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RNTX US Equity

Rein Therapeutics, Inc.Health Care · Pharmaceutical Preparations · CIK 1420565 · FY ends Dec 31
$0.79
+0.02 (+2.84%)
USD · as of 2026-08-19 · marketstack

RNTX · 10-K · period ended 2023-12-31

← all RNTX documents
filed 2024-04-15 · EDGAR original ↗

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Item 1A. Risk Factors.

Careful consideration should be given to the following risk factors, in addition to the other information set forth in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and in other documents that we file with the SEC, in evaluating our company and our business. Investing in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. If any of the following risks actually occur, our business, financial condition, results of operations and future growth prospects could be materially and adversely affected.

Risks Related to Our Business

Our business is highly dependent on the success of our product candidates, LTI-03 and LTI-01 and any other product candidates that we advance into clinical development. Our approach to drug discovery and development in the area of fibrotic diseases, with a focus on Cav1-related peptides, is unproven and may not result in marketable products. All of our product candidates will require significant additional development before we may be able to seek regulatory approval for and launch a product commercially. Raising additional capital may cause dilution to our stockholders, restrict our operations or require us to relinquish rights to LTI-03, LTI-01, or other product candidates.

We currently have no products that are approved for commercial sale and may never be able to develop marketable products. We have two clinical product candidates, LTI-03 and LTI-01, in early- and mid-stage clinical development, respectively. If either of our clinical product candidates encounter safety or efficacy problems, development delays, regulatory issues or other problems, our development plans and business would be significantly harmed. We have completed a Phase 1a safety and tolerability clinical trial of LTI-03 in healthy normal volunteers and are currently recruiting a Phase 1b dose ranging, placebo-controlled safety and tolerability trial of LTI-03 in IPF patients. We have completed a Phase 1b safety, tolerability and proof of mechanism trial and a Phase 2a dose-ranging, placebo-controlled trial of LTI-01 in loculated pleural effusion, or LPE, patients. We must successfully complete Phase 3 clinical trials prior to obtaining FDA approval of LTI-03 or LTI-01 for commercial use.

For each product candidate, we must demonstrate its safety and efficacy in humans, obtain regulatory approval in one or more jurisdictions, obtain manufacturing supply, capacity and expertise, and substantially invest in marketing efforts before we are able to generate any revenue from such product candidate.

Before we can generate any revenue from sales of our clinical product candidates, LTI-03 and LTI-01, or any other product candidates, we must perform additional clinical studies and/or preclinical development, and complete regulatory review and approval in one or more jurisdictions. In addition, if one or more of our product candidates is approved, we must ensure sufficient commercial manufacturing capacity and conduct and finance significant marketing efforts in connection with any commercial launch. These efforts will require substantial investment, and we may not have the financial resources to continue development of our product candidates.

We may experience setbacks that could delay or prevent regulatory approval of, or our ability to commercialize, our product candidates, including, but not limited to:

negative or inconclusive results from our clinical trials or preclinical studies or the clinical trials or preclinical studies of others for product candidates similar to ours, leading to a decision or requirement to conduct additional clinical trials or preclinical studies or to abandon a program;

drug-related side effects experienced by subjects in our clinical trials or by individuals using drugs or therapeutics similar to our product candidates;

delays in submitting Investigational New Drug applications, or INDs, or comparable foreign regulatory applications or delays or failure in obtaining the necessary approvals from regulators to commence a clinical trial, or a suspension or termination of a clinical trial once commenced;

conditions imposed by the FDA or comparable foreign authorities regarding the scope or design of our clinical trials or our drug development strategy;

delays in enrolling subjects in clinical trials;

high drop-out rates of subjects from clinical trials;

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inadequate or delayed supply or quality of product candidates or other materials necessary for the conduct of our clinical trials;

greater than anticipated clinical trial costs;

inability to compete with other therapies;

unfavorable FDA or other regulatory agency inspection and review of a clinical trial site;

failure of our third-party manufacturers, contractors or investigators to comply with regulatory requirements or otherwise meet their contractual obligations in a timely manner, or at all;

delays in obtaining any pre-market inspections required by the FDA or other regulatory agencies;

delays and changes in regulatory requirements, policy and guidelines, including the imposition of additional regulatory oversight around clinical testing generally or with respect to our technology in particular; or

varying interpretations of data by the FDA and similar foreign regulatory agencies.

We do not have complete control over many of these factors, including certain aspects of clinical development and the regulatory review process, potential threats to our intellectual property rights and our manufacturing, marketing, distribution and sales efforts or that of any future collaborator.

Our approach to drug research and development in the area of fibrotic diseases, with a focus on Cav1-related peptides, is unproven and may not result in marketable products.

Our approach is to develop targeted treatments for fibrosis with an initial focus on Cav1 biology and utilization of its caveolin scaffolding domain, or CSD, peptide region. However, to date, this mechanism has not been definitively proven to successfully treat fibrosis in patients. Utilizing a Cav1-related peptide to treat fibrosis is a novel approach in a rapidly developing field, and there can be no assurance that we will not experience unforeseen problems or delays in developing our product candidates, that such problems or delays will not result in unanticipated costs, or that any such development problems can be solved. Therefore, we may ultimately discover that our approach and any product candidates resulting therefrom do not possess properties required for therapeutic effectiveness. As a result, we may never succeed in developing a marketable product.

In addition, while we have utilized cell assays, precision cut lung slice models, and in vivo animal models to assess both anti-fibrotic and epithelium preservation functions of Cav1-related peptides, there can be no assurance that our technology will yield its intended benefits in human patients.

Risks Related to Our Financial Condition

We will require substantial additional capital to finance our operations. Our cash and cash equivalents are not sufficient to enable us to complete the development and commercialization of LTI-03 and LTI-01. If we are unable to raise such capital when needed, or on acceptable terms, we may be forced to delay, reduce and/or eliminate one or more of our clinical and research and development programs, future commercialization efforts or other operations.

Developing biopharmaceutical products, including conducting clinical trials and preclinical studies, is a very time-consuming, expensive and uncertain process that takes years to complete. Our operations have consumed substantial amounts of cash since inception. We expect our expenses to increase in connection with our ongoing activities, particularly as we conduct our planned clinical trials of LTI-03 and LTI-01 and any future product candidates that we may develop, seek regulatory approvals for our product candidates and to launch and commercialize any products for which we receive regulatory approval. Accordingly, we will need to obtain substantial additional funding in order to maintain our continuing operations. If we are unable to raise capital when needed or on acceptable terms, we may be forced to delay, reduce or eliminate one or more of our research and drug development programs or future commercialization efforts.

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As of December 31, 2023, we had approximately $17.3 million in cash and cash equivalents. Based on our current operating plan, we believe that existing cash and cash equivalents will be sufficient to fund our operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements into the fourth quarter of 2024. However, our future capital requirements and the period for which our existing resources will support our operations may vary significantly from what we expect, and we will in any event require additional capital in order to complete clinical development of any of our current programs. Our monthly spending levels will vary based on new and ongoing development and corporate activities. Because the length of time and activities associated with development of our product candidates is highly uncertain, we are unable to estimate the actual funds we will require for development, marketing and commercialization activities. Our future funding requirements, both near and long-term, will depend on many factors, including, but not limited to:

the initiation, progress, timing, costs and results of clinical trials and preclinical studies for our product candidates;

the clinical development plans we establish for these product candidates;

the timelines of our clinical trials and the overall costs to finish the clinical trials;

the number and characteristics of product candidates that we develop;

the outcome, timing and cost of meeting regulatory requirements established by the FDA, and other comparable foreign regulatory authorities;

whether we are able to enter into collaboration agreements and the terms of any such agreements;

the cost of filing, prosecuting, defending and enforcing our patent claims and other intellectual property rights;

the cost of defending intellectual property disputes, including patent infringement actions brought by third parties against us or our product candidates;

the effect of competing technological and market developments;

the cost and timing of completion of outsourced manufacturing activities; and

the cost of establishing sales, marketing and distribution capabilities for any product candidates for which we may receive regulatory approval in regions where we choose to commercialize our products on our own.

We do not have any committed external source of funds or other support for our development efforts and we cannot be certain that additional funding will be available on acceptable terms, or at all. Until we can generate sufficient revenue to finance our cash requirements, which we may never do, we expect to finance our future cash needs through a combination of public or private equity offerings, debt financings, collaborations, strategic alliances, licensing arrangements and other marketing or distribution arrangements. If we raise additional funds through public or private equity offerings, the terms of these securities may include liquidation or other preferences that adversely affect the rights of our common stockholders. Further, to the extent that we raise additional capital through the sale of common stock or securities convertible or exchangeable into common stock, your ownership interest will be diluted. In addition, any debt financing may subject us to fixed payment obligations and covenants limiting or restricting our ability to take specific actions, such as incurring additional debt, making capital expenditures or declaring dividends. If we raise additional capital through marketing and distribution arrangements or other collaborations, strategic alliances or licensing arrangements with third parties, we may have to relinquish certain valuable intellectual property or other rights to our product candidates, technologies, future revenue streams or research programs or grant licenses on terms that may not be favorable to us. We also may be required to seek collaborators for any of our 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. Any of the above events could significantly harm our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operations and cause the price of our common stock to decline.

There is no guarantee that our acquisition of Lung and its business will increase stockholder value in our company or that we will be able to realize the anticipated benefits of the acquisition.

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In October 2023, we acquired Lung and shifted our disease focus from chemoprotection to orphan pulmonary and fibrosis indications. We cannot guarantee that implementing the Lung Acquisition and related transactions and the shift in our disease focus will not impair stockholder value or otherwise adversely affect our business or that we will be able to realize the anticipated benefits of the acquisition. The Lung Acquisition poses significant integration challenges between our business and management teams which could result in management and business disruptions, any of which could harm our results of operation, business prospects, and impair the value of such acquisition to our stockholders.

Raising additional capital may cause dilution to our stockholders, restrict our operations or require us to relinquish rights to LTI-03, LTI-01 or other product candidates.

We expect our expenses to increase as we will incur significant research and development expenses as we continue our ongoing clinical trial of LTI-03 in patients with IPF, continue our non-clinical research with our product candidates, initiate additional clinical trials of our product candidates and pursue later stages of clinical development of our product candidates. Until such time, if ever, as we can generate substantial revenues from the sale of our products, we expect to finance our cash needs through a combination of equity offerings, debt financings, collaborations, strategic alliances and/or licensing arrangements. To the extent that we raise additional capital through the sale of equity or convertible debt securities, the ownership interest of our then existing stockholders may be diluted, and the terms of these securities could include liquidation or other preferences and anti-dilution protections that could adversely affect the rights of our common stockholders. In addition, debt financing, if available, would result in fixed payment obligations and may involve agreements that include restrictive covenants that limit our ability to take specific actions, such as incurring additional debt, making capital expenditures, creating liens, redeeming stock or declaring dividends, that could adversely impact our ability to conduct our business. Securing financing may also require a substantial amount of time and attention from our management team and could divert a disproportionate amount of their attention away from day-to-day activities, which may adversely affect our management’s ability to oversee the development of our product candidates.

We may seek one or more collaborators for future development of our product candidates for one or more indications. However, we may not be able to enter into such collaborations on suitable terms, on a timely basis, or at all. Even if we are able to raise additional funds through collaborations, strategic alliances or licensing arrangements with third parties, we may have to relinquish valuable rights to our technology, future revenue streams or product candidates or grant licenses on terms that may not be favorable to us.

If we are unable to raise additional funds when needed, we may be required to delay, reduce and/or eliminate our product development or future commercialization efforts, or grant rights to develop and market product candidates that we might otherwise prefer to develop and market ourselves.

We have a limited operating history and no products approved for commercial sale, which may make it difficult to evaluate our prospects and likelihood of success.

We are a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company with a limited operating history. We have no products approved for commercial sale and have not generated any revenue from product sales. Our operations to date have been limited to organizing and staffing our company, business planning, raising capital, establishing our intellectual property portfolio and performing clinical trials and research and development of our product candidates. Our approach to the research and development of product candidates is unproven, and we do not know whether we will be able to develop any products of commercial value. In addition, one clinical product candidate, LTI-03, is in early clinical development and a second clinical product candidate, LTI-01, is in mid-stage clinical development. Both programs will require substantial additional development and clinical research time and resources before we would be able to apply for or receive regulatory approvals and begin generating revenue from product sales. We have not yet demonstrated the ability to progress any product candidate through clinical trials to regulatory approval. We are still in mid-stage and early clinical development and may be unable to obtain regulatory approval, manufacture a commercial scale product, or arrange for a third party to do so on our behalf, or conduct sales and marketing activities necessary for successful product commercialization. Investment in biopharmaceutical product development is highly speculative because it entails substantial upfront capital expenditures and significant risk that any potential product candidate will fail to demonstrate adequate efficacy or an acceptable safety profile, gain regulatory approval and become commercially viable. In addition, as a business with a limited operating history, we may encounter unforeseen

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expenses, difficulties, complications, delays and other known and unknown factors and risks frequently experienced by early-stage biopharmaceutical companies in rapidly evolving fields. Consequently, we have no meaningful history of operations upon which to evaluate our business, and predictions about our future success or viability may not be as accurate as they could be if we had a longer operating history or a history of successfully developing and commercializing drug products.

