Bolt Biotherapeutics, Inc. - Annual Report: 2021 (Form 10-K)

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UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

(Mark One)

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021

OR

For the transition period from to

Commission File Number 001-39988

Bolt Biotherapeutics, Inc.

(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its Charter)

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (650) 665-9295

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

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

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 15(d) of the 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, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

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 has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report. ☐

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

The aggregate market value of common stock held by non-affiliates of the Registrant, based on the closing sales price for such stock on June 30, 2021, as reported by The Nasdaq Global Select Market, was approximately $382.6 million. The calculation of the aggregate market value of voting and non-voting stock excludes certain shares of the Registrant’s common stock held by current executive officers, directors and stockholders that the Registrant has concluded are affiliates of the Registrant. Exclusion of such shares should not be construed to indicate that any such person possesses the power, direct or indirect, to direct or cause the direction of the management or policies of the Registrant or that such person is controlled by or under common control with the Registrant.

As of March 24, 2022, the Registrant had 37,466,312 shares of common stock outstanding.

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SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This Annual Report contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”). All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this Annual Report are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding:

These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause our actual results, performance and achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements.

In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “anticipates,” “believes,” “continue,” “could,” “estimates,” “expects,” “intends,” “may,” “plans,” “potential,” “predicts,” “should,” “will,” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. These forward-looking statements are only predictions. We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections about future events and financial trends that we believe may affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those described in Part I, Item 1A, "Risk Factors". The events and circumstances reflected in our forward-looking statements may not be achieved or occur and actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Moreover, we operate in an evolving environment. New risk factors and uncertainties may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for management to predict all risk factors and uncertainties. Except as required by applicable law, we do not plan to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements contained herein, whether as a result of any new information, future events, changed circumstances or otherwise.

We have common law trademark rights in the unregistered marks “Bolt Biotherapeutics, Inc.,” “Boltbody,” and the Bolt Biotherapeutics logo in certain jurisdictions. Solely for convenience, trademarks and tradenames referred to in this Annual Report appear without the ® and ™ symbols, but those references are not intended to indicate, in any way, that we will not assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our rights or that the applicable owner will not assert its rights, to these trademarks and tradenames.

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RISK FACTOR SUMMARY

Below is a summary of material factors that make an investment in our common stock speculative or risky. Importantly, this summary does not address all the risks and uncertainties that we face. Additional discussion of the risks and uncertainties summarized in this risk factor summary, as well as other risks and uncertainties that we face, can be found under “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” and Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors” in this Form 10-K.

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PART I

Item 1. Business.

Overview

We are pioneering a new class of immuno-oncology agents that combine the targeting precision of antibodies with the power of both the innate and adaptive immune systems. Our proprietary Boltbody™ ISAC (immune-stimulating antibody conjugate) approach uses immunostimulants to engage and activate myeloid cells, including macrophages and dendritic cells, that directly kill tumor cells via phagocytosis and expose tumor neoantigens to the adaptive immune system. This leads to recruitment of cytotoxic T cells and additional tumor-killing myeloid cells thereby converting immunologically “cold” tumors to “hot” tumors. Preclinical data demonstrate that this process leads to the development of systemic immunological memory with epitope spreading to neoantigens that is critical to achieving a long-term anti-tumor response. Our BDC-1001 program, currently in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial, and our BDC-2034 program, expected to enter the clinic later in 2022, both come from the Boltbody ISAC platform.

Our expertise in myeloid cell biology also forms the foundation for additional, innovative ways to target the immune activation that complement our Boltbody ISAC platform. An example of this approach is BDC-3042, our Dectin-2 agonist antibody program. BDC-3042 is being developed to repolarize critical cells in the tumor microenvironment by targeting cell-surface receptors on macrophages. Dectin-2 agonism results in these tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) changing to the tumor-destructive M1 phenotype, away from the M2 phenotype, which suppresses immune responses and supports tumor growth.

Our Boltbody ISACs are delivered systemically but act locally through a highly targeted approach that triggers a localized anti-tumor immune cascade through a “Three-Factor Authentication” process. This process is designed to optimize safety and minimize adverse, non-tumor-targeted systemic immune stimulation as follows:

Tumor-associated myeloid cells engulf the Boltbody ISAC-bound tumor cells, become armed with tumor neoantigens, and migrate to the lymph nodes. At the lymph nodes, TAMs mediate the activation and rapid expansion of tumor-reactive T cells to eliminate tumor cells, including those without the initial target antigen. As a result, the immune system determines which neoantigens are most important to eliminate the target tumors. We believe that this represents the development of systemic immunological memory with epitope spreading to neoantigens that will result in long-term anti-tumor responses.

The Boltbody ISAC platform has the following unique features that offer potential benefits for patients:

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Our Pipeline

We are leveraging our myeloid biology expertise to build a robust pipeline of immuno-oncology product candidates, including multiple Boltbody ISACs and a unique agonist antibody that targets tumor-associated macrophages as shown in the figure below. In addition to these programs, we are exploring various well-known targets that have been traditionally difficult to drug and where our myeloid expertise and the Boltbody ISAC approach may unlock the potential of these promising antigens as viable cancer targets. We currently hold exclusive worldwide rights to all of our pipeline programs.

In this graphic, HER2 = human epidermal growth factor receptor 2; CEA = carcinoembryonic antigen; PD-L1 = programmed cell death-ligand 1

Our lead product candidate, BDC-1001, is currently in clinical development for the treatment of patients with HER2-expressing solid tumors, including those with HER2-low tumors. HER2, or human epidermal growth factor receptor 2, is also known as ERBB2 and is expressed in a wide range of tumors including breast, gastric, and colorectal. We have designed BDC-1001 as a Boltbody ISAC comprising the HER2-targeting biosimilar trastuzumab conjugated to one of our proprietary TLR7/8 agonists to maximize the potential anti-tumor response. Preliminary clinical data demonstrate that BDC-1001 is well tolerated at dose level up to 20 mg/kg administered every other week and leads to changes in key biomarkers in the tumor and plasma consistent with our proposed mechanism of action. Activity has been seen in the form of disease stabilization across eight different types of HER2-expressing tumors, plus a partial response that has persisted for more than 60 weeks. BDC-1001’s monotherapy dose-escalation study continues with the goal of exploring higher exposure levels and identifying a recommended Phase 2 dose. A dose-escalation study evaluating BDC-1001 in combination with Opdivo® commenced in December 2021. We expect to present an update on both dose-escalation studies later in 2022.

Our second program, BDC-2034, is a Boltbody ISAC targeting carcinoembryonic antigen cell adhesion molecule 5, or CEA,. CEA is a well-known tumor antigen expressed in various solid tumors with significant unmet medical need including, but not limited to, colorectal cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and breast cancer. CEA is upregulated on the cell surface of these cancers and displays minimal receptor-mediated internalization into the cancer cell. CEA allows us to target these cancers, some of which are immunologically “cold.” In our preclinical studies, we have observed promising in vivo and in vitro activity with notable anti-tumor activity in xenograft models. We are completing studies to enable an Investigational New Drug Application, or IND, and anticipate advancing BDC-2034 into the clinic later in 2022.

Our third program, BDC-3042, is an agonist antibody targeting Dectin-2, an innate immune receptor found on the surface of macrophages. Dectin-2 is selectively expressed in TAMs across a broad range of tumor types, including ovarian, prostate, and lung cancer, among other. We have demonstrated that stimulation with our agonist antibody has anti-tumor activity in mouse models. We have developed a lead agonist antibody that binds to Dectin-2 and activates human TAMs. Activated TAMs start to produce TNFα, IL-6, IL-1β, and CCL3. BDC-3042 is in IND-enabling preclinical studies and we expect to submit an IND in 2023.

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Our fourth program is a PD-L1 Boltbody ISAC focused on the treatment of patients with tumors that are nonresponsive or become refractory to immune checkpoint blockade. Programmed cell death-ligand 1, or PD-L1, is expressed on tumor and immune cells and can help protect those cells from destruction by T cells. This encompasses more than 15 different tumor types impacting the lives of millions of patients yearly. Our PD-L1 program is a trifunctional therapeutic with the following mechanism: 1) standard ISAC mechanism, including ADCP of the tumor cells, 2) direct activation myeloid cells, and 3) PD-L1/PD-1 checkpoint inhibition. In our preclinical studies, we observed an effective anti-tumor response that was substantially improved over PD-L1 antibody blockage, and induced robust, target-dependent activation of the immune system, including induction of immunological memory.

We entered into our first collaboration in March 2019 with Toray Industries, Inc., or Toray, to jointly develop and commercialize a Boltbody ISAC utilizing a Toray proprietary antibody. In May 2021, we entered into an oncology research and development collaboration with Genmab A/S, or Genmab to evaluate Genmab antibodies and bispecific antibody engineering technologies in combination with our proprietary Boltbody ISAC technology platform, with the goal of discovering and developing next-generation bispecific ISACs for the treatment of cancer. In August 2021, we entered into an oncology research and development collaboration with Innovent Biologics, Inc., or Innovent to leverage Innovent’s proprietary therapeutic antibody portfolio and antibody discovery capability against undisclosed oncology targets in combination with our advanced ISAC technology and myeloid biology expertise to create new candidates for cancer treatments. We expect our collaborations with Toray, Genmab, and Innovent to add additional novel ISACs to our pipeline.

Our Corporate History and Team

Our company was founded in 2015 to develop and commercialize pioneering work from the Engleman Laboratory at Stanford University. We have assembled a highly qualified management team with broad experience in myeloid biology, and drug discovery and development to execute our mission. Our scientific founders and management team collectively have extensive experience in immunology, oncology drug development, and patient care. We are industry veterans with prior experience at companies such as Alder, Astellas, Jazz, Roche / Genentech, Sunesis and others. Together, our team has a proven track record in the discovery, development, and commercialization of numerous approved therapeutics such as Alecensa, Cytovene, Evenity, Gazyva, Herceptin, Kadcyla, Polivy, Perjeta, Rituxan, Tecentriq, Valcyte, Venclexta and Vyepti while at other companies.

Strategy

Our goal is to become a leading immuno-oncology company, leveraging our myeloid biology expertise and proprietary Boltbody ISAC approach to discover, develop and commercialize transformative treatments to address key unmet medical needs in cancer. The key components of our strategy are to:

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BDC-1001

BDC-1001–Overview

Our lead product candidate, BDC-1001, is currently in clinical development for the treatment of patients with HER2-expressing solid tumors, including those with HER2-low tumors. BDC-1001 provides a compelling example of the potential of Boltbody ISACs to address unmet medical needs in solid tumors. BDC-1001 is delivered systemically and acts locally by targeting HER2-expressing tumors and related metastatic disease, triggering their destruction by the innate and adaptive immune systems. BDC-1001 consists of a biosimilar of the humanized monoclonal antibody trastuzumab that is chemically conjugated to one of our proprietary TLR7/8 agonists via a non-cleavable linker.

BDC-1001–Preclinical Data

We have conducted extensive in vitro and in vivo experiments over the course of developing BDC-1001. Detailed results can be reviewed in our posters and publications, including Ackerman SE, et al. Nature Cancer. 2021; 2:18-33. Key findings from our preclinical studies include:

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BDC-1001–Overview of HER2 Indications and Treatment Paradigms

HER2 is a proto-oncogene that encodes a transmembrane protein involved in signal transduction pathways that promote cell growth and differentiation. HER2 protein overexpression and gene amplification have been documented across multiple cancers, including breast, gastric, bladder, lung, esophageal, colorectal, ovarian, salivary gland, pancreatic, cervical, and other cancers. Prevalence of HER2-overexpressing or -amplified tumors varies across indications. Targeting HER2 with antibodies and small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitors in combination with chemotherapy has had a major impact on patients with HER2-expressing breast and gastric cancer, but there remains a significant unmet medical need on an individual and global patient basis. Our BDC-1001 program seeks to improve therapeutic outcomes for patients with HER2-expressing tumors across three categories: 1) HER2-positive breast and gastric cancer refractory to existing anti-HER2 therapies, 2) tumors with lower expression of HER2 that are not indicated for approved therapies, and 3) other HER2-positive tumors not eligible for approved HER2-targeting therapies. In addition, the innovative Boltbody ISAC approach of BDC-1001 seeks to address this critically important unmet medical need not only in patients with the aforementioned advanced tumors, but also to extend that innovation to neoadjuvant and adjuvant settings.

HER2-targeting agents have only been approved for patients with HER2-positive breast and gastric cancers, with HER2-positivity based on protein overexpression or gene amplification. Only trastuzumab and fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki are approved for both indications. Additional approved HER2-targeting agents for HER2-positive breast cancer include the following: pertuzumab, trastuzumab emtansine, trastuzumab-hyaluronidase-oysk, lapatinib, neratinib, and most recently, margetuximab and tucatinib.

According to Globe Life Sciences research, the 2021 annual incidence of breast cancer in the United States and in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK (formerly known as the “EU5”) was estimated to be approximately 552,400 patients in the aggregate. Of these, we estimate that tumors in approximately 87,600 patients are HER2-positive. We estimate that patients with HER2-low cancers to be more than 50% of this total population, including approximately 100,450 patients whose tumors are IHC2+ without gene amplification and approximately 179,800 patients whose tumors are IHC1+ without gene amplification. We plan to explore this HER2-low population in breast cancer starting with the IHC2+ group first.

Fam-trastuzumab-deruxtecan-nxki (Enhertu) was recently approved for the treatment of patients with previously treated advanced HER2-positive gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma. While this agent provides an important option for patients with advanced HER2+ gastric cancer, it is important to highlight that 58% of patients did not respond, and the median duration of response was 12.5 months. There are no approved HER2 therapies for HER2+ colorectal, endometrial, or cervical cancers.

BDC-1001–Clinical Development Overview

We are currently conducting a four-part, Phase 1/2 multiple ascending dose and dose-expansion trial of BDC-1001 administered as a single agent or in combination with nivolumab, a PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor. We initiated Part 1, the monotherapy dose-escalation, in the first quarter of 2020 and Part 2, the combination dose-escalation, in the fourth quarter of 2021. This trial is evaluating safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and preliminary anti-tumor activity in patients with HER2-expressing solid tumors. All patients in our study have metastatic disease and disease progression after multiple prior therapies.

Monotherapy

Combination with Checkpoint Inhibitor

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BDC-1001–Preliminary Results

We presented an interim data update on the ongoing clinical trial at the ESMO Immuno-oncology Congress in December 2021. All data in the update are as of October 6, 2021. At that time, we had enrolled 57 subjects across nine cohorts at escalating levels of drug exposure. We evaluated intravenous dosing once every three weeks at dose level up to 20 mg/kg, and intravenous administration once every two weeks at dose level up to 12 mg/kg without observing any dose-limiting toxicities (DLTs) or reaching a maximum tolerated dose. Enrollment at the 20mg/kg q3w and the q2w regimens at 8mg/kg and 12mg/kg were ongoing and the 20mg/kg q2w regimen had not been initiated as of the data cut-off date for that presentation.

The 57 subjects had a median of four prior anti-cancer treatments, with 79% having received a prior anti-HER2 therapy. We have seen more than a dozen different HER2-expressing tumor types in the trial, and clinical activity has been observed in 8 different tumor types.

BDC-1001 has demonstrated good safety and tolerability. No DLTs have been seen. There were two drug-related serious adverse events, both of which led to treatment discontinuation. One was an asymptomatic grade 3 left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) decrease of more than 20% in an anti-HER2-therapy naïve subject with a history of hypertension who had received four cycles of therapy. The subject’s LVEF has improved with follow-up. The other SAE was a grade 4 bronchopulmonary hemorrhage that occurred while the first dose of BDC-1001 was being infused, in a subject who had undergone a lung biopsy five days prior to treatment. All other treatment-emergent adverse events deemed to be related to BDC-1001 have been mild or moderate in severity, including mild infusion-related reactions without interruption to dosing. We continue to enroll patients in the study and we are proceeding to open enrollment in the once-weekly administration cohorts.

The initial drug half-life for BDC-1001 is approximately 3.5 days. This implies the need for administration every two weeks or every week to achieve average trough levels of drug concentration exceeding the approximately 20 µg/ml target threshold associated with anti-tumor activity in a wide range of preclinical models. Elevations in pharmacodynamic markers such as plasma cytokines and chemokines were observed with a trend towards greater magnitude in patients with increasing serum BDC-1001 level. These include increases in plasma levels of IP-10, MIP1β, TNFα and IL-6. We have also evaluated multiple paired tumor biopsies, comparing the tumor before treatment with the tumor biopsy at cycle 2 day 4. Multiple samples displayed an increase in immune cell infiltration after BDC-1001 administration, including increases in conventional and plasmacytoid dendritic cells and a shift in macrophages towards a more inflammatory phenotype.

Early signs of clinical disease control with BDC-1001 included stable disease or a partial response, or PR, in 13 out of 40 evaluable subjects. The subject with microsatellite-stable metastatic colorectal cancer who attained a PR only received four doses of BDC-1001 administration at 5 mg/kg every three weeks before discontinuing treatment due to the asymptomatic LVEF decrease mentioned above. The subject continued to be evaluated and his PR deepened and has persisted for more than 60 weeks with no subsequent anti-cancer therapy. Several other subjects have experienced long-term stable disease of more than 12 weeks, including an 84-year-old endometrial cancer patient who received 2 mg/kg q3w and had 24 weeks of stable disease and five other subjects with melanoma, colorectal, cervical, and breast cancer who were all still on treatment at the time of the update. Stable disease has been observed at dose levels ranging from 2 mg/kg q3w to 8 mg/kg q2w, even though the trough levels at these dose levels were well below the target drug concentration level of approximately 20 µg/ml.

The monotherapy and combination therapy dose-escalation parts of the trial continue, and we expect to declare a recommended Phase 2 dose in both settings later in 2022 before moving into the Phase 2 dose expansion cohorts.

BDC-2034

Our second program focuses on CEA, a well-known tumor antigen that is expressed in various solid tumors with significant unmet medical need including, but not limited to, colorectal cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and breast cancer. CEA is upregulated on the cell surface of these cancers and displays minimal receptor-mediated internalization into the cancer cell, favoring our novel ISAC mechanism of action. In our preclinical studies, we have observed promising anti-tumor activity in vivo with potent in vitro ADCP.

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Immune profiling of various solid tumors has revealed that myeloid cells are present even in immunologically “cold” tumors. Immunologically “cold” means the tumors have very few T cells infiltrating the tumor, with colorectal cancer and pancreatic cancer being good examples. CEA is expressed or overexpressed in these immunologically “cold” cancers. We believe that this, combined with the aforementioned properties, make CEA-expressing tumors an attractive therapeutic opportunity for our Boltbody ISAC approach. We are completing manufacturing scale-up, toxicology and other preclinical work to prepare for an IND submission in 2022 and anticipate advancing BDC-2034 into the clinic in the latter half of 2022.

Preclinical Data

In our preclinical experiments we have identified a CEA-targeting antibody, or mAb, that has favorable CEA binding properties, including selectivity for CEACAM5. We believe this selectivity will reduce unwanted off-target effects that could lead to safety complications. The favorable binding properties of this mAb will permit increased residence time on CEA and the opportunity for myeloid cells to engage the Fc portion of the CEA mAb through Fc receptors.

We also tested the ability of CEA mAbs to invoke activity in a cellular-based assay that measures ADCP. We observed that our lead CEA mAb has prominent ADCP activity relative to other mAbs tested. We believe this serves as a strong foundational mAb for BDC-2034 since ADCP is a key part of the ISAC mechanism that leads to a productive anti-tumor immune response.

To assess the potential efficacy of our CEA Boltbody ISAC program targeting CEA-expressing tumors, we conducted in vivo xenograft experiments in mice engrafted with the human pancreatic cancer cell line HPAFII. The cell surface expression of CEA on HPAFII tumors is believed to represent typical CEA expression levels found in human pancreatic cancers. In this study we compared the anti-tumor activity of our lead CEA mAb to a CEA Boltbody ISAC (CEA ISAC). In addition, we also compared both groups to mice that did not receive either therapy (Untreated). Measuring tumor volumes throughout the course of the study revealed that the HPAFII model was refractory to naked CEA mAb with no evidence of anti-tumor activity. In contrast, CEA ISAC displayed effective anti-tumor activity in all animals. We believe that these data support continued research and development of BDC-2034 for patients with CEA-expressing cancers.

BDC-3042

In addition to the Boltbody ISAC platform, our expertise in myeloid biology and immuno-oncology has led us to discover Dectin-2, a novel target expressed by tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs). We have demonstrated that agonism of Dectin-2 with the natural ligand mediates tumor regression in syngeneic mouse models, and that this effect disappears when Dectin-2 is blocked. Dectin-2 agonism causes TAMs to increase production of cytokines and chemokines such as TNFα, IL-6, IL-1β, and CCL3.

Dectin-2 is specifically expressed by TAMs in a wide variety of cancers, including but not limited to lung, ovarian, breast, and pancreatic cancers. Additionally, KRAS and TP53 mutations may upregulate Dectin-2 on TAMs and could provide an avenue to develop precision medicine with an immune modulator. Most of these TAMs belong to the immunosuppressive phenotype known as “M2” macrophages, and agonism of Dectin-2 mediates pro-inflammatory cytokine production, enhanced phagocytosis, and antigen processing and presentation. A Dectin-2 agonist antibody has the potential to convert an M2 TAM into a tumor-destructive “M1” macrophage to elicit a productive anti-tumor immune response.

We have discovered a number of potent agonist antibodies targeting Dectin-2 and lead optimization has resulted in a lead candidate with an engineered Fc domain which we are developing. Our preclinical work has demonstrated that this antibody can potently activate human macrophages, eliciting production of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines including TNFα, IL-6, IL-1β, and CCL3. In an ex-vivo experiment, we also demonstrated induction of significant cytokines and chemokines from primary human tumor samples which included a mix of tumor cells and immune cell infiltrate. We have also demonstrated that stimulation with our agonist antibody has anti-tumor activity in mouse models.

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PD-L1 Program

Our third Boltbody ISAC program targets PD-L1, focusing on another area with significant unmet medical need, the treatment of patients with tumors that are nonresponsive or become refractory to immune checkpoint blockade, such as lung, colorectal, breast, and other cancers. PD-L1 is an immune checkpoint protein that can be expressed on cancer and immune cells. Expression of PD-L1 on the cell surface of these cells engages the PD-1 checkpoint and results in the inhibition of a productive anti-tumor immune response. More specifically, T cell-mediated immune responses are significantly dampened since the expression of PD-L1 on the cancer cells engages with the PD-1 on the cell surface of T cells and acts like a brake on the immune system. Inhibition of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis has shown potent anti-tumor immune responses in numerous types of cancers; however, a substantial number of cancer patients’ tumors are non-responsive or become refractory to immune checkpoint inhibitors. These patients with checkpoint refractory tumors represent a significant unmet medical need. We believe that a PD-L1 Boltbody ISAC has the potential to overcome the limitations of current anti-PD-L1 therapies.

Our PD-L1 Boltbody ISAC is designed to be a trifunctional therapeutic to overcome such limitations. As such, our PD-L1 ISAC is built to elicit: 1) the normal ISAC mechanism, including antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis of PD-L1-expressing tumor cells, 2) direct activation of PD-L1-expressing myeloid cells in the tumor microenvironment to enhance neoantigen presentation and consequential T cell-dependent tumor killing and immunological memory, and 3) inhibition of the PD-L1/PD1 axis that can thwart T cell-dependent responses.

PD-L1 is in preclinical development for the potential treatment of patients with checkpoint refractory tumors expressing PD-L1.

Collaboration Agreements

Joint Development and License Agreement with Toray Industries

In March 2019, we entered into a Joint Development and License Agreement, or the Toray Agreement, with Toray, to develop and commercialize a Boltbody ISAC containing a proprietary antibody owned by Toray. Under the Toray Agreement, we exchanged co-exclusive (with each other) licenses to certain patents and know-how covering our respective technologies. Each party is required to use commercially reasonable efforts to conduct development and regulatory activities assigned to it under a development plan. Toray will be solely responsible for both parties’ development costs up to the conclusion of the first Phase 1 clinical trial and Toray is entitled to reimbursement for 50% of such development costs from our share of revenues collected from the sale or licensing of collaboration products. After the conclusion of the first Phase 1 clinical trial, the parties will share equally all costs of development activities necessary for obtaining regulatory approval of collaboration products in the territories covered under the agreement, unless either party elects to opt out of its co-funding obligations or reduce them by half, which election can be on a region-by-region basis.

Oncology Research and Development Collaboration with Genmab A/S

In May 2021, we entered into a License and Collaboration Agreement, or the Genmab Agreement, with Genmab. Together, the companies will evaluate Genmab antibodies and bispecific antibody technologies in combination with our ISAC technology platform, with the goal of discovering and developing next-generation bispecific ISACs for the treatment of cancer. Under this research collaboration, the companies will evaluate multiple bispecific ISAC concepts to identify up to three clinical candidates for development. Genmab will fund the research, along with the preclinical and clinical development of these candidates through initial clinical proof of concept. Under the Genmab Agreement, we received an upfront payment of $10.0 million and an equity investment of $15.0 million under a separate stock purchase agreement. Under the Genmab Agreement, we will be compensated for research and development services at the agreed upon full-time employee rate and third-party costs through initial clinical proof of concept of the therapeutic candidates, after which both parties can exercise their respective program opt-in rights. With respect to each candidate for which a party has exercised its program opt-in rights and has exclusive global rights, the other party is eligible to receive potential development and sales-based milestone payments and tiered royalties. Bolt is eligible to receive total potential milestone payments of up to $285.0 million per therapeutic candidate exclusively developed and commercialized by Genmab, along with tiered royalties.

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Oncology Research and Development Collaboration with Innovent Biologics, Inc.

In August 2021, we entered into a License and Collaboration Agreement, or the Innovent Agreement, with Innovent. Together, the companies will leverage Innovent’s proprietary therapeutic antibody portfolio and antibody discovery capability against undisclosed oncology targets in combination with our Boltbody ISAC technology and myeloid biology expertise to create up to three new candidates for cancer treatments. Innovent will fund the initial research, along with the preclinical and clinical development of these candidates through initial clinical proof of concept. Under the Innovent Agreement, we received an upfront payment of $5.0 million. Under the Innovent Agreement, we will be compensated for research and development services at the agreed upon full-time employee rate and third-party costs through initial clinical proof of concept of the therapeutic candidates, after which both parties can exercise their respective license rights. The Innovent Agreement includes license options exercisable by each party to exclusively develop, manufacture, and commercialize each candidate in a specific territory. With respect to each candidate for which a party has exercised its license option, the other party is eligible to receive a license option exercise fee, potential development and sales-based milestone payments and tiered royalties.

Oncology Clinical Trial Collaboration and Supply Agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb

In September 2021, we entered into a clinical collaboration and supply agreement, or the BMS Agreement, with Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, or BMS, to study BDC-1001 in combination with BMS’s PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab, for the treatment of HER2-expressing solid tumors. Under the BMS Agreement, BMS granted us a non-exclusive, non-transferrable, royalty-free license (with a right to sublicense) under its intellectual property to use nivolumab in a clinical trial for a combination therapy with our proprietary compound BDC-1001. In addition, BMS has agreed to supply nivolumab at no cost to us and we will sponsor, fund and conduct the initial Phase 1/2 clinical trial in accordance with an agreed-upon protocol. Both parties will own the study data produced in the clinical trial, other than study data related solely to nivolumab, which will belong solely to BMS, or study data related solely to BDC-1001, which will belong solely to us. The parties may conduct additional clinical trials on the combined therapy which may be sponsored and funded by one party, or jointly funded. We initiated the clinical trial evaluating the combination of nivolumab and BDC-1001 in the fourth quarter of 2021.

License Agreements

License Agreements with Stanford University

In May 2015 and June 2018, we entered into license agreements, or the Stanford Agreement, as amended, with The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, or Stanford. The Stanford Agreement provides us exclusive licenses to certain patents related to our proprietary Boltbody ISAC technology and related to Dectin-2, to develop, manufacture and commercialize licensed products incorporating such technology. Stanford retained the right under the Stanford Agreement, on behalf of itself and certain of its affiliates, and all other non-profit research institutions, to practice the licensed patents for any non-profit purpose, including sponsored research and collaborations, but excluding delivery of paid or reimbursed healthcare. However, Stanford retained the right to practice the licensed patents for the delivery of its own paid or reimbursed healthcare. The licensed patents related to Dectin-2 are additionally subject to a nonexclusive, worldwide license held by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to exercise such intellectual property rights for research purposes, with the right to sublicense to non-profit and governmental entities.

The technology claimed by some of the patents licensed under both Stanford Agreements was developed using U.S. government funding and those licenses are therefore subject to a nonexclusive license held by the U.S. government, certain requirements that licensed products be manufactured in the United States (unless waived according to U.S. government process) and U.S. government march-in rights. For more information on risks related to technology developed using government funding see “Risk Factors–Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property.”

Under each Stanford Agreement, we are obligated to use commercially reasonable efforts to develop and commercialize licensed products and we are also required to achieve certain development and/or regulatory milestones by certain dates, which can be extended a limited number of times upon the payment of a nominal fee. The Stanford Agreements continue until terminated. We may terminate either of the Stanford Agreements at any time for any reason by providing at least 30 days’ written notice to Stanford. Stanford may terminate either of the Stanford Agreements if we breach certain provisions of such Stanford Agreement, including the payment and development and/or regulatory milestone obligations, and fail to remedy such breach within 60 days after written notice of such breach by Stanford.

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Manufacturing

We do not own or operate any manufacturing facilities. We rely on third-party CMOs for production and testing of our clinical material, including the linker-payloads and antibodies used to make our Boltbody ISACs, and we expect to continue to do so to meet our toxicology, clinical, and commercial activities. We believe there are multiple sources for all of the materials required for the manufacture of our product candidates.

Manufacturing Agreement with Piramal

In June 2018, we entered into a master services agreement with Piramal pursuant to which Piramal provides development and cGMP manufacturing services to us on a non-exclusive basis, with initial statements of work covering our BDC-1001 drug substance and drug product. The agreement has an initial term of five years and will continue for consecutive one-year renewal terms unless terminated by either party upon written notice to the other party prior to the end of the then current term. We may terminate the agreement or any statement of work upon prior written notice to Piramal and may be required to pay cancellation fees if we cancel scheduled cGMP manufacturing slots without sufficient advance notice prior to the planned start date. In addition, either party may terminate the agreement for the other party’s uncured material breach.

Supply Agreement with EirGenix

In January 2022, we entered into an amended and restated supply agreement with EirGenix, Inc., or the Amended Supply Agreement, which amends the original supply agreement with EirGenix, Inc., or EirGenix, dated March 10, 2019, pursuant to which EirGenix agreed to supply to us, on a non-exclusive basis, bulk drug substance of EG12014, its monoclonal antibody being developed as a biosimilar of trastuzumab, which we use in the manufacture of BDC-1001. In addition, EirGenix provides us access to its regulatory data package and services to facilitate our development and commercialization efforts and we are required to make milestone payments to EirGenix up to an aggregate of $2.0 million based upon achievement of certain BDC-1001 regulatory milestones and to pay for services based upon time and materials. The agreement will remain in effect as long as we, or any of our affiliates or licensees, continue to pursue the development or commercialization of any Boltbody ISAC, unless earlier terminated. We may terminate the agreement if EirGenix fails to supply sufficient quantities of EG12014, or if EirGenix does not obtain regulatory approval for EG12014 as a standalone biosimilar product. We may also terminate the EirGenix Agreement upon prior written notice to EirGenix. EirGenix may terminate the agreement if we do not actively develop a HER2 Boltbody ISAC for more than two years. In addition, either party may terminate the agreement for the other party’s uncured material breach or insolvency.

