Gamida Cell Ltd. - Annual Report: 2021 (Form 10-K)

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

☒ ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2021

OR

☐ TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the transition period from _________ to _________.

Commission File Number: 001-38716

GAMIDA CELL LTD.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

(713) 400-6400

(Telephone Number)

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

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The aggregate market value of the voting and non-voting common equity held by non-affiliates of the registrant as of June 30, 2021 (the last day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter) based on the closing sale price of $6.41 as reported on the Nasdaq Global Market as of that date was approximately $379.9 million.

The registrant had 60,002,190 ordinary shares outstanding as of March 24, 2022.

Documents incorporated by reference: None.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This annual report contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements are contained principally in Part I, Item 1: “Business,” Part I, Item 1A: “Risk Factors,” and Part II, Item 7: “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” but are also contained elsewhere in this annual report. Any statements contained herein that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “may”, “will”, “should”, “expect”, “plan”, “intend”, “anticipate”, “believe”, “estimate”, “predict”, “potential” or “continue”, the negative of such terms or other comparable terminology. These statements speak only as of the date of this annual report and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. 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. Forward-looking statements in this annual report include statements as to:

You should refer to “Item 1A. Risk Factors” in this annual report for a discussion of important factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by our forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties may be amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in the Ukraine, and their potential impact on our business and the global economy. As a result of these factors, we cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements in this annual report will prove to be accurate. Furthermore, if our forward-looking statements prove to be inaccurate, the inaccuracy may be material. In light of the significant uncertainties in these forward-looking statements, you should not regard these statements as a representation or warranty by us or any other person that we will achieve our objectives and plans in any specified time frame, or at all. The forward-looking statements in this annual report represent our views as of the date of this annual report. We anticipate that subsequent events and developments may cause our views to change. However, while we may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. You should, therefore, not rely on these forward-looking statements as representing our views as of any date subsequent to the date of this annual report.

You should read this annual report and the documents that we reference in this annual report and have filed as exhibits to this annual report completely and with the understanding that our actual future results may be materially different from what we expect. We qualify all of our forward-looking statements by these cautionary statements.

In this report all references to (i) “Gamida,” “Gamida Cell,” “we,” “us,” “our” or the “Company” mean Gamida Cell Ltd. and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Gamida Cell Inc., unless the context otherwise requires; (ii) “SEC” refers to the Securities and Exchange Commission; (iii) “Securities Act” refers to the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended; (iv) “Exchange Act” refers to the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended; and (v) all dollar amounts refer to United States dollars unless otherwise indicated.

PART I

ITEM 1. BUSINESS

Overview

We are an advanced cell therapy company committed to cures for blood cancers and serious hematologic diseases. We harness our cell expansion platform to create therapies with the potential to redefine standards of care in areas of serious medical need. While cell therapies have the potential to address a variety of diseases, they are limited by availability of donor cells, matching a donor to the patient, and the decline in donor cell functionality when expanding the cells to achieve a therapeutic dose. We have leveraged our NAM platform, or nicotinamide cell expansion technology platform, to develop a pipeline of product candidates designed to address the limitations of other cell therapies. Our proprietary technology allows for the proliferation and enhancement of donor cells, which allows for maintaining the cells’ functional therapeutic characteristics, providing a potential treatment alternative for patients.

Cell therapies involve the delivery of human cells to replace or repair damaged tissue or cells in order to treat a variety of cancers and other diseases. Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation with donor cells, or allogeneic HSCT, also called bone marrow transplantation, is the most frequently used cell therapy to treat a variety of hematologic malignancies and other serious conditions. HSCT involves reconstituting a patient’s bone marrow from a seed population of stem cells obtained from a donor whose blood-forming and immune-system-forming cells are both cancer free and effective at carrying out their functions.

