Armata Pharmaceuticals, Inc. - Annual Report: 2019 (Form 10-K)

 

 

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

(Mark One)

 

Commission File Number 001‑37544

ARMATA PHARMACEUTICALS, INC.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

 

 

 

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

 

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act.    Yes   ☐    No  ☒

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Exchange Act.     Yes  ☐    No  ☒

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

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes  ☒    No  ☐

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

 

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

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

As of June 28, 2019, the aggregate market value of voting stock held by non-affiliates of the Registrant, based on the closing price of the Common Stock on June 28, 2019 (the last business day of the Registrant’s most recently completed second quarter) as quoted on the NYSE American, was approximately $38.9 million.

As of March 3, 2020, 10,927,032 shares of the Registrant’s Common Stock were outstanding.

 

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ARMATA PHARMACEUTICALS INC.

 

 

 

SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This Annual Report on Form 10-K (this “Annual Report”) and certain information incorporated herein by reference contain forward-looking statements, which are provided under the “safe harbor” protection of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to future events, results or to our future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause our actual results, performance or events to be materially different from any future results, performance or events expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this Annual Report include, but are not limited to, statements regarding:

In some cases, you can identify these statements by terms such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “project,” “should,” “will,” “would” or the negative of those terms, and similar expressions. These forward-looking statements reflect our management’s beliefs and views with respect to future events and are based on estimates and assumptions as of the date of this Annual Report and are subject to risks and uncertainties. We discuss many of these risks in greater detail in the section entitled “Risk Factors.” Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks emerge from time to time. It is not possible for our management to predict all risks, nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements we may make. In addition, statements that “we believe” and similar statements reflect our beliefs and opinions on the relevant subject. These statements are based upon information available to us as of the date of this Annual Report, and while we believe such information forms a reasonable basis for such statements, such information may be limited or incomplete, and our statements should not be read to indicate that we have conducted an exhaustive inquiry into, or review of, all potentially available relevant information. These statements are inherently uncertain. Given these uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on any of the forward-looking statements included in this Annual Report. In addition, this Annual Report also contains estimates, projections and other information concerning our industry, our business, and the markets for our product candidates, as well as data regarding market research, estimates and forecasts prepared by our management. Information that is based on estimates, forecasts, projections, market research or similar methodologies is inherently subject to uncertainties and actual events or circumstances may differ materially from events and circumstances reflected in this information. These statements are based upon information available to us as of the date of this Annual Report, and while we believe such information forms a reasonable basis for such statements, such information may be limited or incomplete, and our statements should not be read to indicate that we have conducted an exhaustive inquiry into, or review of, all potentially available relevant information.

This Annual Report includes trademarks and registered trademarks of Armata Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Products or service names of other companies mentioned in this Annual Report may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

As used in this Annual Report, unless the context requires otherwise, the “Company,” “we,” “us” and “our” refer to Armata Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and its wholly owned subsidiaries.

PART I

Item 1.     BUSINESS

Overview

We are a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on the development of precisely targeted bacteriophage therapeutics for the treatment of antibiotic-resistant infections using our proprietary bacteriophage-based technology. Bacteriophages or “phages” have a powerful and highly differentiated mechanism of action that enables binding to and killing specific bacteria, in contrast  to traditional  broad-spectrum antibiotics.   We believe that phages represent a promising means to treat bacterial  infections, especially those that have developed resistance to current standard of care therapies, including the so-called multidrug-resistant or “superbug” strains of bacteria. We are a leading developer of phage therapeutics, which are uniquely positioned to address the growing worldwide threat of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

 

We are combining our proprietary approach and expertise in identifying, characterizing and developing both naturally-occurring and engineered (synthetic) bacteriophages with our proprietary phage-specific Good Manufacturing Practice compliance (“cGMP”) manufacturing capabilities to advance a broad pipeline of high-quality bacteriophage product candidates.  We believe that synthetic phage,  engineered using advances in sequencing and synthetic biology techniques, represent a promising means to advance phage therapy,   including phage-based  diagnostics and improving upon the ability of natural phage to treat bacterial infections, especially those that have developed resistance to current antibiotic  therapies,  including the multidrug-resistant or “superbug” bacterial pathogens.  Our phage product  candidates  aim to address areas of significant unmet clinical need, by targeting key antibiotic-resistant bacteria including those on the World Health Organization’s global priority pathogens  list.

 

We are developing and advancing our second generation  phage product  candidate  for Pseudomonas aeruginosa (“P. aeruginosa”), known as AP-PA02. We anticipate initiating a Phase 1b/2, multi-center,  double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, single and multiple ascending dose study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and preliminary efficacy of AP-PA02 in subjects with cystic fibrosis (“CF”) and chronic pulmonary P. aeruginosa infection in the first half of 2020.

 

We are also developing a second generation  phage product  candidate  for Staphylococcus aureus (“S. aureus”), known as AP-SA02, for the treatment of S. aureus bacteremia.  We intend to file an IND Application with the FDA to initiate a Phase 1/2, multi-center,   randomized, double-blind, placebo- controlled dose escalation study that will assess the safety, tolerability,   and efficacy of AP-SA02 in the second half of 2020.

 

In partnership with Merck & Co., known as Merck Sharp & Dohme outside of the United States and Canada  (“Merck”), we are developing proprietary synthetic phage candidates  to target undisclosed infectious disease agents. Our proprietary phage engineering platform   serves to enhance the clinical and commercial prospects of phage therapy.   These attributes include expanded host range, improved potency which is a fundamental drug property  that can translate  into improved clinical efficacy, and importantly,  biofilm disruption, which is a critical aspect of serious infections that needs to be addressed.

 

In addition  to our more advanced pipeline programs,    we have phage discovery efforts underway to target other major pathogens  of infectious disease (including the ESKAPE  pathogens:  Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter species) and preventable  infectious disease of the microbiome.

 

We are committed  to conducting  formal  randomized  clinical trials  required  for FDA  approval   in order to move toward commercialization of  alternatives  to traditional antibiotics  and provide a potential   method of treating patients suffering from drug-resistant bacterial infections.

Corporate History and Reorganization

Armata was created as a result of a business combination of AmpliPhi Biosciences Corporation, a bacteriophage development stage company (“AmpliPhi”) with C3J Therapeutics, Inc. (“C3J”), where Ceres Merger Sub, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of AmpliPhi, merged with and into C3J (the “Merger”). On May 9, 2019, immediately prior to the closing of the Merger, AmpliPhi changed its name to Armata Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

C3J’s predecessor, C3 Jian, Inc., was incorporated under the laws of the State of California on November 4, 2005. On February 26, 2016, as part of a reorganization transaction, C3 Jian, Inc. merged with a wholly-owned subsidiary of C3J, and as part of this process, C3 Jian, Inc. was converted to a limited liability company organized under the laws of the State of California named C3 Jian, LLC. Prior to the Merger, C3J was privately held and was financed principally through a series of equity financings.

AmpliPhi was incorporated under the laws of the State of Washington in March 1989 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Immunex Corporation and began operations as an independent company in 1992 as Targeted Genetics Corporation. In January 2011, AmpliPhi completed the acquisition of Biocontrol Ltd, an antimicrobial biotechnology company based in the United Kingdom, with the goal of developing their phage therapy programs using funding from the sale of our legacy gene therapy assets. In November 2012, AmpliPhi completed the acquisition of Special Phage Holdings Pty Ltd, a company based in Australia, with the goal of continuing research addressing the rapidly escalating problem of antibiotic resistance through the development of a series of bacteriophage-based treatments.

 

Pipeline

The following chart summarizes the status of our phage product candidate development programs:

 

Strategy

Our strategy is to demonstrate safety, tolerability and efficacy of multiple phage products in randomized controlled clinical trials required for FDA approval and to support commercialization in multiple indications in areas of high unmet medical need. Our fully integrated product development capabilities from bench to clinic enables discovery of optimal product candidates, efficient process development and manufacturing, rigorous clinical trials. Our microbiological surveillance and synthetic biology capabilities drive long-term product life cycle management. We intend to:

The Need for New Anti-Infective Therapies

The introduction of penicillin in the early 1940s marked the start of the antibiotic discovery era, during which more than 20 new classes of antibiotic were marketed over a period of three decades. The first case of the “superbug”, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (“MRSA”), in the United States occurred in 1968. A void in the discovery of new classes of antibiotics lasting approximately 30 years drove the emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), and pandrug-resistant strains of Acinetobacter baumannii,  Pseudomonas aeruginosa,  Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae.

 

The dramatic and continuous emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and the lack of new antibiotics in the pipeline, has prompted calls to action from many of the world’s major health bodies such as The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the “CDC”), and the WHO, who warn of an “antibiotic cliff” and a “post-antibiotic era.” A growing list of infections – such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, bacteremia/septicemia, gonorrhea, and foodborne diseases – are becoming harder, and sometimes impossible, to treat as antibiotics become less effective. In 2009, the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System concluded that “the loss of effective antimicrobial therapy increasingly threatens the delivery of crucial health services in hospitals and in the community.” This conclusion was reinforced by The Antimicrobial Availability Task Force of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (the “IDSA”), and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in conjunction with the EMA.

The IDSA and WHO regard antimicrobial resistance as one of the greatest threats to human health worldwide. The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, a global project commissioned by the British government and the Wellcome Trust, reports that at least 700,000 people die each year of drug resistance in illnesses that include bacterial infections. The report predicts that, by 2050, 10 million lives a year worldwide (more people than currently die from cancer) and a cumulative US$100 trillion of economic output are at risk due to the rise of drug-resistant infections. The CDC estimates that at least 2 million people in the United States develop infections due to resistant bacteria resulting in more than 23,000 deaths each year. A 2018 study from the Washington University School of Medicine indicated that the number of deaths would be between 153,113 and 162,044, which suggests that the CDC estimates may be dramatic underestimations. It is estimated that 50% of hospital-acquired infections are resistant to first-line anti-infective therapies. The cumulative annual healthcare costs for treating drug-resistant bacterial infections in United States alone is calculated at US$21 billion to US$34 billion , with over 8 million additional hospital days. It is for these reasons that we believe there is a critical and pressing need to develop new and novel antibacterial therapies to combat the rise in antibiotic-resistance bacteria.

Anti-Infective Therapeutics Market

The market opportunity for antibiotics is large, with the market estimated to reach $44.7 billion in annual sales globally in 2020. Almost one in every five deaths worldwide occurs as a result of infection and, according to the WHO, many bacterial infections will become difficult or impossible to cure as the efficacy of current standard-of-care antibiotics wanes. Despite the advances in antimicrobial and vaccine development, infectious diseases still remain the third-leading cause of death in the United States and the second-leading cause of death worldwide.

The number of new antibiotics approved by the FDA, and other global regulatory authorities has declined consistently over the last two decades. According to a September 2019 report from PEW Charitable Trusts, only 42 new antibiotics (all small molecules that act systemically) with the potential to treat serious or life-threatening bacterial infections are in global clinical development. This is compared with more than 1,000 new product candidates in the drug pipeline for cancer. Historically, the success rate from Phase 1 to marketing approval is only one in five for infectious disease products. We therefore believe there is a need for new approaches to treat serious and life-threatening bacterial infections.

Hospital-acquired (nosocomial) infections are a major healthcare problem throughout the world, affecting developed countries as well as resource-poor countries. The WHO reports that hospital-acquired infections are among the major causes of death and increased morbidity among hospitalized patients and estimates that more than 1.4 million people per year worldwide suffer from infectious complications from a hospital stay. In 2016, the CDC reported that in the United States, approximately 4% of all patients admitted to a hospital will be affected by a hospital-acquired infection during their stay, typically requiring extended stays and additional care.

Compounding the above situations is the alarming and continuing rise in the prevalence of multidrug-resistant bacterial infections. This, coupled with the lack of new antibiotics in current discovery and development pipelines, has generated a significant clinical management problem worldwide, leading to increases in morbidity and mortality due to these antibiotic-resistant bacteria as well as increases in healthcare costs.

Bacteriophage therapy has the potential to be an alternative method of treating bacterial infection.

Bacteriophage Therapy

Bacteriophages, also known as phages, are ubiquitous viruses, found wherever bacteria exist. It is estimated there are more bacteriophages than every other organism on Earth combined. Phages are natural predators of bacteria, and the name “bacteriophage” translates as “eaters of bacteria”. Phages infect and rapidly kill the bacterial host by multiplying inside and then bursting through the cell membrane in order to release the next generation of phages into the surrounding environment, ready to infect and kill additional nearby target bacterial cells until the bacteria have been eliminated. When there are no target bacteria left for the phages to infect, the phages are removed through the body’s natural clearance processes.

Phages have the potential to provide both an alternative to, and a synergistic approach with, antibiotic therapy. Phages offer several differentiating attributes compared to classic antibiotics:

Phages were discovered in 1915 at the Pasteur Institute and were shown to kill bacteria taken from patients suffering from dysentery. Furthermore, it was noted that phage numbers rose as patients recovered from infection, suggesting a direct association. Throughout the pre-antibiotic era, phages were widely used as an effective therapeutic agent to combat a variety of bacterial infections. However, phage use was displaced by the common use of broad-spectrum antibiotics in the early 1940s, with antibiotics being seen for many years as the superior treatment to combat bacterial disease, particularly in Western medicine. This attitude persisted until the development of the wide-ranging, and in some cases total, resistance to antibiotics seen within the last 10 years. We believe that the continuing emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria provides the opportunity to revitalize phage use.

There are hundreds of cases published in the scientific and medical literature describing the use of phage therapy in human medicine over more than 90 years, mostly in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Phage therapy is still commonly used today in Russia, Poland and Georgia, with numerous reports of success in treating infectious diseases

caused by many pathogenic bacterial species. However, the safety and effectiveness of these therapies have not been conclusively established due to the lack of randomized controlled clinical studies.

Recently, Western medicine has seen a rise in the clinical evaluation of phages. In the United Kingdom, two early-stage clinical trials of Pseudomonas aeruginosa phage cocktails showed no adverse effects in patients. One study (Phase 1/2a) demonstrated efficacy in a small trial of 12 patients with chronic multidrug-resistant P. aeruginosa otitis treated with a cocktail of six natural phages. Since 2016, there have been a number of Compassionate Use cases in which patients suffering from various serious or life-threatening infections have been treated with phage therapy under physician-sponsored Emergency Investigational New Drug (“Emergency IND”) Applications with high rates of success and no adverse effects attributable to the therapy. Most notable was the well-documented case in 2016 of Tom Patterson, whose disseminated multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii infection was successfully treated with phage-based therapeutic cocktails administered intravenously and intraperitoneally. An 82-year-old male with an aortic graft (heart implant) infected with pandrug-resistant P. aeruginosa was successfully treated with a single application of phage, marking Yale University’s first case using phage therapy under Emergency IND. By early 2019, Yale University had treated more than half-a-dozen compassionate use cases, the majority individuals with CF with antibiotic-resistant lung infection. In 2018, a 15-year-old CF patient with a disseminated Mycobacterium abscessus lung infection was treated intravenously with a three-phage cocktail following lung transplantation. That patient’s case represents another milestone for phage therapy – the first person to be treated with genetically modified phages.

A consistent takeaway from these early phage therapy uses, and from the more recent clinical trials and compassionate use cases, is that phage therapy is generally well tolerated, with generally no reports of serious adverse events. Phage have previously received approvals for use in cleaning food facilities and as a food additive for human consumption by the FDA and the EMA, and as agricultural bacterial pest treatments by the United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”). Phages have met the criteria to be considered as “generally recognized as safe”, or “GRAS”, in the food and food contact surface categories.

With the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance, we believe it is essential that phage safety and efficacy is demonstrated by conducting rigorous well-powered clinical trials required for FDA approval, in order to move toward commercialization of alternatives to traditional antibiotics and bring a potential solution to all patients suffering from drug-resistant bacterial infections.

Target Markets and Medical Need

Pulmonary Bacterial Infections

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is consistently recognized by the CDC, and other public health agencies, as among the most dangerous and difficult-to-treat pathogens associated with significant impacts on health, quality of life, and economic burden. Regular standard-of-care antibiotics treatments often fail to completely eradicate the pathogen, and the problem is further complicated by rising rates of antibiotic resistance due to a growing number of multidrug-resistant isolates emerging, particularly with long term use. Pseudomonas is particularly problematic for CF patients given that their already compromised immune system leads to chronic infections. In addition to CF lung infections, P. aeruginosa is responsible for other respiratory infections with high unmet medical need, including hospitalized pneumonia. Staphylococcus aureus is another major pathogen that drives both community-acquired and healthcare-associated pneumonias (“HCAPs”).

P. aeruginosa Infection is a Major Cause of Morbidity and Mortality in Cystic Fibrosis

CF is a genetic disease caused by mutations in the CF transmembrane conductance regulator (“CFTR”) gene. CF affects over 30,000 people in the United States (70,000 people worldwide) with approximately 1,000 new diagnoses per year. Dysfunction of the CFTR gene leads to dysfunction in multiple organs, but particularly the lungs, where a failure of hydration of airway secretions results in thick mucus, chronic inflammation, airway remodeling, and recurrent infections. Lung function continues to decline over time, punctuated by pulmonary exacerbations with increased cough, shortness of breath, and infections that result in rapid declines in lung function. For these reasons, CF remains the most common fatal hereditary lung disease.

Outcomes for people with CF have improved significantly in recent years through early screening, the development and use of CFTR modulators, and other therapies. However, people with CF still suffer significant morbidity and mortality due to pulmonary infection with P. aeruginosa. Chronic P. aeruginosa infections occur in 55% of CF patients by age 25, and are strongly associated with worsening lung function, frequent pulmonary exacerbations, and increased mortality. In 2018, the median survival age was 47 years. Although many patients with chronic P. aeruginosa benefit from routine suppressive inhaled antibiotic therapy, large numbers of CF patients still experience clinical deterioration despite these treatments, hence the need for more effective therapies, ideally with a different mechanism of action compared to traditional antibiotics, for the treatment of chronic P. aeruginosa infection. GlobalData projects that total antibiotic sales in the CF market will exceed $400 million in 2020.

Initial P. aeruginosa pulmonary infections are treated aggressively with the goal of eradicating the infection because P. aeruginosa infection in children is associated with increased mortality whereas sustained eradication of first P. aeruginosa infections leads to a 74% decreased 5‑year risk of chronic P. aeruginosa infection. However, despite several acceptable antibiotic regimens, infection eradication is sustained in only 57‑69% of children and adolescents. Given the significant health costs associated with treatment of infection in children and adolescents with CF after the failure to achieve sustained P. aeruginosa eradication, a 30% treatment failure rate is unacceptable and demonstrates an urgent need for better eradication therapies for initial P. aeruginosa infections.

Staphylococcus aureus Bacteremia

Bacteremia is a common diagnosis with up to 1.7 million cases reported annually in the United States. S. aureus is the most commonly identified pathogen in both hospital- and community-acquired blood stream infections. Annually in the U.S. there are approximately 200,000 hospitalizations for S. aureus bacteremia (“SAB”). Despite conventional antibiotics, mortality in SAB results in death of up to 40% of all cases and 57% of patients over the age of 85. Patients with comorbidities such as alcoholism, malignancy, diabetes, end-stage renal disease requiring hemodialysis, and immunosuppression are at even higher risk for death when SAB develops. Age-adjusted mortality assessments show that SAB mortality is higher than that of AIDS, tuberculosis, or viral hepatitis, and comparable to mortality rates for breast or prostate cancer. Outcomes are even poorer for SAB due to MRSA, classified as a serious threat to global health by the CDC and a high priority threat by the WHO, with higher rates of complications and increased mortality as compared to methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA). Average hospital costs to patients with nosocomial SAB ranges between $40,000 (MSSA) and $114,000 (MRSA). Treatment failures are common in SAB, with highest rates due to MRSA. These failures can be attributed in part to poor penetration of some tissues by antibiotics, slow onset of bactericidal effects, emerging resistance patterns, and biofilm formation. While biofilms can render traditional antibiotics ineffective, phages may have the ability to penetrate the biofilm allowing rapid and efficient infection of the host and amplification at the site of infection. Daptomycin (approved in 2005; based on clinical cure rates of <50%) and vancomycin are the only two antibiotics with label indications in the U.S. for the treatment of SAB, and the emergence of drug-resistant S. aureus isolates, including to these two standard of care drugs, represents a major threat in terms of increasing morbidity, mortality and health care utilization.

Platform Technologies

Proprietary Synthetic Phage Platform

Phages, natural predators of bacteria, have been in an uninterrupted battle for millions of years – evolving to kill or evade. These powerful natural phages can be purposely engineered to be more efficient killers. The use of synthetic biology tools enables us to precisely engineer natural phages in ways that further improve their pharmacological properties and antimicrobial activity, with the potential to create supercharged synthetic phages that, once marketing authorization is obtained, can be deployed in the clinic as highly effective weapons in the fight against multidrug-

resistant bacterial infections. Engineering natural phages may broaden their host range, minimize resistance and improve efficacy through the expression of beneficial moieties such as biofilm-degrading enzymes and antimicrobial peptides.

 

Proprietary STAMP Platform

Specifically Targeted Antimicrobial Peptides (STAMPs) are designed by first identifying targeting domains in bacterial genomes using genomic mining techniques. An antimicrobial peptide is then linked to the targeting domain, directing the antimicrobial activity to a specific pathogen or group of pathogens of choice within a microbial community. The platform technology allows the STAMP to effectively re-engineer the microbiota by selectively killing the targeted pathogen while sparing the remaining healthy microorganisms within the indigenous microflora. In contrast to this targeted approach, broad-spectrum antibiotics indiscriminately kill both beneficial and pathogenic bacteria. Treatment

with STAMPs results in biofilm communities that remain intact and “healthier” after treatment, serving as a barrier to prevent reinfection.

 

A STAMP platform proof-of-concept has been demonstrated with C16G2 advancing through several clinical trials, including Phase 2 clinical trials, conducted under an IND application. Administered as a topical product, C16G2 targets S. mutans, recognized as the major causative agent of dental caries (tooth decay/cavities). These studies demonstrated an acceptable safety and tolerability profile of the drug while demonstrating a selective reduction of S. mutans in the oral cavity. Given the length and cost of pursuing a large Phase 2 trial or a pivotal Phase 3 trial, we elected not to proceed, and instead seek alternatives to lower STAMP cost of goods, which could include C16G2 expressed in a synthetic phage. We plan to seek partners to continue the development of C16G2.