We have incurred significant net losses since inception and we expect to continue to incur significant net losses for the foreseeable future and do not expect to achieve or maintain profitability. Even if we are able to develop and commercialize our product candidates, we may never generate revenues that are significant or large enough to achieve profitability.

We have incurred significant losses since our inception and have financed our operations principally through equity financings. We continue to incur significant research and development and other expenses related to our ongoing operations. For the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, we reported an operating loss of $16.3 million and $27.6 million, respectively. As of December 31, 2023, we had an accumulated deficit of $288.5 million. We have devoted substantially all of our resources and efforts to organizing and staffing our company, business planning, raising capital, acquiring and discovering development programs, securing intellectual property rights and research and development and we expect that it will be several years, if ever, before we generate revenue from product sales. Even if we receive marketing approval for and commercialize one or more of our product candidates, we expect that we will continue to incur substantial research and development and other expenses in order to develop and market additional potential product candidates. We expect to continue to incur significant losses for the foreseeable future, and we anticipate that our expenses will increase substantially if, and as, we:

advance the development of our clinical product candidates, LTI-03 and LTI-01, and our other product candidates, through clinical development, and, if successful, later-stage clinical trials;

advance our preclinical development programs into clinical development;

research and develop new product candidates;

experience delays or interruptions to clinical trials, preclinical studies, our receipt of materials and services from our third-party service providers on whom we rely, or our supply chain;

seek regulatory approvals for any product candidates that successfully complete clinical trials;

commercialize our product candidates and any future product candidates, if approved;

increase the amount of research and development activities to identify and develop product candidates;

hire additional clinical, chemistry, manufacturing, controls, or CMC, quality control, scientific and management personnel and expand our operational, financial and management systems and personnel, including personnel to support our clinical development and manufacturing efforts and our operations as a public company;

establish a sales, marketing, medical affairs and distribution infrastructure to commercialize any products for which we may obtain marketing approval and intend to commercialize on our own or jointly with third parties;

maintain, expand and protect our intellectual property portfolio; and

invest in or in-license other technologies or product candidates.

To become and remain profitable, we must develop and eventually commercialize products with significant market potential. This will require us to be successful in a range of challenging activities, including completing clinical trials and preclinical studies, obtaining marketing approval for product candidates, manufacturing, marketing and selling products for which we may obtain marketing approval and satisfying any post-marketing requirements. We may never succeed in any or all of these activities and, even if we do, we may never generate revenue that is significant enough to achieve profitability. If we do achieve profitability, we may not be able to sustain or increase profitability on a quarterly or annual basis. Our failure to become and remain profitable would decrease the value of our company

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and could impair our ability to raise capital, maintain our research and development efforts, expand our business or continue our operations.

We hold a portion of our cash and cash equivalents that we use to meet our working capital and operating expense needs in deposit accounts that could be adversely affected if the financial institutions holding such funds fail.

We hold a portion of cash and cash equivalents that we use to meet our working capital and operating expense needs in deposit accounts. The balance held in these accounts may exceed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, standard deposit insurance limit of $250,000. If a financial institution in which we hold such funds fails or is subject to significant adverse conditions in the financial or credit markets, we could be subject to a risk of loss of all or a portion of such uninsured funds or be subject to a delay in accessing all or a portion of such uninsured funds. Any such loss or lack of access to these funds could adversely impact our short term liquidity and ability to meet our operating expense obligations.

For example, on March 10, 2023, Silicon Valley Bank, or SVB, and Signature Bank, were closed by state regulators and the FDIC was appointed receiver for each bank. The FDIC created successor bridge banks and all deposits of SVB and Signature Bank were transferred to the bridge banks under a systemic risk exception approved by the United States Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC. If financial institutions in which we hold funds for working capital and operating expenses were to fail, we cannot provide any assurances that such governmental agencies would take action to protect our uninsured deposits in a similar manner.

We also maintain investment accounts in which we hold our investments and, if access to the funds we use for working capital and operating expenses is impaired, we may not be able to open new operating accounts or to sell investments or transfer funds from our investment accounts to new operating accounts on a timely basis sufficient to meet our operating expense obligations.

We have identified conditions that raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern and if we are unable to continue as a going concern, we may have to liquidate, dissolve or seek bankruptcy protection.

We do not believe that our cash and cash equivalents as of the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K will be sufficient to enable us to fund our current operations for at least twelve months from the date of issuance of the financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and have therefore concluded that this circumstance raises substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern. See Note 1 to our consolidated financial statements appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information on our assessment. We expect that we will continue to generate substantial operating losses for the foreseeable future until we complete development and approval of our product candidates.

Our consolidated financial statements have been prepared assuming that we will continue to operate as a going concern, which contemplates the continuity of operations, realization of assets and the satisfaction of liabilities in the ordinary course of business. After the Lung Acquisition, we believe that, based on our current operating plan, our cash and cash equivalents as of December 31, 2023, will enable us to fund our operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements into the fourth quarter of 2024 following the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Since our inception, we have not generated any revenue from product sales and have never generated an operating profit. We have incurred significant losses on an aggregate basis. These losses have resulted primarily from costs incurred in connection with research and development activities, licensing and patent investment and general and administrative costs associated with our operations. In February 2023, we discontinued development of ALRN-6924 which substantially reduced our operating expenses. Notwithstanding these events, we expect to continue to incur operating losses for the foreseeable future unless we complete development and approval of our product candidates. We will continue to fund our operations primarily through utilization of our current financial resources and additional raises of capital.

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These conditions raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern as of the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. We plan to address these conditions by raising funds from our current investors, potential outside investors and other funding sources. However, there is no assurance that such funding will be available to us, will be obtained on terms favorable to us or will provide us with sufficient funds to meet our objectives. The reaction of investors to the inclusion of a going concern statement by our auditors and our potential inability to continue as a going concern may materially adversely affect our share price and our ability to raise new capital or enter into partnerships. Our funding estimates are based on assumptions that may prove to be wrong, and we could use our available capital resources sooner than we currently expect. Our future viability is dependent on our ability to raise additional capital, enter into a financing, consummate a successful acquisition, merger, business combination, or a sale of assets or other transaction. If we become unable to continue as a going concern, we may have to:

significantly delay, scale back, or discontinue the development or commercialization of our product candidates;

seek strategic partnerships, or amend existing partnerships, for research and development programs at an earlier stage than otherwise would be desirable or that we otherwise would have sought to develop independently, or on terms that are less favorable than might otherwise be available in the future;

dispose of technology assets, or relinquish or license on unfavorable terms, our rights to technologies or any of our product candidates that we otherwise would seek to develop or commercialize ourselves;

liquidate our assets and the values we receive for our assets in liquidation or dissolution could be significantly lower than the values reflected in our consolidated financial statements; or

file for bankruptcy or cease operations altogether (and face any related legal proceedings).

Any of these events could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and prospects.

We have identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting and may identify additional material weaknesses in the future or fail to maintain an effective system of internal control over financial reporting, which may result in material misstatements of our financial statements or cause us to fail to meet our periodic reporting obligations.

Effective internal control over financial reporting is necessary for us to provide reliable financial reports and, together with adequate disclosure controls and procedures, are designed to prevent fraud. Any failure to implement required new or improved controls, or difficulties encountered in their implementation could cause us to fail to meet our reporting obligations. In addition, any testing by us conducted in connection with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or any subsequent testing by our independent registered public accounting firm, may reveal deficiencies in our internal control over financial reporting that are deemed to be material weaknesses or that may require prospective or retroactive changes to our financial statements or identify other areas for further attention or improvement. An ineffective system of internal control could also cause investors to lose confidence in our reported financial information, which could have a negative effect on the trading price of our stock.

We have identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2023. A material weakness is a deficiency, or combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting such that there is a possibility that a material misstatement of our financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. The material weaknesses primarily related to the accounting for the business combination with Lung Therapeutics, Inc., specifically the (i) lack of sufficient accounting and supervisory personnel to maintain appropriate segregation of duties relating to user access of the financial accounting system and who have the appropriate level of technical accounting experience and training, (ii) lack of evidence over reviews of account reconciliations and supporting schedules, and (iii) lack of adequate procedures and controls to ensure that accurate financial statements could have been prepared and reviewed on a timely basis for annual reporting purposes. Refer to Part II, Item 9A for additional information regarding the material weaknesses.

We are implementing procedures to remediate these material weaknesses, however, we cannot assure you that these or other measures will fully remediate the material weaknesses in a timely manner or prevent future material weaknesses from occurring.

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If we identify material weaknesses in the future, and we are unable to remediate any such material weaknesses, our reputation, financial reporting and condition, and operating results could suffer. Moreover, we could become subject to investigations by regulatory authorities, which could require additional financial and management resources.

We are required to disclose changes made in our internal control procedures on a quarterly basis. Our management is required to assess the effectiveness of these controls annually. Pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, or Section 404, we are required to furnish a report by our management on our internal control over financial reporting. However, for so long as we are neither a “large accelerated filer” nor an “accelerated filer”, we will not be required to include an attestation report on internal control over financial reporting issued by our independent registered public accounting firm. An independent assessment of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting could detect additional material weaknesses that our management’s assessment might not detect. Undetected material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting could lead to restatements of our financial statements and require us to incur the expense of remediation.

During the course of our review and testing, we may identify additional material weaknesses and be unable to remediate them before we must provide the required reports. Furthermore, if we identify any material weaknesses, we may not detect errors on a timely basis and our financial statements may be materially misstated.

The amount of our future losses is uncertain and our quarterly operating results may fluctuate significantly or may fall below the expectations of investors or securities analysts, each of which may cause our stock price to fluctuate or decline.

Our quarterly and annual operating results may fluctuate significantly in the future due to a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control and may be difficult to predict, including the following:

the timing and success or failure of clinical trials for our product candidates or competing product candidates, or any other change in the competitive landscape of our industry, including consolidation among our competitors or partners;

our ability to successfully recruit and retain subjects for clinical trials, and any delays caused by difficulties in such efforts;

our ability to obtain marketing approval for our product candidates, and the timing and scope of any such approvals we may receive;

the timing and cost of, and level of investment in, research and development activities relating to our product candidates, which may change from time to time;

the cost and timing of manufacturing our product candidates, which may vary depending on the quantity of production and the terms of our agreements with manufacturers;

our ability to attract, hire and retain qualified personnel;

expenditures that we will or may incur to develop additional product candidates;

the level of demand for our product candidates should they receive approval, which may vary significantly;

the risk/benefit profile, cost and reimbursement policies with respect to our product candidates, if approved, and existing and potential future therapeutics that compete with our product candidates;

general market conditions or extraordinary external events, such as recessions or pandemics;

the changing and volatile U.S. and global economic environments; and

future accounting pronouncements or changes in our accounting policies.

The cumulative effects of these factors could result in large fluctuations and unpredictability in our quarterly and annual operating results. As a result, comparing our operating results on a period-to-period basis may not be meaningful. This variability and unpredictability could also result in our failing to meet the expectations of industry or financial analysts or investors for any period. If our revenue or operating results fall below the expectations of

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analysts or investors or below any forecasts we may provide to the market, or if the forecasts we provide to the market are below the expectations of analysts or investors, the price of our common stock could decline substantially. Such a stock price decline could occur even when we have met any previously publicly stated guidance we may provide.

Risks Related to the Discovery, Development and Commercialization of Product Candidates

The outcome of preclinical testing and early clinical trials may not be predictive of the success of later clinical trials, interim results of a clinical trial, do not necessarily predict final results and the results of our clinical trials may not satisfy the requirements of the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities.

We currently have no products approved for sale and we cannot guarantee that we will ever have marketable products. Clinical failure can occur at any stage of clinical development. Clinical trials may produce negative or inconclusive results, and we or any future collaborators may decide, or regulatory authorities may require us, to conduct additional clinical trials or nonclinical studies. We will be required to demonstrate with substantial evidence through well-controlled, adequate clinical trials that our product candidates are safe and effective for use in a diverse population before we can seek marketing approvals for their commercial sale. Success in preclinical studies and early-stage clinical trials does not mean that future larger registration clinical trials will be successful. This is because product candidates in later-stage clinical trials may fail to demonstrate sufficient safety and efficacy to the satisfaction of the FDA and comparable foreign regulatory authorities despite having progressed through nonclinical studies and early-stage clinical trials.

