were as follows:

 

 

Supplemental balance sheet information related to leases is as follows:

 

 

Supplemental cash flow information related to leases was as follows:

 

 

The calculation of the present value of the operating lease payments for the Vancouver lease and the lease for the future principal offices and laboratory space did not include the options to extend the lease.

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At March 31, 2020, the future payments under the Company’s operating and finance lease liabilities were as follows:

 

 

5. Stockholders’ equity

 

(a) Share capital

Neoleukin is authorized to issue two classes of stock, common and preferred.  The total number of shares Neoleukin is authorized to issue is 105,000,000 shares, comprised of 100,000,000 common stock and 5,000,000 preferred stock, both with a par value of $0.000001 per share. As of March 31, 2020 and December 31, 2019, the total number of shares of common stock issued and outstanding was 38,386,160 and 37,996,849, respectively. As of March 31, 2020 and December 31, 2019, the total number of shares of preferred stock issued or outstanding was nil.

(b) Pre-funded common stock warrants

On December 17, 2019, Neoleukin entered into an exchange agreement (the “Exchange Agreement”) with certain stockholders, pursuant to which the Company exchanged an aggregate of 10,925,481 shares of common stock held by the stockholders for pre-funded warrants (the “Exchange Warrants”) to purchase an aggregate of 10,925,481 shares of common stock (subject to adjustment in the event of stock splits, recapitalizations and other similar events affecting common stock), with an exercise price of $0.000001 per share. The Exchange Warrants may be exercised at any time after the date of issuance, except that the Exchange Warrants cannot be exercised by the stockholders if, after giving effect thereto, the stockholders would beneficially own more than 9.99% of the outstanding common stock, subject to certain exceptions. The holders of the Exchange Warrants will not have the right to vote on any matter except to the extent required by Delaware law.

As the Exchange Warrants meet the conditions for equity classification, the proceeds previously received for the shares of common stock will remain in additional paid-in capital.  Upon the exercise of the warrants the proceeds received along with the exercise price will be recorded in common stock.

(c) Stock option plan

The Company’s 2014 Equity Incentive Plan (“2014 Plan”) became effective in March 2014. The 2014 Plan is the successor to and continuation of the Joint Canadian Stock Option Plan (the “2006 Plan”). No further grants will be made under the 2006 Plan. The 2014 Plan provides for the grant of stock options, stock appreciation rights, restricted stock awards, restricted stock unit awards, performance stock awards, performance cash awards, and other forms of equity awards to employees, directors, and consultants.

As at March 31, 2020, the maximum number of shares of common stock that may be issued under the 2014 Plan was 10,273,506 shares.  Additionally, the number of shares of common stock reserved for issuance under the 2014 Plan will automatically increase on January 1 of each year for a period of up to 10 years, beginning on January 1, 2015 and ending on and including January 1, 2024, by 4% of the total number of shares of capital stock outstanding on December 31 of the preceding calendar year, or a lesser number of shares determined by the board of directors.

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Stock option transactions and the number of stock options outstanding are summarized below:

 

 

During the three months ended March 31, 2020, the Company granted stock options to purchase 290,700 shares of common stock to employees. The stock options granted to employees have an exercise price per share ranging from $6.44 to $12.44 and vest 25% one year after the beginning of the vesting period and thereafter ratably each month over the following thirty-six months.  All stock options under the 2014 Plan are subject to a 10-year expiration period.

During the three months ended March 31, 2020, 376,311 shares of common stock were issued upon exercise of options with an aggregate intrinsic value of $1.3 million.

Restricted stock units

Restricted stock unit transactions and the number of unvested stock restricted stock units are summarized below:

 

 

During the three months ended March 31, 2020, the Company granted 75,000 restricted stock units to employees with a grant date fair value per share of $6.44.  The restricted stock units granted vest one-third on the first anniversary of the grant date, one-third on the second anniversary of the grant date and one-third on the third anniversary of the grant date. There is no expiration period for the restricted stock units under the 2014 Plan.

During the three months ended March 31, 2020, 13,000 shares were issued upon the vesting of the restricted stock units with an aggregate intrinsic value of $0.1 million.

(d) Stock-based compensation

The fair value of stock options granted is estimated using the Black-Scholes option pricing model with the following weighted average assumptions:

 

 

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The Company amortizes the fair value of the stock options on a straight-line basis over the applicable requisite service periods of the awards, which is generally the vesting period. Stock-based compensation expense charged to research and development expenses was $0.3 million and $0.1 million for the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively. Stock-based compensation expense charged to general and administrative expenses was $0.4 million and $1.0 million for the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively. Total unrecognized compensation cost for all stock-based compensation plans was $9.8 million and $6.7 million as of March 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively, which is expected to be recognized over a weighted-average period of 3.36 years (March 31, 2019 – 2.61 years).

6. Restructuring

In July 2018, the Company’s Board of Directors approved a restructuring plan to reduce operating costs and better align the Company’s workforce with the needs of its business following the June 27, 2018 announcement that its Phase 3 Leadership 301 clinical trial evaluating once-daily, oral rosiptor for the treatment of IC/BPS failed to meet its primary endpoint. The Company has halted all further development activities with rosiptor. In 2018 and 2019, the Company incurred and paid aggregate restructuring charges of $7.4 million related to clinical trial closing costs, contract cancellations, closing of its office in San Bruno, California, severance payments and other employee-related costs. There were no amounts accrued as of March 31, 2020 or December 31, 2019.

 

On November 6, 2018, the Company’s Board of Directors approved an additional restructuring plan to further reduce operating costs. In 2019, the Company incurred and paid aggregate restructuring charges of $1.6 million related to severance payments and other employee-related costs.  There were no amounts accrued as of March 31, 2020.  

 

For the three months ended March 31, 2020, we incurred and paid an immaterial amount.

For the three months ended March 31, 2019, restructuring costs of $0.1 million were recorded in research and development expenses and $0.2 million in general and administrative expenses.

7. Other income, net

 

 

8. Net loss per common stock

Basic and diluted net loss per share of common stock is computed by dividing net loss by the weighted average number of common stock outstanding. The 10,925,481 pre-funded warrants are included in the computation of basic and diluted net loss per common stock as the warrants are fully vested and exercisable at any time and for a nominal cash consideration.

The Company excluded the following outstanding stock options and restricted stock units from the computation of basic and diluted net loss per common stock as the effect would have been antidilutive for all periods presented.

 

 

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You should read the following discussion of our financial condition and results of operations in conjunction with the unaudited interim condensed consolidated financial statements and notes thereto included elsewhere in this report and our audited consolidated financial statements and notes included as part of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019.

Forward-Looking Statements

The following discussion of our financial condition and results of operations contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements are based on our management’s beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to our management. All statements other than statements of historical facts are “forward-looking statements” for purposes of these provisions, including those relating to future events or our future financial performance and financial guidance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “may,” “might,” “will,” “should,” “expect,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “project,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” “intend” or “continue,” the negative of terms like these or other comparable terminology, and other words or terms of similar meaning in connection with any discussion of future operating or financial performance. These statements are only predictions. All forward-looking statements included in this document are based on information available to us on the date hereof, and we assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Any or all of our forward-looking statements in this document may turn out to be wrong. Actual events or results may differ materially. Our forward-looking statements can be affected by inaccurate assumptions we might make or by known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. In evaluating these statements, you should specifically consider various factors, including the risks outlined under the caption “Risk Factors” set forth in Item 1A of Part II of this quarterly report on Form 10-Q, as well as those contained from time to time in our other filings with the SEC. We caution investors that our business and financial performance are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties.

Overview

We are a biopharmaceutical company creating next generation immunotherapies for cancer, inflammation and autoimmunity using de novo protein design technology. We use sophisticated computational methods to design proteins that demonstrate specific pharmaceutical properties that provide potentially superior therapeutic benefit over native proteins. Existing protein engineering treatments generally involve the modification of native proteins. With our proprietary platform we design completely new protein structures from the ground up, capable of demonstrating specifically desired biological properties. Through this method we are able to produce proteins that, while resembling native proteins, can be designed around the structural issues of native proteins while delivering therapeutic benefit. De novo proteins have the capacity to be cytokine receptor agonists, antagonists, or result in conditional activation of specific cytokine receptors such that they may regulate inflammation or the immune response to cancer. We are initially focused on key cytokine mimetics, which we refer to as Neoleukin de novo cytokine mimetics. Neoleukin de novo cytokine mimetics can be modified to adjust affinity, thermodynamic stability, resistance to biochemical modification, pharmacokinetic characteristics, and targeting to tumor or inflamed tissues.

Our lead product candidate, NL-201, is a de novo protein designed to mimic the therapeutic activity of the cytokines interleukin-2, or IL-2, and interleukin-15, or IL-15, for the potential treatment of various types of cancer, including renal cell carcinoma, or RCC, and melanoma, while limiting the toxicity caused by the preferential binding of native IL-2 and IL-15 to non-target cells. In preclinical studies, a closely-related precursor to NL-201 demonstrated higher levels of activity and lower toxicity in multiple murine solid tumor syngeneic models as compared to recombinant, native IL-2.

We commenced operations in Canada in December 2003. Aquinox Pharmaceuticals (Canada) Inc., a corporation formed under the Canada Business Corporations Act, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Aquinox Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a Delaware corporation formed in May 2007 (“Aquinox”). On August 8, 2019, upon the merger of Aquinox with Neoleukin Therapeutics, Inc. (“Former Neoleukin”) pursuant to an Agreement and Plan of Merger dated August 5, 2019, Former Neoleukin merged with a wholly owned subsidiary of Aquinox. Upon completion of the transaction, Aquinox was renamed Neoleukin Therapeutics, Inc.

COVID-19 Impact

The recent outbreak of the Coronavirus Disease 2019, or COVID-19, which has been declared by the World Health Organization to be a pandemic, has spread across the globe and is impacting worldwide economic activity. During this unprecedented time, protecting the health and well-being of our employees and community is a top priority. In addition, we are focused on maintaining continuity of our research, development and business activities while balancing potential impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Our People and Operations

As of March 9, 2020, we transitioned to a work from home policy for our employees and discontinued all work-related travel. Business-critical research and development work has continued, adhering to guidelines to ensure employee safety. We continually assess our work policies and monitors guidance from the state and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the CDC, in order to determine any changes to current work practices.

NL-201 Development Activities

We remain focused on our efforts to support an Investigational New Drug, or IND, application for our lead therapeutic, NL-201, and are working with key vendors to assess any potential impacts to these efforts. At this time, we do not expect a delay in our development plans but acknowledge the potential exists for our timing to be impacted. Further, we are evaluating the potential for geographic diversity of clinical trial sites to minimize any regional and/or seasonal effects of COVID-19 recurrences.

Research Activities & Data Announcements

We plan to present preclinical data on NL-201 and our de novo protein technology platform in 2020. Three abstracts were accepted for presentation at the American Association for Cancer Research, or AACR, Annual Meeting, previously scheduled to take place in San Diego in April 2020. We now expect to present these data as part of the AACR Virtual Annual Meeting II, taking place in June 2020. Due to the COVID-19 public health emergency, we are also utilizing our research and computational bandwidth available during this time to investigate the potential application of our de novo protein technology toward COVID-19.

Finances

We will need to raise substantial additional capital to support our continuing operations and pursue our growth strategy. Until such time as we can generate significant revenue from product sales, if ever, we plan to finance our operations through the sale of equity, debt financings or other capital sources, which may include collaborations with other companies or other strategic transactions. There are no assurances that we will be successful in obtaining an adequate level of financing as and when needed to finance our operations on terms acceptable to us or at all. Any failure to raise capital as and when needed could have a negative impact on our financial condition and on our ability to pursue our business plans and strategies. If we are unable to secure adequate additional funding, we may have to significantly delay, scale back or discontinue the development and commercialization of one or more product candidates or delay our pursuit of potential in‑licenses or acquisitions.

As of March 31, 2020, we had cash and cash equivalents of $139.4 million. Based on our current operating plan, we expect our existing cash and cash equivalents will enable us to fund our operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements through 2022.

Results of Operations

Operating Expenses

The following table summarizes our operating expenses for the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019 (in thousands):

 

 

Research and Development Expenses

Research and development expenses consists primarily of personnel related costs (including stock-based compensation and travel expenses), facility-related costs, lab supplies, testing services and manufacturing costs.

For the three months ended March 31, 2020, research and development expenses were $5.5 million compared to $0.1 million for the three months ended March 31, 2019. The increase in research and development expenses during the three months ended March 31, 2020 was due to increased expenses incurred from IND-enabling activities related to our lead product candidate, NL-201, and in connection with the advancement of other Neoleukin technologies compared to lower research and development costs during the three months ended March 31, 2019 as a result of the suspension of all research and development activities with rosiptor in June 2018.

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General and Administrative Expenses

General and administrative expenses consist primarily of personnel related costs (including severance, stock-based compensation and travel expenses), facility-related costs, insurance, public company expenses, professional fees for consulting, legal and accounting services, and restructuring costs.

For the three months ended March 31, 2020, general and administrative expenses were $3.6 million compared to $2.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2019.  The increase in general and administrative expenses during the three months ended March 31, 2020 as compared to the three months ended March 31, 2019 was primarily due to the increase in employees after the merger compared to lower personnel and overhead costs as a result of the restructurings in the second half of 2018.

Other income, net

 

 

Interest income during the three months ended March 31, 2020 decreased compared to the same period in 2019 due a decrease in interest rates partially offset by higher cash and investment balances for the three months ended March 31, 2020.

Liquidity and Capital Resources

Since our inception, we have incurred net losses and negative cash flows from our operations. Our operating activities used $6.4 million and $2.8 million of cash flows during the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively. As of March 31, 2020, we had an accumulated deficit of $308.2 million, working capital of $134.1 million and cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash of $139.9 million.

Cash Flows

The following table summarizes our cash flows for the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019 (in thousands):

 

 

Net cash used in operating activities

Net cash used in operating activities for the three months ended March 31, 2020 increased significantly compared to the three months ended March 31, 2019 due to an increase in operating expenses resulting primarily from expenses incurred in developing our lead product candidate, NL-201, compared to a reduction in costs in the three months ended March 31, 2019 due to the restructuring in the second half of 2018 and the halting of all development activities relating to rosiptor.

Net cash used in investing activities

Net cash used in investing activities for the three months ended March 31, 2020 was primarily the result of the acquisition of laboratory and computer equipment. For the three months ended March 31, 2019 there was no net cash used in investing activities as the Company had no acquisitions of laboratory or computer equipment during that period.     

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Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities

For the three months ended March 31, 2020, net cash provided by financing activities of $3.4 million consisted of proceeds from the exercise of stock options. For the three months ended March 31, 2019, net cash used in financing activities was the result of the payment of finance lease liabilities.

Operating and Capital Expenditure Requirements

We have not generated product revenue or achieved profitability since our inception and we expect to continue to incur net losses for the foreseeable future. As of March 31, 2020, we had approximately $139.4 million in cash and cash equivalents. Based on our current operating plan, we believe that our available cash and cash equivalents will be sufficient to fund our operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements through 2022. However, our future capital requirements and the period for which we expect our existing resources to support our operations, fund expansion, develop new or enhanced products, or otherwise respond to competitive pressures, may vary significantly from our expectation and we may need to seek additional funds sooner than planned. Unless and until we generate sufficient revenue to be profitable, we will seek to fund our operations through public or private equity or debt financings or other sources. If we raise additional funds through the issuance of convertible debt securities, these securities could have rights senior to those of our common stock and could contain covenants that restrict our operations. There can be no assurance that we will be able to obtain additional equity or debt financing on terms acceptable to us, if at all. Our failure to obtain sufficient funds on acceptable terms when needed could have a negative impact on our business, results of operations, financial condition, cash flows and future prospects. Our future capital requirements will depend on many factors, including:

Please see Item 1A of Part II of this Quarterly Report titled “Risk Factors” for additional risks associated with our substantial capital requirements.