Preclinical and Clinical Development Programs

Our phage product discovery platform in which we screen of hundreds of clinically-relevant isolates against our extensive phage library utilizing proprietary methods that identify optimal phage combinations with superior attributes, together with our phage-specific cGMP manufacturing facilities, uniquely enable us to efficiently identify new therapeutic candidates. Our therapeutic phage candidates aim to address areas of significant unmet clinical need, by targeting key antibiotic-resistant bacteria including those on the WHO’s global priority pathogens list. We are developing and advancing a broad pipeline of natural and synthetic phage candidates, including clinical candidates for Pseudomonas aeruginosa,  Staphylococcus aureus, and other pathogens. Proprietary synthetic phage candidates designed to target an undisclosed infectious disease agent are being developed in partnership with Merck. We are committed to advancing phage with drug development expertise that spans bench to clinic including in-house phage-specific cGMP manufacturing.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa Phage Product Candidate, AP-PA02

Background and Strategy

AP-PA02 is being developed as a replacement for its predecessor AP-PA01 (previously known as AB-PA01). A total of 10 patients with serious or life-threatening P. aeruginosa infections not responding to antibiotic therapy have been treated with AP-PA01, along with antibiotics, under single-patient expanded access programs in the United States (Emergency INDs, per the FDA) or Australia (Special Access Scheme, per the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration). The treated patients’ infections included bacteremia, native and prosthetic valve endocarditis, recurrent pneumonia (CF, post-transplant), VAP, prosthetic joint infection, ventricular assist device infection, and septicemia due

to burns. There were no treatment-related serious adverse events (SAEs) from treatment with AP-PA01 administered via nebulizer or intravenously. One of these cases was recently featured in the peer-reviewed journal Infection after AP-PA01 was used to successfully treat a CF patient who had developed a multidrug-resistant P. aeruginosa infection. Another recent success with AP-PA01 used to treat a 77‑year-old with VAP and empyema was described in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

In August 2018, we held a Type B pre-IND meeting with the FDA regarding our proposed Phase 1/2 clinical study of AP-PA01 for the treatment of P. aeruginosa respiratory infections (VAP). Feedback from the FDA in September 2018 included: agreement on product specifications, manufacturing and analytical plan, and a stability program. Furthermore, the FDA noted that preclinical toxicology studies are not required for AP-PA01 to enter clinical development.

Human exposure through treatment of single patients with AP-PA01 under the expanded access program has been helpful in demonstrating the promise of phage therapy. Feedback from the pre-IND meeting has been insightful for the regulatory path required for phage therapeutics in general, and specifically for phage product candidate intended for respiratory infection. We therefore have leveraged our experiences with AP-PA01 to derive a development plan for AP-PA02.

Preclinical Development of AP-PA02

AP-PA02 is one example of the novel candidates to emerge from our robust research and development capabilities, and significantly improves upon our original P. aeruginosa phage product candidate, AP-PA01. A series of selection criteria and different methods were deployed, including bioinformatics and comparative genomics, in order to identify such optimal attributes for a product candidate. We have engaged in preclinical studies to determine pharmacological and toxicological parameters to confirm therapeutic potential in the clinic. In parallel, we initiated manufacturing feasibility and process optimization efforts with the goal of achieving high-quality phage product free of endotoxin and host cell proteins whilst maintaining adequate phage titers. AP-PA02 is comprised of a cocktail of P. aeruginosa phages originating from distinct families and subfamilies, targeting multiple receptor classes, functioning with compatibility (i.e., the phages don’t interfere with one another) and cooperativity (i.e., the phages work together for a better outcome), and further characterized by being highly potent and having a broad host range and overlap. AP-PA02 demonstrates broad coverage against approximately 90% of tested clinical isolates.

Preclinical highlights of AP-PA02 include:

We have developed AP-PA02 as a liquid formulation, suitable for delivery by inhalation and intravenous administration. Feasibility batches of AP-PA02 have been completed meeting all intended specifications. Verification batches have also been completed with quality control data expected to support regulatory filings. Potency of drug substance supports doses up to at least 1x1011 PFU (plaque forming units) per mL, and endotoxin levels are well within specifications for an intravenous product. We have initiated manufacturing of clinical trial material at our production facility in Marina del Rey, California, using cGMP, to support the required regulatory filing(s) for clinical entry in the United States and/or Europe.

Clinical Development Plans

We plan to file an IND Application with the FDA, and possibly a Clinical Trial Application (“CTA”) with the relevant competent authorities in Europe, in the first half of 2020, upon regulatory clearance, initiate a Phase 1b/2, multi-center, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, single and multiple ascending dose study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and preliminary efficacy of AP-PA02 in subjects with CF and chronic pulmonary P. aeruginosa infection. We plan to explore the pharmacokinetic (“PK”) profile, pharmacodynamic (“PD”) profile, and immunogenicity, of AP-PA02. We anticipate conducting the study at sites in the United States and Europe. We anticipate generating topline data from this study in 2020.

With positive outcomes from this first clinical study, we plan to initiate follow-on clinical studies that will investigate the efficacy of AP-PA02 to improve lung function and decrease exacerbations. Our ultimate goal is to bring AP-PA02 to the CF community at large as a new FDA-approved therapy to treat airway P. aeruginosa infections and improve the long-term health of people with CF.

In addition to CF lung infections, we have begun charting the appropriate clinical and regulatory paths for other respiratory infections with high unmet medical need, such as bacterial pneumonia. For this purpose, we intend to also optimize a P. aeruginosa phage product candidate for the treatment and/or prevention of hospitalized pneumonia utilizing a core set of phages derived from AP-PA02. We do not anticipate clinical development of such a product until such time that we can evaluate the results of the CF study.

We plan to produce our proprietary bacteriophage therapeutics for these clinical trials at our cGMP-compliant manufacturing facility located in Marina del Rey, California. We believe our cGMP-facility has the capacity to produce our proprietary bacteriophage therapeutics for these clinical trials through a potential biologics license application filing and potential approval.

Furthermore, we will investigate whether AP-PA02, and any other Pseudomonas phage product candidates that we may develop in the future, may be eligible for Fast Track Designation and for approval under the Limited Population pathway (“LPAD pathway”), which is intended to facilitate development of therapeutics to treat serious or life-threatening infections in a limited population of patients with unmet need. Products eligible for approval under the LPAD pathway may follow streamlined approaches for clinical development, which may involve smaller, shorter, or fewer clinical trials to help reduce the overall product development timeline.

Staphylococcus aureus Phage Product Candidate, AP-SA02

Background

Our first-generation phage product candidate, AP-SA02 (previously AB-SA01) targets S. aureus. The three natural lytic phage that comprise the product candidate were chosen for their ability to cover approximately 95% of S. aureus clinical isolates, including multidrug-resistant strains.

The therapeutic potential of the first-generation S. aureus bacteriophage product, AP-SA01, has been demonstrated through:

AP-SA01 has previously advanced through a Type B pre-IND meeting with the FDA in August 2018.

Product Optimization: Development of AP-SA02

Using the same integrated approach and proprietary techniques that we employed to improve upon AP-PA01 as described above, we have developed an optimized phage cocktail for Staphylococcus aureus, with significantly improved attributes. This product draws upon prior experience and expertise to derive bacteriophage cocktails with superior therapeutic attributes. Unlike AP-SA01, which is comprised of three highly-related lytic phages of one family, this new product AP-SA02 consists of phage from different families with robust host range and superior killing kinetics compared to the phage which comprise AP-SA01.

Preclinical highlights of AP-SA02 include:

AP-SA02 Clinical Development Plans

We are committed to developing novel phage therapies that specifically address areas of high need which includes drug resistant and difficult to treat infections such as Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia (SAB). The long-term potential for phage therapy is broad reaching, including potential use as front-line therapy. However, first indications will be as adjunct therapy in indications with high unmet need, which demands careful patient population selection to assure that a treatment effect with the phage cocktail can be observed over and above the efficacy of standard-of-care antibiotics.

We plan to file an IND Application with the FDA, and, upon regulatory clearance, initiate a Phase 1b/2, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled dose escalation study that will assess the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of AP-SA02 administered intravenously as an adjunct to best available antibiotic therapy (“BAT”) for the treatment of SAB. The objectives of this study are to: (i) demonstrate safety and tolerability of multiple different dose levels of AP-SA02; (ii) evaluate optimal dosing through safety, PK and microbial efficacy; and (iii) explore efficacy through evaluation of key meaningful endpoints. We anticipate conducting the study at sites in the United States and potentially also at sites abroad. We have developed a synopsis for the Phase 1b/2 study design that reflects feedback from the FDA, received by our predecessor in September 2018. Additional refinements in trial design and study population will be derived through consultation with key opinion leaders from academic centers and U.S. government medical treatment facilities, prior to incorporation into the final study protocol. We anticipate findings from this study will provide the basis for constructing a robust trial strategy for registration which can be the basis for an End-of-Phase‑2 meeting with the FDA that enables us to obtain agreement on a path to approval.

We are actively seeking and intend to continue to seek non-dilutive financing and explore other opportunities to conduct this Phase 1/2 study. Given our priorities to devote internal resources to the Pseudomonas respiratory indications outlined above, clinical trials in S. aureus indications outside of respiratory infections will not proceed until we secure third party funding.

Improved patient outcomes are needed for other staphylococcal infections, particularly those caused by MRSA, in settings such as endocarditis, prosthetic joint infections, and pneumonia and we believe AP-SA02 could also have a meaningful impact in these indications. As mentioned above, our initial priority will be targeting respiratory infections and, absent third-party funding, our priority would likely target AP-SA02 in such indications. For example, having bacteriophage products for S. aureus and P. aeruginosa would enable us to address the two most common pathogens causing hospitalized pneumonia.

We will investigate whether AP-SA02, and any other Staphylococcal phage product candidates that we may develop in the future, may be eligible for Fast Track Designation and for approval under the LPAD pathway, which is intended to facilitate development of therapeutics to treat serious or life-threatening infections in a limited population of patients with unmet need. Products eligible for approval under the LPAD pathway may follow streamlined approaches for clinical development, which may involve smaller, shorter, or fewer clinical trials to help reduce the overall product development timeline.

Merck Partnered Program

Proprietary synthetic phage candidates designed to target an undisclosed infectious disease agent are being developed in partnership with Merck, a collaboration that reflects the pharmaceutical industry’s growing interest in phage therapy. Pursuant to the terms of the Amended and Restated Research Collaboration and Option to License Agreement between Armata and Merck (the “Research and Option Agreement”) we are engaged in the research and development of engineered phage, or a combination of two or more engineered phages, that infect specific bacteria, pursuant to the criteria set forth in the research plan. We intend for the phage to be engineered for a wide host range, and to express anti-biofilm and antimicrobial payloads. We will be entitled to milestone payments tied to the achievement of product development and regulatory milestones, and royalty payments based on net sales of products developed pursuant to the Research and Option Agreement. We are responsible for our costs and expenses in connection with the research program. Unless the Research and Option Agreement is terminated by Merck, it will continue in full force and effect

until one or more products developed thereunder has received marketing authorization and, thereafter, until expiration of all royalty obligations thereunder. Upon expiration of the Research and Option Agreement, Merck’s licenses pursuant to the Research and Option Agreement will become fully paid-up, perpetual licenses. An amendment to the Research and Option Agreement with a revised research plan was agreed to by the parties in December 2019.

Engineered Phage-Based Diagnostic

We are developing a diagnostic test to help us to rapidly and accurately identify patients during our clinical trials and in connection with the commercialization of our phage product candidates that we are developing or may develop in the future. The test is deigned to drive early use of our therapeutic phage in a treatment paradigm by identifying patients who are most likely to benefit. For example, those patients who are infected with a bacterial isolate that is sensitive to our particular therapeutic phage, and to monitor response to treatment with our particular therapeutic phage. The test is designed to be highly sensitive and to identify colonized patients even before a diagnosis of infection has been given by the treating physician.

Discovery Research

In addition to developing our more advanced pipeline programs described above, we continue phage discovery efforts by screening other interesting bacterial targets against our phage library in order to further expand our pipeline. Klebsiella pneumoniae phage, for example, is a potentially important addition to treatment options for serious lung infections. A recent outbreak of VAP caused by a new emerging hypervirulent K. pneumoniae strain led to the death of five patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital in China (Lancet Infect. Dis.; Volume 18:1, Jan 2018).

Furthermore, our team of microbiologists and synthetic biologists hunt for natural phages and evaluate the suitability of these phages for engineering using our proprietary synthetic phage platform. We continue to make advancements in the engineering of super fit phage, incorporating the best attributes from a phage family to expand host range and increase burst size, and improving bactericidal and biofilm activity through the expression of heterologous proteins.

Manufacturing

We produce clinical quantities of each of our bacteriophage product candidates at our cGMP-compliant manufacturing facility in Marina del Rey, California. This facility, which serves as our headquarters, has approximately 35,500 square feet of laboratory and office space, including 5,600 square feet of cGMP laboratory space, designed to produce clinical quantities of each of our product candidates and to perform in-house Quality Control testing. We operate in-house process development activities through to production, purification, formulation, and release of our therapeutic phage cocktails for use in human clinical trials. Our facility is registered with the FDA and licensed by the California Department of Public Health (“CDPH”) for drug manufacturing, and is subject to periodic, unannounced inspections by both agencies for compliance with cGMP and other state and federal regulations. Our facility is staffed with an independent Quality Unit and cGMP-trained Manufacturing and Facilities personnel. We believe this facility will be sufficient to meet our manufacturing needs through our Phase 3 clinical trials.

Our current formulations for our Pseudomonas and Staphylococcal phage product candidates are intended for inhaled and intravenous delivery, both requiring our drug products to be sterile. Our Marina del Rey facility is capable of manufacturing sterile drug products, utilizing ISO-certified cleanrooms and ISO 5‑certified biological safety cabinets. The facility also houses an ISO 5‑certified closed system isolator. We may further optimize future formulations of our product candidates which may or may not require assurance of sterility.

For our manufacturing facility we have been able to access and hire highly skilled process development and phage manufacturing expertise and believe that we have control of our proprietary platform from phage identification through final product fill and finish and release. Manufacturing campaigns are managed by a specialist team of our internal staff, which is designed to promote compliance with the technical aspects and regulatory requirements of the manufacturing process. We have developed a cGMP-compliant manufacturing process that utilizes both industry standard and proprietary methods for the manufacture of our product candidates. Our process is designed to be scalable to meet our clinical study needs, and to fulfill the requirements of regulators for human studies.

Although our facility is capable of manufacturing our phage product candidates, we rely on, and may continue to rely on, third-party contract manufacturers for the manufacture of certain raw materials, components, or packaging of the product candidates that may be developed for clinical testing, as well as for commercialization.

We also had an additional cGMP-compliant manufacturing facility, located in in Ljubljana, Slovenia, that was leased by our wholly-owned subsidiary, AmpliPhi, Biotehnološke Raziskave in Razvoj, d.o.o. This facility was comprised of approximately 5,300 square feet of laboratory and office space, including 1,080 square feet of cGMP laboratory space where cGMP clinical trial materials have previously been manufactured. This facility was subject to inspection and regulation by JAZMP, the Agency for Medicinal Products and Medical Devices of the Republic of Slovenia. In April 2019, the facility successfully completed a periodic regulatory cGMP inspection by JAZMP. Subsequent to the Merger in May 2019, following an extensive evaluation and a technology transfer from the Slovenian facility to the Marina del Rey, California location, management determined that the Slovenia manufacturing facility was not essential to Armata’s business. This conclusion was reached in September 2019 after considering the monthly expenses of maintaining the Slovenian facility and its location in Europe. On November 8, 2019, the Company entered into an agreement to sell the Slovenian subsidiary to an un-related third-party buyer (“Buyer”). The Company will no longer be responsible for funding the liabilities of the Slovenia facility. The agreement requires that the Buyer maintain the ability of the Slovenia facility to manufacture the Company’s products. If the Company requires such products, the Buyer and the Company would negotiate a supply agreement governing the purchase and sale of such products. In addition, the Company has the right to repurchase the Slovenian subsidiary’s operations at any point in the five-year period immediately following the closing of the sale of the Slovenian subsidiary. On December 5, 2019, the Company completed the sale transaction of its Slovenia subsidiary and recognized a non-cash loss on sale of $0.7 million in the operating expenses in the statement of operations and comprehensive loss for the year ended December 31, 2019.

Intellectual Property

General

Our goal is to protect the proprietary technology that we believe is important to our business, including to obtain, maintain and enforce patent protection for our product candidates, formulations, processes, methods and any other proprietary technologies, preserve our trade secrets and operate without infringing on the proprietary rights of other parties, both in the United States and in other countries. Our policy is to actively seek to obtain, where appropriate, the broadest intellectual property protection possible for our current product candidates and any future product candidates, proprietary information and proprietary technology through a combination of contractual arrangements and patents, both in the United States and abroad. However, patent protection may not afford us with complete protection against competitors who seek to circumvent our patents.

We also rely on trademarks, trade secrets, know-how, continuing technological innovation and in-licensing opportunities to develop and maintain our proprietary position. We also depend upon the skills, knowledge, experience and know-how of our management and research and development personnel, as well as that of our advisors, consultants and other contractors. To help protect our proprietary processes and know-how, which is not patentable, and for

inventions for which patents may be difficult to enforce, we currently and will in the future rely on trade secret protection and contractual obligations with third parties to protect our interests and to develop and maintain our competitive position. To this end, we require all of our employees, consultants, advisors and other contractors to enter into agreements with contractual obligations that prohibit the disclosure of confidential information and, where applicable, require disclosure and assignment to us of the ideas, developments, discoveries and inventions important to our business.

Our success in preserving market exclusivity for our product candidates relies on patent protection, including extensions to this where appropriate, and on data exclusivity relating to an approved biologic. This may be extended by orphan drug and/or pediatric use protection where appropriate. Once any regulatory period of data exclusivity expires, depending on the status of our patent coverage, we may not be able to prevent others from marketing and selling biosimilar versions of our product candidates. We are also dependent upon the diligence of our appointed agents in national jurisdictions, acting for and on our behalf, which manage the prosecution of pending domestic and foreign patent applications and maintain granted domestic and foreign patents.

Because patent applications in the United States and certain other jurisdictions are maintained in secrecy for 18 months or potentially even longer, and because publication of discoveries in the scientific or patent literature often lags behind actual discoveries and patent application filings, we cannot be certain of the priority of inventions covered by pending patent applications. Accordingly, we may not have been the first to invent the subject matter disclosed in some of our patent applications or the first to file patent applications covering such subject matter, and we may have to participate in interference proceedings or derivation proceedings declared by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“U.S. PTO”) to determine priority of invention.

Bacteriophage Patent Portfolio

As of December 31, 2019, we owned or had exclusive license rights to a total of 101 patents and applications: ten U.S. patents, five U.S. non-provisional patent applications, two U.S. provisional applications, four pending Patent Cooperation Treaty applications, 60 foreign patents (includes six European patent validation countries that are in process for European patent 2 874 635 issued on December 18, 2019), and 20 foreign patent applications, with nominal expiration on various dates between 2024 and 2039. Patent term adjustments or patent term extensions could result in later expiration dates. We believe these patents and applications cover our lead phage therapeutic programs and use thereof, synthetic phage and methods of manufacture thereof, beneficial effects of bacteriophage treatment, bacteriophage combinations, the sequential use of bacteriophages in combination with conventional antibiotics, genetic sequence variations, methods to reduce antibiotic resistance, methods to design therapeutic combination panels of bacteriophage, disinfection methods using bacteriophages, and bacteriophage mutants having increased bacterial host spectra.

STAMP Patent Portfolio

As of December 31, 2019, we owned or had exclusive license rights to 13 United States and 24 foreign issued patents and allowed patent applications relating to our STAMP platform and its use in the development of product candidates and products, including, without limitation, C16G2, with nominal expiration on various dates between 2024 and 2035 (for United States patents) and between 2026 and 2029 (for foreign patents). We have pending patent applications for compositions comprising our STAMP platform, including C16G2 that, if issued, would expire in the United States and in countries outside of the United States between 2031 and in 2038, excluding any patent term adjustment that might be available following the grant of the patent and any patent term extensions that might be available following the grant of marketing authorizations.

Competition

The development and commercialization of new drugs is highly competitive. We face competition from many different sources, including commercial pharmaceutical and biotechnology enterprises, academic institutions, government agencies and private and public research institutions all seeking to develop novel treatment modalities for bacterial infections. Many of our competitors have significantly greater financial, product development, manufacturing

and marketing resources than us. Large pharmaceutical companies have extensive experience in clinical development and obtaining regulatory approval for drug products. In addition, many universities and private and public research institutes are active in antibacterial research, some in direct competition with us. We also may compete with these organizations to recruit scientists and clinical development personnel.

Our ability to compete successfully will depend largely on our ability to leverage our collective experience in drug discovery, development and commercialization to:

Key factors affecting the success of any approved product include its efficacy, safety profile, drug interactions, method of administration, pricing, reimbursement and level of promotional activity relative to those of competing drugs.

The majority of phage companies are focused on aspects outside of human health such as agriculture, food, environmental, veterinary, biocontrol, manufacturing, and diagnostics. There are a handful of small biotechnology companies developing bacteriophage products to treat human diseases. To our knowledge, several biotechnology companies in the United States and Europe, including Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Pherecydes Pharma, BiomX Ltd., Intralytix, Inc., EnBiotix, Inc., Locus Biosciences, Inc., PhagoMed Biopharma GmbH, Phi Therapeutics, Inc., TechnoPhage, SA, Felix Biotechnology, and LytPhage, Inc., as well as academic institutions, have discovery stage or clinical programs utilizing naturally occurring phages or synthetic biology approaches to genetically modify bacteriophages to remove or input genes to improve therapeutic properties such as increases to the bacterial host range to infect a larger number of bacterial strains and decrease the need for using multiple phages in a product.

Our bacteriophage programs may compete with or be synergistic with currently approved antibiotics, and experimental approaches such as novel antibiotics, antimicrobial peptides, antimicrobial vaccines, metals, antisense, monoclonal antibodies and possibly microbiome manipulation.

Sales and Marketing

We have full worldwide commercial rights to all of our phage-based product candidates to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections, including our product candidates: AP-SA01 and AP-SA02, for the treatment of S. aureus infections, and AP-PA01 and AP-PA02 for the treatment of P. aeruginosa infections. We believe we can maximize the value of our company by retaining substantial global commercialization rights to these product candidates and, where appropriate, entering into partnerships to develop and commercialize these product candidates.

We have not yet established a sales, marketing or product distribution infrastructure because our lead candidates are still in early clinical development. Subject to receiving marketing approvals, or earlier we intend to either partner the commercial rights to our products with existing companies that have the wherewithal and resources to commercialize explore building the necessary marketing and sales infrastructure to market and sell our current product candidates. We also intend to explore the use of a variety of distribution agreements and commercial partnerships in those territories where we do not establish a sales force for any of our product candidates that obtain marketing approval.

Material Agreements

License Agreements

Amended and Restated Research Collaboration and Option to License Agreement with Merck

Pursuant to the terms of the Research and Option Agreement, we are engaged in generating broad host range synthetic bacteriophage candidate(s) targeting an undisclosed infectious disease agent(s), pursuant to the criteria set forth in the research plan.

We granted to Merck an exclusive, worldwide license in our patent rights, and our interest in any joint patent rights, with the right to grant and authorize sublicenses, for any and all uses of any product candidates, or products, developed through the research plans set forth in the Research and Option Agreement in a specific field of use. Further, we granted to Merck an exclusive, worldwide license, with the right to grant and authorize sublicenses, in our background intellectual property and know-how, solely to make, have made, use, import, offer to sell and sell (but not genetically modify) the product candidates, or products, developed through the research plans set forth in the Research and Option Agreement in the specific field of use.

We will be entitled to milestone payments tied to the achievement of product development and regulatory milestones, and royalty payments based on net sales of products developed pursuant to the Research and Option Agreement.

Each party to the Research and Option Agreement is responsible for its costs and expenses in connection with the research program. Unless the Research and Option Agreement is terminated by Merck, it will continue in full force and effect until one or more products developed thereunder has received marketing authorization and, thereafter, until expiration of all royalty obligations thereunder. Upon termination of the Research and Option Agreement, Merck’s licenses pursuant to the Research and Option Agreement will become fully paid-up, perpetual licenses.