Competition

The biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, including the immuno-oncology subsector, are characterized by rapidly advancing technologies, fierce competition and a strong emphasis on proprietary drugs and defense of intellectual property. We face potential competition from many sources, including pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academic institutions, public and private research institutions, and governmental agencies. Any drug candidates that we successfully develop and commercialize will compete with existing treatments and new treatments that are in development and may become available in the future.

Oncology therapeutics on the market and in development range from traditional cancer therapies, including chemotherapy, to new therapies that harness the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. A significant part of the immune response to cancer involves myeloid cells, including macrophages, dendritic cells, neutrophils, monocytes and granulocytes, all of which dynamically regulate tumor growth and progression. There are several therapies targeting myeloid cells on the market or in development. We view companies developing ISACs containing TLR agonists as the closest competitors for our lead program, BDC-1001. At least two other TLR agonist-containing ISACs are or have been in development for oncology indications including Novartis’ NJH-395 and Silverback’s SBT6050. We currently do not consider any company potentially developing unconjugated TLR agonists to be direct competitors given our Boltbody ISAC approach has demonstrated greater effectiveness and differentiating biology and favorable safety profile compared to an unconjugated TLR agonist and such agents typically are administered intratumorally or have significant toxicities when administered systemically.

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We are initially developing BDC-1001 for the treatment of HER2-expressing cancers. HER2 is a well-known and validated oncology target and there are marketed therapies and others in development addressing this target. Marketed therapies include Roche’s Herceptin, Perjeta, Kadcyla and Phesgo (fixed-dose combination of Herceptin/Perjeta), Novartis’ Tykerb, Puma Biotechnology’s Nerlynx, Seagen’s Tukysa, MacroGenics’ Margenza, as well as Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca’s Enhertu. We are aware of several therapies in development for patients with HER2-expressing tumors including Zymework’s zanidatamab and ZW49, Seagen and RemeGen’s disitamab vedotin, Byondis’ trastuzumab duocarmazine (also known as SYD985) Merus’ MCLA-128, and Ambrx’s ARX788.

Many of our potential competitors have significantly greater financial resources and expertise in research and development, manufacturing, preclinical, and clinical development, obtaining regulatory approvals, and marketing approved drugs than we do. Smaller or early-stage companies may also prove to be significant competitors, particularly through collaborative arrangements with large and established companies. These competitors also compete with us in recruiting and retaining qualified scientific and management personnel, establishing clinical trial sites, and enrolling subjects for our clinical trials, as well as in acquiring technologies complementary to, or necessary for, our programs.

Our success is contingent in part upon the successful development and commercialization of BDC-1001 and our other pipeline candidates that prove to be more effective or safer than competing products in our target indications. We could see a reduction or elimination of our commercial opportunity if our competitors develop and commercialize products that are safer, more effective, have fewer or less severe side effects, are more convenient or are less expensive than BDC-1001 or any other drug that we may develop. Our competitors also may be more successful than us in obtaining U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or the FDA, or other regulatory approvals for their drugs more rapidly than we may obtain approval for BDC-1001 or our other drugs, which could result in our competitors establishing a strong market position before we are able to enter the market.

Intellectual Property

Our commercial success depends in part on our ability to obtain, maintain and protect intellectual property and other proprietary rights for our current and future product candidates, and our Boltbody ISAC approach through a variety of methods, including seeking and maintaining patents intended to cover our Boltbody ISAC approach, our products and compositions, their methods of use and processes for their manufacture and any other inventions that are commercially important to the development of our business, novel discoveries, product development technologies and know-how, to operate without infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating the intellectual property and proprietary rights of others and to prevent others from infringing, misappropriating or violating our intellectual property and proprietary rights. We also rely on trademarks, trade secrets, know-how, continuing technological innovation and confidential information to develop and maintain our proprietary position.

Regardless of the coverage we seek under our existing patent applications, there is always a risk that an alteration to the product or process may provide sufficient basis for a competitor to avoid infringement claims. In addition, the coverage claimed in a patent application can be significantly reduced before a patent is issued and courts can reinterpret patent scope after issuance. Moreover, many jurisdictions, including the United States, permit third parties to challenge issued patents in administrative proceedings, which may result in further narrowing or even cancellation of patent claims. Furthermore, we cannot provide any assurance that any patents will be issued from our pending or any future applications or that any current or future issued patents will adequately protect our intellectual property. For this and other risks related to our proprietary technology, inventions, improvements, Boltbody ISAC approach and product candidates, please see the section entitled “Risk Factors–Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property.”

As of December 31, 2021, we have two issued U.S. patents that we co-own with Stanford and for which Stanford has exclusively licensed their rights to us under the 2015 Stanford Agreement. The issued U.S. patents contain claims to our lead product candidate BDC-1001 and will expire in 2037. In addition, as of December 31, 2021, we own, co-own with Stanford or exclusively license from Stanford approximately 102 pending patent applications in various countries (22 of which are pending in the United States).

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We have 19 pending patent applications, including two pending U.S. nonprovisional patent applications and 17 pending foreign patent applications, which contain claims to our lead product candidate BDC-1001 and which we co-own with Stanford and for which Stanford has exclusively licensed its rights to us under the 2015 Stanford Agreement. These pending patent applications, if issued, are expected to expire between 2037 and 2040, excluding any extension of patent term that may be available. We also have one Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application that has yet to enter the national phase in any countries, which we solely own, directed to the clinical use of our lead product candidate BDC-1001, as well as one pending U.S. nonprovisional patent application and one pending European patent application, which we solely own, directed to a method of preparing immunoconjugates, which could be utilized to prepare our lead product candidate BDC-1001 or other Boltbody ISACs. These pending patent applications, if issued, are expected to expire between 2038 and 2041, excluding any extension of patent term that may be available.

In addition, we have 80 pending patent applications directed to potential products and methods other than our lead product candidate BDC-1001 and the use thereof, including 52 pending patent applications that are solely owned by us, 20 pending patent applications that we co-own with Stanford and have exclusively licensed under the 2015 Stanford Agreement, one pending patent application that is solely owned by Stanford and that we have exclusively licensed under the 2015 Stanford Agreement and seven pending patent applications that are solely owned by Stanford and that we have exclusively licensed under the 2018 Stanford Agreement. Of these 80 pending patent applications, six are U.S. provisional patent applications, 15 are PCT applications that have yet to enter the national phase in one or more countries, 13 are U.S. nonprovisional patent applications, and 46 are foreign patent applications. These pending patent applications, if issued, are expected to expire between 2035 and 2041 excluding any extension of patent term that may be available.

The patents and patent applications licensed from Stanford are subject to retained rights by Stanford to allow academic and non-profit research institutions to practice the licensed technology and patents for non-commercial purposes. The patents and patent applications licensed from Stanford pursuant to the 2018 Stanford Agreement are additionally subject to a non-exclusive, worldwide license held by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to exercise such intellectual property rights for research purposes, with the right to sublicense to non-profit and governmental entities. For more information regarding our license agreements with Stanford, please see “—License and Collaboration Agreements.”

Some of our pending patent applications in the United States are provisional patent applications. Provisional patent applications are not eligible to become issued patents until, among other things, we file a non-provisional patent application within 12 months of filing of one or more of our related provisional patent applications. If we do not timely file any non-provisional patent applications, we may lose our priority date with respect to our provisional patent applications and any patent protection on the inventions disclosed in our provisional patent applications. While we intend to timely file non-provisional patent applications relating to our provisional patent applications, we cannot predict whether any such patent applications will result in the issuance of patents that provide us with any competitive advantage.

The terms of individual issued patents extend for varying periods depending on the date of filing of the patent applications or the dates of patent issuance and the legal term of patents in the countries in which they are obtained. Generally, utility patents issued for applications filed in the United States are granted a term of 20 years from the earliest effective filing date of a non-provisional patent application, assuming the patent has not been terminally disclaimed over a commonly owned patent or a patent naming a common inventor, or over a patent not commonly owned but that was disqualified as prior art as the result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. The life of a patent, and the protection it affords, is therefore limited and once our issued patents have expired, we may face competition, including from other competing technologies. In addition, in certain instances, the term of a U.S. patent can be extended to recapture a portion of the delay by the USPTO in issuing the patent as well as a portion of the term effectively lost as a result of the FDA regulatory review period. However, as to the FDA component, the restoration period cannot be longer than five years, the total patent term including the restoration period must not exceed 14 years following FDA approval, only one patent applicable to each regulatory review period may be extended and only those claims covering the approved drug or a method for using it may be extended. We may not receive an extension if we fail to exercise due diligence during the testing phase or regulatory review process, fail to apply within applicable deadlines, fail to apply prior to expiration of relevant patents or otherwise fail to satisfy applicable requirements.

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Moreover, the length of the extension could be less than we request. There can be no assurance that we will benefit from any patent term extension or favorable adjustment to the term of any of our patents. The duration of foreign patents varies in accordance with provisions of applicable local law, but typically is also 20 years from the earliest effective filing date. The actual protection afforded by a patent may vary on a product-by-product basis and from country to country and can depend upon many factors, including the type of patent, the scope of its coverage, the availability of regulatory-related extensions, the availability of legal remedies in a particular country and the validity and enforceability of the patent. As a result, our owned and licensed patent portfolio may not provide us with sufficient rights to exclude others from commercializing products similar or identical to ours.

Furthermore, we rely upon trade secrets and know-how, confidential information, unpatented technologies, continuing technological innovation and other proprietary information to develop, protect and maintain our competitive position and aspects of our business that are not amenable to, or that we do not presently consider appropriate for, patent protection and prevent competitors from reverse engineering or copying our technologies. However, the foregoing rights, technologies and information are difficult to protect. We seek to protect them by, in part, using confidentiality agreements with our employees and consultants and any potential commercial partners and collaborators and invention assignment agreements with our employees. We also have implemented or intend to implement confidentiality agreements or invention assignment agreements with our selected consultants and any potential commercial partners. These agreements are designed to protect our proprietary information and, in the case of the invention assignment agreements, to grant us ownership of technologies that are developed through a relationship with a third party. These agreements may be breached, and we may not have adequate remedies for any breach. There can be no assurance that these agreements will provide meaningful protection for our trade secrets or other intellectual property or proprietary information. In addition, our trade secrets may otherwise become known or be independently discovered by competitors. To the extent that our commercial partners, collaborators, employees and consultants use intellectual property owned by others in their work for us, disputes may arise as to the rights in related or resulting know-how and inventions.

Our commercial success will also depend in part on not infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating the intellectual or proprietary rights of third parties. The issuance of third-party patents could require us to alter our development or commercial strategies, change our products or processes, obtain licenses to additional third-party patents or other intellectual property or cease certain activities. Our breach of any license agreements or failure to obtain a license to proprietary rights that we may require to develop or commercialize our future products may have an adverse impact on us. Given that patent applications in the United States and certain other jurisdictions are maintained in secrecy for 18 months or potentially longer and the publication of discoveries in scientific or patent literature often lags actual discoveries, we cannot be certain of the patent protection being sought by third parties and/or the priority of inventions covered by such patent applications. Moreover, we may have to participate in interference, revocation, derivation, re-examination, post-grant review, inter partes review, or opposition proceedings brought by third parties or declared by the USPTO or an equivalent foreign body. See “Risk Factors–Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property” for additional information regarding these and other risks related to our intellectual property portfolio and their potential effect on us.

Government Regulation

Government authorities in the United States at the federal, state, and local level and in other countries and jurisdictions, including the European Union, 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 our investigational medicines and any future investigational medicines. Generally, before a new drug or biologic can be marketed, considerable data demonstrating its quality, safety and efficacy must be obtained, organized into a format specific for each regulatory authority, submitted for review and approved by the regulatory authority.

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Regulatory Approval in the United States and European Union

In the United States, pharmaceutical products are subject to extensive regulation by the FDA under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, or FDCA, the Public Health Service Act, or PHSA, and other federal and state statutes and regulations. These regulations govern, among other things, the research, development, testing, manufacture, storage, recordkeeping, approval, labeling, promotion and marketing, distribution, post-approval monitoring and reporting, sampling, and import and export of pharmaceutical products, including biological products such as our Boltbody ISAC product candidates. Our Boltbody ISACs and monoclonal antibodies are subject to approval for marketing via a Biologics License Application, or BLA. Failure to comply with applicable U.S. requirements may subject a company to a variety of administrative or judicial sanctions, such as clinical hold, FDA refusal to approve pending BLAs, warning or untitled letters, product recalls, product seizures, total or partial suspension of production or distribution, injunctions, fines, civil penalties, and criminal prosecution.

Our investigational medicines and any future investigational medicines must be approved by the FDA before they may be legally marketed in the United States. The process generally involves the following:

The process in the European Union and other countries or jurisdictions with developed regulatory regimes is broadly comparable.

Preclinical Studies

Before testing any biological product candidates in humans, the product candidate must undergo rigorous preclinical testing. Preclinical studies include laboratory evaluation of product chemistry and formulation, as well as in vitro and animal studies to assess the potential for adverse events and in some cases to establish a rationale for therapeutic use. The conduct of preclinical studies is subject to federal regulations and requirements, including GLP regulations for safety/toxicology studies. An IND sponsor must submit the results of the preclinical tests, together with manufacturing information, analytical data, any available clinical data or literature and plans for clinical studies, among other things, to the FDA as part of an IND. An IND is a request for authorization from the FDA to administer an investigational product to humans and must become effective before human clinical trials may begin. Some long-term preclinical testing may continue after the IND is submitted. An IND automatically becomes effective 30 days after receipt by the FDA, unless the FDA raises concerns or questions related to one or more proposed clinical trials and places the trial on clinical hold. In such a case, the IND sponsor and the FDA must resolve any outstanding concerns before the clinical trial can begin. As a result, submission of an IND may not result in the FDA allowing clinical trials to commence.

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Clinical Trials

The clinical stage of development involves the administration of the investigational product to healthy volunteers or patients under the supervision of qualified investigators, generally physicians not employed by or under the trial sponsor’s control. Clinical trials must be conducted: (i) in compliance with federal regulations; (ii) in compliance with GCP, an international standard meant to protect the rights and health of patients and to define the roles of clinical trial sponsors, administrators and monitors; as well as (iii) under protocols detailing, among other things, the objectives of the trial, the parameters to be used in monitoring safety and the effectiveness criteria to be evaluated in the trial. Each protocol involving testing on U.S. patients and subsequent protocol amendments must be submitted to the FDA as part of the IND. Furthermore, each clinical trial must be reviewed and approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) for each institution at which the clinical trial will be conducted to ensure that the risks to individuals participating in the clinical trials are minimized and are reasonable in relation to anticipated benefits. The IRB 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.

There also are requirements governing the reporting of ongoing clinical trials and completed clinical trial results to public registries. Information about certain clinical trials, including clinical trial results, must be submitted within specific timeframes for publication on the www.clinicaltrials.gov website. Information related to the product, patient population, phase of investigation, clinical trial sites, and investigators and other aspects of the clinical trial is then made public as part of the registration. Disclosure of the results of these clinical trials can be delayed in certain circumstances for up to two years after the date of completion of the trial.

A sponsor who wishes to conduct a clinical trial outside of the United States may, but need not, obtain FDA authorization to conduct the clinical trial under an IND. If a foreign clinical trial is not conducted under an IND, the sponsor may still submit data from the clinical trial to the FDA in support of a BLA. The FDA will accept a well-designed and well-conducted foreign clinical trial not conducted under an IND if the clinical trial was conducted in accordance with GCP requirements, and the FDA is able to validate the data through an onsite inspection if deemed necessary.

Clinical trials are generally conducted in three sequential phases, known as Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3:

These phases may overlap or be combined. For example, a Phase 1/2 clinical trial may contain both a dose-escalation stage and a dose-expansion stage, the latter of which may confirm tolerability at the recommended dose for expansion in future clinical trials (as in traditional Phase 1 clinical trials) and provide insight into the anti-tumor effects of the investigational therapy in selected subpopulation(s).

Typically, during the development of oncology therapies, all subjects enrolled in Phase 1 clinical trials are disease-affected patients and, as a result, considerably more information on clinical activity may be collected during such trials than during Phase 1 clinical trials for non-oncology therapies. A single Phase 3 or Phase 2 trial with other confirmatory evidence may be sufficient in rare instances to provide substantial evidence of effectiveness (generally subject to the requirement of additional post-approval studies).

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Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3 and other types of clinical trials may not be completed successfully within any specified period, if at all. The FDA, the IRB, or the sponsor may suspend or terminate a clinical trial at any time on various grounds, including non-compliance with regulatory requirements or a finding that the patients are being exposed to an unacceptable health risk. Similarly, an IRB 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 requirements or if the drug or biologic has been associated with unexpected serious harm to patients. Additionally, some clinical trials are overseen by an independent group of qualified experts organized by the clinical trial sponsor, known as a data safety monitoring board or committee. This group provides authorization for whether a trial may move forward at designated checkpoints based on access to certain data from the trial.

Concurrent with clinical trials, companies usually complete additional animal studies, and must develop additional information about the chemistry and physical characteristics of the drug or biologic, as well as finalize a process for manufacturing the product in commercial quantities in accordance with cGMP requirements. The manufacturing process must be capable of consistently producing quality batches of the product and, among other things, companies must develop methods for testing the identity, strength, quality, potency and purity of the final product. Additionally, appropriate packaging must be selected and tested, and stability studies must be conducted to demonstrate that the investigational medicines do not undergo unacceptable deterioration over their shelf life.

In 2014, Clinical Trials Regulation 536/2014 was adopted. The new Regulation is directly applicable in all EU Member States (without national implementation) and entered into application on January 31, 2022. The new Regulation seeks to simplify and streamline the approval of clinical trials in the EU. Pursuant to the Regulation, the sponsor shall submit a single Clinical Trial Application (CTA) via the EMA's Clinical Trials Information System, or CTIS, which will cover all regulatory and ethics assessments from the member states concerned
 

Any submissions made from January 31, 2023, onwards must be made through CTIS and all trials authorized pursuant to the Directive that are still ongoing on January 31, 2025 must have their details registered on CTIS. In both cases trials registered on CTIS must comply with the Regulation. Once the CTA is approved in accordance with a member state's requirements, clinical trial development may proceed. Approval and monitoring of clinical trials in the EU is, as it was under the Directive, the responsibility of individual member states, but compared to the position prior to the applicability of the Clinical Trials Regulation there is likely to be more collaboration, information-sharing, and decision-making between member states. The new Regulation also aims to streamline and simplify the rules on safety reporting and introduces enhanced transparency requirements, such as mandatory submission of a summary of the clinical trial results to a new EU Database. Clinical trials must be carried out in accordance with GCP.

Review Process

Following completion of the clinical trials, the results of preclinical studies and clinical trials are submitted to the FDA as part of a BLA, along with proposed labeling, chemistry, and manufacturing information to ensure product quality and other relevant data. To support marketing approval, the data submitted must be sufficient in quality and quantity to establish the safety and efficacy of the investigational product to the satisfaction of the FDA. FDA approval of a BLA must be obtained before a biologic or drug may be marketed in the United States.

The cost of preparing and submitting a BLA is substantial. Under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, or PDUFA, each BLA must be accompanied by a substantial 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 applicant under an approved BLA is also subject to an annual program fee.

The FDA reviews all submitted BLAs before it accepts them for filing and may request additional information. The FDA must make a decision on accepting a BLA for filing within 60 days of receipt, and such decision could include a refusal to file by the FDA. Once the submission is accepted for filing, the FDA begins an in-depth review of the BLA. 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 for a new molecular entity and respond to the applicant, and six months from the filing date of an original BLA designated for priority review. The review process for both standard and priority review may be extended by the FDA for three additional months to consider certain late-submitted information, or information intended to clarify information already provided in the submission. The FDA does not always meet its PDUFA goal dates for standard and priority BLAs, and the review process can be extended by FDA requests for additional information or clarification.

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Before approving a BLA, the FDA will conduct a pre-approval 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 and the integrity of the data supporting safety and efficacy. Additionally, the FDA may refer applications for novel products or products 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 under what conditions, if any. The FDA is not bound by recommendations of an advisory committee, but it generally follows such recommendations when making decisions on approval. The FDA likely will reanalyze the clinical trial data, which could result in extensive discussions between the FDA and the applicant during the review process.

After the FDA evaluates a BLA, it will issue either an approval letter or a Complete Response Letter, or CRL. An approval letter authorizes commercial marketing of the biologic with specific prescribing information for specific indications. A CRL indicates that the review cycle of the application is complete, and the application will not be approved in its present form. A CRL generally outlines the deficiencies in the BLA and may require additional clinical data, additional pivotal clinical trial(s) and/or other significant and time-consuming requirements related to clinical trials, preclinical studies, or manufacturing for the FDA to reconsider the application. If a CRL is issued, the applicant may either resubmit the BLA, addressing all deficiencies identified in the letter, or withdraw the application or request an opportunity for a hearing. The FDA has committed to reviewing such resubmissions in two or six months, depending on the type of information included. Even if such data and information are submitted, the FDA may decide that the BLA does not satisfy the criteria for approval.

As a condition of BLA approval, the FDA may require a REMS to help ensure that the benefits of the biologic outweigh the potential risks to patients. A REMS can include medication guides, communication plans for healthcare professionals, and elements to assure a product’s safe use, or ETASU. An ETASU can include, but is not limited to, special training or certification for prescribing or dispensing the product, dispensing the product only under certain circumstances, special monitoring and the use of patient-specific registries. The requirement for a REMS can materially affect the potential market and profitability of the product. Moreover, the FDA may require substantial post-approval testing and surveillance to monitor the product’s safety or efficacy.

An application for authorization to market a product in the European Union, or one or more member states, proceeds under one of four procedures: a centralized authorization procedure, a mutual recognition procedure, a decentralized procedure or a national procedure. Since our products, by virtue of being antibody-based biologics, fall under the centralized procedure, only this procedure will be described here. A successful application under the centralized authorization procedure results in a marketing authorization from the European Commission, which is automatically valid in all European Union member states. The other European Economic Area member states (namely Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein) are also obligated to recognize the European Commission decision. The EMA and the European Commission administer the centralized authorization procedure.

Under the centralized authorization procedure, the CHMP serves as the scientific committee that renders opinions about the safety, efficacy and quality of human products on behalf of the EMA. The CHMP is composed of experts nominated by each member state’s national drug authority, with one of them appointed to act as Rapporteur for the coordination of the evaluation with the possible assistance of a further member of the CHMP acting as a Co-Rapporteur. After approval, the Rapporteur(s) continue to monitor the product throughout its life cycle. The CHMP is required to issue an opinion within 210 days of receipt of a valid application, though the clock is stopped to ask the applicant for clarification of anything contained within the application or further supporting data. The process is complex and involves extensive consultation with the regulatory authorities of member states and a number of experts. Once the procedure is completed, a European Public Assessment Report is produced. If the CHMP concludes that the quality, safety and efficacy of the medicinal product is sufficiently proven, it adopts a positive opinion. The CHMP’s opinion is sent to the European Commission, which uses the opinion as the basis for its decision whether to grant a marketing authorization. If the opinion is negative, information is given as to the grounds on which this conclusion was reached. After approval, the Rapporteur(s) continue to monitor the product throughout its life cycle.

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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 but for which there is no reasonable expectation that the cost of developing and making the product for this type of disease or condition will be recovered from sales of the product in the United States.

Orphan drug designation 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 on its own 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 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 product for the same indication for seven years from the date of such approval, except in limited circumstances, such as a showing of clinical superiority to the product with orphan exclusivity 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. In the latter case, because healthcare professionals are free to prescribe products for off-label uses, based on their independent medical judgment, the competitor’s product could be used for the orphan indication despite another product’s orphan exclusivity.

FDA's determination of whether two antibody–drug conjugates, or ADCs, are the same product for purposes of orphan drug exclusivity is based on a determination of sameness of the monoclonal antibody element and the functional element of the conjugated molecule. Two ADCs are deemed to be the same product if the complementarity determining region sequences of the antibody and the functional element of the conjugated molecule are the same. A difference in either of those two elements can result in a determination that the molecules are different.

Regulation (EC) 141/2000 states that a drug shall be designated as an orphan drug in the European Union if its sponsor can establish (i) that it is intended for the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of a life-threatening or chronically debilitating condition affecting not more than five in 10,000 persons in the European Union when the application is made, or that it is intended for the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of a life-threatening, seriously debilitating or serious and chronic condition in the European Union and that without incentives it is unlikely that the marketing of the drug in the European Union would generate sufficient return to justify the necessary investment; and (ii) that there exists no satisfactory method of diagnosis, prevention or treatment of the condition in question that has been authorized in the European Union or, if such method exists, the drug will be of significant benefit to those affected by that condition. Regulation (EC) 847/2000 sets out criteria for the designation of orphan drugs. An application for designation as an orphan product can be made any time prior to the filing of an application for approval to market the product. Marketing authorization for an orphan drug leads to a 10-year period of orphan market exclusivity, during which the EMA and European Union Member States shall not accept another marketing authorization application for the same indication for a similar medicinal product. This period of orphan market exclusivity can be reduced to six years if it no longer meets the criteria for orphan drug designation by the end of the fifth year or extended to 12 years with an agreed Pediatric Investigation Plan, or PIP.

Expedited Development and Review Programs

The FDA is authorized to designate certain products for expedited review if they are intended to address an unmet medical need in the treatment of a serious or life-threatening disease or condition.

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Fast Track designation may be granted for products that are intended to treat a serious or life-threatening disease or condition for which there is no effective treatment, and preclinical or clinical data demonstrate the potential to address unmet medical needs for the condition. Fast Track designation applies to both the product and the specific indication for which it is being studied. The sponsor of a new biologic candidate can request the FDA to designate the candidate for a specific indication for Fast Track status concurrent with, or after, the submission of the IND for the candidate. The FDA must determine if the biologic candidate qualifies for Fast Track designation within 60 days of receipt of the sponsor’s request. For Fast Track products, sponsors may have greater interactions with the FDA and the FDA may initiate review of sections of a Fast Track product’s BLA before the application is complete. This “rolling review” is available if the FDA determines, after preliminary evaluation of clinical data submitted by the sponsor, that a Fast Track product may be effective. The sponsor must also provide, and the FDA must approve, a schedule for the submission of the remaining information and the sponsor must pay applicable user fees. 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 and accelerated approval.

Breakthrough therapy designation may be granted for products that are intended, alone or in combination with one or more other products, to treat a serious or life-threatening condition and preliminary clinical evidence indicates that the product may demonstrate substantial improvement over currently approved therapies on one or more clinically significant endpoints. Under the breakthrough therapy program, the sponsor of a new biologic candidate may request that the FDA designate the candidate for a specific indication as a breakthrough therapy concurrent with, or after, the submission of the IND for the biologic candidate. The FDA must determine if the biological product qualifies for breakthrough therapy designation within 60 days of receipt of the sponsor’s request. The FDA may take certain actions with respect to breakthrough therapies, including holding meetings with the sponsor throughout the development process, providing timely advice to the product sponsor regarding development and approval, involving more senior staff in the review process, assigning a cross-disciplinary project lead for the review team, and taking other steps to design the clinical studies in an efficient manner.

Priority review may be granted for products that are intended to treat a serious or life-threatening condition and, if approved, would provide a significant improvement in safety and effectiveness compared to available therapies. The FDA will attempt to direct additional resources to the evaluation of an application designated for priority review in an effort to facilitate the review.

Accelerated approval may be granted for products that are intended to treat a serious or life-threatening condition and that generally provide a meaningful therapeutic advantage to patients over existing treatments. A product eligible for accelerated approval may be approved on the basis of either a surrogate endpoint that is reasonably likely to predict clinical benefit, or on a clinical endpoint that can be measured earlier than 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. In clinical trials, a surrogate endpoint is a measurement of laboratory or clinical signs of a disease or condition that substitutes for a direct measurement of how a patient feels, functions, or survives. The accelerated approval pathway is most often used in settings in which the course of a disease is long, and an extended period of time is required to measure the intended clinical benefit of a product, even if the effect on the surrogate or intermediate clinical endpoint occurs rapidly. Thus, accelerated approval has been used extensively in the development and approval of products for treatment of a variety of cancers in which the goal of therapy is generally to improve survival or decrease morbidity and the duration of the typical disease course requires lengthy and sometimes large studies to demonstrate a clinical or survival benefit. The accelerated approval pathway is contingent on a sponsor’s agreement to conduct additional post-approval confirmatory studies to verify and describe the product’s clinical benefit. These confirmatory trials must be completed with due diligence and, in some cases, the FDA may require that the trial be designed, initiated and/or fully enrolled prior to approval. Failure to conduct required post-approval studies, or to confirm a clinical benefit during post-marketing studies, would allow the FDA to withdraw the product from the market on an expedited basis. All promotional materials for product candidates approved under accelerated regulations are subject to prior review by the FDA.

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 the time period for FDA review or approval may not be shortened. Furthermore, Fast Track designation, breakthrough therapy designation, priority review and accelerated approval do not change the standards for approval but may expedite the development or approval process.

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Similar conditional approval and accelerated assessment processes exist in the European Union for medicine that would fulfill an unmet medical need or therapeutic innovation. We believe that some of the disease indications in which our product candidates are currently being or may be developed in the future qualify for this provision, and we will take advantage of this provision as appropriate.

Additional Controls for Biologics

To help reduce the increased risk of the introduction of adventitious agents, the PHSA emphasizes the importance of manufacturing controls for products whose attributes cannot be precisely defined. The PHSA also provides authority to the FDA to immediately suspend licenses in situations where there exists a danger to public health, to prepare or procure products in the event of shortages and critical public health needs, and to authorize the creation and enforcement of regulations to prevent the introduction or spread of communicable diseases in the United States and between states.

After a BLA is approved, the product may also be subject to official lot release as a condition of approval. As part of the manufacturing process, the manufacturer is required to perform certain tests on each product lot before it is released for distribution. If the product is subject to official release by the FDA, the manufacturer submits samples of each product lot to the FDA together with a release protocol showing a summary of the history of manufacture of the lot and the results of all the manufacturer’s tests performed on the lot. The FDA may also 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. As with drugs, after approval of biologics, manufacturers must address any safety issues that arise, are subject to recalls or a halt in manufacturing, and are subject to periodic inspection after approval.

Pediatric Information

Under the Pediatric Research Equity Act, or PREA, BLAs or supplements to BLAs must contain data to assess the safety and effectiveness of the biological product for the claimed indications in all relevant pediatric subpopulations and to support dosing and administration for each pediatric subpopulation for which the biological product is safe and effective. The FDA may grant full or partial waivers, or deferrals, for submission of data. Unless otherwise required by regulation, PREA generally does not apply to any biological product for an indication for which orphan designation has been granted. However, beginning in 2020, PREA will apply to BLAs for orphan-designated biologics if the biologic is a molecularly targeted cancer product intended for the treatment of an adult cancer and is directed at a molecular target that FDA has determined is substantially relevant to the growth or progression of a pediatric cancer.

The Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act, or the BPCA, provides a six-month extension of any exclusivity–patent or non-patent–for a biologic if certain conditions are met. Conditions for exclusivity include the FDA’s determination that information relating to the use of a new biologic in the pediatric population may produce health benefits in that population, FDA making a written request for pediatric studies, and the applicant agreeing to perform, and reporting on, the requested studies within the statutory timeframe. Applications under the BPCA are treated as priority applications, with all the benefits that designation confers.

While there is no direct equivalent to the separate route for biologics, broadly equivalent requirements and controls similarly apply to the submission of pediatric testing and marketing authorization applications to the European Medicines Agency in the European Union and, post-approval, to the holding of such marketing authorizations, including conditionality.

Post-Approval Requirements

Once a BLA is approved, a product will be subject to certain post-approval requirements. For instance, the FDA tightly regulates the post-approval marketing and promotion of biologics, including standards and regulations for direct-to-consumer advertising, off-label promotion, industry-sponsored scientific and educational activities and promotional activities, involving the Internet. Biologics may be marketed only for the approved indications and in a manner consistent with the provisions of the approved labeling.

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Adverse event reporting and submission of periodic safety summary reports is required following FDA approval of a BLA. The FDA also may require post-marketing testing, known as Phase 4 testing, REMS, and surveillance to monitor the effects of an approved product, or the FDA may place conditions on an approval that could restrict the distribution or use of the product. In addition, quality control, biological product manufacture, packaging and labeling procedures must continue to conform to cGMPs after approval. Biologic manufacturers and certain of their subcontractors are required to register their establishments with the FDA and certain state agencies. The FDA is authorized to conduct periodic unannounced inspections at any establishment where a biologic product is manufactured to assess cGMPs compliance. Accordingly, manufacturers must continue to expend time, money and effort in the areas of production and quality-control to maintain compliance with cGMPs.

Once an approval is granted, the FDA may withdraw the approval if compliance with regulatory requirements and standards is not maintained or if problems occur after the product reaches the market. Later discovery of previously unknown problems with a product, including adverse events of unanticipated severity or frequency, or with manufacturing processes or failure to comply with regulatory requirements, may result in revisions to the approved labeling to add new safety information, imposition of post-market studies or clinical studies to assess new safety risks or imposition of distribution or other restrictions under a REMS program. Potential consequences include, among other things:

Broadly equivalent requirements, controls and sanctions similarly apply to supply, QA, manufacture, labelling, advertising, pharmacovigilance, and tracing of medicinal products as imposed by European Union laws and enforced by European Union national regulatory authorities.

U.S. Patent Term Restoration and Marketing Exclusivity

Depending upon the timing, duration, and specifics of FDA approval of our product candidates, some of our U.S. patents may be eligible for limited patent term extension under the Hatch Waxman Amendments. The Hatch Waxman Amendments permit a patent term extension of up to five years as compensation for patent term lost during the FDA regulatory review process. Patent term extension, however, cannot extend the remaining term of a patent beyond a total of 14 years from the product’s approval date. The patent term extension period is generally one half the time between the effective date of an IND and the submission date of a BLA, plus the time between the submission date of a BLA and the approval of that application, except that the review period is reduced by any time during which the applicant failed to exercise due diligence. Only one patent applicable to an approved drug is eligible for such an extension, only those claims covering the approved drug, a method for using it, or a method for manufacturing it may be extended and the application for the extension must be submitted prior to the expiration of the patent. The USPTO, in consultation with the FDA, reviews and approves the application for any patent term extension or restoration. Similar provisions are available in Europe and other foreign jurisdictions to extend the term of a patent that covers an approved drug. In the future, we or our licensors may apply for patent term extension for our owned or licensed 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 BLA. However, an extension might not be granted because of, for example, our or our licensors’ failure to exercise due diligence during the testing phase or regulatory review process, failure to apply within applicable deadlines, failure to apply prior to expiration of relevant patents or any other failure to satisfy applicable requirements. Moreover, the applicable time period or the scope of patent protection afforded could be less than requested. There is no guarantee that the applicable authorities, including the FDA in the United States, will agree with our assessment of whether any extensions should be granted, and if granted, the length of such extensions.

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The Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009, or the BPCIA, created an abbreviated approval pathway for biological products shown to be biosimilar to, or interchangeable with, an FDA-licensed reference biological product. Biosimilarity, which requires that the biological product be highly similar to the reference product notwithstanding minor differences in clinically inactive components, and that there be no clinically meaningful differences between the biological product and the reference product in terms of safety, purity, and potency, can be shown through analytical studies, animal studies and a clinical trial or trials. Interchangeability requires that a biological product be biosimilar to the reference product and that the product can be expected to produce the same clinical results as the reference product in any given patient and, for products administered multiple times to an individual, that the product and the reference product may be alternated or switched after one has been previously administered without increasing safety risks or risks of diminished efficacy relative to exclusive use of the reference biological product without such alternation or switch.

A reference biological product is granted 12 years of data exclusivity from the time of first licensure of the product and the FDA will not accept an application for a biosimilar or interchangeable product based on the reference biological product until four years after the date of first licensure of the reference product. “First licensure” typically means the initial date the product at issue was licensed in the United States. Date of first licensure does not include the date of licensure of (and a new period of exclusivity is not available for) a biological product if the licensure is for a supplement for the biological product or for a subsequent application by the same sponsor or manufacturer of the biological product (or licensor, predecessor in interest or other related entity) for a change (not including a modification to the structure of the biological product) that results in a new indication, route of administration, dosing schedule, dosage form, delivery system, delivery device or strength, or for a modification to the structure of the biological product that does not result in a change in safety, purity or potency.

Brexit and the Regulatory Framework in the United Kingdom

On June 23, 2016, the electorate in the United Kingdom voted in favor of Brexit and the United Kingdom officially withdrew from the European Union on January 31, 2020. Great Britain is no longer covered by the European Union’s procedures for the grant of marketing authorizations (Northern Ireland is covered by the centralized authorization procedure and can be covered under the decentralized or mutual recognition procedures). A separate marketing authorization will be required to market drugs in Great Britain. For two years from 1 January 2021, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, or MHRA, may adopt decisions taken by the European Commission on the approval of new marketing authorizations through the centralized procedure, and the MHRA will have regard to marketing authorizations approved in a country in the European Economic Area (although in both cases a marketing authorization will only be granted if any Great Britain-specific requirements are met). Various national procedures are now available to place a drug on the market in the United Kingdom, Great Britain, or Northern Ireland, with the main national procedure having a maximum timeframe of 150 days (excluding time taken to provide any further information or data required). The data exclusivity periods in the United Kingdom are currently in line with those in the European Union, but the Trade and Cooperation Agreement provides that the periods for both data and market exclusivity are to be determined by domestic law, and so there could be divergence in the future.

Gaining orphan drug designation in Great Britain following Brexit is based on the prevalence of the condition in Great Britain (rather than in the European Union). It is therefore possible that conditions that are currently designated as orphan conditions in Great Britain will no longer be and that conditions that are not currently designated as orphan conditions in the European Union will be designated as such in Great Britain. Unlike in the European Union, applications for orphan drug designation in Great Britain are reviewed in parallel with the corresponding marketing authorization application.

The regulatory framework in place in the United Kingdom in relation to clinical trials is derived from the European Union's Clinical Trials Directive, as implemented into United Kingdom law. The Clinical Trials Regulation does not apply in Great Britain. It is uncertain as to what extent the United Kingdom will seek to align its regulations with the Clinical Trials Regulation, and there are already added administrative burdens as a result of Brexit for trials that take place both in the United Kingdom and the European Union, for example United Kingdom sponsored trials that also have sites in the European Union now need to have a legal representative in the European Union.

International Regulation

In addition to regulations in the United States and Europe, a variety of foreign regulations govern clinical trials, commercial sales, and distribution of product candidates. The approval process varies from country to country and the time to approval may be longer or shorter than that required for FDA or European Commission approval.

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Other U.S. Healthcare Laws and Regulations and Legislative Reform

U.S. Healthcare and Privacy Laws and Regulations

Healthcare providers and third-party payors will play a primary role in the recommendation and prescription of any product candidates for which we obtain marketing approval. Our operations, including any arrangements with healthcare providers, third-party payors and customers may expose us to broadly applicable fraud and abuse and other healthcare laws that may affect the business or financial arrangements and relationships through which we would market, sell, and distribute our products. The healthcare laws that may affect our ability to operate include, but are not limited to:

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If our operations are found to be in violation of any of these laws or any other current or future healthcare laws that may apply to us, we may be subject to significant civil, criminal and administrative penalties, damages, fines, disgorgement, imprisonment, exclusion from government funded healthcare programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, contractual damages, reputational harm, diminished profits and future earnings, additional reporting and oversight obligations, and the curtailment or restructuring of our operations. Although effective compliance programs can mitigate the risk of investigation and prosecution for violations of these laws, these risks cannot be entirely eliminated. In addition, if any physicians or healthcare providers or entities with whom we expect to do business is found not to be in compliance with applicable laws, they may be subject to significant criminal, civil or administrative sanctions, including exclusions from government funded healthcare programs.

Legislative Reform

We operate in a highly regulated industry, and new laws, regulations and judicial decisions, or new interpretations of existing laws, regulations, and decisions, related to healthcare availability, the method of delivery and payment for healthcare products and services could negatively affect our business, financial condition, and prospects. There is significant interest in promoting healthcare reforms, and it is likely that federal and state legislatures within the United States and the governments of other countries will continue to consider changes to existing healthcare legislation. For example, the U.S. and state governments continue to propose and pass legislation designed to reduce the cost of healthcare. In 2010, the ACA was enacted which included changes to the coverage and reimbursement of drug products under government healthcare programs.

While there have been executive judicial and congressional challenges to the ACA, several bills affecting the implementation of certain taxes under the ACA have been signed into law. For example, in 2017, the U.S. Congress enacted the Tax Act, which eliminated 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.” On June 17, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a challenge on procedural grounds that argued the ACA is unconstitutional in its entirety because the “individual mandate” was repealed by Congress. Thus, the ACA will remain in effect in its current form. Further, prior to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, on January 28, 2021, President Biden issued an executive order to initiate a special enrollment period for obtaining health insurance coverage through the ACA marketplace. The executive order also instructed certain governmental agencies to review and reconsider their existing policies and rules that limit access to healthcare, including among others, reexamining Medicaid demonstration projects and waiver programs that include work requirements, and policies that create unnecessary barriers to obtaining access to health insurance coverage through Medicaid or the ACA. It is possible that the ACA will be subject to judicial and congressional challenges in the future. It is unclear how such challenges and the healthcare reform measures of the Biden administration will impact the ACA.

In addition, there have been and continue to be a number of initiatives at the United States federal and state levels that seek to reduce healthcare costs. In 2011, the U.S. Congress enacted the Budget Control Act, which included provisions intended to reduce the federal deficit. The Budget Control Act resulted in the imposition of 2% reductions in Medicare payments to providers beginning in 2013 and, due to subsequent legislative amendments to the statute, will remain in effect through 2031 with the exception of a temporary suspension, absent additional congressional action, from May 1, 2020 through March 31, 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Under current legislation, the actual reduction in Medicare payments will vary from 1% in 2022 to 3% in the final fiscal year of this sequester. In 2012, the U.S. Congress enacted the American Taxpayer Relief Act, which, among other things, further 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.

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Furthermore, there has been heightened governmental scrutiny over the manner in which manufacturers set prices for their marketed products. This has resulted in several congressional inquiries and proposed legislation 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 drug products. At the federal level, the Trump administration used several means to propose or implement drug pricing reform, including through federal budget proposals, executive orders, and policy initiatives. For example, on July 24, 2020 and September 13, 2020, the Trump administration announced several executive orders related to prescription drug pricing that attempted to implement several of the administration’s proposals. As a result, the FDA concurrently released a final rule and guidance in September 2020 providing pathways for states to build and submit importation plans for drugs from Canada. Further, on November 20, 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized a regulation removing safe harbor protection for price reductions from pharmaceutical manufacturers to plan sponsors under Medicare Part D, either directly or through pharmacy benefit managers, unless the price reduction is required by law. The implementation of the rule has been delayed by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act until January 1, 2026. The rule also creates a new safe harbor for price reductions reflected at the point-of-sale, as well as a new safe harbor for certain fixed fee arrangements between pharmacy benefit managers and manufacturers, the implementation of which have also been delayed until January1, 2026. On November 20, 2020, CMS issued an interim final rule implementing the Trump administration’s Most Favored Nation executive order, which would tie Medicare Part B payments for certain physician-administered drugs to the lowest price paid in other economically advanced countries, effective January 1, 2021. As a result of litigation challenging the Most Favored Nation model, on December 27, 2021, CMS published a final rule that rescinded the Most Favored Nation model interim final rule. Further, in July 2021, the Biden administration released an executive order, “Promoting Competition in the American Economy,” with multiple provisions aimed at prescription drugs. In response to Biden’s executive order, on September 9, 2021, HHS released a Comprehensive Plan for Addressing High Drug Prices that outlines principles for drug pricing reform and sets out a variety of potential legislative policies that Congress could pursue to advance these principles. No legislation or administrative actions have been finalized for the implementation of these principles. Furthermore, Congress is considering drug pricing as part of other reform initiatives. 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. In addition, regional healthcare authorities and individual hospitals are increasingly using bidding procedures to determine what pharmaceutical products and which suppliers will be included in their prescription drug and other healthcare programs. We expect that additional state and federal healthcare reform measures will be adopted in the future. It is also possible that additional governmental action will be taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Environmental, Health and Safety Laws and Regulations

We and our third-party contractors are subject to numerous environmental, health and safety laws and regulations, including those governing laboratory procedures and the use, generation, manufacture, distribution, storage, handling, treatment, remediation and disposal of hazardous materials and wastes. Hazardous chemicals, including flammable and biological materials, are involved in certain aspects of our business, and we cannot eliminate the risk of injury or contamination from the use, generation, manufacture, distribution, storage, handling, treatment or disposal of hazardous materials and wastes. Our product candidates use PBDs, which are highly potent cytotoxins that require special handling by our and our contractors' staff. In the event of contamination, injury, or failure to comply with environmental, health and safety laws and regulations, we could be held liable for any resulting damages, fines and penalties associated with such liability could exceed our assets and resources. Environmental, health and safety laws and regulations are becoming increasingly more stringent. We may incur substantial costs in order to comply with current or future environmental, health and safety laws and regulations.

Pharmaceutical Coverage, Pricing and Reimbursement

The availability and extent of coverage and adequate reimbursement by governmental and private third-party payors are essential for most patients to be able to afford expensive medical treatments. In both domestic and foreign markets, sales of our product candidates will depend substantially on the extent to which the costs of our product candidates will be covered by third-party payors, such as government health programs, commercial insurance, and managed healthcare organizations. These third-party payors decide which products will be covered and establish reimbursement levels for those products.

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Coverage and reimbursement by a third-party payor may depend upon a number of factors, including the third-party payor’s determination that use of a product is:

Obtaining coverage approval and reimbursement for a product from a government or other third-party payor is a time-consuming and costly process that could require us to provide supporting scientific, clinical and cost-effectiveness data for the use of our products to the payor. We may not be able to provide data sufficient to gain acceptance with respect to coverage and reimbursement at a satisfactory level. If coverage and adequate reimbursement of our future products, if any, are unavailable or limited in scope or amount, such as may result where alternative or generic treatments are available, we may be unable to achieve or sustain profitability. Adverse coverage and reimbursement limitations may hinder our ability to recoup our investment in our product candidates, even if such product candidates obtain regulatory approval.

There is significant uncertainty related to the insurance coverage and reimbursement of newly approved products. There is no uniform policy for coverage and reimbursement in the United States and, coverage and reimbursement can differ significantly from payor to payor. In the United States, the principal decisions about reimbursement for new medicines are typically made by the CMS, which decides whether and to what extent a new medicine will be covered and reimbursed under Medicare. Private payors often, but not always, follow the CMS’ decisions regarding coverage and reimbursement. It is difficult to predict what third-party payors will decide with respect to coverage and reimbursement for fundamentally novel products such as ours, as there is no body of established practices and precedents for these new products. Further, one payor’s determination to provide coverage and adequate reimbursement for a product does not assure that other payors will also provide coverage and adequate reimbursement for that product. We may need to conduct expensive pharmaco-economic studies to demonstrate the medical necessity and cost-effectiveness of our product candidates. There can be no assurance that our product candidates will be considered medically necessary or cost-effective. In addition to third-party payors, professional organizations and patient advocacy groups such as the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and the American Society of Clinical Oncology can influence decisions about reimbursement for new medicines by determining standards for care. Therefore, it is possible that any of our product candidates, even if approved, may not be covered by third-party payors or the reimbursement limit may be so restrictive that we cannot commercialize the product candidates profitably.

Reimbursement agencies in Europe may be more restrictive than payors in the United States. For example, a number of cancer products have been approved for reimbursement in the United States but not in certain European countries. In Europe, decisions about pricing and reimbursement vary from country to country. In certain countries, new products may be marketed after agreement on reimbursement price has been reached. Such pricing negotiations with governmental authorities can take considerable time after receipt of marketing approval for a product. Political, economic, and regulatory developments may further complicate pricing negotiations, and pricing negotiations may continue after reimbursement has been obtained. Other countries require additional health technology assessments that compare the cost-effectiveness of a particular product candidate to currently available therapies. In addition, the European Union provides options for its member states to restrict the range of products reimbursed by their national health insurance systems to control the prices of medicinal products for human use. With pricing and reimbursement decisions taking place at the member state level, member states may approve a specific price for a product, adopt a system of direct or indirect controls on the profitability of the company placing the product on the market or monitor and control prescription volumes and issue guidance to physicians to limit prescriptions. Reference pricing used by various European Union member states and parallel distribution, or arbitrage between low-priced and high-priced member states, can further reduce prices. Furthermore, many countries in the European Union have increased the number of discounts required on pharmaceutical products. These efforts could continue as countries attempt to manage healthcare expenditures, especially in light of severe fiscal and debt crises experienced by many countries in the European Union. There can be no assurance that any country with reimbursement limitations for pharmaceutical products will allow favorable reimbursement and pricing arrangements for any of our products, if approved in those countries. Accordingly, reimbursement for any products in Europe may be lower, compared to the United States and may be insufficient to generate commercially reasonable revenues and profits.

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The containment of healthcare costs has become a priority of foreign and domestic governments as well as private third-party payors. The pricing of drugs has been a focus in this effort. Governments and private third-party payors have attempted to control costs by limiting coverage and the amount of reimbursement for particular medications, which could affect our ability to sell our product candidates profitably. We also expect to experience pricing pressures due to the trend towards managed healthcare, the increasing influence of health maintenance organizations, and additional legislative changes. These and other cost-control initiatives could cause us to decrease the price we might establish for products, which could result in lower-than-anticipated product revenues. In addition, the publication of discounts by third-party payors or authorities may lead to further pressure on the prices or reimbursement levels within the country of publication and other countries. If pricing is set at unsatisfactory levels or if coverage and adequate reimbursement of our products is unavailable or limited in scope or amount, our revenues, and the potential profitability of our product candidates in those countries would be negatively affected.

Human Capital Resources

As of December 31, 2021, we had 91 employees, all of whom were full-time. None of our employees are represented by labor unions or covered by collective bargaining agreements. We consider our relationship with our employees to be good and we have not experienced any work stoppages.

We recognize that attracting, motivating, and retaining talent at all levels is vital to our continued success. Our employees are a significant asset, and we aim to create an equitable, inclusive, diverse, and empowering environment in which our employees can grow and advance their careers. Our overall goal is to develop, expand and retain our workforce in support of our current pipeline and future business objectives. Our human resources objectives include identifying, recruiting, retaining, motivating, and integrating our existing and future employees. By focusing on employee retention and engagement, we also improve our ability to support our clinical trials, our pipeline, our platform technologies, business, and operations, and protect the long-term interests of our stockholders. Our efforts to recruit and retain a diverse and passionate workforce include providing competitive compensation and benefits packages and ensuring we listen to our employees.
 

We value innovation, passion, data-driven decision making, persistence and honesty. We are building an environment where our employees can thrive and be inspired to make exceptional contributions towards the advancement of novel and more effective therapies for cancer patients. We also seek and support a diverse population of employees, and value the contributions of all without regard to age, race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. We recognize the value of our employees’ unique backgrounds and breadth of experience in building a strong and sustainable company.
 

The principal purposes of our equity incentive plans are to attract, retain and motivate our employees and directors through grants of stock-based compensation awards and payments of cash-based performance bonus awards. These incentives are intended to encourage employees to perform to the best of their abilities and achieve objectives, thus contributing to our stockholder value. We also offer the 2021 Employee Stock Purchase Plan to all employees where they can purchase shares of our common stock at a discounted price. We are committed to providing a competitive and comprehensive benefits package to our employees. Our benefits package is designed to support our employees and their family’s health and well-being. Our benefits include, medical, dental and vision, as well as dependent care, mental health, and other wellness benefits.
 

We value career development for all employees, and we provide reimbursement and time for employees to attend professional development courses ranging from technical training, competency-based workshops, and leadership development programs. Direct managers also take an active role in identifying individualized development plans to assist their employees in realizing their full potential and creating opportunities for promotions and added responsibilities that enhance the engagement and retention of our workforce. We are committed to maintaining and increasing our investment in our workforce as we grow, including improvements in the way we hire, develop, motivate, and retain employees.

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Corporate History

We were incorporated under the laws of Delaware under the name Bolt Therapeutics, Inc. as a private company in January 2015. We changed our name to Bolt Biotherapeutics, Inc. in July 2015, and we completed our initial public offering in February 2021. Our principal executive offices are located at 900 Chesapeake Drive, Redwood City, California 94063 and our telephone number is (650) 665-9295. Our corporate website address is www.boltbio.com. We make available, free of charge on our website our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to those reports, as soon as reasonably practicable after filing such reports with the SEC. Alternatively, you may access these reports at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report, and the inclusion of our website address is an inactive textual reference only.

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Item 1A. Risk Factors.

Our business involves significant risks, some of which are described below. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and the financial statements and the related notes. If any of the following risks actually occur, it could harm our business, prospects, operating results and financial condition and future prospects. In such event, the market price of our common stock could decline and you could lose all or part of your investment. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently deem immaterial may also impair our business operations. This report on Form 10-K also contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements as a result of factors that are described below and elsewhere in this Annual Report.

Risks Related to Our Financial Position and Need for Additional Capital

We have a limited operating history and have incurred significant losses since inception, and we anticipate that we may continue to incur losses for the foreseeable future and may never achieve or maintain profitability.

Biopharmaceutical product development is a highly speculative undertaking and involves a substantial degree of risk. We are an immuno-oncology company with a limited operating history upon which you can evaluate our business and prospects. With the exception of our lead product candidate, BDC-1001, all of our development programs are in preclinical development or drug discovery stage. We commenced operations in 2015, and to date, we have focused primarily on organizing and staffing our company, business planning, raising capital, developing our proprietary Boltbody ISAC approach, identifying product candidates, establishing our intellectual property portfolio and conducting research, preclinical studies and clinical trials. Our approach to the discovery and development of product candidates based on our Boltbody ISAC approach is unproven, and we do not know whether we will be able to develop any product candidates that succeed in clinical development or products of commercial value. As an organization, we have not yet completed any clinical trials, obtained regulatory approvals, manufactured a commercial-scale product (or arranged for a third party to do so on our behalf), or conducted sales and marketing activities necessary for successful product commercialization. Consequently, any predictions made about our future success or viability may not be as accurate as they could be if we had a history of successfully developing and commercializing biopharmaceutical products.

Since inception in 2015, we have not generated any product revenue and have incurred significant operating losses. Our net losses were $98.6 million and $60.7 million for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively. As of December 31, 2021, we had an accumulated deficit of $207.0 million. We expect to continue to incur significant expenses and increasing operating losses for the foreseeable future. It could be at least several years, if ever, before we have a commercialized drug. The net losses we incur may fluctuate significantly from quarter to quarter and year to year. We anticipate that our expenses will increase substantially if, and as, we:

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In addition, because of the numerous risks and uncertainties associated with pharmaceutical products and development, we are unable to accurately predict the timing or amount of increased expenses and when, or if, we will be able to achieve profitability. Our expenses could increase and profitability could be further delayed if we decide to or are required by the FDA or other regulatory authorities such as the European Medicines Agency, or EMA, or the U.K. Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, or MHRA, to perform studies or trials in addition to those currently expected, or if there are any delays in the development or completion of any planned or future preclinical studies or clinical trials of our current and future product candidates. Even if we complete the development and regulatory processes described above, we anticipate incurring significant costs associated with launching and commercializing our current and future product candidates.

Even if we do achieve profitability, we may not be able to sustain or increase profitability on a quarterly or annual basis. Our failure to become and remain profitable would decrease the value of our company and could impair our ability to raise capital, maintain our research and development efforts, expand our business or continue our operations. A decline in the value of our company also could cause you to lose all or part of your investment.

We will need substantial funding to pursue our business objectives. If we are unable to raise capital when needed or on terms favorable to us, we could be forced to delay, reduce or terminate our product development, other operations or commercialization efforts.

Identifying and developing potential product candidates and conducting preclinical studies and clinical trials is a time-consuming, expensive and uncertain process that takes years to complete, and we may never generate the necessary data or results required to obtain regulatory approval and begin selling any approved products. We expect our expenses to increase in connection with our ongoing activities, particularly as we conduct our ongoing and planned preclinical studies, initiate additional clinical trials for our product candidates and seek regulatory approval for our current product candidates and any future product candidates we may develop. Our expenses could increase beyond our current expectations if the FDA requires us to perform clinical trials and other studies in addition to those that we currently anticipate. In addition, if we obtain marketing approval for any of our product candidates, we expect to incur significant commercialization expenses related to product sales, marketing, manufacturing and distribution. Accordingly, we will need to obtain substantial additional funding in connection with our continuing operations. If we are unable to raise capital when needed or on attractive terms, we would be forced to delay, reduce or terminate our research and development programs or future commercialization efforts.

As of December 31, 2021, we had cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $271.6 million. Based upon our current operating plan and assumptions, we believe that our existing cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities will be sufficient to fund our operations for at least the next 12 months following the issuance date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. This estimate is based on assumptions that may prove to be wrong, and we could use our available capital resources sooner than we expect. Changes may occur beyond our control that would cause us to consume our available capital before that time, including changes in and progress of our development activities and changes in regulation. Our future capital requirements will depend on many factors, including:

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We will require additional capital to complete our planned clinical development programs for our current product candidates to obtain regulatory approval. Any additional capital raising efforts may divert our management from their day-to-day activities, which may adversely affect our ability to develop and commercialize our current and future product candidates, if approved.

In addition, we cannot guarantee that future financing will be available on a timely basis, in sufficient amounts or on terms acceptable to us, if at all. Moreover, the terms of any financing may adversely affect the holdings or the rights of our stockholders and the issuance of additional securities by us, whether equity or debt, or the market perception that such issuances are likely to occur, could cause the market price of our common stock to decline. If we are unable to obtain funding on a timely basis on acceptable terms, we may be required to delay, reduce or terminate one or more of our research and development programs or the commercialization of any product candidates that may be approved. This could harm our business and could potentially cause us to cease operations.

Raising additional capital may cause dilution to our stockholders, restrict our operations or require us to relinquish proprietary rights.

Until such time, if ever, as we can generate substantial product revenues, we expect to finance our cash needs through a combination of equity offerings, debt financings, collaborations, strategic alliances and licensing arrangements. To the extent that we raise additional capital through the sale of equity or convertible debt securities, your ownership interest will be diluted and the terms of these securities may include liquidation or other preferences that adversely affect your rights as a common stockholder. Debt financing, if available, may involve agreements that include covenants limiting or restricting our ability to take specific actions, such as incurring additional debt, making capital expenditures or declaring dividends.

If we raise additional funds through collaborations, strategic alliances or licensing arrangements with third parties, we may have to relinquish valuable rights to our technologies, future revenue streams, research programs or product candidates or grant licenses on terms that may not be favorable to us. If we are unable to raise additional funds through equity or debt financings when needed, we may be required to delay, reduce or terminate our product development or future commercialization efforts or grant rights to third parties to develop and market product candidates that we would otherwise prefer to develop and market ourselves.

We might not be able to utilize a significant portion of our net operating loss carryforwards.

As of December 31, 2021, we had federal and state net operating loss, or NOL, carryforwards of $178.1 million and $168.5 million, respectively. The federal NOLs include $4.4 million that may be used to offset up to 100% of future taxable income and will begin to expire in 2035, unless previously utilized, and $173.6 million that are not subject to expiration. The net operating loss carryforwards subject to expiration could expire unused and be unavailable to offset future income tax liabilities. Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or the Tax Act, as modified by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, federal net operating losses incurred in taxable years beginning after December 31, 2017 and in future taxable years may be carried forward indefinitely, but the deductibility of such federal net operating losses in taxable years beginning after December 31, 2020 is limited. There is variation in how states will respond to the Tax Act and CARES Act. In addition, for state income tax purposes, there may be periods during which the use of NOLs is suspended or otherwise limited, such as recent California legislation limiting the usability of NOLs for tax years beginning in 2020 and before 2022.

[Separately, under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the Internal Revenue Code, and corresponding provisions of state law, if a corporation undergoes an “ownership change,” which is generally defined as a greater than 50% change, by value, in its equity ownership over a three-year period, the corporation’s ability to use its pre-change net operating loss carryforwards and other pre-change tax attributes to offset its post-change income or taxes may be limited. The completion of our initial public offering, together with private placements and other transactions that have occurred since our inception, may trigger such an ownership change pursuant to Section 382. We have not completed a Section 382 analysis, and therefore, there can be no assurances that the NOLs are not already limited.]

We may experience ownership changes as a result of subsequent shifts in our stock ownership, some of which may be outside of our control. If an ownership change occurs and our ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards is materially limited, it would harm our future operating results by effectively increasing our future tax obligations.

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Risks Related to the Development of Our Product Candidates

We depend primarily on the success of our lead product candidate, BDC-1001, which is in clinical development and which has not completed a pivotal trial. If we do not obtain regulatory approval for and successfully commercialize our lead product candidate in one or more indications or we experience significant delays in doing so, or if we are unable to advance our other product candidates through preclinical and clinical development, obtain regulatory approval for and successfully commercialize our other product candidates in one or more indications, or we experience significant delays in doing so, we may never generate any revenue or become profitable.