Contractual Obligations and Commitments

Our future minimum contractual commitments were reported in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019, as filed with the SEC. There have been no material changes from the contractual commitments previously discussed in that Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Critical Accounting Policies and Significant Judgments and Estimates

The preparation of these consolidated financial statements in accordance with U.S. GAAP requires us to make estimates and judgments that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue and expenses and the disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities in our consolidated financial statements. We evaluate our estimates and judgments on an ongoing basis. We base our estimates on historical experience, known trends and events and various other factors that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, the results of which form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. Actual results may differ from these estimates under different assumptions or conditions. A summary of our significant accounting policies is presented in Part II, Item 8, of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019. There have been no material changes to our significant accounting policies during the three months ended March 31, 2020.

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Recent Accounting Pronouncements

See Note 2(g), Recently issued and recently adopted accounting standards in the Notes to Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements included in Part I Item 1 of this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q.

Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements

We do not have any off-balance sheet arrangements.

Management believes there have been no material changes to our quantitative and qualitative disclosures about market risks during the three months ended March 31, 2020, compared to those discussed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019, filed with the SEC.

Interest rate risk

Our exposure to market risk for changes in interest rates relates primarily to our investment portfolio. As of March 31, 2020, we had cash equivalent holdings in U.S. government securities of $118.2 million. We have estimated the effect on our investment portfolio of a hypothetical increase in interest rates by one percent (100 basis points) to have an immaterial impact in the fair value of our investment portfolio as of March 31, 2020.

Foreign Currency Risk

Our exposure to foreign currency risk relates primarily to our Canadian operations, including payments we make to vendors and suppliers. We currently do not hedge against foreign currency risk. If the Canadian dollar strengthens against the U.S. dollar, it could result in higher expenditures and have a negative impact on our financial results. We also maintain bank balances in foreign currencies such as the Canadian dollar and the Euro. If these foreign currencies decline against the U.S. dollar, it could have a negative impact on our financial positions.  For the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019, foreign exchange gain (losses) were insignificant as the impact of changes in foreign exchange rates on our foreign currency portfolio was offset by its impact on our foreign currency liabilities.

Evaluation of disclosure controls and procedures. Under the supervision and with the participation of our principal executive officer and principal financial officer, our management conducted an evaluation of the effectiveness of the design and operation of our disclosure controls and procedures, as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Exchange Act, as of the end of the period covered by this report.

In designing and evaluating our disclosure controls and procedures, management recognizes that any disclosure controls and procedures, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable assurance of achieving the desired control objectives. In addition, the design of disclosure controls and procedures must reflect the fact that there are resource constraints and that management is required to apply its judgment in evaluating the benefits of possible controls and procedures relative to their costs.

Based on management’s evaluation, our principal executive officer and principal financial officer concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures are designed to, and are effective to, provide assurance at a reasonable level that the information we are required to disclose in reports that we file or submit under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in SEC rules and forms, and that such information is accumulated and communicated to our management, including our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, as appropriate, to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosures.

Changes in internal control over financial reporting. We are in the process of transitioning accounting and financial reporting operations from our Vancouver, British Columbia office to our new headquarters in Seattle, Washington. We believe we have taken the necessary steps to monitor and maintain appropriate internal control over financial reporting during the three months ended March 31, 2020 and will evaluate the operating effectiveness of related controls during subsequent periods. There were no other changes in our internal control over financial reporting identified in connection with the evaluation required by Rule 13a-15(d) and 15d-15(d) of the Exchange Act that occurred during the period covered by this report that has materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.

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Part II. Other Information

We may from time to time be named as a party to legal claims, actions and complaints, including matters involving employment, intellectual property or others.

You should carefully consider the following risk factors, in addition to the other information contained in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, including our condensed consolidated financial statements and related notes. If any of the events described in the following risk factors occurs, our business, operating results and financial condition could be seriously harmed. This Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q also contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements as a result of factors that are described below and elsewhere in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q.

Risks Related to Our Financial Position and Capital Needs

We will require substantial additional capital to finance our operations which may not be available to us on acceptable terms, or at all. If we fail to obtain necessary financing, we may be unable to complete the development and potential commercialization of our product candidates.

The development of biopharmaceutical product candidates is capital-intensive. If our product candidates enter and advance through preclinical studies and clinical trials, we will need substantial additional funds to expand or create our development, regulatory, manufacturing, marketing, and sales capabilities. We have used substantial funds to develop our technology and product candidates and will require significant funds to conduct further research and development and preclinical testing and clinical trials of our product candidates, to seek regulatory approvals for our product candidates and to manufacture and market products, if any, which are approved for commercial sale. In addition, we expect to continue incurring costs associated with operating as a public company.

Preclinical studies and clinical trials for our product candidates will require substantial funds to complete. As of March 31, 2020, we had approximately $139.4 million in cash and cash equivalents. We expect to incur substantial expenditures in the foreseeable future as we seek to advance NL-201 and any future product candidates through preclinical and clinical development, the regulatory approval process and, if approved, commercial launch activities. Based on our current operating plan, we believe that our available cash and cash equivalents will be sufficient to fund our operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements through 2022. However, our future capital requirements and the period for which we expect our existing resources to support our operations, fund expansion, develop new or enhanced products, or otherwise respond to competitive pressures, may vary significantly from what we expect and we may need to seek additional funds sooner than planned. Our monthly spending levels vary based on new and ongoing research and development and other corporate activities. Because the length of time and activities associated with successful research and development of our product candidates is highly uncertain, we are unable to estimate the actual funds we will require for development and any marketing and commercialization activities for approved products. Our future funding requirements, both near and long-term, will depend on many factors, including, but not limited to:

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If we are unable to obtain funding on a timely basis or on acceptable terms, we may have to delay, reduce or terminate our research and development programs and preclinical studies or clinical trials, limit strategic opportunities or undergo reductions in our workforce or other corporate restructuring activities. We do not expect to realize revenue from sales of commercial products or royalties from licensed products in the foreseeable future, if at all, and, in no event, before our product candidates are clinically tested, approved for commercialization and successfully marketed.

We will be required to seek additional funding in the future and currently intend to do so through additional collaborations and/or licensing agreements, public or private equity offerings or debt financings, credit or loan facilities, or a combination of one or more of these funding sources. If we raise additional funds by issuing equity securities, our stockholders will suffer dilution and the terms of any financing may adversely affect the rights of our stockholders. In addition, as a condition to providing additional funds to us, future investors may demand, and may be granted, rights superior to those of existing stockholders. Our future debt financings, if available, are likely to involve restrictive covenants limiting our flexibility in conducting future business activities, and, in the event of insolvency, debt holders would be repaid before holders of our equity securities received any distribution of our corporate assets. If we raise additional funds through licensing or collaboration arrangements with third parties, we may have to relinquish valuable rights to our product candidates, or grant licenses on terms that are not favorable to us. We also could be required to seek collaborators for product candidates at an earlier stage than otherwise would be desirable or relinquish our rights to product candidates or technologies that we otherwise would seek to develop or commercialize ourselves. Failure to obtain capital when needed on acceptable terms may force us to delay, limit or terminate our product development and commercialization of our current or future product candidates, which could have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

We have incurred significant losses in every quarter since our inception and anticipate that we will continue to incur significant losses in the future.

We are a biotechnology company with a limited operating history. Investment in biotechnology is highly speculative because it entails substantial upfront capital expenditures and significant risk that any potential product candidate will fail to demonstrate adequate effect or an acceptable safety profile, gain regulatory approval or become commercially viable. We do not have any products approved by regulatory authorities for marketing or commercial sale, we have not generated any revenue from product sales to date, and all of our product candidates are in preclinical development. We continue to incur significant expenses related to our ongoing operations. As a result, we are not profitable and have incurred losses in every reporting period since our inception in 2003. For the three-month period ended March 31, 2020, we reported a net loss of $8.6 million.  For the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2018, we reported a net loss of $69.4 million and $31.6 million, respectively. As of March 31, 2020, we had an accumulated deficit since inception of $308.2 million.

We expect to continue to incur significant expenses and operating losses for the foreseeable future as we seek to identify, acquire and conduct research and development of future product candidates, and potentially begin to commercialize any future products that may achieve regulatory approval. We may encounter unforeseen expenses, difficulties, complications, delays and other unknown factors that may adversely affect our financial condition. The size of our future net losses will depend, in part, on the rate of future growth of our expenses and our ability to generate revenues. Our prior losses and expected future losses have had, and will continue to have, an adverse effect on our financial condition. If any of our future product candidate fails in clinical trials or does not gain regulatory approval, or if approved, fails to achieve market acceptance, we may never become profitable. Even if we achieve profitability in the future, we may not be able to sustain profitability in subsequent periods.

We have a limited operating history, which may make it difficult for you to evaluate the success of our business to date and to assess our future viability.

Our operations to date have been primarily limited to organizing and staffing our company, acquiring product and technology rights, discovering and developing novel small molecule drug candidates and undertaking preclinical studies and, prior to the Merger, clinical trials of rosiptor. We have not yet obtained regulatory approval for any product candidate. Consequently, evaluating our performance, viability or possibility of future success will be more difficult than if we had a longer operating history or approved products on the market.

We currently have no source of product revenue and may never become profitable.

To date, we have not generated any revenues from commercial product sales, or otherwise. Our ability to generate revenue from product sales and achieve profitability will depend upon our ability, alone or with any future collaborators, to successfully commercialize any products that we may develop, in-license or acquire in the future. Even if we can successfully achieve regulatory approval for any future product candidates, we do not know when any of these products will generate revenue from product sales for us, if at all. Our ability to generate revenue from any of our future product candidates also depends on several additional factors, including our or any future collaborators’ ability to:

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In addition, because of the numerous risks and uncertainties associated with biological product development, any future product candidates may not advance through development or achieve the endpoints of applicable clinical trials. Therefore, we are unable to predict the timing or amount of increased expenses, or when or if we will be able to achieve or maintain profitability. In addition, our expenses could increase beyond expectations if we decide, or are required by the FDA or foreign regulatory authorities, to perform studies or trials in addition to those that we currently anticipate. Even if we can complete the development and regulatory process for any future product candidates, we anticipate incurring significant costs associated with commercializing these products.

Even if we can generate revenues from the sale of any future product candidates that may be approved, we may not become profitable and may need to obtain additional funding to continue operations. If we fail to become profitable or are unable to sustain profitability on a continuing basis, then we may be unable to continue our operations at planned levels and be forced to reduce our operations.

We will require additional capital to finance our operations which may not be available to us on acceptable terms, or at all. If we fail to obtain necessary financing, we may be unable to complete the development and potential commercialization of develop future product candidates.

Developing pharmaceutical products, including conducting preclinical studies and clinical trials, is expensive. Our operations have consumed substantial amounts of cash since inception. If we identify and advance any current or future product candidates into clinical trials and launch and commercialize any product candidates for which we receive regulatory approval, we expect research and clinical development expenses, and our selling, general and administrative expenses to increase substantially. In connection with our ongoing activities, we believe that our existing cash and cash equivalents will be sufficient to fund our operating requirements for at least the next 12 months. However, circumstances may cause us to consume capital more rapidly than we anticipate. We will likely require additional capital for the further development and potential commercialization of future product candidates and may also need to raise additional funds sooner to pursue a more accelerated development of future product candidates.

If we need to secure additional financing, fundraising efforts may divert our management from our day-to-day activities, which may adversely affect our ability to develop and commercialize future product candidates. In addition, we cannot guarantee that future financing will be available in sufficient amounts or on terms acceptable to us, if at all. If we do not raise additional capital when required or on acceptable terms, we may need to:

If we need to conduct additional fundraising activities and we do not raise additional capital in sufficient amounts or on terms acceptable to us, we may be prevented from pursuing development and commercialization efforts, which will have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and prospects.

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Our forecast of the period of time through which our financial resources will be adequate to support our operations is a forward-looking statement and involves risks and uncertainties, and actual results could vary as a result of a number of factors, including the factors discussed elsewhere in this “Risk Factors” section. We have based this estimate on assumptions that may prove to be wrong, and we could spend our available capital resources sooner than we currently expect. Our future funding requirements, both near and long-term, will depend on many factors, including, but not limited to:

If we are unable to expand our operations or otherwise capitalize on our business opportunities due to a lack of capital, our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows and future prospects could be materially adversely affected.

Risks Related to Discovery, Development and Commercialization

Our product candidates are in early stages of development and may fail in development or suffer delays that materially and adversely affect their commercial viability. If we are unable to complete development of, or commercialize our product candidates, or experience significant delays in doing so, our business will be materially harmed.

We are in the early stages of our development efforts. We have no products on the market and all of our product candidates, including NL-201, are still in the preclinical or drug discovery stages, and we may not ever obtain regulatory approval for any of our product candidates. We have limited experience in conducting and managing the clinical trials necessary to obtain regulatory approvals, including approval by the FDA. Before obtaining regulatory approval for the commercial distribution of our product candidates, we or an existing or future collaborator must conduct extensive preclinical tests and clinical trials to demonstrate the safety and efficacy in humans of our product candidates. We currently expect to submit an Investigational New Drug application, or IND, with respect to NL-201 by the end of 2020. However, it is possible that the FDA may deny our IND or require additional testing before allowing clinical testing in humans. Alternatively, we may obtain data while preparing for an IND that causes us to delay or even abandon clinical testing of NL-201. Additionally, we have a portfolio of targets and programs that are in earlier stages of discovery and preclinical development and may never advance to clinical-stage development. If we do not receive regulatory approvals for clinical testing and commercialization of our product candidates, we may not be able to continue our operations.

We may not have the financial resources to continue development of, or to enter into collaborations for, a product candidate if we experience any issues that delay or prevent regulatory approval of, or our ability to commercialize, product candidates, including:

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We or our future partners’ inability to complete development of, or commercialize our product candidates, or significant delays in doing so due to one or more of these factors, could have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

Further, cancer therapies are sometimes characterized as first-line, second-line, or third-line, and the FDA often approves new therapies initially only for advanced cancers, i.e. third-line or beyond. When cancer is detected early enough, first-line therapy, usually chemotherapy, surgery, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, hormone therapy, or a combination of these, is sometimes adequate to cure the cancer or prolong life without a cure. Second- and third-line therapies are administered to patients when prior therapy is not effective. We expect our clinical trials for NL-201 will be with patients who have received one or more prior treatments. Subsequently, for those of our products that prove to be sufficiently beneficial, if any, we would expect to seek approval in earlier lines of therapy. Any product candidates we develop, even if approved, may not be successfully approved for earlier lines of therapy, and, prior to any such approvals, we will likely have to conduct additional clinical trials, which are often very lengthy, expensive, and have a significant risk of failure.

Our business is heavily dependent on the success of our Neoleukin platform and of our most advanced product candidate, NL-201. Existing and future preclinical studies and clinical trials of these product candidates may not be successful, and if we are unable to commercialize these product candidates or experience significant delays in doing so, our business will be materially harmed.

Our business is heavily dependent on our ability to obtain regulatory approval of and then successfully launch and commercialize our product candidates. We have invested a significant portion of our efforts and financial resources in the development of our proprietary system of advanced computational algorithms and methods for the design of functional de novo proteins, which we refer to as our Neoleukin platform, with an initial focus on key cytokine mimetics, which we refer to as Neoleukin de novo cytokine mimetics. Our lead product candidate, NL-201, is a Neoleukin de novo protein derived from our Neoleukin platform. However, NL-201 and our other product candidates are still in the preclinical or earlier stage. Our ability to generate commercial product revenues, which we do

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not expect will occur for many years, if ever, will depend heavily on the successful development and eventual commercialization of our lead product candidates. Our product candidates may not be successful in clinical trials or receive regulatory approval. Even if they are successful in clinical trials, regulatory authorities may not complete their review in a timely manner, or additional delays may result if an FDA Advisory Committee or other regulatory authority recommends non-approval or restrictions on approval. In addition, we may experience delays or rejections based upon additional government regulation from future legislation or administrative action, or changes in regulatory authority policy during the period of product development, clinical trials, and the review process. Regulatory authorities may approve a product candidate for targets, disease indications or patient populations that are not as broad as we intended or desired, approve more limited indications than requested, or require distribution restrictions or strong safety language, such as contraindications or boxed warnings. Regulatory authorities may also require Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies, or REMS, or the performance of costly post-marketing clinical trials. Even if we successfully obtain regulatory approvals to market our product candidates, our revenues will be dependent, in part, upon the size of the markets in the territories for which we gain regulatory approval and have commercial rights. If the markets for patient subsets that we are targeting are not as significant as we estimate, we may not generate significant revenues from sales of such products, if approved.