License Agreement with United Kingdom Secretary of State for the Department of Health

In January 2011, upon completion of our acquisition of Biocontrol Ltd., we assumed a license agreement entered into in March 2007 between Biocontrol Ltd. and the Health Protection Agency, Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response, to use certain intellectual property rights to develop treatments for bacterial biofilm infections. The agreement was subsequently assigned to the United Kingdom Secretary of State for the Department of Health (“DoH”).

Under the license agreement, we have obtained exclusive rights to a patent portfolio related to the use of bacteriophages combined with biofilm-disrupting agents in treating biofilm infections. In consideration for the exclusive license, we may be required to pay to the DoH certain milestone payments in the aggregate of up to £10,000 per product, as well as single digit percentage royalty on net sales of products incorporating licensed intellectual property.

The license agreement will remain in effect until the expiration of the last patent exclusively licensed under the license agreement. If we default on any milestone or royalty payments, or upon breach by us of certain other terms of the license agreement, the DoH may either terminate the license agreement immediately upon written notice or modify the license to be non-exclusive upon 30 days’ written notice.

Exclusive License Agreement with The Regents of the University of California

C3J was granted an exclusive license to its proprietary STAMP platform pursuant to the terms of an exclusive license agreement, dated April 24, 2007, as amended from time to time (the “UCLA Agreement”), with The Regents of the University of California (“UCLA”), including rights to develop and commercialize any products developed using the STAMP platform. In exchange for the exclusive license, UCLA was entitled to receive from C3J an upfront payment, and is entitled to receive, for the term of the UCLA Agreement, milestone payments tied to the achievement of product development and regulatory milestones, and royalty payments based on net sales of products developed using the STAMP platform, subject to certain reductions. C3J must diligently proceed with the development, manufacture and sale

of the products developed using the STAMP platform. Unless earlier terminated pursuant to other provisions of the UCLA Agreement, the UCLA Agreement will be effective for the life of the last-to-expire patent related to the STAMP platform, or until the last patent application licensed under the UCLA Agreement is abandoned, provided that no licensed patent is issued.

Strategic Alliances and Research Agreements

Global R&D Agreement with U.S. Army

In June 2013, we entered into a Research and Development Agreement with the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (the “Research and Development Agreement”). The Research and Development Agreement focuses on developing bacteriophage therapeutics to treat S. aureus,  E. coli and P. aeruginosa infections, with the initial therapeutic development focus being wounds and skin infections from S. aureus, which is the leading pathogen in healthcare-associated infections in the United States as a whole, accounting for 30.4% of surgical site infections.

We retain global regulatory ownership and commercial rights to all products developed by us under the Research and Development Agreement. The U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command will have the right to retain a non-exclusive license to use any products developed by or on behalf of the U.S. Government for non-commercial uses. We also have the rights to exclusively license any intellectual property developed by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command under the collaboration on terms to be agreed upon.

The Research and Development Agreement will expire in June 2020 and can be terminated by either the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command or us upon 60 days’ written notice to the other party at any time.

Facilities

Our corporate headquarters are located in Marina del Rey, California, where we currently lease 35,500 square feet of laboratory and office space. The lease expires on December 31, 2021  and includes an option to extend for an additional ten years. The facility includes 19,500 square feet of BSL2 laboratory space dedicated to phage product development. The facility includes approximately 3,000 square feet of cGMP laboratory space, designed to produce clinical quantities of our phage product candidates for human trials and to perform in-house Quality Control (“QC”) testing. The manufacturing space consists of two ISO-certified cleanrooms capable of production, purification, drug product formulation and aseptic filling of drug product. The QC laboratory contains qualified analytical instruments to support the testing and release of clinical trial material. The facility is registered with the FDA and licensed by the California Department of Public Health (“CDPH”) for drug manufacturing, and is subject to periodic, unannounced inspections by both agencies for compliance with cGMP and other state and federal regulations. To date, this facility has not been inspected by any regulatory party.

In addition, we lease a 5,000 square foot facility located in Sydney, Australia. The 4,000 square feet of laboratory space provides capabilities to support phage product development and manufacturing process development. The facility is also set up to provide microbiological support of clinical trials.

We occupy approximately 1,000 square feet of leased office space pursuant to a month-to-month sublease, located at 3579 Valley Centre Drive, Suite 100, San Diego, California 92130.

We believe that our facilities are adequate for our current and near-term needs.

Legal Proceedings

Between April 15 and April 25, 2019, three putative class action lawsuits (captioned Midgarden v. AmpliPhi Biosciences Corp., et al., No. 19‑cv‑0684 (S.D. Cal. filed Apr. 15, 2019); Henning v. AmpliPhi Biosciences Corp., et al., No. 19‑cv‑0728 (S.D. Cal. filed Apr. 19, 2019); and Plumley v. AmpliPhi Biosciences Corp., et al., No. 19‑cv‑0617 (W.D. Wash. filed Apr. 25, 2019)) were filed in federal court against us and the former AmpliPhi board of directors related to the Merger. The lawsuits asserted violations of Section 14(a) of the Exchange Act and Rule 14a‑9 promulgated

thereunder against all defendants, and asserted violations of Section 20(a) of the Exchange Act as to the individual defendants. The plaintiffs contended that the Definitive Proxy Statement on Schedule 14A, filed on April 4, 2019 (the “April 2019 Proxy Statement”), omitted or misrepresented material information regarding the Merger. The complaints sought injunctive relief, rescission, or rescissory damages and an award of plaintiffs’ costs, including attorneys’ fees and expenses. On May 1, 2019, we amended the April 2019 Proxy Statement to provide additional disclosure to our stockholders. Each of the above cases have since been dismissed.

In addition, from time to time, we are a party to certain litigation that is either judged to be not material or that arises in the ordinary course of business. We intend to vigorously defend our interests in these matters. We expect that the resolution of these matters will not have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. However, due to the uncertainties inherent in litigation, no assurance can be given as to the outcome of these proceedings.

As of the date of this Annual Report, we are not subject to any material legal proceedings.

Government Regulation

Government authorities in the United States, at the federal, state and local level, and other countries extensively regulate, among other things, the research, development, testing, manufacture, quality control, approval, labeling, packaging, storage, record-keeping, promotion, advertising, distribution, post-approval monitoring and reporting, marketing and export and import of drug and biological products such as those we are developing. Generally, before a new drug or biologic can be marketed, considerable data demonstrating its quality, safety, efficacy, purity, and/or potency must be obtained, organized into a format specific for each regulatory authority, submitted for review and approved by the regulatory authority where the product is intended to be marketed.

United States Product Development Process

The process of obtaining regulatory approvals and the subsequent compliance with appropriate federal, state, local and foreign statutes and regulations require the expenditure of substantial time and financial resources. Failure to comply with the applicable FDA requirements at any time during the product development process or approval process, or after approval, may subject an applicant to administrative or judicial sanctions. FDA sanctions could include refusal to approve pending applications, withdrawal of an approval, a clinical hold, warning letters, product recalls, product seizures, total or partial suspension of production or distribution injunctions, fines, refusals of government contracts, restitution, disgorgement or civil or criminal penalties. Any agency or judicial enforcement action could have a material adverse effect on us. The process required by the FDA before a biological product may be marketed in the United States generally involves the following:

The lengthy process of seeking required approvals and the continuing need for compliance with applicable statutes and regulations require the expenditure of substantial resources even when approvals are inherently uncertain.

The strategies, nature, and technologies of bacteriophage products are different from those of conventional antibiotic therapy products. From the regulatory requirements established to ensure the safety, efficacy and quality of bacteriophage preparations, there are several major points to consider during the development, manufacturing, characterization, preclinical study and clinical trial of bacteriophage products. The major issues include:

Preclinical Studies and IND

Before testing any compounds with potential therapeutic value in humans, the biological product candidate enters the preclinical testing stage. Preclinical tests include laboratory evaluations of product biology, toxicity and formulation, as well as animal studies to assess the potential safety and activity of the biological product candidate. The conduct of the preclinical tests must comply with federal regulations and requirements, including good laboratory practices described in 21 CFR Part 58 (GLP). The sponsor must submit the results of the preclinical tests, together with manufacturing information, analytical data, any available clinical data or literature and a proposed clinical protocol, to the FDA as part of the IND application. The IND automatically becomes effective 30 days after receipt by the FDA, unless the FDA places the IND on a clinical hold within that 30‑day time period. In such a case, the IND sponsor and the FDA must resolve any outstanding concerns before the clinical trial can begin. The FDA may also impose clinical holds on a product candidate at any time before or during clinical trials due to safety concerns or non-compliance. Accordingly, we cannot be certain that submission of an IND application will result in the FDA allowing clinical trials to begin, or that, once begun, issues will not arise that suspend or terminate such clinical trial.

Clinical Trials

Clinical trials involve the administration of the product candidate to healthy volunteers or patients under the supervision of qualified investigators, generally physicians not employed by the sponsor. Clinical trials are conducted under protocols detailing, among other things, the objectives of the clinical trial, dosing procedures, subject inclusion and exclusion criteria and the parameters to be used to monitor subject safety. Each protocol must be submitted to the FDA. Clinical trials must be conducted in accordance with GCP requirements. Further, each clinical trial must be reviewed and approved by an independent institutional review board (“IRB”) or ethics committee if conducted outside of the United States, at or servicing each institution at which the clinical trial will be conducted. An IRB or ethics committee is charged with protecting the welfare and rights of trial participants and considers such items as whether the

risks to individuals participating in the clinical trials are minimized and are reasonable in relation to anticipated benefits. The IRB or ethics committee also approves the informed consent form that must be provided to each clinical trial subject or his or her legal representative and must monitor the clinical trial until completed. We intend to use third-party CROs to administer and conduct our planned clinical trials and will rely upon such CROs, as well as medical institutions, clinical investigators and consultants, to conduct our trials in accordance with our clinical protocols. The failure by any of such third parties to meet expected timelines, adhere to our protocols or meet regulatory standards could adversely impact the subject product development program and we remain legally responsible for compliance with applicable laws and regulations governing the conduct of these clinical trials.

Human clinical trials are typically conducted in three sequential phases that may overlap or be combined:

Post-approval studies, or Phase 4 clinical trials, may be requested by the FDA as a condition of approval and are conducted after initial marketing approval. These studies are used to gain additional experience from the treatment of patients in the intended therapeutic indication.

Progress reports detailing the results of the clinical trials must be submitted annually to the FDA and written safety reports must be submitted to the FDA and the investigators for serious and unexpected adverse events or any finding from tests in laboratory animals that suggest that there may be a significant risk for human subjects. The FDA or the sponsor or, if used, the sponsor’s data safety monitoring board may suspend a clinical trial at any time on various grounds, including a finding that the research subjects or patients are being exposed to an unacceptable health risk. Similarly, an IRB or ethics committee can suspend or terminate approval of a clinical trial at its institution if the clinical trial is not being conducted in accordance with the IRB’s or ethics committee’s requirements or if the pharmaceutical product has been associated with unexpected serious harm to patients. Suspension of a clinical trial due to safety risks attributed to the investigational product will result in termination of the trial and possibly others that are underway.

Concurrent with clinical trials, companies usually complete additional animal studies and must also develop additional information about the physical characteristics of the product candidate as well as finalize a process for manufacturing the product candidate in commercial quantities in accordance with cGMP requirements. To help reduce the risk of the introduction of adventitious agents or other impurities with the use of biological products, the Public Health Service Act emphasizes the importance of manufacturing control for products whose attributes cannot be precisely defined. The manufacturing process must be capable of consistently producing quality batches of the product candidate and, among other things, the sponsor must develop methods for testing the identity, strength, quality, potency, and purity of the final biological product. Additionally, appropriate packaging must be selected and tested, and stability studies must be conducted to demonstrate that the biological product candidate does not undergo unacceptable deterioration over its shelf life.

FDA Review and Approval Processes

In order to obtain approval to market a biological product in the United States, a BLA that provides data establishing to the FDA’s satisfaction the safety and effectiveness of the investigational product candidate for the proposed indication

must be submitted to the FDA. The application includes all data available from nonclinical studies and clinical trials, including negative or ambiguous results as well as positive findings, together with detailed information relating to the product’s manufacture and composition, and proposed labeling, among other things. The testing and approval processes require substantial time and effort and there can be no assurance that the FDA will accept the BLA for filing and, even if filed, that any approval will be granted on a timely basis, if at all.

Under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, as amended (“PDUFA”), each BLA must be accompanied by a significant user fee. The FDA adjusts the PDUFA user fees on an annual basis. Fee waivers or reductions are available in certain circumstances, including a waiver of the application fee for the first application filed by a small business. Additionally, no user fees are assessed on BLAs for products designated as orphan drugs, unless the product also includes a non-orphan indication.

The FDA has 60 days from its receipt of a BLA to determine whether the application will be accepted for filing based on the agency’s threshold determination that the application is sufficiently complete to permit substantive review. The FDA may refuse to file any BLA that it deems incomplete or not properly reviewable at the time of submission and may request additional information. In this event, the BLA must be resubmitted with the additional information. The resubmitted application is also subject to review before the FDA accepts it for filing. After the BLA is accepted for filing, the FDA reviews it to determine, among other things, whether the proposed product is safe and effective for its intended use, has an acceptable purity profile, and whether the product is being manufactured in accordance with cGMP to assure and preserve the product’s identity, safety, strength, quality, potency, and purity. Under the goals and policies agreed to by the FDA under PDUFA, the FDA has 10 months from the filing date in which to complete its initial review of an original BLA and respond to the applicant, and six months from the filing date of an original BLA designated for priority review. The FDA does not always meet its PDUFA goal dates for standard and priority BLAs, and the review process is often extended by FDA requests for additional information or clarification.

Before approving a BLA, the FDA will conduct a preapproval inspection of the manufacturing facilities for the new product to determine whether they comply with cGMP requirements. The FDA will not approve the product unless it determines that the manufacturing processes and facilities are in compliance with cGMP requirements and adequate to assure consistent production of the product within required specifications. The FDA also may audit data from clinical trials to ensure compliance with GCP requirements. Additionally, the FDA may refer applications for novel product candidates or those that present difficult questions of safety or efficacy to an advisory committee, typically a panel that includes clinicians and other experts, for review, evaluation and a recommendation as to whether the application should be approved and, if so, under what conditions. The FDA is not bound by the recommendations of an advisory committee, but it considers such recommendations carefully when making decisions. The FDA may ultimately decide that the BLA does not satisfy the criteria for approval. If a product receives regulatory approval, the approval may be significantly limited to specific diseases and dosages or the indications for use may otherwise be limited, which could restrict the commercial value of the product. Further, the FDA may require that certain contraindications, warnings or precautions be included in the product labeling.

Orphan Drug Designation

Under the Orphan Drug Act, the FDA may grant orphan designation to a drug or biological product intended to treat a rare disease or condition, which is generally a disease or condition that affects fewer than 200,000 individuals in the United States, or more than 200,000 individuals in the United States and for which there is no reasonable expectation that the cost of developing and making the product available in the United States for this type of disease or condition will be recovered from sales of the product. Orphan drug designation for a biologic must be requested before submitting a BLA. After the FDA grants orphan drug designation, the identity of the therapeutic agent and its potential orphan use are disclosed publicly by the FDA. Orphan drug designation does not convey any advantage in or shorten the duration of the regulatory review and approval process.

If a product that has orphan designation subsequently receives the first FDA approval for the rare disease or condition for which it has such designation, the product is entitled to orphan drug exclusivity, which means that the FDA may not approve any other applications to market the same drug for the same indication for seven years from the date of such approval. Additionally, the sponsor can benefit from certain financial incentives, including opportunities for grant

funding towards clinical trial costs, research and development tax credits, and user fee waivers. If the same drug has already been approved, the proposed drug needs to demonstrate clinical superiority to obtain orphan exclusivity for the same indication, such as by means of greater effectiveness, greater safety or providing a major contribution to patient care, or in instances of drug supply issues.

Competitors, however, may receive approval of either a different product for the same indication or the same product for a different indication but that could be used off-label in the orphan indication. Orphan drug exclusivity also could block the approval of one of our products for seven years if a competitor obtains approval before we do for the same product, as defined by the FDA, for the same indication we are seeking approval, or if our product is determined to be contained within the scope of the competitor’s product for the same indication or disease. If one of our products designated as an orphan drug receives marketing approval for an indication broader than that which is designated, it may not be entitled to orphan drug exclusivity. Orphan drug status in the European Union has similar, but not identical, requirements and benefits.

Pediatric Information

Under the Pediatric Research Equity Act (“PREA”), a BLA or supplement to a BLA must contain data to assess the safety and efficacy of the biologic for the claimed indications in all relevant pediatric subpopulations and to support dosing and administration for each pediatric subpopulation for which the product is safe and effective. The FDA may grant deferrals for submission of pediatric data or full or partial waivers. A sponsor who is planning to submit a marketing application for a drug that includes a new active ingredient, new indication, new dosage form, new dosing regimen or new route of administration must submit an initial Pediatric Study Plan (“PSP”) within 60 days of an end-of-Phase 2 meeting or, if there is no such meeting, as early as practicable before the initiation of the Phase 3 or Phase 2/3 study. The initial PSP must include an outline of the pediatric study or studies that the sponsor plans to conduct, including study objectives and design, age groups, relevant endpoints and statistical approach, or a justification for not including such detailed information, and any request for a deferral of pediatric assessments or a full or partial waiver of the requirement to provide data from pediatric studies along with supporting information. The FDA and the sponsor must reach an agreement on the PSP. A sponsor can submit amendments to an agreed-upon initial PSP at any time if changes to the pediatric plan need to be considered based on data collected from preclinical studies, early phase clinical trials and/or other clinical development programs.

Special FDA Expedited Review and Approval Programs

The FDA has various programs, including Fast Track designation, Limited Population, accelerated approval and priority review, that are intended to expedite the process for the development and FDA review of drugs that are intended for the treatment of serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions and demonstrate the potential to address unmet medical needs. The purpose of these programs is to provide important new drugs and biological products to patients earlier than under standard FDA review procedures.

To be eligible for a Fast Track designation, the FDA must determine, based on the request of a sponsor, that a product is intended to treat a serious or life-threatening disease or condition and demonstrates the potential to address an unmet medical need, or if the drug or biological product qualifies as a qualified infectious disease product under the Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now Act (the “GAIN Act”). The FDA will determine that a product will fill an unmet medical need if it will provide a therapy where none exists or provide a therapy that may be potentially superior to existing therapies based on efficacy or safety factors. We intend to request Fast Track designation for our product candidates if applicable.

Fast Track designation applies to the combination of the product and the specific indication for which it is being studied. The sponsor of a new drug or biological may request the FDA to designate the drug or biologic as a Fast Track product at any time during the clinical development of the product. Unique to a Fast Track product, the FDA may consider for review sections of the marketing application on a rolling basis before the complete application is submitted, if the sponsor provides a schedule for the submission of the sections of the application, the FDA agrees to accept sections of the application and determines that the schedule is acceptable, and the sponsor pays any required user fees upon submission of the first section of the application.

Any product submitted to the FDA for marketing, including under a Fast Track program, may be eligible for other types of FDA programs intended to expedite development and review, such as priority review, accelerated approval, and, as of 2018, for antibacterial and antifungal therapies, approval under the Limited Population Pathway. Any product is eligible for priority review if it has the potential to provide safe and effective therapy where no satisfactory alternative therapy exists or if there is a significant improvement in the treatment, diagnosis or prevention of a disease compared to marketed products. The FDA will attempt to direct additional resources to the evaluation of an application for a new drug or biological product designated for priority review in an effort to facilitate the review. Additionally, a product may be eligible for accelerated approval. Drug or biological products studied for their safety and effectiveness in treating serious or life-threatening illnesses and that provide meaningful therapeutic benefit over existing treatments may receive accelerated approval, which means that they may be approved on the basis of adequate and well-controlled clinical trials establishing that the product has an effect on a surrogate endpoint that is reasonably likely to predict a clinical benefit, or on the basis of an effect on a clinical endpoint other than survival or irreversible morbidity or mortality, that is reasonably likely to predict an effect on irreversible morbidity or mortality or other clinical benefit, taking into account the severity, rarity or prevalence of the condition and the availability or lack of alternative treatments. The limited population pathway for antibacterial and antifungal drugs or biologics (LPAD) may enable streamlined development of safe and effective medicines that overcome the unmet needs of a limited population of patients with serious bacterial infections.

As a condition of approval, the FDA may require a sponsor of a drug or biological product receiving accelerated approval to perform post-marketing studies to verify and describe the predicted effect on irreversible morbidity or mortality or other clinical endpoint, and the drug or biological product may be subject to accelerated withdrawal procedures. In addition, the FDA currently requires as a condition for accelerated approval and approval under LPAD pre-approval of promotional materials, which could adversely impact the timing of the commercial launch of the product. Fast Track designation, priority review and accelerated approval do not change the standards for approval but may expedite the development or approval process. Approval under LPAD is for a limited population of patients; labeling statements for the limited use of the product are removed when supplemental data substantiates expansion of the patient population.

Eligibility for a drug or biologic product to be licensed under LPAD includes treatment of a serious or life-threatening infection in a limited population of patients with unmet medical need. FDA also considers the severity, rarity or prevalence of the infection and the lack of alternative treatment in the limited population the therapeutic is intended for. It is possible for qualifying therapies to complete a streamlined clinical program to demonstrate substantial evidence of effectiveness and safety in the limited population. Drugs or biological products approved under LPAD can also receive fast track and breakthrough designations as well as accelerated and priority review of the marketing application. LPAD-required limitations of labeling are removed when supplemental data demonstrating a favorable benefit-risk profile in a broader population corroborates label expansion. We intend to request approval under LPAD in the BLA for our product candidates if applicable.

A sponsor can also request designation of a product candidate as a “breakthrough therapy.” A breakthrough therapy is defined as a drug or biological product that is intended, alone or in combination with one or more other drugs or biological products, to treat a serious or life-threatening disease or condition, and preliminary clinical evidence indicates that the biological product or drug may demonstrate substantial improvement over existing therapies on one or more clinically significant endpoints, such as substantial treatment effects observed early in clinical development. Drugs or biological products designated as breakthrough therapies are also eligible for accelerated approval. The FDA must take certain actions, such as holding timely meetings and providing advice, intended to expedite the development and review of an application for approval of a breakthrough therapy. We intend to request “breakthrough therapy” designation for our product candidates if applicable.

Even if a product qualifies for one or more of these programs, the FDA may later decide that the product no longer meets the conditions for qualification or decide that the time period for FDA review or approval will not be shortened.

FDA Post-Approval Requirements

Maintaining substantial compliance with applicable federal, state, local, and foreign statutes and regulations requires the expenditure of substantial time and financial resources. Rigorous and extensive FDA regulation of new products continues after approval, particularly with respect to cGMP. We may rely on third parties for the production of commercial quantities of any products that we may commercialize. We and third-party manufacturers of our products are required to comply with applicable requirements in the cGMPs, including quality control and quality assurance and maintenance of records and documentation. We cannot be certain that we or our present or future suppliers will be able to comply with the cGMP and other FDA requirements. Other post-approval requirements applicable to biological products include reporting of cGMP deviations that may affect the identity, potency, purity and overall safety of a distributed product, record-keeping requirements, reporting of adverse effects, reporting updated safety and efficacy information, and complying with electronic record and signature requirements. After a BLA is approved, the product also may be subject to official lot release. As part of the manufacturing process, the manufacturer is required to perform certain tests on each lot of the product before it is released for distribution. If the product is subject to official release by the FDA, the manufacturer submits samples of each lot of product to the FDA together with a release protocol showing a summary of the history of manufacture of the lot and the results of all of the manufacturer’s tests performed on the lot. The FDA also may perform certain confirmatory tests on lots of some products, such as viral vaccines, before releasing the lots for distribution by the manufacturer. In addition, the FDA conducts laboratory research related to the regulatory standards on the safety, purity, potency, and effectiveness of biological products.