There are multiple sources of donor cells. The best source for donor cells is a sibling who is a matched related donor, or MRD, but the chances of having a sibling match in the United States are only 25% to 30%. The majority of patients rely on alternate sources of donor cells, including matched unrelated donor, or MUD, haploidentical, or “half-matched” donors, and mismatched unrelated donor, or MMUD, as well as umbilical cord blood. However, due to disease progression and other complications during the time needed to find a suitable donor, unfortunately many patients cannot find an appropriate donor. According to the CIBMTR, in the U.S., there are approximately 8,000 patients above the age of 12 with hematologic malignancies who undergo an allogeneic stem cell transplant each year and we believe that number of patients may grow over time. We estimate that there are approximately 1,000 patients each year, who are above the age of 12 and are deemed eligible for an allogeneic stem cell transplant but cannot find an appropriate donor.

Notwithstanding the various potential sources of donor cells, HSCT is subject to a number of significant limitations, including: (i) delays in finding a suitable match, during which disease progression may make patients ineligible for transplant; (ii) an insufficient number or delayed engraftment of donor cells, leaving patients without a functioning immune system and leading to potentially life-threatening immune deficiency following transplant; (iii) a lack of long-term compatibility between the donor cells and the patient’s own cells, resulting in potentially fatal graft versus host disease, or GvHD; and (iv) older donor age may correspond to a negative impact on the patient’s outcome. In addition, there is ethnic and racial disparity in access to HSCT: data from 2018 indicate that white patients of European descent are approximately four times more likely to receive a transplant than Black patients.

Umbilical cord blood is a readily available source of stem cells for patients who need HSCT and do not have a matched related donor. It is easier to find a match when using stem cells derived from cord blood, since a full match is not required for a successful transplant using cord blood. However, on average, a typical cord blood graft contains approximately one-tenth the number of stem and progenitor cells compared to stem cell grafts from adult bone marrow or peripheral blood donors. This lower number of cells may delay engraftment of the donor cells and reconstitution of the immune system. This, in turn, increases both time in the hospital and the likelihood that a patient might contract a life-threatening infection.

Omidubicel, our lead product candidate, is designed to address the limitations of HSCT. Omidubicel consists of NAM-expanded and enhanced hematopoietic stem cells and differentiated immune cells, including T cells. The final cell therapy product is cryopreserved until the patient is ready to begin the transplant, when it is thawed and infused. Omidubicel has the potential to be a universal stem cell graft in two broad patient groups: (i) patients with high-risk leukemias and lymphomas who require HSCT but who lack access to an appropriate matched related donor; and (ii) patients with severe hematologic disorders such as severe aplastic anemia.

In October 2021, the complete results from our pivotal Phase 3 clinical study of omidubicel in 125 patients with various hematologic malignancies were published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Blood. The trial achieved its primary endpoint of time to neutrophil engraftment as well as all three of the prespecified secondary endpoints. These secondary endpoints were the proportion of patients who achieved platelet engraftment by day 42, the proportion of patients with grade 2 or grade 3 bacterial or invasive fungal infections in the first 100 days following transplant, and the number of days alive and out of the hospital in the first 100 days following transplant. All three secondary endpoints demonstrated statistical significance in an intent-to-treat analysis.

In December 2021, we also reported data from an analysis of a subset of 37 patients from the Phase 3 randomized trial of omidubicel at Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology, or ASH. The analysis was aimed at investigating the reduced infection rates observed in the study and showed that the omidubicel-treated patients had more rapid recovery of a wide variety of immune cells including CD4+ T cells, B cells, NK cells and dendritic cell subtypes. The robust recovery of the immune system provides rationale for fewer severe bacterial, fungal and viral infections in patients treated with omidubicel. Additional analyses are ongoing to further characterize the immune recovery following omidubicel transplantation.

In early 2022, the FDA agreed that the initiation of our rolling biologics license application, or BLA, submission for omidubicel was appropriate and we initiated the rolling submission process. We plan to complete submission of the BLA in the first half of 2022.