We plan to seek regulatory approval to commercialize our product candidates both in the United States and in selected foreign countries. In order to market and sell our product candidates in the European Union and many other jurisdictions, we must obtain separate marketing approvals and comply with numerous and varying regulatory requirements. Approval by the FDA does not ensure approval by regulatory authorities in other countries or jurisdictions, and approval by one regulatory authority outside the United States does not ensure approval by regulatory authorities in other countries or jurisdictions or by the FDA. The approval procedure varies among countries and can involve additional testing. In addition, clinical trials conducted in one country may not be accepted by regulatory authorities in other countries. The time required to obtain approval may differ substantially from that required to obtain FDA approval. The regulatory approval process outside the United States generally includes all of the risks associated with obtaining FDA approval. In addition, in many countries outside the United States, it is required that the product be approved for reimbursement before the product can be approved for sale in that country. We may be required to expend significant resources to obtain regulatory approval, which may not be on a timely basis or successful at all, and to comply with ongoing regulations in these jurisdictions.

The success of our Neoleukin platform, NL-201, and our other product candidates will depend on many factors, including the following:

If we do not achieve any one or more of these factors in a timely manner or at all, we could experience significant delays or an inability to successfully commercialize our product candidates, which would materially harm our business.

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Our future clinical trials or those of any future collaborators may reveal significant adverse events not seen in our preclinical studies and may result in a safety profile that could inhibit regulatory approval or market acceptance of any of our product candidates.

If significant adverse events or other side effects are observed in any of our clinical trials, we may have difficulty recruiting patients to our clinical trials, patients may drop out of our trials, we may be required to pause, delay, or abandon the trials or our development efforts of one or more product candidates altogether, we may be required to have more restrictive labeling, or we may experience the delay or denial of regulatory approval by the FDA, EMA or other applicable regulatory authorities. We, the FDA, EMA or other applicable regulatory authorities, or an IRB may suspend clinical trials of a product candidate at any time for various reasons, including a belief that subjects or patients in such trials are being exposed to unacceptable health risks or adverse side effects. Some potential therapeutics developed in the biotechnology industry that initially showed therapeutic promise in early-stage trials have later been found to cause side effects that prevented their further development. Even if the side effects do not preclude the product candidate from obtaining or maintaining marketing approval, undesirable side effects may inhibit market acceptance of the approved product due to its tolerability versus other therapies. We designed NL-201 to mimic the therapeutic activity of the cytokine interleukin-2, or IL-2, and interleukin-15, or IL-15, while limiting the toxicity caused by the preferential binding of native IL-2 and native IL-15 to non-target cells. However, it is possible NL-201 will demonstrate significant adverse events similar to, or in addition to, those associated with IL-2 and IL-15, such as vascular leak syndrome, hypotension, impaired kidney and liver function, and mental status changes. Therapies involving cytokines have been known to cause side effects such neurotoxicity and cytokine release syndrome.

Further, de novo proteins are a new class of therapeutics that have not been previously tested in humans. De novo proteins can be substantially different from all known proteins and as a result, it is unknown to what extent, if any, these de novo proteins will produce immunologic reactions in patients. Immunologic reactions could substantially limit the effectiveness of the treatment, the duration of treatment, or represent safety risks.

Additionally, if any of our product candidates receives marketing approval, the FDA could require us to adopt a REMS to ensure that the benefits of the product outweigh its risks, which may include, among other things, a Medication Guide outlining the risks of the product for distribution to patients and a communication plan to health care practitioners. Furthermore, if we or others later identify undesirable side effects caused by any of our products, several potentially significant negative consequences could result, including:

Any of these developments could materially harm our business, financial condition and prospects.

If we do not achieve our projected development goals in the timeframes we announce and expect, the commercialization of our products may be delayed and, as a result, our stock price may decline.

From time to time, we estimate the timing of the anticipated accomplishment of various scientific, clinical, regulatory and other product development goals, which we sometimes refer to as milestones. These milestones may include the commencement or completion of scientific studies and clinical trials and the submission of regulatory filings. From time to time, we may publicly announce the expected timing of some of these milestones. All of these milestones are and will be based on numerous assumptions. The actual timing of these milestones can vary dramatically compared to our estimates, in some cases for reasons beyond our control. If we do not meet these milestones as publicly announced, or at all, the commercialization of our products may be delayed or never achieved and, as a result, our stock price may decline.

Our approach to the discovery and development of our therapeutic treatments is based on novel de novo protein design technology that are unproven and may not result in marketable products.

The success of our business depends primarily upon our ability to discover, develop, and commercialize a pipeline of product candidates using our Neoleukin platform. Unlike traditional protein-based therapeutics that modify native proteins, our Neoleukin platform designs new proteins from the ground up. Our platform uses advanced computational algorithms and methods to design functional de novo proteins that are hyper-stable, modifiable, and are designed to optimize desired intermolecular interactions and eliminate undesirable interactions. While we believe this approach will enable us to develop product candidates that may offer unique therapeutic benefits, the scientific basis of our efforts to develop product candidates using our Neoleukin platform is ongoing and may not result in viable product candidates.

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While we have had favorable preclinical study results related to precursors to NL-201, we have not yet submitted an IND related to NL-201 or any other product candidate from our Neoleukin platform. Our approach may be unsuccessful in moving NL-201 from preclinical studies into clinical development, discovering additional product candidates, and any product candidates that we are currently developing may be shown to have harmful side effects or may have other characteristics that may necessitate additional clinical testing or make the product candidates unmarketable or unlikely to receive marketing approval. If any of these events occur, we may be forced to abandon our development efforts for a program or programs, which would have a material adverse effect on our business and could potentially cause us to cease operations.

To date, we have not tested any of our product candidates in any clinical trials. We may ultimately discover that our Neoleukin platform and any product candidates resulting therefrom do not possess certain properties required for therapeutic effectiveness. Our product candidates may also be unable to remain stable in the human body for the period of time required for the drug to reach the target tissue, or they may trigger immune responses that inhibit the activity of the product candidate or that cause adverse side effects in humans. We may spend substantial funds attempting to mitigate these properties and may never succeed in doing so. In addition, product candidates based on our Neoleukin platform may demonstrate different chemical and pharmacological properties in patients than they do in laboratory studies. Our Neoleukin platform and any product candidates resulting therefrom may not demonstrate the same chemical and pharmacological properties in humans and may interact with human biological systems in unforeseen, ineffective, or harmful ways.

The regulatory approval process for novel product candidates such as ours can be more expensive and take longer than for other, better known or extensively studied product candidates. Because the FDA has no prior experience with de novo proteins as therapeutics, we anticipate that this may increase the complexity, uncertainty and length of the regulatory approval process for our product candidates. We or any future partners may be required to perform additional or unanticipated clinical trials to obtain approval or be subject to post-marketing testing requirements to maintain regulatory approval. If the products resulting from our Neoleukin platform and research programs prove to be ineffective, unsafe or commercially unviable, our Neoleukin Platform and pipeline would have little, if any, value, which would have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

Preclinical and clinical development involve a lengthy and expensive process, with an uncertain outcome, and results of earlier studies and trials may not be predictive of future trial results. We may incur additional costs or experience delays in completing, or ultimately be unable to complete, the development and commercialization of our current product candidates or any future product candidates.

All of our product candidates are in preclinical or earlier development and their risk of failure is high. It is impossible to predict when or if any of our product candidates will receive regulatory approval. To obtain the requisite regulatory approvals to commercialize any product candidates, we must demonstrate through extensive preclinical studies and lengthy, complex, and expensive clinical trials that our product candidates are safe and effective in humans. Clinical testing can take many years to complete, and its outcome is inherently uncertain. Failure can occur at any time during the clinical trial process. The results of preclinical studies and early clinical trials of our product candidates may not be predictive of the success of later-stage clinical trials. The design of a clinical trial can determine whether its results will support approval of a product and flaws in the design of a clinical trial may not become apparent until the clinical trial is well advanced. We may be unable to establish clinical endpoints that applicable regulatory authorities would consider clinically meaningful, and a clinical trial can fail at any stage of testing and we have limited experience in designing clinical trials and may be unable to design and execute a clinical trial to support marketing approval. Differences in trial design between early-stage clinical trials and later-stage clinical trials make it difficult to extrapolate the results of earlier clinical trials to later clinical trials. Moreover, clinical data are often susceptible to varying interpretations and analyses, and many companies that have believed their product candidates performed satisfactorily in clinical trials have nonetheless failed to obtain marketing approval of their products. A number of companies in the biopharmaceutical industry have suffered significant setbacks in advanced clinical trials due to lack of efficacy or to unfavorable safety profiles, notwithstanding promising results in earlier trials, and we could face similar setbacks. There is typically a high rate of failure of product candidates proceeding through clinical trials. Most product candidates that commence clinical trials are never approved as products and there can be no assurance that any of our future clinical trials will ultimately be successful or support clinical development of our current or any of our future product candidates.

We intend to advance NL-201, our lead development candidate from our Neoleukin platform_, toward IND submission by the end of 2020. Commencement of our future clinical trials is subject to finalizing the trial design and submitting an IND or similar submission to the FDA, EMA, or comparable foreign regulatory authorities. Even after we submit our IND or comparable submissions in other jurisdictions, the FDA, EMA, or comparable foreign regulatory authorities could disagree that we have satisfied their requirements to commence our clinical trials or disagree with our study design, which may require us to complete additional preclinical studies or amend our protocols or impose stricter conditions on the commencement of clinical trials.

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We may encounter substantial delays in the commencement or completion, or termination or suspension, of our clinical trials, which could result in increased costs to us, delay or limit our ability to generate revenue and adversely affect our commercial prospects.

We or any collaborators may experience delays in initiating or completing clinical trials or may experience numerous unforeseen events during, or as a result of, any future clinical trials that we could conduct that could delay or prevent our ability to receive marketing approval or commercialize NL-201 or any future product candidates, including:

We could also encounter delays if a clinical trial is suspended or terminated by us, the IRBs of the institutions in which such trials are being conducted, or the FDA, EMA or other regulatory authorities, or if a clinical trial is recommended for suspension or termination by the Data Safety Monitoring Board, or the DSMB, for such trial. A suspension or termination may be imposed due to a number of factors, including failure to conduct the clinical trial in accordance with regulatory requirements or our clinical protocols, inspection of the clinical trial operations or trial site by the FDA, EMA, or other regulatory authorities resulting in the imposition of a clinical hold, unforeseen safety issues or adverse side effects, failure to demonstrate a benefit from using a product or treatment, failure to establish or achieve clinically meaningful trial endpoints, changes in governmental regulations or administrative actions or lack of adequate funding to continue the clinical trial. Clinical studies may also be delayed or terminated as a result of ambiguous or negative interim results. Many of the factors that cause, or lead to, a delay in the commencement or completion of clinical trials may also ultimately lead to the denial of regulatory approval of our product candidates. Further, the FDA, EMA, or other regulatory authorities may disagree with our clinical trial design and our interpretation of data from clinical trials, or may change the requirements for approval even after they have reviewed and commented on the design for our clinical trials.

Our product development costs will increase if we experience delays in clinical testing or obtaining marketing approvals. We do not know whether any of our clinical trials will begin as planned, will need to be restructured or will be completed on schedule, or at all. Significant clinical trial delays also could shorten any periods during which we may have the exclusive right to commercialize our product candidates and may allow our competitors to bring products to market before we do, potentially impairing our ability to successfully commercialize our product candidates and harming our business and results of operations. Any delays in our clinical development programs may harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations significantly.

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If we experience delays or difficulties in the enrollment of patients in clinical trials, our clinical development activities could be delayed or otherwise adversely affected.

Patient enrollment, a significant factor in the timing of clinical trials, is affected by many factors including the size and nature of the patient population, the number and location of clinical sites we enroll, the proximity of patients to clinical sites, the eligibility and exclusion criteria for the trial, the design of the clinical trial, the inability to obtain and maintain patient consents, the risk that enrolled participants will drop out before completion, competing clinical trials, and clinicians’ and patients’ perceptions as to the potential advantages of the product candidate being studied in relation to other available therapies, including any new drugs or therapeutic biologics that may be approved for the indications being investigated by us. Furthermore, we expect to rely on our collaborators, CROs, and clinical trial sites to ensure the proper and timely conduct of our future clinical trials, including the patient enrollment process, and we have limited influence over their performance. Additionally, we could encounter delays if treating physicians encounter unresolved ethical issues associated with enrolling patients in future clinical trials of our product candidates in lieu of prescribing existing treatments that have established safety and efficacy profiles.

Our inability to enroll a sufficient number of patients for our clinical trials would result in significant delays or might require us to abandon one or more clinical trials altogether. Enrollment delays in our clinical trials may result in increased development costs for our product candidates, slow down or halt our product candidate development and approval process and jeopardize our ability to seek and obtain the marketing approval required to commence product sales and generate revenue, which would cause the value of our company to decline and limit our ability to obtain additional financing if needed.

Interim and preliminary or topline data from our clinical trials that we announce or publish from time to time may change as more patient data become available and are subject to audit and verification procedures that could result in material changes in the final data.

From time to time, we may publish interim topline or preliminary data from our clinical trials. Interim data from clinical trials that we may complete are subject to the risk that one or more of the clinical outcomes may materially change as patient enrollment continues and more patient data become available. Preliminary or topline data also remain subject to audit and verification procedures that may result in the final data being materially different from the preliminary or topline data we previously published. As a result, interim and preliminary data should be viewed with caution until the final data are available. Adverse differences between interim or preliminary or topline data and final data could significantly harm our reputation and business prospects.

Failure to obtain regulatory approval in international jurisdictions would prevent any future product candidates from being marketed outside the United States.

In order to market and sell our products in the European Union and other jurisdictions, we must obtain separate marketing approvals and comply with numerous and varying regulatory requirements. The approval procedure varies among countries and can involve additional testing. The time required to obtain approval may differ substantially from that required to obtain FDA approval. The regulatory approval process outside the United States generally includes all of the risks associated with obtaining FDA approval. In addition, in many countries outside the United States, it is required that the product be approved for reimbursement before the product can be approved for sale in that country. Obtaining foreign regulatory approvals and compliance with foreign regulatory requirements could result in significant delays, difficulties and costs for us and could delay or prevent the introduction of our products in certain countries. We may not obtain approvals from regulatory authorities outside the United States on a timely basis, if at all. Approval by the FDA does not ensure approval by regulatory authorities in other countries or jurisdictions, and approval by one regulatory authority outside the United States does not ensure approval by regulatory authorities in other countries or jurisdictions or by the FDA. A failure or delay in obtaining regulatory approval in one country may have a negative effect on the regulatory approval process in others. We may not be able to file for marketing approvals and may not receive necessary approvals to commercialize our products in any market. If we are unable to obtain approval of any of our future product candidates by regulatory authorities in the European Union or another jurisdiction, the commercial prospects of that product candidate may be significantly diminished and our business prospects could decline.

Recently enacted and future legislation, including potentially unfavorable pricing regulations or other healthcare reform initiatives, may increase the difficulty and cost for us to obtain marketing approval of, and commercialization of, our future product candidates and affect the prices we may obtain.

The regulations that govern, among other things, marketing approvals, coverage, pricing and reimbursement for new drug products vary from country to country. In the United States and some foreign jurisdictions, there have been a number of legislative and regulatory changes and proposed changes regarding the healthcare system that could prevent or delay marketing approval of our future product candidates, restrict or regulate post-approval activities and affect our ability to successfully sell any product candidates for which we obtain marketing approval.