Discovery of previously unknown problems or the failure to comply with the applicable regulatory requirements, by us or our suppliers, may result in restrictions on the marketing of a product or withdrawal of the product from the market as well as possible civil or criminal sanctions and adverse publicity. FDA sanctions could include refusal to approve pending applications, withdrawal of an approval, clinical hold, warning or untitled letters, product recalls, product seizures, total or partial suspension of production or distribution, injunctions, fines, refusals of government contracts, mandated corrective advertising or communications with doctors, debarment, restitution, disgorgement of profits, or civil or criminal penalties. Any agency or judicial enforcement action could have a material adverse effect on us.

Biological product manufacturers and other entities involved in the manufacture and distribution of approved products are required to register their facilities with the FDA and certain state agencies and are subject to periodic unannounced inspections by the FDA and certain state agencies for compliance with cGMPs and other laws. In addition, changes to the manufacturing process or facility generally require prior FDA approval before being implemented and other types of changes to the approved product, such as adding new indications and additional labeling claims, are also subject to further FDA review and approval.

Labeling, Marketing and Promotion

The FDA closely regulates the labeling, marketing and promotion of drugs and biological products, including direct-to-consumer advertising, promotional activities involving the internet, and industry-sponsored scientific and educational activities. While doctors are free to prescribe any product approved by the FDA for any use, a company can only make claims relating to safety and efficacy of a product that are consistent with FDA approval, and the company is allowed to actively market a product only for the particular use and treatment approved by the FDA. In addition, any claims we make for our products in advertising or promotion must be appropriately balanced with important safety information and otherwise be adequately substantiated. Failure to comply with these requirements can result in adverse publicity, warning letters, corrective advertising, injunctions and potential civil and criminal penalties.

Patent Term Restoration and Extension

The term of individual patents depends upon the legal term of the patents in the countries in which they are obtained. In most countries in which we file, including the United States, the base term is 20 years from the filing date of the earliest-filed non-provisional patent application from which the patent claims priority. The term of a U.S. patent can be lengthened by patent term adjustment, which compensates the owner of the patent for administrative delays at the U.S. PTO. Depending upon the timing, duration and specifics of FDA approval of our drugs, some of our U.S. patents may be eligible for limited patent term extension under the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of

1984, referred to as the Hatch-Waxman Amendments. The Hatch-Waxman Amendments permit a patent restoration term of up to five years as compensation for patent term lost during product development and the FDA regulatory review process. However, patent term restoration cannot extend the remaining term of a patent beyond a total of 14 years from the product’s approval date. The patent term restoration period is generally one half the time between the effective date of an IND, and the submission date of an NDA or BLA, plus the time between the submission date of an NDA or BLA and the approval of that application. Only one patent applicable to an approved drug is eligible for the extension, and the extension must be applied for prior to expiration of the patent. The U.S. PTO, in consultation with the FDA, reviews and approves the application for any patent term extension or restoration.

Some foreign jurisdictions, including Europe and Japan, have analogous patent term extension provisions, which allow for extension of the term of a patent that covers a drug approved by the applicable foreign regulatory agency.

Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009: Biosimilars and Interchangeable Biologic Products

The Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 amended the Public Health Service Act to create an abbreviated approval pathway for two types of “generic” biologics — biosimilars and interchangeable biologic products, and provides for a twelve-year data exclusivity period for the first approved biological product, or reference product, against which a biosimilar or interchangeable application is evaluated; however, if pediatric clinical trials are performed and accepted by the FDA, the twelve-year data exclusivity period will be extended for an additional six months. A biosimilar product is defined as one that is highly similar to a reference product notwithstanding minor differences in clinically inactive components and for which there are no clinically meaningful differences between the biological product and the reference product in terms of the safety, purity and potency of the product. An interchangeable product is a biosimilar product that may be substituted for the reference product without the intervention of the health care provider who prescribed the reference product.

The biosimilar applicant must demonstrate that the product is biosimilar based on data from (1) analytical studies showing that the biosimilar product is highly similar to the reference product; (2) animal studies (including toxicity); and (3) one or more clinical trials to demonstrate safety, purity and potency in one or more appropriate conditions of use for which the reference product is approved. In addition, the applicant must show that the biosimilar and reference products have the same mechanism of action for the conditions of use on the label, route of administration, dosage and strength, and the production facility must meet standards designed to assure product safety, purity and potency.

An application for a biosimilar product may not be submitted until four years after the date on which the reference product was first approved. The first approved interchangeable biologic product will be granted an exclusivity period of up to one year after it is first commercially marketed, but the exclusivity period may be shortened under certain circumstances.

Pediatric Exclusivity

Pediatric exclusivity is a type of marketing exclusivity available in the United States under the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act, which provides for an additional six months of marketing exclusivity and may be available if a sponsor conducts clinical trials in children in response to a written request from the FDA (the “Written Request”). If the Written Request does not include clinical trials in neonates, the FDA is required to include its rationale for not requesting those clinical trials. The FDA may request studies on approved or unapproved indications in separate Written Requests. The issuance of a Written Request does not require the sponsor to undertake the described clinical trials.

Diagnostics

We may employ companion diagnostics to help us to more accurately identify patients within a particular bacterial strain, both during our clinical trials and in connection with the commercialization of our product candidates that we are developing or may in the future develop. Companion diagnostics can identify patients who are most likely to benefit from a particular therapeutic product; identify patients likely to be at increased risk for serious side effects as a result of treatment with a particular therapeutic product; or monitor response to treatment with a particular therapeutic product for the purpose of adjusting treatment to achieve improved safety or effectiveness. Companion diagnostics are regulated as

medical devices by the FDA and, as such, require either clearance or approval prior to commercialization. The level of risk combined with available controls to mitigate risk determines whether a companion diagnostic device requires Premarket Approval Application (“PMA”) approval or is cleared through the 510(k) premarket notification process. For a novel therapeutic product for which a companion diagnostic device is essential for the safe and effective use of the product, the companion diagnostic device should be developed and approved or 510(k)-cleared contemporaneously with the therapeutic. The use of the companion diagnostic device will be stipulated in the labeling of the therapeutic product.

Other U.S. Healthcare Laws and Compliance Requirements

In addition to FDA restrictions on the marketing of pharmaceutical products, we may be subject to various federal and state laws targeting fraud and abuse in the healthcare industry. These laws may impact, among other things, our business or financial arrangements and relationships through which we market, sell and distribute the products, if any, for which we obtain approval. In addition, we may be subject to patient privacy regulation by both the federal government and the states in which we conduct our business. The laws that may affect our ability to operate include:

Additionally, we are subject to state and foreign equivalents of each of the healthcare laws described above, among others, some of which may be broader in scope and may apply regardless of the payor. Many U.S. states have adopted laws similar to the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, some of which apply to the referral of patients for healthcare services reimbursed by any source, not just governmental payors, including private insurers. In addition, some states have passed laws that require pharmaceutical companies to comply with the April 2003 Office of Inspector General Compliance Program Guidance for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and/or the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America’s Code on Interactions with Healthcare Professionals. Several states also impose other marketing restrictions or require pharmaceutical companies to make marketing or price disclosures to the state. There are ambiguities as to what is required to comply with these state requirements, and if we fail to comply with an applicable state law requirement, we could be subject to penalties. Finally, there are state and foreign laws governing the privacy and security of health information, many of which differ from each other in significant ways and often are not preempted by HIPAA, thus complicating compliance efforts.

Because of the breadth of these laws and the narrowness of the statutory exceptions and safe harbors available, it is possible that some of our business activities could be subject to challenge under one or more of such laws.

Violations of fraud and abuse laws may be punishable by criminal and/or civil sanctions, including penalties, fines, imprisonment and/or exclusion or suspension from federal and state healthcare programs such as Medicare and Medicaid and debarment from contracting with the U.S. government. In addition, private individuals have the ability to bring actions on behalf of the U.S. government under the federal False Claims Act as well as under the false claims laws of several states.

Law enforcement authorities are increasingly focused on enforcing fraud and abuse laws, and it is possible that some of our practices may be challenged under these laws. Efforts to ensure that our current and future business arrangements with third parties, and our business generally, will comply with applicable healthcare laws and regulations will involve substantial costs. It is possible that governmental authorities will conclude that our business practices, including our arrangements with physicians and other healthcare providers, some of whom receive stock options as compensation for services provided, may not comply with current or future statutes, regulations, agency guidance or case law involving applicable fraud and abuse or other healthcare laws and regulations. If 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 civil, criminal and administrative penalties, damages, disgorgement, monetary fines, imprisonment, possible exclusion from participation in Medicare, Medicaid and other federal healthcare programs, contractual damages, reputational harm, diminished profits and future earnings, and curtailment of our operations, any of which could adversely affect our ability to operate our business and our results of operations. In addition, the approval and commercialization of any of our product candidates outside the United States will also likely subject us to foreign equivalents of the healthcare laws mentioned above, among other foreign laws.

If any of the physicians or other healthcare providers or entities with whom we expect to do business are found to be not in compliance with applicable laws, they may be subject to criminal, civil or administrative sanctions, including exclusions from government funded healthcare programs, which may also adversely affect our business.

Additional Regulation

In addition to the foregoing, state and federal laws regarding environmental protection and hazardous substances, including the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Resource Conservancy and Recovery Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act, affect our business. These and other laws govern our use, handling and disposal of various biological, chemical and radioactive substances used in, and wastes generated by, our operations. If our operations result in contamination of the environment or expose individuals to hazardous substances, we could be liable for damages and governmental fines. We believe that we are in material compliance with applicable environmental laws and that continued compliance therewith will not have a material adverse effect on our business. We cannot predict, however, how changes in these laws may affect our future operations.

U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, to which we are subject, prohibits corporations and individuals from engaging in certain activities to obtain or retain business or to influence a person working in an official capacity. It is illegal to pay, offer to pay or authorize the payment of anything of value to any foreign government official, government staff member, political party or political candidate in an attempt to obtain or retain business or to otherwise influence a person working in an official capacity.

U.S. Healthcare Reform

A primary trend in the U.S. healthcare industry and elsewhere is cost containment. Government authorities and other third-party payors have attempted to control costs by limiting coverage and the amount of reimbursement for particular medical products. For example, in March 2010, the Affordable Care Act was enacted, which, among other things, increased the minimum Medicaid rebates owed by most manufacturers under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program; introduced a new methodology by which rebates owed by manufacturers under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program are calculated for drugs that are inhaled, infused, instilled, implanted or injected; extended the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program to utilization of prescriptions of individuals enrolled in Medicaid managed care plans; imposed mandatory discounts for certain Medicare Part D beneficiaries as a condition for manufacturers’ outpatient drugs coverage under Medicare Part D; subjected drug manufacturers to new annual fees based on pharmaceutical companies’ share of sales to federal healthcare programs; imposed a new federal excise tax on the sale of certain medical devices; created a new Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute to oversee, identify priorities in and conduct comparative clinical effectiveness research, along with funding for such research; and established the Center for Medicare Innovation at the CMS to test innovative payment and service delivery models to lower Medicare and Medicaid spending.

Since its enactment, there have been a number of significant changes to the Affordable Care Act (the “ACA”). On October 13, 2017, President Trump signed an Executive Order terminating the cost-sharing subsidies that reimburse insurers under the Affordable Care Act. Several state Attorneys General filed suit to stop the administration from terminating the subsidies, but their request for a restraining order was denied by a federal judge in California on October 25, 2017. In addition, CMS has recently proposed regulations that would give states greater flexibility in setting benchmarks for insurers in the individual and small group marketplaces, which may have the effect of relaxing the essential health benefits required under the Affordable Care Act for plans sold through such marketplaces. In January 2017, President Trump signed an Executive Order directing federal agencies with authorities and responsibilities under the Affordable Care Act to waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation of any provision of the Affordable Care Act that would impose a fiscal or regulatory burden on states, individuals, healthcare providers, health insurers, or manufacturers of pharmaceuticals or medical devices.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (“TCJA”), includes a provision repealing, effective January 1, 2019, the tax-based shared responsibility payment imposed by the ACA on certain individuals who fail to maintain qualifying health coverage for all or part of a year that is commonly referred to as the “individual mandate.” Additionally, on January 22,

2018, President Trump signed a continuing resolution on appropriations for fiscal year 2018 that delayed the implementation of certain ACA-mandated fees, including the so-called “Cadillac” tax on certain high cost employer sponsored insurance plan, the annual fee imposed on certain health insurance providers based on market share, and the medical device exercise tax on non-exempt medical devices. Further, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, among other things, amends the ACA, effective January 1, 2019, to reduce the coverage gap in most Medicare drug plans, commonly referred to as the “donut hole.” Congress will likely consider other legislation to replace or modify elements of the Affordable Care Act. We continue to evaluate the effect that the Affordable Care Act and its possible repeal, replacement or further modification could have on our business. It is uncertain the extent to which any such changes may impact our business or financial condition.

In addition, the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 led to aggregate reductions of Medicare payments to providers of up to 2% per fiscal year that will remain in effect through 2027 unless additional Congressional action is taken. Further, on January 2, 2013, the American Taxpayer Relief Act was signed into law, which, among other things, reduced Medicare payments to several types of providers, including hospitals, imaging centers and cancer treatment centers, and increased the statute of limitations period for the government to recover overpayments to providers from three to five years. More recently, there has been heightened governmental scrutiny over the manner in which manufacturers set prices for their marketed products, which have resulted in several recent Congressional inquiries and proposed bills designed to, among other things, bring more transparency to product pricing, review the relationship between pricing and manufacturer patient programs, and reform government program reimbursement methodologies for pharmaceutical products. Individual states in the United States have also become increasingly active in passing legislation and implementing regulations designed to control pharmaceutical 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.

We expect that additional foreign, federal and state 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 limited coverage and reimbursement and reduced demand for our products, once approved, or additional pricing pressures.

Government Regulation Outside of the United States

In addition to regulations in the United States, we will be subject to a variety of regulations in other jurisdictions governing, among other things, clinical trials of drug products as well as the approval, manufacture and distribution of our product candidates. Because biologically sourced raw materials are subject to unique contamination risks, their use may be restricted in some countries. Whether or not we obtain FDA approval for a product candidate, we must obtain the requisite approvals from regulatory authorities in foreign countries prior to the commencement of clinical trials or marketing of the product in those countries. If we fail to comply with applicable foreign regulatory requirements, we may be subject to, among other things, fines, suspension or withdrawal of regulatory approvals, product recalls, seizure of products, operating restrictions and criminal prosecution.

Clinical Trials

Certain countries outside of the United States have a regulatory process similar to the U.S. process that requires the submission of a CTA much like the IND prior to the commencement of human clinical trials. In the European Union, for example, CTA must be submitted for each clinical trial to the national health authority and an independent ethics committee in each country in which the trial is to be conducted, much like the FDA and an IRB, respectively. Clinical trial application must be accompanied by an investigational medicinal product dossier with supporting information prescribed by the Clinical Trials Directive (and corresponding national laws of the member states) and further detailed in applicable guidance documents. Once the CTA is approved in accordance with a country’s requirements, the clinical trial may proceed. A similar process to the one described for the European Union is required in Israel for initiation of clinical trials. The requirements and process governing the conduct of clinical trials vary from country to country. In all cases, the clinical trials must be conducted in accordance with GCP and the applicable regulatory requirements and the ethical principles that have their origin in the Declaration of Helsinki.

Approval Process

In order to market our products, we must obtain a marketing approval for each product and comply with numerous and varying regulatory requirements. The approval procedure varies among countries and can involve additional testing in comparison to the testing carried out for the U.S. approval. The time required to obtain approval in foreign countries may differ substantially from that required to obtain FDA approval. Clinical trials conducted in one country may not be accepted by regulatory authorities in other countries. The regulatory approval process outside the United States generally is subject to all of the same risks associated with obtaining FDA approval. In addition, in many countries outside the United States, it is required that the product be approved for reimbursement before the product can be approved for sale in that country.

To obtain marketing approval of a medicinal product under the European Union regulatory system, an applicant must submit a marketing authorization application (“MAA”), under either a centralized or a decentralized procedure. The decentralized procedure is based on a collaboration among the member states selected by the applicant. In essence, the applicant chooses a ‘lead’ member state that will carry out the scientific assessment of the MAA and review the product information. The other member states must recognize the outcome of such assessment and review except in case of a “serious potential risk to public health.” The decentralized procedure results in the grant of a national marketing authorization in each selected country. That procedure is available for all medicinal products unless they fall into the mandatory scope of the centralized procedure. In practice, it is used for OTC, not highly innovative products, generic products and, increasingly, for biosimilars.

The centralized procedure provides for the grant of a single marketing authorization by the European Commission that is valid for all European Union member states. The centralized procedure is compulsory for certain medicinal products, including for medicinal products produced by certain biotechnological processes, products designated as orphan medicinal products, advanced therapy medicinal products (“ATMPs”) and products with a new active substance and indicated for the treatment of certain diseases. For products with a new active substance and indicated for the treatment of other diseases, products that are highly innovative or for which a centralized process is in the interest of patients, the centralized procedure is optional.

Under the centralized procedure, the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (“CHMP”), the main scientific committee established at the EMA, is responsible for conducting the scientific assessment of the future medicinal product. The CHMP is also responsible for several post-authorization and maintenance activities, such as the assessment of modifications or extensions to an existing marketing authorization. The maximum timeframe for the evaluation of an MAA is 210 days, excluding clock stops. The European Commission grants or refuses the marketing authorization, following a procedure that involves representatives of the member states. The European Commission’s decision is in accordance with the CHMP scientific assessment except in very rare cases.

Pursuant to Regulation (EC) 1394/2007, specific rules apply to ATMPs, a category that is comprised of gene therapy medical products, somatic cell therapy medicinal products, and tissue-engineered medicinal products. Those rules have triggered the adoption of guidelines on manufacturing, clinical trials and pharmacovigilance that adapt the general regulatory requirements to the specific characteristics of ATMPs. Regulation (EC) 1394/2007 introduced a “hospital exemption.” which authorizes hospitals to develop ATMP for their internal use without having obtained a marketing authorization and to complying with European Union pharmaceutical law. The hospital exemption, which is in essence a compounded ATMP, has been transposed in all Member States, sometimes in such a way that the ATMPs under the hospital exemption are competitive alternatives to ATMPs with marketing authorization. The broad use of the hospital exemption by national hospitals led the European Commission to discuss with the Member States a more reasonable application of the hospital exemption that would not undermine the common legal regime for ATMP.

Marketing authorization is valid for five years in principle and the marketing authorization may be renewed after five years on the basis of a re-evaluation of the risk-benefit balance by the EMA or the competent authority of the authorizing member state. To this end, the marketing authorization holder must provide the EMA or the competent authority with a consolidated version of the file in respect of quality, safety and efficacy, including all variations introduced since the marketing authorization was granted, at least six months before the marketing authorization ceases to be valid. Once renewed, the marketing authorization is valid for an unlimited period, unless the European

Commission or the national competent authority decides, on justified grounds relating to pharmacovigilance, to proceed with one additional renewal. Any authorization which is not followed by the actual placing of the medicinal product on the European Union market (in case of centralized procedure) or on the market of the authorizing member state within three years after authorization ceases to be valid (the so-called sunset clause).

Orphan Designation

Countries other than the United States have adopted a specific legal regime to support the development and marketing of drugs and biologics for rare diseases.

For example, in the European Union, Regulation 141/2000 organizes the grant of orphan drug designations to promote the development of products that are intended for the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of life threatening or chronically debilitating conditions affecting not more than five in 10,000 persons in the European Economic Area (the European Union, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) (or where it is unlikely that the development of the medicine would generate sufficient return to justify the investment) and for which no satisfactory method of diagnosis, prevention or treatment has been authorized or, if a method exists, the product would be of significant benefit to those affected. The EMA’s Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products (“COMP”) examines if the orphan criteria are met and gives opinions thereon, and the orphan status is granted by the European Commission. The meeting of the criteria for orphan designation is examined again by the COMP at the time of approval of the medicinal product, which typically occurs several years after the grant of the orphan designation. If the criteria for orphan designation are no longer met at that time, the European Commission withdraws the orphan status.

In the European Union, orphan drug designation entitles the sponsor to financial incentives such as reduction of fees or fee waivers and to ten years of market exclusivity granted following medicinal product approval. Market exclusivity precludes the EMA or a national regulatory authority from validating another MAA, and the European Commission or a national regulatory authority from granting another marketing authorization, for a same or similar medicinal product and a same therapeutic indication, for that time period. This 10-year period may be reduced to six years if the orphan drug designation criteria are no longer met, including where it is shown that the product is sufficiently profitable not to justify maintenance of market exclusivity. The orphan exclusivity may be lost vis-à-vis another medicinal product in cases the manufacturer is unable to assure sufficient quantity of the medicinal product to meet patient needs or if that other product is proved to be clinically superior to the approved orphan product. A drug is clinically superior if it is safer, more effective or makes a major contribution to patient care. Orphan drug designation must be requested before submitting a MAA. Orphan drug designation does not convey any advantage in, or shorten the duration of, the regulatory review and approval process, and it does not afford any regulatory exclusivity until a marketing authorization is granted.

Expedited Development and Approval

Mechanisms are in place in many jurisdictions that allow an earlier approval of the drug so that it reaches patients with unmet medical needs earlier. The European Union, for example, has instituted several expedited approval mechanisms including two mechanisms that are specific to the centralized procedure:

A conditional marketing authorization may be granted when the CHMP finds that, although comprehensive clinical data referring to the safety and efficacy of the medicinal product have not been supplied, all the following requirements are met:

The granting of a conditional marketing authorization is typically restricted to situations in which only the clinical part of the application is not yet fully complete. Incomplete preclinical or quality data may however be accepted if duly justified and only in the case of a product intended to be used in emergency situations in response to public health threats.

Conditional marketing authorizations are valid for one year, on a renewable basis. The conditions to which approval is subject will typically require the holder to complete ongoing trials or to conduct new trials with a view to confirming that the risk/benefit balance is positive and to collect pharmacovigilance data. Once the conditions to which the marketing authorization is subject are fulfilled, the conditional marketing authorization is transformed into a regular marketing authorization. If, however, the conditions are not fulfilled within the timeframe set by the EMA, the conditional marketing authorization ceases to be renewed.

The EMA has also implemented the so-called “PRIME” (PRIority MEdicines) status in order support the development and accelerate the approval of complex innovative medicinal products addressing an unmet medical need. PRIME status enables early dialogue with the relevant EMA scientific committees and, possibly, some payors and thus reinforces the EMA’s scientific and regulatory support. It also opens accelerated assessment of the MAA as PRIME status, is normally reserved for medicinal products that may benefit from accelerated assessment, i.e., medicines of major interest from a public health perspective, in particular from a therapeutic innovation perspective.