We do not have any products that have received regulatory approval and may never be able to develop marketable product candidates. We are very early in our development efforts. BDC-1001, our lead product candidate, is still in the early stages of clinical development, and is our only product candidate to have advanced beyond preclinical studies. We have invested substantially all of our efforts in developing our Boltbody ISAC approach, identifying potential product candidates and conducting preclinical studies. We expect that a substantial portion of our efforts and expenses over the next several years will be devoted to the development of BDC-1001 in our ongoing and planned clinical trials in HER2-expressing solid tumors, including subsets of HER2-low tumors. As a result, our business currently depends heavily on the successful development, regulatory approval and, if approved, commercialization of BDC-1001 in one or more of these indications. We cannot be certain that BDC-1001 will receive regulatory approval or will be successfully commercialized even if it receives regulatory approval. The research, testing, manufacturing, safety, efficacy, labeling, approval, sale, marketing and distribution of BDC-1001 is, and will remain, subject to comprehensive regulation by the FDA and similar foreign regulatory authorities. Before obtaining regulatory approvals for the commercial sale of any product candidate, we must demonstrate through preclinical studies and clinical trials that the product candidate is safe and effective for use in each target indication. Drug development is a long, expensive and uncertain process, and delay or failure can occur at any stage of any of our clinical trials. Failure to obtain regulatory approval for our product candidates will prevent us from commercializing and marketing our product candidates. The success of BDC-1001 and any other product candidates, including BDC-2034 for the treatment of CEA-expressing solid tumors, will depend on several additional factors, including:

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Many of these factors are beyond our control, including the time needed to adequately complete clinical testing, the regulatory submission process, potential threats to our intellectual property rights and changes in the competitive landscape. It is possible that none of our product candidates will ever obtain regulatory approval, even if we expend substantial time and resources seeking such approval. If we do not achieve one or more of these factors in a timely manner or at all, we could experience significant delays or an inability to successfully complete clinical trials, obtain regulatory approval or, if approved, commercialize our product candidates, which would materially harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

In addition, the clinical trial requirements of the FDA, the EMA, the MHRA and other regulatory agencies and the criteria these regulators may use to determine the safety and efficacy of a product candidate vary substantially according to the type, complexity, novelty and intended use and market of the potential products. The regulatory approval process for novel product candidates such as ours can be more expensive and take longer than for other, better known or extensively studied pharmaceutical or other product candidates.

Our approach to the discovery and development of product candidates based on our Boltbody ISAC approach is unproven, which makes it difficult to predict the time and cost of product candidate development, and we do not know whether we will be able to develop any products of commercial value, or if competing technological approaches will limit the commercial value of our product candidates or render our platform obsolete.

The success of our business depends primarily upon our ability to identify, develop and commercialize products based on our proprietary Boltbody ISAC approach, which leverages a novel and unproven approach. While we have had favorable preclinical study results based on our technology, we have not yet succeeded and may not succeed in demonstrating safety and efficacy for any product candidates in clinical trials or in obtaining marketing approval thereafter. Our lead product candidate, BDC-1001, is in clinical development and we have not yet completed any clinical trials for any product candidate. Our research methodology and novel approach to immunotherapy may be unsuccessful in identifying additional product candidates, and any product candidates based on our technology may be shown to have harmful side effects or may have other characteristics that may necessitate additional clinical testing, or make the product candidates unmarketable or unlikely to receive marketing approval. Further, because all of our product candidates and development programs are based on our technology approach, adverse developments with respect to one of our programs may have a significant adverse impact on the actual or perceived likelihood of success and value of our other programs.

In addition, the biotechnology and biopharmaceutical industries are characterized by rapidly advancing technologies. Our future success will depend in part on our ability to maintain a competitive position with our Boltbody ISAC approach. If we fail to stay at the forefront of technological change in utilizing our Boltbody ISAC approach to create and develop product candidates, we may be unable to compete effectively. Our competitors may render our Boltbody ISAC approach obsolete, or limit the commercial value of our product candidates, by advances in existing technological approaches (for example, using different antibody drug conjugate, or ADC, technologies than we use) or the development of new or different approaches, potentially eliminating the advantages in our drug discovery process that we believe we derive from our research approach and proprietary technologies. By contrast, adverse developments with respect to other companies that attempt to use a similar approach to our approach may adversely impact the actual or perceived value of our Boltbody ISAC approach and potential of our product candidates.

We have concentrated our product research and development efforts on our novel therapeutic approach, and our future success depends on the successful development of our lead product candidate, BDC-1001, and other product candidates. There can be no assurance that any development problems we experience in the future related to our novel therapy will not cause significant delays or unanticipated costs, or that such development problems can be efficiently solved. We may also experience delays in developing a sustainable, reproducible and scalable manufacturing process or transferring that process to commercial partners, which may prevent us from completing our clinical trials or commercializing our product candidates on a timely or profitable basis, if at all.

If any of these events occur, we may be forced to abandon our development efforts for a program or programs, which would have a material adverse effect on our business and could potentially cause us to cease operations.

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We are currently developing, and in the future may develop, product candidates in combination with other therapies and that may expose us to additional risks.

We are developing BDC-1001 as a combination therapy in addition to a single agent therapy. As an example, in January 2022, we announced that the first patient has been dosed in a new combination arm of the ongoing multi-center, multi-dose Phase 1/2 clinical trial of BDC-1001. Also, we may develop future product candidates for use in combination with one or more currently approved cancer therapies. Even if any product candidate we develop was to receive marketing approval or be commercialized for use in combination with other existing therapies, we would continue to be subject to the risks that the FDA or similar foreign regulatory authorities could revoke approval of the therapy used in combination with our product candidate or that safety, efficacy, manufacturing or supply issues could arise with these existing therapies. Combination therapies are commonly used for the treatment of cancer, and we would be subject to similar risks if we develop any of our product candidates for use in combination with other drugs or for indications other than cancer. This could result in our own products being removed from the market or being less successful commercially.

We may also evaluate BDC-1001 or any other future product candidates in combination with one or more other cancer therapies that have not yet been approved for marketing by the FDA or similar foreign regulatory authorities. We will not be able to market and sell BDC-1001 or any product candidate we develop in combination with any such unapproved cancer therapies that do not ultimately obtain marketing approval.

If the FDA or similar foreign regulatory authorities do not approve these other drugs or revoke their approval of, or if safety, efficacy, manufacturing or supply issues arise with, the drugs we choose to evaluate in combination with BDC-1001 or any product candidate we develop, we may be unable to obtain approval of or market BDC-1001 or any product candidate we develop.

We may seek accelerated approval for some or all of our product candidates from the FDA, however, the FDA may disagree and may require completion of additional clinical trials before considering a Biologics License Application, or BLA, for review.

We may seek accelerated approval for BDC-1001 for the treatment of patients with HER2-expressing solid tumors. Under the FDA’s accelerated approval program, the FDA may approve a drug or biologic for a serious or life-threatening illness that provides meaningful therapeutic benefit to patients over existing treatments based upon a surrogate endpoint that is reasonably likely to predict clinical benefit, or on a clinical endpoint that can be measured earlier than 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. For drugs and biologics granted accelerated approval, confirmatory trials are required to confirm safety and clinical benefit and convert the application to full approval. These confirmatory trials must be completed with due diligence. Moreover, the FDA may withdraw approval of an application approved under the accelerated approval pathway if, for example:

Clinical trials are very expensive, time-consuming and difficult to design and implement, and involve uncertain outcomes. Furthermore, results of earlier preclinical studies and clinical trials may not be predictive of results of future preclinical studies or clinical trials.

The risk of failure for our product candidates is high. It is impossible to predict when or if any of our product candidates will prove effective or safe in humans or will receive regulatory approval. To obtain the requisite regulatory approvals to market and sell any of our product candidates, we must demonstrate through extensive preclinical studies and clinical trials that our product candidates are safe and effective in humans for use in each target indication. Clinical testing is expensive and can take many years to complete, and the outcome is inherently uncertain. Failure can occur at any time during the clinical trial process.

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In addition, the results of preclinical studies and earlier clinical trials may not be predictive of the results of later-stage preclinical studies or clinical trials. The results generated to date in preclinical studies or clinical trials for our product candidates do not ensure that later preclinical studies or clinical trials will demonstrate similar results. We have limited clinical data for any of our product candidates. Product candidates in later stages of clinical trials, although we have none at this stage as of yet, may fail to show the desired safety and efficacy traits despite having progressed through preclinical and earlier stage clinical trials. For example, the favorable results of our ongoing trial of BDC-1001 in patients with HER2-expressing solid tumors may not be predictive of similar results in subsequent trials. In later-stage clinical trials, we will likely be subject to more rigorous statistical analyses than in completed earlier stage clinical trials. A number of companies in the pharmaceutical industry have suffered significant setbacks in later-stage clinical trials due to adverse safety profiles or lack of efficacy, notwithstanding promising results in earlier trials, and we cannot be certain that we will not face similar setbacks. Moreover, preclinical and clinical data are often susceptible to varying interpretations and analyses, and many companies that have believed their product candidates performed satisfactorily in preclinical studies and clinical trials have nonetheless failed to obtain marketing approval of their products.

In some instances, there can be significant variability in safety or efficacy results between different clinical trials of the same product candidate due to numerous factors, including changes in clinical trial procedures set forth in protocols, differences in the size and type of the patient populations, adherence to the dosing regimen and other clinical trial protocols, and the rate of dropout among clinical trial participants. If we fail to produce positive results in our planned preclinical studies or clinical trials of any of our product candidates, the development timeline and regulatory approval and commercialization prospects for our product candidates, and, correspondingly, our business and financial prospects, would be materially and adversely affected.

We may encounter substantial delays in our clinical trials or we may fail to demonstrate safety and efficacy to the satisfaction of applicable regulatory authorities.

Before obtaining marketing approval from regulatory authorities for the sale of our product candidates, we must conduct extensive clinical trials to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of the product candidate for its intended indications. Clinical trials are expensive, time-consuming and uncertain as to outcome. We cannot guarantee that any clinical trials will be conducted as planned or completed on schedule, if at all. A failure of one or more clinical trials can occur at any stage of testing. Events that may prevent successful or timely completion of clinical development include:

For instance, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the measures taken by the governmental authorities could disrupt the supply chain and the manufacture or shipment of drug substances and finished drug products for our product candidates for use in our research and clinical trials, delay, limit or prevent our employees and CROs from continuing research and development activities, impede the ability of patients to enroll or continue in clinical trials, or impede testing, monitoring, data collection and analysis or other related activities, any of which could delay our clinical trials and increase our development costs, and have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

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Any inability to timely and successfully complete preclinical and clinical development could result in additional costs to us or impair our ability to achieve regulatory and commercialization milestones. In addition, if we make manufacturing or formulation changes to our product candidates, we may need to conduct additional testing to bridge our modified product candidate to earlier versions. Clinical trial delays could also shorten any periods during which we may have the exclusive right to commercialize our product candidates, if approved, or allow our competitors to bring comparable drugs to market before we do, which could impair our ability to successfully commercialize our product candidates and may harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Additionally, if the results of our clinical trials are inconclusive or if there are safety concerns or serious adverse events associated with our product candidates, we may:

Our drug development costs will also increase if we experience delays in testing or obtaining marketing approvals. We do not know whether any of our preclinical studies or clinical trials will begin as planned, need to be restructured or be completed on schedule, if at all.

Further, we, the FDA or an institutional review board may suspend our clinical trials at any time if it appears that we or our collaborators are failing to conduct a trial in accordance with regulatory requirements, including the FDA’s current Good Clinical Practice, or GCP, regulations, that we are exposing participants to unacceptable health risks or if the FDA finds deficiencies in our Investigational New Drug Applications, or INDs, or the conduct of these trials. Therefore, we cannot predict with any certainty the schedule for commencement and completion of future clinical trials. If we experience delays in the commencement or completion of our clinical trials, or if we terminate a clinical trial prior to completion, the commercial prospects of our product candidates could be negatively impacted, and our ability to generate revenues from our product candidates may be delayed or eliminated entirely.

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

Because we have limited financial and managerial resources, we focus on research programs that we identify for specific indications. As a result, we may forego or delay pursuit of opportunities with other product candidates or for other indications that later prove to have greater commercial potential. Our resource allocation decisions may cause us to fail to capitalize on viable commercial therapies or profitable market opportunities. Our spending on current and future research and development programs and product candidates for specific indications may not yield any commercially viable products. If we do not accurately evaluate the commercial potential or target market for a particular product candidate, we may relinquish valuable rights to that product candidate through collaboration, licensing or other royalty arrangements in cases in which it would have been more advantageous for us to retain sole development and commercialization rights to such product candidate.

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If any of our product candidates receives marketing approval and we, or others, later discover that the drug is less effective than previously believed or causes undesirable side effects that were not previously identified, our ability to market the drug could be compromised.

Clinical trials of our product candidates are conducted in carefully defined subsets of patients who have agreed to enter into clinical trials. Consequently, it is possible that our clinical trials may indicate an apparent positive effect of a product candidate that is greater than the actual positive effect, if any, or alternatively fail to identify undesirable side effects. If one or more of our product candidates receives regulatory approval, and we, or others, later discover that they are less effective than previously believed, or cause undesirable side effects, a number of potentially significant negative consequences could result, including:

Any of these events could prevent us from achieving or maintaining market acceptance of the particular product candidate, if approved, and could significantly harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

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

We may experience difficulties in patient enrollment in our clinical trials for a variety of reasons. The timely completion of clinical trials in accordance with their protocols depends, among other things, on our ability to enroll a sufficient number of patients who remain in the study until its conclusion. We may experience difficulties in patient enrollment in our clinical trials for a variety of reasons. The enrollment of patients depends on many factors, including:

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In addition, our clinical trials will compete with other clinical trials for product candidates that are in the same therapeutic areas as our product candidates, and this competition will reduce the number and types of patients available to us, because some patients who might have opted to enroll in our trials may instead opt to enroll in a trial being conducted by one of our competitors. Since the number of qualified clinical investigators is limited, we expect to conduct some of our clinical trials at the same clinical trial sites that some of our competitors use, which will reduce the number of patients who are available for our clinical trials at such clinical trial site. Moreover, because our product candidates represent a departure from more commonly used methods for cancer treatment, potential patients and their doctors may be inclined to use conventional therapies rather than enroll patients in any future clinical trial.

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

We may become exposed to costly and damaging liability claims, either when testing our product candidates in the clinic or at the commercial stage, and our product liability insurance may not cover all damages from such claims.

We are exposed to potential product liability and professional indemnity risks that are inherent in the research, development, manufacturing, marketing and use of pharmaceutical products. We currently have no products that have been approved for commercial sale. However, the current and future use of product candidates by us in clinical trials, and the sale of any approved products in the future, may expose us to liability claims. These claims might be made by patients who use the product, healthcare providers, pharmaceutical companies or others selling such products. In addition, we have agreed to indemnify the licensors of the intellectual property related to our product candidates against certain intellectual property infringement, misappropriation and other claims. Any claims against us, or with respect to which we are obligated to provide indemnification, regardless of their merit, could be difficult and costly to defend or settle, and could compromise the market acceptance of our product candidates or any prospects for commercialization of our product candidates, if approved. For more information regarding the risks associated with intellectual property-related litigation, see “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property.”

Although the clinical trial process is designed to identify and assess potential side effects, it is always possible that a drug, even after regulatory approval, may exhibit unforeseen side effects. If any of our product candidates were to cause adverse side effects during clinical trials or after approval of the product candidate, we may be exposed to substantial liabilities. Physicians and patients may not comply with any warnings that identify known potential adverse effects and patients who should not use our product candidates.

Although we maintain product liability insurance coverage, such insurance may not be adequate to cover all liabilities that we may incur. We may need to increase our insurance coverage each time we commence a clinical trial and if we successfully commercialize any product candidate. As the expense of insurance coverage is increasing, we may not be able to maintain insurance coverage at a reasonable cost or in an amount adequate to satisfy any liability that may arise. If a successful product liability claim or series of claims is brought against us for uninsured liabilities or in excess of insured liabilities, our assets may not be sufficient to cover such claims and our business operations could be impaired.

Risks Related to Commercialization of Our Product Candidates

We have never commercialized a product candidate and we may lack the necessary expertise, personnel and resources to successfully commercialize any of our products that receive regulatory approval on our own or together with collaborators.

We have never commercialized a product candidate. Our operations to date have been limited to organizing and staffing our company, business planning, raising capital, acquiring the rights to our product candidates and undertaking preclinical studies and clinical trials of our product candidates. We currently have no sales force, marketing, manufacturing or distribution capabilities. To achieve commercial success of our product candidates, if any are approved, we will have to develop our own sales, marketing and manufacturing capabilities or outsource these activities to a third party.

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Factors that may affect our ability to commercialize our product candidates on our own include recruiting and retaining adequate numbers of effective sales and marketing personnel, persuading adequate numbers of physicians to prescribe our product candidates and other unforeseen costs associated with creating an independent sales and marketing organization. Developing a sales and marketing organization requires significant investment, is time-consuming and could delay the launch of our product candidates. We may not be able to build an effective sales and marketing organization in the United States, the European Union or other key global markets. If we are unable to build our own distribution and marketing capabilities or to find suitable partners for the commercialization of our product candidates, we may have difficulties generating revenue from them.

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

The development and commercialization of new drug products is highly competitive. We face competition with respect to our current product candidates and will face competition with respect to any product candidates that we may seek to develop or commercialize in the future, from major pharmaceutical, specialty pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies among others. We compete in the segments of the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and other related markets that develop immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer. There are other companies working to develop immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer including divisions of large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies of various sizes. Some of these competitive products and therapies are based on scientific approaches that are the same as or similar to our approach, and others are based on entirely different approaches. Potential competitors also include academic institutions, government agencies and other public and private research organizations that conduct research, seek patent protection and establish collaborative arrangements for research, development, manufacturing and commercialization.

We are developing our initial product candidates for the treatment of cancer and currently none of these therapies are approved. There are already a variety of available drug therapies marketed for cancer and some of the currently approved drug therapies are branded and subject to patent protection, and others are available on a generic basis. Many of these approved drugs are well established therapies and are widely accepted by physicians, patients and third-party payors. Insurers and other third-party payors may also encourage the use of generic products. We expect that if our product candidates are approved, they will be priced at a significant premium over competitive generic products. This may make it difficult for us to achieve our business strategy of using our product candidates in combination with existing therapies or replacing existing therapies with our product candidates.

Competition may further increase as a result of advances in the commercial applicability of technologies for drug discovery and development and greater availability of capital for investment in cancer therapies. We are aware that Novartis and Silverback are developing HER2-targeting ISACs, and other companies may develop ISACs and toll-like receptor, or TLR, agonists that may have utility for the treatment of HER2-expressing cancers and other indications we are targeting. With respect to BDC-1001, there are numerous companies developing and marketing therapies focused on HER2-expressing cancers that utilize a range of other technologies and scientific approaches including ADCs, vaccines, bispecific antibodies and receptor tyrosine kinases inhibitors. Several of these companies have approved therapies, including Seattle Genetics, Daiichi Sankyo, Roche, Novartis and AstraZeneca, and many others have therapies in clinical development, including Zymeworks, MacroGenics, Merus, and Ambrx. Our current product and future product candidates will also compete more generally with companies developing alternative innate and adaptive immune system approaches for the treatment of cancer.

Our competitors may succeed in developing, acquiring or licensing, on an exclusive basis, products that are more effective or less costly than any product candidate that we may develop. In addition, most of these companies have substantially greater sales, marketing and other experience and reserves than we do.

Established pharmaceutical companies may invest heavily to accelerate discovery and development of novel compounds or to in-license novel compounds that could make our product candidates less competitive. In addition, any new product that competes with an approved product must demonstrate compelling advantages in efficacy, convenience, tolerability and safety in order to overcome price competition and to be commercially successful. Accordingly, our competitors may succeed in obtaining patent protection, discovering, developing, receiving FDA approval for or commercializing drugs before we do, which would have an adverse impact on our business and results of operations.

The availability of our competitors’ products could limit the demand and the price we are able to charge for any product candidate we commercialize, if any. The inability to compete with existing or subsequently introduced drugs would harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

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Even if any of our product candidates receive marketing approval, they may fail to achieve the degree of market acceptance by physicians, patients, third-party payors and others in the medical community necessary for commercial success.

If BDC-1001 and our other current and future product candidates receive marketing approval, whether as a single agent or in combination with other therapies, they may nonetheless fail to gain sufficient market acceptance by physicians, patients, third-party payors and others in the medical community. For example, current approved immunotherapies, and other cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation therapy, are well established in the medical community, and doctors may continue to rely on these therapies. If any of our product candidates do not achieve an adequate level of acceptance, we may not generate significant product revenues and we may never become profitable. The degree of market acceptance of our product candidates, if approved for commercial sale, will depend on a number of factors, including:

The successful commercialization of certain of our product candidates will depend in part on the extent to which governmental authorities and health insurers establish adequate coverage, reimbursement levels and pricing policies. Failure to obtain or maintain adequate coverage and reimbursement for our product candidates, if approved, could limit our ability to market those products and decrease our ability to generate revenue.

The availability and adequacy of coverage and reimbursement by governmental healthcare programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, private health insurers and other third-party payors are essential for most patients to be able to afford products such as our product candidates, if approved. Our ability to achieve acceptable levels of coverage and reimbursement for products by governmental authorities, private health insurers and other organizations will have an effect on our ability to successfully commercialize our product candidates and attract additional collaboration partners to invest in the development of our product candidates. Coverage under certain government programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid, the 340B drug pricing program and TRICARE, may not be available for certain of our product candidates. Assuming we obtain coverage for a given product by a third-party payor, the resulting reimbursement payment rates may not be adequate or may require co-payments that patients find unacceptably high. We cannot be sure that coverage and reimbursement in the United States, European Union Member States or elsewhere will be available for any product that we may develop, and any reimbursement that may become available may be decreased or eliminated in the future.

Third-party payors increasingly are challenging prices charged for pharmaceutical products and services, and many third-party payors may refuse to provide coverage and reimbursement for particular drugs when an equivalent generic drug, biosimilar or a less expensive therapy is available. It is possible that a third-party payor may consider our product candidates and other therapies as substitutable and only offer to reimburse patients for the less expensive product. Even if we show improved efficacy or improved convenience of administration with our product candidates, pricing of existing drugs may limit the amount we will be able to charge for our product candidates. These payors may deny or revoke the reimbursement status of a given product or establish prices for new or existing marketed products at levels that are too low to enable us to realize an appropriate return on our investment in product development. If reimbursement is not available or is available only at limited levels, we may not be able to successfully commercialize our product candidates and may not be able to obtain a satisfactory financial return on products that we may develop.

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There is significant uncertainty related to the insurance coverage and reimbursement of newly approved products. In the United States, third-party payors, including private and governmental payors, such as the Medicare and Medicaid programs, play an important role in determining the extent to which new drugs and biologics will be covered. The Medicare and Medicaid programs increasingly are used as models for how private payors and other governmental payors develop their coverage and reimbursement policies for drugs and biologics. Some third-party payors may require pre-approval of coverage for new or innovative devices or drug therapies before they reimburse health care providers who use such therapies. It is difficult to predict at this time what third-party payors will decide with respect to the coverage and reimbursement for our product candidates.

Obtaining and maintaining reimbursement status is time-consuming and costly. No uniform policy for coverage and reimbursement for products exists among third-party payors in the United States. Therefore, coverage and reimbursement for products can differ significantly from payor to payor. As a result, the coverage determination process is often a time-consuming and costly process that will require us to provide scientific and clinical support for the use of our products to each payor separately, with no assurance that coverage and adequate reimbursement will be applied consistently or obtained in the first instance. Furthermore, rules and regulations regarding reimbursement change frequently, in some cases at short notice, and we believe that changes in these rules and regulations are likely.

Moreover, increasing efforts by governmental and third-party payors in the United States and abroad to cap or reduce healthcare costs may cause such organizations to limit both coverage and the level of reimbursement for newly approved products and, as a result, they may not cover or provide adequate payment for our product candidates. We expect to experience pricing pressures in connection with the sale of any of our product candidates due to the trend toward managed healthcare, the increasing influence of health maintenance organizations, and additional legislative changes. The downward pressure on healthcare costs in general, particularly prescription drugs, has become very intense. As a result, increasingly high barriers are being erected to the entry of new products. The continuing efforts of the government, insurance companies, managed care organizations and other payors of health care services to contain or reduce costs of health care may adversely affect:

Even if we receive marketing approval for any of our product candidates, we may not achieve market acceptance, which would limit the revenue that we can generate from sales of any of our approved product candidates.

Even if the FDA approves the marketing of any product candidates that we develop, physicians, patients, third-party payors or the medical community may not accept or use them. Efforts to educate the medical community and third-party payors on the benefits of our product candidates may require significant resources and may not be successful. Market acceptance of BDC-1001 and our other product candidates, if any are approved, will depend on a number of factors, including, among others:

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The market acceptance of our product candidates also will depend in part on the market acceptance of other immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer. While a number of other cancer immunotherapies have received regulatory approval and are being commercialized, our approach to harnessing ISACs is novel. Adverse events in clinical trials for our product candidates or in clinical trials of others developing similar products and the resulting publicity, as well as any other adverse events in the field of immuno-oncology that may occur in the future, could result in a decrease in demand for BDC-1001 or any other product candidate that we may develop. If public perception is influenced by claims that the use of cancer immunotherapies is unsafe, whether related to our therapies or those of our competitors, our products may not be accepted by the general public or the medical community. Future adverse events in immuno-oncology or the biopharmaceutical industry generally could also result in greater governmental regulation and stricter labeling requirements.

If any one of our product candidates is approved but does not achieve an adequate level of acceptance by patients, physicians and third-party payors, we may not generate sufficient revenue to become or remain profitable and our business may be harmed.

Even if we obtain regulatory approval for our product candidates, they will remain subject to ongoing regulatory oversight.

Even if we obtain regulatory approval for any of our product candidates, they will be subject to extensive and ongoing regulatory requirements for manufacturing processes, labeling, packaging, distribution, adverse event reporting, storage, advertising, promotion, sampling and record-keeping. These requirements include submissions of safety and other post-marketing information and reports, registration, as well as continued compliance with current good manufacturing practices, or cGMP, regulations and GCPs, for any clinical trials that we conduct post-approval, all of which may result in significant expense and limit our ability to commercialize such products. In addition, any regulatory approvals that we receive for our product candidates may also be subject to limitations on the approved indicated uses for which the product may be marketed or to the conditions of approval, or contain requirements for potentially costly post-marketing testing, including Phase 4 clinical trials, and surveillance to monitor the safety and efficacy of the product candidate. For example, prescription drugs may be promoted only for the approved indications in accordance with the approved label. However, physicians may, in their independent medical judgment, prescribe legally available products for off-label uses. The FDA does not regulate the behavior of physicians in their choice of treatments, but the FDA does restrict manufacturer’s communications on the subject of off-label use of their products. Companies may only share truthful and not misleading information that is otherwise consistent with a product’s FDA approved labeling. The FDA may also require a REMS as a condition of approval of our product candidates, which could include requirements for a medication guide, physician communication plans or additional elements to ensure safe use, such as restricted distribution methods, patient registries and other risk minimization tools.

The FDA’s and other regulatory authorities’ policies may change, and additional government regulations may be enacted that could prevent, limit or delay regulatory approval of our product candidates. We cannot predict the likelihood, nature or extent of government regulation that may arise from future legislation or administrative action, either in the United States or abroad. If we are slow or unable to adapt to changes in existing requirements or the adoption of new requirements or policies, or if we are not able to maintain regulatory compliance, we may lose any marketing approval that we may have obtained and we may not achieve or sustain profitability. Moreover, if there are changes in the application of legislation or regulatory policies, or if problems are discovered with a product or our manufacture of a product, or if we or one of our distributors, licensees or co-marketers fails to comply with regulatory requirements, the regulators could take various actions. These include:

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If any of these events occurs, our ability to sell such product may be impaired, and we may incur substantial additional expense to comply with regulatory requirements, which could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

If any of our product candidates are approved for marketing and commercialization and we are unable to establish sales and marketing capabilities or enter into agreements with third parties to sell and market our product candidates, we will be unable to successfully commercialize our product candidates if and when they are approved.

We have no sales, marketing or distribution capabilities or experience. To achieve commercial success for any approved product for which we retain sales and marketing responsibilities, we must either develop a sales and marketing organization, which would be expensive and time consuming, or outsource these functions to other third parties. In the future, we may choose to build a focused sales and marketing infrastructure to sell, or participate in sales activities with our collaborators for some of our product candidates if and when they are approved.

There are risks involved with both establishing our own sales and marketing capabilities and entering into arrangements with third parties to perform these services. For example, recruiting and training a sales force is expensive and time-consuming and could delay any product launch. If the commercial launch of a product candidate for which we recruit a sales force and establish marketing capabilities is delayed or does not occur for any reason, we would have prematurely or unnecessarily incurred these commercialization expenses. This may be costly, and our investment would be lost if we cannot retain or reposition our sales and marketing personnel.

Factors that may inhibit our efforts to commercialize our product candidates on our own include:

If we enter into arrangements with third parties to perform sales, marketing and distribution services, our product revenues or the profitability of these product revenues to us are likely to be lower than if we were to market and sell any products that we develop ourselves. In addition, we may not be successful in entering into arrangements with third parties to sell and market our product candidates or may be unable to do so on terms that are favorable to us. In entering into third-party marketing or distribution arrangements, any revenue we receive will depend upon the efforts of the third parties and we cannot assure you that such third parties will establish adequate sales and distribution capabilities or devote the necessary resources and attention to sell and market our product candidates effectively. If we do not establish sales and marketing capabilities successfully, either on our own or in collaboration with third parties, we will not be successful in commercializing our product candidates.

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The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union could adversely affect us.

The United Kingdom held a referendum on June 23, 2016, in which a majority voted for the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, or Brexit. As a result of this vote, the United Kingdom left the European Union on January 31, 2020, commonly referred to as Brexit. Pursuant to the formal withdrawal arrangements agreed between the United Kingdom and the European Union, the United Kingdom was subject to a transition period until December 31, 2020, or the Transition Period, during which European Union rules continued to apply. The Trade and Cooperation Agreement, or the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which outlines the future trading relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union was agreed in December 2020, provisionally applied from January 1, 2021, and became formally effective on May 1, 2021. The effects of Brexit have been and will continue to be far-reaching. Brexit and the perceptions as to its impact may adversely affect business activity and economic conditions in Europe and globally and could continue to contribute to instability in global financial and foreign exchange markets. Since a significant proportion of the regulatory framework in the United Kingdom applicable to our business and our product candidates is derived from European Union directives and regulations, Brexit has had, and will continue to have, a material impact upon the regulatory regime with respect to the development, manufacture, importation, approval and commercialization of our product candidates in the United Kingdom and in the European Union (given that certain development activities relating to our products take place in the United Kingdom). For example, Great Britain is no longer covered by the centralized procedures for obtaining European Union wide marketing authorization from the EMA and a separate marketing authorization will therefore be required to market our product candidates in Great Britain.

Any delay in obtaining, or an inability to obtain, any marketing approvals, as a result of Brexit or otherwise, could make it more difficult to commercialize, or prevent us from commercializing our product candidates in the European Union or in the United Kingdom and restrict our ability to generate revenue and achieve and sustain profitability. While the Trade and Cooperation Agreement provides for the tariff-free trade of medicinal products between the United Kingdom and the European Union, there may be additional non-tariff costs to such trade which did not exist prior to the end of the Transition Period. Further, should the United Kingdom further diverge from the European Union from a regulatory perspective in relation to medicinal products, tariffs could be put into place in the future. We could therefore, both now and in the future, face significant additional expenses (when compared to the position prior to the end of the Transition Period) to operate our business, which could significantly and materially harm or delay our ability to generate revenues or achieve profitability of our business.