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In the United States in recent years, Congress has considered reductions in Medicare reimbursement for drugs administered by physicians. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, the agency that administers the Medicare program, also has the authority to revise reimbursement rates and to implement coverage restrictions for drugs. Cost reduction initiatives and changes in coverage implemented through legislation or regulation could decrease utilization of, and reimbursement for, any approved products, which in turn could affect the price we can receive for those products. While Medicare regulations apply only to drug benefits for Medicare beneficiaries, private payors often follow Medicare coverage policy and payment limitations in establishing their own coverage polices and reimbursement rates. Therefore, any reduction in reimbursement that results from federal legislation or regulation may result in a similar reduction in payments from private payors.

In March 2010, President Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act in an effort to, among other things, broaden access to health insurance, reduce or constrain the growth of healthcare spending, enhance remedies against fraud and abuse, add new transparency requirements for healthcare and health insurance industries, impose new taxes and fees on pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers and impose additional health policy reforms. The Affordable Care Act, among other things, also expanded manufacturers’ rebate liability to include covered drugs dispensed to individuals who are enrolled in Medicaid managed care organizations, increased the minimum rebate due for innovator drugs from 15.1% of average manufacturer price, or AMP, to 23.1% of AMP and capped the total rebate amount for innovator drugs at 100% of AMP. The Affordable Care Act and subsequent legislation and regulation also revised the definition of AMP for calculating and reporting Medicaid drug rebates on outpatient prescription drug prices. Furthermore, the Affordable Care Act imposes a significant annual, nondeductible fee on companies that manufacture or import certain branded prescription drug products. Substantial provisions affecting compliance were enacted, which may affect our business practices with healthcare practitioners, and a significant number of provisions are not yet, or have only recently become, effective. Certain provisions of the Affordable Care Act have been subject to judicial and Congressional challenges, as well as efforts by the Trump administration to repeal or replace certain aspects of the Affordable Care Act. Since January 2017, President Trump has signed two executive orders and other directives designed to delay, circumvent, or loosen certain requirements mandated by the Affordable Care Act. Concurrently, Congress has considered legislation that would repeal or repeal and replace all or part of the Affordable Care Act. While Congress has not passed repeal legislation, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act includes a provision repealing, effective January 1, 2019, the tax-based shared responsibility payment imposed by the Affordable Care Act on certain individuals who fail to maintain qualifying health coverage for all or part of a year that is commonly referred to as the “individual mandate”. The Affordable Care Act has also been subject to judicial challenge. In December 2018, a federal district court judge, in a challenge brought by a number of state attorneys general, found the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional in its entirety. Pending appeals, which could take some time, the Affordable Care Act is still operational in all respects. Congress may consider other legislation to repeal or replace elements of the Affordable Care Act. Because of the continued uncertainty about the implementation of Affordable Care Act, including the potential for further legal challenges or repeal of Affordable Care Act, we cannot quantify or predict with any certainty the likely impact of the Affordable Care Act or its repeal on our business, prospects, financial condition or results of operations.

In addition, other legislative changes have been proposed and adopted since the Affordable Care Act was enacted. On August 2, 2011, the President signed into law the Budget Control Act of 2011, which, among other things, created the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to recommend to Congress proposals in spending reductions. The Joint Select Committee did not achieve a targeted deficit reduction of at least $1.2 trillion for the years 2013 through 2021, triggering the legislation’s automatic reduction to several government programs. This includes aggregate reductions to Medicare payments to providers of up to 2% per fiscal year that went into effect on April 1, 2013 and, due to subsequent legislative amendments to the statute, will remain in effect through 2029 unless additional Congressional action is taken. On January 2, 2013, President Obama signed into law the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which, among other things, further reduced Medicare payments to several providers and increased the statute of limitations period for the government to recover overpayments to providers from three to five years. These laws may result in additional reductions in Medicare and other healthcare funding, which could have a material adverse effect on our customers and accordingly, our financial operations. Legislative and regulatory proposals have been made to expand post-approval requirements and restrict sales and promotional activities for pharmaceutical products. Furthermore, there has been heightened governmental scrutiny recently over the manner in which manufacturers set prices for their marketed products. For example, there have been several recent Congressional inquiries and proposed bills designed to, among other things, bring more transparency to drug pricing, review the relationship between pricing and manufacturer’s patient programs, and reform government program reimbursement methodologies for drug products. We cannot be sure whether additional legislative changes will be enacted, or whether existing regulations, guidance or interpretations will be changed, or what the impact of such changes on the marketing approvals of our future product candidates, if any, may be.

In the United States, the European Union and other potentially significant markets for our future product candidates, government authorities and third-party payors are increasingly attempting to limit or regulate the price of medical products and services, particularly for new and innovative products and therapies, which has resulted in lower average selling prices. Furthermore, the increased emphasis on managed healthcare in the United States and on country and regional coverage, pricing and reimbursement controls in the European Union will put additional pressure on product coverage, pricing, reimbursement and utilization, which may adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows and future prospects. These pressures can arise from various sources, including but not limited to, rules and practices of managed care groups, judicial decisions and governmental laws and regulations related to Medicare, Medicaid and healthcare reform, pharmaceutical reimbursement policies and pricing in general.

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Some countries require approval of the sale price of a drug before it can be marketed. In many countries, the pricing review period begins after marketing or product licensing approval is granted. In some foreign markets, prescription pharmaceutical pricing remains subject to continuing governmental control even after initial approval is granted. As a result, we might obtain marketing approval for a product candidate in a particular country, but then be subject to price regulations that delay our commercial launch of the product, possibly for lengthy time periods, which could negatively impact the revenues we are able to generate from the sale of the product in that particular country. Adverse pricing limitations may hinder our ability to recoup our investment in one or more product candidates even if our product candidates obtain marketing approval.

Laws and regulations governing international operations may preclude us from developing, manufacturing and selling certain product candidates outside of the United States and Canada and require us to develop and implement costly compliance programs.

As we expand our operations outside of the United States and Canada, we must comply with numerous laws and regulations in each jurisdiction in which we plan to operate. We must also comply with U.S. laws applicable to the foreign operations of U.S. businesses and individuals, such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, and Canadian laws applicable to the foreign operations of Canadian businesses and individuals, such as the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, or CFPOA. The creation and implementation of international business practices compliance programs is costly and such programs are difficult to enforce, particularly where reliance on third parties is required.

The FCPA prohibits any U.S. individual or business from paying, offering, authorizing payment or offering anything of value, directly or indirectly, to any foreign official, political party or candidate for the purpose of influencing any act or decision of the foreign entity in order to assist the individual or business in obtaining or retaining business. The FCPA also obligates companies whose securities are listed in the United States to comply with certain accounting provisions requiring us to maintain books and records that accurately and fairly reflect all transactions of the corporation, including international subsidiaries, and to devise and maintain an adequate system of internal accounting controls for international operations. The anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA are enforced primarily by the DOJ. The SEC is involved with enforcement of the books and records provisions of the FCPA.

Compliance with the FCPA is expensive and difficult, particularly in countries in which corruption is a recognized problem. In addition, the FCPA presents particular challenges in the pharmaceutical industry, because, in many countries, hospitals are operated by the government, and doctors and other hospital employees are considered foreign officials. Certain payments to hospitals in connection with clinical trials and other work have been deemed to be improper payments to government officials and have led to FCPA enforcement actions.

Various laws, regulations and executive orders also restrict the use and dissemination outside the United States, or the sharing with certain non-U.S. nationals, of information classified for national security purposes, as well as certain products and technical data relating to those products. Our expanding presence outside the United States will require us to dedicate additional resources to comply with these laws, and these laws may preclude us from developing, manufacturing, or selling certain products and product candidates outside the United States, which could limit our growth potential and increase our development costs.

The failure to comply with laws governing international business practices may result in substantial penalties, including suspension or debarment from government contracting. Violation of the FCPA can result in significant civil and criminal penalties. Indictment alone under the FCPA can lead to suspension of the right to do business with the U.S. government until the pending claims are resolved. Conviction of a violation of the FCPA can result in long-term disqualification as a government contractor. The termination of a government contract or relationship as a result of our failure to satisfy any of our obligations under laws governing international business practices would have a negative impact on our operations and harm our reputation and ability to procure government contracts. The SEC also may suspend or bar issuers from trading securities on U.S. exchanges for violations of the FCPA’s accounting provisions.

The CFPOA prohibits Canadian businesses and individuals from giving or offering to give a benefit of any kind to a foreign public official, or any other person for the benefit of the foreign public official, where the ultimate purpose is to obtain or retain a business advantage. Furthermore, a company may be found liable for violations by not only its employees, but also by its third-party agents. Any failure to comply with the CFPOA, as well as applicable laws and regulations in foreign jurisdictions, could result in substantial penalties or restrictions on our ability to conduct business in certain foreign jurisdictions, which may have a material adverse impact on us and our share price.

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Even if we are able to commercialize our future product candidates, the products may not receive coverage and adequate reimbursement from third-party payors, which could harm our business.

Our ability to commercialize any products successfully will depend, in part, on the extent to which coverage and adequate reimbursement for these products and related treatments will be available from government authorities, private health insurers, health maintenance organizations and third-party payors. Patients who are prescribed medications for the treatment of their conditions generally rely on third-party payors to reimburse all or part of the costs associated with their prescription drugs. Coverage and adequate reimbursement from government healthcare programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, and private health insurers are critical to new product acceptance. Patients are unlikely to use our future product candidates unless coverage is provided and reimbursement is adequate to cover a significant portion of the cost of our product candidates. A primary trend in the U.S. healthcare industry and elsewhere is cost containment. As a result, government authorities and other third-party payors have attempted to control costs by limiting coverage and the amount of reimbursement for particular medications. Increasingly, third-party payors are requiring that drug companies provide them with predetermined discounts from list prices and are challenging the prices charged for medical products. Third-party payors may also seek additional clinical evidence, beyond the data required to obtain marketing approval, demonstrating clinical benefits and value in specific patient populations before covering our products for those patients. We cannot be sure that coverage and adequate reimbursement will be available for any product that we commercialize and, if reimbursement is available, what that level of reimbursement will be. Coverage and reimbursement may impact the demand for, or the price of, any product candidate for which we obtain marketing approval. If coverage and reimbursement are not available or are available only at limited levels, we may not be able to successfully commercialize any product candidate for which we obtain marketing approval.

There may be significant delays in obtaining coverage and reimbursement for newly approved drugs, and coverage may be more limited than the purposes for which the drug is approved by the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities. Moreover, obtaining coverage does not imply that any drug will be paid for in all cases or at a rate that covers our costs, including research, development, manufacture, sales and distribution. Interim reimbursement levels for new drugs, if applicable, may also not be sufficient to cover our costs and may only be temporary. Reimbursement rates may vary according to the use of the drug and the clinical setting in which it is used. Reimbursement rates may also be based in part on existing reimbursement amounts for lower cost drugs or may be bundled into the payments for other services. Net prices for drugs may be reduced by mandatory discounts or rebates required by government healthcare programs or private payors and by any future relaxation of laws that presently restrict imports of drugs from countries where they may be sold at lower prices than in the United States. Coverage and reimbursement for drug products can differ significantly from payor to payor. As a result, the coverage and reimbursement determination process is often a time-consuming and costly process with no assurance that coverage and adequate reimbursement will be obtained or applied consistently. Third-party payors often rely upon Medicare coverage policy and payment limitations in setting their own coverage and reimbursement policies. Our inability to promptly obtain coverage and profitable reimbursement rates from both government-funded and private payors for any approved products that we develop could have a material adverse effect on our operating results, our ability to raise capital needed to commercialize products and our overall financial condition.

We have never marketed a drug before. If we are able to identify and acquire a product candidate that is ultimately approved for sale, but are unable to establish an effective sales force and marketing infrastructure, or enter into acceptable third-party sales and marketing or licensing arrangements, we may be unable to generate any revenue.

We do not currently have an infrastructure for the sales, marketing and distribution of pharmaceutical drug products and the cost of establishing and maintaining such an infrastructure may exceed the cost-effectiveness of doing so. While we do not currently have any product candidates in clinical development, if we were able to identify and establish product candidates and advance them through clinical development, in order to market any products that may ultimately be approved by the FDA and comparable foreign regulatory authorities, we must build our sales, marketing, managerial and other non-technical capabilities or make arrangements with third parties to perform these services. If we are unable to establish adequate sales, marketing and distribution capabilities, whether independently or with third parties, we may not be able to generate product revenue and may not become profitable. We will be competing with many companies that have extensive and well-funded sales and marketing operations. Without an internal commercial organization or the support of a third party to perform sales and marketing functions, we may be unable to compete successfully against these more established companies.

We may not be successful in our efforts to use our Neoleukin platform to expand our pipeline of product candidates and develop marketable products.

The success of our business depends in part upon our ability to discover, develop, and commercialize products based on our Neoleukin platform, which may fail to identify other potential product candidates for clinical development for a number of reasons. Our research methodology may be unsuccessful in identifying potential product candidates or our potential product candidates may be shown to have harmful side effects or may have other characteristics that may make the products unmarketable or unlikely to receive marketing approval. If any of these events occur, we may be forced to abandon our development efforts for a program or for multiple programs, which would materially harm our business and could potentially cause us to cease operations. Research programs to identify new product candidates require substantial technical, financial, and human resources.

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We may expend our limited resources to pursue a particular product candidate and fail to capitalize on product candidates that may be more profitable or for which there is a greater likelihood of success.

Because we have limited financial and managerial resources, we focus our research and development efforts on our lead product candidate, NL-201, with initial indications including renal cell carcinoma and melanoma. As a result, we may forgo or delay pursuit of opportunities with other product candidates that later prove to have greater commercial potential. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 public health emergency, we are also utilizing a portion of our research and computational bandwidth to investigate the potential application of our de novo protein technology toward COVID-19. Our resource allocation decisions may cause us to fail to capitalize on viable commercial products or profitable market opportunities. Our spending on current and future research and development programs and product candidates for specific indications may not yield any commercially viable product candidates. If we do not accurately evaluate the commercial potential or target market for a particular product candidate, we may relinquish valuable rights to that product candidate through collaboration, licensing or other royalty arrangements in cases in which it would have been more advantageous for us to retain sole development and commercialization rights to such product candidate.

We face substantial competition, including companies developing novel treatments and technology platforms in oncology. If these companies develop technologies or product candidates more rapidly than we do or their technologies are more effective, our ability to develop and successfully commercialize product candidates may be adversely affected.

The development and commercialization of drugs is highly competitive. Our product candidates, if approved, will face significant competition and our failure to effectively compete may prevent us from achieving significant market penetration. Most of our competitors have significantly greater resources than we do and we may not be able to successfully compete. We compete with a variety of multinational biopharmaceutical companies, specialized biotechnology companies, and emerging biotechnology companies, as well as with technologies and product candidates being developed at academic institutions, governmental agencies, and other public and private research institutions. Our competitors have developed, are developing, or will develop product candidates and processes competitive with our product candidates and processes. Competitive therapeutic treatments include those that have already been approved and accepted by the medical community and any new treatments, including those based on novel technology platforms that enter the market. We believe that a significant number of products are currently under development, and may become commercially available in the future, for the treatment of conditions for which we are trying, or may try, to develop product candidates. There is intense and rapidly evolving competition in the biotechnology, biopharmaceutical, and interleukin and immunoregulatory therapeutics fields. Competition from many sources exists or may arise in the future. Our competitors include larger and better funded biopharmaceutical, biotechnological, and therapeutics companies, including companies focused on oncology therapeutics, as well as numerous small companies. Moreover, we also compete with current and future therapeutics developed at universities and other research institutions. Some of these companies are well-capitalized and, in contrast to us, have significant clinical experience, and may include our future partners. In addition, these companies compete with us in recruiting scientific and managerial talent.

Our success will depend partially on our ability to develop and commercialize therapeutics that are safer and more effective than competing products. Our commercial opportunity and success will be reduced or eliminated if competing products are safer, more effective, or less expensive than the therapeutics we develop.