In addition, we have applied our NAM cell expansion technology to natural killer, or NK, cells, to develop our initial NK product candidate, GDA-201, an investigational, NK cell-based immunotherapy for the treatment of hematologic and solid tumors in combination with standard of care antibody therapies. GDA-201 is currently being evaluated in a Phase 1/2 investigator-sponsored trial for the treatment of relapsed or refractory non-Hodgkin lymphoma, or NHL, and multiple myeloma, or MM. Data from the trial demonstrate that GDA-201 was well-tolerated and no dose-limiting toxicities were observed in 19 patients with NHL and 16 patients with MM. The data show that therapy using GDA-201 with monoclonal antibodies demonstrated significant clinical activity in heavily pretreated patients with advanced NHL. Of the 19 patients with NHL, 13 complete responses and one partial response were observed, with an overall response rate of 74% and a complete response rate of 68%. At the December 2021 Annual Meeting of ASH, we reported two-year follow-up data from this clinical trial on outcomes and cytokine biomarkers associated with survival. The data demonstrated a median duration of response of 16 months (range 5-36 months), an overall survival at two years of 78% (95% CI, 51%–91%) and a safety profile similar to that reported previously.

In September 2021, we submitted an investigational new drug application, or IND, for a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of GDA-201 in patients with follicular and diffuse large B-cell lymphomas. The FDA placed this IND on clinical hold prior to the initiation of patient dosing. The FDA has requested modifications in donor eligibility procedures and assay qualifications. We are in active communication with the FDA with the objective to address these requests to satisfy the requirements for IND acceptance and study initiation. We expect to initiate our Phase 1/2 study of GDA-201 in patients with follicular and diffuse large B-cell lymphomas in 2022.

We are led by an experienced management team with extensive expertise in developing oncology therapies and manufacturing cell therapies and other complex biologics. Our director and chief executive officer, Julian Adams, played a central role in the discovery and development of bortezomib, or Velcade®, a widely used therapy for MM and other blood cancers approved by the FDA in 2003. Dr. Adams also led research and development, or R&D, efforts at Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which helped lead to the 2018 FDA approval of duvelisib, also known as Copiktra®, for the treatment of certain leukemias and lymphomas.

Pipeline

The figure below summarizes key information about our current pipeline of product candidates:

Our Strategy

Our goal is to deliver curative cell therapies to patients with serious and life-threatening medical conditions. The key strategies to achieve our goal are the following:

We have completed an international, multicenter, randomized, pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial evaluating transplantation with omidubicel compared to standard umbilical cord blood in 125 patients with various hematological malignancies, including acute lymphocytic leukemia, or ALL, acute myeloid leukemia, or AML, myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS, chronic myeloid leukemia, or CML, and lymphoma. The primary endpoint was time to neutrophil engraftment. The trial achieved its primary endpoint, as well as all three of the prespecified secondary endpoints. In February 2022, we initiated submission of the BLA for omidubicel on a rolling basis. We plan to submit the full BLA for omidubicel in the first half of 2022, and if approved in the United States, we plan to seek regulatory approval in the European Union and other geographies.

In parallel with our rolling BLA submission for omidubicel, we are assessing alternatives for the commercialization of omidubicel, including potential U.S. or global partnerships. We also reported the results of an analysis of resource utilization data from the first 100 days after transplant for 108 patients in the pivotal Phase 3 trial that will help to inform pricing and reimbursement. Additionally, we are developing a reimbursement strategy modeled upon recently approved cell therapies in oncology, including potentially through the New Technology Add-on Payment program.

With the objective of extending our cash runway into mid-2023, consistent with the timeline for potential U.S. approval of omidubicel, we are reducing operating expenses primarily by delaying hiring and planned spending in 2022 and implementation of a workforce reduction of approximately 10% in January 2022.

We have applied our NAM technology platform to develop the lead product candidate, GDA-201, in our NK cell pipeline. GDA-201 is currently being evaluated in an investigator-sponsored, Phase 1/2 clinical study in patients with NHL or MM, in combination with rituximab or elotuzumab, respectively. At the December 2021 Annual Meeting of ASH, we reported two-year follow-up data from the clinical trial on outcomes and cytokine biomarkers associated with survival. The data demonstrated a median duration of response of 16 months (range 5- 36 months), an overall survival at two years of 78% (95% CI, 51%–91%) and a safety profile similar to that reported previously. In September 2021, we submitted an IND for a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of GDA-201 in patients with follicular and diffuse large B-cell lymphomas. The FDA placed this IND on clinical hold prior to the initiation of patient dosing. The FDA has requested modifications in donor eligibility procedures and assay qualifications. We are in active communication with the FDA with the objective to address these requests and enable IND acceptance. We expect to initiate our Phase 1/2 study of GDA-201 in patients with follicular and diffuse large B-cell lymphomas in 2022.