From time to time, we may publish or report topline, interim or preliminary data from our clinical trials. We make assumptions, estimates, calculations, and conclusions as part of our analyses of data, and we may not have received or had the opportunity to evaluate all data fully and carefully. As a result, topline, interim or preliminary data from clinical trials that we may conduct may not be indicative of the final results of such trials and are subject to the risk that one or more of the clinical outcomes may materially change as subject enrollment continues and more data from the trials become available. Topline, interim or preliminary data also remain subject to audit and verification procedures that may result in the final data being materially different from the interim or preliminary data. As a result, topline, interim or preliminary data should be viewed with caution until the final data are available.

We are conducting and may in the future choose to conduct clinical trials for current or future product candidates outside of the U.S., and the FDA and comparable foreign regulatory authorities may not accept data from such trials.

We are conducting and may in the future choose to conduct one or more clinical trials outside the U.S. The acceptance of study data from clinical trials conducted outside the U.S. or another jurisdiction by the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authority may be subject to certain conditions or may not be accepted at all. There can be no assurance that the FDA or any comparable foreign regulatory authority will accept data from trials conducted outside of the U.S. or the applicable jurisdiction. If the FDA or any comparable foreign regulatory authority does not accept such data, it would result in the need for additional trials, which could be costly and time-consuming, and which may result in current or future product candidates that we may develop being delayed for development or regulatory authorization or not receiving approval for commercialization in the applicable jurisdiction.

We may incur additional costs or experience delays in completing, or ultimately be unable to complete, the development and commercialization of LTI-03, LTI-01 or any other product candidates.

We may experience delays in initiating or completing clinical trials. We also may experience numerous unforeseen events during, or as a result of, any future clinical trials that could delay or prevent our ability to receive marketing approval or commercialize LTI-03, LTI-01 or any other product candidates, including, but not limited to:

regulators or institutional review boards, or IRBs, or ethics committees may not authorize us or our investigators to commence a clinical trial or conduct a clinical trial at a prospective trial site;

the FDA or other comparable regulatory authorities may disagree with our clinical trial design, including with respect to dosing levels administered in our planned clinical trials, which may delay or prevent us from initiating our clinical trials with our originally intended trial design;

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we may experience delays in reaching, or we may fail to reach, agreement on acceptable terms with prospective trial sites and prospective contract research organizations, or CROs, which can be subject to extensive negotiation and may vary significantly among different CROs and trial sites;

the number of subjects required for clinical trials of any product candidates may be larger than we anticipate or patient recruitment and enrollment may be slow or subjects may drop out of these clinical trials or fail to return for post-treatment follow-up at a higher rate than we anticipate;

our third-party contractors may fail to comply with regulatory requirements or meet their contractual obligations to us in a timely manner, or at all, or may deviate from the clinical trial protocol or drop out of the trial, which may require that we add new clinical trial sites or investigators;

additional delays and interruptions to our clinical trials could extend the duration of the trials and increase the overall costs to finish the trials as our fixed costs are not substantially reduced during delays;

we may elect to, or regulators, IRBs, Data Safety Monitoring Boards, or DSMBs, or ethics committees may require that we or our investigators, suspend or terminate clinical research or trials for various reasons, including noncompliance with regulatory requirements or a finding that the participants are being exposed to unacceptable health risks;

we may not have the financial resources available to begin and complete the planned trials, or the cost of clinical trials of any product candidates may be greater than we anticipate;

the supply or quality of our product candidates or other materials necessary to conduct clinical trials of our product candidates may be insufficient or inadequate to initiate or complete a given clinical trial; and

the FDA or other comparable foreign regulatory authorities may require us to submit additional data such as long-term toxicology studies or impose other requirements before permitting us to initiate a clinical trial.

Our product development costs will increase if we experience additional delays in clinical testing or in 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. If we do not achieve our product development goals in the time frames we announce and expect, the approval and commercialization of our product candidates may be delayed or prevented entirely. 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.

Our ongoing and future clinical trials may reveal significant adverse events or unexpected drug-drug interactions not seen in our preclinical studies or earlier clinical studies and may result in a safety profile that could delay or prevent regulatory approval or market acceptance of any of our product candidates.

We completed a healthy normal volunteer Phase 1a clinical trial of our clinical product candidate LTI-03. During our LTI-03 Phase 1a clinical trial, subjects experienced mild Treatment Emergent Adverse Events, or TEAEs, such as dry cough, as well as moderate or even severe TEAEs, such as wheezing, chest tightness, or decline in the amount of air a person can force from their lungs in one second. While no subject experienced a Serious Adverse Event, or SAE, it is possible that subjects in future clinical studies could develop TEAEs such as the ones experienced in the Phase 1a clinical trial, and it is possible that such the number and/or severity of such TEAEs could result in a pause or cessation of the clinical trial. We have also completed Phase 1b and Phase 2a clinical trials of our clinical product candidate LTI-01 in LPE patients. In the Phase 2a trial, four subjects experienced TEAEs, including 1 mild, 2 moderate, and 1 severe TEAE. There were no SAEs reported. The product candidate was concluded to be generally well-tolerated across all doses in trial participants.

If significant adverse events or other side effects are observed in any of our ongoing or future clinical trials, whether or not related to our product candidates, we may have difficulty recruiting patients to our clinical trials, patients may drop out of our trials, or we may be required to abandon the trials or our development efforts altogether

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or may result in safety profile that could delay or prevent regulatory approval or market acceptance of any of our product candidates.

Clinical development involves a lengthy, complex and expensive process, with an uncertain outcome.

To obtain the requisite regulatory approvals to commercialize any product candidates, we must demonstrate through extensive preclinical studies and clinical trials that our product candidates are safe and effective in humans. Clinical testing is expensive and can take many years to complete, and its outcome is inherently uncertain. In particular, the general approach for FDA approval of a new drug is dispositive data from two well-controlled, Phase 3 clinical trials of the relevant drug in the relevant patient population. Phase 3 clinical trials typically involve many patients, have significant costs and can take years to complete. A product candidate can fail at any stage of testing, even after observing promising signals of activity in earlier preclinical studies or clinical trials. The results of preclinical studies and early clinical trials of our product candidates may not be predictive of the results of later-stage clinical trials. In addition, initial success in clinical trials may not be indicative of results obtained when such trials are completed. There is typically an extremely high rate of attrition of candidate therapies from failure of these candidates proceeding through clinical trials. Product candidates in later stages of clinical trials may fail to show the desired safety and efficacy profile despite having progressed through preclinical studies and previous clinical trials. A number of companies in the biopharmaceutical industry have suffered significant setbacks in advanced clinical trials due to lack of efficacy or unacceptable safety issues, notwithstanding promising results in earlier trials. Most product candidates that commence clinical trials are never approved as new drugs and there can be no assurance that any of our future clinical trials will ultimately be successful or support further clinical development of LTI-03 and LTI-01 or any of our other product candidates. Product candidates that appear promising in the early phases of development may fail to reach the market for several reasons, including, but not limited to:

clinical trials or preclinical studies may show the product candidates to be less effective than expected (e.g., a clinical trial could fail to meet its primary endpoint(s)) or to have unacceptable side effects or toxicities;

failure to establish clinical endpoints that applicable regulatory authorities would consider clinically meaningful;

failure to receive the necessary regulatory approvals;

failure of contract manufacturers to comply with regulatory requirements;

manufacturing costs, formulation issues, pricing or reimbursement issues, or other factors that make a product candidate uneconomical; and

the proprietary rights of others and their competing products and technologies that may prevent one of our product candidates from being commercialized.

In addition, 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 candidates that have performed satisfactorily in clinical trials have nonetheless failed to obtain marketing approval of their products. Some of our future trials may be open label studies, where both the patient and investigator know whether patient is receiving the investigational product candidate or either an existing approved drug or placebo. Most typically, open label clinical trials test only the investigational product candidates and sometimes do so at different dose levels. Open label clinical trials are subject to various limitations that may exaggerate any therapeutic effect as patients in open label clinical trials are aware when they are receiving treatment. In addition, open label clinical trials may be subject to an “investigator bias” where those assessing and reviewing the physiological outcomes of the clinical trials are aware of which patients have received treatment and may interpret the information of the treated group more favorably given this knowledge. Therefore, it is possible that positive results observed in open label trials will not be replicated in later placebo-controlled trials.

In addition, the standards that the FDA and comparable foreign regulatory authorities use when regulating us require judgment and can change, which makes it difficult to predict with certainty how they will be applied. Any analysis we perform of data from preclinical and clinical activities is subject to confirmation and interpretation by regulatory authorities, which could delay, limit or prevent regulatory approval. We may also encounter unexpected

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delays or increased costs due to new government regulations. Examples of such regulations include future legislation or administrative action, or changes in FDA policy during the period of product development and FDA regulatory review. It is impossible to predict whether legislative changes will be enacted, or whether the FDA or foreign regulations, guidance or interpretations will be changed, or what the impact of such changes, if any, may be. The FDA also requires a panel of experts, referred to as an Advisory Committee, to deliberate on the adequacy of the safety and efficacy data to support product candidate approval. The opinion of the Advisory Committee, although not binding, may have a significant impact on our ability to obtain approval of any product candidates that we develop.

If we seek to conduct clinical trials in foreign countries or pursue marketing approvals in foreign jurisdictions, we must comply with numerous foreign regulatory requirements governing, among other things, the ethical conduct of clinical trials, manufacturing and marketing authorization, pricing and third-party reimbursement. The foreign regulatory approval process varies among countries and may include all of the risks associated with FDA approval described above as well as risks attributable to the satisfaction of local regulations in foreign jurisdictions. Moreover, the time required to obtain approval may differ from that required to obtain FDA approval. Approval by the FDA does not ensure approval by regulatory authorities outside the U.S. and vice versa.

Successful completion of clinical trials is a prerequisite to submitting a marketing application to the FDA and similar marketing applications to comparable foreign regulatory authorities, for each product candidate and, consequently, the ultimate approval and commercial marketing of any product candidates. We may experience negative or inconclusive results, which may result in our deciding, or our being required by regulators, to conduct additional clinical studies or trials or abandon some or all of our product development programs, which could have a material adverse effect on our business.

Studies involving human tissue samples may also be subject to institutional and government human subject privacy policies that may vary by territory. We or our partners which use human tissue samples or conduct tissue and/or animal studies on our behalf, may be found to be in violation of one or more of these regulations or policies and may be subject to closure, censure or other penalties. In some cases, these penalties could materially impact the performance, availability, or validity of studies conducted by us or on our behalf. Even in the absence of violations resulting in penalties, regulatory and other authorities may refuse to authorize the conduct or to accept the results of studies for regulatory or ethical reasons.

If we encounter difficulties enrolling and retaining patients in our clinical trials, our clinical development activities could be delayed or otherwise adversely affected.

We may experience difficulties in patient enrollment in our clinical trials for a variety of reasons. The timely completion of clinical trials in accordance with their protocols depends, among other things, on our ability to enroll a sufficient number of patients who remain in the trial until its conclusion. The enrollment of patients depends on many factors, including, but not limited to:

the patient eligibility and exclusion criteria defined in the protocol;

the size of the patient population required for analysis of the trial’s primary endpoints and the process for identifying patients;

the willingness or availability of patients to participate in our trials;

the proximity of patients to trial sites;

the design of the trial;

our ability to recruit clinical trial investigators with the appropriate competencies and experience;

clinicians’ and patients’ perceptions as to the potential advantages and risks of the product candidate being studied in relation to other available therapies, including any new products that may be approved for the indications we are investigating;

the availability of competing commercially available therapies and other competing product candidates’ clinical trials;

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our ability to obtain and maintain patient informed consents; and

the risk that patients enrolled in clinical trials will drop out of the trials or are discontinued from trials at the recommendation of the principal investigator before completion.

For example, we are developing LTI-03 for the treatment of IPF, which is an orphan indication. In the U.S., IPF is estimated to affect approximately 100,000 people. As a result, we may encounter difficulties enrolling subjects in our clinical trials of LTI-03 due, in part, to the small size of this patient population. In addition, our clinical trials could compete with other clinical trials for product candidates that are in the same therapeutic areas as our product candidates, and this competition will reduce the number and types of patients available to us, because some patients who might have opted to enroll in our trials may instead opt to enroll in a trial being conducted by one of our competitors. Since the number of qualified clinical investigators is limited, it is possible that we would conduct some of our clinical trials at the same clinical trial sites that a competitor uses, which would reduce the number of patients who are available for our clinical trials in such clinical trial site. Certain of our planned clinical trials may also involve invasive procedures such as bronchoscopy and broncho-alveolar lavage procedure, which may lead some patients to drop out of trials to avoid these follow-up procedures. In addition, patients participating in our clinical trials may drop out before completion of the trial or experience adverse medical events unrelated to our products.