Our lead product candidate, NL-201, is under development for the treatment of advanced solid tumors, including melanoma and renal cell carcinoma. If approved, it would face competition from approved advanced melanoma and renal cell carcinoma treatments, including multiple checkpoint inhibitors, tyrosine kinase inhibitors, VEGF inhibitors, recombinant human IL-2, and several chemotherapy drugs or combinations. Further, we are aware of several of several IL-2 or IL-15 agonists in various stages of clinical and preclinical development. Nektar Therapeutics, Inc. has a modified IL-2 molecule in Phase III clinical trials. ImmunityBio (formerly Altor BioScience Corporation) has a modified IL-15 molecule in Phase II clinical trials. Alkermes plc, Novartis International AG, Sanofi (formerly Synthorx), Cue Biopharma, Inc., Philogen S.p.A. and Roche AG have disclosed Phase I and/or II clinical trials involving modified IL-2 or IL-15 molecules, and we are aware of IL-2 or IL-15 programs in preclinical studies at Medicenna Therapeutics Corp, Pivotal BioSciences Inc., BioNTech SE, Xencor Inc. and Ascendis Pharma A/S. Furthermore, several large pharmaceutical companies have disclosed preclinical investments in this field, including AstraZeneca plc, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Roche AG, and Celgene Corporation.

Many of these competitors have significantly greater financial, technical, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and supply resources or experience than we have. If we successfully obtain approval for any product candidate, we will face competition based on many different factors, including the safety and effectiveness of our products, the ease with which our products can be administered and the extent to which patients accept relatively new routes of administration, the timing and scope of regulatory approvals for these products, the availability and cost of manufacturing, marketing and sales capabilities, price, reimbursement coverage, and patent position. Competing products could present superior treatment alternatives, including by being more effective, safer, less expensive, or marketed and sold more effectively than any products we may develop. Competitive products may make any products we develop obsolete or noncompetitive before we recover the expense of developing and commercializing our product candidates. Such competitors could also recruit our employees, which could negatively impact our level of expertise and our ability to execute our business plan.

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We expect the product candidates we develop will be regulated as biological products, or biologics, and therefore they may be subject to competition sooner than anticipated.

The Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009, or the BPCIA, was enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act to establish an abbreviated pathway for the approval of biosimilar biological products (both highly similar and interchangeable biosimilar biological products. The regulatory pathway establishes legal authority for the FDA to review and approve biosimilar biologics, including the possible designation of a biosimilar as “interchangeable” based on its similarity to an approved biologic. Under the BPCIA, an application for a biosimilar product cannot be approved by the FDA until 12 years after the first licensure date of the reference product licensed under a Biologics License Application, or BLA. The law is complex and some provisions are still being interpreted and implemented by the FDA. As a result, its ultimate impact, implementation, and meaning are subject to uncertainty.

A biological product submitted for licensure under a BLA is eligible for a period of exclusivity that commences on the date of its licensure, unless its date of licensure is not considered a date of first licensure because it falls within an exclusion under the PBCIA. There is a risk that this exclusivity could be shortened due to congressional action or otherwise, potentially creating the opportunity for generic competition sooner than anticipated. Most states have enacted substitution laws that permit substitution of only interchangeable biosimilars.  The extent to which a highly similar biosimilar, once approved, will be substituted for any one of the reference products in a way that is similar to traditional generic substitution for non-biological products is not yet clear, and will depend on a number of marketplace and regulatory factors that are still developing.

Risks Related to Our Reliance on Third Parties

We expect to rely on third parties to conduct certain of our preclinical studies or clinical trials. If those third parties do not perform as contractually required, fail to satisfy legal or regulatory requirements, miss expected deadlines or terminate the relationship, our development program could be delayed with potentially material and adverse effects on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

We intend to rely in the future on third-party clinical investigators, CROs, clinical data management organizations, and consultants to assist or provide the design, conduct, supervision, and monitoring of preclinical studies and clinical trials of our product candidates. Because we intend to rely on these third parties and will not have the ability to conduct all preclinical studies or clinical trials independently, we will have less control over the timing, quality, and other aspects of preclinical studies and clinical trials than we would have had we conducted them on our own. These investigators, CROs, and consultants will not be our employees, and we will have limited control over the amount of time and resources that they dedicate to our programs. These third parties may have contractual relationships with other entities, some of which may be our competitors, which may draw time and resources from our programs. The third parties with which we may contract might not be diligent, careful, or timely in conducting our preclinical studies or clinical trials, resulting in the preclinical studies or clinical trials being delayed or unsuccessful.

If we cannot contract with acceptable third parties on commercially reasonable terms, or at all, or if these third parties do not carry out their contractual duties, satisfy legal and regulatory requirements for the conduct of preclinical studies or clinical trials or meet expected deadlines, our clinical development programs could be delayed and otherwise adversely affected. In all events, we will be responsible for ensuring that each of our preclinical studies and clinical trials are conducted in accordance with the general investigational plan and protocols for the trial as well as applicable legal and regulatory requirements. The FDA generally requires preclinical studies to be conducted in accordance with Good Laboratory Practices and clinical trials to be conducted in accordance with Good Clinical Practices, including for designing, conducting, recording, and reporting the results of preclinical studies and clinical trials to assure that data and reported results are credible and accurate and that the rights, integrity, and confidentiality of clinical trial participants are protected. Our reliance on third parties that we do not control will not relieve us of these responsibilities and requirements. Any adverse development or delay in our preclinical studies or clinical trials as a result of our reliance on third parties could have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

If any of our relationships with these third-party CROs or others terminate, we may not be able to enter into arrangements with alternative CROs or other third parties or to do so on commercially reasonable terms. Switching or adding additional CROs involves additional cost and requires management time and focus. In addition, there is a natural transition period when a new CRO begins work. As a result, delays may occur, which can materially impact our ability to meet our desired clinical development timelines.

We rely on third-party manufacturers and suppliers to supply components of our product candidates. The loss of our third-party manufacturers or suppliers, or our or their failure to comply with applicable regulatory requirements or to supply sufficient quantities at acceptable quality levels or prices, or at all, would materially and adversely affect our business.

We do not own or operate facilities for drug manufacturing, storage, distribution, or quality testing. We currently rely, and expect to continue to rely, on third-party contract manufacturers to manufacture bulk drug substances, drug products, raw materials, samples, components, or other materials and reports, and conduct fill-finish services. Reliance on third-party manufacturers may expose us to different risks than if we were to manufacture product candidates ourselves. There can be no assurance that our preclinical and clinical development product supplies will not be limited, available at acceptable prices. In particular, any replacement of our manufacturer could require significant effort and expertise because there may be a limited number of qualified replacements.

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The manufacturing process for a product candidate is subject to review by the FDA, EMA, or other applicable regulatory authorities. We, and our suppliers and manufacturers, must meet applicable manufacturing requirements and undergo rigorous facility and process validation tests required by regulatory authorities in order to comply with regulatory standards, such as current Good Manufacturing Practices, or cGMPs. Securing marketing approval also requires the submission of information about the product manufacturing process to, and inspection of manufacturing facilities by, the FDA and foreign regulatory authorities. If our contract manufacturers cannot successfully manufacture material that conforms to our specifications and the strict regulatory requirements of the FDA, EMA or other applicable regulatory authorities, we may not be able to rely on their manufacturing facilities for the manufacture of elements of our product candidates and approval may be delayed. Moreover, although we do not control the manufacturing process at our contract manufacturers and are completely dependent on them for compliance with current regulatory requirements, we are responsible for ensuring that our products comply with regulatory requirements. If any of our manufacturers fails to comply with such requirements or to perform its obligations in relation to quality, timing or otherwise, or if our supply of components or other materials becomes limited or interrupted for other reasons, we may be forced to enter into an agreement with another third party, which we may not be able to do on reasonable terms, if at all. In some cases, the technical skills or technology required to manufacture our product candidates may be unique or proprietary to the original manufacturer and we may have difficulty transferring such to another third party. These factors would increase our reliance on such manufacturer or require us to obtain a license from such manufacturer in order to enable us, or to have another third party, manufacture our product candidates. If we are required to change manufacturers for any reason, we will be required to verify that the new manufacturer maintains facilities and procedures that comply with quality standards and with all applicable regulations and guidelines; and we may be required to repeat some of the development program. The delays associated with the verification of a new manufacturer could negatively affect our ability to develop product candidates in a timely manner or within budget.

We expect to continue to rely on third-party manufacturers if we receive regulatory approval for any product candidate. To the extent that we have existing, or enter into future, manufacturing arrangements with third parties, we will depend on these third parties to perform their obligations in a timely manner consistent with contractual and regulatory requirements, including those related to quality control and assurance. Any manufacturing facilities used to produce our products will be subject to periodic review and inspection by the FDA, EMA, or other applicable regulatory authorities, including for continued compliance with cGMP requirements, quality control, quality assurance, and corresponding maintenance of records and documents. If we are unable to obtain or maintain third-party manufacturing for product candidates, or to do so on commercially reasonable terms, we may not be able to develop and commercialize our product candidates successfully. Our or a third party’s failure to execute on our manufacturing requirements, comply with cGMPs, or maintain a compliance status acceptable to the FDA, EMA, or other applicable regulatory authorities could adversely affect our business in a number of ways, including:

Additionally, our contract manufacturers may experience manufacturing difficulties due to resource constraints or as a result of labor disputes or unstable political environments. For example, in December 2019 the outbreak of COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China, has since spread across the globe. To date, this outbreak has  resulted in extended shutdowns of  businesses in the United States, Canada and many other countries and has had ripple effects to businesses around the world. Global health concerns, such as COVID-19, could also result in adverse effects to our manufacturing operations. If our contract manufacturers were to encounter any of these difficulties, our ability to provide our product candidates to patients in preclinical and clinical trials, or to provide product for treatment of patients once approved, would be jeopardized.

Our third-party manufacturers may encounter difficulties in production. If we or any of our third-party manufacturers encounter such difficulties, our ability to provide supply of our product candidates for clinical trials, our ability to obtain marketing approval, or our ability to provide supply of our products for patients, if approved, could be delayed or stopped.

Our product candidates are biopharmaceuticals, and the process of manufacturing biopharmaceuticals is complex, time-consuming, highly regulated, and subject to multiple risks. Our contract manufacturers must comply with legal requirements, cGMPs, and guidelines for the bulk manufacturing, fill-finish services, packaging, and storage of biopharmaceuticals used in clinical trials and, if approved, marketed products. Our contract manufacturers may have limited experience in the manufacturing of cGMP batches.

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Manufacturing biopharmaceuticals is highly susceptible to product loss due to contamination, equipment failure, improper installation or operation of equipment, vendor or operator error, inconsistency in yields, variability in product characteristics, and difficulties in scaling the production process. Even minor deviations from normal manufacturing processes could result in reduced production yields, product defects, and other supply disruptions. If microbial, viral, or other contaminations are discovered at our third-party manufacturers’ facilities, such facilities may need to be closed for an extended period of time to investigate and remedy the contamination, which could delay clinical trials and adversely harm our business. Moreover, if the FDA determines that our third-party manufacturers’ facilities are not in compliance with FDA laws and regulations, including those governing cGMPs, the FDA may deny approval of our application until the deficiencies are corrected or we replace the manufacturer in our application with a manufacturer that is in compliance.

In addition, there are risks associated with large scale manufacturing for clinical trials or commercial scale including, among others, cost overruns, potential problems with process scale-up, process reproducibility, stability issues, compliance with cGMPs, lot consistency and timely availability of raw materials. Even if our collaborators obtain regulatory approval for any of our product candidates, there is no assurance that manufacturers will be able to manufacture the approved product, or provide fill-finish services, to specifications acceptable to the FDA, EMA, or other applicable regulatory authorities, to produce it in sufficient quantities to meet the requirements for the potential launch of the product or to meet potential future demand. If our manufacturers are unable to produce sufficient quantities for clinical trials or for commercialization, commercialization efforts would be impaired, which would have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

Scaling up a biopharmaceutical manufacturing process is a difficult and uncertain task, and our third-party manufacturers may not have the necessary capabilities to complete the implementation, manufacturing, and development process. If we are unable to adequately validate or scale-up the manufacturing process at our current manufacturers’ facilities, we will need to transfer to another manufacturer and complete the manufacturing validation process, which can be lengthy. If we are able to adequately validate and scale-up the manufacturing process for our product candidates with a contract manufacturer, we will still need to negotiate with such contract manufacturer an agreement for commercial supply and it is not certain we will be able to come to agreement on terms acceptable to us.

We cannot assure you that any stability or other issues relating to the manufacture of any of our product candidates or products will not occur in the future. Our de novo protein product candidates may not demonstrate sufficient long-term stability to support a BLA filing or obtain approval, or the product shelf life may be limited by stability results. Poor control of production processes can lead to the introduction of adventitious agents or other contaminants, or to inadvertent changes in the properties or stability of our product candidates that may not be detectable in final product testing. If our third-party manufacturers were to encounter any of these difficulties, our ability to provide any product candidates to patients in planned clinical trials and products to patients, once approved, would be jeopardized. Any delay, interruption or other issues that arise in the manufacture, fill- finish, packaging, or storage of clinical trial supplies could delay the completion of planned clinical trials, increase the costs associated with maintaining clinical trial programs and, depending upon the period of delay, require us to commence new clinical trials at additional expense or terminate clinical trials completely. Any adverse development affecting clinical or commercial manufacturing of our product candidates or products may result in shipment delays, inventory shortages, lot failures, product withdrawals or recalls, or other interruptions in the supply of our product candidates or products. We may also have to take inventory write-offs and incur other charges and expenses for product candidates or products that fail to meet specifications, undertake costly remediation efforts or seek more costly manufacturing alternatives. Accordingly, failures or difficulties faced at any level of our supply chain could adversely affect our business and delay or impede the development and commercialization of any of our product candidates or products, if approved, and could have an adverse effect on our business, prospects, financial condition, and results of operations.

As part of our process development efforts, we also may make changes to the manufacturing processes at various points during development, for various reasons, such as controlling costs, achieving scale, decreasing processing time, increasing manufacturing success rate or other reasons. Such changes carry the risk that they will not achieve their intended objectives, and any of these changes could cause our product candidates to perform differently and affect the results of our ongoing clinical trials or future clinical trials. In some circumstances, changes in the manufacturing process may require us to perform ex vivo comparability studies and to collect additional data from patients prior to undertaking more advanced clinical trials. For instance, changes in our process during the course of clinical development may require us to show the comparability of the product used in earlier clinical phases or at earlier portions of a trial to the product used in later clinical phases or later portions of the trial.

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We may, in the future, seek to enter into collaborations with other third parties for the discovery, development and commercialization of our product candidates. If our collaborators cease development efforts under our collaboration agreements, or if any of those agreements are terminated, these collaborations may fail to lead to commercial products and we may never receive milestone payments or future royalties under these agreements.

We expect a significant portion of our future revenue and cash resources to be derived from collaboration agreements or other similar agreements into which we may enter in the future for research, development, and commercialization of other therapeutic technologies or product candidates. Biopharmaceutical companies are our likely future collaborators for any marketing, distribution, development, licensing, or broader collaboration arrangements. If we fail to enter into future collaborations on commercially reasonable terms, or at all, or such collaborations are not successful, we may not be able to execute our strategy to develop certain targets, product candidates, or disease areas that we believe could benefit from the resources of either larger biopharmaceutical companies or those specialized in a particular area of relevance.

Revenue from research and development collaborations depends upon continuation of the collaborations, payments for research and development services, and resulting options to acquire any licenses of successful product candidates, and the achievement of milestones, contingent payments, and royalties, if any, derived from future products developed from our research. If we are unable to successfully advance the development of our product candidates or achieve milestones, revenue and cash resources from milestone payments under our collaboration agreements will be substantially less than expected.

With respect to future collaboration agreements, we expect to have limited control over the amount and timing of resources that our collaborators dedicate to the development or commercialization of our product candidates. Moreover, our ability to generate revenues from these arrangements will depend on our collaborators’ abilities to successfully perform the functions assigned to them in these arrangements.