Finally, all medicinal products (i.e. decentralized and centralized procedures) may benefit from an MA “under exceptional circumstances.” This marketing authorization is close to the conditional marketing authorization as it is reserved to medicinal products to be approved for severe diseases or unmet medical needs and the applicant does not hold the complete data set legally required for the grant of a marketing authorization. However, unlike the conditional marketing authorization, the applicant does not have to provide the missing data and will never have to. The risk/benefit of the medicinal product is reviewed annually. As a result, although the MA “under exceptional circumstances” is granted definitively, the risk/benefit balance of the medicinal product is reviewed annually and the marketing authorization is withdrawn in case the risk/benefit ratio is no longer favorable.

Pediatrics

Mandatory testing in the pediatric population is required in more and more jurisdictions. The European Union has enacted a complex and very stringent system that has inspired other jurisdictions, including the United States and Switzerland. Any application for approval of (i) a medicinal product containing a new active substance or (ii) a new therapeutic indication, pharmaceutical form or route of administration of an already authorized medicinal product which contains an active substance still protected by a supplementary protection certificate (“SPC”) or a patent that qualifies for an SPC, must include pediatric data. Otherwise, the application is not validated by the competent regulatory authority. The submission of pediatric data is mandatory in those cases, even if the application concerns an adult use. Submission of pediatric data is not required or fully required if the EMA granted, respectively, a full or partial waiver to pediatric development. Moreover, that submission can be postponed if the EMA grants a deferral in order not to delay the submission of the MAA for the adult population.

The pediatric data are generated through the implementation of a pediatric investigation plan (“PIP”) that is proposed by the company after completion of the PK studies in adults and agreed upon by the EMA, typically after some modifications. The PIP lists all the studies to conduct and measures to take in order to prove the safety and efficacy of the future medicinal product when used in children. The EMA may agree to modify the PIP at the company’s request. The scope of the PIP is the adult therapeutic indication or the condition of which the adult application is part or even the

mechanism of action of the active substance, at the EMA’s quasi-discretion. This very broad discretion enables the EMA to require companies to develop children indications that are different from the adult indications.

Completion of a PIP renders the company eligible for a pediatric reward, which can be six-month extension of the term of the SPC or, in the cases of orphan medicinal products, two additional years of market exclusivity. The reward is subject, among other conditions, to the PIP being fully completed, to the pediatric medicinal product being approved in all the member states, and to the results of the pediatric studies being mentioned, in one way or another (for example, the approval of a pediatric indication), in the summary of product characteristics of the product.

Post-Marketing Requirements

Many countries impose post-marketing requirements similar to those imposed in the United States, in particular safety monitoring or pharmacovigilance. In the European Union, pharmacovigilance data are the basis for the competent regulatory authorities imposing the conduct of post-approval safety or efficacy study, including on off-label use. Non-compliance with those requirements can result in significant financial penalties as well as the suspension or withdrawal of the marketing authorization.

Supplementary Protection Certificate and Regulatory Exclusivities

In some countries other than the United States, some of our patents may be eligible for limited patent term extension, depending upon the timing, duration and specifics of the regulatory approval of our product candidates and any future product candidates. Furthermore, authorized drugs and biologics may benefit from regulatory exclusivities (in additional to patent protection resulting from patents).

In the European Union, Regulation (EC) 469/2009 institutes SPCs. An SPC is an extension of the term of a patent that compensates for the patent protection lost because of the legal requirements to conduct safety and efficacy tests and to obtain a marketing authorization before placing a medicinal product on the market. An SPC may be applied for any active substance that is protected by a “basic patent” (a patent chosen by the patent holder, which can be a product, process or application patent) and has not been placed on the market as a medicinal product before having obtained a marketing authorization in accordance with European Union pharmaceutical law. The term of the SPC is maximum five years, and the combined patent and SPC protection may not exceed fifteen years from the date of the first marketing authorization in the European Economic Area (“EEA”). SPC rights are restricted by both the basic patent and the marketing authorization, i.e., the SPC grants the same rights as those conferred by the basic patent but limited to the active substance covered by the marketing authorization (and any use as medicinal product approved afterwards).

While SPC are regulated at the European level, they are granted by the national patent offices. The grant of an SPC requires a basic patent granted by the national patent office and a marketing authorization, which is the first marketing authorization for the active substance as a medicinal product in the country. Furthermore, no SPC must have already been granted to the active substance, and the application for the SPC must be filed with the national patent office within six months of the first marketing authorization in the EEA or the grant of the basic patent, whichever is the latest.

In the future, we may apply for an SPC for one or more of our currently owned or licensed European patents to add patent life beyond their current expiration date, depending on the expected length of the clinical trials and other factors involved in the filing of the relevant MAA.

Furthermore, in the European Union, medicinal products may benefit from the following regulatory exclusivities: data exclusivity, market protection, market exclusivity, and pediatric reward.

A medicinal product that contains a new active substance (reference medicinal product) is granted eight years of data exclusivity followed by two years of market protection. Data exclusivity prevents other companies from referring to the non-clinical and clinical data in marketing authorization dossier of the reference medicinal product for submission of generic MAA purposes, and market protection prevents other companies from placing generics on the market. Pursuant to the concept of global marketing authorization, any further development of that medicinal product (e.g., new indication, new form, change to the active substance) by the marketing authorization holder does not trigger any new or

additional protection. The authorization of any new development is considered as “falling” into the initial marketing authorization with regard to regulatory protection; hence, the new development only benefits from the regulatory protection that remains when it is authorized. The only exception is a new therapeutic indication that is considered as bringing a significant clinical benefit in comparison to the existing therapies. Such new indication will add one-year of market protection to the global marketing authorization, provided that it is authorized within the first eight years of authorization (i.e., during the data exclusivity period). Moreover, a new therapeutic indication of a “well-established substance” benefits from one-year data exclusivity but limited to the non-clinical and clinical data supporting the new indication. Any active substance approved for at least ten years in the EEA qualifies as well-established substance.

Biosimilars may be approved through an abbreviated approval pathway after the expiration of the eight-year data exclusivity period and may be marketed after the 10‑ or 11‑year market protection period. The approval of biosimilars requires the applicant to demonstrate similarity between the biosimilar and the biological medicinal product and to submit the non-clinical and clinical data defined by the EMA. The biosimilar legal regime has been mainly developed through EMA’s scientific guidelines applicable to categories of biological active substances. Unlike in the United States, interchangeability is regulated by each member state.

Market exclusivity is a regulatory protection exclusively afforded to medicinal products with an orphan status. Market exclusivity precludes the EMA or a national regulatory authority from validating another MAA, and the European Commission or a national regulatory authority from granting another marketing authorization, for a same or similar medicinal product and a same therapeutic indication, for a period of ten years from approval (see above).

Pediatric reward is another regulatory exclusivity. Completion of a PIP renders the company eligible for a pediatric reward, which can be six-month extension of the term of the SPC or, in the cases of orphan medicinal products, two additional years of market exclusivity (see above). In case a PIP is completed on a voluntary basis, i.e., for an approved medicinal product that is not or no longer protected by an SPC or a basic patent, the pediatric reward takes the form of a “pediatric use marketing authorization” (“PUMA”). That special authorization does not fall into the global marketing authorization and thus benefits from eight years of data exclusivity followed by two or three years of market protection.

Other Healthcare Laws and Compliance Requirements Outside of the United States

Much like the Anti-Kickback Statute prohibition in the United States, 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 European Union. The provision of benefits or advantages to physicians is mainly governed by the national anti-bribery laws of the member states, such as the UK Bribery Act 2010, or national anti-kickback provisions (France, Belgium, etc.). Infringement of these laws could result in substantial fines and imprisonment. In certain member states, payments made to physicians must be publicly disclosed. Moreover, agreements with physicians often must be the subject of prior notification and approval by the physician’s employer, his or her competent professional organization and/or the regulatory authorities of the individual member states. These requirements are provided in the national laws, industry codes or professional codes of conduct, applicable in the member states. Failure to comply with these requirements could result in reputational risk, public reprimands, administrative penalties, fines or imprisonment.

Much like the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, to which we are subject, that prohibits corporations and individuals from engaging in certain activities to obtain or retain business or to influence a person working in an official capacity, similar rules apply to many other countries worldwide such as France (“Loi Sapin”) or the United Kingdom (UK Bribery Act). It is illegal to pay, offer to pay or authorize the payment of anything of value to any foreign government official, government staff member, political party or political candidate in an attempt to obtain or retain business or to otherwise influence a person working in an official capacity.

Pricing and Reimbursement

Although none of our product candidates has been commercialized for any indication, if they are approved for marketing, commercial success of our product candidates will depend, in part, upon the availability of third-party reimbursement from payors at the federal, state and private levels. Third-party payors include government healthcare

programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, private health insurers and managed-care plans. We anticipate third-party payors will provide reimbursement for our products. However, these third-party payors are increasingly challenging the price and examining the cost effectiveness of medical products and services. In addition, significant uncertainty exists as to the reimbursement status of newly approved healthcare products. We may need to conduct expensive pharmacoeconomic studies in order to demonstrate the cost effectiveness of our products. Our product candidates may not be considered cost effective. It is time consuming and expensive for us to seek reimbursement from third-party payors. Reimbursement may not be available or sufficient to allow us to sell our products on a competitive and profitable basis.

We expect that there will continue to be a number of federal and state proposals to implement governmental pricing controls and limit the growth of healthcare costs, including the cost of prescription drugs.

In addition, in some foreign countries, the proposed pricing for a drug must be approved before it may be lawfully marketed. The requirements governing drug pricing vary widely from country to country. For example, the European Union 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 medicinal products for human use. 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. There can be no assurance that any country that has price controls or reimbursement limitations for pharmaceutical products will allow favorable reimbursement and pricing arrangements for any of our products.

Historically, products launched in the European Union do not follow price structures of the United States and generally tend to be significantly lower.

Employees

As of March 6, 2020, we had thirty-three full-time employees and five part-time employees. Of these 38 employees, thirty-one employees were engaged in research and development activities and seven employees were engaged in finance, legal, human resources, facilities and general management. We have no collective bargaining agreements with our employees, we have not experienced any work stoppages and we believe our relations with our employees are good.

Corporate History and Reorganization

Our company was created as a result of a business combination of Armata (formerly known as AmpliPhi) with C3J that became effective on May 9, 2019. Immediately prior to the closing of the Merger, AmpliPhi changed its name to Armata Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

C3J’s predecessor, C3 Jian, Inc., was incorporated under the laws of the State of California on November 4, 2005. On February 26, 2016, as part of a reorganization transaction, C3 Jian, Inc. merged with a wholly-owned subsidiary of C3J, and as part of this process, C3 Jian, Inc. was converted to a limited liability company organized under the laws of the State of California named C3 Jian, LLC. Prior to the Merger, C3J was privately held and was financed principally through a series of equity financings.

AmpliPhi was incorporated under the laws of the State of Washington in March 1989 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Immunex Corporation and began operations as an independent company in 1992 as Targeted Genetics Corporation. In January 2011, AmpliPhi completed the acquisition of Biocontrol Ltd, an antimicrobial biotechnology company based in the United Kingdom, with the goal of developing their phage therapy programs using funding from the sale of our legacy gene therapy assets. In November 2012, AmpliPhi completed the acquisition of Special Phage Holdings Pty Ltd, a company based in Australia, with the goal of continuing research addressing the rapidly escalating problem of antibiotic resistance through the development of a series of bacteriophage-based treatments.

 

Item 1A.     RISK FACTORS

 

You should consider carefully the following information about the risks described below, together with the other information contained in this Annual Report and in our other public filings, in evaluating our business. If any of the following risks actually occurs, our business, financial condition, results of operations and future growth prospects would likely be materially and adversely affected. In these circumstances, the market price of our common stock would likely decline.

 

Risks Related to Our Financial Condition and Need for Additional Capital

There is substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern, which may affect our ability to obtain future financing and may require us to curtail our operations. We will need to raise additional capital to support our operations.

The audited financial statements and accompanying notes thereto as of and for the year ended December 31, 2019  included disclosures stating that our recurring losses and negative cash flows from operations raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern. Our financial statements as of December 31, 2019 and 2018 were prepared under the assumption that we will continue as a going concern and do not include any adjustments that might result from the outcome of this uncertainty. At December 31, 2019, we had cash and cash equivalents of $6.0 million, and we have had recurring losses from operations and negative operating cash flows since inception.

 

We will need to raise additional capital to support our operations and product development activities. In the near term, we expect to continue to fund our operations, if at all, primarily through equity and debt financings in the future. Our ability to raise additional capital may be adversely impacted by potential worsening global economic conditions and the recent disruptions to, and volatility in, financial markets in the United States and worldwide resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We may also seek funds through arrangements with collaborators, grant agencies or others that may require us to relinquish rights to the product candidates that we might otherwise seek to develop or commercialize independently. If we are unable to secure additional funds when needed or on acceptable terms, we may be required to defer, reduce or eliminate significant planned expenditures, restructure, curtail or eliminate some or all of our development programs or other operations, dispose of technology or assets, pursue an acquisition of our company by a third party at a price that may result in a loss on investment for our stockholders, enter into arrangements that may require us to relinquish rights to certain of our product candidates, technologies or potential markets, file for bankruptcy or cease operations altogether. Any of these events could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

 

On January 27, 2020, we entered into a Securities Purchase Agreement (the “Securities Purchase Agreement”) with Innoviva, Inc. (“Innoviva”) pursuant to which we agreed to sell and issue up to 8,710,800 newly issued shares of common stock, par value $0.01 per share of Armata and warrants to purchase up to 8,710,800 shares of common stock, with an exercise price per share of $2.87, in exchange for aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $25.0 million.  See “Part II—Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities—Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities” for more information.

 

While we believe that our existing cash resources combined with the proceeds from the Securities Purchase Agreement with Innoviva will be sufficient to fund our planned operations into the second quarter of 2021, we cannot provide assurances that our estimates are accurate, that our plans will not change or that changed circumstances will not result in the depletion of our capital resources more rapidly than we currently anticipate. Developing drugs and conducting clinical trials is expensive. Our future funding requirements will depend on many factors, including:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In addition, raising additional capital through the sale of securities could cause significant dilution to our stockholders. Any additional fundraising efforts may divert our management from their day to day activities, which may adversely affect our ability to develop and commercialize our product candidates. Our ability to raise additional funds will depend, in part, on the success of our product development activities, including our targeted phage therapies strategy and any clinical trials we initiate, regulatory events, our ability to identify and enter into in-licensing or other strategic arrangements, and other events or conditions that may affect our value or prospects, as well as factors related to financial, economic and market conditions, many of which are beyond our control. There can be no assurances that sufficient funds will be available to us when required or on acceptable terms, if at all.

 

We have incurred losses since our inception and anticipate that we will continue to incur significant losses for the foreseeable future, and our future profitability is uncertain.

 

As of December 31, 2019, our accumulated deficit was $157.5 million and we expect to incur losses for the foreseeable future. We have devoted, and will continue to devote for the foreseeable future, substantially all of our resources to research and development of our product candidates. For the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2018, we had losses from operations of $19.8 million and $17.7 million, respectively. Additional information regarding our results of operations may be found in our consolidated financial statements and in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” included in Item 7 in this Annual Report.

 

Clinical trials and activities associated with discovery research are costly. We do not expect to generate any revenue from the commercial sales of our product candidates in the near term, and we expect to continue to have significant losses for the foreseeable future.

 

We have never generated any revenue from product sales and may never be profitable.

 

 Our ability to generate meaningful revenue and achieve profitability depends on successfully completing the development of, and obtaining the regulatory approvals necessary to, commercialize our product candidates. If any of our product candidates fail in clinical trials or if any of our product candidates do not gain regulatory approval, or if any of our product candidates, if approved, fail to achieve market acceptance, we may never become profitable. Even if we achieve profitability in the future, we may not be able to sustain profitability in subsequent periods. Our ability to generate future revenues from product sales depends heavily on our success in:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even if one or more of the product candidates that we develop is approved for commercial sale, we anticipate incurring significant costs associated with commercializing any approved product. Our expenses could increase beyond expectations if we are required by the FDA, the European Medicines Agency (“EMA”), or other foreign regulatory authorities to perform clinical trials and other studies in addition to those that we currently anticipate. Even if we are able to generate revenues from the sale of any approved products, we may not become profitable and may need to obtain additional funding to continue operations.

 

The coronavirus outbreak could adversely affect our results of operations.

 

During January 2020, a strain of the COVID-19 viral disease (or the “coronavirus”) was reported to have surfaced in Wuhan, China.  In an effort to halt the outbreak, the Chinese government placed significant restrictions on travel within China and closed certain businesses in the region, and governments and other parties outside of China have halted or sharply curtailed the movement of people, goods and services.  In March 2020, the World Health Organization called the COVID-19 viral disease a pandemic and the United States has been substantially impacted by the outbreak. If the impact of the coronavirus outbreak continues for an extended period, it could materially adversely impact our clinical development activities as a result of the impacts on our employees, our manufacturing facility, our supply of critical laboratory and manufacturing materials, our clinical trial sites, access to patients in the clinical trials and additionally regulatory guidance could be delayed or impacted.  At this point, we cannot accurately predict what effects these conditions will have on our business, which will depend on, among other factors, the ultimate geographic spread of the virus, the duration of the outbreak and travel restrictions and business closures imposed by the various governments

 

The 2017 comprehensive tax reform bill could adversely affect our business and financial condition.

 

On December 22, 2017, President Trump signed into law new legislation that significantly revises the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended. The newly enacted federal income tax law, among other things, contains significant changes to corporate taxation, including reduction of the corporate tax rate from a top marginal rate of 35% to a flat rate of 21%, limitation of the tax deduction for interest expense to 30% of adjusted earnings (except for certain small businesses), limitation of the deduction for net operating losses to 80% of current year taxable income and elimination of net operating loss carrybacks, one time taxation of offshore earnings at reduced rates regardless of whether they are repatriated, immediate deductions for certain new investments instead of deductions for depreciation expense over time, and modifying or repealing many business deductions and credits (including reducing the business tax credit for certain clinical testing expenses incurred in the testing of certain drugs for rare diseases or conditions). Notwithstanding the reduction in the corporate income tax rate, the overall impact of the new federal tax law is uncertain and our business and financial condition could be adversely affected. In addition, it is uncertain if and to what extent various states will conform to the newly enacted federal tax law.

 

 

Taxing authorities could reallocate our taxable income among our subsidiaries, which could increase our overall tax liability.

 

We are organized in the United States, and we currently have subsidiaries in the United Kingdom and Australia. Between May 2019 and December 2019, we also had operations in Slovenia. If we succeed in growing our business, we expect to conduct increased operations through our subsidiaries in various tax jurisdictions pursuant to transfer pricing arrangements between us and our subsidiaries. If two or more affiliated companies are located in different countries, the tax laws or regulations of each country generally will require that transfer prices be the same as those between unrelated companies dealing at arm’s length and that appropriate documentation is maintained to support the transfer prices. While we believe that we operate in compliance with applicable transfer pricing laws and intend to continue to do so, our transfer pricing procedures are not binding on applicable tax authorities.

 

If tax authorities in any of these countries were to successfully challenge our transfer prices as not reflecting arm’s length transactions, they could require us to adjust our transfer prices and thereby reallocate our income to reflect these revised transfer prices, which could result in a higher tax liability to us. In addition, if the country from which the income is reallocated does not agree with the reallocation, both countries could tax the same income, resulting in double taxation. If tax authorities were to allocate income to a higher tax jurisdiction, subject our income to double taxation or assess interest and penalties, it would increase our consolidated tax liability, which could adversely affect our financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

 

Maintaining and improving our financial controls and the requirements of being a public company may strain our resources, divert management’s attention and affect our ability to attract and retain qualified board members.

As a public company, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the rules of the NYSE American exchange. The requirements of these rules and regulations increase our legal and financial compliance costs,  make some activities more difficult, time-consuming  or costly and place strain on our personnel, systems and resources. The Exchange Act requires, among other things, that we file annual,  quarterly   and current reports with respect to our business and financial condition.

 

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we maintain  effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting. Ensuring that we have adequate  internal  financial and accounting  controls and procedures in place is a costly and time-consuming  effort that needs to be re-evaluated  frequently.

 

We currently do not have an internal audit group, and we may need to hire additional accounting  and financial staff with appropriate public company experience and technical accounting  knowledge.  Implementing  any appropriate changes to our internal controls may require specific compliance training for  our directors, officers and employees, entail substantial  costs to modify our existing accounting  systems,  and take a significant period of time to complete. Such changes may not, however, be effective in maintaining the adequacy of our internal controls, and any failure to maintain  that adequacy, or consequent  inability to produce accurate financial statements  on a timely basis, could increase our operating costs and could materially impair our ability to operate our business. Moreover,   effective internal controls are necessary for us to produce reliable financial reports and are important to help prevent fraud.

 

In accordance  with NYSE American exchange rules, we are required to maintain  a majority independent  board of directors. The various rules and regulations  applicable to public companies make it more difficult and more expensive for us to maintain  directors’ and officers’ liability insurance,  and we may  be required to accept reduced coverage or incur substantially   higher costs to maintain  coverage. If we are  unable to maintain  adequate  directors’ and officers’ insurance,  our ability to recruit and retain qualified officers and directors will be significantly curtailed.

 

 

If we fail to maintain proper and effective internal control over financial reporting, our ability to produce accurate financial statements on a timely basis could be impaired and our public reporting may be unreliable.

 

We are required to maintain  internal control over financial reporting  adequate  to provide reasonable  assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting  and the preparation of our consolidated financial  statements  in accordance  with generally accepted accounting  principles. We do not expect that our internal  control over financial reporting  will prevent all errors and all fraud. A control system, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable,   not absolute, assurance that the control system’s objectives will be met. Further, the design of a control system must reflect the fact that there are resource constraints, and the benefits of controls must be considered relative to their costs. Controls  can be circumvented by the individual acts of some persons, by collusion of two or more people, or by  management override of the controls. Over time, controls may become inadequate because changes in conditions  or deterioration in the degree of compliance with policies or procedures may occur. Because of the inherent limitations  in a cost-effective control system, misstatements  due to error or fraud may occur and not be detected. Material   weaknesses in our internal controls have been identified in the past, and we cannot assure you that significant deficiencies or material weaknesses in our internal control over financial  reporting  will not be identified in the future.

 

If we are unable to maintain  effective controls and procedures,   or identify any future material  weaknesses, the accuracy and timing of our financial reporting  may be adversely affected, we may be unable  to maintain  compliance with securities law requirements  regarding timely filing of periodic reports and we may experience a loss of public confidence, which could have an adverse effect on our business, financial  condition  and the market price of our common stock.

 

Because the Merger resulted in an ownership change under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code for Armata, Armata’s pre-Merger net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes will be subject to limitations. The net operating loss carryforwards and other tax attributes of C3J may also be subject to limitations as a result of ownership changes.

 

If a corporation undergoes an “ownership change” within the meaning of Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, such corporation’s net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes arising from before the ownership change are subject to limitations on use after the ownership change. In general, an ownership change occurs if there is a cumulative change in the corporation’s equity ownership by certain stockholders that exceeds fifty percentage points over a rolling three-year period. Similar rules may apply under state tax laws. The Merger resulted in an ownership change for AmpliPhi and, accordingly, AmpliPhi’s net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes may be subject to limitations (or disallowance) on their use after the Merger. C3J’s net operating loss carryforwards may also be subject to limitation as a result of prior shifts in equity ownership and/or the Merger. Additional ownership changes in the future could result in additional limitations on our net operating loss carryforwards. Consequently, even if we achieve profitability, we may not be able to utilize a material portion of our net operating loss carryforwards and other tax attributes, which could have a material adverse effect on cash flow and results of operations.