We plan to continue to leverage our platform technology with a goal of discovering additional product candidates and expanding into new therapeutic areas. We continue to advance our NAM-enabled genetically modified NK cell pipeline, which utilizes CAR, membrane bound- and CRISPR-mediated strategies to increase targeting, potency and persistence against hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. We plan to execute preclinical proof of concept studies for our genetically modified NK therapeutic targets and to select pipeline candidates for IND enabling studies by the end of 2022. We also believe our technology can be applied to other cells with therapeutic potential, and we plan to continue to invest in our research and development activities.

NAM Cell Expansion Technology

While cell-based therapies have the potential to address a variety of medical conditions, one of the key technical challenges for developing treatments with this approach is the expansion of therapeutically functional cells. In order for cell therapies to be clinically effective, there must be a sufficient quantity of therapeutically active cells for treatment, which requires the donor cells to be expanded in cell culture. While this may increase the number of cells, the functionality of those cells often diverges from the therapeutic functionality of the original donor cells. This shortcoming in the cells used for treatment can result in suboptimal clinical outcomes.

Our NAM cell expansion technology is designed to address this challenge by leveraging the biochemical properties of the small molecule nicotinamide in our manufacturing process. We expand and enhance the number of donor cells while maintaining their functional therapeutic characteristics through the proprietary combination of NAM, intended to maintain silencing of cell differentiation and preservation of gene expression, and particular cytokines which promote cell growth. Our optimized manufacturing process results in robust and replicable batch production, enabling the generation of standardized donor-derived cell products, potentially resulting in better clinical outcomes.

We have presented research describing the mechanism of action for the role of NAM in expanding CD34+ stem cells. The research included transcriptome, transcription factor, and pathway analysis to elucidate the factors that lead to the preservation of engraftment after ex vivo expansion of CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood (the starting point for omidubicel) compared to CD34+ cells grown in the absence of NAM. Analyses showed that the presence of NAM reduced the expression of genes involved in the production of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, suggesting that cell stress was minimized during expansion. In addition, NAM also decreased growth factor of pathways responsible for activation and differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells, suggesting NAM expanded cells while keeping them in an undifferentiated state. The presence of NAM also led to a decrease in the expression of genes responsible for matrix metalloproteinase secretion, simulating the microenvironment of the bone marrow. Additionally, NAM led to an increased expression of telomerase genes, which is believed to enable cells to remain in a more quiescent, stem-like state. These data provide further scientific rationale for the favorable stem cell engraftment and patient outcomes that were observed in the Phase 3 clinical study of omidubicel.

We have also applied NAM technology in developing GDA-201 and the other product candidates in our NK cell pipeline, and we are exploring this technology for other cells with therapeutic potential.

Hematologic Malignancies and Allogeneic HSCT

Overview

Hematologic malignancies are characterized by an abnormal and excessive proliferation of malignant blood cells that replace normal blood cells in the bone marrow and the circulation. In some patients, these cancerous cells proliferate rapidly, requiring urgent treatment. Patients are initially treated with chemotherapy in order to destroy the malignant cells in a rapid manner. However, in most patients, remission is temporary and the disease will return after initial treatment. One of the most effective treatment options for these patients is hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, or HSCT, where the blood-forming cells in the patient are destroyed using chemotherapy, radiation or a combination of both. These patients then receive new bone marrow stem cells from a healthy donor.

Allogeneic HSCT is the transplantation of hematopoietic stem cells, derived from a donor’s bone marrow or peripheral blood, or standard umbilical cord blood. HSCT involves reconstituting a person’s entire blood and bone marrow from a seed population of cells. In some clinical settings, autologous HSCT may be performed, in which cells are derived from the patient and reinfused at a later date. In leukemia and other hematologic malignancies, it is more appropriate to use allogeneic HSCT obtained from a donor, which ensures that the graft does not contain the patient’s malignant cells and leverages the ability of donor cells to fight against a patient’s cancer, which is known as the “graft versus leukemia” effect.