Collaborations involving our product candidates may pose the following risks to us:

As a result of the foregoing, our current and any future collaboration agreements may not lead to development or commercialization of our product candidates in the most efficient manner or at all. If a collaborator of ours were to be involved in a business combination, the continued pursuit and emphasis on our product development or commercialization program could be delayed, diminished or terminated. Any failure to successfully develop or commercialize our product candidates pursuant to our current or any future collaboration agreements could have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

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Moreover, to the extent that any of our future collaborators were to terminate a collaboration agreement, we may be forced to independently develop these product candidates, including funding preclinical studies or clinical trials, assuming marketing and distribution costs and defending intellectual property rights, or, in certain instances, abandon product candidates altogether, any of which could result in a change to our business plan and have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

We may have conflicts with our collaborators that could delay or prevent the development or commercialization of our product candidates.

We may have conflicts with our collaborators, such as conflicts concerning the interpretation of preclinical or clinical data, the achievement of milestones, the interpretation of contractual obligations, payments for services, development obligations or the ownership of intellectual property developed during our collaboration. If any conflicts arise with any of our collaborators, such collaborator may act in a manner that is adverse to our best interests. Any such disagreement could result in one or more of the following, each of which could delay or prevent the development or commercialization of our product candidates, and in turn prevent us from generating revenues: unwillingness on the part of a collaborator to pay us milestone payments or royalties we believe are due to us under a collaboration, which could require us to raise additional capital; uncertainty regarding ownership of intellectual property rights arising from our collaborative activities, which could prevent us from entering into additional collaborations; unwillingness by the collaborator to cooperate in the development or manufacture of the product, including providing us with product data or materials; unwillingness on the part of a collaborator to keep us informed regarding the progress of its development and commercialization activities or to permit public disclosure of the results of those activities; initiating of litigation or alternative dispute resolution options by either party to resolve the dispute; or attempts by either party to terminate the agreement.

We may not successfully engage in strategic transactions, including any additional collaborations we seek, which could adversely affect our ability to develop and commercialize product candidates, impact our cash position, increase our expenses, and present significant distractions to our management.

From time to time, we may consider strategic transactions, such as additional collaborations, acquisitions of companies, asset purchases, and out- or in-licensing of product candidates or technologies that we believe will complement or augment our existing business. In particular, we will evaluate and, if strategically attractive, seek to enter into additional collaborations, including with major biotechnology or biopharmaceutical companies. The competition for collaborators is intense, and the negotiation process is time-consuming and complex. Any new collaboration may be on terms that are not optimal for us, and we may not be able to maintain any new collaboration if, for example, development or approval of a product candidate is delayed, sales of an approved product candidate do not meet expectations or the collaborator terminates the collaboration. In addition, a significant number of recent business combinations among large pharmaceutical companies has resulted in a reduced number of potential future strategic partners. Our collaborators may consider alternative product candidates or technologies for similar indications that may be available to collaborate on and whether such a collaboration could be more attractive than the one with us for our product candidate. Our ability to reach a definitive agreement for a collaboration will depend, among other things, upon our assessment of the strategic partner’s resources and expertise, the terms and conditions of the proposed collaboration, and the proposed strategic partner’s evaluation of a number of factors. These factors may include the design or results of clinical trials, the likelihood of approval by the FDA, EMA, or other applicable regulatory authorities, the potential market for the subject product candidate, the costs and complexities of manufacturing and delivering such product candidate to patients, the potential of competing products, the existence of uncertainty with respect to our ownership of technology, which can exist if there is a challenge to such ownership without regard to the merits of the challenge, and industry and market conditions generally. Moreover, if we acquire assets with promising markets or technologies, we may not be able to realize the benefit of acquiring such assets if we are not able to successfully integrate them with our existing technologies. We may encounter numerous difficulties in developing, testing, manufacturing, and marketing any new products resulting from a strategic acquisition that delay or prevent us from realizing their expected benefits or enhancing our business.

We cannot assure you that following any such collaboration, or other strategic transaction, we will achieve the expected synergies to justify the transaction. For example, such transactions may require us to incur non-recurring or other charges, increase our near- and long-term expenditures and pose significant integration or implementation challenges or disrupt our management or business. These transactions would entail numerous operational and financial risks, including exposure to unknown liabilities, disruption of our business and diversion of our management’s time and attention in order to manage a collaboration or develop acquired products, product candidates or technologies, incurrence of substantial debt or dilutive issuances of equity securities to pay transaction consideration or costs, higher than expected collaboration, acquisition or integration costs, write-downs of assets or goodwill or impairment charges, increased amortization expenses, difficulty, and cost in facilitating the collaboration or combining the operations and personnel of any acquired business, impairment of relationships with key suppliers, manufacturers or customers of any acquired business due to changes in management and ownership, and the inability to retain key employees of any acquired business.

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Accordingly, although there can be no assurance that we will undertake or successfully complete any transactions of the nature described above, any transactions that we do complete may be subject to the foregoing or other risks and would have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects. Conversely, any failure to enter any additional collaboration or other strategic transaction that would be beneficial to us could delay the development and potential commercialization of our product candidates and have a negative impact on the competitiveness of any product candidate that reaches market.

Risks Related to Our Business and Operations

The outbreak of the novel strain of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, could adversely impact our business, including our preclinical development activities and planned clinical trials.

Public health crises such as pandemics or similar outbreaks could adversely impact our business. In December 2019, a novel strain of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, surfaced in Wuhan, China. Since then, COVID-19 has spread to multiple countries, including the United States. As a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, or similar pandemics, we may experience disruptions that could severely impact our business, manufacturing, preclinical development activities, preclinical studies and planned clinical trials, including:

These and other factors arising from the COVID-19 pandemic could worsen in countries that are already afflicted with COVID-19, could continue to spread to additional countries, or could return to countries where the pandemic has been partially contained, each of which could further adversely impact our ability to conduct preclinical development activities, preclinical studies and planned clinical trials and our business generally, and could have a material adverse impact on our operations and financial condition and results.

 

In addition, the trading prices for our common stock and other biopharmaceutical companies, as well as the broader equity and debt markets, have been highly volatile as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting impact on economic activity. As a result, we may face difficulties raising capital when needed, and any such sales may be on unfavorable terms to us. Further, to the extent we raise additional capital through the sale of equity or convertible debt securities, the ownership interest of existing stockholders will be diluted.

 

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The COVID-19 outbreak continues to rapidly evolve. The extent to which the outbreak may impact our business, manufacturing, preclinical development activities, preclinical studies and planned clinical trials and will depend on future developments, which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted with confidence, such as the ultimate geographic spread of COVID-19, the duration of the outbreak, the potential for a second outbreak after it is contained, travel restrictions and actions to contain the outbreak or treat its impact, such as social distancing and quarantines or lock-downs in the United States and other countries, business closures or business disruptions and the effectiveness of actions taken in the United States and other countries to contain and treat the disease.

We will need to grow our organization, and we may experience difficulties in managing our growth and expanding our operations, which could adversely affect our business.

We have approximately 45 full-time employees. As our development and commercialization plans and strategies develop, we expect to expand our employee base for managerial, operational, financial and other resources. In addition, we have limited experience in product development. As our product candidates enter and advance through preclinical studies and clinical trials, we will need to expand our development and regulatory capabilities and contract with other organizations to provide manufacturing and other capabilities for us. In the future, we expect to have to manage additional relationships with collaborators or partners, suppliers, and other organizations. Our ability to manage our operations and future growth will require us to continue to improve our operational, financial, and management controls, reporting systems, and procedures. We may not be able to implement improvements to our management information and control systems in an efficient or timely manner and may discover deficiencies in existing systems and controls. Our inability to successfully manage our growth and expand our operations could have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

Any inability to attract and retain qualified key management and technical personnel would impair our ability to implement our business plan.

Our success largely depends on the continued service of key management, advisors and other specialized personnel. We currently do not maintain key person insurance on any of these individuals. The loss of one or more members of our management team or other key employees or advisors could delay our research and development programs and have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects. The relationships that our key managers have cultivated within our industry make us particularly dependent upon their continued employment with us. We are dependent on the continued service of our technical personnel because of the highly technical nature of our product candidates and technologies related to our Neoleukin Platform, and the specialized nature of the regulatory approval process. Because our management team and key employees are not obligated to provide us with continued service, they could terminate their employment with us at any time without penalty.

Competition for skilled personnel in our market is intense and may limit our ability to hire and retain highly qualified personnel on acceptable terms or at all. We also face competition for personnel from other companies, universities, public and private research institutions, government entities and other organizations. Our future success will depend in large part on our continued ability to attract and retain other highly qualified scientific, technical and management personnel, as well as personnel with expertise in clinical testing, manufacturing, governmental regulation, and commercialization. If we are unable to continue to attract and retain high-quality personnel, the rate and success at which we can discover and develop product candidates will be limited which could have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Our relationships with healthcare professionals, principal investigators, consultants, customers (actual and potential) and third-party payors are and will be subject, directly and indirectly, to applicable anti-kickback, fraud and abuse, privacy, transparency and other healthcare laws and regulations, which could expose us to penalties, including without limitation, civil, criminal and administrative sanctions, civil penalties, damages, fines, disgorgement, individual imprisonment, possible exclusion from participation in Medicare, Medicaid and other federal healthcare programs, integrity obligations, contractual damages, reputational harm, administrative burdens and diminished profits and future earnings and the curtailment or restructuring of our operations.

As a biopharmaceutical company, even though we do not and will not control referrals of healthcare services or bill directly to Medicare, Medicaid or other third-party payors, federal and state healthcare laws and regulations pertaining to fraud and abuse and patients’ rights are and will be applicable to our future arrangements with third-party payors and customers who are in a position to purchase, recommend and/or prescribe our product candidates for which we obtain marketing approval. These broadly applicable fraud and abuse and other healthcare laws and regulations may constrain our future business or financial arrangements and relationships with healthcare professionals, principal investigators, consultants, customers, and third-party payors and other entities, including our marketing practices, educational programs and pricing policies. Restrictions under applicable federal and state healthcare laws and regulations that may affect our ability to operate include, but are not limited to, the following:

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Efforts to ensure that our internal operations and any business arrangements with third parties will comply with applicable healthcare laws and regulations will involve substantial costs. Recent healthcare reform legislation has also strengthened these laws. For example, the Affordable Care Act, among other things, amends the intent requirement of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, such that a person or entity no longer needs to have actual knowledge of this statute or specific intent to violate it in order to have committed a violation. In addition, the Affordable Care Act codified case law that a claim that includes items or services resulting from a violation of the federal anti-kickback statute constitutes a false or fraudulent claim for purposes of the federal civil False Claims Act. It is possible that governmental authorities will conclude that our business practices may not comply with current or future statutes, regulations, agency guidance, or case law involving applicable fraud and abuse or other healthcare laws and regulations. If our operations are found to be in violation of any of these laws or any other governmental laws and regulations that may apply to us, we may be subject to penalties, including without limitation, significant civil, criminal and administrative penalties, damages, fines, disgorgement, individual imprisonment, exclusion from government funded healthcare programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, integrity obligations, contractual damages, reputational harm, administrative burdens and diminished profits and future earnings, and the curtailment or restructuring of our operations. If any physicians or other healthcare providers or entities with whom we expect to do business are found to not be in compliance with applicable laws, they may be subject to criminal, civil or administrative sanctions, including exclusions from government funded healthcare programs. Moreover, we expect there will continue to be federal, state, local and foreign laws and regulations, proposed and implemented, that could impact our operations and business. The extent to which future legislation or regulations, if any, relating to healthcare fraud abuse laws or enforcement, may be enacted or what effect such legislation or regulation would have on our business remains uncertain.

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We may form strategic alliances in the future, and we may not realize the benefits of such alliances.

We may form strategic alliances, create joint ventures or collaborations or enter into licensing arrangements with third parties that we believe will complement or augment our existing business. These relationships or those like them may require us to incur non-recurring and other charges, increase our near- and long-term expenditures, issue securities that dilute our stockholders or disrupt our management and business. In addition, we face significant competition in seeking appropriate strategic partners and the negotiation process is time-consuming and complex. Moreover, we may not be successful in our efforts to establish a strategic partnership or other alternative arrangements for any future drug candidates and programs because our research and development pipeline may be insufficient, our drug candidates and programs may be deemed to be at too early a stage of development for collaborative effort and third parties may not view our drug candidates and programs as having the requisite potential to demonstrate safety and efficacy. If we license products or businesses, we may not be able to realize the benefit of such transactions if we are unable to successfully integrate them with our existing operations and company culture. We cannot be certain that, following a strategic transaction or license, we will achieve the revenues or specific net income that justifies such transaction. Any delays in entering into new strategic partnership agreements related to our drug candidates could also delay the development and commercialization of our drug candidates and reduce their competitiveness even if they reach the market.

Our employees, independent contractors, principal investigators, CROs, consultants, vendors and collaboration partners may engage in misconduct or other improper activities, including noncompliance with regulatory standards and requirements, which could cause significant liability for us and harm our reputation.

We are exposed to the risk of fraud or other misconduct by our employees, independent contractors, principal investigators, CROs, consultants, vendors and collaboration partners, including intentional failures to comply with FDA regulations or similar regulations of comparable foreign regulatory authorities, provide accurate information to the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities, comply with manufacturing standards we have established, comply with federal and state data privacy and security, fraud and abuse and other healthcare laws and regulations and similar laws and regulations established and enforced by comparable foreign regulatory authorities, report financial information or data accurately or disclose unauthorized activities to us. Specifically, sales, marketing and business arrangements in the healthcare industry are subject to extensive laws and regulations intended to prevent fraud, misconduct, kickbacks, self-dealing and other abusive practices. These laws and regulations may restrict or prohibit a wide range of pricing, discounting, marketing and promotion, sales commission, customer incentive programs and other business arrangements. Employee misconduct could also involve the improper use or misrepresentation of information obtained in the course of clinical trials or creating fraudulent data in our pre-clinical studies or clinical trials, which could result in regulatory sanctions and cause serious harm to our reputation. We have adopted a code of conduct for our directors, officers and employees, but it is not always possible to identify and deter misconduct by employees and other third parties, and the precautions we take to detect and prevent this activity may not be effective in controlling unknown or unmanaged risks or losses or in protecting us from governmental investigations or other actions or lawsuits stemming from a failure to be in compliance with such laws or regulations. Additionally, we are subject to the risk that a person or government could allege such fraud or other misconduct, even if none occurred. If any such actions are instituted against us, and we are not successful in defending ourselves or asserting our rights, those actions could have a significant impact on our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows from future prospects, including the imposition of significant fines or other sanctions.

Product liability lawsuits against us could cause us to incur substantial liabilities and to limit commercialization of any products that we may develop.

We will face an inherent risk of product liability exposure related to the testing of our product candidates in clinical trials and will face an even greater risk if we commercialize any of our product candidates. If we cannot successfully defend ourselves against claims that our product candidates caused injuries, we could incur substantial liabilities. Regardless of merit or eventual outcome, liability claims may result in:

We currently maintain product liability insurance coverage of up to $10 million, which may not be adequate to cover all liabilities that we may incur. We anticipate that we will need to increase our insurance coverage when we begin clinical trials and if we successfully commercialize any product candidate. Insurance coverage is increasingly expensive. We may not be able to maintain insurance coverage at a reasonable cost or in an amount adequate to satisfy any liability that may arise.

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We may engage in future acquisitions that could disrupt our business, cause dilution to our stockholders and harm our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows and future prospects.

We may, in the future, make acquisitions of, or investments in, companies that we believe have products or capabilities that are a strategic or commercial fit with our future product candidates and business or otherwise offer opportunities for our company. In connection with these acquisitions or investments, we may:

We may not be able to complete acquisitions on favorable terms, if at all. If we do complete an acquisition, we cannot assure you that it will ultimately strengthen our competitive position or that it will be viewed positively by customers, financial markets or investors. Furthermore, future acquisitions could pose numerous additional risks to our operations, including:

We may not be able to complete any acquisitions or effectively integrate the operations, products or personnel gained through any such acquisition.

Our business and operations would suffer in the event of computer system failures or security breaches.