 

As of December 31, 2019, we had federal net operating loss carryforwards of approximately $88.8 million.  

 

Risks Related to Our Business

We have limited operating history, have incurred significant operating losses since inception and expects to incur significant operating losses for the foreseeable future. We may never become profitable or, if achieved, be able to sustain profitability.

 

To date, we have funded its operations primarily through private placement offerings of equity securities. As of December 31, 2019, we had cash and cash equivalents of $6.0 million. We have incurred significant operating losses since our inception and expect to incur significant losses for the foreseeable future as we continue our development programs for our product candidates.

 

We currently generate no revenue from product sales, and may never be able to commercialize our product candidates, or other future product candidates. We do not currently have the required approvals to market our product candidates and we may never receive them. We may not be profitable even if we or any of our future development partners succeed in commercializing any of ’our product candidates. Because of the numerous risks and uncertainties associated with developing and commercializing ’our product candidates, we are unable to predict the extent of any future losses or when it will become profitable, if at all.

 

Our single-patient expanded access treatment results may not be representative of the results we encounter during clinical studies we conduct in the future, which in turn could adversely affect our business.

 

In the past, our bacteriophage product candidates were used under single-patient expanded access guidelines to patients outside of clinical trials with antibiotic-resistant infections who have few or no other therapeutic options.   While we do not currently plan to continue this program, this program  was and is subject to numerous  risks and uncertainties, including the following:

 

 

 

 

In September 2018, we received the official minutes from our August 2018 Type B pre-IND meeting with the FDA regarding our AP-SA01 bacteriophage therapy product candidate. The FDA expressed general agreement with our proposed clinical trial designs and, based on the current FDA feedback, no additional clinical or nonclinical data are required to proceed with human clinical trials. Subsequent to the Type B meeting, we have changed the bacteriophage product candidate to AP-SA02. While we believe the FDA comments and stances related to AP-SA01 will apply to AP-SA02, there can be no assurances that is the case.

 

Results from preclinical studies and Phase 1 or 2 clinical trials of our product candidates or from single-patient expanded access treatments may not be predictive of the results of later stage clinical trials.

 

Preclinical studies, including studies of our product candidates in animal disease models, may not accurately predict the result of human clinical trials of those product candidates. In particular, promising animal studies suggesting the efficacy of prototype phage products in the treatment of bacterial infections, such as P. aeruginosa and S. aureus, may not predict the ability of these products to treat similar infections in humans. Despite promising data in our completed Phase 1 clinical trials, our phage technology may be found not to be efficacious in treating bacterial infections alone or in combination with other agents, when studied in later-stage clinical trials.

 

In addition, we have used our bacteriophage technology in the area of targeted medicine under single-patient expanded access guidelines, which permit the use of phage therapy outside of clinical trials, in the United States and Australia. Despite prior single-patient expanded access successes, no assurance can be given that we will have similar single-patient expanded access treatment successes in the future. Single-patient expanded access is a term that is used to refer to the use of an investigational drug or therapy outside of a clinical trial to treat a patient with a serious or immediately life-threatening disease or condition who has no comparable or satisfactory alternative treatment options. Regulators often allow single-patient expanded access on a case-by-case basis for an individual patient or for defined groups of patients with similar treatment needs. In some countries, such as Australia, the treating physician can administer treatment under single-patient expanded access guidelines without pre-approval from the applicable regulatory authority. 

 

To satisfy FDA or foreign regulatory approval standards for the commercial sale of our product candidates, we must demonstrate in adequate and controlled clinical trials that our product candidates are safe and effective. Success in early clinical trials, including Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials, or in our single-patient expanded access program does not ensure that later clinical trials will be successful. Our initial results from early stage clinical trials or our single-patient expanded access program also may not be confirmed by later analysis or subsequent larger clinical trials. A number of companies in the pharmaceutical industry have suffered significant setbacks in advanced clinical trials, even after obtaining promising results in earlier clinical trials and most product candidates that commence clinical trials are never approved for commercial sale.

We are seeking to develop antibacterial agents using bacteriophage and synthetic phage technology, a novel approach, which makes it difficult to predict the time and cost of development. No bacteriophage products have been approved in the United States or elsewhere.

We are developing our product candidates with bacteriophage and synthetic phage technology. We have not, nor to our knowledge has any other company, received regulatory approval from the FDA or equivalent foreign agencies for a pharmaceutical drug based on this approach. While in vitro studies have characterized the behavior of bacteriophages in cell cultures and there exists a body of literature regarding the use of phage therapy in humans, the safety and efficacy of phage therapy in humans has not been extensively studied in well-controlled modern clinical trials. Most of the prior research on phage-based therapy was conducted in the former Soviet Union prior to and immediately after World War II and lacked appropriate control group design or lacked control groups at all. Furthermore, the standard of care has changed substantially during the ensuing decades since those studies were performed, diminishing the relevance of prior claims of improved cure rates. We cannot be certain that our approach will lead to the development of approvable or marketable drugs.

Developing phage-based therapies on a commercial scale will also require developing new manufacturing processes and techniques. We and our third-party collaborators may experience delays in developing manufacturing capabilities for our product candidates, and may not be able to do so at the scale required to efficiently conduct the clinical trials required to obtain regulatory approval of our product candidates, or to manufacture commercial quantities of our products, if approved.

In addition, the FDA or other regulatory agencies may lack experience in evaluating the safety and efficacy of drugs based on these approaches, which could lengthen the regulatory review process, increase our development costs and delay or prevent commercialization of our product candidates.

Delays in our clinical trials could result in us not achieving anticipated developmental milestones when expected, increased costs and delay our ability to obtain regulatory approval for and commercialize our product candidates.

Delays in our ability to commence or enroll patients for our clinical trials could result in us not meeting anticipated clinical milestones and could materially impact our product development costs and delay regulatory approval of our product candidates. Planned clinical trials may not be commenced or completed on schedule, or at all. Clinical trials can be delayed for a variety of reasons, including:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If we do not successfully commence or complete our clinical trials on schedule, the price of our common stock may decline.

Completion of clinical trials depends, among other things, on our ability to enroll a sufficient number of patients, which is a function of many factors, including:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We may experience difficulties in enrolling patients in our clinical trials, which could increase the costs or affect the timing or outcome of these clinical trials. This is particularly true with respect to diseases with relatively small patient populations.

We have not completed formulation development of our product candidates.

The development of our bacteriophage product candidates requires that we isolate, select and combine a number of bacteriophages that target the desired bacteria for that product candidate. The selection of bacteriophages for any of our product candidates is based on a variety of factors, including without limitation the ability of the selected phages, in combination, to successfully kill the targeted bacteria, the degree of cross-reactivity of the individual phages with the same part of the bacterial targets, the ability of the combined phages to satisfy regulatory requirements, our ability to manufacture sufficient quantities of the phages, intellectual property rights of third parties, and other factors. While we have selected initial formulations of AP-PA02 for the treatment of P. aeruginosa infections and AP-SA02 for the treatment of S. aureus infections, there can be no assurance that these initial formulations will be the final formulations for commercialization if approved. If we are unable to complete formulation development of our product candidates in the time frame that we have anticipated, then our product development timelines, and the regulatory approval of our product candidates, could be delayed.

Our product candidates must undergo rigorous clinical testing, such clinical testing may fail to demonstrate safety and efficacy and any of our product candidates could cause undesirable side effects, which would substantially delay or prevent regulatory approval or commercialization.

Before we can obtain regulatory approval for a product candidate, we must undertake extensive clinical testing in humans to demonstrate safety and efficacy to the satisfaction of the FDA or other regulatory agencies. Clinical trials of new drug candidates sufficient to obtain regulatory marketing approval are expensive and take years to complete.

We cannot be certain of successfully completing clinical testing within the time frame we have planned, or at all. We may experience numerous unforeseen events during, or as a result of, the clinical trial process that could delay or prevent us from receiving regulatory approval or commercializing our product candidates, including the following:

 

 

 

 

 

We must continue to develop manufacturing processes for our product candidates and any delay in or our inability to do so would result in delays in our clinical trials.

We are developing novel manufacturing processes for our product candidates at our facilities in Marina Del Rey (near Los Angeles), California. The manufacturing processes for our product candidates, and the scale up of such processes for clinical trials, is novel, and there can be no assurance that we will be able to complete this work in a timely manner, if at all. Any delay in the development or scale up of these manufacturing processes could delay the start of clinical trials and harm our business. In the event our facility in Marina Del Rey does not receive a satisfactory current good manufacturing practice regulations (“cGMP”) inspection for the manufacture of our product candidates, we may need to fund additional modifications to our manufacturing process, conduct additional validation studies, or find

alternative manufacturing facilities, any of which would result in significant cost to us as well as a delay of up to several years in obtaining approval for such product candidate.

Our manufacturing facility will be subject to ongoing periodic inspection by the FDA  for compliance with U.S. cGMP regulations. Compliance with these regulations and standards is complex and costly, and there can be no assurance that we will be able to comply. Any failure to comply with applicable regulations could result in sanctions being imposed (including fines, injunctions and civil penalties), failure of regulatory authorities to grant marketing approval of our product candidates, delays, suspension or withdrawal of approvals, license revocation, seizures or recalls of product candidates or products, operating restrictions and criminal prosecution.

We may conduct clinical trials for our products or product candidates outside the United States and the FDA may not accept data from such trials.

We completed an investigator-sponsored clinical trial of AP-SA01 at the University of Adelaide in Australia for CRS in December 2016. Although the FDA may accept data from clinical trials conducted outside the United States, acceptance of such study data by the FDA is subject to certain conditions. For example, the study must be well designed and conducted and performed by qualified investigators in accordance with ethical principles. The study population must also adequately represent the U.S. population, and the data must be applicable to the U.S. population and U.S. medical practice in ways that the FDA deems clinically meaningful. Generally, the patient population for any clinical studies conducted outside of the United States must be representative of the population for whom we intend to label the product in the United States. In addition, such studies would be subject to the applicable local laws and FDA acceptance of the data would be dependent upon its determination that the studies also complied with all applicable U.S. laws and regulations. There can be no assurance the FDA will accept data from trials conducted outside of the United States. If the FDA does not accept any such data, it would likely result in the need for additional trials, which would be costly and time consuming and delay aspects of our business plan.

We may need to license additional intellectual property rights.

The development and commercialization of phage-based antibacterial agents may require us to obtain rights to intellectual property from third parties. We may also determine that it is necessary or advisable to license other intellectual property from third parties. There can be no assurance that such intellectual property rights would be available on commercially reasonable terms, if at all.

We are subject to significant regulatory approval requirements, which could delay, prevent or limit our ability to market our product candidates.

Our research and development activities, preclinical studies, clinical trials and the anticipated manufacturing and marketing of our product candidates are subject to extensive regulation by the FDA and other regulatory agencies in the United States and by comparable authorities in Europe and elsewhere. There can be no assurance that our manufacturing facilities will satisfy the requirements of the FDA or comparable foreign authorities. We require the approval of the relevant regulatory authorities before we may commence commercial sales of our product candidates in a given market. The regulatory approval process is expensive and time-consuming, and the timing of receipt of regulatory approval is difficult to predict. Our product candidates could require a significantly longer time to gain regulatory approval than expected, or may never gain approval. We cannot be certain that, even after expending substantial time and financial resources, we will obtain regulatory approval for any of our product candidates. A delay or denial of regulatory approval could delay or prevent our ability to generate product revenues and to achieve profitability.

Changes in regulatory approval policies during the development period of any of our product candidates, changes in, or the enactment of, additional regulations or statutes, or changes in regulatory review practices for a submitted product application may cause a delay in obtaining approval or result in the rejection of an application for regulatory approval.

Regulatory approval, if obtained, may be made subject to limitations on the indicated uses for which we may market a product. These limitations could adversely affect our potential product revenues. Regulatory approval may also require costly post-marketing follow-up studies. In addition, the labeling, packaging, adverse event reporting, storage,

advertising, promotion and record-keeping related to the product will be subject to extensive ongoing regulatory requirements. Furthermore, for any marketed product, its manufacturer and its manufacturing facilities will be subject to continual review and periodic inspections by the FDA or other regulatory authorities. Failure to comply with applicable regulatory requirements may, among other things, result in fines, suspensions of regulatory approvals, product recalls, product seizures, operating restrictions and criminal prosecution.

Failure to comply with health and data protection laws and regulations could lead to government enforcement actions (which could include civil or criminal penalties), private litigation and/or adverse publicity and could negatively affect our operating results and business.

We and any potential collaborators may be subject to federal, state and foreign data protection laws and regulations (i.e., laws and regulations that address privacy and data security). In the United States, numerous federal and state laws and regulations, including federal health information privacy laws, state data breach notification laws, state health information privacy laws and federal and state consumer protection laws (e.g., Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act), that govern the collection, use, disclosure and protection of health-related and other personal information could apply to our operations or the operations of our collaborators. In addition, we may obtain health information from third parties (including research institutions from which we obtain clinical trial data) that are subject to privacy and security requirements under the HIPAA, as amended by HITECH. Depending on the facts and circumstances, we could be subject to criminal penalties if we knowingly obtain, use, or disclose individually identifiable health information maintained by a HIPAA-covered entity in a manner that is not authorized or permitted by HIPAA.

International data protection laws, including Regulation 2016/679, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) may also apply to health-related and other personal information obtained outside of the United States. The GDPR went into effect on May 25, 2018. The GDPR introduced new data protection requirements in the European Union, as well as potential fines for noncompliant companies of up to the greater of €20 million or 4% of annual global revenue. The regulation imposes numerous new requirements for the collection, use and disclosure of personal information, including more stringent requirements relating to consent and the information that must be shared with data subjects about how their personal information is used, the obligation to notify regulators and affected individuals of personal data breaches, extensive new internal privacy governance obligations and obligations to honor expanded rights of individuals in relation to their personal information (e.g., the right to access, correct and delete their data). In addition, the GDPR includes restrictions on cross-border data transfer. The GDPR will increase our responsibility and liability in relation to personal data that we process, and we may be required to put in place additional mechanisms to ensure compliance with the new EU data protection rules. Further, the United Kingdom’s vote in favor of exiting the EU, often referred to as Brexit, has created uncertainty with regard to data protection regulation in the United Kingdom. In particular, it is unclear whether the United Kingdom will enact data protection legislation equivalent to the GDPR and how data transfers to and from the United Kingdom will be regulated.

In addition, California recently enacted legislation that has been dubbed the first “GDPR-like” law in the United States.  Known as the California Consumer Privacy Act, it creates new individual privacy rights for consumers (as that word is broadly defined in the law) and places increased privacy and security obligations on entities handling personal data of consumers or households.  When it goes into effect on January 1, 2020, the CCPA will require covered companies to provide new disclosures to California consumers, provide such consumers new ways to opt-out of certain sales of personal information, and allow for a new cause of action for data breaches. Legislators have stated that amendments will be proposed to the CCPA before it goes into effect, but it remains unclear what, if any, modifications will be made to this legislation or how it will be interpreted. As currently written, the CCPA may impact (possibly significantly) our business activities and exemplifies the vulnerability of our business to the evolving regulatory environment related to personal data and protected health information.

Compliance with U.S. and international data protection laws and regulations could require us to take on more onerous obligations in our contracts, restrict our ability to collect, use and disclose data, or in some cases, impact our ability to operate in certain jurisdictions. Failure to comply with U.S. and international data protection laws and regulations could result in government enforcement actions (which could include civil or criminal penalties), private litigation and/or adverse publicity and could negatively affect our operating results and business. Moreover, clinical trial subjects about whom we or our potential collaborators obtain information, as well as the providers who share this

information with us, may contractually limit our ability to use and disclose the information. Claims that we have violated individuals’ privacy rights, failed to comply with data protection laws, or breached our contractual obligations, even if we are not found liable, could be expensive and time consuming to defend and could result in adverse publicity that could harm our business.

A variety of risks associated with our international operations could materially adversely affect our business.

In addition to our U.S. operations, we have operations and subsidiaries in the United Kingdom and Australia. We face risks associated with our international operations, including possible unfavorable regulatory, pricing and reimbursement, political, tax and labor conditions, which could harm our business. We are subject to numerous risks associated with international business activities, including:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These and other risks associated with our international operations may materially adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We do not have a sales force and do not currently have plans to develop one.

The commercial success of any of our product candidates will depend upon the strength of sales and marketing efforts for them. We do not have a sales force and have no experience in sales, marketing or distribution. To successfully commercialize our product candidates, we will need to develop such a capability ourselves or seek assistance from a third party with a large distribution system and a large direct sales force. We may be unable to put such a plan in place. In addition, if we arrange for others to market and sell our products, our revenues will depend upon the efforts of those

parties. Such arrangements may not succeed. Even if one or more of our product candidates is approved for marketing, if we fail to establish adequate sales, marketing and distribution capabilities, independently or with others, our business will be materially harmed.

Our success depends in part on attracting, retaining and motivating our personnel.

Our success depends on our continued ability to attract, retain and motivate highly qualified management, clinical and scientific personnel and on our ability to develop and maintain important relationships with leading academic institutions, clinicians and scientists. Our success will depend on our ability to retain and motivate personnel and hire additional qualified personnel when required. Competition for qualified personnel in the biotechnology field is intense. We face competition for personnel from other biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, universities, public and private research institutions and other organizations. We also face competition from other more well-funded and well-established businesses and we may also be viewed as a riskier choice from a job stability perspective due to our relative newer status than longer existing biotech and pharmaceutical companies. We may not be able to attract and retain qualified personnel on acceptable terms given the competition for such personnel. If we are unsuccessful in our retention, motivation and recruitment efforts, we may be unable to execute our business strategy.

We must manage a geographically dispersed organization.

While we are a small company, we currently have operations in the United States and Australia. In the future, we may also locate facilities in other locations based on proximity to personnel with the expertise needed to research, develop and manufacture phage-based therapeutics, costs of operations or other factors. Managing our organization across multiple locations and multiple time zones may reduce our efficiency, increase our expenses and increase the risk of operational difficulties in the execution of our plans.

Our business and operations might be adversely affected by security breaches, including any cybersecurity incidents.

We depend on the efficient and uninterrupted operation of our computer and communications systems, which we use for, among other things, sensitive company data, including our financial data, intellectual property and other proprietary business information.

While certain of our operations have business continuity and disaster recovery plans and other security measures intended to prevent and minimize the impact of IT-related interruptions, our IT infrastructure and the IT infrastructure of our consultants, contractors and vendors are vulnerable to damage from cyberattacks, computer viruses, unauthorized access, electrical failures and natural disasters or other catastrophic events. We could experience failures in our information systems and computer servers, which could result in an interruption of our normal business operations and require substantial expenditure of financial and administrative resources to remedy. System failures, accidents or security breaches can cause interruptions in our operations and can result in a material disruption of our targeted phage therapies, bacteriophage product candidates and other business operations. The loss of data from completed or future studies or clinical trials could result in delays in our research, development or regulatory approval efforts and significantly increase our costs to recover or reproduce the data. To the extent that any disruption or security breach were to result in a loss of, or damage to, our data or applications, or inappropriate disclosure of confidential or proprietary information, we could incur liabilities and the development of our product candidates could be delayed or otherwise adversely affected.

Even though we believe we carry commercially reasonable business interruption and liability insurance, we might suffer losses as a result of business interruptions that exceed the coverage available under our insurance policies or for which we do not have coverage. For example, we are not insured against terrorist attacks or cyberattacks. Any natural disaster or catastrophic event could have a significant negative impact on our operations and financial results. Moreover, any such event could delay the development of our product candidates.

 

Interruptions in the availability of server systems or communications with Internet or cloud-based services, or failure to maintain the security, confidentiality, accessibility or integrity of data stored on such systems, could harm our business.

We rely upon a variety of Internet service providers, third-party hosting facilities and cloud computing platform providers to support our business. Failure to maintain the security, confidentiality, accessibility or integrity of data stored on such systems could damage our reputation in the market, cause us to lose revenue or market share, increase our service costs, cause us to incur substantial costs, subject us to liability for damages and/or fines and divert our resources from other tasks, any one of which could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. Any damage to, or failure of, such systems, or communications to and between such systems, could result in interruptions in our operations. If our security measures or those of our third-party data center hosting facilities, cloud computing platform providers, or third-party service partners, are breached, and unauthorized access is obtained to our data or our information technology systems, we may incur significant legal and financial exposure and liabilities.

We do not have control over the operations of the facilities of our cloud service providers and our third-party providers may be vulnerable to damage or interruption from natural disasters, cybersecurity attacks, terrorist attacks, power outages and similar events or acts of misconduct. In addition, any changes in our cloud service providers’ service levels may adversely affect our ability to meet our requirements and operate our business.

Risks Related to Our Reliance on Third Parties

We will rely on third parties to conduct our clinical trials, and their failure to perform their obligations in a timely or competent manner may delay development and commercialization of our product candidates.

We expect to use third parties, such as clinical research organizations, to assist in conducting our clinical trials. However, we may face delays outside of our control if these parties do not perform their obligations in a timely or competent fashion or if we are forced to change service providers. This risk is heightened for clinical trials conducted outside of the United States, where it may be more difficult to ensure that clinical trials are conducted in compliance with FDA requirements. Any third party that we hire to conduct clinical trials may also provide services to our competitors, which could compromise the performance of their obligations to us. If we experience significant delays in the progress of our clinical trials and in our plans to submit Biologics License Applications, the commercial prospects for product candidates could be harmed and our ability to generate product revenue would be delayed or prevented.

Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property

We are dependent on patents and proprietary technology. If we fail to adequately protect this intellectual property or if we otherwise do not have exclusivity for the marketing of our products, our ability to commercialize products could suffer.

Our commercial success will depend in part on our ability to obtain and maintain patent protection sufficient to prevent others from marketing our product candidates, as well as to defend and enforce these patents against infringement and to operate without infringing the proprietary rights of others. Protection of our product candidates from unauthorized use by third parties will depend on having valid and enforceable patents cover our product candidates or their manufacture or use, or having effective trade secret protection. If our patent applications do not result in issued patents, or if our patents are found to be invalid, we will lose the ability to exclude others from making, using or selling the inventions claimed therein. We have a limited number of patents and pending patent applications.

The patent positions of biotechnology companies can be uncertain and involve complex legal and factual questions. This is due to inconsistent application of policy and changes in policy relating to examination and enforcement of biotechnology patents to date on a global scale. The laws of some countries may not protect intellectual property rights to the same extent as the laws of countries having well-established patent systems, and those countries may lack adequate rules and procedures for defending our intellectual property rights. Also, changes in either patent laws or in interpretations of patent laws may diminish the value of our intellectual property. We are not able to guarantee that all of

our patent applications will result in the issuance of patents and we cannot predict the breadth of claims that may be allowed in our patent applications or in the patent applications we may license from others.