If approved, our product candidates that are regulated as biologics may face competition from biosimilars approved through an abbreviated regulatory pathway.

The Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009, or BPCIA, was enacted as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or the ACA, to establish an abbreviated pathway for the biosimilar and interchangeable 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, a reference biological product is granted 12 years of data exclusivity from the time of first licensure of the product, and the FDA will not accept an application for a biosimilar or interchangeable product based on the reference biological product until four years after the date of first licensure of the reference product. In addition, the approval of a biosimilar product may not be made effective by the FDA until 12 years from the date on which the reference product was first licensed. During this 12-year period of exclusivity, another company may still develop and receive approval of a competing biologic, so long as their biologics license application, or BLA, does not rely on the reference product, sponsor’s data or submit the application as a biosimilar application. The law is complex and is still being interpreted and implemented by the FDA. As a result, the law’s ultimate impact, implementation, and meaning are subject to uncertainty, and any new policies or processes adopted by the FDA could have a material adverse effect on the future commercial prospects for our biological products.

We believe that any of the product candidates we develop that are approved in the U.S. as a biological product under a BLA may qualify for the 12-year period of exclusivity. However, there is a risk that the FDA may not grant exclusivity, this exclusivity could be shortened due to congressional action or otherwise undermined by a competitor, or that the FDA will not consider the subject product candidates to be reference products for competing products, potentially creating the opportunity for biosimilar competition sooner than anticipated. Moreover, the extent to which a 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. The approval of a biosimilar of our product candidates could have a material adverse impact on our business due to increased competition and pricing pressure.

Although we have received U.S. Orphan Drug Designation for LTI-03 for IPF and U.S. and European Union, or EU, Orphan Drug Designation for LTI-01 for pleural empyema, we may be unable to obtain and maintain Orphan Drug Designation for our other product candidates and, even if we obtain such designation, we may not be able to realize the benefits of such designation, including potential marketing exclusivity of our product candidates, if approved.

Regulatory authorities in some jurisdictions, including the U.S. and other major markets, may designate drugs intended to treat conditions or diseases affecting relatively small patient populations as orphan drugs. Under the Orphan Drug Act of 1983, the FDA may designate a product candidate as an orphan drug if it is intended to treat a rare disease or condition, which is generally defined as having a patient population of fewer than 200,000 individuals

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in the U.S. or a patient population greater than 200,000 in the U.S. where there is no reasonable expectation that the cost of developing the drug will be recovered from sales in the U.S.

Regulation (EC) No. 141/2000 specifies the requirements for designation as an orphan drug at the EU level. The medicinal product must be intended (i) for the treatment of a life-threatening or chronically debilitating disease affecting no more than five in 10,000 individuals in the EU, or (ii) for the treatment of a correspondingly serious condition described in the Regulation, and in both cases, without additional incentives, the marketing of the medicinal product must be unlikely to generate sufficient profit to justify the necessary investment. If one of the two alternatives applies, it is assumed that there is no other satisfactory treatment method or, if such a method exists, that the new product has a significant therapeutic benefit compared to it.

Although we have received U.S. Orphan Drug Designation for LTI-03 for IPF and U.S. and EU Orphan Drug Designation for LTI-01 for pleural empyema, we have not received U.S. Orphan Drug Designation for LTI-01 for LPE, which is the first indication that we are pursuing for LTI-01. Furthermore, the designation of any of our product candidates as an orphan drug does not mean that any regulatory agency will accelerate regulatory review of, or ultimately approve, that product candidate, nor does it limit the ability of any regulatory agency to grant Orphan Drug Designation to product candidates of other companies that treat the same indications as our product candidates.

Generally, if a product candidate with an Orphan Drug Designation in the U.S. receives the first marketing approval for the indication for which it has such designation, the product is entitled to a period of marketing exclusivity, which precludes FDA from approving another marketing application for a product that constitutes the same drug treating the same indication for that marketing exclusivity period, except in limited circumstances. Similar exclusivity rights apply under EU law if a product candidate with Orphan Drug Designation is authorized in the EU. Designation does not mean approval. Even if we obtain marketing authorization, the FDA may choose not to grant exclusivity. In the EU, market exclusivity only applies if the criteria for orphan drug designation still subsist at the time when the marketing authorization is granted. The applicable period is seven years in the U.S. and ten years in the EU. Under EU law, the period of exclusivity may be reduced to six years if it is established, at the end of the fifth year, that the criteria for orphan drug designation are no longer met. In the U.S., orphan drug exclusivity may be revoked if the FDA determines that the request for designation was materially defective or if the manufacturer is unable to assure sufficient quantity of the product to meet the needs of patients with the rare disease or condition.

Under EU law, the protection of an orphan medicinal product does not only apply to medicinal products with the same active substance, but extends to all “similar medicinal products”. This is determined by the molecular structure, the mechanism of action and the approved therapeutic indication. Once an orphan medicinal product has been authorized, the European Commission, the EMA and the national regulatory authorities may not, for a period of ten years from the date of authorization, in respect of such similar medicinal products for the same therapeutic indication: accept another application for authorization, grant a corresponding authorization, or grant an application to extend an existing authorization. Thus, not only market exclusivity is conferred, but also additional protection by prohibiting any application and/or granting of authorization for a similar medicinal product during this 10-year period.

Yet, even if we obtain orphan drug exclusivity for a product candidate, that exclusivity may not effectively protect the product candidate from competition because different drugs can be approved for the same condition or the FDA or the European Commission can approve a similar drug for a different indication. Even after an orphan drug is approved, the FDA may subsequently approve another drug for the same condition if the FDA concludes that the latter drug is not the same drug or is clinically superior in that it is shown to be safer, more effective, or makes a major contribution to patient care. In the EU, another similar product in the same indication may be approved if the holder of the orphan designation is unable to supply sufficient quantities of the product or if the second applicant can establish clinical superiority of its product.

On April 26, 2023, the European Commission presented a draft for a comprehensive reform of the pharmaceutical legislation. The so-called “EU pharmaceutical package” provides, among others, for a new regulation to replace Regulation (EC) No. 141/2000 on orphan medicinal products. The draft regulation introduces the possibility of establishing new designation criteria by the EMA and the restriction of designation as an orphan drug to generally seven years. The draft regulation also provides for more flexible rules on the duration of market exclusivity, including: ten years of market exclusivity for orphan drugs in the case of “high unmet medical need”, five years for orphan drugs, approved by a bibliographic marketing authorization and nine years in all other cases with the possibility of extension

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in the case of market access in all Member States (another year) or development of new therapeutic indications for an already authorized orphan medicinal product (up to two years). Market exclusivity can thus add up to a maximum of thirteen years, whereas today it is still capped at ten years. It should be noted that the market exclusivity right of the orphan medicinal product does not prevent the submission, validation and assessment of an application for marketing authorization of a similar medicinal product, including generics and biosimilars, if the remaining duration of the market exclusivity right is less than two years. The EU pharmaceutical package is still at an early stage of the legislative process. It may still undergo substantial changes and is expected to turn into binding law in several years’ time.

Changes in methods of product candidate manufacturing or formulation may result in additional costs or delay.

As product candidates progress through preclinical to later-stage clinical trials to marketing approval and commercialization, it is common that various aspects of the development program, such as manufacturing methods and formulation, are altered along the way in an effort to optimize yield, manufacturing batch size, minimize costs and achieve consistent quality and results. Such changes carry the risk that they will not achieve these intended objectives. Any of these changes could cause our product candidates to perform differently and affect the results of planned clinical trials or other future clinical trials conducted with the altered materials. This could delay completion of clinical trials, require the conduct of bridging clinical trials or the repetition of one or more clinical trials, increase clinical trial costs, delay approval of our product candidates and jeopardize our ability to commercialize our product candidates and generate revenue.

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 good manufacturing practices, lot consistency and timely availability of raw materials. Even if we obtain marketing approval for any of our product candidates, there is no assurance that our manufacturers will be able to manufacture the approved product to specifications acceptable to the FDA or other comparable foreign regulatory authorities, to produce it in sufficient quantities to meet the requirements for the potential commercial 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, our development and commercialization efforts would be impaired, which would have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and growth prospects.

Due to our limited resources and access to capital, we must make decisions on the allocation of resources to certain programs and product candidates; these decisions may prove to be wrong and may adversely affect our business.

We have limited financial and human resources and intend to initially focus on research programs and product candidates for a limited set of indications. As a result, we may forgo or delay pursuit of opportunities with other product candidates or for other indications that later prove to have greater commercial potential or a greater likelihood of success. This approach may cause us to commit significant resources to prepare for and conduct later-stage trials for one or more product candidates that subsequently fail earlier-stage clinical testing. Therefore, our resource allocation decisions may cause us to fail to capitalize on viable commercial products or profitable market opportunities, or expend resources on product candidates that are not viable.

There can be no assurance that we will ever be able to identify additional therapeutic opportunities for our product candidates or to develop suitable potential product candidates through internal research programs, which could materially adversely affect our future growth and prospects. We may focus our efforts and resources on potential product candidates or other potential programs that ultimately prove to be unsuccessful.

Mergers and acquisitions in the biopharmaceutical and biotechnology industries may result in even more resources being concentrated among a smaller number of our competitors. Smaller or early stage companies may also prove to be significant competitors, particularly through collaborative arrangements with large and established companies. These competitors also compete with us in recruiting and retaining qualified scientific and management personnel and establishing clinical trial sites and patient registration for clinical trials, as well as in acquiring technologies complementary to, or necessary for, our programs. Our commercial opportunity could be reduced or

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eliminated if our competitors develop and commercialize products that are safer, more effective, more convenient, or less expensive than any products that we may develop. Furthermore, products currently approved for other indications could be discovered to be effective treatments of IPF and LPE as well, which could give such products significant regulatory and market timing advantages over LTI-03 and LTI-01 or other product candidates that we may identify. Currently, off-label use of fibrinolytics is utilized in many hospitals for the treatment of LPE. Our competitors also may obtain FDA or other regulatory approval for their products more rapidly than we may obtain approval for ours, which could result in our competitors establishing a strong market position before we are able to enter the market. If competitors obtain patent protection or market exclusivity for their products before any of our products are approved, they could significantly delay the approval, and even review (in some cases), of our marketing application. Additionally, products or technologies developed by our competitors may render our potential product candidates uneconomical or obsolete and we may not be successful in marketing any product candidates we may develop against competitors. The availability of competitive products could limit the demand, and the price we are able to charge, for any products that we may develop and commercialize.

We may not be successful in our efforts to identify or discover additional product candidates in the future.

Our research programs may initially show promise in identifying potential product candidates, yet fail to yield product candidates for clinical development for a number of reasons, including, but not limited to:

our inability to design or obtain such product candidates with the pharmacological properties that we desire or attractive pharmacokinetics; or

potential product candidates may, on further study, be shown to have harmful side effects or other characteristics that indicate that they are unlikely to be medicines that will receive marketing approval and achieve market acceptance.

We have Cav1-related peptides in preclinical development for potentially a broad number of fibrosis indications. Many of these fibrosis indications may require a systemically delivered formulation to effectively treat these indications. We have not finalized a systemic formulation of a proprietary Cav1-related peptide and are currently developing potential systemic formulations. In the event we are unable to successfully complete a suitable formulation for therapeutic delivery, we may not be able to develop product candidates to address additional fibrosis indications. Even if we are able to develop a systemic formulation, it is possible that this systemic delivered product candidate will fail to show sufficient efficacy or safety in later stages of testing to proceed with development.

We face substantial competition, which may result in others discovering, developing or commercializing products before or more successfully than us.

The development and commercialization of new drug products is highly competitive. We may face competition with respect to any product candidates that we seek to develop or commercialize in the future from major biopharmaceutical companies, specialty biopharmaceutical companies and biotechnology companies worldwide. Potential competitors also include academic institutions, government agencies, and other public and private research organizations that conduct research, seek patent protection and establish collaborative arrangements for research, development, manufacturing, and commercialization.

There are a number of large biopharmaceutical and biotechnology companies that are currently pursuing the commercialization or development of products for the treatment of fibrosis. Companies that we are aware of that are targeting the treatment of various fibrosis indications include large companies with significant financial resources such as, but not limited to: AbbVie Inc., Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Bristol Myers Squibb Company, Gilead Sciences, Inc., Roche Holding AG, Novartis AG, and Pliant Therapeutics, Inc. Many of our current or potential competitors, either alone or with their strategic partners, have significantly greater financial resources and expertise in research and development, manufacturing, preclinical testing, conducting clinical trials, obtaining regulatory approvals, and marketing approved products than we do. There are currently no approved therapeutics for the treatment of LPE. Roche Holding AG manufactures tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, and recombinant deoxyribonuclease, or DNase, which are used off-label to treat LPE patients. We are not aware of any other pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies developing drug therapies for the treatment of LPE.