In the ordinary course of our business, we collect, store and transmit confidential information, including intellectual property, proprietary business information and personal information. Despite the implementation of security measures, our internal computer systems, and those of our CROs and other third parties on which we rely, are vulnerable to damage from computer viruses, unauthorized access, cyberattacks, natural disasters, fire, terrorism, war and telecommunication and electrical failures. Cyberattacks are increasing in their frequency, sophistication and intensity. Cyberattacks could include the deployment of harmful malware, denial-of-service attacks, social engineering and other means to affect service reliability and threaten the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information. Significant disruptions of our information technology systems or security breaches could adversely affect our business operations and/or result in the loss, misappropriation, and/or unauthorized access, use or disclosure of, or the prevention of access to, confidential information (including trade secrets or other intellectual property, proprietary business information and personal information), and could result in financial, legal, business and reputational harm to us. If such disruptions were to occur and cause interruptions in our operations, it could result in a material disruption of our product development programs. For example, the loss of clinical trial data from completed, ongoing or planned clinical trials could result in delays in our regulatory approval efforts and significantly increase our costs to recover or reproduce the data. To the extent that any disruption or security breach results in a loss of, or damage to, our data or applications, or inappropriate disclosure of confidential or proprietary information, we could incur liability and the further development of our future product candidates could be delayed.

Business disruptions could seriously harm our future revenues and financial condition and increase our costs and expenses.

Our operations could be subject to earthquakes, power shortages, telecommunications failures, water shortages, floods, hurricanes, typhoons, fires, extreme weather conditions, medical epidemics such as the corona virus outbreak and other natural or manmade disasters or business interruptions, for which we are predominantly self-insured. We do not carry insurance for all categories of risk that our business may encounter. The occurrence of any of these business disruptions could seriously harm our operations and financial condition and increase our costs and expenses. We rely on third-party manufacturers to produce our product candidates. Our ability to obtain clinical supplies of product candidates could be disrupted, if the operations of these suppliers are affected by a man-made or natural disaster or other business interruption. The ultimate impact on us, our significant suppliers and our general infrastructure of being consolidated in certain geographical areas is unknown, but our operations and financial condition could suffer in the event of a major earthquake, fire or other natural disaster. Further, any significant uninsured liability may require us to pay substantial amounts, which would adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows from future prospects.

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Our ability to use our U.S. net operating losses to offset future taxable income will be subject to certain limitations.

As of December 31, 2019, we had U.S. net operating losses, or NOLs, of $25.5 million, for which we have recorded a full valuation allowance. These NOLs and tax credit carryforwards expire in various years beginning in 2028, if not utilized. Utilization of the NOLs will be subject to significant annual limitations due to historical ownership changes pursuant to Sections 382 of the Internal Revenue Code, or the Code.  If we experience further changes to our stock ownership in the future, some of which changes are outside our control, the tax benefits related to the NOLs may be further limited or lost. Any such disallowances may result in greater tax liabilities than we would incur in the absence of such a limitation and any increased liabilities could adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition, cash flow and future prospects.

Recent tax reform legislation could adversely affect our business and financial condition.

On December 22, 2017, President Trump signed into law new tax legislation, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, that significantly changes the Code. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, among other things, contains significant changes to corporate taxation, including reduction of the corporate tax rate from a top marginal rate of 35% to a flat rate of 21%, limitation of the tax deduction for interest expense to 30% of adjusted earnings (except for certain small businesses), limitation of the deduction for net operating losses to 80% of current year taxable income and elimination of net operating loss carrybacks, one time taxation of offshore earnings at reduced rates regardless of whether they are repatriated, immediate deductions for certain new investments instead of deductions for depreciation expense over time, and modifying or repealing many business deductions and credits. Any federal net operating losses created in 2018 and thereafter will be carried forward indefinitely pursuant to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Notwithstanding the reduction in the corporate income tax rate, the overall impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is uncertain and our business and financial condition could be adversely affected. The impact of this Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on holders of our common stock is also uncertain and could be adverse. We urge investors to consult with their legal and tax advisors with respect to such legislation and the potential tax consequences of investing in our common stock.

Risks Related to Intellectual Property

If we are not able to obtain, maintain, and enforce patent protection for our product candidates, our Neoleukin platform technology, or other proprietary technologies we may develop, development and commercialization of our product candidates may be adversely affected.

Our success depends in part on our ability to obtain and maintain patents and other forms of intellectual property rights, including in-licenses of intellectual property rights of others, for our product candidates, as well as our ability to preserve our trade secrets, to prevent third parties from infringing upon our proprietary rights and to operate without infringing upon the proprietary rights of others. Under our License Agreement with the University of Washington, dated July 8, 2019, we have an exclusive license to develop and commercialize products covered by patent applications with claims covering the composition of matter of key molecule families as well as methods of using the computational algorithms that form the basis of the Neoleukin platform. However, we may not be able to apply for patents on certain aspects of our product candidates in a timely fashion or at all. Further, we may not be able to prosecute all necessary or desirable patent applications, or maintain, enforce, and license any patents that may issue from such patent applications, at a reasonable cost or in a timely manner. It is also possible that we will fail to identify patentable aspects of our research and development output before it is too late to obtain patent protection. We may not have the right to control the preparation, filing, and prosecution of all patent applications that we license from third parties, or to maintain the rights to patents licensed to third parties. Therefore, these patents and applications may not be prosecuted and enforced in a manner consistent with the best interests of our business. Future patents we obtain may not be sufficiently broad to prevent others from using our technology or from developing competing products and technology. There is no guarantee that any of our pending patent applications will result in issued or granted patents, that any of our future issued or granted patents will not later be found to be invalid or unenforceable or that any future issued or granted patents will include claims that are sufficiently broad to cover our product candidates or to provide meaningful protection from our competitors. Moreover, the patent position of biotechnology and biopharmaceutical companies can be highly uncertain because it involves complex legal and factual questions. We will be able to protect our proprietary rights from unauthorized use by third parties only to the extent that our current and future proprietary technology and product candidates are covered by valid and enforceable patents or are effectively maintained as trade secrets. If third parties disclose or misappropriate our proprietary rights, it may materially and adversely affect our position in the market.

Our pending patent applications cannot be enforced against third parties practicing the technology claimed in such applications unless and until a patent issues from such applications. Assuming the other requirements for patentability are met, currently, the first to file a patent application is generally entitled to the patent. However, prior to March 16, 2013, in the United States, the first to invent was entitled to the patent. Publications of discoveries in the scientific literature often lag behind the actual discoveries, and patent applications in the United States and other jurisdictions are typically not published until 18 months after filing, or in some cases not at all. Therefore, we cannot be certain that we were the first to make the inventions claimed in our pending patent applications, or that we were the first to file for patent protection of such inventions.

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO, and various foreign governmental patent agencies require compliance with a large number of procedural, documentary, fee payment and other provisions during the patent process. There are situations in which noncompliance can result in abandonment or lapse of a patent or patent application, resulting in partial or complete loss of patent rights in the relevant jurisdiction. In such an event, competitors might be able to enter the market earlier than would otherwise have been the case. The standards applied by the USPTO and foreign patent offices in granting patents are not always applied uniformly or predictably. For example, there is no uniform worldwide policy regarding patentable subject matter or the scope of claims allowable in biotechnology and biopharmaceutical patents. As such, we do not know the degree of future protection that we will have on our proprietary products and technology. The process of obtaining patents is time consuming, expensive and sometimes unpredictable.

Once granted, for a given period after allowance or grant patents may remain open to opposition, interference, re-examination, post-grant review, inter partes review, nullification, or derivation action in court or before patent offices or similar proceedings, during which time third parties can raise objections against such initial grant. Such proceedings may continue for a protracted period of time and an adverse determination in any such proceedings could reduce the scope of the allowed or granted claims thus attacked, or could result in our patents being invalidated in whole or in part, or being held unenforceable, which could allow third parties to commercialize our product candidates and compete directly with us without payment to us. In addition, there can be no assurance that:

If we or our licensors or collaborators fail to maintain patent applications and later-issued patents covering our product candidates, our competitors might be able to enter the market, which could have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects. In addition, if the breadth or strength of protection provided by our patent applications and later-issued patents is threatened, regardless of the outcome, it could dissuade companies from collaborating with us to license, develop or commercialize current or future product candidates.

We could be required to incur significant expenses to strengthen our intellectual property rights, and our intellectual property rights may be inadequate to protect our competitive position.

The patent prosecution process is expensive and time-consuming, and we or our future potential licensors may not be able to file and prosecute all necessary or desirable patent applications at a reasonable cost or in a timely manner. It is also possible that we or our future potential licensors will fail to identify patentable aspects of inventions made in the course of our development and commercialization activities before it is too late to obtain patent protection on them. Further, given the amount of time required for the development, testing and regulatory review of new product candidates, patents protecting such candidates might expire before or shortly after such candidates are commercialized. As a result, our owned and licensed patent portfolio may not provide us with sufficient rights to exclude others from commercializing products similar or identical to ours. We expect to seek extensions of patent terms in the United States and, if available, in other countries where we are prosecuting patents. In the United States, the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984 permits a patent term extension of up to five years beyond the expiration of the patent. However, the applicable authorities, including the FDA in the United States, and any equivalent regulatory authority in other countries, may not agree with our assessment of whether such extensions are available, and may refuse to grant extensions to our patents, or may grant more limited extensions than we request. If this occurs, our competitors may be able to take advantage of our

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investment in development and clinical trials by referencing our clinical and preclinical data and launch their product earlier than might otherwise be the case. Changes in either the patent laws or interpretation of the patent laws in the United States and other countries may diminish the value of our patents or narrow the scope of our patent protection. The laws of foreign countries may not protect our rights to the same extent as the laws of the United States, and these foreign laws may also be subject to change. For example, methods of treatment and manufacturing processes may not be patentable in certain jurisdictions. Publications of discoveries in the scientific literature often lag behind the actual discoveries, and patent applications in the United States and other jurisdictions are typically not published until 18 months after filing or in some cases not at all. Therefore, we cannot be certain that we or our licensors were the first to make the inventions claimed in our owned or licensed patents or pending patent applications, or that we or our licensors were the first to file for patent protection of such inventions.

Our patent applications and the enforcement or defense of our issued patents may be impacted by the application of or changes in U.S. and foreign standards.

The standards that the USPTO and foreign patent offices use to grant patents are not always applied predictably or uniformly and can change. Consequently, our pending patent applications may not be allowed and, if allowed, may not contain the type and extent of patent claims that will be adequate to conduct our business as planned. Additionally, any issued patents we currently own or obtain in the future may have a shorter patent term than expected or may not contain claims that will permit us to stop competitors from using our technology or similar technology or from copying our product candidates. Similarly, the standards that courts use to interpret patents are not always applied predictably or uniformly and may evolve, particularly as new technologies develop. In addition, changes to patent laws in the United States or other countries may be applied retroactively to affect the validation enforceability, or term of our patent. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has recently modified some legal standards applied by the USPTO in examination of U.S. patent applications, which may decrease the likelihood that we will be able to obtain patents and may increase the likelihood of challenges to patents we obtain or license. In addition, changes to the U.S. patent system have come into force under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, or the Leahy-Smith Act, which was signed into law in September 2011. The Leahy-Smith Act included a number of significant changes to U.S. patent law. These include provisions that affect the way patent applications will be prosecuted and may also affect patent litigation. In particular, under the Leahy-Smith Act, the United States transitioned in March 2013 to a “first to file” system in which the first inventor to file a patent application will be entitled to the patent. Third parties are allowed to submit prior art before the issuance of a patent by the USPTO, and may become involved in opposition, derivation, reexamination, inter-partes review or interference proceedings challenging our patent rights or the patent rights of others. An adverse determination in any such submission, proceeding or litigation could reduce the scope of, or invalidate, our patent rights, which could adversely affect our competitive position.

While we cannot predict with certainty the impact the Leahy-Smith Act or any potential future changes to the U.S. or foreign patent systems will have on the operation of our business, the Leahy-Smith Act and such future changes could increase the uncertainties and costs surrounding the prosecution of our patent applications and the enforcement or defense of our issued patents, all of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows and future prospects.

Obtaining and maintaining any patent protection we may receive will depend on compliance with various procedural, document submissions, fee payment and other requirements imposed by governmental patent agencies, and our patent protection could be reduced or eliminated for non-compliance with these requirements.

Periodic maintenance and annuity fees on any issued patent are due to be paid to the USPTO and foreign patent agencies in several stages over the lifetime of the patent. The USPTO and various foreign governmental patent agencies require compliance with a number of procedural, documentary, fee payment and other similar provisions during the patent application process. While an inadvertent lapse can in many cases be cured by payment of a late fee or by other means in accordance with the applicable rules, there are situations in which noncompliance can result in abandonment or lapse of the patent or patent application, resulting in partial or complete loss of patent rights in the relevant jurisdiction. Non-compliance events that could result in abandonment or lapse of a patent or patent application include, but are not limited to, failure to respond to official actions within prescribed time limits, non-payment of fees and failure to properly legalize and submit formal documents. If we or our future potential licensors fail to maintain the patents and patent applications covering our future product candidates, our competitive position would be adversely affected.

We may be subject to claims by third parties claiming ownership of what we regard as our own intellectual property.

Many of our employees, including our senior management, were previously employed at universities or at other biotechnology or biopharmaceutical companies, including our competitors or potential competitors. Some of these employees, including members of our senior management, executed proprietary rights, non-disclosure and non-competition agreements, in connection with such previous employment. Although we try to ensure that our employees do not use the proprietary information or know-how of others in their work for us, we may be subject to claims that we, or these employees, have used or disclosed confidential information or intellectual property, including trade secrets or other proprietary information, of any such employee’s former employer. We are not aware of any threatened or pending claims related to these matters or concerning the agreements with our senior management, but in the future litigation may be necessary to defend against such claims. In addition, third parties may from time to time make claims over

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what we regard as our intellectual property, or we may get into disputes with licensors or licensees of our intellectual property rights over the interpretation of the license terms. Our licensors may have the right to terminate their license agreements with us or pursue damages or other legal remedies. If we fail in defending any such claims, in addition to paying monetary damages, we may lose valuable intellectual property rights or personnel or sustain damages. Such intellectual property rights could be awarded to a third party, and we could be required to obtain a license from such third party to commercialize our technology or products. Such a license may not be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all. Even if we are successful in defending against such claims, litigation could result in substantial costs and be a distraction to management.

If we are unable to protect the confidentiality of our trade secrets, our business and competitive position would be harmed.

In addition to seeking patents for some of our technology and products, we also rely on trade secrets, including unpatented know-how, technology and other proprietary information, to maintain our competitive position. We seek to protect these trade secrets, in part, by entering into non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements with parties who have access to them, such as our employees, corporate collaborators, outside scientific collaborators, contract manufacturing organizations, consultants, advisors and other third parties. We also generally enter into confidentiality and invention or patent assignment agreements with our employees and consultants. Despite these efforts, any of these parties may breach the agreements and disclose our proprietary information, including our trade secrets, and we may not be able to obtain adequate remedies for such breaches. Enforcing a claim that a party illegally disclosed or misappropriated a trade secret is difficult, expensive and time-consuming, and the outcome is unpredictable. In addition, some courts both within and outside the United States may be less willing or unwilling to protect trade secrets. If any of our trade secrets were to be lawfully obtained or independently developed by a competitor, we would have no right to prevent such competitor from using that technology or information to compete with us, which could harm our competitive position.

Although we expect all of our employees to assign their inventions to us, and all of our employees, consultants, advisors and any third parties who have access to our proprietary know-how, information or technology to enter into confidentiality agreements, we cannot provide any assurances that all such agreements have been duly executed or that our trade secrets and other confidential proprietary information will not be disclosed or that competitors will not otherwise gain access to our trade secrets or independently develop substantially equivalent information and techniques. Additionally, if the steps taken to maintain our trade secrets are deemed inadequate, we may have insufficient recourse against third parties for misappropriating the trade secret. In addition, others may independently discover our trade secrets and proprietary information. For example, the FDA, as part of its Transparency Initiative, is currently considering whether to make additional information publicly available on a routine basis, including information that we may consider to be trade secrets or other proprietary information, and it is not currently clear how the FDA’s disclosure policies may change in the future, if at all.