In HSCT, a patient is treated with chemotherapy and/or radiation to destroy the residual cancerous or defective cells that reside in the bone marrow. This procedure, called myeloablation, also destroys the hematopoietic stem cells that are responsible for forming red blood cells, platelets and white blood cells. Stem cells from a donor are then infused into a patient, migrate and home to the bone marrow and begin to proliferate and differentiate into various types of blood cells, eventually leading to a full reconstitution of the bone marrow and immune system.

The intent of HSCT is to cure patients of their hematologic malignancies. As of 2016, more than 500,000 allogeneic HSCT procedures have been performed worldwide over the past 50 years with over 30,000 being performed per year, of which 8,500 are in the United States. Approximately half of such patients are cured of their hematologic malignancies. From 2006 to 2016, the number of patients receiving an allogeneic HSCT procedure increased by approximately 5% per year in the United States due to multiple factors, including an aging population and new transplant modalities.

Approximately 90% of HSCT procedures performed in the United States are for patients with various hematologic malignancies.

Although the number of allogeneic HSCT procedures performed is growing and there are new modalities for the procedure, HSCT continues to have a number of limitations. There are two major areas of unmet need. First, of those who receive a transplant, there is concomitant morbidity and mortality associated with the treatment. Second, a significant number of patients who are candidates for transplant do not receive one in a timely fashion. We believe that omidubicel can address these significant limitations.

Current Sources of Donor Cells for Allogeneic HSCT

There are multiple potential sources of donor cells for transplants. For each donor, there are various baseline requirements including age and overall health. In general, younger donors produce more and better cells for HSCT than older donors. Donor matching is determined by human leukocyte antigens, or HLA, which are proteins present on most cells and inherited genetically. HLA are recognized by the immune system, and “foreign” or nonmatching HLA may be rejected. Therefore, matching of HLA between bone marrow donor and recipient is needed for a successful transplant outcome.

The optimal source of donor cells is a matched sibling, but the chances of having a sibling match are only 25% to 30%. An alternate source of donor cells is a MUD, but only 30% of patients requiring a transplant have a good to intermediate probability of finding a MUD. Furthermore, it takes approximately four months on average to identify an appropriate MUD who is medically suitable and willing to donate. During this lengthy time period, there is a risk of disease recurrence. Over time, the patient may also become ineligible due to other health complications. Moreover, prolonged donor searches heighten anxiety for patients and their families. In addition, there is ethnic and racial disparity in access to HSCT: data from 2018 indicate that white patients of European descent are approximately four times more likely to receive a transplant than Black patients. The ability to find a match through this process is particularly challenging for individuals of ethnic backgrounds that are not well represented in donor databases.

If a matched donor cell source is not identified, there are three alternatives for transplant candidates: mismatched unrelated donor, haploidentical donors and umbilical cord donors. Haploidentical, or “half-matched” donors, and MUD are only partially compatible with the recipient. Because of the immune incompatibility in transplants from such donors, there is a high risk of GvHD, infection and other complications.

Alternatively, donor cells can be obtained from umbilical cord blood. In contrast to MUD transplants, which require a greater degree of matching, matching requirements for cord blood are less stringent than those from unrelated donors, leading to a greater probability for finding a match: 96% for Caucasians of European descent, 81% for Black patients, and 82-91% of other minorities. This obviates the need to go through a prolonged search process with uncertain outcomes in order to find a donor and arrange for the collection of donor cells. Because the donor T cells in cord blood are naïve, meaning that they have not matured, they readily adapt to the recipient and are associated with a low risk of a patient developing GvHD, in particular chronic GvHD. Furthermore, transplantation with cord blood reduces the risk of potential transmission of an infection from an adult donor.

Limitations of Allogeneic HSCT

There are three critical limitations to successful HSCT:

Omidubicel is Designed to Address the Limitations of HSCT

In addition to the general limitations of HSCT, the low number of hematopoietic cells in standard umbilical cord blood is a major clinical constraint. With standard umbilical cord blood, the small number of stem cells infused leads to a prolonged time to engraftment, the process by which donor stem cells home to the bone marrow, differentiate, and repopulate the recipient’s blood cells. Longer time to engraftment is associated with a higher rate of post-transplant complications, longer hospitalization time, and an increase in transplant-related mortality. Omidubicel is designed to address the limitations of allogeneic HSCT because it expands the number of donor cord blood stem cells while maintaining the cells’ functional therapeutic characteristics. The omidubicel manufacturing process also enhances cell functionality.