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If product liability lawsuits are brought against us, we may incur substantial financial or other liabilities and may be required to limit commercialization of our product candidates.

We face an inherent risk of product liability as a result of testing LTI-03, LTI-01 and any of our other product candidates in clinical trials, and will face an even greater risk if we commercialize any products. For example, we may be sued if any of our product candidates cause or are perceived to cause injury or are found to be otherwise unsuitable during clinical trials, manufacturing, marketing or sale. Any such product liability claims may include allegations of defects in manufacturing, defects in design, a failure to warn of dangers inherent in the product, negligence, strict liability or a breach of warranties. Claims could also be asserted under state consumer protection acts. If we cannot successfully defend ourselves against product liability claims, we may incur substantial liabilities or be required to limit commercialization of our product candidates. Even successful defense would require significant financial and management resources. Regardless of the merits or eventual outcome, liability claims may result in:

inability to bring a product candidate to the market;

decreased demand for our products;

injury to our reputation;

withdrawal of clinical trial participants and inability to continue clinical trials;

initiation of investigations by regulators;

fines, injunctions or criminal penalties;

costs to defend the related litigation;

diversion of management’s time and our resources;

substantial monetary awards to trial participants;

product recalls, withdrawals or labeling, marketing or promotional restrictions;

loss of revenue;

exhaustion of any available insurance and our capital resources;

adverse effects to our results of operations and business;

the inability to commercialize any product candidate, if approved; and

decline in our share price.

Our inability to obtain sufficient product liability insurance at an acceptable cost to protect against potential product liability claims could prevent or inhibit the commercialization of products we develop, alone or with collaboration partners. We will need to obtain additional insurance for clinical trials as LTI-03 and LTI-01 continue clinical development and as additional product candidates enter the clinic. However, we may be unable to obtain, or may obtain on unfavorable terms, clinical trial insurance in amounts adequate to cover any liabilities from any of our clinical trials. Our insurance policies may also have various exclusions, and we may be subject to a product liability claim for which we have no coverage. We may have to pay any amounts awarded by a court or negotiated in a settlement that exceed our coverage limitations or that are not covered by our insurance, and we may not have, or be able to obtain, sufficient capital to pay such amounts. Even if our agreements with any future corporate collaborators entitle us to indemnification against losses, such indemnification may not be available or adequate should any claim arise.

Risks Related to Marketing Approval

We have never obtained marketing approval for a product candidate and we may be unable to obtain, or may be delayed in obtaining, marketing approval for any product candidate.

We have never obtained marketing approval for a product candidate. It is possible that the FDA may refuse to accept for substantive review any new drug applications, or NDAs, or biologics license applications, or BLAs, that

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we submit for our product candidates or may conclude after review of our data that our application is insufficient to obtain marketing approval of our product candidates. If the FDA does not accept or approve our NDAs or BLAs for our product candidates, it may require that we conduct additional clinical, nonclinical or manufacturing validation studies and submit that data before it will reconsider our applications. Depending on the extent of these or any other FDA-required studies, approval of any NDA or BLA, or application that we submit may be delayed by several years, or may require us to expend more resources than we have available. It is also possible that additional studies, if performed and completed, may not be considered sufficient by the FDA to approve our NDAs or BLAs.

Any delay in obtaining, or an inability to obtain, marketing approvals would prevent us from commercializing our product candidates, generating revenues and achieving and sustaining profitability. If any of these outcomes occur, we may be forced to abandon our development efforts for our product candidates, which could significantly harm our business.

We currently have no marketing and sales organization and have no experience as a company in commercializing products, and we may have to invest significant resources to develop these capabilities. If we are unable to establish marketing and sales capabilities or enter into agreements with third parties to market and sell our products, we may not be able to generate product revenue.

We have no internal sales, marketing or distribution capabilities, nor have we commercialized a product. If any of our product candidates ultimately receives regulatory approval, we expect to establish a marketing and sales organization with technical expertise and supporting distribution capabilities to commercialize each such product in major markets, which will be expensive and time consuming. We have no prior experience as a company in the marketing, sale and distribution of pharmaceutical products and there are significant risks involved in building and managing a sales organization, including our ability to hire, retain and incentivize qualified individuals, generate sufficient sales leads, provide adequate training to sales and marketing personnel and effectively manage a geographically dispersed sales and marketing team. Any failure or delay in the development of our internal sales, marketing and distribution capabilities would adversely impact the commercialization of these products. We may also choose to collaborate with third parties that have direct sales forces and established distribution systems, either to augment our own sales force and distribution systems or in lieu of our own sales force and distribution systems. Notwithstanding our current license and collaboration agreement with Taiho, we may not be able to enter into future collaborations or hire consultants or external service providers to assist us in sales, marketing and distribution functions on acceptable financial terms, or at all, which may result in being unable to successfully commercialize our products. In addition, our product revenues and our profitability, if any, may be lower if we rely on third parties for these functions than if we were to market, sell and distribute any products that we develop ourselves. We likely will have little control over such third parties, and any of them may fail to devote the necessary resources and attention to sell and market our products effectively. If we are not successful in commercializing our product candidates, either on our own or through arrangements with one or more third parties, we may not be able to generate any future product revenue and we would incur significant additional losses.

Even if a product candidate we develop receives marketing approval, it may fail to achieve the degree of market acceptance by physicians, patients, third-party payors and others in the medical community necessary for commercial success.

Even if LTI-03, LTI-01 or any other product candidate we develop receives marketing approval, it may nonetheless fail to gain sufficient market acceptance by physicians, patients, third-party payors, such as Medicare and Medicaid programs and managed care organizations, and others in the medical community. Our belief that LTI-01 compares well on dosing schedule, surgical referrals and side effect profile compared to off-label IPFT treatment, such as tPA with DNase, to treat LPE patients is based upon limited data from our completed clinical trials. In addition, the availability of coverage by third-party payors may be affected by existing and future health care reform measures designed to reduce the cost of health care. If the product candidates we develop do not achieve an adequate level of acceptance, we may not generate significant product revenues and we may not become profitable.

The degree of market acceptance of any product candidate, if approved for commercial sale, will depend on a number of factors, including, but not limited to:

efficacy and potential advantages compared to alternative treatments;

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the ability to offer our products, if approved, for sale at competitive prices;

convenience and ease of administration compared to alternative treatments;

the willingness of the target patient population to try new therapies and of physicians to prescribe these therapies;

the recommendations with respect to our product candidates in guidelines published by various scientific organizations applicable to us and our product candidates;

the strength of marketing and distribution support;

the ability to obtain sufficient third-party coverage, and adequate reimbursement; and

the prevalence and severity of any side effects.

If government and other third-party payors do not provide coverage and adequate reimbursement levels for any products we commercialize, market acceptance and commercial success would be reduced.

In addition, even if we obtain approval, the FDA or a comparable foreign regulatory authority might add specific warnings to the product label, making promotion more difficult. In the U.S., for example, a product with a “Boxed Warning” which is a call-out warning for the possibility of a serious, life-threatening risk, carries promotional restrictions. In addition, due to the nature of the serious risk potentially associated with the drug, necessitating the Boxed Warning, public acceptance of the product may be challenging.

Even if we complete the necessary preclinical studies and clinical trials, the marketing approval process is expensive, time-consuming and uncertain and may prevent us, or any future collaborators, from obtaining approvals for the commercialization of LTI-03, LTI-01 or any other product candidate that we may develop. As a result, we cannot predict when or if, and in which territories or for which indications, we, or any future collaborators, will obtain marketing approval to commercialize LTI-03, LTI-01 or any other product candidate that we may develop.

The research, testing, manufacturing, labeling, approval, selling, marketing, promotion and distribution of drugs are subject to extensive regulation by the FDA and comparable foreign regulatory authorities, whose laws and regulations may differ from country to country. We, and any future collaborators, are not permitted to market our product candidates in the U.S. or in other countries until we or they receive approval of an NDA or BLA from the FDA or marketing approval from comparable foreign regulatory authorities. LTI-03 and LTI-01 are in early stages of development and are subject to the risks of failure inherent in drug development. We have not submitted an application for or received marketing approval for LTI-03, LTI-01 or any of our future product candidates in the U.S. or in any other jurisdiction. We have limited experience in conducting and managing the clinical trials necessary to obtain marketing approvals, including FDA approval of an NDA or BLA.

The process of obtaining marketing approvals, both in the U.S. and abroad, is a lengthy, expensive and uncertain process. It may take many years, if approval is obtained at all, and can vary substantially based upon a variety of factors, including the type, complexity and novelty of the product candidates involved. Securing marketing approval requires the submission of extensive preclinical and clinical data and supporting information to regulatory authorities for each therapeutic indication to establish the product candidate’s safety and efficacy. Securing marketing approval also requires the submission of information about the product manufacturing process to, and inspection of manufacturing facilities by, the regulatory authorities. The FDA or other regulatory authorities have substantial discretion and may determine that our product candidates are not safe and effective, only moderately effective or have undesirable or unintended side effects, toxicities or other characteristics that preclude our obtaining marketing approval or prevent or limit commercial use. Any marketing approval we ultimately obtain may be limited or subject to restrictions, such as the aforementioned Boxed Warning in the product label, or post-approval commitments that render the approved product not commercially viable.

Our product candidates could fail to receive marketing approval for many reasons, including the following:

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the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may disagree with the design or implementation of our clinical trials;

we may be unable to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities that a product candidate is safe and effective for its proposed indication;

the results of clinical trials may not meet the level of statistical significance required by the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities for approval;

we may be unable to demonstrate that a product candidate’s clinical and other benefits outweigh its safety risks;

the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may disagree with our interpretation of data from preclinical studies or clinical trials;

the data collected from clinical trials of our product candidates may not be sufficient to support the submission of an NDA or other submission or to obtain marketing approval in the U.S. or elsewhere;

the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may fail to approve the manufacturing processes or facilities of third-party manufacturers with which we contract for clinical and commercial supplies due to quality manufacturing concerns;

the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may fail to approve any companion diagnostics that may be required in connection with approval of our therapeutic product candidates; and

the approval policies or regulations of the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may significantly change in a manner rendering our clinical data insufficient for approval.

This lengthy approval process as well as the unpredictability of clinical trial results may result in our failing to obtain marketing approval to market our product candidates, which would significantly harm our business, results of operations and prospects.

In addition, changes in marketing approval policies during the development period, changes in or the enactment or promulgation of additional statutes, regulations or guidance or changes in regulatory review for each submitted drug application may cause delays in the approval or rejection of an application. Regulatory authorities have substantial discretion in the approval process and may refuse to accept any application or may decide that our data are insufficient for approval and require additional preclinical studies, clinical trials or other studies and testing. In addition, varying interpretations of the data obtained from preclinical studies and clinical trials could delay, limit or prevent marketing approval of a product candidate. Any marketing approval we, or any collaborators we may have in the future, ultimately obtain may be limited or subject to restrictions or post-approval commitments that render the approved drug not commercially viable.

Any delay in obtaining or failure to obtain required approvals could materially adversely affect our ability or that of any collaborators we may have to generate revenue from the particular product candidate, which likely would result in significant harm to our financial position and adversely impact our stock price.

Failure to obtain marketing approval in foreign jurisdictions would prevent our product candidates from being marketed abroad. Any approval we are granted for LTI-03 or LTI-01 in the U.S. would not assure approval of our product candidates in foreign jurisdictions.

In order to market and sell our products in the EU and many other foreign jurisdictions, we or our potential third-party collaborators 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 of the U.S. generally includes all of the risks associated with obtaining FDA approval. In addition, in many countries outside of the U.S., it is required that the product be approved for reimbursement before the product can be approved for sale in that country. We or our potential third-party collaborators may not obtain approvals from regulatory authorities outside of the U.S. 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 of the

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U.S. does not ensure approval by regulatory authorities in other countries or jurisdictions or by the FDA. However, a failure or delay in obtaining regulatory approval in one country may have a negative effect on the regulatory process in other countries. We may not be able to file for marketing approvals and may not receive necessary approvals to commercialize our products candidates in any market.

The above-mentioned EU pharmaceutical package does not intend to change the existing procedures currently in place at EU level: Medicinal products are still to be approved in the decentralized procedure, mutual recognition procedure, or centralized procedure. However, the duration of authorization procedures is generally to be reduced. The decisive factor for the reduction of the duration of the procedure under the decentralized procedure and the mutual recognition procedure is the reduction of the period of cooperation of the EU member states. In regards of the centralized procedure, the shortening of the overall duration results from the accumulation of several small reductions in time.

Additionally, we could face heightened risks with respect to seeking marketing approval in the United Kingdom, or the UK, as a result of the withdrawal of the UK from the EU, commonly referred to as Brexit. Brexit may have a material impact upon the regulatory regime with respect to the development, manufacture, importation, approval and commercialization of product candidates in the UK.