Any further changes in international trade, tariff and import/export regulations as a result of Brexit or otherwise may impose unexpected duty costs or other non-tariff barriers on us. These developments, or the perception that any of them could occur, may significantly reduce global trade and, in particular, trade between the impacted nations and the United Kingdom.

Other European Union Member States may seek to conduct referenda with respect to their continuing membership in the European Union. Given these possibilities and others we may not anticipate, as well as the lack of comparable precedent, we cannot be certain of the full extent to which Brexit could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

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Risks Related to Our Dependence on Third Parties

We do not have our own manufacturing capabilities and will rely on third parties to produce clinical and commercial supplies of BDC-1001 and our other current and future product candidates.

We have limited experience in drug formulation and manufacturing and do not own or operate, and we do not expect to own or operate facilities for drug manufacturing, storage, distribution or testing. We have entered into supply agreements with Piramal Healthcare UK Ltd, or Piramal, to manufacture drug substance and drug product and EirGenix, Inc., pursuant to which we agreed to purchase monoclonal antibodies, including a biosimilar of trastuzumab, for our Boltbody ISAC. Our current third-party CMOs may be unable or unwilling to supply us with sufficient clinical and commercial grade quantities of our clinical materials due to production shortages or other supply interruptions resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic or otherwise, because they are purchased by one of our competitors or another company that decides not to continue supplying us with these materials, or for other reasons. If one or more of these events occur and we are unable to timely establish an alternate supply from one or more third-party CMOs, we could experience delays in our development efforts as we locate and qualify new manufacturers. Under such circumstances, we may be required to receive drug substance for use on a purchase order basis, and as such, there can be no assurance that we actually receive sufficient quantities. See also the risk factor titled “Our business, operations and clinical development plans and timelines and supply chain could be adversely affected by the effects of health epidemics, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, on the manufacturing, clinical trial and other business activities performed by us or by third parties with whom we conduct business, including our CMOs, CROs, shippers and others.”

Further, our reliance on third-party manufacturers exposes us to risks beyond our control, including the risk of:

Some of these events could be the basis for FDA action, including injunction, recall, seizure or total or partial suspension of production. In addition, our third-party manufacturers and suppliers are subject to FDA inspection from time to time. Failure by our third-party manufacturers and suppliers to pass such inspections and otherwise satisfactorily complete the FDA approval regimen with respect to our product candidate may result in regulatory actions such as the issuance of FDA Form 483 notices of observations, warning letters or injunctions or the loss of operating licenses. In addition, our third-party manufacturers and suppliers are subject to numerous environmental, health and safety laws and regulations, including those governing the handling, use, storage, treatment and disposal of waste products, and failure to comply with such laws and regulations could result in significant costs associated with civil or criminal fines and penalties for such third parties. Based on the severity of the regulatory action, our clinical or commercial supply of drug and packaging and other services could be interrupted or limited, which could harm our business.

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In addition, our CMOs are or may be engaged with other companies to supply and manufacture materials or products for such companies, which also exposes our suppliers and manufacturers to regulatory risks for the production of such materials and products. As a result, failure to meet the regulatory requirements for the production of those materials and products may also affect the regulatory clearance of a contract supplier’s or manufacturer’s facility. If the FDA or a comparable foreign regulatory agency does not approve these facilities for the supply or manufacture of our product candidates, or if it withdraws its approval in the future, we may need to find alternative supply or manufacturing facilities, which would negatively impact our ability to develop, obtain regulatory approval of or market our product candidates, if approved.

As we prepare for later-stage clinical trials and potential commercialization, we will need to take steps to increase the scale of production of our product candidates, which may include transferring production to new third-party suppliers or manufacturers. In order to conduct larger or late-stage scale clinical trials for our product candidates and supply sufficient commercial quantities of the resulting drug product and its components, if that product candidate is approved for sale, our CMOs and suppliers will need to produce our product candidates in larger quantities, more cost effectively and, in certain cases, at higher yields than they currently achieve. These third-party contractors may not be able to successfully increase the manufacturing capacity for any such product candidates in a timely or cost-effective manner or at all. Significant scale up of manufacturing may require additional processes, technologies and validation studies, which are costly, may not be successful and which the FDA and foreign regulatory authorities must review and approve. In addition, quality issues may arise during those scale-up activities because of the inherent properties of a product candidate itself or of a product candidate in combination with other components added during the manufacturing and packaging process, or during shipping and storage of the active pharmaceutical ingredients or the finished product. If our third-party CMOs are unable to successfully scale up the manufacture of any of our product candidates in sufficient quality and quantity and at commercially reasonable prices, and we are unable to find one or more replacement suppliers or manufacturers capable of production at a substantially equivalent cost in substantially equivalent volumes and quality, and we are unable to successfully transfer the processes on a timely basis, the development of that product candidate and regulatory approval or commercial launch for any resulting products may be delayed, or there may be a shortage in supply, either of which could significantly harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Any of these events could lead to clinical trial delays, failure to obtain regulatory approval or impact our ability to successfully commercialize any potential future product candidates.

We rely on third parties to conduct our preclinical studies and clinical trials and if these third parties perform in an unsatisfactory manner, our business could be substantially harmed.

We intend to conduct our future clinical trials using our own clinical resources while also leveraging expertise and assistance from CROs as appropriate. We do not currently have the ability to independently conduct large-scale clinical trials, such as a Phase 3 clinical trial, without outside assistance.

We have relied upon and plan to continue to rely upon medical institutions, clinical investigators, contract laboratories and other third parties, such as CROs, to conduct or assist us in conducting GCP-compliant clinical trials on our product candidates properly and on time and may not currently have all of the necessary contractual relationships in place to do so. Once we have established contractual relationships with such third-party CROs, we will have only limited control over their actual performance of these activities.

We and our CROs and other vendors are required to comply with current good manufacturing practice, or cGMP, good clinical practice, or GCP, and good laboratory practice, or GLP, which are regulations and guidelines enforced by the FDA, the Competent Authorities of the Member States of the European Union and any comparable foreign regulatory authorities for all of our product candidates in preclinical and clinical development. Regulatory authorities enforce these regulations through periodic inspections of trial sponsors, principal investigators, clinical trial sites and other contractors. Although we rely on CROs to conduct any current or planned GLP-compliant preclinical studies and GCP-compliant clinical trials and have limited influence over their actual performance, we remain responsible for ensuring that each of our preclinical studies and clinical trials is conducted in accordance with its investigational plan and protocol and applicable laws and regulations, and our reliance on the CROs does not relieve us of our regulatory responsibilities. If we or any of our CROs or vendors fail to comply with applicable regulations, the data generated in our preclinical studies and clinical trials may be deemed unreliable and the FDA, EMA, MHRA or any comparable foreign regulatory agency may require us to perform additional preclinical studies and clinical trials before approving our marketing applications. We cannot assure you that upon inspection by a given regulatory agency, such regulatory agency will determine that all of our clinical trials comply with GCP regulations. In addition, our clinical trials must be conducted with products produced under cGMP requirements. Our failure to comply with these requirements may require us to repeat clinical trials, which would delay the regulatory approval process.

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While we will have agreements governing their activities, our CROs will not be our employees, and we will not be able to control whether or not they devote sufficient time and resources to our future preclinical and clinical programs. These CROs may also have relationships with other commercial entities, including our competitors, for whom they may also be conducting clinical trials, or other drug development activities which could harm our business. We face the risk of potential unauthorized disclosure, infringement, misappropriation or other violation of our intellectual property by CROs, which may reduce our trade secret protection and allow our potential competitors, and other third parties, to access and exploit our proprietary technology. CROs also may use our proprietary information and intellectual property in such a way as to invite litigation or other intellectual property-related proceedings that could jeopardize or invalidate our proprietary information and intellectual property. If our CROs do not successfully carry out their contractual duties or obligations, fail to meet expected deadlines or if the quality or accuracy of the clinical data they obtain is compromised due to the failure to adhere to our clinical protocols or regulatory requirements or for any other reason, our clinical trials may be extended, delayed or terminated, the clinical data generated in our clinical trials may be deemed unreliable, and we may not be able to obtain regulatory approval for, or successfully commercialize any product candidate that we develop. As a result, our financial results and the commercial prospects for any product candidate that we develop would be harmed, our costs could increase, and our ability to generate revenue could be delayed.

If our relationships with these CROs terminate, we may not be able to enter into arrangements with alternative CROs or do so on commercially reasonable terms. Switching or adding additional CROs involves substantial cost and requires management time and focus and could delay development and commercialization of our product candidates. In addition, there is a natural transition period when a new CRO commences work. As a result, delays occur, which can negatively impact our ability to meet our desired clinical development timelines. Though we intend to carefully manage our relationships with our CROs, there can be no assurance that we will not encounter challenges or delays in the future or that these delays or challenges will not have a negative impact on our business and financial condition.

If we are not able to maintain our current collaborations and establish further collaborations, we may have to alter some of our future development and commercialization plans.

We have established collaboration agreements with third parties to develop our current and potential future product candidates. These include our collaborations with Toray Industries, Inc., or Toray, Genmab A/S, or Genmab, Innovent Biologics, Inc., or Innovent, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, or BMS. We may enter into other collaboration agreements with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies for the future development and potential commercialization of our product candidates. We will likely have limited control over the amount and timing of resources that our collaborators dedicate to the development or commercialization of any product candidates we may seek to develop with them. We cannot predict the success of any collaboration that we have entered into or will enter into.

We face significant competition in seeking appropriate collaborators, and a number of more established companies may also be pursuing strategies to license or acquire third-party intellectual property rights that we may consider attractive. These established companies may have a competitive advantage over us due to their size, financial resources and greater clinical development and commercialization capabilities. In addition, companies that perceive us to be a competitor may be unwilling to assign or license rights to us. Whether we reach a definitive agreement for a collaboration will depend, among other things, upon our assessment of the collaborator’s resources and expertise, the terms and conditions of the proposed collaboration and the proposed collaborator’s evaluation of a number of factors. Those factors may include the design or results of clinical trials, the likelihood of approval by the FDA, EMA, MHRA or similar foreign regulatory authorities, the potential market for the subject product candidate, the costs and complexities of manufacturing and delivering such product candidate to patients, competing products, the existence of uncertainty with respect to our ownership of technology, which can exist if there is a challenge to such ownership without regard to the merits of the challenge, and industry and market conditions generally. The collaborator may also consider alternative product candidates or technologies for similar indications that may be available to collaborate on and whether such a collaboration could be more attractive than the one with us for our product candidate. We may also be restricted under future license agreements from entering into agreements on certain terms with potential collaborators. Collaborations are complex and time-consuming to negotiate and document. In addition, there have been a significant number of recent business combinations among large pharmaceutical companies that have resulted in a reduced number of potential future collaborators.

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We may not be able to negotiate further collaborations on a timely basis, on acceptable terms, or at all. Even if we are able to obtain a license to intellectual property of interest, we may not be able to secure exclusive rights, in which case others could use the same rights and compete with us. Our existing collaboration partners may not prioritize our product candidates or otherwise not effectively pursue the development of our product candidates which may delay, reduce or terminate the development of such product candidate, reduce or delay its development program or delay its potential commercialization. Further if we are unable to successfully obtain rights to required third-party intellectual property rights or maintain and protect the existing intellectual property rights we have, we may have to delay, reduce or terminate the development of such product candidate, reduce or delay its development program or one or more of our other development programs, delay its potential commercialization or reduce the scope of any sales or marketing activities or increase our expenditures and undertake development or commercialization activities at our own expense. Doing so will likely harm our ability to execute our business plans. If we elect to increase our expenditures to fund development or commercialization activities on our own, we may need to obtain additional capital, which may not be available to us on acceptable terms or at all. If we do not have sufficient funds, we may not be able to further develop our product candidates or bring them to market and generate product revenue.

Risks Related to Regulatory Compliance

Enacted and future legislation may increase the difficulty and cost for us to obtain marketing approval of and commercialize our product candidates and affect the prices we may charge for such product candidates.

The United States and many foreign jurisdictions have enacted or proposed legislative and regulatory changes affecting the healthcare system that could prevent or delay marketing approval of our product candidates, restrict or regulate post-approval activities and affect our ability to profitably sell any product for which we obtain marketing approval.

In March 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, or collectively, the Affordable Care Act, was enacted, which includes measures that have significantly changed the way health care is financed by both governmental and private insurers. There have been executive, judicial and congressional challenges to certain aspects of the Affordable Care Act. While Congress has not passed comprehensive repeal legislation, it has enacted laws that modify certain provisions of the Affordable Care Act such as removing penalties, starting January 1, 2019, for not complying with the Affordable Care Act’s “individual mandate” to carry health insurance. On June 17, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a challenge on procedural grounds that argued the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional in its entirety because the “individual mandate” was repealed by Congress. Thus, the Affordable Care Act will remain in effect in its current form. Further, on January 28, 2021, President Biden issued an executive order that initiated a special enrollment period for purposes of obtaining health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. The executive order also instructed certain governmental agencies to review and reconsider their existing policies and rules that limit access to healthcare, including among others, reexamining Medicaid demonstration projects and waiver programs that include work requirements, and policies that create unnecessary barriers to obtaining access to health insurance coverage through Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act. It is possible that the Affordable Care Act will be subject to judicial or congressional challenges in the future. It is unclear how any such challenges and the healthcare reform measures of the Biden administration will impact the Affordable Care Act.

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In addition, other legislative changes have been proposed and adopted since the Affordable Care Act was enacted. For example, in August 2011, President Obama signed into law the Budget Control Act of 2011, which, among other things, created the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to recommend to Congress proposals in spending reductions. The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction did not achieve a targeted deficit reduction, which triggered the legislation’s automatic reduction to several government programs. This includes aggregate reductions to Medicare payments to providers of, on average, 2% per fiscal year through 2031 with the exception of a temporary suspension from May 1, 2020 through March 31, 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, unless Congress takes additional action. Under current legislation, the actual reduction in Medicare payments will vary from 1% in 2022 to up to 3% in the final fiscal year of this sequester. Recently, there has been increasing legislative and enforcement interest in the United States with respect to specialty drug pricing practices. Specifically, there have been several recent U.S. presidential executive orders, congressional inquiries and legislation designed to, among other things, bring more transparency to drug pricing, reduce the cost of prescription drugs under Medicare, review the relationship between pricing and manufacturer patient programs and reform government program reimbursement methodologies for drugs. For example, in July 2021, the Biden administration released an executive order, “Promoting Competition in the American Economy,” with multiple provisions aimed at prescription drugs. In response to Biden’s executive order, on September 9, 2021, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, released a Comprehensive Plan for Addressing High Drug Prices that outlines principles for drug pricing reform and sets out a variety of potential legislative policies that Congress could pursue to advance these principles. No legislation or administrative actions have been finalized to implement these principles. In addition, Congress is considering drug pricing as part of other reform initiatives. At the state level, legislatures have increasingly passed legislation and implemented regulations designed to control costs pharmaceutical and biological products. It is also possible that additional governmental action will be taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We expect that the healthcare reform measures that have been adopted and may be adopted in the future, may result in more rigorous coverage criteria and in additional downward pressure on the price that we receive for any approved product and could seriously harm our future revenues. Any reduction in reimbursement from Medicare or other government programs may result in a similar reduction in payments from private payors. The implementation of cost containment measures or other healthcare reforms may prevent us from being able to generate revenue, attain profitability or commercialize our products.

Our business operations and current and future relationships with investigators, health care professionals, consultants, third-party payors and customers will be subject, directly or indirectly, to federal and state healthcare fraud and abuse laws, false claims laws, health information privacy and security laws and other healthcare laws and regulations. If we are unable to comply, or have not fully complied with such laws, we could face substantial penalties.

Although we do not currently have any products on the market, our operations may be, directly or indirectly subject to various U.S. federal and state healthcare laws and regulations, including, without limitation, the U.S. federal Anti-Kickback Statute, the U.S. federal civil and criminal false claims laws and the Physician Payments Sunshine Act and regulations. Healthcare providers and others play a primary role in the recommendation and prescription of any products for which we obtain marketing approval. These laws may impact, among other things, our current business operations, including our clinical research activities, and proposed sales, marketing and education programs and constrain the business of financial arrangements and relationships with healthcare providers and other parties through which we may market, sell and distribute our products for which we obtain marketing approval. In addition, we may be subject to patient data privacy and security regulation by both the U.S. federal government and the states in which we conduct our business. Finally, we may be subject to additional healthcare, statutory and regulatory requirements and enforcement by foreign regulatory authorities in jurisdictions in which we conduct our business. The laws that may affect our ability to operate include:

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Ensuring that our internal operations and future business arrangements with third parties comply with applicable healthcare laws and regulations will involve substantial costs. It is possible that governmental authorities will conclude that our business practices do not comply with current or future statutes, regulations, agency guidance or case law involving applicable fraud and abuse or other healthcare laws and regulations. If our operations are found to be in violation of any of the laws described above or any other governmental laws and regulations that may apply to us, we may be subject to significant penalties, including civil, criminal and administrative penalties, damages, fines, exclusion from U.S. government funded healthcare programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, or similar programs in other countries or jurisdictions, disgorgement, imprisonment, contractual damages, reputational harm, diminished profits, additional reporting requirements and oversight if we become subject to a corporate integrity agreement or similar agreement to resolve allegations of non-compliance with these laws and the delay, reduction, termination or restructuring of our operations. Further, defending against any such actions can be costly and time-consuming, and may require significant financial and personnel resources. Therefore, even if we are successful in defending against any such actions that may be brought against us, our business may be impaired. If any of the physicians or other providers or entities with whom we expect to do business is found to not be in compliance with applicable laws, they may be subject to criminal, civil or administrative sanctions, including exclusions from government funded healthcare programs and imprisonment. If any of the above occur, it could adversely affect our ability to operate our business and our results of operations.

Failure to comply with current or future federal, state and foreign laws and regulations and industry standards relating to privacy and data protection laws 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 our collaborators and third-party providers may be subject to federal, state and foreign data privacy and security laws and regulations. In the United States, numerous federal and state laws and regulations, including federal health information privacy laws, state data breach notification laws, new proposed cybersecurity rules from the SEC, 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 and third-party providers.

In many jurisdictions, enforcement actions and consequences for noncompliance are rising. In the United States, these include enforcement actions in response to rules and regulations promulgated under the authority of federal agencies and state attorneys general and legislatures and consumer protection agencies. In addition, privacy advocates and industry groups have regularly proposed, and may propose in the future, self-regulatory standards that may legally or contractually apply to us. If we fail to follow these security standards, even if no customer information is compromised, we may incur significant fines or experience a significant increase in costs. Many state legislatures have adopted legislation that regulates how businesses operate online, including measures relating to privacy, data security and data breaches. Laws in all 50 states require businesses to provide notice to customers whose personally identifiable information has been disclosed as a result of a data breach. The laws are not consistent, and compliance in the event of a widespread data breach is costly.

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States are also constantly amending existing laws, requiring attention to frequently changing regulatory requirements. For example, California recently enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act, or the CCPA, which became effective on January 1, 2020. The CCPA gives California residents expanded rights to access and delete their personal information, opt out of certain personal information sharing and receive detailed information about how their personal information is used. The CCPA provides for civil penalties for violations, as well as a private right of action for data breaches that are expected to increase data breach litigation. Additionally, a new privacy law, the California Privacy Rights Act, or the CPRA, was approved by California voters in the election of November 3, 2020. The CPRA, which will take effect in most material respects on January 1, 2023, modifies the CCPA significantly, including by expanding consumers’ rights with respect to certain sensitive personal information and creating a new state agency to oversee implementation and enforcement efforts, potentially resulting in further uncertainty and requiring us to incur additional costs and expenses in an effort to comply. At this time, we do not collect personal data on residents of California, but should we begin to do so, the CCPA and CPRA will impose new and burdensome privacy compliance obligations on our business and will raise new risks for potential fines and class actions. Further, on March 2, 2021, Virginia enacted the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act, or
CDPA, which becomes effective on January 1, 2023, and on June 8, 2021, Colorado enacted the Colorado Privacy Act, or
CPA, which takes effect on July 1, 2023. The CPA and CDPA are similar to the CCPA and CPRA but aspects of these state
privacy statutes remain unclear, resulting in further legal uncertainty and potentially requiring us to modify our data practices and policies and to incur substantial additional costs and expenses in an effort to comply. Other states have considered similar bills, which could be enacted in the future. In addition to fines and penalties that may be imposed for failure to comply with state law, some states also provide for private rights of action to customers for misuse of or unauthorized access to personal information. Our compliance with these changing and increasingly burdensome and sometimes conflicting regulations and
requirements may cause us to incur substantial costs or require us to change our business practices, which may impact our
financial condition.

Foreign data protection laws, including EU General Data Protection Regulation, or the GDPR, and the Personal Information

Protection Act, or the PIPA, in South Korea, may also apply to health-related and other personal information obtained outside of the United States. The GDPR, which came into effect on May 25, 2018, 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). Among other requirements, the GDPR regulates transfers of personal data to third countries that have not been found to provide adequate protection to such personal data, including the United States, and the efficacy and longevity of current transfer mechanisms between the EU and the United States remains uncertain. We may make use of alternative data transfer mechanisms such as standard contractual clauses approved on June 4, 2021, by the European Commission, or the
SCCs. The new SCCs may require us to expend significant resources to update our contractual arrangements and to comply
with such obligations. Our third-party service providers may also be affected by these changes. In addition to other impacts,
we may experience additional costs to comply with these changes. We also may be required to engage in new contract
negotiations with third parties that aid in processing data on our behalf, to the extent that any of our service providers or
consultants have been relying on invalidated or insufficient contractual protections for compliance with evolving
interpretations of and guidance for cross-border data transfers pursuant to the GDPR. In such cases, we may not be able to
find alternative service providers, which could limit our ability to process personal data from the EEA, Switzerland, or the
United Kingdom and increase our costs.

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Further, the vote in the United Kingdom in favor of exiting the EU, referred to as Brexit, has created uncertainty with regard to data protection regulation in the United Kingdom. Specifically, while the Data Protection Act of 2018, that “implements” and complements the GDPR achieved Royal Assent on May 23, 2018, and is now effective in the United Kingdom, aspects of data protection in the United Kingdom, such as the transfer of data from the EEA to the United Kingdom, remain uncertain. In particular, with the expiry of the transition period on December 31, 2020, companies must comply with both the GDPR and the GDPR as incorporated into United Kingdom national law, the latter regime having the ability to separately fine up to the greater of £17.5 million or 4% of global turnover. On June 28, 2021, the European Commission announced a decision of “adequacy” concluding that the United Kingdom ensures an equivalent level of data protection to the GDPR, which provides some relief regarding the legality of continued personal data flows from the EEA to the United Kingdom. Some uncertainty remains, however, as this adequacy determination must be renewed after four years and may be modified or revoked in the interim. We cannot fully predict how the Data Protection Act, the UK GDPR, and other UK data protection laws or regulations may develop in the medium to longer term nor the effects of divergent laws and guidance regarding how data transfers to and from the United Kingdom will be regulated. At this time, we do not believe we are subject to the GDPR or the Data Protection Act of 2018, but should this change, the GDPR and/or the Data Protection Act of 2018 will increase our responsibility and potential liability in relation to personal data that we process, and we may be required to put in place additional mechanisms to ensure compliance with these data protection rules.

Compliance with U.S. and foreign 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 by us, our collaborators, or third-party providers to comply with U.S. and foreign 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, could result in adverse publicity and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property

If we are unable to obtain, maintain and protect sufficient patent and other intellectual property rights for our product candidates and technology, or if the scope of patent and other intellectual property rights obtained is not sufficiently broad, we may not be able to compete effectively in our market.

Our success depends in significant part on our ability and the ability of our licensors and collaborators to obtain, maintain, enforce and defend patents and other intellectual property rights with respect to our product candidates and technology and to operate our business without infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating the intellectual property rights of others. We have licensed two patent estates from The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, or Stanford. For more information, see “Business—License and Collaboration Agreements.” In addition, we have filed patent applications that are solely owned by us or co-owned by us with Stanford and for which Stanford has granted us an exclusive license to its rights. As of December 31, 2021, we only have three issued patents namely two U.S. patents that are co-owned with, and exclusively licensed to us by, Stanford and an Australian patent that is owned by Stanford and exclusively licensed to us. Many of our patent applications that we own, co-own with Stanford, or have licensed from Stanford are U.S. provisional patent applications. A U.S. provisional patent application is not eligible to become an issued patent until, among other things, we file a non-provisional patent application within 12 months of filing of the provisional patent application. With regard to such U.S. provisional patent applications, if we or our licensors do not timely file any non-provisional patent applications, we may lose our priority dates with respect to our provisional patent applications and any patent protection on the inventions disclosed in our provisional patent applications. While we intend to timely file non-provisional patent applications relating to our provisional patent applications, we cannot predict whether any such patent applications will result in the issuance of patents that provide us with any competitive advantage.

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The patent prosecution process is expensive and time-consuming. We and our current or future licensors, licensees or collaborators may not be able to prepare, file and prosecute all necessary or desirable patent applications at a reasonable cost or in a timely manner. It is also possible that we or our licensors will fail to identify patentable aspects of our research and development output in time to obtain patent protection or fail to file patent applications covering inventions made in the course of development and commercialization activities before a competitor or another third party files a patent application covering, or publishes information disclosing, a similar, independently-developed invention. Such competitor’s or other third party’s patent application may pose obstacles to our ability to obtain patent protection or limit the scope of the patent protection we may obtain. Although we enter into non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements with parties who have access to confidential or patentable aspects of our research and development output, such as our employees, collaborators, CROs, contract manufacturers, consultants, advisors and other third parties, any of these parties may breach the agreements and disclose such output before a patent application is filed, thereby jeopardizing our ability to seek patent protection. In addition, publications of discoveries in the scientific literature often lag behind the actual discoveries, and patent applications in the United States and other jurisdictions are typically not published until 18 months after filing, or in some cases not at all. Therefore, we cannot be certain that we or our licensors were the first to make the inventions claimed in our owned or licensed patents or pending patent applications or were the first to file for patent protection of such inventions.

The patent position of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies generally is uncertain, involves complex legal and factual questions and is the subject of much litigation. As a result, the issuance, scope, validity, enforceability and commercial value of our and our current or future licensors’ patent rights are uncertain. Our and our licensors’ pending, and future patent applications may not result in patents being issued that protect our technology or product candidates, in whole or in part, or which effectively exclude others from commercializing competitive technologies and product candidates. The patent examination process may require us or our licensors to narrow the scope of the claims of our pending and future patent applications, and therefore, even if such patent applications issue as patents, they may not issue in a form that will provide us with any meaningful protection, prevent competitors or other third parties from competing with us or otherwise provide us with any competitive advantage. Our and our licensors’ patent applications cannot be enforced against third parties practicing the technology claimed in such applications unless and until a patent issues from such applications, and then only to the extent the issued claims cover such technology. Any patents that we hold, or in-license may be challenged, narrowed, circumvented or invalidated by third parties. Consequently, we do not know whether any of our product candidates will be protectable or remain protected by valid and enforceable patents. Our competitors or other third parties may be able to circumvent our patents by developing similar or alternative technologies or products in a non-infringing manner. Any of the foregoing could harm our competitive position, business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

The patent protection we obtain for our product candidates and technology may be challenged or not sufficient to provide us with any competitive advantage.

Even if our owned or licensed patent applications issue as patents, the issuance of any such patents is not conclusive as to their inventorship, scope, validity or enforceability, and such patents may be challenged, invalidated, narrowed or held to be unenforceable, including in the courts or patent offices in the United States and abroad, or circumvented. We may be subject to a third party preissuance submission of prior art to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO, or equivalent foreign bodies, or become involved in opposition, derivation, revocation, re-examination, post-grant and inter partes review or interference proceedings challenging our patent rights or the patent rights of others. An adverse determination in any such submission, proceeding or litigation could reduce the scope of, or invalidate, our patent rights, allow third parties to commercialize our technology or products and compete directly with us, without payment to us, or result in our inability to manufacture or commercialize products without infringing third-party patent rights. Moreover, we, or one of our licensors, may have to participate in interference or derivation proceedings declared by the USPTO to determine priority or ownership of invention or in post-grant challenge proceedings, such as oppositions in a foreign patent office, that challenge priority of invention or other features of patentability. Such proceedings and any other patent challenges may result in loss of patent rights, loss of exclusivity, loss of priority or in patent claims being narrowed, invalidated or held unenforceable, which could limit our ability to stop others from using or commercializing similar or identical technology and products or limit the duration of the patent protection of our technology and product candidates. Such proceedings also may result in substantial costs and require significant time from our scientists and management, even if the eventual outcome is favorable to us. Moreover, there could be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other developments related to any of the foregoing proceedings. If securities analysts or investors perceive those results to be negative, it could cause the price of shares of our common stock to decline. Any of the foregoing could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

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Moreover, some of our owned or in-licensed patents and patent applications are, and may in the future be, co-owned with third parties. If we are unable to obtain an exclusive license to any such co-owners’ interest in such patents or patent applications, such co-owners may be able to license their rights to other third parties, including our competitors, who could market competing products and technology. In addition, we may need the cooperation of any such co-owners in order to enforce such patents against third parties, and such cooperation may not be provided to us.

In addition, our owned and in-licensed patents may be subject to a reservation of rights by one or more third parties. For example, our licenses to certain intellectual property owned by Stanford are subject to certain rights Stanford retained for itself and for other non-profit research institutions. In addition, the technology claimed by the patents that we licensed from Stanford was developed using U.S. government funding. As a result, the U.S. government has certain rights to such patent rights and technology, including march-in rights and a non-exclusive license authorizing the government to use the invention for noncommercial purposes. These rights may permit the government to disclose our confidential information to third parties or allow third parties to use our licensed technology. The government can also exercise its march-in rights if it determines that action is necessary because we fail to achieve practical application of the government-funded technology, or to alleviate health or safety needs, to meet requirements of federal regulations, or to give preference to U.S. industry. In addition, our rights in such inventions may be subject to certain requirements to manufacture products embodying such inventions in the United States. Any of the foregoing could harm our competitive position, business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

We are heavily dependent on licensed intellectual property. If we were to lose our rights to licensed intellectual property, we may not be able to continue developing or commercializing our product candidates, if approved. If we breach any of the agreements under which we license the use, development and commercialization rights to our product candidates or technology from third parties or, in certain cases, we fail to meet certain development deadlines, we could lose license rights that are important to our business.

We are heavily reliant upon licenses to certain patent rights and other intellectual property from third parties that are important or necessary to the development of our product candidates, including BDC-1001. For example, in May 2015 and June 2018 we entered into license agreements with Stanford under which we are granted rights to intellectual property that are necessary to the development and commercialization of BDC-1001 or are otherwise important to our business. We may also need to obtain additional licenses to advance the development and commercialization of our current product candidates and other product candidates we may develop. It is possible that we may be unable to obtain any additional licenses at a reasonable cost or on reasonable terms, or at all, or such licenses may be non-exclusive. In that event, we may be required to expend significant time and resources to redesign our technology, product candidates or the methods for manufacturing them or to develop or license replacement technology, all of which may not be feasible on a technical or commercial basis. If we are unable to do so, we may be unable to develop or commercialize the affected product candidates, which could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects significantly.