We may not be able to protect our intellectual property rights throughout the world.

Filing, prosecuting and defending patents on our product candidates throughout the world would be prohibitively expensive. In addition, the laws of some foreign countries do not protect intellectual property rights to the same extent as federal and state laws in the United States. Consequently, we and our licensors or future collaborators may not be able to prevent third parties from practicing our inventions in all countries outside the United States, or from selling or importing products made using our inventions in and into the United States or other jurisdictions. Competitors may use our technologies in jurisdictions where we have not obtained patent protection to develop their own products and may export otherwise infringing products to territories where we have patent protection, but where enforcement is not as strong as that in the United States. These products may compete with our products in jurisdictions where we do not have any issued patents and our patent claims or other intellectual property rights may not be effective or sufficient to prevent them from so competing.

Many companies have encountered significant problems in protecting and defending intellectual property rights in foreign jurisdictions. The legal systems of certain countries, particularly certain developing countries, do not favor the enforcement of patents and other intellectual property protection, particularly those relating to biopharmaceuticals, which could make it difficult for us to stop the infringement of our patents or marketing of competing products in violation of our proprietary rights generally. Proceedings to enforce our patent rights in foreign jurisdictions could result in substantial cost and divert our efforts and attention from other aspects of our business. We may not prevail in any lawsuits that we initiate, and the damages or other remedies awarded, if any, may not be commercially meaningful.

The requirements for patentability may differ in certain countries, particularly developing countries. For example, unlike other countries, China has a heightened requirement for patentability, and specifically requires a detailed description of medical uses of a claimed drug. In India, unlike the United States, there is no link between regulatory approval of a drug and its patent status. Furthermore, generic or biosimilar drug manufacturers or other competitors may challenge the scope, validity or enforceability of our or our licensors’ or collaborators’ patents, requiring us or our licensors or collaborators to engage in complex, lengthy and costly litigation or other proceedings. Generic or biosimilar drug manufacturers may develop, seek approval for, and launch biosimilar versions of our products. In addition to India, certain countries in Europe and developing countries, including China, have compulsory

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licensing laws under which a patent owner may be compelled to grant licenses to third parties. In those countries, we and our licensors or collaborators may have limited remedies if patents are infringed or if we or our licensors or collaborators are compelled to grant a license to a third party, which could materially diminish the value of those patents. This could limit our potential revenue opportunities. Accordingly, our and our licensors’ or collaborators’ efforts to enforce intellectual property rights around the world may be inadequate to obtain a significant commercial advantage from the intellectual property that we own or license.

Intellectual property rights do not necessarily address all potential threats to any competitive advantage we may have.

The degree of future protection afforded by our intellectual property rights is uncertain because intellectual property rights have limitations, and may not adequately protect our business, or permit us to maintain our competitive advantage. The following examples are illustrative:

Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock

Our stock price has been and will likely continue to be volatile and may decline regardless of our operating performance, resulting in substantial losses for investors.

The trading price of our common stock has been, and is likely to continue to be, volatile for the foreseeable future. The trading price of our common stock could be subject to wide fluctuations in response to various factors, some of which are beyond our control. In addition to the factors discussed in this “Risk Factors” section and elsewhere in this report, these factors include:

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In addition, the stock market in general, and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in particular, have experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have often been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of these companies. Broad market and industry factors may negatively affect the market price of our common stock, regardless of our actual operating performance. The realization of any of these risks or any of a broad range of other risks, including those described in this “Risk Factors” section and elsewhere in this report, could have a dramatic and material adverse impact on the market price of our common stock.

We may be subject to securities litigation, which is expensive and could divert management attention.

The trading price of our common stock has been and will continue to be volatile. In the past, companies that have experienced volatility in the market price of their stock have been subject to securities class action litigation. We may be the target of this type of litigation in the future. Securities litigation against us could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention from other business concerns, which could seriously harm our business.

Our principal stockholders, directors and management own a significant percentage of our stock and will be able to exert significant control over matters subject to stockholder approval.

Our executive officers, directors, holders of 5% or more of our capital stock and their respective affiliates together beneficially own a majority of our outstanding voting stock. These stockholders are able to determine the outcome of all matters requiring stockholder approval. For example, these stockholders are able to control elections of directors, amendments of our organizational documents, or approval of any merger, sale of assets, or other major corporate transaction. This may prevent or discourage unsolicited acquisition proposals or offers for our common stock that you may feel are in your best interest as one of our stockholders. The interests of this group of stockholders may not always coincide with your interests or the interests of other stockholders and they may act in a manner that advances their best interests and not necessarily those of other stockholders, including seeking a premium value for their common stock, and might affect the prevailing market price for our common stock.

We are no longer an “emerging growth company,” however, we are still a “smaller reporting company,” and the reduced disclosure requirements applicable to smaller reporting companies may make our common stock less attractive to investors.

Although we ceased to be an “emerging growth company,” as defined in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012, or JOBS Act, on December 31, 2019, we are a “smaller reporting company,” meaning that the market value of our stock held by non-affiliates is less than $700.0 million and our annual revenue is less than $100.0 million during the most recently completed fiscal year. We may continue to be a smaller reporting company if either (i) the market value of our stock held by non-affiliates is less than $250.0 million or (ii) our annual revenue is less than $100.0 million during the most recently completed fiscal year and the market value of our stock held by non-affiliates is less than $700.0 million. As a smaller reporting company, we may continue to rely on exemptions from certain disclosure requirements that are available to smaller reporting companies. Specifically, we may choose to present only the two most recent fiscal years of audited financial statements in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and, similar to emerging growth companies, smaller reporting companies have reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation. We cannot predict if investors will find our common stock less attractive because we may rely on these exemptions. If some investors find our common stock less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our common stock and our stock price may be more volatile.

 

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If we cease to be a “smaller reporting company” or a “non-accelerated filer” in the future, we may be subject to certain disclosure requirements that are applicable to other public companies that had not been applicable to us previously. These requirements include:

There can be no assurance that we will be able to comply with the applicable regulations in a timely manner, if at all.

If we fail to maintain an effective system of internal control over financial reporting in the future, we may not be able to accurately report our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows and future prospects, which may adversely affect investor confidence in us and, as a result, the value of our common stock.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we maintain effective internal controls for financial reporting and disclosure controls and procedures and that we furnish a report by management on, among other things, the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. This assessment needs to include disclosure of any material weaknesses identified by our management in our internal control over financial reporting. A material weakness is a deficiency, or combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting that results in more than a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act also generally requires an attestation from our independent registered public accounting firm on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. However, for as long as we are not an accelerated filer or large accelerated filer, we intend to take advantage of the exemption permitting us not to comply with the independent registered public accounting firm attestation requirement.

Our compliance with Section 404 will require that we incur substantial accounting expense and expend significant management efforts. We currently do not have an internal audit group, and we will need to hire additional accounting and financial staff with appropriate public company experience and technical accounting knowledge and compile the system and process documentation necessary to perform the evaluation needed to comply with Section 404. We may not be able to complete our evaluation, testing and any required remediation in a timely fashion. During the evaluation and testing process, if we fail to identify and to remediate any significant deficiencies or material weaknesses that may be identified, or encounter problems or delays in the implementation of internal control over financial reporting, we will be unable to assert that our internal control over financial reporting is effective. We cannot assure you that there will not be material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in our internal control over financial reporting in the future. Any failure to maintain internal control over financial reporting could severely inhibit our ability to accurately report our financial condition, results of operations or cash flows. If we are unable to conclude that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, or if our independent registered public accounting firm determines we have a material weakness or significant deficiency in our internal control over financial reporting, we could lose investor confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports, the market price of our common stock could decline, and we could be subject to sanctions or investigations by the Nasdaq Stock Market, or NASDAQ, the SEC or other regulatory authorities. Failure to remedy any material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting, or to implement or maintain other effective control systems required of public companies, could also restrict our future access to the capital markets.

Our disclosure controls and procedures may not prevent or detect all errors or acts of fraud.

We are subject to the periodic reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act. Our disclosure controls and procedures are designed to reasonably assure that information required to be disclosed by us in reports we file or submit under the Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to management, recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in the rules and forms of the SEC. We believe that any disclosure controls and procedures or internal controls and procedures, no matter how well conceived and operated, can provide only reasonable, not absolute, assurance that the objectives of the control system are met.

These inherent limitations include the realities that judgments in decision-making can be faulty, and that breakdowns can occur because of simple error or mistake. Additionally, controls can be circumvented by the individual acts of some persons, by collusion of two or more people or by an unauthorized override of the controls. Accordingly, because of the inherent limitations in our control system, misstatements or insufficient disclosures due to error or fraud may occur and not be detected.

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We have incurred and will incur increased costs as a result of operating as a public company, and our management is required to devote substantial time to new compliance initiatives.

As a public company, we have incurred and will incur significant legal, accounting and other expenses that we did not incur as a private company, and these expenses will likely increase even more given we are no longer an “emerging growth company.” We are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Protection Act, as well as rules adopted, and to be adopted, by the SEC and NASDAQ. Our management and other personnel devote a substantial amount of time to these compliance initiatives. Moreover, these rules and regulations have substantially increased our legal and financial compliance costs and made some activities more time-consuming and costly. The increased costs will increase our consolidated net loss. We cannot predict or estimate the amount or timing of additional costs we may incur to respond to these requirements.

Because we do not anticipate paying any cash dividends on our capital stock in the foreseeable future, capital appreciation, if any, will be your sole source of gain.

We have never declared or paid cash dividends on our capital stock. We currently intend to retain all of our future earnings, if any, to finance the growth and development of our business. In addition, the terms of any future debt agreements may preclude us from paying dividends. As a result, capital appreciation, if any, of our common stock will be your sole source of gain for the foreseeable future.

Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market could cause our stock price to fall.

Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market could occur at any time. These sales, or the perception in the market that the holders of a large number of shares intend to sell shares, could reduce the market price of our common stock.

We have in the past and may in the future grant rights to some of our stockholders that require us to register the resale of our common stock or other securities on behalf of these stockholders and/or facilitate public offerings of our securities held by these stockholders, including in connection with potential future acquisition or capital-raising transactions. For example, in connection with our public offering of common stock on September 19, 2016, we entered into a registration rights agreement with the Baker Entities that together, based on information available to us, collectively beneficially owned approximately 45.1% of our common stock as of September 19, 2016. Under the registration rights agreement, we agree that, if at any time and from time to time after December 19, 2016, the Baker Entities demand that we register their shares of our common stock for resale under the Securities Act, we would be obligated to effect such registration. On January 6, 2017, pursuant to the registration rights agreement, we registered for resale, from time to time, up to 10,536,092 shares of our common stock held by the Baker Entities. Our registration obligations under this registration rights agreement cover all shares now held or hereafter acquired by the Baker Entities, would be in effect for up to ten years, and would include our obligation to facilitate certain underwritten public offerings of our common stock by the Baker Entities in the future. If the Baker Entities or any other holders of registration rights with respect to our common stock, by exercising their registration and/or underwriting rights or otherwise, sell a large number of our shares, or the market perceives that the Baker Entities or such holders intend to sell a large number of our shares, this could adversely affect the market price of our common stock. We have registered all currently reserved shares of common stock that we may issue under our equity compensation plans and intend to register in the future any additional reserved or issued shares of common stock. These registered shares can be freely sold in the public market upon issuance, subject to volume limitations applicable to affiliates. We have also filed registration statements covering the sale of up to $250.0 million of any combination of our common stock, preferred stock, debt securities or warrants and may conduct one or more sales of securities pursuant to such registration statement, from time to time.

Future sales and issuances of our common stock or rights to purchase common stock, including pursuant to our equity incentive plans, could result in additional dilution of the percentage ownership of our stockholders and could cause our stock price to fall.

We expect that significant additional capital will be needed in the future to continue our planned operations. To raise capital, we may sell substantial amounts of common stock or securities convertible into or exchangeable for common stock. These future issuances of common stock or common stock-related securities, including the exercise of outstanding options and any additional shares issued in connection with acquisitions, if any, may result in material dilution to our stockholders. New investors could also gain rights, preferences and privileges senior to those of holders of our common stock.

Pursuant to our 2014 Equity Incentive Plan, our compensation committee is authorized to grant equity-based incentive awards to our directors, executive officers and other employees and service providers, including officers, employees and service providers of our subsidiaries and affiliates. Future option grants and issuances of common stock under our 2014 Equity Incentive Plan may have an adverse effect on the market price of our common stock.

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Some provisions of our charter documents and Delaware law may have anti-takeover effects that could discourage an acquisition of us by others, even if an acquisition would be beneficial to our stockholders and may prevent attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management.

Provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, or certificate of incorporation, and amended and restated bylaws, or bylaws, as well as provisions of Delaware law, could make it more difficult for a third party to acquire us or increase the cost of acquiring us, even if doing so would benefit our stockholders, or remove our current management. These include provisions that:

These provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management by making it more difficult for stockholders to replace members of our board of directors, who are responsible for appointing the members of our management. Because we are incorporated in Delaware, we are governed by the provisions of Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law, which may discourage, delay or prevent someone from acquiring us or merging with us whether or not it is desired by or beneficial to our stockholders. Under Delaware law, a corporation may not, in general, engage in a business combination with any holder of 15% or more of its capital stock unless the holder has held the stock for three years or, among other things, the board of directors has approved the transaction. Any provision of our certificate of incorporation or bylaws or Delaware law that has the effect of delaying or deterring a change in control could limit the opportunity for our stockholders to receive a premium for their shares of our common stock, and could also affect the price that some investors are willing to pay for our common stock.

The exclusive forum provisions in our restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws may limit a stockholder's ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or any of our directors, officers, or other employees, which may discourage lawsuits with respect to such claims.

Our restated certificate of incorporation, to the fullest extent permitted by law, will provide that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware will be the exclusive forum for: any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf; any action asserting a breach of fiduciary duty; any action asserting a claim against us arising pursuant to the Delaware General Corporation Law, or the DGCL, our restated certificate of incorporation, or our restated bylaws; or any action asserting a claim against us that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine. This exclusive forum provision does not apply to suits brought to enforce a duty or liability created by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act. It could apply, however, to a suit that falls within one or more of the categories enumerated in the exclusive forum provision and asserts claims under the Securities Act, inasmuch as Section 22 of the Securities Act, creates concurrent jurisdiction for federal and state courts over all suits brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act or the rule and regulations thereunder. There is uncertainty as to whether a court would enforce such provision with respect to claims under the Securities Act, and our stockholders will not be deemed to have waived our compliance with the federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder.

In April 2020, we amended and restated our restated bylaws to provide that the federal district courts of the United States of America will, to the fullest extent permitted by law, be the exclusive forum for resolving any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act, or a Federal Forum Provision. Our decision to adopt a Federal Forum Provision followed a decision by the Supreme Court of the State of Delaware holding that such provisions are facially valid under Delaware law. While there can be no assurance that federal or state courts will follow the holding of the Delaware Supreme Court or determine that the Federal Forum Provision should be enforced in a particular case, application of the Federal Forum Provision means that suits brought by our stockholders to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act must be brought in federal court and cannot be brought in state court.

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These choice of forum provisions may limit a stockholder's ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or any of our directors, officers, or other employees, which may discourage lawsuits with respect to such claims. Alternatively, if a court were to find the choice of forum provisions contained in our restated certificate of incorporation or amended and restated bylaws to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could harm our business, results of operations and financial condition.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, our stock price and trading volume could decline.

The trading market for our common stock depends in part on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us, or our business. If one or more of the securities or industry analysts who cover us downgrade our stock or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, our stock price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of our company or fail to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our stock could decrease, which might cause our stock price and trading volume to decline.

Item 2. Unregistered Sales of Equity Securities and Use of Proceeds

None.

Item 3. Defaults Upon Senior Securities

None.

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures

Not applicable.

Item 5. Other Information

Not applicable.

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SIGNATURES

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned thereunto duly authorized.

 

 

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