The UK is no longer part of the European Single Market and EU Customs Union. Though a significant proportion of the regulatory framework for pharmaceutical products in the UK covering the quality, safety, and efficacy of pharmaceutical products, clinical trials, marketing authorization, commercial sales, and distribution of pharmaceutical products is derived from EU Directives and Regulations, there are some significant changes made to the regulatory framework to address the UK’s departure from the EU.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, or the MHRA, is the national regulator responsible for supervising medicines and medical devices in the UK, comprising England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. England, Scotland, and Wales form Great Britain which follows domestic law, whereas Northern Ireland currently continues to be subject to EU rules under the Northern Ireland Protocol. The main domestic legislation regulating medicines in the UK is the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/1916) (as amended), or the HMR. The HMR has incorporated into domestic law some of the body of EU law instruments governing medicinal products that pre-existed prior to the UK’s withdrawal from the EU and has been amended to take into account the country’s departure from the EU. Other domestic law implements the other corpus of EU medicines law that existed prior to the UK’s departure from the EU.

Following Brexit, national marketing authorizations in the UK can be obtained to cover the whole of the UK (UKMA(UK)), Great Britain (UKMA(GB)) or Northern Ireland (UKMA(NI)), through the different available marketing authorization routes. Northern Ireland also continues to participate in the EU marketing authorization routes. In this case, the UK for the purpose of Northern Ireland can be a concerned member state (not a reference member state) for medicines going through the decentralized or mutual recognition procedure. Northern Ireland can also be included within the scope of the centralized procedure.

Any marketing authorizations granted by the MHRA under the decentralized or mutual recognition procedure before Brexit became national marketing authorizations covering the whole of the UK. Centrally authorized products were converted to a UKMA(GB) on January 1, 2021 unless the marketing authorization holder informed the MHRA otherwise, and centrally authorized products continued to be recognized in Northern Ireland. Until December 31, 2023, the European Commission Decision Reliance Procedure (ECDRP) could be used to obtain a UKMA(GB) with the MHRA relying on a decision taken by the European Commission on the approval of a new MA under the centralized procedure. Similarly, the MHRA can grant UKMA(UK) or UKMA(GB) marketing authorizations under the decentralized and mutual recognition reliance procedure (MRDCRP).

From January 1, 2024, the ECDRP will be replaced by a new International Recognition Procedure (IRP). The MRDCRP will be incorporated within the IRP. ECDRP and MRDCRP submissions received by the MHRA before January 1, 2024 will continue to follow existing procedures, but for ECDRP applications the CHMP positive opinion (but not necessarily the European Commission Decision) should be received before December 31, 2023. The IRP procedure is open to applicants who have received an authorization for the same product in one of the MHRA’s

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specified Reference Regulators. The current Reference Regulators include (among others) the FDA, EMA and the national competent authorities of the EU / EEA countries.

The start dates of the data and market exclusivity periods for medicines in the UK will depend on which route it was granted. In respect to orphan drugs, the general position under the HMR is 10 years’ orphan market exclusivity is awarded from the date of authorization by the MHRA (which can be reduced to six years at the end of the fifth year if the licensing authority is satisfied that the orphan criteria is no longer met). An additional two years may be granted where pediatric data requirements are met. A UK-wide orphan marketing authorization can only be granted in the absence of an active EU designation.

On February 27, 2023, the UK and the EU agreed the Windsor Framework which addresses (among other things) the supply of medicines into Northern Ireland. It provides that medicines must be approved and licensed on a UK-wide basis by the MHRA with the same labelling and packaging across the whole of the UK. The EMA will have no role in the approval of new medicines for Northern Ireland. The arrangement takes effect from January 1, 2025.

Since a significant proportion of the regulatory framework for pharmaceutical products in the UK covering the quality, safety, and efficacy of pharmaceutical products, clinical trials, marketing authorization, commercial sales, and distribution of pharmaceutical products is derived from EU Directives and Regulations, with some amendments made to address the UK’s departure from the EU, Brexit may have a material impact upon the regulatory regime with respect to the development, manufacture, importation, approval and commercialization of product candidates in the UK. However, there are new routes to obtaining marketing authorizations available such as the IRP.

Any delay in obtaining, or an inability to obtain, any marketing approvals, as a result of Brexit or otherwise, may force us to restrict or delay efforts to seek regulatory approval in the UK for our product candidates, which could significantly and materially harm our business.

The design or execution of our ongoing and future clinical trials may not support marketing approval.

The design or execution of a clinical trial can determine whether its results will support marketing approval, and flaws in the design or execution of a clinical trial may not become apparent until the clinical trial is well advanced. We completed a Phase 2a dose-ranging, placebo-controlled trial of LTI-01 in LPE patients. We may need to investigate higher or lower doses of LTI-01 in future clinical trials to establish efficacy and safety. Additionally, as no drug has been approved for LPE, our Phase 2a primary endpoint of treatment failure, defined as death or referral to surgery by a specific criteria checklist within seven days of commencing treatment may not be considered an appropriate endpoint for approval by the regulatory authorities. The trial results did not show statistical significance on the primary endpoint. Additionally, our highest dose of LTI-01 in this trial showed a lower effect than the other LTI-01 doses tested. Based on the results of this trial, we expect to investigate LTI-01 in a Phase 2b dose-ranging, placebo-controlled clinical trial with a lower dose to establish efficacy and safety. Even with additional clinical trial testing with a modified primary endpoint, we may never be successful in demonstrating sufficient results to support marketing approval.

Additionally, in some instances, there can be significant variability in safety or efficacy results between different clinical trials with the same product candidate due to numerous factors, including differences in trial protocols, size and type of the patient populations, variable adherence to the dosing regimen or other protocol requirements and the rate of dropout among clinical trial participants. We do not know whether any clinical trials we conduct will demonstrate consistent or adequate efficacy and safety to obtain marketing approval to market our product candidates.

Further, the FDA and comparable foreign regulatory authorities have substantial discretion in the approval process and in determining when or whether marketing approval will be obtained for any of our product candidates. Our product candidates may not be approved even if they achieve their primary endpoints in future Phase 3 clinical trials or registrational trials. The FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may disagree with our trial designs and our interpretation of data from clinical trials or preclinical studies. In addition, any of these regulatory authorities may change requirements for the approval of a product candidate even after reviewing and providing comments or advice on a protocol for a pivotal Phase 3 or registrational clinical trial. In addition, any of these regulatory authorities may also approve a product candidate for fewer or more limited indications than we request or may grant approval contingent on the performance of costly post-marketing clinical trials or a more restrictive label than we expect (e.g.,

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Boxed Warning). Similarly, the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may not approve the labeling claims that we believe would be necessary or desirable for the successful commercialization of our product candidates, if approved.

Delays in patient enrollment may result in increased costs or may affect the timing or outcome of our future clinical trials, which could prevent completion of these trials and adversely affect our ability to advance the development of our product candidates.

If the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities approve generic or competitor versions of any of our drugs that receive marketing approval, or such authorities do not grant our drugs appropriate periods of data or market exclusivity before approving generic or competitor versions of our drugs, the sales of our drugs could be adversely affected.

Once an NDA is approved, the drug covered thereby becomes a “reference-listed drug” in the FDA’s publication, “Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations.” Manufacturers may seek approval of generic versions of reference-listed drugs through submission of ANDAs in the U.S. In support of an ANDA, a generic manufacturer need not conduct clinical trials demonstrating safety and efficacy. Rather, the applicant generally must show that its drug has the same active ingredient(s), dosage form, strength, route of administration and conditions of use or labeling as the reference-listed drug and that the generic version is bioequivalent to the reference-listed drug, meaning it is absorbed in the body at the same rate and to the same extent. Generic drugs may be significantly less costly to bring to market than the reference-listed drug and companies that produce generic drugs are generally able to offer them at lower prices. Thus, following the introduction of a generic drug, a significant percentage of the sales of any branded product or reference-listed drug is typically lost to the generic drug.

The FDA may not approve an ANDA for a generic drug until any applicable period of non-patent exclusivity for the reference-listed drug has expired. The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, or the FDCA, provides a period of five years of non-patent exclusivity for a new drug containing a new chemical entity, or NCE. Specifically, in cases where such exclusivity has been granted, an ANDA may not be filed with the FDA and the FDA may not approve the application until the expiration of five years unless the submission is accompanied by a Paragraph IV certification that a patent covering the reference-listed drug is either invalid, will not be infringed by the generic drug, or unenforceable, in which case the applicant may submit its application four years following approval of the reference-listed drug. Manufacturers may seek to launch these generic drugs following the expiration of the marketing exclusivity period, even if we still have patent protection for our drug.

Competition that our drugs may face from generic or competitor versions of our drugs could materially and adversely impact our future revenue, profitability and cash flows and substantially limit our ability to obtain a return on the investments we have made in those drug candidates. Our future revenues, profitability and cash flows could also be materially and adversely affected and our ability to obtain a return on the investments we have made in those drug candidates may be substantially limited if our drugs, if and when approved, are not afforded the appropriate periods of non-patent exclusivity.

Risks Related to Reimbursement, Healthcare Regulations and Ongoing Regulatory Compliance

Even if we receive regulatory approval of any product candidates, we will be subject to ongoing regulatory obligations and continued regulatory review, which may result in significant additional expense and we may be subject to penalties if we fail to comply with regulatory requirements or experience unanticipated problems with our product candidates, if approved.

If any of our product candidates are approved, they will be subject to ongoing regulatory requirements for manufacturing, labeling, packaging, distribution, adverse event reporting, storage, advertising, promotion, sampling, record-keeping, conduct of post-marketing studies and submission of safety, efficacy and other post-market information, including both federal and state requirements in the U.S. and requirements of comparable foreign regulatory authorities. In addition, we will be subject to continued compliance with good manufacturing practices, or cGMP, and good clinical practices, or GCP, requirements for any clinical trials that we conduct post-approval.

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Manufacturers and their facilities are required to comply with extensive FDA and comparable foreign regulatory authority requirements, including ensuring that quality control and manufacturing procedures conform to cGMP regulations. As such, we and our contract manufacturers will be subject to continual review and inspections to assess compliance with cGMP and adherence to commitments made in any marketing application, and previous responses to inspection observations. Accordingly, we and others with whom we work must continue to expend time, money, and effort in all areas of regulatory compliance, including manufacturing, production, and quality control.

Any regulatory approvals that we receive for our product candidates may be subject to limitations on the approved indicated uses for which the product may be marketed or to the conditions of approval, contain requirements for potentially costly post-marketing testing, including Phase 4 clinical trials and surveillance to monitor the safety and efficacy of the product candidate, or include specific safety-related label warnings that could affect marketing efforts. The FDA may also require a risk evaluation and mitigation strategies, or REMS, program as a condition of approval of our product candidates, which could entail requirements for long-term patient follow-up, a medication guide, physician communication plans or additional elements to ensure safe use, such as restricted distribution methods, patient registries and other risk minimization tools. In addition, if the FDA or a comparable foreign regulatory authority approves our product candidates, we will have to comply with requirements including submissions of safety and other post-marketing information and reports and registration.

The FDA and comparable foreign regulatory agencies may initiate consent decrees or withdraw approval if compliance with regulatory requirements and standards is not maintained or if problems occur after the product reaches the market. Later discovery of previously unknown problems with our product candidates, including adverse events of unanticipated severity or frequency, or with our third-party manufacturers or manufacturing processes, or failure to comply with regulatory requirements, may result in revisions to the approved labeling to add new safety information; imposition of post-market studies or clinical trials to assess new safety risks; or imposition of distribution restrictions or other restrictions under a REMS program. Other potential consequences include, among other things:

rescinding approval of the application, restrictions on the marketing or manufacturing of our products, withdrawal of the product from the market or voluntary or mandatory product recalls;

fines, warning letters or holds on clinical trials;

refusal by the FDA or a comparable foreign regulatory agency to approve pending applications or supplements to approved applications filed by us or suspension or revocation of license approvals;

product seizure or detention or refusal to permit the import or export of our product candidates; and

injunctions or the imposition of civil or criminal penalties.

The FDA strictly regulates marketing, labeling, advertising, and promotion of products that are placed on the market, and similar restrictions apply in foreign jurisdictions. Products may be promoted only for the approved indications and in accordance with the provisions of the approved label. However, companies may share truthful and not misleading information that is not inconsistent with the labeling, if certain conditions are met. The FDA and other agencies, including the Department of Justice, actively enforce the laws and regulations prohibiting the promotion of false or misleading information or unapproved uses and a company that is found to have improperly promoted the product may be subject to significant liability. The policies of the FDA and of other regulatory authorities may change and additional government regulations may be enacted that could prevent, limit or delay regulatory approval of our product candidates. We cannot predict the likelihood, nature or extent of government regulation that may arise from future legislation or administrative action, either in the U.S. or abroad. If we are slow or unable to adapt to changes in existing requirements or the adoption of new requirements or policies, or if we are not able to maintain regulatory compliance, we may lose any marketing approval that we may have obtained and we may not achieve or sustain profitability.