Our existing license agreements with Stanford impose, and we expect that future license agreements will impose, upon us various development, regulatory and/or commercial diligence obligations, obligations to make milestone or royalty payments or to share revenues and other obligations. If we fail to comply with our obligations under these agreements, or we are subject to a bankruptcy-related event, the licensor may have the right to terminate the license, and if they exercise that right we would not be able to develop, market or otherwise commercialize our technology and product candidates covered by the license, which in the case of our 2015 license agreement with Stanford includes BDC-1001. Our business could suffer, for example, if any current or future licenses terminate, if the licensors fail to abide by the terms of the license, if the licensed patents or other rights are found to be invalid or unenforceable or if we are unable to enter into necessary licenses on acceptable terms.

Licensing of intellectual property is of critical importance to our business and involves complex legal, business and scientific issues, and certain provisions in intellectual property license agreements may be susceptible to multiple interpretations. Disputes may arise between us and our licensors regarding intellectual property subject to a license agreement, including:

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The resolution of any contract interpretation disagreement that may arise could narrow what we believe to be the scope of our rights to the relevant intellectual property or technology or increase what we believe to be our financial or other obligations under the relevant agreement, either of which could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. Moreover, if disputes over intellectual property that we have licensed prevent or impair our ability to maintain our current licensing arrangements on acceptable terms, we may be unable to successfully develop and commercialize the affected product candidates.

We may enter into additional licenses to third-party intellectual property that are necessary or useful to our business. Under some license agreements, such as under the Toray Agreement, Genmab Agreement, and Innovent Agreement, we may not control the preparation, filing, prosecution or maintenance of the licensed intellectual property, or may not have the first right to enforce the intellectual property. In those cases, we may not be able to adequately influence patent prosecution or enforcement or prevent inadvertent lapses of coverage due to failure to pay maintenance fees and we cannot be certain that these patents and patent applications will be prepared, filed, prosecuted, maintained, enforced, and defended in a manner consistent with the best interests of our business and that does not compromise the patent rights. If we fail to comply with any of our obligations under a current or future license agreement, the licensor may allege that we have breached our license agreement and may accordingly seek to terminate our license. Termination of any of our current or future licenses could result in our loss of the right to use the licensed intellectual property, which could materially adversely affect our ability to develop and commercialize a product candidate or product, if approved, as well as harm our competitive business position and our business prospects. Under some license agreements, termination may also result in the transfer or granting of rights under certain of our intellectual property and information related to the product candidate being developed under the license, such as regulatory information. If these licenses are terminated, or if the underlying patents fail to provide the intended exclusivity, third parties, including our competitors, may have the freedom to seek regulatory approval of, and to market, products identical to ours. In addition, we may seek to obtain additional licenses from our licensors and, in connection with obtaining such licenses, we may agree to amend our existing licenses in a manner that may be more favorable to the licensors, including by agreeing to terms that could enable third parties, including our competitors, to receive licenses to a portion of the intellectual property that is subject to our existing licenses. Any of these events could have a material adverse effect on our competitive position, business, financial conditions, results of operations, and prospects.

In addition, if our licensors fail to abide by the terms of the license, if the licensors fail to prevent infringement, misappropriation or violation of the licensed intellectual property by third parties, if the licensed intellectual property or other rights are found to be invalid or unenforceable, or if we are unable to enter into necessary licenses on acceptable terms, our business, competitive position, financial condition, results of operations and prospects could be materially harmed.

Our reliance on third parties requires us to share our trade secrets, which increases the possibility that a competitor will discover them or that our trade secrets will be misappropriated or disclosed.

Because we rely on third parties to develop and manufacture our product candidates, we must, at times, share trade secrets with them. We seek to protect our proprietary technology in part by entering into confidentiality agreements and, if applicable, material transfer agreements, collaborative research agreements, consulting agreements or other similar agreements with our collaborators, advisors, employees and consultants prior to beginning research or disclosing proprietary information. These agreements typically limit the rights of the third parties to use or disclose our confidential information, such as trade secrets. Despite these contractual agreements with third parties, sharing trade secrets and other confidential information increases the risk that such trade secrets become known by our competitors, are inadvertently incorporated into the technology of others or are disclosed or used in violation of these agreements. Given that our proprietary position is based, in part, on our know-how and trade secrets, a competitor’s discovery of our trade secrets or other unauthorized use or disclosure would impair our competitive position and may harm our business.

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In addition, these agreements typically restrict the ability of our advisors, employees, third-party contractors and consultants to publish data potentially relating to our trade secrets, although our agreements may contain certain limited publication rights. Despite our efforts to protect our trade secrets, our competitors may discover our trade secrets, either through breach of our agreements with third parties, independent development or publication of information by any of our third-party collaborators. A competitor’s discovery of our trade secrets would impair our competitive position and have an adverse impact on our business.

We may become involved in lawsuits to protect or enforce our patents or other intellectual property, which could be expensive, time-consuming and unsuccessful, and issued patents covering our technology and product candidates could be found invalid or unenforceable if challenged.

Competitors and other third parties may infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate our issued patents or other intellectual property or the patents or other intellectual property of our licensors. In addition, our patents or the patents of our licensors may become involved in inventorship or priority disputes. Our pending patent applications cannot be enforced against third parties practicing the technology claimed in such applications unless and until patents issue from such applications. To counter infringement or other unauthorized use, we may be required to file infringement claims, which can be expensive and time-consuming. Any claims we assert against perceived infringers could provoke these parties to assert counterclaims against us alleging that we infringe their patents or that our patents are invalid or unenforceable. In a patent infringement proceeding, a court may decide that a patent of ours is invalid or unenforceable, in whole or in part, construe the patent’s claims narrowly or refuse to stop the other party from using the technology at issue on the grounds that our patents do not cover the technology. An adverse result in any litigation proceeding could result in one or more of our owned or licensed patents being invalidated, held unenforceable or interpreted narrowly. We may find it impractical or undesirable to enforce our intellectual property against some third parties.

In patent litigation in the United States, defendant counterclaims alleging invalidity or unenforceability are commonplace. Grounds for a validity challenge could be an alleged failure to meet any of several statutory requirements, including lack of novelty, obviousness, non-enablement or insufficient written description. Grounds for an unenforceability assertion could be an allegation that someone connected with prosecution of the patent withheld relevant information from the USPTO or made a misleading statement during prosecution. Third parties may also raise similar claims before the USPTO or an equivalent foreign body, even outside the context of litigation. Potential proceedings include re-examination, post-grant review, inter partes review, interference proceedings, derivation proceedings and equivalent proceedings in foreign jurisdictions (e.g., opposition proceedings). Such proceedings could result in the revocation of, cancellation of, or amendment to our patents in such a way that they no longer cover our technology or any product candidates that we may develop. The outcome following legal assertions of invalidity and unenforceability is unpredictable. With respect to the validity question, for example, we cannot be certain that there is no invalidating prior art of which we and the patent examiner were unaware during prosecution. If a defendant were to prevail on a legal assertion of invalidity or unenforceability, we would lose at least part, and perhaps all, of the patent protection on the applicable product candidates or technology covered by the patent rendered invalid or unenforceable. Such a loss of patent protection would materially harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Interference or derivation proceedings provoked by third parties or brought by us or declared by the USPTO may be necessary to determine the ownership or priority of inventions with respect to our patents or patent applications. An unfavorable outcome could require us to cease using the related technology or to attempt to license rights to it from the prevailing party. Such licenses may not be available on commercially reasonable terms, or at all, or may be non-exclusive. If we are unable to obtain and maintain such licenses, we may need to cease the development, manufacture and commercialization of one or more of the product candidates we may develop. In addition, if we or our licensors are unsuccessful in any inventorship disputes to which we or they are subject, we may lose valuable intellectual property rights, such as exclusive ownership of, or the exclusive right to use, our owned or in-licensed patents. The loss of exclusivity or the narrowing of our owned and licensed patent claims could limit our ability to stop others from using or commercializing similar or identical technology and products. Any of the foregoing could result in a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations or prospects. Even if we are successful in any of the foregoing disputes, it could result in substantial costs and be a distraction to management and other employees. Furthermore, because of the substantial amount of discovery required in connection with intellectual property litigation, there is a risk that some of our confidential information could be compromised by disclosure during this type of litigation or proceeding.

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Such litigation or proceedings could substantially increase our operating losses and reduce the resources available for development activities or any future sales, marketing or distribution activities. We may not have sufficient financial or other resources to conduct such litigation or proceedings adequately. Most of our competitors are larger than we are and have substantially greater resources. They are, therefore, likely to be able to sustain the costs of complex patent litigation or proceedings more effectively than we can because of their greater financial resources and more mature and developed intellectual property portfolios. Accordingly, despite our efforts, we may not be able to prevent third parties from infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating our intellectual property. Even if resolved in our favor, litigation or other legal proceedings relating to intellectual property claims could result in substantial costs and diversion of management resources, which could harm our business. In addition, the uncertainties associated with litigation could compromise our ability to raise the funds necessary to continue our clinical trials, continue our internal research programs or in-license needed technology or other product candidates. There could also be public announcements of the results of the hearing, motions or other interim proceedings or developments. If securities analysts or investors perceive those results to be negative, it could cause the price of shares of our common stock to decline. Any of the foregoing events could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

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

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

Many companies have encountered significant problems in protecting and defending intellectual property rights in foreign jurisdictions. The legal systems of some countries do not favor the enforcement of patents and other intellectual property rights, which could make it difficult for us to stop the infringement, misappropriation or other violation of our intellectual property rights generally. Proceedings to enforce our intellectual property rights in foreign jurisdictions could result in substantial costs and divert our efforts and attention from other aspects of our business, could put our patents at risk of being invalidated or interpreted narrowly and our patent applications at risk of not issuing and could provoke third parties to assert claims against us. We may not prevail in any lawsuits that we initiate, and the damages or other remedies awarded, if any, may not be commercially meaningful.

Many countries, including European Union Member States, India, Japan and China, have compulsory licensing laws under which a patent owner may be compelled under specified circumstances to grant licenses to third parties. In addition, many countries limit the enforceability of patents against government agencies or government contractors. In those countries, we may have limited remedies if patents are infringed or if we are compelled to grant a license to a third-party, which could materially diminish the value of those patents. This could limit our potential revenue opportunities. Accordingly, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights around the world may be inadequate to obtain a significant commercial advantage from the intellectual property that we develop or license, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

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We may not identify relevant third-party patents or may incorrectly interpret the relevance, scope or expiration of a third-party patent which might adversely affect our ability to develop and market our product candidates.

We cannot guarantee that any of our or our licensors’ patent searches or analyses, including the identification of relevant patents, the scope of patent claims or the expiration of relevant patents, are complete or thorough, nor can we be certain that we have identified each and every third-party patent and pending patent application in the United States and abroad that is relevant to or necessary for the commercialization of our product candidates in any jurisdiction. For example, U.S. patent applications filed before November 29, 2000, and certain U.S. patent applications filed after that date that will not be filed outside the United States remain confidential until patents issue. Patent applications in the United States and elsewhere are published approximately 18 months after the earliest filing for which priority is claimed, with such earliest filing date being commonly referred to as the priority date. Therefore, patent applications covering our product candidates could have been filed by third parties without our knowledge. Additionally, pending patent applications that have been published can, subject to certain limitations, be later amended in a manner that could cover our product candidates or the use of our product candidates. The scope of a patent claim is determined by an interpretation of the law, the written disclosure in a patent and the patent’s prosecution history. Our interpretation of the relevance or the scope of a patent or a pending application may be incorrect, which may negatively impact our ability to market our product candidates. We may incorrectly determine that our product candidates are not covered by a third-party patent or may incorrectly predict whether a third party’s pending application will issue with claims of relevant scope. Our determination of the expiration date of any patent in the United States or abroad that we consider relevant may be incorrect, which may negatively impact our ability to develop and market our product candidates. Our failure to identify and correctly interpret relevant patents may negatively impact our ability to develop and market our product candidates.

If we fail to identify and correctly interpret relevant patents or if we are unable to obtain licenses to relevant patents, we may be subject to infringement claims. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to successfully settle or otherwise resolve such infringement claims. If we fail in any such dispute, in addition to being forced to pay damages, which may be significant, we may be temporarily or permanently prohibited from commercializing any of our product candidates that are held to be infringing. We might, if possible, also be forced to redesign product candidates so that we no longer infringe the third-party intellectual property rights. Any of these events, even if we were ultimately to prevail, could require us to divert substantial financial and management resources that we would otherwise be able to devote to our business and could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

If we are unable to obtain licenses from third parties on commercially reasonable terms or fail to comply with our obligations under such agreements, our business could be harmed.

It may be necessary for us to use the patented or proprietary technology of third parties to commercialize our products, in which case we would be required to obtain a license from these third parties. The licensing or acquisition of third-party intellectual property rights is a competitive area, and several more established companies may pursue strategies to license or acquire third-party intellectual property rights that we may consider attractive or necessary. These established companies may have a competitive advantage over us due to their size, capital resources and greater clinical development and commercialization capabilities. In addition, companies that perceive us to be a competitor may be unwilling to assign or license rights to us. If we are unable to license such technology or if we are forced to license such technology, on unfavorable terms, our business could be materially harmed. If we are unable to obtain a necessary license, we may be unable to develop or commercialize the affected product candidates, which could materially harm our business, and the third parties owning such intellectual property rights could seek either an injunction prohibiting our sales, or, with respect to our sales, an obligation on our part to pay royalties and/or other forms of compensation. Even if we are able to obtain a license, it may be non-exclusive, thereby giving our competitors access to the same technologies licensed to us.

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If we fail to comply with our obligations under our license agreements, our counterparties may have the right to terminate these agreements, in which event we might not be able to develop, manufacture or market, or may be forced to cease developing, manufacturing or marketing, any product that is covered by these agreements or may face other penalties under such agreements. Such an occurrence could materially adversely affect the value of the product candidate being developed under any such agreement. Termination of these agreements or reduction or elimination of our rights under these agreements may result in our having to negotiate new or reinstated agreements with less favorable terms, cause us to lose our rights under these agreements, including our rights to important intellectual property or technology, or impede, delay or prohibit the further development or commercialization of one or more product candidates that rely on such agreements. For more information on risks related to our licensing of intellectual property, see “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property—We are heavily dependent on licensed intellectual property. If we were to lose our rights to licensed intellectual property, we may not be able to continue developing or commercializing our product candidates, if approved. If we breach any of the agreements under which we license the use, development and commercialization rights to our product candidates or technology from third parties or, in certain cases, we fail to meet certain development deadlines, we could lose license rights that are important to our business.”

Patent terms may be inadequate to protect the competitive position of our product candidates for an adequate amount of time.

Patents have a limited lifespan. In the United States, if all maintenance fees are timely paid, the natural expiration of a patent is generally 20 years from its earliest U.S. non-provisional filing date. Various extensions may be available, but the life of a patent, and the protection it affords, is limited. Even if patents covering our product candidates are obtained, once the patent life has expired for a product candidate, we may be open to competition from competitive medications, including generic medications. Given the amount of time required for the development, testing and regulatory review of new product candidates, patents protecting such product candidates might expire before or shortly after such product candidates are commercialized. As a result, our owned and licensed patent portfolio may not provide us with sufficient rights to exclude others from commercializing product candidates similar or identical to ours.

Depending upon the timing, duration and conditions of any FDA marketing approval of our product candidates, one or more 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, and one or more of our foreign patents may be eligible for patent term extension or similar extensions to protection provided by such patents under similar legislation in other jurisdictions, for example, in the European Union a supplementary protection certificate, or SPC, is available to extend the protection afforded to a specific product covered by a patent for maximum of five years (unless extended by six months if trials are completed in accordance with an agreed pediatric investigation plan). In the United States, the Hatch-Waxman Amendments permit a patent term extension of up to five years for a patent covering an approved product as compensation for effective patent term lost during product development and the FDA regulatory review process. However, there are no assurances that the FDA or any comparable foreign regulatory authority or national patent office will grant such extensions, in whole or in part. For example, we may not receive an extension if we fail to exercise due diligence during the testing phase or regulatory review process, fail to apply within applicable deadlines, fail to apply prior to expiration of relevant patents or otherwise fail to satisfy applicable requirements. Moreover, the length of the extension could be less than we request. Only one patent per approved product can be extended, the extension cannot extend the total patent term beyond 14 years from approval, and only those claims covering the approved drug, a method for using it or a method for manufacturing it may be extended. If we are unable to obtain patent term extension or the term of any such extension is less than we request, the period during which we can enforce our patent rights for the applicable product candidate will be shortened, and our competitors may obtain approval to market competing products sooner. As a result, our revenue from applicable products could be reduced. Further, if this occurs, our competitors may take advantage of our investment in development and trials by referencing our clinical and preclinical data and launch their product earlier than might otherwise be the case, and our competitive position, business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects could be materially harmed.

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Changes in patent law could diminish the value of patents in general, thereby impairing our ability to protect our product candidates.

Obtaining and enforcing patents in the pharmaceutical industry is inherently uncertain, due in part to ongoing changes in the patent laws. Depending on decisions by Congress, the federal courts, and the USPTO and equivalent institutions in other jurisdictions, the laws and regulations governing patents, and interpretation thereof, could change in unpredictable ways that could weaken our and our licensors or collaborators’ ability to obtain new patents or to enforce existing or future patents. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on several patent cases in recent years, either narrowing the scope of patent protection available in certain circumstances or weakening the rights of patent owners in certain situations. Therefore, there is increased uncertainty with regard to our and our licensors or collaborators’ ability to obtain patents in the future, as well as uncertainty with respect to the value of patents once obtained.

Recent patent reform legislation could increase the uncertainties and costs surrounding the prosecution of our and our licensors or collaborators’ patent applications and the enforcement or defense of our or our licensors or collaborators’ issued patents. Assuming that other requirements for patentability are met, prior to March 2013, in the United States, the first to invent the claimed invention was entitled to the patent, while outside the United States, the first to file a patent application was entitled to the patent. After March 2013, under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, or the Leahy-Smith Act, enacted in September 2011, the United States transitioned to a first inventor to file system in which, assuming that other requirements for patentability are met, the first inventor to file a patent application will be entitled to the patent on an invention regardless of whether a third party was the first to invent the claimed invention. The Leahy-Smith Act also includes a number of significant changes that affect the way patent applications are prosecuted and may also affect patent litigation. These include allowing third-party submission of prior art to the USPTO during patent prosecution and additional procedures to attack the validity of a patent by USPTO-administered post-grant proceedings, including post-grant review, inter partes review and derivation proceedings. The USPTO recently developed new regulations and procedures to govern administration of the Leahy-Smith Act, and many of the substantive changes to patent law associated with the Leahy-Smith Act, particularly the first inventor-to-file provisions. Accordingly, it is not clear what, if any, impact the Leahy-Smith Act will have on the operation of our business. However, the Leahy-Smith Act and its implementation could increase the uncertainties and costs surrounding the prosecution of our or our licensors’ patent applications and the enforcement or defense of our or our licensors’ issued patents, all of which could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Obtaining and maintaining patent protection depends on compliance with various procedural, document submission, fee payment and other requirements imposed by governmental patent agencies, and our patent protection could be reduced or eliminated if we fail to comply with these requirements.

Periodic maintenance fees, renewal fees, annuity fees and various other government fees on any issued patents and applications are required to be paid to the USPTO and foreign patent agencies in several stages over the lifetime of a patent. In certain circumstances, we rely on our licensors to pay these fees. The USPTO and various foreign patent agencies also require compliance with a number of procedural, documentary, fee payment and other similar requirements during the patent application and prosecution process. Noncompliance events that could result in abandonment or lapse of a patent or patent application include failure to respond to official communications within prescribed time limits, non-payment of fees and failure to properly legalize and submit formal documents. While an inadvertent lapse can in many cases be cured by payment of a late fee or by other means in accordance with the applicable rules, there are situations in which non-compliance can result in irrevocable abandonment or lapse of the patent or patent application, resulting in partial or complete loss of patent rights in the relevant jurisdiction. If we or our licensors or collaborators fail to maintain the patents and patent applications covering our product candidates, our competitors might be able to enter the market with similar or identical products or technology, which would harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

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Third parties may initiate legal proceedings alleging that we are infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating their intellectual property rights, the outcome of which would be uncertain and could negatively impact the success of our business.

Our commercial success depends upon our ability and the ability of our collaborators to develop, manufacture, market and sell our product candidates and use our proprietary technologies without infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating the intellectual property and other proprietary rights of third parties. There is considerable intellectual property litigation in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. We may become party to, or be threatened with, future adversarial proceedings or litigation regarding intellectual property rights with respect to our product candidates and technology, including re-examination, interference, post-grant review, inter partes review or derivation proceedings before the USPTO or an equivalent foreign body. Numerous U.S. and foreign issued patents and pending patent applications owned by third parties exist in the fields in which we are developing our product candidates. For example, we are aware of certain third-party patents, including those of our competitors, that may be construed to cover the use of our Boltbody ISACs for the treatment of cancer and of pending patent applications that, if issued with their current claim scope, may be construed to cover our Boltbody ISAC approach and product candidates more generally. In the event that any of these patents were asserted against us, we believe that we would have defenses against any such action, including that such patents are not valid or that we would be able to replace such technology with alternative, non-infringing technology. However, if any such patents were to be asserted against us and our defenses to such assertion were unsuccessful and such alternative technology was not available or technologically or commercially practical, unless we obtain a license to such patents, we could be liable for damages, which could be significant and include treble damages and attorneys’ fees if we are found to willfully infringe such patents, and we could be precluded from commercializing any product candidates that were ultimately held to infringe such patents. Any potential future legal proceedings relating to these patents could cause us to incur significant expenses and could distract our technical and management personnel from their normal responsibilities. If we are unsuccessful in our challenges to these patents and become subject to litigation or are unable to obtain a license on commercially reasonable terms with respect to these patents, it could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Third parties may assert infringement claims against us based on existing patents or patents that may be granted in the future, regardless of their merit. Even if we believe third-party intellectual property claims are without merit, there is no assurance that a court would find in our favor on questions of infringement, validity, enforceability or priority. A court of competent jurisdiction could hold that third-party patents asserted against us are valid, enforceable and infringed, which could materially and adversely affect our ability to commercialize any product candidates we may develop and any other product candidates or technologies covered by the asserted third-party patents. In order to successfully challenge the validity of any such U.S. patent in federal court, we would need to overcome a presumption of validity. As this burden is a high one requiring us to present clear and convincing evidence as to the invalidity of any such U.S. patent claim, there is no assurance that a court of competent jurisdiction would invalidate the claims of any such U.S. patent. If we are found to infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate a third party’s intellectual property rights, and we are unsuccessful in demonstrating that such rights are invalid or unenforceable, we could be required to obtain a license from such a third party in order to continue developing and marketing our products and technology. However, we may not be able to obtain any required license on commercially reasonable terms or at all. Even if we were able to obtain a license, it could be non-exclusive, thereby giving our competitors access to the same technologies licensed to us, and it could require us to make substantial licensing and royalty payments. We could be forced, including by court order, to cease commercializing the infringing technology or product candidates. A finding of infringement could prevent us from commercializing our product candidates or force us to cease some of our business operations. In the event of a successful claim of infringement against us, we may have to pay substantial damages, including treble damages and attorneys’ fees for willful infringement, pay royalties and other fees, redesign our infringing drug or obtain one or more licenses from third parties, which may be impossible or require substantial time and monetary expenditure. Claims that we have misappropriated the confidential information or trade secrets of third parties could have a similar negative impact on our business. Any of the foregoing events would harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

We may be subject to claims by third parties asserting that we or our employees have infringed upon, misappropriated or otherwise violated their intellectual property rights, or claiming ownership of what we regard as our own intellectual property.

Many of our employees were previously employed at other biotechnology or pharmaceutical companies. Although we try to ensure that our employees, consultants and advisors do not use the proprietary information or know-how of others in their work for us, we may be subject to claims that we or these individuals have used or disclosed intellectual property, including trade secrets or other proprietary information, of any such individual’s former employer. Litigation may be necessary to defend against these claims.

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In addition, we or our licensors may be subject to claims that former employees, collaborators or other third parties have an interest in our owned or in-licensed patents or other intellectual property as an inventor or co-inventor. While it is our policy to require our employees and contractors who may be involved in the development of intellectual property to execute agreements assigning such intellectual property to us, we may be unsuccessful in executing such an agreement with each party who in fact conceives, develops or reduces to practice intellectual property that we regard as our own. Our and their assignment agreements may not be self-executing or may be breached, and we may be forced to bring claims against third parties, or defend claims they may bring against us, to determine the ownership of what we regard as our intellectual property.

If we fail in prosecuting or defending any such claims, in addition to paying monetary damages, we may lose valuable intellectual property rights or personnel. Even if we are successful in prosecuting or defending against such claims, litigation could result in substantial costs, delay development of our product candidates and be a distraction to management. Any of the foregoing events would harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Intellectual property litigation could cause us to spend substantial resources and distract our personnel from their normal responsibilities.

Even if resolved in our favor, litigation or other legal proceedings relating to intellectual property claims may cause us to incur significant expenses and could distract our technical and management personnel from their normal responsibilities. In addition, there could be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim proceedings or developments and if securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a substantial adverse effect on the price of our common stock. Such litigation or proceedings could substantially increase our operating losses and reduce the resources available for development activities or any future sales, marketing or distribution activities. We may not have sufficient financial or other resources to conduct such litigation or proceedings adequately. Some of our competitors may be able to sustain the costs of such litigation or proceedings more effectively than we can because of their greater financial resources. Uncertainties resulting from the initiation and continuation of patent litigation or other proceedings could compromise our ability to compete in the marketplace, including compromising our ability to raise the funds necessary to continue our clinical trials, continue our research programs, license necessary technology from third parties or enter into development collaborations that would help us commercialize our product candidates, if approved. Any of the foregoing events would harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

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

We rely on trade secrets and confidentiality agreements to protect our unpatented know-how, technology and other proprietary information and to maintain our competitive position. With respect to our Boltbody ISAC approach and development programs, we consider trade secrets and know-how to be one of our important sources of intellectual property, including our extensive knowledge of certain drug delivery techniques and antibody conjugation. Trade secrets and know-how can be difficult to protect. We seek to protect these trade secrets and other proprietary technology, in part, by entering into non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements with parties who have access to them, such as our employees, collaborators, CROs, contract manufacturers, consultants, advisors and other third parties. We also enter into confidentiality and invention or patent assignment agreements with our employees and consultants. We cannot guarantee that we have entered into such agreements with each party that may have or has had access to our trade secrets or proprietary technology and processes. Despite these efforts, any of these parties may breach the agreements and disclose our proprietary information, including our trade secrets, and we may not be able to obtain adequate remedies for such breaches. Enforcing a claim that a party illegally disclosed or misappropriated a trade secret is difficult, expensive and time-consuming, and the outcome is unpredictable. In addition, some courts inside and outside the United States are less willing or unwilling to protect trade secrets. If any of our trade secrets were to be lawfully obtained or independently developed by a competitor or other third-party, we would have no right to prevent them from using that technology or information to compete with us. If any of our trade secrets were to be disclosed to or independently developed by a competitor or other third-party, our competitive position would be materially and adversely harmed.

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We may not be able to protect and enforce our trademarks and trade names or build name recognition in our markets of interest thereby harming our competitive position.

We intend to rely on both registered and common law rights for our trademarks. We have not yet registered certain of our trademarks in all of our potential markets, including our “Boltbody” and “Bolt Biotherapeutics” trademarks. We are currently applying to register these trademarks with the USPTO and may in the future seek to register additional trademarks in the United States and other countries. Our current and future trademark applications may not be allowed for registration in a timely fashion or at all, and our registered trademarks may not be maintained or enforced. In addition, the registered or unregistered trademarks or trade names that we own may be challenged, infringed, circumvented, declared generic, lapsed or determined to infringe on or dilutive of other marks. We may not be able to protect our rights in these trademarks and trade names or may be forced to stop using these names, which we need for name recognition by potential partners or customers in our markets of interest. In addition, third parties have filed, and may in the future file, for registration of trademarks similar or identical to our trademarks, thereby impeding our ability to build brand identity and possibly leading to market confusion. If they succeed in registering or developing common law rights in such trademarks, and if we are not successful in challenging such rights, we may not be able to use these trademarks to develop brand recognition of our technologies, products or services. In addition, there could be potential trade name or trademark infringement claims brought by owners of other registered trademarks or trademarks that incorporate variations of our registered or unregistered trademarks or trade names.

During the trademark registration process, we may receive Office Actions from the USPTO or from comparable agencies in foreign jurisdictions objecting to the registration of our trademark. Although we would be given an opportunity to respond to those objections, we may be unable to overcome such rejections. In addition, in the USPTO and in comparable agencies in many foreign jurisdictions, third parties are given an opportunity to oppose pending trademark applications and/or to seek the cancellation of registered trademarks. Opposition or cancellation proceedings may in the future be filed against our trademark applications or registrations, and our trademark applications or registrations may not survive such proceedings. In addition, third parties may file first for our trademarks in certain countries. If they succeed in registering such trademarks, and if we are not successful in challenging such third-party rights, we may not be able to use these trademarks to market our products in those countries. If we do not secure registrations for our trademarks, we may encounter more difficulty in enforcing them against third parties than we otherwise would. If we are unable to establish name recognition based on our trademarks and trade names, we may not be able to compete effectively, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Intellectual property rights do not necessarily address all potential threats.

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

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Should any of these events occur, they could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Risks Related to Our Business Operations, Employee Matters and Managing Growth

Our business, operations and clinical development plans and timelines and supply chain could be adversely affected by the effects of health epidemics, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, on the manufacturing, clinical trial and other business activities performed by us or by third parties with whom we conduct business, including our CMOs, CROs, shippers and others.

Our business has been, and is expected to continue to be, impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic consequences wherever we have clinical trial sites or other business operations. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused, and could continue to cause significant disruption in the operations of CMOs, CROs and other third parties upon whom we rely. Many geographic regions have imposed restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19. Our headquarters are located in the San Francisco Bay Area and our CMOs are located in the United States and in the United Kingdom. At present, we have implemented a flexible work-from-home policy allowing employees to work from home in jobs where that is reasonable. The effects of the executive order and our work-from-home policies may negatively impact productivity, disrupt our business and delay our clinical programs and timelines, the magnitude of which will depend, in part, on the length and severity of the restrictions and other limitations on our ability to conduct our business in the ordinary course. These and similar, and perhaps more severe, disruptions in our operations could negatively impact our business, operating results and financial condition.

We are dependent on a global supply chain for products to be used in our clinical trials and, if approved by the regulatory authorities, for commercialization. Quarantines, shelter-in-place and similar government orders, or the expectation that such orders, shutdowns or other restrictions could occur, whether related to the COVID-19 pandemic or other infectious diseases, could impact personnel at third-party manufacturing facilities in the United States and other countries, or the availability or cost of materials or supplies, which could disrupt our supply chain or our ability to enroll patients in or perform testing for our clinical trials. For example, any manufacturing supply interruption of BDC-1001, which is currently manufactured at facilities in the United Kingdom and the United States, or any future product candidates, could adversely affect our ability to conduct ongoing and future clinical trials of BDC-1001 and any future product candidates. In addition, closures of transportation carriers and modal hubs could materially impact our clinical development and any future commercialization timelines.