Central provisions of The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, or the America Invents Act went into effect on September 16, 2012 and on March 16, 2013. The America Invents Act includes a number of significant changes to U.S. patent law. These changes include provisions that affect the way patent applications are being filed, prosecuted and litigated. For example, the America Invents Act enacted proceedings involving post-issuance patent review procedures, such as inter partes review (“IPR”), and post-grant review, that allow third parties to challenge the validity of an issued patent in front of the “U.S. PTO” Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Each proceeding has different eligibility criteria and different patentability challenges that can be raised. IPRs permit any person (except a party who has been litigating the patent for more than a year) to challenge the validity of the patent on the grounds that it was anticipated or made obvious by prior art. Patents covering pharmaceutical products have been subject to attack in IPRs from generic drug companies and from hedge funds. If it is within six months of the issuance of the challenged patent, a third party can petition the U.S. PTO for post-grant review, which can be based on any invalidity grounds and is not limited to prior art patents or printed publications.

In post-issuance proceedings, U.S. PTO rules and regulations generally tend to favor patent challengers over patent owners. For example, unlike in district court litigation, claims challenged in post-issuance proceedings are given their broadest reasonable meaning, which increases the chance a claim might be invalidated by prior art or lack support in the patent specification. As another example, unlike in district court litigation, there is no presumption of validity for an issued patent, and thus, a challenger’s burden to prove invalidity is by a preponderance of the evidence, as opposed to the heightened clear and convincing evidence standard. As a result of these rules and others, statistics released by the U.S. PTO show a high percentage of claims being invalidated in post-issuance proceedings. Moreover, with few exceptions, there is no standing requirement to petition the U.S. PTO for inter partes review or post-grant review. In other words, companies that have not been charged with infringement or that lack commercial interest in the patented subject matter can still petition the U.S. PTO for review of an issued patent. Thus, even where we have issued patents, our rights under those patents may be challenged and ultimately not provide us with sufficient protection against competitive products or processes.

The degree of future protection for our proprietary rights is uncertain because legal means afford only limited protection and may not adequately protect our rights or permit us to gain or keep our competitive advantage. For example:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An issued patent does not guarantee us the right to practice the patented technology or commercialize the patented product. Third parties may have blocking patents that could be used to prevent us from commercializing our patented

products and practicing our patented technology. Our issued patents and those that may be issued in the future may be challenged, invalidated or circumvented, which could limit our ability to prevent competitors from marketing the same or related product candidates or could limit the length of the term of patent protection of our product candidates. Moreover, because of the extensive time required for development, testing and regulatory review of a potential product, it is possible that, before any of our product candidates can be commercialized, any related patent may expire or remain in force for only a short period following commercialization, thereby reducing any advantage of the patent. Patent term extensions may not be available for these patents.

We rely on trade secrets and other forms of non-patent intellectual property protection. If we are unable to protect our trade secrets, other companies may be able to compete more effectively against us.

We rely on trade secrets to protect certain aspects of our technology, including our proprietary processes for manufacturing and purifying bacteriophages. Trade secrets are difficult to protect, especially in the pharmaceutical industry, where much of the information about a product must be made public during the regulatory approval process. Although we use reasonable efforts to protect our trade secrets, our employees, consultants, contractors, outside scientific collaborators and other advisors may unintentionally or willfully disclose our information to competitors. Enforcing a claim that a third party illegally obtained and is using our trade secret information is expensive and time-consuming, and the outcome is unpredictable. In addition, courts outside the United States may be less willing to or may not protect trade secrets. Moreover, our competitors may independently develop equivalent knowledge, methods and know-how.

If we are sued for infringing intellectual property rights of third parties or if we are forced to engage in an interference proceeding, it will be costly and time-consuming, and an unfavorable outcome in that litigation or interference would have a material adverse effect on our business.

Our ability to commercialize our product candidates depends on our ability to develop, manufacture, market and sell our product candidates without infringing the proprietary rights of third parties. Numerous United States and foreign patents and patent applications, which are owned by third parties, exist in the general field of anti-infective products or in fields that otherwise may relate to our product candidates. If we are shown to infringe, we could be enjoined from use or sale of the claimed invention if we are unable to prove that the patent is invalid. In addition, because patent applications can take many years to issue, there may be currently pending patent applications, unknown to us, which may later result in issued patents that our product candidates may infringe, or which may trigger an interference proceeding regarding one of our owned or licensed patents or applications. There could also be existing patents of which we are not aware that our product candidates may inadvertently infringe or which may become involved in an interference proceeding.

The biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries are characterized by the existence of a large number of patents and frequent litigation based on allegations of patent infringement. For so long as our product candidates are in clinical trials, we believe our clinical activities fall within the scope of the exemptions provided by 35 U.S.C. Section 271(e) in the United States, which exempts from patent infringement liability activities reasonably related to the development and submission of information to the FDA. As our clinical investigational drug product candidates progress toward commercialization, the possibility of a patent infringement claim against us increases. While we attempt to ensure that our active clinical investigational drugs and the methods we employ to manufacture them, as well as the methods for their use we intend to promote, do not infringe other parties’ patents and other proprietary rights, we cannot be certain they do not, and competitors or other parties may assert that we infringe their proprietary rights in any event.

We may be exposed to future litigation based on claims that our product candidates, or the methods we employ to manufacture them, or the uses for which we intend to promote them, infringe the intellectual property rights of others. Our ability to manufacture and commercialize our product candidates may depend on our ability to demonstrate that the manufacturing processes we employ and the use of our product candidates do not infringe third-party patents. If third-party patents were found to cover our product candidates or their use or manufacture, we could be required to pay damages or be enjoined and therefore unable to commercialize our product candidates, unless we obtained a license. A license may not be available to us on acceptable terms, if at all.

Risks Related to Our Industry

If our competitors are able to develop and market products that are more effective, safer or more affordable than ours, or obtain marketing approval before we do, our commercial opportunities may be limited.

Competition in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries is intense and continues to increase. Some companies that are larger and have significantly more resources than we do are aggressively pursuing antibacterial development programs, including traditional therapies and therapies with novel mechanisms of action. In addition, other companies are developing phage-based products for non-therapeutic uses, and may elect to use their expertise in phage development and manufacturing to try to develop products that would compete with ours.

We also face potential competition from academic institutions, government agencies and private and public research institutions engaged in the discovery and development of drugs and therapies. Many of our competitors have significantly greater financial resources and expertise in research and development, preclinical testing, conducting clinical trials, obtaining regulatory approvals, manufacturing, sales and marketing than we do. Smaller or early-stage companies may also prove to be significant competitors, particularly through collaborative arrangements with large and established pharmaceutical companies.

Our competitors may succeed in developing products that are more effective, have fewer side effects and are safer or more affordable than our product candidates, which would render our product candidates less competitive or noncompetitive. These competitors also compete with us to recruit and retain qualified scientific and management personnel, establish clinical trial sites and patient registration for clinical trials, as well as to acquire technologies and technology licenses complementary to our programs or advantageous to our business. Moreover, competitors that are able to achieve patent protection, obtain regulatory approvals and commence commercial sales of their products before we do, and competitors that have already done so, may enjoy a significant competitive advantage.

The Generating Antibiotics Incentives Now Act is intended to provide incentives for the development of new, qualified infectious disease products. These incentives may result in more competition in the market for new antibiotics,  and may cause pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies with more resources than we have to shift their efforts towards the development of products that could be competitive with our product candidates.

There is a substantial risk of product liability claims in our business. If we do not obtain sufficient liability insurance, a product liability claim could result in substantial liabilities.

Our business exposes us to significant potential product liability risks that are inherent in the development, manufacturing and marketing of human therapeutic products. Regardless of merit or eventual outcome, product liability claims may result in:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If we succeed in marketing products, product liability claims could result in an FDA investigation of the safety or efficacy of our products, our manufacturing processes and facilities or our marketing programs. An FDA investigation could also potentially lead to a recall of our products or more serious enforcement actions, or limitations on the indications, for which they may be used, or suspension or withdrawal of approval.

We have product liability insurance that covers our clinical trials up to a $10.0 million annual per claim and aggregate limit. We intend to expand our insurance coverage to include the sale of commercial products if marketing approval is obtained for our product candidates or any other compound that we may develop. However, insurance coverage is expensive and we may not be able to maintain insurance coverage at a reasonable cost or at all, and the insurance coverage that we obtain may not be adequate to cover potential claims or losses.

Even if we receive regulatory approval to market our product candidates, the market may not be receptive to our product candidates upon their commercial introduction, which would negatively affect our ability to achieve profitability.

Our product candidates may not gain market acceptance among physicians, patients, healthcare payors and the medical community. The degree of market acceptance of any approved products will depend on a number of factors, including:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If our product candidates receive regulatory approval but do not achieve an adequate level of acceptance by physicians, healthcare payors and patients, we may not generate product revenues sufficient to attain profitability.

Foreign governments tend to impose strict price controls, which may adversely affect our future profitability.

In some foreign countries, particularly in the European Union, prescription drug pricing is subject to governmental control. 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 may be required to conduct a clinical trial that compares the cost-effectiveness of our product candidate 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 profitability will be negatively affected.

We may incur significant costs complying with environmental laws and regulations, and failure to comply with these laws and regulations could expose us to significant liabilities.

Our research and development activities use biological and hazardous materials that are dangerous to human health and safety or the environment. We are subject to a variety of federal, state and local laws and regulations governing the use, generation, manufacture, storage, handling and disposal of these materials and wastes resulting from these materials. We are also subject to regulation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”), state and federal environmental protection agencies and to regulation under the Toxic Substances Control Act. OSHA, state governments

or federal Environmental Protection Agency, may adopt regulations that may affect our research and development programs. We are unable to predict whether any agency will adopt any regulations that could have a material adverse effect on our operations. We have incurred, and will continue to incur, capital and operating expenditures and other costs in the ordinary course of our business in complying with these laws and regulations.

Although we believe our safety procedures for handling and disposing of these materials comply with federal, state and local laws and regulations, we cannot entirely eliminate the risk of accidental injury or contamination from the use, storage, handling or disposal of hazardous materials. In the event of contamination or injury, we could be held liable for any resulting damages, and any liability could significantly exceed our insurance coverage.

 

The uncertainty associated with pharmaceutical reimbursement and related matters may adversely affect our business.

 

Market acceptance and sales of any one or more of our product candidates will depend on reimbursement policies and may be affected by future healthcare reform measures in the United States and in foreign jurisdictions. Government authorities and third-party payers, such as private health insurers and health maintenance organizations, decide which drugs they will cover and establish payment levels. We cannot be certain that reimbursement will be available for any of our product candidates. Also, we cannot be certain that reimbursement policies will not reduce the demand for, or the price paid for, our products. If reimbursement is not available or is available on a limited basis, we may not be able to successfully commercialize any product candidates that we develop.

 

In the United States, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (the “MMA”), changed the way Medicare covers and pays for pharmaceutical products. The legislation established Medicare Part D, which expanded Medicare coverage for outpatient prescription drug purchases by the elderly but provided authority for limiting the number of drugs that will be covered in any therapeutic class. The MMA also introduced a new reimbursement methodology based on average sales prices for physician-administered drugs.

 

The United States and several foreign jurisdictions are considering, or have already enacted, a number of legislative and regulatory proposals to change the healthcare system in ways that could affect its ability to sell its products profitably. Among policy makers and payers in the United States and elsewhere, there is significant interest in promoting changes in healthcare systems with the stated goals of containing healthcare costs, improving quality and/or expanding access to healthcare. In the United States, the pharmaceutical industry has been a particular focus of these efforts and has been significantly affected by major legislative initiatives. we expect to experience pricing pressures in connection with the sale of any products that we develop due to the trend toward managed healthcare, the increasing influence of health maintenance organizations, and additional legislative proposals.

 

In March 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act (collectively, the “ACA”), became law in the United States, which substantially changed the way healthcare is financed by both governmental and private insurers. While we cannot predict what impact on federal reimbursement policies this legislation will have in general or on our business specifically, the ACA and any amendments thereto may result in downward pressure on pharmaceutical reimbursement, which could negatively affect market acceptance of, and the price we may charge for, our products that receive regulatory approval. We also cannot predict the impact of ACA and its amendments on us as many of the ACA, as amended, requires the promulgation of detailed regulations implementing the statutory provisions, which have not yet been fully implemented.

 

Risks Related to Our Common Stock

Innoviva may exert a substantial influence on actions requiring stockholder vote, potentially in a manner that you do not support.

 

       Innoviva holds approximately 9.1% of our issued and outstanding shares of common stock, and accordingly controls approximately 9.1% of our voting power. Following the second closing of the financing, Innoviva will hold 8,710,800 shares of our common stock representing approximately 46.7% of our shares outstanding. In addition, Innoviva will hold 8,710,800 warrants to purchase shares of our common stock following the second closing of the

financing. If Innoviva were to exercise the warrants held by them, they would hold approximately 63.7 % of our issued and outstanding shares of common stock.  Innoviva’s large ownership stake may allow it to exert a substantial influence on actions requiring a stockholder vote, potentially in a manner that you do not support, including amendments to our articles of incorporation, election of our board of directors, removal of any of our directors, adoption of measures that could delay or prevent a change in control or impede a merger, takeover, or other business combination involving us, and approval of other major corporate transactions. In addition, Innoviva’s stock ownership may discourage a potential acquirer from making a tender offer or otherwise attempting to obtain control of us, which in turn could reduce our stock price or prevent our stockholders from realizing a premium over our stock price. Accordingly, our stockholders other than Innoviva may be unable to influence management and exercise control over our business.

 

The price of our common stock has been and may continue to be volatile.

As of December 31, 2019, we had outstanding common warrants to purchase an aggregate of 1,854,007 shares of our common stock at a weighted-average exercise price of $14.66 per share. We also have outstanding options to exercise 1,275,380 shares of our common stock at a weighted-average exercise price of $7.61 per share.  In addition, in connection with the Securities Purchase Agreement with Innoviva, we will issue 8,710,800 common warrants with an exercise price of $2.87 per share. Although we cannot determine when these warrants or options will ultimately be exercised, it is reasonable to assume that such warrants and options will be exercised only if the exercise price is below the market price of our common stock. To the extent any of our outstanding warrants or options are exercised, additional shares of our common stock will be issued that will generally be eligible for resale in the public market (subject to limitations under Rule 144 under the Securities Act for certain of our warrants and with respect to shares held by our affiliates), which will result in dilution to our security holders. The issuance of additional securities could also have an adverse effect on the market price of our common stock.

 

Provisions of Washington law and our current articles of incorporation and bylaws may discourage another company from acquiring us and may prevent attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management.

Provisions of Washington law and our current articles of incorporation and bylaws may discourage, delay or prevent a merger or acquisition that stockholders may consider favorable, including transactions in which you might otherwise receive a premium for your shares. In addition, these provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management by making it more difficult for stockholders to replace or remove our board of directors. These provisions include:

 

 

 

In addition, because we are incorporated in Washington, we are governed by the provisions of Chapter 23B.19 of the Washington Business Corporation Act, which, among other things, restricts the ability of stockholders owning 10% or more of our outstanding voting stock from merging or combining with us. These provisions could discourage potential acquisition attempts and could reduce the price that investors might be willing to pay for shares of our common stock in the future and result in the market price being lower than it would without these provisions.

Although we believe these provisions collectively provide for an opportunity to receive higher bids by requiring potential acquirers to negotiate with our board of directors, they would apply even if an offer may be considered beneficial by some stockholders. In addition, these provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management by making it difficult for stockholders to replace members of our board of directors, which is responsible for appointing the members of our management

We have never paid dividends on our common stock, and we do not anticipate paying any cash dividends on our common stock in the foreseeable future.

We have never declared or paid cash dividends on our common stock. We do not anticipate paying any cash dividends on our common stock in the foreseeable future. We currently intend to retain all available funds and any future earnings to fund the development and growth of our business. As a result, capital appreciation, if any, of our common stock will be our stockholders’ sole source of gain for the foreseeable future.

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

The trading market for our common stock will depend in part on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business. We currently have two securities analysts and may never obtain additional research coverage by other securities and industry analysts. If no additional securities or industry analysts commence coverage of our company, the trading price for our stock could be negatively impacted. If we obtain additional securities or industry analyst coverage and if one or more of the analysts who covers us downgrades our stock or publishes inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, our stock price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts ceases coverage of us or fails to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our stock could decrease, which could cause our stock price and trading volume to decline.

Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market by our existing stockholders could cause our stock price to decline.

Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market or the perception that these sales might occur, could depress the market price of our common stock and could impair our ability to raise capital through the sale of additional equity securities. We are unable to predict the effect that sales may have on the prevailing market price of our common stock.

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

We are generally not restricted from issuing additional common stock, including any securities that are convertible into or exchangeable for, or that represent the right to receive, common stock. The market price of our common stock could decline as a result of sales of common stock or securities that are convertible into or exchangeable for, or that represent the right to receive, common stock or the perception that such sales could occur.

We expect that significant additional capital will be needed in the future to continue our planned operations, including conducting clinical trials, commercialization efforts, expanded research and development activities and costs associated with operating as a public company. To the extent we raise additional capital by issuing equity or convertible securities, our stockholders may experience substantial dilution. We may sell common stock, convertible securities or other equity securities in one or more transactions at prices and in a manner we determine from time to time. If we sell common stock, convertible securities or other equity securities in more than one transaction, investors may be materially diluted by subsequent sales. Such sales may also result in material dilution to our existing stockholders, and new investors could gain rights superior to our existing stockholders.

Pursuant to our 2016 Equity Incentive Plan (the “2016 Plan”), our management is authorized to grant stock options and other equity-based awards to our employees, directors and consultants. The number of shares available for future grant under the 2016 Plan will automatically increase on January 1st of each year by up to 5% of all shares of our capital stock outstanding as of December 31st of the preceding calendar year, subject to the ability of our board of directors to take action to reduce the size of the increase in any given year. In addition, we may grant or provide for the grant of rights to purchase shares of our common stock pursuant to our 2016 Employee Stock Purchase Plan (“ESPP”). The number of shares of our common stock reserved for issuance under the ESPP will automatically increase on January 1st of each calendar year by the lessor of 1% of the total number of shares of our common stock outstanding on

December 31st of the preceding calendar year and 30,000 shares, subject to the ability of our board of directors to take action to reduce the size of the increase in any given year. Currently, we plan to register the increased number of shares available for issuance under the 2016 Plan and ESPP each year. Increases in the number of shares available for future grant or purchase may result in additional dilution, which could cause our stock price to decline.

Item 1B.   UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS

None.

Item 2.     PROPERTIES 

Our corporate headquarters are located in Marina del Rey, California, where we currently lease 35,500 square feet of laboratory and office space. The lease expires on December 31, 2021 and includes an option to extend for an additional ten years. The facility includes 19,500 square feet of BSL2 laboratory space dedicated to phage product development. The facility includes approximately 3,000 square feet of cGMP laboratory space, designed to produce clinical quantities of our phage product candidates for human trials and to perform in-house Quality Control (“QC”) testing.

In addition, we lease a 5,000 square foot facility located in Sydney, Australia, which includes 4,000 square feet of laboratory space providing capabilities to support phage product development and manufacturing process development. The facility is also set up to provide microbiological support of clinical trials.

We occupy approximately 1,000 square feet of leased office space pursuant to a month-to-month sublease, located at 3579 Valley Centre Drive, Suite 100, San Diego, California 92130.

We also had an additional cGMP-compliant manufacturing facility, located in in Ljubljana, Slovenia, that was leased by our wholly-owned subsidiary, AmpliPhi, Biotehnološke Raziskave in Razvoj, d.o.o. We completed a sale of this subsidiary in December 2019. See “Item 1. Business—Manufacturing.”

We believe that our existing office and laboratory space is sufficient to meet our needs for the foreseeable future and that suitable additional space will be available when and if needed.

Item 3.     LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

From time to time, we are a party to certain litigation that is either judged to be not material or that arises in the ordinary course of business. We intend to vigorously defend our interests in these matters. We expect that the resolution of these matters will not have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. However, due to the uncertainties inherent in litigation, no assurance can be given as to the outcome of these proceedings.

Item 4.     MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURES

Not applicable.

 

 

 

PART II

Item 5.     MARKET FOR REGISTRANT’S COMMON EQUITY, RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS AND ISSUER PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES

Our common stock is traded on the NYSE American under the symbol “ARMP.”

Holders of Common Stock

As of March 3, 2020, there were 135 holders of record of our common stock. As of such date, there were 10,927,032 shares of our common stock outstanding.

Dividends

We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our common stock. We currently intend to retain all available funds and any future earnings to support our operations and finance the growth and development of our business. Any future determination related to our dividend policy will be made at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend upon, among other factors, our results of operations, financial condition, capital requirements, contractual restrictions, business prospects and other factors our board of directors may deem relevant.

Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities

On January 27, 2020, we entered into the Securities Purchase Agreement with Innoviva, pursuant to which the Company agreed to issue and sell to Innoviva, in a private placement, up to 8,710,800 newly issued shares of our common stock (the “Shares”) and warrants (the “Common Warrants”) to purchase up to 8,710,800 shares of common stock, with an exercise price per share of $2.87 (the “Private Placement”). Each share of common stock is sold together with one Common Warrant, and the per-unit purchase price is $2.87.

First Closing

The Private Placement occurred in two tranches. The first closing (the “First Closing”) occurred on February 12, 2020, at which time Innoviva purchased 993,139 Shares and 993,139 Common Warrants, which was the maximum number of Shares and Common Warrants issuable to Innoviva in compliance with any and all applicable laws and without the requirement for the prior receipt of the stockholders’ approval under the listing requirements of the NYSE American, in exchange for an aggregate gross cash payment of approximately $2.8 million. The First Closing was subject to the satisfaction of certain previously disclosed closing conditions (including obtaining voting agreements (the “Voting Agreements”) from stockholders of the Company representing at least 50.1% of the outstanding shares of common stock). As of February 12, 2020, Armata had obtained Voting Agreements from stockholders representing approximately 61.3% of Armata’s then-outstanding common stock.

Second Closing

At the closing of the second tranche (the “Second Closing”), subject to satisfaction of certain closing conditions, including the Company’s stockholders’ voting in favor of the Private Placement, Innoviva will purchase 7,717,661 Shares and 7,717,661 Common Warrants for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $22.2 million.

Registration Rights Agreement and Investor Rights Agreement

As part of the First Closing of the Private Placement, the Company entered into a registration rights agreement (the “Registration Rights Agreement”) and an investor rights agreement (the “Investor Rights Agreement”) with Innoviva. Pursuant to the Registration Rights Agreement, the Company must file a registration statement on Form S-1 or Form S-3 (the “Shelf Registration Statement”) covering the resale of the securities issued and sold pursuant to the Securities Purchase Agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”) on a continuous basis pursuant to Rule 415 promulgated under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), or if Rule 415 is

not available for offers and sales of such securities, by such other means of distribution of such securities as Innoviva may reasonably specify. The Company must use its commercially reasonable efforts to cause the Shelf Registration Statement to be declared effective under the Securities Act as promptly as possible after the filing thereof, but in any event (i) no later than the fifteenth (15th) day following the filing of the Shelf Registration Statement in the event of no “review” by the Commission, (ii) no later than the sixtieth (60th) day following the filing of the Shelf Registration Statement in the event of “limited review” by the Commission, or (iii) in the event of a “review” by the Commission, the one hundred and twentieth (120th) day following the filing of the Shelf Registration Statement, subject to certain exceptions.

The Investor Rights Agreement provides that for so long as Innoviva and its affiliates hold at least 12.5% of the outstanding shares of Common Stock on a fully-diluted basis, Innoviva shall have the right to designate two (2) directors to the board of directors of the Company (the “Board”), and for so long as Innoviva and its affiliates hold at least 8% but less than 12.5% of the outstanding shares of Common Stock on a fully-diluted basis, Innoviva shall have the right to designate one (1) director to the Board, subject to certain qualifications and conditions in the Investor Rights Agreement. The Investor Rights Agreement also provides for participation rights for Innoviva to participate in future offerings of equity securities by the Company.