Even if we are able to commercialize any product candidate, such product candidate may become subject to unfavorable pricing regulations, third-party coverage and reimbursement policies or healthcare reform initiatives, which would harm our business.

The regulations that govern marketing approval, pricing, coverage and reimbursement for new drugs vary widely from country to country. Some countries require approval of the sale price of a drug before it can be marketed.

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In many countries, the pricing review period begins after marketing 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 in a particular country, but then be subject to price regulations that delay our commercial launch of the product, possibly for lengthy time periods, and negatively impact the revenues we are able to generate from the sale of the product in that country. Adverse pricing limitations may hinder our ability to recoup our investment in LTI-03 and LTI-01 even if we obtain marketing approval for either product candidate.

Our ability to commercialize any products successfully also will depend in part on the extent to which reimbursement and coverage for these products and related treatments will be available from government authorities, private health insurers and other organizations, and if reimbursement and coverage is available, the level of reimbursement and coverage. Government authorities and third-party payors, such as private health insurers and health maintenance organizations, decide which medications they will pay for and establish reimbursement levels. A primary trend in the healthcare industry in the U.S. and elsewhere is cost containment. Government authorities and third-party payors have attempted to control costs by limiting coverage and the amount of reimbursement for particular medications. Increasingly, the third-party payors who reimburse patients or healthcare providers, such as government and private insurance plans, are requiring that drug companies provide them with predetermined discounts from list prices and are seeking to reduce the prices charged or the amounts reimbursed for medical products. We cannot be sure that reimbursement will be available for any drug that we commercialize and, if reimbursement is available, we cannot be sure as to the level of reimbursement. Reimbursement may impact the demand for, or the price of, any product candidate for which we obtain marketing approval. If reimbursement is not available or is available only to 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 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, eligibility for reimbursement does not imply that any drug will be reimbursed in all cases or at a rate that covers our costs, including research, development, manufacture, sale and distribution. Interim reimbursement levels for new drugs, if applicable, may also not be sufficient to cover our costs and may not be made permanent. Reimbursement rates may vary according to the use of the drug and the clinical setting in which it is used, may be based on reimbursement levels already set for lower cost drugs, may be incorporated into existing payments for other services and may reflect budgetary constraints or imperfections in Medicare data. 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 U.S. Third-party payors often rely upon Medicare coverage policy and payment limitations in setting their own reimbursement rates. Our inability to promptly obtain coverage and adequate reimbursement rates from both government-funded and private payors for new products that we develop and for which we obtain marketing approval could have a material adverse effect on our operating results, our ability to raise capital needed to commercialize products and our overall financial condition.

Recently enacted and future legislation may increase the difficulty and cost for us and our future collaborators to obtain marketing approval of and commercialize our product candidates and affect the prices we, or they, may obtain for any products that are approved in the U.S. or foreign jurisdictions.

In the U.S. 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 product candidates, restrict or regulate post-approval activities and affect our ability, or the ability of any future collaborators, to profitably sell any product candidates for which we, or they, obtain marketing approval. We expect that current laws, as well as other healthcare reform measures that may be adopted in the future, may result in more rigorous coverage criteria and in additional downward pressure on the price that we, or any collaborators, may receive for any approved products. If reimbursement of our products is unavailable or limited in scope, our business could be materially harmed.

In the U.S., the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, or Medicare Modernization Act, changed the way Medicare covers and pays for pharmaceutical products. The legislation expanded Medicare coverage for drug purchases by the elderly and introduced a new reimbursement methodology based on

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average sales prices for physician-administered drugs. In addition, this legislation provided authority for limiting the number of drugs that will be covered in any therapeutic class. Cost reduction initiatives and other provisions of this legislation could decrease the coverage and price that we, or any future collaborators, may receive for any approved products. While the Medicare Modernization Act applies only to drug benefits for Medicare beneficiaries, private payors often follow Medicare coverage policy and payment limitations in setting their own reimbursement rates. Therefore, any reduction in reimbursement that results from the Medicare Modernization Act may result in a similar reduction in payments from private payors.

In March 2010, President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act, or collectively the ACA. In August 2011, the Budget Control Act of 2011, among other things, created measures for spending reductions by Congress. This legislation resulted in aggregate reductions to Medicare payments to providers of up to 2% per fiscal year, which will remain in effect through 2031 under the CARES Act. These Medicare sequester reductions were suspended through the end of June 2022, with the full 2% cut resuming thereafter. The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, among other things, 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 and otherwise affect the prices we may obtain for our product candidates for which we may obtain regulatory approval or the frequency with which any such product candidate is prescribed or used. Indeed, under current legislation, the actual reductions in Medicare payments may vary up to 4%.

Since enactment of the ACA, there have been, and continue to be, numerous legal challenges and Congressional actions to repeal and replace provisions of the law. For example, with enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, or the TCJA, which was signed by President Trump on December 22, 2017, Congress repealed the “individual mandate.” The repeal of this provision, which requires most Americans to carry a minimal level of health insurance, became effective in 2019.

On November 10, 2020, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments to a case challenging the ACA. On February 10, 2021, the Biden Administration withdrew the federal government’s support for overturning the ACA. On June 17, 2021, the Supreme Court rejected this challenge to the ACA. Litigation and legislation over the ACA are likely to continue, with unpredictable and uncertain results.

The Trump Administration also took executive actions to undermine or delay implementation of the ACA, including directing federal agencies with authorities and responsibilities under the ACA to waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation of any provision of the ACA that would impose a fiscal or regulatory burden on states, individuals, healthcare providers, health insurers, or manufacturers of pharmaceuticals or medical devices. On January 28, 2021, however, President Biden issued a new Executive Order which directs federal agencies to reconsider rules and other policies that limit Americans’ access to health care and consider actions that will protect and strengthen that access. This Executive Order also directs the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to create a special enrollment period for the Health Insurance Marketplace in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We cannot predict how federal agencies will respond to such Executive Orders.

We expect that these healthcare reforms, as well as other healthcare reform measures that may be adopted in the future, may result in additional reductions in Medicare and other healthcare funding, more rigorous coverage criteria, new payment methodologies and additional downward pressure on the price that we receive for any approved product and/or the level of reimbursement physicians receive for administering any approved product we might bring to market. Reductions in reimbursement levels may negatively impact the prices we receive or the frequency with which our products are prescribed or administered. Any reduction in reimbursement from Medicare or other government programs may result in a similar reduction in payments from private payors. Accordingly, such reforms, if enacted, could have an adverse effect on anticipated revenue from product candidates that we may successfully develop and for which we may obtain marketing approval and may affect our overall financial condition and ability to develop or commercialize product candidates.

Our relationships with healthcare providers and physicians and third-party payors will be subject to applicable anti-kickback, fraud and abuse and other healthcare laws and regulations, which could expose us to criminal sanctions, civil penalties, contractual damages, reputational harm and diminished profits and future earnings.

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Healthcare providers, physicians and third-party payors in the U.S. and elsewhere play a primary role in the recommendation and prescription of biopharmaceutical products. Arrangements with third-party payors and customers can expose biopharmaceutical manufacturers to broadly applicable fraud and abuse and other healthcare laws and regulations, including, without limitation, the federal Anti-Kickback Statute and the federal False Claims Act, or FCA, which may constrain the business or financial arrangements and relationships through which such companies sell, market and distribute biopharmaceutical products. In particular, the research of our product candidates, as well as the promotion, sales and marketing of healthcare items and services, as well as certain business arrangements in the healthcare industry, are subject to extensive laws designed to prevent fraud, kickbacks, self-dealing and other abusive practices. These laws and regulations may restrict or prohibit a wide range of pricing, discounting, marketing and promotion, structuring and commission(s), certain customer incentive programs and other business arrangements generally. Activities subject to these laws also involve the improper use of information obtained in the course of patient recruitment for clinical trials. The applicable federal, state and foreign healthcare laws and regulations laws that may affect our ability to operate include, but are not limited to:

the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, which prohibits, among other things, knowingly and willfully soliciting, receiving, offering or paying any remuneration (including any kickback, bribe, or rebate), directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly, in cash or in kind, to induce or reward, or in return for, either the referral of an individual, or the purchase, lease, order or recommendation of any good, facility, item or service for which payment may be made, in whole or in part, under a federal healthcare program, such as the Medicare and Medicaid programs. A person or entity can be found guilty of violating the statute without actual knowledge of the statute or specific intent to violate it. In addition, a claim submitted for payment to any federal health care program that includes items or services that were made as a result of a violation of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute constitutes a false or fraudulent claim for purposes of the FCA. The Anti-Kickback Statute has been interpreted to apply to arrangements between biopharmaceutical manufacturers on the one hand and prescribers, purchasers, group purchasing organizations, and formulary managers, among others, on the other. There are a number of statutory exceptions and regulatory safe harbors protecting some common activities from prosecution;

the federal civil and criminal false claims laws, including the FCA, and civil monetary penalty laws which prohibit, among other things, individuals or entities from knowingly presenting, or causing to be presented, false, fictitious or fraudulent claims for payment to, or approval by Medicare, Medicaid, or other federal healthcare programs; knowingly making, using or causing to be made or used a false record or statement material to a false or fraudulent claim or an obligation to pay or transmit money or property to the federal government; or knowingly concealing or knowingly and improperly avoiding or decreasing or concealing an obligation to pay money to the federal government. A claim that includes items or services resulting from a violation of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute constitutes a false or fraudulent claim under the FCA. Manufacturers can be held liable under the FCA even when they do not submit claims directly to government payors if they are deemed to “cause” the submission of false or fraudulent claims. The FCA also permits a private individual acting as a “whistleblower” to bring qui tam actions on behalf of the federal government alleging violations of the FCA and to share in any monetary recovery;

the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA, which created additional federal criminal statutes that prohibit knowingly and willfully executing, or attempting to execute, a scheme to defraud any healthcare benefit program or obtain, by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, any of the money or property owned by, or under the custody or control of, any healthcare benefit program, regardless of the payor (e.g., public or private) and knowingly and willfully falsifying, concealing or covering up by any trick or device a material fact or making any materially false statements in connection with the delivery of, or payment for, healthcare benefits, items or services relating to healthcare matters. Similar to the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, a person or entity can be found guilty of violating HIPAA without actual knowledge of the statute or specific intent to violate it;

HIPAA, as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009, or HITECH, and their respective implementing regulations, which impose, among other things, requirements relating to the privacy, security and transmission of individually identifiable health information on certain covered healthcare providers, health plans, and healthcare clearinghouses, known as covered entities, as well as their respective “business associates,” those independent contractors or agents of covered entities that perform services for covered entities that involve the creation, use, receipt,

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maintenance or disclosure of individually identifiable health information. HITECH also created new tiers of civil monetary penalties, amended HIPAA to make civil and criminal penalties directly applicable to business associates, and gave state attorneys general new authority to file civil actions for damages or injunctions in federal courts to enforce the federal HIPAA laws and seek attorneys’ fees and costs associated with pursuing federal civil actions;

the federal Physician Payments Sunshine Act, created under the ACA, and its implementing regulations, which require some manufacturers of drugs, devices, biologics and medical supplies for which payment is available under Medicare, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (with certain exceptions) to report annually to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services, or CMS, information related to payments or other transfers of value made to physicians (defined to include doctors, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists and chiropractors) and teaching hospitals, as well as ownership and investment interests held by physicians and their immediate family members. Effective January 1, 2022, these reporting obligations were extended to include transfers of value made in the previous year to certain non-physician providers such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners;

federal consumer protection and unfair competition laws, which broadly regulate marketplace activities and activities that potentially harm consumers; and

analogous state and foreign laws and regulations, such as state anti-kickback and false claims laws, which may apply to sales or marketing arrangements and claims involving healthcare items or services reimbursed by third-party payors, including private insurers, the Travel Act of 1961, or the Travel Act, which has been used as a tool in the health care context to target kickback schemes prohibited under state law involving private insurance that would not otherwise be prohibited under federal law and may be broader in scope than their federal equivalents; state and foreign laws that require biopharmaceutical companies to comply with the biopharmaceutical industry’s voluntary compliance guidelines and the relevant compliance guidance promulgated by the federal government or otherwise restrict payments that may be made to healthcare providers and other potential referral sources; state and foreign laws that require drug manufacturers to report information related to payments and other transfers of value to physicians and other healthcare providers, marketing expenditures or drug pricing; state and local laws that require the registration of biopharmaceutical sales representatives; and state and foreign laws governing the privacy and security of health information in certain circumstances, many of which differ from each other in significant ways and often are not preempted by HIPAA, thus complicating compliance efforts.