If our relationships with our suppliers or other vendors are terminated or scaled back as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic or other health epidemics, we may not be able to enter into arrangements with alternative suppliers or vendors or do so on commercially reasonable terms or in a timely manner. Switching or adding additional suppliers or vendors involves substantial costs and requires management time and focus. In addition, there is a natural transition period when a new supplier or vendor commences work. As a result, delays generally occur, which could adversely impact our ability to meet our desired clinical development and any future commercialization timelines. Although we carefully manage our relationships with our suppliers and vendors, there can be no assurance that we will not encounter challenges or delays in the future or that these delays or challenges will not have an adverse impact on our business, financial condition and prospects. See “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Our Dependence on Third Parties.”

In addition, our clinical trials have been, and in the future may be, affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, at times during the pandemic we were unable to visit sites, conduct in-person monitoring, or engage with the investigative teams. We have increased the number of planned study sites and the geographic diversification of our sites in an effort to mitigate any potential future impact. In the future, clinical site initiation and patient enrollment may be delayed due to prioritization of hospital resources toward the COVID-19 pandemic or concerns among patients about participating in clinical trials during a pandemic and public health measures imposed by the respective national governments of countries in which the clinical sites are located. Some patients may have difficulty following certain aspects of clinical trial protocols if quarantines impede patient movement or interrupt healthcare services. Similarly, our inability to successfully recruit and retain patients and principal investigators and site staff who, as healthcare providers, may have heightened exposure to COVID-19 or experience additional restrictions by their institutions, city or state governments could adversely impact our clinical trial operations. We continue to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our clinical development timelines.

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The spread of COVID-19 has also led to disruption and volatility in the global capital markets, which increases the cost of, and adversely impacts access to, capital and increases economic uncertainty. The trading prices for the common stock of other biopharmaceutical companies have at times been highly volatile as a result of COVID-19. To the extent the COVID-19 pandemic adversely affects our business, financial results and value of our common stock, it may also affect our ability to access capital, which could in the future negatively affect our liquidity.

The ultimate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic or a similar health epidemic on our business, operations, or the global economy as a whole remains highly uncertain. While there have been vaccines developed and administered, and the spread of COVID-19 may eventually be contained or mitigated, we do not yet know how businesses, or our partners will operate in a post COVID-19 environment. However, these effects could have a material impact on our operations, and we will continue to monitor the COVID-19 situation closely. In addition, there is no guarantee that a future outbreak of this or any other widespread epidemics will not occur, or that the global economy will recover, either of which could harm our business.

Our future success depends on our ability to retain key employees, consultants and advisors and to attract, retain and motivate qualified personnel.

Our ability to compete in the highly competitive immuno-oncology and pharmaceutical industries depends upon our ability to attract and retain highly qualified managerial and scientific personnel. We are highly dependent on the management, research and development, clinical, financial and business development expertise of our executive officers, as well as the other members of our scientific and clinical teams. Although we have employment offer letters with each of our executive officers, each of them may terminate their employment with us at any time. We do not maintain “key person” insurance for any of our executives or employees.

Recruiting and retaining qualified scientific and clinical personnel and, if we are successful in obtaining marketing approval for our product candidates, sales and marketing personnel, is critical to our success. The loss of the services of our executive officers or other key employees could impede the achievement of our research, development and commercialization objectives and seriously harm our ability to successfully implement our business strategy. Furthermore, replacing executive officers and key employees may be difficult and may take an extended period of time because of the limited number of individuals in our industry with the breadth of skills and experience required to successfully develop, gain regulatory approval for and commercialize our product candidates.

Competition to hire qualified personnel in our industry is intense, and we may be unable to hire, train, retain or motivate these key personnel on acceptable terms given the competition among numerous pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies for similar personnel. This competitive situation has become exacerbated by the increase in employee resignations currently taking place throughout the United States, in part as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is commonly referred to as the “great resignation.” We have experienced significant unwanted employee attrition which we believe has been due to such competition, and we may continue to experience unwanted employee attrition in the future. The recent move by companies to offer a remote or hybrid work environment may increase the competition for such employees from employers outside of our traditional office locations. Furthermore, to the extent we hire personnel from competitors, we may be subject to allegations that they have been improperly solicited or that they have divulged proprietary or other confidential information, or that their former employers own their research output. We also experience competition for the hiring of scientific and clinical personnel from universities and research institutions. In addition, we rely on consultants and advisors, including scientific and clinical advisors, to assist us in formulating our research and development and commercialization strategy. Our consultants and advisors may be employed by employers other than us and may have commitments under consulting or advisory contracts with other entities that may limit their availability to us. If we are unable to continue to attract and retain high quality personnel, our ability to pursue our growth strategy will be limited, and could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

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We expect to expand our development and regulatory capabilities and potentially implement sales, marketing and distribution capabilities, and as a result, we may encounter difficulties in managing our growth, which could disrupt our operations.

As of December 31, 2021, we had 91 employees. As our clinical development progresses, we expect to experience growth in the number of our employees and the scope of our operations, particularly in the areas of research, clinical operations, regulatory affairs, general and administrative and, if any of our product candidates receives marketing approval, sales, marketing and distribution. To manage our anticipated future growth, we must continue to implement and improve our managerial, operational and financial systems, expand our facilities and continue to recruit and train additional qualified personnel. Due to the limited experience of our management team in managing a company with such anticipated growth, we may not be able to effectively manage the expansion of our operations or recruit and train additional qualified personnel. The expansion of our operations may lead to significant costs and may divert our management and business development resources. Any inability to manage growth could delay the execution of our business plans or disrupt our operations.

Our employees, independent contractors, consultants, commercial collaborators, principal investigators, CROs and vendors may engage in misconduct or other improper activities, including non-compliance with regulatory standards and requirements.

We are exposed to the risk that our employees, independent contractors, consultants, commercial collaborators, principal investigators, CROs and vendors may engage in fraudulent conduct or other illegal activity. Misconduct by these parties could include intentional, reckless or negligent conduct or unauthorized activities that violates (1) the laws and regulations of the FDA, the EMA, the MHRA and other similar regulatory authorities, including those laws requiring the reporting of true, complete and accurate information to such authorities, (2) manufacturing standards, (3) federal and state data privacy, security, fraud and abuse and other healthcare laws and regulations in the United States and abroad and (4) laws that require the true, complete and accurate reporting of financial information or data. In particular, sales, marketing and business arrangements in the healthcare industry are subject to extensive laws and regulations intended to prevent fraud, misconduct, kickbacks, self-dealing and other abusive practices. These laws and regulations may restrict or prohibit a wide range of pricing, discounting, marketing and promotion, sales commission, customer incentive programs and other business arrangements. Misconduct by these parties could also involve the improper use of individually identifiable information, including information obtained in the course of clinical trials, creating fraudulent data in our preclinical studies or clinical trials or illegal misappropriation of product candidates, which could result in regulatory sanctions and serious harm to our reputation.

We have adopted a code of business conduct and ethics, but it is not always possible to identify and deter misconduct by employees and other third parties, and the precautions we take to detect and prevent this activity may not be effective in controlling unknown or unmanaged risks or losses or in protecting us from governmental investigations or other actions or lawsuits stemming from a failure to be in compliance with such laws or regulations. Additionally, we are subject to the risk that a person or government could allege such fraud or other misconduct, even if none occurred. If any such actions are instituted against us, and we are not successful in defending ourselves or asserting our rights, those actions could have a significant impact on our business, including the imposition of significant civil, criminal and administrative penalties, including damages, fines, disgorgement, imprisonment, exclusion from participation in government healthcare programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, contractual damages, reputational harm and the delay, reduction, termination or restructuring of our operations.

Our international operations may expose us to business, regulatory, political, operational, financial, pricing and reimbursement risks associated with doing business outside of the United States.

Our business is subject to risks associated with conducting business internationally. Some of our suppliers, industry partners and clinical study centers are located outside of the United States. Furthermore, our business strategy incorporates potential international expansion as we seek to obtain regulatory approval for, and commercialize, our product candidates in patient populations outside the United States. If approved, we may hire sales representatives and conduct physician and patient association outreach activities outside of the United States. Doing business internationally involves a number of risks, including but not limited to:

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Any of these factors could harm our future international expansion and operations and, consequently, our results of operations.

Our internal computer systems, or those used by our CROs or other contractors or consultants, may fail or experience security breaches or other unauthorized or improper access.

Despite the implementation of security measures, our internal computer systems, and those of our CROs and other third parties on which we rely, are vulnerable to privacy and information security incidents, such as data breaches, damage from computer viruses and unauthorized access, malware, natural disasters, fire, terrorism, war and telecommunication, electrical failures, cyber-attacks or cyber-intrusions over the Internet, attachments to emails, and actions or lack of taking action by persons inside our organization or persons with access to systems inside our organization. The risk of a security breach or disruption, particularly through cyber-attacks or cyber-intrusions, including by computer hackers, foreign governments and cyber terrorists, has generally increased as the number, intensity and sophistication of attempted attacks and intrusions from around the world have increased. While we have not experienced any such material system failure or security breach to our knowledge to date, if such an event were to occur and cause interruptions in our operations, it could result in a material disruption of our development programs and our business operations. For example, the loss of clinical trial data from completed, ongoing or future clinical trials could result in delays in our regulatory approval efforts and significantly increase our costs to recover or reproduce the data. Likewise, we rely on third parties for the manufacture of our product candidates and to conduct clinical trials, and similar incidents relating to their computer systems could also have a material adverse effect on our business.

Actual or alleged unauthorized disclosure of sensitive or confidential data, including personally identifiable information, whether through a breach of computer systems, systems failure, employee negligence, fraud or misappropriation, or otherwise, or unauthorized access to or through our information systems and networks, whether by our employees or third parties, could result in negative publicity, legal liability and damage to our reputation. Unauthorized disclosure of personally identifiable information could also expose us to sanctions for violations of data privacy laws and regulations around the world. To the extent that any disruption or security breach resulted in a loss of or damage to our data or applications, or inappropriate disclosure of confidential or proprietary information, we could incur liability and the further development of our product candidates could be delayed.

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As we become more dependent on information technologies to conduct our operations, cyber incidents, including deliberate attacks and attempts to gain unauthorized access to computer systems and networks, may increase in frequency and sophistication. These threats pose a risk to the security of our systems and networks, the confidentiality and the availability and integrity of our data and these risks apply both to us, and to third parties on whose systems we rely for the conduct of our business. Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access, disable or degrade service or sabotage systems change frequently and often are not recognized until launched against a target, we and our partners may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures. Further, we do not have any control over the operations of the facilities or technology of our cloud and service providers, including any third-party vendors that collect, process and store personal data on our behalf.

Our systems, servers and platforms and those of our service providers may be vulnerable to computer viruses or physical or electronic break-ins that our or their security measures may not detect. Individuals able to circumvent such security measures may misappropriate our confidential or proprietary information, disrupt our operations, damage our computers or otherwise impair our reputation and business. Threat actors, nation-states, and nation-state-supported actors now engage, and are expected to continue to engage, in cyber-attacks, including for geopolitical reasons and in connection with military conflicts and operations. During times of war and other major conflicts, we and the third parties upon which we rely may be vulnerable to heightened risk of these attacks, including cyber-attacks that could materially disrupt our systems and operations, supply chain, and ability to produce, sell and distribute our goods and services. We may need to expend significant resources and make significant capital investment to protect against security breaches or to mitigate the impact of any such breaches. There can be no assurance that we or our third-party providers will be successful in preventing cyber-attacks or successfully mitigating their effects. 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 liability and the further development and commercialization of our future product candidates could be delayed.
 

While we maintain cyber errors and omissions insurance coverage that covers certain aspects of the cyber risks described above, any losses suffered by the company may not be adequately covered by insurance or other contractual rights available to us. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceed or are not covered by our insurance coverage or changes in our insurance policies, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements, could make us unable to acquire such insurance and may have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Risks Related to Our Common Stock

We have identified a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting. If we fail to remediate the material weakness, or if we experience additional material weaknesses in the future or otherwise fail to maintain an effective system of internal controls in the future, we may not be able to accurately or timely report our financial condition or results of operations, which may adversely affect investor confidence in us and, as a result, the value of our common stock.

Prior to the completion of our initial public offering, we had been a private company with limited accounting personnel to adequately execute our accounting processes and limited supervisory resources with which to address our internal control over financial reporting. In connection with the audit of our financial statements as of and for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, we identified a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting. A material weakness is a deficiency, or combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting, such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of the annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis.

We did not design and have not maintained an effective control environment as required under the rules and regulations of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC. Specifically, we lack a sufficient number of professionals with an appropriate level of accounting knowledge, training and experience to appropriately analyze, record and disclose accounting matters timely and accurately while maintaining appropriate segregation of duties. Without such professionals, we did not design and currently do not maintain formal accounting policies, procedures and controls to achieve complete, accurate and timely financial accounting, reporting and disclosures, including controls over the preparation and review of account reconciliations and journal entries.

The above material weakness did not result in a misstatement; however, it could result in a misstatement of our account balances or disclosures that would result in a material misstatement of our annual or interim financial statements that would not be prevented or detected.

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To address the material weakness, we have been adding personnel and implementing new financial processes. We intend to continue to take steps to remediate the material weakness through the hiring of additional experienced accounting and financial reporting personnel, formalizing documentation of policies and procedures and further evolving the accounting processes, including implementing appropriate segregation of duties.

We cannot assure you that the measures we have taken to date, and are continuing to implement, will be sufficient to remediate the material weakness we have identified or avoid potential future material weaknesses. If the steps we take do not correct the material weakness in a timely manner, we will be unable to conclude that we maintain effective internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, there could continue to be a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of our financial statements would not be prevented or detected on a timely basis.

If we fail to remediate our existing material weakness or identify new material weaknesses in our internal controls over financial reporting, if we are unable to comply with the requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in a timely manner, if we are unable to conclude that our internal controls over financial reporting are effective, or if our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to express an opinion as to the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting when we are no longer an emerging growth company, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and the market price of our common stock could be negatively affected. As a result of such failures, we could also become subject to investigations by the Nasdaq Stock Market, the SEC or other regulatory authorities, and become subject to litigation from investors and stockholders, which could harm our reputation and financial condition or divert financial and management resources from our regular business activities.

The trading price of the shares of our common stock may be volatile, and purchasers of our common stock could incur substantial losses.

Our stock price may be volatile. The stock market in general and the market for pharmaceutical companies in particular have experienced extreme volatility that has often been unrelated to the operating performance of particular companies. As a result of this volatility, investors may not be able to sell their common stock at or above the price paid for the shares. The market price for our common stock may be influenced by many factors, including:

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In addition, in the past, stockholders have initiated class action lawsuits against pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies following periods of volatility in the market prices of these companies’ stock. Such litigation, if instituted against us, could cause us to incur substantial costs and divert management’s attention and resources from our business.

Unstable market and economic conditions may have serious adverse consequences on our business, financial condition and share price.

The global economy, including credit and financial markets, has experienced extreme volatility and disruptions, including severely diminished liquidity and credit availability, declines in consumer confidence, declines in economic growth, increases in unemployment rates, increases in inflation rates and uncertainty about economic stability. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in widespread unemployment, economic slowdown and extreme volatility in the capital markets. Similarly, the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia has created extreme volatility in the global capital markets and is expected to have further global economic consequences, including disruptions of the global supply chain and energy markets. Any such volatility and disruptions may have adverse consequences on us or the third parties on whom we rely. If the equity and credit markets deteriorate, including as a result of political unrest or war, it may make any necessary debt or equity financing more difficult to obtain in a timely manner or on favorable terms, more costly or more dilutive. Inflation can adversely affect us by increasing our costs, including salary costs. Any significant increases in inflation and related increase in interest rates could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.

If equity research analysts do not publish research or reports, or publish unfavorable research or reports about us, our business or our market, our stock price and trading volume could decline.

The trading market for our common stock will be influenced by the research and reports that equity research analysts publish about us and our business. We do not currently have and may never obtain research coverage by equity research analysts. Equity research analysts may elect not to provide research coverage of our common stock after our initial public offering, and such lack of research coverage may adversely affect the market price of our common stock. In the event we do have equity research analyst coverage, we will not have any control over the analysts, or the content and opinions included in their reports. The price of our stock could decline if one or more equity research analysts downgrade our stock or issue other unfavorable commentary or research. If one or more equity research analysts cease coverage of our company or fails to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our stock could decrease, which in turn could cause our stock price or trading volume to decline.

A significant portion of our total outstanding common stock may be sold into the market in the near future. This could cause the market price of our common stock to drop significantly, even if our business is doing well.

Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market could occur at any time, subject to the restrictions and limitations described below. If our stockholders sell, or the market perceives that our stockholders intend to sell, substantial amounts of our common stock in the public market, the market price of our common stock could decline significantly.

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We have registered and intend to continue to register all shares of common stock that we may issue under our equity compensation plans. Once we register these shares, they can be freely sold in the public market upon issuance, subject to vesting arrangements and exercise of options and, in the case of our affiliates, the restrictions of Rule 144.

Additionally, the holders of an aggregate of 7,203,153 shares of our common stock, or their transferees, have rights, subject to some conditions, to require us to file one or more registration statements covering their shares or to include their shares in registration statements that we may file for ourselves or other stockholders. If we were to register the resale of these shares, they could be freely sold in the public market without limitation. If these additional shares are sold, or if it is perceived that they will be sold, in the public market, the trading price of our common stock could decline.

Anti-takeover provisions in our charter documents and under Delaware law could make an acquisition of our company more difficult, limit attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management and limit the market price of our common stock.

Provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change of control or changes in our management. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws include provisions that:

These provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management by making it more difficult for stockholders to replace members of our board of directors, which is responsible for appointing the members of our management. In addition, because we are incorporated in Delaware, we are governed by the provisions of Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law, or the DGCL, which generally, subject to certain exceptions, prohibits a Delaware corporation from engaging in any of a broad range of business combinations with any “interested” stockholder for a period of three years following the date on which the stockholder became an “interested” stockholder. Any delay or prevention of a change of control transaction or changes in our management could cause the market price of our common stock to decline.

Concentration of ownership of our common stock among our existing executive officers, directors and principal stockholders may prevent new investors from influencing significant corporate decisions.

Based upon our common stock outstanding as of December 31, 2021, our executive officers, directors and current beneficial owners of 5% or more of our common stock, in the aggregate, beneficially own approximately 67% of our outstanding common stock. These stockholders, acting together, are able to significantly influence all matters requiring stockholder approval, including the election and removal of directors and any merger or other significant corporate transactions. The interests of this group of stockholders may not coincide with the interests of other stockholders.

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Some of these persons or entities may have interests different than yours. For example, because many of these stockholders purchased their shares at prices substantially below the price at which shares were sold in our initial public offering and have held their shares for a longer period, they may be more interested in selling our company to an acquirer than other investors, or they may want us to pursue strategies that deviate from the interests of other stockholders.

We will incur costs and demands upon our management as a result of complying with the laws and regulations affecting public companies in the United States, which may harm our business.

As a public company listed in the United States, we will incur significant additional legal, accounting and other expenses. In addition, changing laws, regulations and standards relating to corporate governance and public disclosure, including regulations implemented by the SEC and the Nasdaq Stock Market may increase legal and financial compliance costs and make some activities more time consuming. These laws, regulations and standards are subject to varying interpretations and, as a result, their application in practice may evolve over time as new guidance is provided by regulatory and governing bodies. We intend to invest resources to comply with evolving laws, regulations and standards, and this investment may result in increased general and administrative expenses and a diversion of management’s time and attention from regular business activities to compliance activities. If, notwithstanding our efforts, we fail to comply with new laws, regulations and standards, regulatory authorities may initiate legal proceedings against us, and our business may be harmed.

Failure to comply with these rules might also make it more difficult for us to obtain certain types of insurance, including director and officer liability insurance, and we might be forced to accept reduced policy limits and coverage or incur substantially higher costs to obtain the same or similar coverage. The impact of these events could also make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified persons to serve on our board of directors, on committees of our board of directors or as members of senior management.

We are an “emerging growth company” and a “smaller reporting company,” and as a result of the reduced reporting requirements applicable to “emerging growth companies” and “smaller reporting companies,” our common stock may be less attractive to investors.

We are an “emerging growth company,” as defined in the JOBS Act. For as long as we continue to be an “emerging growth company,” we may take advantage of exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not “emerging growth companies,” including not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. We may take advantage of these exemptions until we are no longer an “emerging growth company.” We could be an “emerging growth company” for up to five years, although circumstances could cause us to lose that status earlier, including if the aggregate market value of our common stock held by non-affiliates exceeds $700 million as of any June 30 (the end of our second quarter) before that time, in which case we would no longer be an “emerging growth company” as of the following December 31 (our year-end).

We are also a “smaller reporting company,” as defined in the Exchange Act. Even after we no longer qualify as an “emerging growth company,” we may still qualify as a “smaller reporting company,” which would allow us to continue to take advantage of certain of the scaled disclosures available to “smaller reporting companies.” We cannot predict if investors will find our common stock less attractive because we may rely on these exemptions. If some investors find our common stock less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our common stock and the price of our common stock may be more volatile.

If we fail to maintain proper and effective internal controls, our ability to produce accurate financial statements on a timely basis could be impaired.

We are subject to the reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the rules and regulations of the Nasdaq Stock Market. Section 302 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we report on the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures in our quarterly and annual reports and, beginning with our annual report for the year ending 2021, which is the year covered by the second annual report following the completion of our initial public offering, Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires that we perform system and process evaluation and testing of our internal control over financial reporting to allow management to report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting in our Form 10-K filing for that year. This requires that we incur substantial additional professional fees and internal costs to expand our accounting and finance functions and that we expend significant management efforts. In addition, our independent registered public accounting firm will be

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required to attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting in our first annual report required to be filed with the SEC following the date we are no longer an emerging growth company.

As a public company, we are required to maintain internal controls over financial reporting and to report any material weaknesses in those internal controls. We identified a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting as of and for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, related to a lack of an effective control environment as required under SEC rules and regulations. To address the material weakness, we have been adding personnel and implementing new financial processes. Our remediation efforts are ongoing. 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. Because of the inherent limitations in all control systems, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that misstatements due to error or fraud will not occur or that all control issues and instances of fraud will be detected.

If we are not able to comply with the requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in a timely manner, or if we are unable to maintain proper and effective internal controls, we may not be able to produce timely and accurate financial statements. If that were to happen, the market price of our stock could decline and we could be subject to sanctions or investigations by the Nasdaq Stock Market, the SEC or other regulatory authorities. In addition, our common stock may not be able to remain listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market or any other securities exchange.

Because we do not anticipate paying any cash dividends on our common stock in the foreseeable future, capital appreciation, if any, will be your sole source of gains and you may never receive a return on your investment.

You should not rely on an investment in our common stock to provide dividend income. We have not declared or paid cash dividends on our common stock to date. We currently intend to retain our future earnings, if any, to fund the development and growth of our business. In addition, the terms of any existing or future debt agreements may preclude us from paying dividends. As a result, capital appreciation, if any, of our common stock will be your sole source of gain for the foreseeable future. Investors seeking cash dividends should not purchase our common stock.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware and the federal district courts of the United States of America are the exclusive forums for substantially all disputes between us and our stockholders, which could limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers or employees.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware is the exclusive forum for the following types of actions or proceedings under Delaware statutory or common law:

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To prevent having to litigate claims in multiple jurisdictions and the threat of inconsistent or contrary rulings by different courts, among other considerations, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation further provides that the federal district courts of the United States of America will be the exclusive forum for resolving any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act. This provision would not apply to suits brought to enforce a duty or liability created by the Exchange Act. Furthermore, Section 22 of the Securities Act creates concurrent jurisdiction for federal and state courts over all such Securities Act actions. Accordingly, both state and federal courts have jurisdiction to entertain such claims. While the Delaware courts have determined that such choice of forum provisions are facially valid and several state trial courts have enforced such provisions and required that suits asserting Securities Act claims be filed in federal court, there is no guarantee that courts of appeal will affirm the enforceability of such provisions and a stockholder may nevertheless seek to bring a claim in a venue other than those designated in the exclusive forum provisions. In such instance, we would expect to vigorously assert the validity and enforceability of the exclusive forum provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation. This may require significant additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions and there can be no assurance that the provisions will be enforced by a court in those other jurisdictions. If a court were to find either exclusive forum provision in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur further significant additional costs associated with litigating Securities Act claims in state court, or both state and federal court, which could seriously harm our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

These exclusive forum provisions may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or our directors, officers or other employees, which may discourage lawsuits against us and our directors, officers and other employees. If a court were to find either exclusive-forum provision in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur further significant additional costs associated with resolving the dispute in other jurisdictions, all of which could harm our business.

Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments.

Not applicable.

Item 2. Properties.

Our headquarters are located in Redwood City, California, where we lease space in two locations totaling approximately 71,600 square feet of leased space, of which we have subleased approximately 20,500 square feet to third parties. Our leases expire between 2025 and 2031. We believe that our headquarters and other offices are adequate for our current needs.

Item 3. Legal Proceedings.

From time to time, we may become involved in legal proceedings arising in the ordinary course of our business. There are currently no claims or actions pending against us, the ultimate disposition of which we believe could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, financial condition or cash flows.

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures.

Not applicable.

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PART II

Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities.

Market Information

Our common stock began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on February 5, 2021, and trades under the symbol “BOLT”. Prior to February 5, 2021, there was no public market for our common stock.

Holders of Common Stock

On March 24, 2022, there were approximately 24 holders of record of our common stock. Certain shares are held in “street” name and accordingly, the number of beneficial owners of such shares is not known or included in the foregoing number.

Dividend Policy

We have never declared or paid any dividends on our common stock. We currently intend to retain all available funds and any future earnings, if any, to fund the development and expansion of our business and we do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the foreseeable future. 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.

Stock Price Performance Graph

As a “smaller reporting company” as defined by Item 10 of Regulation S-K, we are not required to provide this information.

Securities Authorized for Issuance under Equity Compensation Plans

Information about our equity compensation plans is incorporated herein by reference to Item 12 of Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Recent Repurchases of Equity Securities.

None.

Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities.

None.

Use of Proceeds

On February 9, 2021, we completed our IPO pursuant to a registration statement on Form S-1 (File No. 333-252136) that was declared effective by the SEC on February 4, 2021 and sold an aggregate of 13,225,000 shares of our common stock, including the exercise in full by the underwriters of their option to purchase 1,725,000 additional shares of our common stock, at a price of $20.00 per share. After deducting underwriting discounts, commissions and offering costs paid by us, the net proceeds from the offering were approximately $242.0 million.

The net proceeds from the offering have been invested according to our approved investment policy in a mix of money market funds and high-quality, fixed-income securities with a weighted average maturity of less than 13 months. Our investment policy emphasizes preservation of principal, availability of cash to meet cash flow requirements, and maximizing total net returns after satisfying the first two conditions. There has been no material change in the expected use of the net proceeds from our initial public offering as described in our final prospectus filed with the SEC pursuant to Rule 424(b).

Item 6. Reserved.

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Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.

The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our audited financial statements and related notes thereto included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form-10K for the period ended December 31, 2021. Except as otherwise indicated herein or as the context otherwise requires, references in this Annual Report on Form 10-K to “Bolt Bio,” “the Company,” “we,” “us” and “our” refer to Bolt Biotherapeutics, Inc.

Overview

We are pioneering a new class of immuno-oncology agents that combine the targeting precision of antibodies with the power of both the innate and adaptive immune systems. Our proprietary Boltbody™ ISAC approach uses immunostimulants to engage and activate myeloid cells, including macrophages and dendritic cells, that directly kill tumor cells via phagocytosis and expose tumor neoantigens to the adaptive immune system. This leads to recruitment of cytotoxic T cells and additional tumor-killing myeloid cells thereby converting immunologically “cold” tumors to “hot” tumors. Preclinical data demonstrate that this process leads to the development of systemic immunological memory with epitope spreading to neoantigens that is critical to achieving a long-term anti-tumor response. Our BDC-1001 program, currently in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial, and our BDC-2034 program, expected to enter the clinic later in 2022, both come from the Boltbody ISAC platform. Our expertise in myeloid cell biology also forms the foundation for additional, innovative ways to target the immune activation that complement our Boltbody ISAC platform. An example of this approach is BDC-3042, our Dectin-2 agonist antibody program. BDC-3042 is being developed to repolarize critical cells in the tumor microenvironment by targeting cell-surface receptors on macrophages. Dectin-2 agonism results in these tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) changing to the tumor-destructive M1 phenotype, away from the M2 phenotype, which suppresses immune responses and supports tumor growth.

Since our inception in January 2015, we have focused primarily on organizing and staffing our company, business planning, licensing, developing intellectual property, raising capital, developing our product candidates, and conducting preclinical studies and early clinical trials. We have not recorded any revenue from product sales. To date, our only revenue has been derived from our collaborations with Toray and Genmab. In March 2019, we entered into the Toray Agreement to jointly develop and commercialize a Boltbody ISAC utilizing a Toray proprietary antibody. Prior to the completion of our initial public offering in February 2021, we funded our operations primarily through private placements of our convertible preferred stock for gross proceeds of $173.7 million, including Toray’s purchase of 717,514 shares of Series T convertible preferred stock for gross proceeds of $10.0 million and the January 2021 issuance and sale of 5,611,059 shares of Series C-2 preferred stock for net proceeds of $51.9 million. In February 2021, we completed our initial public offering of 13,225,000 shares of our common stock at a price to the public of $20.00 per share, including the exercise in full by the underwriters of their option to purchase 1,725,000 additional shares of our common stock. Including the option exercise, the aggregate net proceeds to us from the offering was approximately $242.0 million, net of underwriting discounts, commissions, and other offering expenses.

In May 2021, we entered into an oncology research and development collaboration with Genmab to evaluate Genmab antibodies and bispecific antibody engineering technologies in combination with our proprietary Boltbody ISAC technology platform, with the goal of discovering and developing next-generation bispecific ISACs for the treatment of cancer. The research collaboration will evaluate multiple bispecific ISAC product candidate concepts with the potential to identify up to three clinical candidates for development. Genmab will fund the research, along with the preclinical and clinical development of these candidates through initial clinical proof of concept. Under the Genmab Agreement, we received an upfront payment of $10.0 million, and under the separate Genmab SPA, Genmab invested $15.0 million in our common stock. In August 2021, we entered into an oncology research and development collaboration with Innovent to leverage Innovent’s proprietary therapeutic antibody portfolio and antibody discovery capability against undisclosed oncology targets in combination with our advanced ISAC technology and myeloid biology expertise to create up to three new candidates for cancer treatments with the potential to provide significant benefit to patients. Innovent will fund the initial research, along with the preclinical and clinical development of these candidates through initial clinical proof of concept. Under the Innovent Agreement, we received an upfront payment of $5.0 million, and under the separate Innovent SPA, we may receive up to an additional $10.0 million from Innovent’s investment in our common stock. In September 2021, we entered into a clinical collaboration and supply agreement BMS to study BDC-1001 in combination with BMS’s nivolumab, a leading PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor, for the treatment of HER2-expressing solid tumors. Under the BMS Agreement, BMS will be providing nivolumab at no cost to us and we will sponsor, fund and conduct the initial Phase 1/2 clinical trial in accordance with an agreed-upon protocol. We initiated the clinical trial evaluating the combination of nivolumab and BDC-1001 in the fourth quarter of 2021.