Omidubicel consists of two fractions of a unit of cord blood separated based on the expression of a marker on the surface of individual cells known as CD133. A cell’s CD133 status reflects its “stem cell” properties. Those cells that express CD133 represent a pool of stem or progenitor cells, cells that are capable of generating blood cells that can differentiate into a variety of cell subtypes. The CD133-positive stem or progenitor cells are also capable of reproducing themselves. Once the cells bearing this marker, are isolated, they are cultured using the proprietary NAM technology platform to expand their number while maintaining their regenerative properties. After approximately three weeks, the cells are harvested and cryopreserved. The United States Adopted Names Council selected omidubicel as the name for these cells.

Those cells that do not express CD133 represent other types of more mature, differentiated cells, including essential components of the immune system such as T cells. These mature cells cannot engraft but can provide immunological support until T cells derived from the stem cell graft recover. The CD133-negative cells are also cryopreserved and retained for use as the second component of omidubicel. We refer to the two components collectively as “omidubicel.”

Omidubicel is shipped cryogenically to transplant centers where both components are thawed and infused to patients on the day of transplantation. The thawing process occurs in a closed system and can also be performed at the patient’s bedside for ease of administration. The cryopreserved product resulted in engraftment results similar to those obtained with non-cryopreserved product in a Phase 1 pilot study at Duke University.

Given these characteristics, omidubicel may serve as a new alternative to existing graft modalities as well as expand the transplant market for those who are unable to find a match.

Omidubicel: Clinical Trial Results

Our clinical trials of omidubicel include an initial safety evaluation of omidubicel in a Phase 1 pilot study at Duke University, a Phase 1/2 clinical trial that enrolled 36 patients in an international, multicenter, open-label, single-arm trial, and a Phase 3 clinical trial that evaluated 125 patients in a pivotal, international, multi-center, randomized trial. All patients in our clinical trials of omidubicel had been previously treated for various hematologic malignancies, including ALL, AML, MDS, CML and lymphoma. These patients were deemed to be in remission and at high risk of subsequent relapse.

Pivotal Phase 3 Trial

In January 2020, we enrolled the last patient in the pivotal, international, multi-center, randomized Phase 3 trial of omidubicel. Initiated in 2017, the study compared omidubicel to single or double standard, unmanipulated umbilical cord blood transplantation. Randomization was stratified by treatment center, disease risk, age and intent to perform single or double cord blood transplant. The primary endpoint of time to neutrophil engraftment was met.

All secondary endpoints—time to platelet engraftment, the incidence of grade 2 or grade 3 bacterial or invasive fungal infections and the number of days alive and out of hospital during the first 100 days following transplantation—were also met.

Phase 3 Study Schema

A total of 125 patients were randomized at 33 centers in the United States, South America, Europe and Asia. These 125 patients formed the basis of the intent-to-treat, or ITT, analysis. Of the 62 patients randomized to omidubicel, 52 were transplanted per protocol with the omidubicel graft. Of the 63 patients randomized to the control arm, 56 were transplanted as per protocol.

Phase 3 Patient Disposition and Analysis Populations

Patient demographics were well-balanced in the two study arms, with a median age in the early 40s. The study population was diverse, with approximately 40% either Black, Asian, Latino or patients characterized under “other”. The majority of patients (over 70%) had acute leukemia. With respect to the transplant, all patients received myeloablative conditioning regimens, with approximately half of the patients receiving a total-body-irradiation regimen, and approximately half receiving a chemotherapy-only conditioning regimen. Myeloablative conditioning therapy is a combination of chemotherapy agents, and in some cases radiotherapy, that is expected to produce low blood counts and is administered in order to reduce the tumor burden, suppress the patient’s immune system, and allow engraftment of donor stem cells. Over 70% of patients had a 4/6 HLA matching cord, either serving as the starting material for omidubicel, or as the standard control. A double cord transplant was intended for two-thirds of patients randomized to the standard cord arm. The omidubicel unit was expanded a median 133-fold to a median of 6.6 x 10e8 CD34+ cells. This provided the patients with a median CD34+ cell dose of 9 x 10e6 CD34+ cells/kg, which is a larger cell dose than can be collected from many healthy adult stem cell donors. In contrast, recipients on the control arm received a median 0.3 x 10e6 CD34+ cells/kg.