The distribution of biopharmaceutical products is subject to additional requirements and regulations, including extensive record-keeping, licensing, storage and security requirements intended to prevent the unauthorized sale of biopharmaceutical products. There are also federal and state consumer deception laws, with which we must comply.

The scope and enforcement of each of these laws is uncertain and subject to rapid change in the current environment of healthcare reform, especially in light of the lack of applicable precedent and regulations. Ensuring business arrangements comply with applicable healthcare laws, as well as responding to possible investigations by government authorities, can be time- and resource-consuming and can divert a company’s attention from the business.

It is possible that governmental and enforcement authorities will conclude that our business practices may not comply with current or future statutes, regulations or case law interpreting applicable fraud and abuse or other healthcare laws and regulations. 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, including the imposition of significant civil, criminal and administrative penalties, damages, fines, disgorgement, imprisonment, reputational harm, possible exclusion from participation in federal and state funded healthcare programs, contractual damages and the curtailment or restricting of our operations, as well as additional reporting obligations and oversight if we become subject to a corporate integrity agreement or other agreement to resolve allegations of non-compliance with these laws. Further, if any of the physicians or other healthcare providers or entities with whom we expect to do business are found not to be in compliance with applicable laws, they may be subject to significant criminal, civil or administrative sanctions, including exclusions from government funded healthcare programs. Any action for violation of these laws, even if successfully defended, could cause a biopharmaceutical manufacturer to incur significant legal

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expenses and divert management’s attention from the operation of the business. Prohibitions or restrictions on sales or withdrawal of future marketed products could materially affect business in an adverse way.

The prices of prescription pharmaceuticals in the U.S. and foreign jurisdictions are subject to considerable legislative and executive actions and could impact the prices we obtain for our products, if and when licensed.

The prices of prescription pharmaceuticals have also been the subject of considerable discussion in the U.S. There have been several recent U.S. congressional inquiries, as well as proposed and enacted state and federal legislation designed to, among other things, bring more transparency to pharmaceutical pricing, review the relationship between pricing and manufacturer patient programs, and reduce the costs of pharmaceuticals under Medicare and Medicaid. In 2020, President Trump issued several executive orders intended to lower the costs of prescription products and certain provisions in these orders have been incorporated into regulations. These regulations include an interim final rule implementing a most favored nation model for prices that would tie Medicare Part B payments for certain physician-administered pharmaceuticals to the lowest price paid in other economically advanced countries, effective January 1, 2021. That rule, however, has been subject to a nationwide preliminary injunction and, on December 29, 2021, CMS issued a final rule to rescind it. With issuance of this rule, CMS stated that it will explore all options to incorporate value into payments for Medicare Part B pharmaceuticals and improve beneficiaries’ access to evidence-based care.

In addition, in October 2020, HHS and the FDA published a final rule allowing states and other entities to develop a Section 804 Importation Program, or SIP, to import certain prescription drugs from Canada into the U.S. The final rule is currently the subject of ongoing litigation, but at least six states (Vermont, Colorado, Florida, Maine, New Mexico, and New Hampshire) have passed laws allowing for the importation of drugs from Canada with the intent of developing SIPs for review and approval by the FDA. Further, on November 20, 2020, HHS finalized a regulation removing safe harbor protection for price reductions from pharmaceutical manufacturers to plan sponsors under Part D, either directly or through pharmacy benefit managers, unless the price reduction is required by law. The implementation of the rule has been delayed by the Biden administration from January 1, 2022 to January 1, 2023 in response to ongoing litigation. The final rule would eliminate the current safe harbor for Medicare drug rebates and create new safe harbors for beneficiary point-of-sale discounts and pharmacy benefit manager, or PBM, services fees. It was originally set to go into effect on January 1, 202, but with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act has been delayed by Congress to January 1, 2032.

On July 9, 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 14063, which focuses on, among other things, the price of pharmaceuticals. The Order directs the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, to create a plan within 45 days to combat “excessive pricing of prescription pharmaceuticals and enhance domestic pharmaceutical supply chains, to reduce the prices paid by the federal government for such pharmaceuticals, and to address the recurrent problem of price gouging.” On September 9, 2021, HHS released its plan to reduce pharmaceutical prices. The key features of that plan are to: (a) make pharmaceutical prices more affordable and equitable for all consumers and throughout the health care system by supporting pharmaceutical price negotiations with manufacturers; (b) improve and promote competition throughout the prescription pharmaceutical industry by supporting market changes that strengthen supply chains, promote biosimilars and generic drugs, and increase transparency; and (c) foster scientific innovation to promote better healthcare and improve health by supporting public and private research and making sure that market incentives promote discovery of valuable and accessible new treatments.

More recently, on August 16, 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, or IRA, was signed into law by President Biden. The new legislation has implications for Medicare Part D, which is a program available to individuals who are entitled to Medicare Part A or enrolled in Medicare Part B to give them the option of paying a monthly premium for outpatient prescription drug coverage. Among other things, the IRA requires manufacturers of certain drugs to engage in price negotiations with Medicare (beginning in 2026), with prices that can be negotiated subject to a cap; imposes rebates under Medicare Part B and Medicare Part D to penalize price increases that outpace inflation (first due in 2023); and replaces the Part D coverage gap discount program with a new discounting program (beginning in 2025). The IRA permits the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to implement many of these provisions through guidance, as opposed to regulation, for the initial years.

Specifically, with respect to price negotiations, Congress authorized Medicare to negotiate lower prices for certain costly single-source drug and biologic products that do not have competing generics or biosimilars and are

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reimbursed under Medicare Part B and Part D. CMS may negotiate prices for ten high-cost drugs paid for by Medicare Part D starting in 2026, followed by 15 Part D drugs in 2027, 15 Part B or Part D drugs in 2028, and 20 Part B or Part D drugs in 2029 and beyond. This provision applies to drug products that have been approved for at least 9 years and biologics that have been licensed for 13 years, but it does not apply to drugs and biologics that have been approved for a single rare disease or condition. Nonetheless, since CMS may establish a maximum price for these products in price negotiations, we would have been fully at risk of government action if our products were the subject of Medicare price negotiations. Moreover, given the risk that could be the case, these provisions of the IRA may also have further heightened the risk that we would not have been able to achieve the expected return on our drug products or full value of our patents protecting our products if prices are set after such products had been on the market for nine years.

Further, the legislation subjects drug manufacturers to civil monetary penalties and a potential excise tax for failing to comply with the legislation by offering a price that is not equal to or less than the negotiated “maximum fair price” under the law or for taking price increases that exceed inflation. The legislation also requires manufacturers to pay rebates for drugs in Medicare Part D whose price increases exceed inflation. The new law also caps Medicare out-of-pocket drug costs at an estimated $4,000 a year in 2024 and, thereafter beginning in 2025, at $2,000 a year. In addition, the IRA potentially raises legal risks with respect to individuals participating in a Medicare Part D prescription drug plan who may experience a gap in coverage if they required coverage above their initial annual coverage limit before they reached the higher threshold, or “catastrophic period” of the plan. Individuals requiring services exceeding the initial annual coverage limit and below the catastrophic period, must pay 100% of the cost of their prescriptions until they reach the catastrophic period. Among other things, the IRA contains many provisions aimed at reducing this financial burden on individuals by reducing the co-insurance and co-payment costs, expanding eligibility for lower income subsidy plans, and price caps on annual out-of-pocket expenses, each of which could have potential pricing and reporting implications.

At the state level, individual states are increasingly aggressive in passing legislation and implementing regulations designed to control pharmaceutical and biological product pricing, including price or patient reimbursement constraints, discounts, restrictions on certain product access and marketing cost disclosure and transparency measures, and, in some cases, designed to encourage importation from other countries and bulk purchasing. In addition, regional healthcare organizations and individual hospitals are increasingly using bidding procedures to determine what pharmaceutical products and which suppliers will be included in their prescription drug and other healthcare programs. These measures could reduce the ultimate demand for our products, once approved, or put pressure on our product pricing. We expect that additional state and federal healthcare reform measures will be adopted in the future, any of which could limit the amounts that federal and state governments will pay for healthcare products and services, which could result in reduced demand for our product candidates or additional pricing pressures.

In the E.U., similar political, economic, and regulatory developments may affect our ability to profitably commercialize our product candidates, if approved. In markets outside of the U.S. and the E.U., reimbursement and healthcare payment systems vary significantly by country and many countries have instituted price ceilings on specific products and therapies. In many countries, including those of the E.U., the pricing of prescription pharmaceuticals is subject to governmental control and access. In these countries, pricing negotiations with governmental authorities can take considerable time after the receipt of marketing approval for a product. To obtain reimbursement or pricing approval in some countries, we or our collaborators may be required to conduct a clinical trial that compares the cost-effectiveness of our product to other available therapies. If reimbursement of our products is unavailable or limited in scope or amount or if pricing is set at unsatisfactory levels, our business could be materially harmed.

Governments outside of the U.S. tend to impose strict price controls, which may adversely affect our revenues from the sales of our products, if any.

In most foreign countries, including the European Economic Area, or EEA, and the UK, the proposed pricing for certain drugs (in particular, prescription-only drugs) is subject to pricing regulations. In the EU, although Directive 89/105/EEC regulates the framework conditions for the pricing of medicinal products and Regulation (EU) 2021/2282 on health technology assessment (HTA), to become fully applicable in January 2025, provides for a coordinated approach to assessing the benefit of new therapies, the decisions on pricing and cost reimbursement remain in the responsibility of the member states. The requirements governing drug pricing and reimbursement vary widely from country to country. For example, the EU provides options for its member states to restrict the range of medicinal products for which their national health insurance systems provide reimbursement and to control the prices of

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medicinal products for human use. In some countries, particularly member states of the EU, the pricing of prescription pharmaceuticals is subject to governmental control and other market regulations which could put pressure on the pricing and usage of our product candidates. In these countries, pricing negotiations with governmental authorities can take considerable time after the receipt of marketing approval for a product. In addition, market acceptance and sales of our product candidates will depend significantly on the availability of adequate coverage and reimbursement from third-party payors for our product candidates and may be affected by existing and future health care reform measures. Moreover, there can be considerable pressure by governments and other stakeholders on prices and reimbursement levels, including as part of cost containment measures. Political, economic and regulatory developments may further complicate pricing negotiations, and pricing negotiations may continue after reimbursement has been obtained. Reference pricing used by various EU member states and parallel distribution, or arbitrage between low-priced and high-priced member states, can further reduce prices. A member state may approve a specific price for the medicinal product, or it may instead adopt a system of direct or indirect controls on the profitability of the company placing the medicinal product on the market. In view of the recurring shortages of medicines, individual member states (especially Germany) have decided to adjust price regulations for particularly rare pediatric medicinal products. In some countries, we, or our future collaborators, may be required to conduct a clinical trial or other studies that compare the cost-effectiveness of our product candidates to other available therapies in order to obtain or maintain reimbursement or pricing approval. There can be no assurance that any country that has price controls or reimbursement limitations for biopharmaceutical products will allow favorable reimbursement and pricing arrangements for any of our products. Historically, products launched in the EU do not follow price structures of the U.S. and generally prices tend to be significantly lower. Publication of discounts by third-party payors or authorities may lead to further pressure on the prices or reimbursement levels within the country of publication and other countries. If pricing is set at unsatisfactory levels or if reimbursement of our products is unavailable or limited in scope or amount, our revenues from sales and the potential profitability of any of our product candidates in those countries would be negatively affected.

Publication of discounts by third-party payors or authorities may lead to further pressure on the prices or reimbursement levels within the country of publication and other countries. If reimbursement of any product candidate approved for marketing is unavailable or limited in scope or amount, or if pricing is set at unsatisfactory levels, our business could be materially harmed.

EU drug marketing and reimbursement regulations may materially affect our ability to market and receive coverage for our products in the European member states.

We intend to seek approval to market our product candidates in both the U.S. and in selected foreign jurisdictions. If we obtain approval in one or more foreign jurisdictions for our product candidates, we will be subject to rules and regulations in those jurisdictions.

Much like the federal Anti-Kickback Statute prohibition in the U.S., the provision of benefits or advantages to physicians to induce or encourage the prescription, recommendation, endorsement, purchase, supply, order or use of medicinal products is also prohibited in the EU. The provision of benefits or advantages to physicians is governed by the national anti-bribery laws, unfair competition laws and laws on advertising in the healthcare sector of EU Member States, and in respect of the UK (which is no longer a member of the EU), the UK Bribery Act 2010 and laws on advertising and promotion in the pharmaceutical, medical devices and healthcare sectors. Infringement of these laws could result in substantial fines and imprisonment.

Source: SEC EDGAR (public domain) · 10-K for the period ended 2023-12-31, filed 2024-04-15 · accession 0000950170-24-044508

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