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We have incurred operating losses since our inception. Our net losses were $98.6 million and $60.7 million for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively. As of December 31, 2021, we had an accumulated deficit of $207.0 million. Substantially all of our net losses have resulted from costs incurred in connection with our research and development programs and from general and administrative costs associated with our operations. We expect to continue to incur significant expenses and increasing operating losses for the foreseeable future, and we further expect our expenses will increase substantially as we:

Our net losses may fluctuate significantly from quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year, depending on the timing of our planned clinical trials and preclinical studies, and our expenditures on other research and development activities.

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Our business has been, and is expected to continue to be, impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic consequences wherever we have clinical trial sites or other business operations. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused, and could continue to cause significant disruption in the operations of CMOs, CROs and other third parties upon whom we rely. Many geographic regions have imposed restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19. Our headquarters are located in the San Francisco Bay Area and our CMOs are located in the United States and in the United Kingdom. At present, we have implemented a flexible work-from-home policy allowing employees to work from home in jobs where that is reasonable. The effects of the executive order and our work-from-home policies may negatively impact productivity, disrupt our business and delay our clinical programs and timelines, the magnitude of which will depend, in part, on the length and severity of the restrictions and other limitations on our ability to conduct our business in the ordinary course. These and similar, and perhaps more severe, disruptions in our operations could negatively impact our business, operating results and financial condition.

To date, the COVID-19 pandemic has not had a material adverse impact on our productivity or our business, and as of December 31, 2021, we have not identified any significant disruption or impairment of our assets due to the pandemic. However, we cannot predict the potential future impacts of COVID-19 on us and third parties with whom we conduct business. These impacts will depend on future developments that are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted at this time. Given these uncertainties, COVID-19 could impact our business operations and our ability to execute on our associated business strategies and initiatives, and adversely impact our consolidated results of operations and our financial condition in the future, and could disrupt the business of third parties with whom we do business, including our existing and potential future collaborators. We will continue to closely monitor and evaluate the nature and extent of the impacts of COVID-19 on our business, consolidated results of operations, and financial condition.

Components of Results of Operations

Revenue

To date our only revenue has been collaboration revenue derived from our collaborations with Toray and Genmab. We are collaborating with Toray to develop a Boltbody ISAC that incorporates a proprietary Toray antibody against a novel tumor antigen target. We are jointly responsible for early-stage development and for providing technical and regulatory support, and Toray will pay for the program expenses through the end of Phase 1 development. In conjunction with the collaboration, Toray purchased 717,514 shares of our Series T convertible preferred stock for $10.0 million. We evaluated the collaboration together with Toray’s purchase of Series T convertible preferred stock and allocated $1.5 million from the stock purchase proceeds to deferred revenue, which we recognize, together with payments received from Toray for compensation based on agreed-upon full-time equivalent rates and out of pocket costs, as collaboration revenue over time as we fulfill our performance obligation to Toray.

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In May 2021, we entered into an oncology research and development collaboration with Genmab to evaluate Genmab antibodies and bispecific antibody engineering technologies in combination with our proprietary Boltbody ISAC technology platform, with the goal of discovering and developing next-generation bispecific ISACs for the treatment of cancer. The research collaboration will evaluate multiple bispecific ISAC concepts to identify up to three clinical candidates for development. Genmab will fund the research, along with the preclinical and clinical development of these candidates through initial clinical proof of concept. Under the Genmab Agreement, we received an upfront payment of $10.0 million, in conjunction with the collaboration, Genmab purchased 821,045 shares of our common stock for $15.0 million. We evaluated the collaboration together with Genmab’s purchase of our common stock and allocated $1.4 million from the stock purchase proceeds to deferred revenue, which we recognize, together with the $10.0 million upfront payment, payments received from Genmab for compensation based on agreed-upon full-time equivalent rates, and out-of-pocket costs, as collaboration revenue over time as we fulfill our performance obligation to Genmab.

In August 2021, we entered into an oncology research and development collaboration with Innovent to leverage Innovent’s proprietary therapeutic antibody portfolio and antibody discovery capability against undisclosed oncology targets in combination with our advanced ISAC technology and myeloid biology expertise to create up to three new candidates for cancer treatments with the potential to provide significant benefit to patients. Innovent will fund the initial research, along with the preclinical and clinical development of these candidates through initial clinical proof of concept. Under the Innovent Agreement, the Company received an upfront payment of $5.0 million and a potential equity investment in our common stock of up to $10.0 million. These contracts have been evaluated together and no consideration from the Innovent SPA has been included in the total consideration for collaboration revenue.

We expect that any collaboration revenue we generate from our current collaborations, and from any future collaboration partners, will fluctuate in the future as a result of the timing and results of development activities and the timing and amount paid, including upfront and milestone payments, and other factors.

We have not generated any revenue from product sales, and we do not expect to generate any revenue from product sales unless and until we obtain regulatory approval of and commercialize one of our product candidates.

Operating Expenses

Research and Development

Research and development expenses have related primarily to early research and discovery activities and to preclinical and clinical development of our product candidates. Research and development expenses are recognized as incurred and payments made prior to the receipt of goods or services to be used in research and development are capitalized until the goods or services are received.

Research and development expenses include:

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Our direct research and development expenses consist principally of external costs, such as fees paid to CROs and consultants in connection with our preclinical and toxicology studies and costs related to manufacturing materials for our preclinical studies. Since our inception and through December 31, 2021, the vast majority of our third-party expenses related to the research and development of BDC-1001. With the exception of cost incurred to satisfy our performance obligations under our collaboration agreements, we do not allocate employee costs and costs associated with our discovery efforts, laboratory supplies and facilities, including other indirect costs, to specific product candidates because these costs are associated with multiple programs and, as such, are not separately classified. We use internal resources primarily to conduct our research as well as for managing our preclinical development, process development, manufacturing, and clinical development activities. We deploy our personnel across all of our research and development activities and, as our employees work across multiple programs, we do not currently track our costs by product candidate.

We plan to continue to increase our research and development expenses for the foreseeable future as we continue the development of our product candidates, particularly as product candidates in later stages of development generally have higher development costs than those in earlier stages of development. We cannot determine with certainty the timing of initiation, the duration or the completion costs of future clinical trials and preclinical studies of our product candidates due to the inherently unpredictable nature of clinical and preclinical development. Clinical and preclinical development timelines, the probability of success and development costs can differ materially from expectations.

We anticipate that we will make determinations as to which product candidates and development programs to pursue and how much funding to direct to each product candidate or program on an ongoing basis in response to the results of ongoing and future preclinical studies and clinical trials, regulatory developments, and our ongoing assessments as to each product candidate’s commercial potential. We will need to raise substantial additional capital in the future. In addition, we cannot forecast which product candidates may be subject to future collaborations, when such arrangements will be secured, if at all, and to what degree such arrangements would affect our development plans and capital requirements.

Our future clinical development costs may vary significantly based on factors such as:

General and Administrative

General and administrative expenses consist primarily of salaries and employee-related costs, including stock-based compensation, for personnel in executive, finance, and other administrative functions. Other significant costs include legal fees relating to intellectual property and corporate matters, professional fees for accounting and consulting services and facility-related costs.

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We expect our general and administrative expenses will increase for the foreseeable future to support our increased research and development activities and increased costs of operating as a public company. These increased costs will likely include higher expenses related to audit, legal, regulatory, and tax-related services associated with maintaining compliance with Nasdaq and SEC requirements, director and officer insurance premiums and investor relations costs associated with operating as a public company.

Other Income (Expense), Net

Interest Income, Net

Interest income consists of interest on our cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments.

Change in Fair Value of Convertible Preferred Stock Purchase Right Liability

In connection with the issuance of our Series C-1 convertible preferred stock in June 2020, the investors agreed to buy, and we agreed to sell, additional shares of such preferred convertible stock at the original issue price upon the achievement of pre-defined milestones. These contractual obligations were required to be accounted for as liabilities and remeasured to fair value at each reporting date, with any change in the fair value reported as a component of other income (expense). In January 2021, with the completion of the Series C-2 convertible preferred stock financing, this contractual obligation was settled, and the convertible preferred stock purchase right liability was remeasured to fair value on the purchase date and reclassified to permanent equity.

Results of Operations

Comparison of the Years Ended December 31, 2021 and 2020

Collaboration Revenue

Revenue was $1.3 million and $0.2 million for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively. Revenue in 2021 was generated from the services performed under the Genmab Agreement as we fulfill our performance obligations to Genmab. Revenue in 2020 was generated from the services performed under the Toray Agreement as we fulfill our performance obligations to Toray. We expect to continue to provide services to further our collaborations with our partners.

Research and Development Expenses

Research and development expenses increased by $35.3 million from $40.4 million in 2020 to $75.7 million in 2021. The increase was due to $14.3 million in higher manufacturing expenses related to the timing of batch production of our product candidates, $10.3 million in higher personnel-related expenses due to an increase in headcount, $5.5 million in higher facility-related expenses, $2.9 million in higher expenses related to the ongoing BDC-1001 clinical trial due to increase in clinical sites and patient activities, and $2.2 million in higher lab supplies and contract services.

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General and Administrative Expenses

General and administrative expenses increased by $9.3 million from $9.1 million in 2020 to $18.4 million in 2021. The increase was due to $6.4 million in higher personnel-related expenses due to an increase in headcount and $3.1 million in higher professional services expenses related to information technology and accounting services and other professional services, offset by $0.4 million in lower allocated office and facility-related expenses.

Other Income (Expense), Net

Other Income (Expense), Net

Interest income increased by $0.1 million from $0.2 million in 2020 to $0.3 million in 2021. The increase was due to higher interest income from higher marketable securities balances.

Change in Fair Value of Convertible Preferred Stock Purchase Right Liability

The $11.7 million change in fair value of convertible preferred stock purchase right liability in 2020 derived from the increase in the fair value of outstanding convertible preferred stock purchase right liability from the original estimate of $13.5 million to $25.2 million as of December 31, 2020, upon fair value remeasurement at period-end. The $6.1 million change in fair value of convertible preferred stock purchase right liability in 2021 derived from the increase in the fair value of the convertible preferred stock purchase right liability from $25.2 million as of December 31, 2020 to $31.3 million prior to the exercise of the convertible preferred stock purchase right in January 2021. Upon the exercise of the convertible preferred stock purchase right with the completion of the Series C-2 Closing in January 2021, we remeasured the convertible preferred stock purchase right liability to fair value and reclassified to permanent equity on the balance sheets.

Liquidity and Capital Resources

Sources of Liquidity

We have incurred net losses and negative cash flows from operations since our inception and anticipate we will continue to incur net losses for the foreseeable future. As of December 31, 2021, we had an accumulated deficit of $207.0 million. Our net loss was $98.6 million and $60.7 million in 2021 and 2020, respectively, and we expect to incur additional losses in the future. We evaluated our current cash position, historical results, forecasted cash flows and plans with regard to liquidity. We believe that our current cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities balances as of December 31, 2021 will be sufficient to meet our cash needs for at least 12 months following the issuance date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. We believe we will meet longer term expected future cash requirements and obligations, through a combination of cash flows from operating activities, available cash balances, and equity or debt financings or other capital sources, including potential collaborations, licenses, and other similar arrangements.
 

The following table sets forth a summary of our cash flows for each of the periods indicated:

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Operating Activities

Net cash used in operating activities was $57.1 million and $47.3 million for 2021 and 2020, respectively. Net cash used in operating activities for 2021 was due to our net loss of $98.6 million, adjusted for $21.0 million of non-cash charges and a $20.5 million change in operating assets and liabilities. The non-cash charges were comprised of $8.5 million for stock-based compensation, $6.1 million related to the change in fair value of convertible preferred stock purchase right liability, $3.0 million for accretion of discount on marketable securities, $2.5 million of non-cash lease related expense, $1.2 million for depreciation and amortization expense, $0.3 million for unrealized loss on marketable securities, and $0.1 million for loss on disposal of property and equipment. The change in net operating assets was due to a $15.6 million increase in deferred revenue related to the Genmab Agreement and Innovent Agreement and a $6.7 million increase in our accounts payable and accrued expenses, offset by a decrease in operating lease liabilities and an increase in our prepaid expense and other current assets. Net cash used in operating activities for 2020 was due to our net loss of $60.7 million, adjusted for $15.7 million of non-cash charges and a $2.3 million change in operating assets and liabilities. The non-cash charges were comprised of $11.7 million related to the change in fair value of convertible preferred stock purchase right liability, $1.9 million of non-cash lease related expense, $1.4 million for stock-based compensation and $0.6 million for depreciation and amortization expense. The change in net operating assets was due to increases in our accounts payable and accrued expenses related to an increase in research and development expenses and the timing of vendor payments and increases in our operating lease liabilities.

Investing Activities

Net cash used in investing activities in 2021 and 2020 were due to $229.9 million net purchases of marketable securities and purchases of property and equipment.

Financing Activities

Net cash provided by financing activities was $311.1 million and $39.6 million for 2021 and 2020, respectively. The net cash provided by financing activities for 2021 was due to net proceeds of $244.3 million in connection with our IPO that was completed in February 2021, $51.9 million of net proceeds from the issuance of 5,611,059 shares of Series C-2 preferred stock in January 2021, $13.6 million of net proceeds from issuance of common stock related to Genmab SPA, and $1.3 million of net proceeds from the issuance of common stock from the 2021 Employee Stock Purchase Plan and exercise of stock options. Net cash provided by financing activities for 2020 was due to net proceeds of $41.3 million for the issuance of 5,162,173 shares of our convertible preferred stock in July 2020, partially offset by payments of $1.9 million for deferred offering costs incurred in connection with our initial public offering that was completed in February 2021.

Funding Requirements

Based upon our current operating plans, we believe that our existing cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities will be sufficient to fund our operations for at least the next 12 months following the issuance date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. However, our forecast of the period of time through which our financial resources will be adequate to support our operations is a forward-looking statement that involves risks and uncertainties, and actual results could vary materially. We have based this estimate on assumptions that may prove to be wrong, and we could deplete our capital resources sooner than we expect. Additionally, the process of testing product candidates in clinical trials is costly, and the timing of progress and expenses in these trials is uncertain.

Our future capital requirements will depend on many factors, including:

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Until such time as we can generate significant revenue from sales of our product candidates, if ever, we expect to finance our cash needs through equity or debt financings or other capital sources, including potential collaborations, licenses, and other similar arrangements. However, we may be unable to raise additional funds or enter into such other arrangements when needed on favorable terms or at all. To the extent that we raise additional capital through the sale of equity or convertible debt securities, the ownership interest of our stockholders will be or could be diluted, and the terms of these securities may include liquidation or other preferences that adversely affect the rights of our common stockholders. Debt financing and equity financing, if available, may involve agreements that include covenants limiting or restricting our ability to take specific actions, such as incurring additional debt, making capital expenditures, or declaring dividends. If we raise funds through collaborations, or other similar arrangements with third parties, we may have to relinquish valuable rights to our product candidates, future revenue streams or research programs or may have to grant licenses on terms that may not be favorable to us and/or may reduce the value of our common stock. If we are unable to raise additional funds through equity or debt financings when needed, we may be required to delay, limit, reduce or terminate our product development or future commercialization efforts or grant rights to develop and market our product candidates even if we would otherwise prefer to develop and market such product candidates ourselves.

Contractual Obligations and Commitments

Contract Supply Agreement

In January 2022, we entered into an amended and restated supply agreement with EirGenix, Inc., or the Amended Supply Agreement, which amends the original supply agreement with EirGenix, Inc., or EirGenix, dated March 10, 2019, pursuant to which EirGenix agreed to supply to us, on a non-exclusive basis, bulk drug substance of EG12014, its monoclonal antibody being developed as a biosimilar of trastuzumab, which we use in the manufacture of BDC-1001. In addition, EirGenix provides us access to its regulatory data package and services to facilitate our development and commercialization efforts and we are required to make milestone payments to EirGenix up to an aggregate of $2.0 million based upon achievement of certain BDC-1001 regulatory milestones and pay for services based upon time and materials. The agreement will remain in effect as long as we, or any of our affiliates or licensees, continue to pursue the development or commercialization of any HER2 Boltbody ISAC, unless earlier terminated. We may terminate the agreement if EirGenix fails to supply sufficient quantities of EG12014, or if EirGenix does not obtain regulatory approval for EG12014 as a standalone biosimilar product. We may also terminate the EirGenix Agreement upon prior written notice to EirGenix. EirGenix may terminate the agreement if we do not actively develop a HER2 Boltbody ISAC for more than two years. In addition, either party may terminate the agreement for the other party’s uncured material breach or insolvency.

Collaboration Agreements

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Joint Development and License Agreement with Toray Industries

In March 2019, we entered into a Joint Development and License Agreement, or the Toray Agreement, with Toray Industries, Inc., or Toray, to develop and commercialize a Boltbody ISAC containing a proprietary antibody owned by Toray. Under the Toray Agreement, we exchanged co-exclusive (with each other) licenses to certain patents and know-how covering our respective technologies. Each party is required to use commercially reasonable efforts to conduct development and regulatory activities assigned to it under a development plan. Toray will be solely responsible for both parties’ development costs up to the conclusion of the first Phase 1 clinical trial and Toray is entitled to reimbursement for 50% of such development costs from our share of revenues collected from the sale or licensing of collaboration products. After the conclusion of the first Phase 1 clinical trial, the parties will share equally all costs of development activities necessary for obtaining regulatory approval of collaboration products in the indications in the territories covered under the agreement, unless either party elects to opt out of its co-funding obligations or reduce them by half, which election can be on a region-by-region basis. Both parties are currently reevaluating of the research plan and the outcome of this reevaluation may impact the scope and timing of the collaboration.

Oncology Research and Development Collaboration with Genmab A/S

In May 2021, we entered into a License and Collaboration Agreement, or the Genmab Agreement, with Genmab A/S, or Genmab. Together, the companies will evaluate Genmab antibodies and bispecific antibody technologies in combination with our ISAC technology platform, with the goal of discovering and developing next-generation bispecific ISACs for the treatment of cancer. Under this research collaboration, the companies will evaluate multiple bispecific ISAC concepts to identify up to three clinical candidates for development. Genmab will fund the research, along with the preclinical and clinical development of these candidates through initial clinical proof of concept. Under the Genmab Agreement, we received an upfront payment of $10.0 million and an equity investment of $15.0 million under a separate stock purchase agreement. Under the Genmab Agreement, we will be compensated for research and development services at the agreed upon full-time employee rate and third-party costs through initial clinical proof of concept of the therapeutic candidates, after which both parties can exercise their respective program opt-in rights. With respect to each candidate for which a party has exercised its program opt-in rights and has exclusive global rights, the other party is eligible to receive potential development and sales-based milestone payments and tiered royalties. Bolt is eligible to receive total potential milestone payments of up to $285.0 million per therapeutic candidate exclusively developed and commercialized by Genmab, along with tiered royalties.

Oncology Research and Development Collaboration with Innovent Biologics, Inc.

In August 2021, we entered into a License and Collaboration Agreement, or the Innovent Agreement, with Innovent Biologics, Inc., or Innovent. Together, the companies will leverage Innovent’s proprietary therapeutic antibody portfolio and antibody discovery capability against undisclosed oncology targets in combination with our Boltbody ISAC technology and myeloid biology expertise to create up to three new candidates for cancer treatments. Innovent will fund the initial research, along with the preclinical and clinical development of these candidates through initial clinical proof of concept. Under the Innovent Agreement, we received an upfront payment of $5.0 million. Under the Innovent Agreement, we will be compensated for research and development services at the agreed upon full-time employee rate and third-party costs through initial clinical proof of concept of the therapeutic candidates, after which both parties can exercise their respective license rights. The Innovent Agreement includes license options exercisable by each party to exclusively develop, manufacture and commercialize each candidate in a specific territory. With respect to each candidate for which a party has exercised its license option, the other party is eligible to receive a license option exercise fee, potential development and sales-based milestone payments and tiered royalties.

Oncology Clinical Trial Collaboration and Supply Agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb

In September 2021, we entered into a clinical collaboration and supply agreement, or the BMS Agreement, with Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, or BMS, to study BDC-1001 in combination with BMS’s PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab, for the treatment of HER2-expressing solid tumors. Under the BMS Agreement, BMS granted us a non-exclusive, non-transferrable, royalty-free license (with a right to sublicense) under its intellectual property to use nivolumab in a clinical trial for a combination therapy of nivolumab and our proprietary compound, BDC-1001, and has agreed to supply nivolumab at no cost to us and we will sponsor, fund and conduct the initial Phase 1/2 clinical trial in accordance with an agreed-upon protocol. Both parties will own the study data produced in the clinical trial, other than study data related solely to nivolumab, which will belong solely to BMS, or study data related solely to BDC-1001, which will belong solely to us. The parties may conduct additional clinical trials on the combined therapy which may be sponsored and funded by one party, or jointly funded. We initiated the clinical trial evaluating the combination of nivolumab and BDC-1001 in the fourth quarter of 2021.

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License Agreements

License Agreements with Stanford University

In May 2015 and June 2018, we entered into license agreements with Stanford, pursuant to which Stanford granted us worldwide exclusive licenses under certain patents related to our proprietary Boltbody ISAC technology and myeloid modulation for cancer immunotherapy, respectively. Under these agreements, we are obligated to pay annual license maintenance fees, which are nominal and will be creditable against any royalties payable to Stanford under such agreement in the applicable year. We are required in each agreement to make milestone payments up to an aggregate of $0.4 million for the first licensed product under such agreement that meets certain patent issuance, clinical and regulatory milestones, and an additional milestone payment of $0.2 million for each additional regulatory approval. We also agreed in each agreement to pay Stanford tiered royalties on our and our sublicensees’ net sales of licensed products, at low single-digit percentage rates, subject to certain customary reductions. Our royalty obligations continue for the term of each agreement, and we are required to pay royalties on any licensed products made, used, imported or offered for sale during the term of such agreement but sold after the term of the agreement. In addition, we are obligated in each agreement to pay Stanford a sub-teen double digit to low teen double-digit percentage, based on the date of sublicensing, of certain consideration we receive as a result of granting sublicenses to the licensed patents. Pursuant to each agreement, we will reimburse Stanford’s patent expenses, including reasonable costs incurred in assisting us with prosecuting and maintaining licensed patents.

Critical Accounting Estimates

Our management’s discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations are based on our financial statements, which have been prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. The preparation of these financial statements requires us to make estimates and judgments that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities and expenses and the disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities in our financial statements and accompanying notes. We base our estimates on historical experience, known trends and events and various other factors that are believed to be reasonable under the circumstances, the results of which form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. Actual results may differ from these estimates under different assumptions or conditions. While our significant accounting policies are described in more detail in Note 2 to our financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, we believe the following accounting policies and estimates to be most critical to the preparation of our financial statements.

Revenue Recognition

For all periods presented, we recognized revenue in accordance with the provisions of Accounting Standard Codification Topic 606, Revenue from Contract with Customers, or ASC 606. In accordance with ASC 606, when our customer obtains control of promised goods or services, in an amount that reflects the consideration which we expect to receive in exchange for those goods or services. We perform the following five steps in determining the appropriate amount of revenue to be recognized as we fulfill our obligations under each of these agreements:

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If an agreement includes a license to our intellectual property and that license is determined to be distinct from the other performance obligations identified in the arrangement, we recognize revenues allocated to the license when the license is transferred to the customer and the customer is able to use and benefit from the license. For licenses that are bundled with other promises, we utilize judgment to assess the nature of the combined performance obligation to determine whether the combined performance obligation is satisfied over time or at a point in time and, if over time, the appropriate method of measuring progress for purposes of recognizing revenue from non-refundable, up-front fees. We evaluate the measure of progress each reporting period and, if necessary, adjust the measure of performance and related revenue recognition. For combined performance obligation that is satisfied over time, collaboration revenue is recognized over time proportionate to the costs incurred to perform the services using an input method as a measure of progress towards satisfying the performance obligation, which is based on project hours. In some agreements, we receive compensation for the research and development services performed, which may be billed in the quarter ahead of performance and are trued up on the subsequent quarter’s invoice following the work performed, or billed based on actual hours incurred. The cumulative effect of revisions to estimated hours to complete our performance obligation will be recorded in the period in which changes are identified and amounts can be reasonably estimated. While such changes to our estimates have no impact on our reported cash flows, the amount of revenue recorded in the period could be materially impacted.

Amounts received prior to satisfying the above revenue recognition criteria were recognized as deferred revenue until all applicable revenue recognition criteria were met. Deferred revenue represented the portion of payments received that have not been earned.

Accrued Research and Development Expenses

We are required to estimate our expenses resulting from our obligations under contracts with vendors, consultants and CROs, in connection with conducting research and development activities. The financial terms of these contracts vary from contract to contract and may result in payment flows that do not match the periods over which materials or services are provided under such contracts. We reflect research and development expenses in our financial statements by matching those expenses with the period in which services and efforts are expended.

We account for these expenses according to the progress of the preclinical study as measured by the timing of various aspects of the study or related activities. We determine accrual estimates through review of the underlying contracts along with discussions with our third-party services providers and our personnel as to the progress of studies, or other services being conducted. During the course of a study, we adjust our rate of expense recognition if actual results differ from our estimates.

Although we do not expect our estimates to be materially different from amounts actually incurred, if our estimates of the status and timing of services performed differ from the actual status and timing of services performed, it could result in us reporting amounts that are too high or too low in any particular period. Our accrual is dependent, in part, upon the receipt of timely and accurate reporting from CROs and other third-party vendors. Variations in the assumptions used to estimate accruals including, but not limited to, the number of patients enrolled, the rate of patient enrollment and the actual services performed, may vary from our estimates, resulting in adjustments to clinical trial expenses in future periods. Changes in these estimates that result in material changes to our accruals could materially affect our financial condition and results of operations. To date, there have been no material differences between our estimates of such expenses and the amounts actually incurred.

Stock-Based Compensation Expense

Stock-based compensation expense represents the cost of the grant date fair value of equity awards recognized over the requisite service period of the awards (usually the vesting period) on a straight-line basis. We estimate the fair value of stock option awards using the Black-Scholes option pricing model and recognize forfeitures as they occur.

For restricted stock awards, the fair value of the award is the estimated fair value of our common stock on the grant date, as determined by our board of directors.

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The Black-Scholes option pricing model requires the use of subjective assumptions, including the risk-free interest rate, the expected stock price volatility, the expected term of stock options, the expected dividend yield and the fair value of the underlying common stock on the date of grant. Changes in the assumptions can materially affect the fair value and ultimately how much stock-based compensation expense is recognized. These inputs are subjective and generally require significant analysis and judgment to develop. See Note 10 to our financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for information concerning certain of the specific assumptions we used in applying the Black-Scholes option pricing model to determine the estimated fair value of our stock options granted in 2021 and 2020.

In 2021 and 2020, stock-based compensation expense related to stock options was $8.5 million and $1.4 million, respectively. As of December 31, 2021, the unrecognized stock-based compensation expense related to stock options was $24.2 million and is expected to be recognized as expense over a weighted-average period of approximately 2.5 years.

Emerging Growth Company and Smaller Reporting Company Status

In April 2012, the JOBS Act was enacted. Section 107 of the JOBS Act provides that an "emerging growth company" may take advantage of the extended transition period provided in Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act for complying with new or revised accounting standards. Therefore, an emerging growth company can delay the adoption of certain accounting standards until those standards would otherwise apply to private companies. We have irrevocably elected not to avail ourselves of this exemption from new or revised accounting standards, and, therefore, will be subject to the same new or revised accounting standards as other public companies that are not emerging growth companies. We intend to rely on other exemptions provided by the JOBS Act, including without limitation, not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

We are also a “smaller reporting company,” meaning that the market value of our stock held by non-affiliates plus the aggregate amount of gross proceeds to us as a result of our initial public offering, is less than $700 million and our annual revenue was less than $100 million during the most recently completed fiscal year. We may continue to be a smaller reporting company if either (i) the market value of our stock held by non-affiliates is less than $250 million as of the last business day of the second fiscal quarter or (ii) our annual revenue was less than $100 million during the most recently completed fiscal year and the market value of our stock held by non-affiliates is less than $700 million as of the last business day of the second fiscal quarter. If we are a smaller reporting company at the time we cease to be an emerging growth company, we may continue to rely on exemptions from certain disclosure requirements that are available to smaller reporting companies. Specifically, as a smaller reporting company we may choose to present only the two most recent fiscal years of audited financial statements in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and, similar to emerging growth companies, smaller reporting companies have reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation.

Net Operating Loss and Research and Development Carryforwards and Other Income Tax Information

As of December 31, 2021, we had federal and state NOL carryforwards of $178.1 million and $168.5 million, respectively. The federal NOLs include $4.5 million that may be used to offset up to 100% of future taxable income and will begin to expire in 2035 unless previously utilized and $173.6 million that are not subject to expiration. The net operating loss carryforwards subject to expiration could expire unused and be unavailable to offset future income tax liabilities. The federal NOLs not subject to expiration are available to offset up to 80% of taxable income each year indefinitely. The state NOL carryforwards will begin to expire in 2035, unless previously utilized. As of December 31, 2021, we also had federal and state research credit carryforwards of $4.7 million and $3.6 million, respectively. The federal research and development tax credit carryforwards expire beginning in 2038 unless previously utilized, and the state research and development tax credit carryforwards do not expire. We have established valuation allowances against our NOLs and research and development credits due to the uncertainty surrounding the realization of these assets. We file tax returns in the U.S. and California. We are not currently under examination in any of these jurisdictions and all its tax years remain effectively open to examination due to net operating loss carryforwards.

We have not completed a Section 382 study to assess whether an ownership change has occurred or whether there have been multiple ownership changes since our formation due to the complexity and cost associated with such a study and the fact that there may be additional such ownership changes in the future. Pursuant to Sections 382 and 383 of the Internal Revenue Code, annual use of our NOL and research and development tax credit carryforwards may be limited in the event a cumulative change in ownership of more than 50% occurs within a three-year period.

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Item 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk.

As a “smaller reporting company” as defined by Item 10 of Regulation S-K, we are not required to provide this information.

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Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data.

BOLT BIOTHERAPEUTICS, INC.

INDEX TO FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

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Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm

To the Board of Directors and Stockholders of Bolt Biotherapeutics, Inc.

Opinion on the Financial Statements

We have audited the accompanying balance sheets of Bolt Biotherapeutics, Inc. (the “Company”) as of December 31, 2021 and 2020, and the related statements of operations and comprehensive loss, of convertible preferred stock and stockholders’ equity (deficit) and of cash flows for the years then ended, including the related notes (collectively referred to as the “financial statements”). In our opinion, the financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company as of December 31, 2021 and 2020, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for the years then ended in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.

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 of these financial statements 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.

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

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BOLT BIOTHERAPEUTICS, INC.

BALANCE SHEETS

(in thousands, except share and per share amounts)

See accompanying notes to the financial statements.

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BOLT BIOTHERAPEUTICS, INC.

STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS AND COMPREHENSIVE LOSS

(in thousands, except share and per share amounts)

See accompanying notes to the financial statements.

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BOLT BIOTHERAPEUTICS, INC.

STATEMENTS OF CONVERTIBLE PREFERRED STOCK AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY (DEFICIT)

(in thousands, except share amounts)