Item 6.     SELECTED FINANCIAL DATA

The selected consolidated financial data set forth below as of December 31, 2019 and 2018, and for the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2018, are derived from our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this report. This information should be read in conjunction with those consolidated financial statements, the notes thereto, and with “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.”

 

 

Item 7.     MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

You should read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations in conjunction with the consolidated financial statements and the related notes contained elsewhere in this Annual Report. Some of the information contained in this discussion and analysis are set forth elsewhere in this Annual Report, including information with respect to our plans and strategy for our business and related financing, includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. See “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements.” Our

actual results may differ substantially from those referred to herein due to a number of factors, including but not limited to risks described in the section entitled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report.

 

Our predecessor, C3 Jian, Inc., was incorporated under the laws of the state of California on November 4, 2005. On February 26, 2016, as part of a reorganization transaction, C3 Jian, Inc. merged with a wholly owned subsidiary of C3J, and as part of this process, C3 Jian, Inc. was converted to a limited liability company organized under the laws of the State of California named C3 Jian, LLC. On May 9, 2019, C3J completed a reverse merger with AmpliPhi, where Ceres Merger Sub, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of AmpliPhi, merged with and into C3J. Following the completion of the Merger, and a $10.0 million concurrent private placement financing, the former C3J stockholders owned approximately 76% of our common stock and the former AmpliPhi stockholders owned approximately 24% of our common stock.

 

Immediately prior to the Merger, AmpliPhi completed a 1-for-14 reverse stock split and changed its name to Armata Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Our common stock is traded on the NYSE American exchange under the symbol “ARMP.” We are headquartered in Marina Del Rey, CA, in a 35,500 square-foot research and development facility built for product development with capabilities spanning from bench to clinic. In addition to microbiology, synthetic biology, formulation, chemistry and analytical laboratories, the facility is equipped with two licensed GMP drug manufacturing suites enabling the production, testing and release of clinical material.

 

Statements contained in this Annual Report that are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements concerning product development plans, commercialization of our products, the expected market opportunity for our products, the use of bacteriophages and synthetic phages to kill bacterial pathogens, having resources sufficient to fund our operations into the second quarter of 2021, future funding sources, general and administrative expenses, clinical trial and other research and development expenses, costs of manufacturing, costs relating to our intellectual property, capital expenditures, the expected benefits of our targeted phage therapies strategy, the potential market for our products, tax credits and carry-forwards, and litigation-related matters. Words such as “believe,” “anticipate,” “plan,” “expect,” “intend,” “will,” “goal,” “potential” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, though not all forward-looking statements necessarily contain these identifying words. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including those set forth below under Item 1A, “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they were made, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

 

Overview

We are a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on the development of precisely targeted bacteriophage therapeutics for the treatment of antibiotic-resistant infections using our proprietary bacteriophage-based technology. Bacteriophages or “phages” have a powerful and highly differentiated mechanism of action that enables binding to and killing specific bacteria, in contrast to traditional  broad-spectrum antibiotics.   We believe that phages represent a promising means to treat bacterial  infections, especially those that have developed resistance to current standard of care therapies, including the so-called multidrug-resistant or “superbug” strains of bacteria. We are a leading developer of phage therapeutics, which are uniquely positioned to address the growing worldwide threat of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

 

We are combining our proprietary approach and expertise in identifying, characterizing and developing both naturally-occurring and engineered (synthetic) bacteriophages with our proprietary phage-specific Good Manufacturing Practice compliance (“cGMP”) manufacturing capabilities to advance a broad pipeline of high-quality bacteriophage product candidates.  We believe that synthetic phage,  engineered using advances in sequencing and synthetic biology techniques, represent a promising means to advance phage therapy,   including phage-based  diagnostics and improving upon the ability of natural phage to treat bacterial infections, especially those that have developed resistance to current antibiotic  therapies,  including the multidrug-resistant or “superbug” bacterial pathogens.  Our phage product candidates aim to address areas of significant unmet clinical need, by targeting key antibiotic-resistant bacteria including those on the World Health Organization’s global priority pathogens list.

 

We are developing and advancing our second-generation phage product candidate for Pseudomonas aeruginosa (“P. aeruginosa”), known as AP-PA02. We anticipate initiating a Phase 1b/2, multi-center,  double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, single and multiple ascending dose study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and preliminary efficacy of AP-PA02 in subjects with cystic fibrosis (“CF”) and chronic pulmonary P. aeruginosa infection in the first half of 2020.

 

We are also developing a second-generation phage product candidate for Staphylococcus aureus (“S. aureus”), known as AP-SA02, for the treatment of S. aureus bacteremia.  We intend to file an IND Application with the FDA to initiate a Phase 1/2, multi-center, randomized, double-blind, placebo- controlled dose escalation study that will assess the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of AP-SA02 in the second half of 2020.

 

In partnership with Merck & Co., known as Merck Sharp & Dohme outside of the United States and Canada (“Merck”), we are developing proprietary synthetic phage candidates to target undisclosed infectious disease agents. Our proprietary phage engineering platform serves to enhance the clinical and commercial prospects of phage therapy.   These attributes include expanded host range, improved potency which is a fundamental drug property that can translate into improved clinical efficacy, and importantly,  biofilm disruption, which is a critical aspect of serious infections that needs to be addressed.

 

In addition to our more advanced pipeline programs,  we have phage discovery efforts underway to target other major pathogens of infectious disease (including the ESKAPE pathogens:  Enterococcus faecium, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii,  and Enterobacter species) and preventable infectious disease of the microbiome.

 

We are committed to conducting formal randomized clinical trials required for FDA approval in order to move toward commercialization of alternatives to traditional antibiotics and provide a potential  method of treating patients suffering from drug-resistant bacterial infections.

 

The following chart summarizes the status of our phage product candidate development programs:

 

 

We have generally incurred net losses since our inception and our operations to date have been primarily limited to research and development and raising capital. As of December 31, 2019, we had an accumulated deficit of $157.5 million. We anticipate that a substantial portion of our capital resources and efforts in the foreseeable future will be focused on completing the development and seeking to obtain regulatory approval of our product candidates.

 

We currently expect to use our existing cash and cash equivalents for the continued research and development of our product candidates, including through our targeted phage therapies strategy, and for working capital and other general corporate purposes. We expect to continue to incur significant and increasing operating losses at least for the next several years. We do not expect to generate product revenue unless and until we successfully complete development and obtain marketing approval for at least one of our product candidates.

 

We may also use a portion of our existing cash and cash equivalents for the potential acquisition of, or investment in, product candidates, technologies, formulations or companies that complement our business, although we have no current understandings, commitments or agreements to do so. Our existing cash and cash equivalents will not be

sufficient to enable us to complete all necessary development of any potential product candidates. Accordingly, we will be required to obtain further funding through one or more other public or private equity offerings, debt financings, collaboration, strategic financing, grants or government contract awards, licensing arrangements or other sources. Our ability to raise additional capital may be adversely impacted by potential worsening global economic conditions and the recent disruptions to, and volatility in, financial markets in the United States and worldwide resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Adequate additional funding may not be available to us on acceptable terms, or at all. If we are unable to raise capital when needed or on acceptable terms, we may be required to defer, reduce or eliminate significant planned expenditures, restructure, curtail or eliminate some or all of our development programs or other operations, dispose of assets, enter into arrangements that may require us to relinquish rights to certain of our product candidates, technologies or potential markets, file for bankruptcy or cease operations altogether. Any of these events could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations and result in a loss of investment by our stockholders.

 

Recent Events

On January 27, 2020, we entered into the Securities Purchase Agreement with Innoviva, pursuant to which the Company agreed to issue and sell to Innoviva, in a private placement, up to 8,710,800 newly issued shares of our common stock and warrants to purchase up to 8,710,800 shares of common stock, with an exercise price per share of $2.87 (the “Private Placement”). Each share of common stock is sold together with one Common Warrant, and the per-unit purchase price is $2.87. The Private Placement is occurring in two tranches. The first closing occurred on February 12, 2020, at which time Innoviva purchased 993,139 Shares and 993,139 Common Warrants, which was the maximum number of Shares and Common Warrants issuable to Innoviva in compliance with any and all applicable laws and without the requirement for the prior receipt of the stockholders’ approval under the listing requirements of the NYSE American, in exchange for an aggregate gross cash payment of approximately $2.8 million. At the closing of the second tranche, subject to satisfaction of certain closing conditions, including the Company’s stockholders’ voting in favor of the Private Placement, Innoviva will purchase an additional 7,717,661 Shares and 7,717,661 Common Warrants for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $22.2 million.

 

See “Part II—Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities—Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities” for more information.

 

Results of Operations

As a result of the Merger, C3J was considered the accounting acquirer of AmpliPhi because C3J’s shareholders retained a majority control of ownership of the combined company subsequent to the Merger; therefore, the historical financial statements presented herein prior to the closing of the Merger are the historical financial statements of C3J.

 

Comparison of year ended December 31, 2019 and 2018

 

Research and Development

 

Research and development expenses for the year ended December 31, 2019 and 2018 were $9.8 million and $8.4 million, respectively. The net increase of $1.4 million was primarily related to a $0.9 million increase in stock-based compensation expense, a $0.7 million increase in personnel expenses due to increased headcount, $0.5 million increase in lab supplies, $0.4 million increase of outside services, $0.2 million increase of rent and utilities expenses, offset by $1.3 million of tax rebate from the Australian tax authorities.

 

Acquired In-Process Research and Development

 

Acquired in-process research and development (“IPR&D”) expense of $6.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2018 consists of the estimated fair value of the assets acquired and consideration given in connection with the acquisition of the synthetic phage assets. As the assets acquired were in the research and development phase and were determined to not have any alternative future use, it was expensed as acquired IPR&D. There was no such expense for the year ended December 31, 2019.

 

General and Administrative

 

General and administrative expenses for the year ended December 31, 2019 and 2018 were $9.3 million and $2.5 million, respectively. The increase of $6.8 million was primarily due to a $3.3 million increase in stock-based compensation expense, $2.1 million increase in professional fees (legal, audit and investment banking) primarily associated with the Merger, $0.4 million increase in personnel-related expenses, $0.5 million increase in insurance costs and $0.5 million increase in administrative costs of being a public company.

 

Loss on sale of assets

 

Loss on sale of available-for-sale assets of $0.7 million during the year ended December 31, 2019 represented the excess of carrying value of Slovenia net assets sold over proceeds received. The loss primarily related to fixed assets sold and accordingly, there was no impact on cash and cash equivalents from this transaction.

 

Other Income (Expense)

 

For the year ended December 31, 2019, we recorded a noncash gain of $1.1 million upon the settlement of the derivative liability as a result of the issuance of equity in connection with the SGI asset acquisition coinciding with the closing of the Merger. See Note 11 to our consolidated financial statements.

 

Non cash interest expense of $0.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2019 was fairly consistent with $1.0 million recorded for the year ended 2018, respectively. Non cash interest expense consists of interest accretion on the time-based cash payments due in connection with the SGI asset acquisition. The slight decrease was due to a partial cash payment of $1.0 million to SGI during 2019.

 

Income Taxes

 

There was no income tax benefit for the year ended December 31, 2019 or December 31, 2018.

 

Operating activities

 

Net cash used in operating activities for the year ended December 31, 2019 was $15.6 million, as compared to $10.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2018. The increase of $5.0 million was due to a $2.8 million increase in net loss, $0.5 million increase in non-cash adjustments to cash used in operating activities and a $1.7 million net increase in operating assets and liabilities.

 

Investing activities

 

Net cash provided by investing activities was $2.9 million and $8.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2019 and 2018, respectively. During the year ended December 31, 2019, the cash provided was primarily due to $3.0 million acquired in connection with the Merger, offset in part by net capital equipment purchases of $0.1 million. During the year ended December 31 2018, the cash provided was primarily due to a $9.6 million net maturity and sale of investment securities offset in part by $0.8 million in net capital equipment purchases.

 

Financing activities

 

Net cash of $9.0 million provided by financing activities for the year ended December 31, 2019 was comprised of net cash proceeds of $10.0 million from a common stock sale coinciding with the Merger, offset in part by a payment of $1.0 million in deferred consideration related to the time-based payment obligation in connection with the SGI asset acquisition. There was zero change to net cash related to financing activities for the year ended December 31, 2018.

 

 

Liquidity, Capital Resources and Financial Condition

 

We have prepared our consolidated financial statements on a going concern basis, which assumes that we will realize our assets and satisfy our liabilities in the normal course of business. However, we have incurred net losses since our inception and have negative operating cash flows. These circumstances raise substantial doubt about our ability to

continue as a going concern. The accompanying financial statements do not include any adjustments to reflect the possible future effects on the recoverability and classification of assets or the amounts and classifications of liabilities that may result from the outcome of the uncertainty concerning our ability to continue as a going concern. While management believes this plan to raise additional funds will alleviate the conditions that raise substantial doubt, these plans are not entirely within its control and cannot be assessed as being probable of occurring. The Company may not be able to secure additional financing in a timely manner or on favorable terms, if at all.

 

As of December 31, 2019, we had unrestricted cash and cash equivalents of $6.0 million. In February 2020, we completed the first closing of the Private Placement and raised gross proceeds of $2.8 million. Considering our current cash resources and the assumed proceeds from the second closing of the Private Placement with Innoviva, management believes our cash resources will be sufficient to fund our planned operations into the second quarter of 2021. For the foreseeable future, our ability to continue its operations is dependent upon our ability to obtain additional capital.

 

Future Capital Requirements

 

We will need to raise additional capital in the future to continue to fund our operations. Our future funding requirements will depend on many factors, including:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We may seek to raise capital through a variety of sources, including:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Any additional fundraising efforts may divert our management team from their day to day activities, which may adversely affect our ability to develop and commercialize our product candidates. Our ability to raise additional funds will depend, in part, on the success of our product development activities, including our targeted phage therapies strategy and any clinical trials we initiate, regulatory events, our ability to identify and enter into in-licensing or other strategic arrangements, and other events or conditions that may affect our value or prospects, as well as factors related to financial, economic and market conditions, many of which are beyond our control. We cannot be certain that sufficient

funds will be available to us when required or on acceptable terms. If we are unable to secure additional funds on a timely basis or on acceptable terms, we may be required to defer, reduce or eliminate significant planned expenditures, restructure, curtail or eliminate some or all of our development programs or other operations, dispose of technology or assets, pursue an acquisition of our company by a third party at a price that may result in a loss on investment for our stockholders, enter into arrangements that may require us to relinquish rights to certain of our product candidates, technologies or potential markets, file for bankruptcy or cease operations altogether. Any of these events could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Moreover, if we are unable to obtain additional funds on a timely basis, there will be substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern and increased risk of insolvency and loss of investment by our stockholders. To the extent that additional capital is raised through the sale of equity or convertible debt securities, the issuance of such securities could result in dilution to our existing stockholders. Our ability to raise additional capital may be adversely impacted by potential worsening global economic conditions and the recent disruptions to, and volatility in, financial markets in the United States and worldwide resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Critical Accounting Policies and Use of Estimates

 

Our significant accounting policies are described in Note 3 to the consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report. 

 

Our management’s discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations are based on our consolidated financial statements as of December 31, 2019 and December 31, 2018, which have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States.  The preparation of these consolidated financial statements requires us to make estimates and judgments that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, and expenses and the related disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities. On an on-going basis, we evaluate our estimates and judgments, including those related to impairment assessment of our indefinite lived intangible assets, stock-based compensation and derivative liabilities. We base our estimates on historical experience, known trends and events, and various other factors that we believe are reasonable under the circumstances, the results of which form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. Actual results may differ from these estimates under different assumptions or conditions.

 

Valuation of Goodwill and Intangible Assets with Indefinite Lives

Our goodwill represents the excess of the cost over the fair value of net assets acquired from our business combination. The determination of the value of goodwill and intangible assets arising from the business combination requires extensive use of accounting estimates and judgments to allocate the purchase price to the fair value of the net tangible and intangible assets acquired, including capitalized in-process research and development, or IPR&D. Intangible assets acquired in a business combination that are used for IPR&D activities are considered indefinite lived until the completion or abandonment of the associated research and development efforts. Upon commercialization of the relevant research and development project, we will amortize the acquired in-process research and development over its estimated useful life or expense the acquired in-process research and development should the research and development project be unsuccessful with no future alternative use.

Goodwill and IPR&D are not amortized; however, they are assessed for impairment using fair value measurement techniques on an annual basis or more frequently if facts and circumstance warrant such a review. The goodwill or IPR&D are considered to be impaired if we determine that the carrying value of the reporting unit or IPR&D exceeds its respective fair value, respectively.

 

Impairment of Goodwill

We perform our goodwill impairment analysis at the reporting unit level. For the year ended December 31, 2019 and 2018, our company has one reporting unit. We perform our annual impairment analysis by either doing a qualitative assessment of a reporting unit’s fair value from the last quantitative assessment to determine if there is potential impairment, or comparing a reporting unit’s estimated fair value to its carrying amount. If a quantitative assessment is performed the evaluation includes management estimates of cash flow projections based on internal future projections and/or use of a market approach by looking at market values of comparable companies. Our market capitalization is also considered as a part of this analysis.

In accordance with our accounting policy, we completed the annual evaluation for impairment of goodwill as of December 31, 2019 using the qualitative method and determined that no impairment existed.

 

Impairment Review of In-process Research and Development (“IPR&D”)

 

We test our IPR&D asset for impairment as of December 31 of each year or more frequently if indicators of impairment are present. The authoritative accounting guidance provides an optional qualitative assessment for any indicators that indefinite-lived intangible assets are impaired. If it is determined that it is more likely than not that the indefinite-lived intangible assets, including IPR&D, are impaired, the fair value of the indefinite-lived intangible assets is compared with the carrying amount and impairment is recorded for any excess of the carrying amount over the fair value of the indefinite-lived intangible assets.

If and when a quantitative analysis of IPR&D assets is required based on the result of the optional qualitative assessment, the estimated fair value of IPR&D assets is calculated based on the income approach, which includes discounting expected future net cash flows associated with the assets to a net present value. The fair value measurements utilized to perform the impairment analysis are categorized within Level 3 of the fair value hierarchy. Significant management judgment is required in the forecast of future operating results that are used in our impairment analysis. The estimates management use are consistent with the plans and estimates that it uses to manage its business. Significant assumptions utilized the income approach model include the timing of clinical studies and regulatory approvals, the probability of success of its research and development programs, timing of commercialization of these programs, forecasted sales, gross margin, selling, general and administrative expenses, capital expenditures, as well as anticipated growth rates. Our analysis indicated no impairment existed.

Valuation of Derivatives

 

In connection with the Synthetic Phage platform, we provided SGI with the right to receive additional payments upon the occurrence of specified events related to 1) the initial public offering of shares of C3J’s common stock pursuant to an effective registration statement under the Securities Act, 2) the sale of all or substantially all the assets of C3J to a third party, or 3) a consolidation or merger into a third party. We determined that these contingent rights are required to be accounted for as derivatives in accordance with ASC 815 — Derivatives and Hedging. We estimate the fair value of this derivative by forecasting the timing and likelihood of the events occurring and discounting the probability adjusted payments using an appropriate discount based on market interest rates and our own non-performance risk as required by ASC 820 — Fair Value Measurement.

 

 

Stock-Based Compensation

 

Compensation expense related to stock options granted is measured at the grant date based on the estimated fair value of the award and is recognized on an accelerated attribution method over the requisite service period. We determine the estimated fair value of each stock option on the date of grant using the Black-Scholes valuation model which uses assumptions regarding a number of complex and subjective variables. The risk-free interest rate is based on the U.S. Treasury yield for a period consistent with the expected term of the option in effect at the time of the grant. Expected volatility is based on the historical volatility of our common stock. The expected term represents the period that we expect our stock options to be outstanding. The expected term assumption is estimated using the simplified method set forth in the U.S. Securities and Exchange (the “SEC”) Staff Accounting Bulletin 110, which is the mid-point between the option vesting date and the expiration date. For stock options granted to parties other than employees or directors, we elect, on a grant by grant basis, to use the expected term or the contractual term of the option award. We have never declared or paid dividends on our common stock and have no plans to do so in the foreseeable future. Forfeitures are recognized as a reduction of stock-based compensation expense as they occur. Changes in these assumptions may lead to variability with respect to the amount of stock compensation expense we recognize related to stock options.

 

Stock-based compensation expense for an award with a performance condition is recognized when the achievement of such performance condition is determined to be probable. If the outcome of such performance condition is not

determined to be probable or is not met, no compensation expense is recognized and any previously recognized compensation expense is reversed.  

 

 

Recent Accounting Pronouncements

 

Refer to Note 3 of the notes to the consolidated financial statements contained elsewhere in this Annual Report.

 

Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements

As of December 31, 2019, we did not have any relationships with unconsolidated entities or financial partnerships, such as entities often referred to as structured finance or special purpose entities, which would have been established for the purpose of facilitating off-balance sheet arrangements or other contractually narrow or limited purposes. In addition, we do not engage in trading activities involving non-exchange traded contracts. Therefore, we are not materially exposed to any financing, liquidity, market or credit risk that could arise if we had engaged in these relationships.

Item 7A.  QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE DISCLOSURES ABOUT MARKET RISK

We are a smaller reporting company as defined by Rule 12b‑2 of the Exchange Act and are not required to provide the information required under this item.

Item 8.     FINANCIAL STATEMENTS AND SUPPLEMENTARY DATA

ARMATA PHARMACEUTICALS INC.

INDEX TO AUDITED CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

 

 

Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm

 

The Board of Directors and Stockholders of Armata Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

 

Opinion on the Financial Statements

 

We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheets of Armata Pharmaceuticals Inc. (the Company) as of December 31, 2019 and 2018, the related consolidated statements of operations and comprehensive income, stockholders’ equity, and cash flows for the years then ended, and the related notes (collectively referred to as the “consolidated financial statements”). In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company at December 31, 2019 and 2018, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for the years then ended, in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.

 

The Company’s Ability to Continue as a Going Concern

 

The accompanying consolidated financial statements have been prepared assuming that the Company will continue as a going concern. As discussed in Note 2 to the financial statements, the Company has suffered recurring losses and negative cash flows from operations and has stated that substantial doubt exists about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern. Management's evaluation of the events and conditions and management’s plans regarding these matters are also described in Note 2. The consolidated financial statements do not include any adjustments that might result from the outcome of this uncertainty.

 

Adoption of ASU No. 2016-02

 

As discussed in Note 3 to the consolidated financial statements, the Company changed its method of accounting for leases in 2019 due to the adoption of Accounting Standards Update (ASU) No. 2016-02, Leases (Topic 842), and the related amendments.

 

Basis for Opinion

 

These financial statements are the responsibility of the Company's management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s financial statements based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (PCAOB) and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

 

We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. The Company is not required to have, nor were we engaged to perform, an audit of its internal control over financial reporting. As part of our audits we are required to obtain an understanding of internal control over financial reporting but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Company's internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express no such opinion. 

 

Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

 

/s/ Ernst & Young LLP

 

We have served as the Company’s auditor since 2019.

 

San Diego, California

March 19, 2020

Armata Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Consolidated Balance Sheets

 

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