Phase 3 Patient Demographics

Phase 3 Baseline Disease and Transplant Characteristics

The primary endpoint was time to neutrophil engraftment, based on recovery of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell that helps fight infections. In the ITT population, the patients randomized to omidubicel engrafted at median of 12 days following transplantation (95% confidence interval 10-15 days). Those randomized to the control arm engrafted at a median of 22 days (95% confidence interval 19-25 days). This was statistically significant (p<0.001). In the as-treated, or AT, analysis, patients who received omidubicel had a median time to neutrophil engraftment of 10 days, vs 20.5 days for the control. The cumulative incidence of neutrophil engraftment was 96% for omidubicel recipients and 89% for the controls.

Cumulative Incidence of Neutrophil and Platelet Engraftment

The results of the study were published in October 2021 in the peer reviewed ASH journal Blood. Results included statistically significant positive results in all three secondary endpoints: platelet engraftment, infections, and hospitalization. Platelets are required for normal blood clotting. Platelet engraftment on day 42 after transplant was achieved in 55% of those randomized to omidubicel and 35% of those randomized to the control arm (ITT). This difference had a p value of 0.028.

Patients randomized to omidubicel were less likely to develop a grade 2 or grade 3 bacterial or invasive fungal infection: 37% versus 57% for those randomized to the control arm (p=0.03). The cumulative incidence of first grade 3 viral infection during the first year after transplantation was also lower for those randomized to omidubicel (10% vs 26%; p=0.02). When looking at the overall number and rate of infections, or infection density, during the first year after transplantation, the risk ratio for all infections, irrespective of severity, was significantly lower among recipients of omidubicel.

Incidence of Serious Bacterial and Viral Infection Post-Transplant

Relative Risk (95% CI) for Bacterial, Viral, and all Infections at One Year

Patients randomized to omidubicel spent a median of 60.5 days alive and out of the hospital during the first 100 days following transplantation, compared to 48 days for control patients (p=0.005).

In the ITT population, the cumulative incidence of non-relapse mortality at 210 days following randomization was 11% for omidubicel and 24% for control. The incidence of relapse at 15 months following randomization was 25% for omidubicel and 17% for the controls. These differences were not statistically different.

Incidence of Non-Relapse Mortality and Incidence of Relapse

There was no statistically significant difference between the omidubicel arm and the control arm in one year overall survival or disease-free survival. The Hazard Ratio of overall survival was 0.57 in favor of omidubicel, p=0.09.

Disease-Free Survival and Overall Survival

The safety profile for omidubicel recipients in this study was consistent with the expected toxicities of allogeneic stem cell transplantation following conditioning therapy, and there was no increase in adverse events, serious adverse events, or infusion reactions in the omidubicel arm compared to control. GvHD is a multisystem disorder that is common in allogeneic HSCT. GvHD occurs when immune cells from a donor graft recognize the transplant recipient host as foreign and initiate an immune reaction. Acute GvHD usually presents around the time of engraftment and manifests as rash, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, or increased serum bilirubin. Chronic GvHD is usually diagnosed later during the first year post-transplant, and clinical manifestations include skin involvement, gastrointestinal disease, and increased bilirubin. There was no statistically significant difference between omidubicel and control patients in the cumulative incidence of acute GvHD in the first 100 days post-transplant.

Grade 2-4 acute GvHD was observed in 56% of omidubicel recipients and 43% of controls. The numbers for grade 3/4 (severe) acute GvHD were 14% and 21% for omidubicel and control, respectively. There was also no statistically significant difference in the cumulative incidence of chronic GvHD (all grades, including mild, moderate and severe) in the first year, 35% vs 29% for omidubicel and control, respectively. Overall, the results of the Phase 3 study showed superior hematopoietic recovery, decreased risk of serious infection, and shorter duration of hospitalization in patients treated with omidubicel, with an acceptable safety profile.

In November 2021, we completed a Type B Pre-BLA meeting with the FDA for omidubicel during which the FDA requested that we provide revised analysis of the manufacturing data generated at our manufacturing facility in Kiryat Gat, Israel to demonstrate the analytical comparability of the omidubicel produced at Kiryat Gat to the omidubicel that was produced at the clinical manufacturing sites for the Phase 3 study. In January 2022, we received positive Type B meeting correspondence from the FDA that we had established the requisite analytical comparability. Based on the positive Phase 3 trial results and the comparability analysis, the FDA agreed that the initiation of a rolling BLA submission is appropriate. In February 2022, we initiated the rolling submission process with the FDA, and we plan to submit the full BLA for omidubicel to the FDA in the first half of 2022.

Omidubicel has Breakthrough Therapy Designation from the FDA. Additionally, omidubicel received orphan drug designation from both the FDA and the EMA.

Phase 1/2 Clinical Trial

The main objective of the Phase 1/2 study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of omidubicel treatment in patients with hematologic malignancies following myeloablative conditioning therapy. The study compared outcomes against a group of historic controls that were identified from data collected by the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research, or CIBMTR, which tracks all allogeneic transplants conducted in the United States. From the CIBMTR database, we identified 146 age and disease matched patients who received standard cord blood transplants and served as historic controls.

The primary endpoint of this study was also time to neutrophil engraftment, which was also met. Patients treated with omidubicel recovered their neutrophils (500 cells per microliter) with a median recovery of 11.5 days after transplantation, which is significantly shorter than the 21 days observed in the historic controls (p<0.001). Platelet counts recovered within a median time period of 34 days in the omidubicel treated patients, compared to 46 days in the historic controls (p<0.001). For both neutrophils and platelets, the percentage of patients who achieved engraftment was higher than in the historic controls. The age-adjusted cumulative incidence of neutrophil engraftment at 42 days following transplantation was 94% for omidubicel recipients and 85% for the CIBMTR comparator cohort.

Rates of acute GvHD, chronic GvHD, infections, and hospitalization, as well as safety findings, were similar to those observed in the Phase 3 study.

Omidubicel: Health Economic Implications

The potential clinical advantages of omidubicel could lead to societal benefits such as enabling patients to return to work, spend time with loved ones and enjoy improved quality of life. Omidubicel may also reduce the costs to the healthcare system versus standard cord HSCT due to potentially shortened isolation and intensive care hospital stays, reduced re-admission rates and decreased severity and rates of infections. At the December 2021 Annual Meeting of ASH, we reported the results of an analysis of resource utilization data from the first 100 days after transplant for 108 patients in the Phase 3 trial showing that the omidubicel-treated patients had significantly shorter durations of hospitalization and intensive care unit stays, and fewer consultant visits, procedures, and transfusions than the patients in the control arm. These data provide further evidence of the clinical benefit associated with the more rapid hematopoietic recovery in patients treated with omidubicel and the corresponding reduction in healthcare resource utilization. These data will help to inform pricing and reimbursement.

Omidubicel for the Treatment of Bone Marrow Failure Disorders

In addition to hematologic malignancies, we are pursuing the development of omidubicel for the treatment of severe aplastic anemia and other bone marrow failure disorders. Severe aplastic anemia is a rare disease, with an estimated incidence in the United States of 600-900 patients per year.

Underlying causes include autoimmune disease, certain medications or toxic substances, and inherited conditions. However, the cause is unknown in approximately half of all cases of severe aplastic anemia. The disease is characterized by stem cells in the bone marrow that are damaged and unable to produce enough new blood cells. This leads to extremely low blood cell counts and platelet levels, and often requires patients to be immediately hospitalized for treatment.

Allogeneic HSCT is the treatment of choice for patients with severe aplastic anemia who have an available matched sibling donor. Among the 2,471 patients with severe aplastic anemia receiving HSCT with a matched sibling donor between 2005 and 2015, the three-year probability of survival was 91% for those younger than 18 years, and 78% for patients 18 years of age or older. Among the 1,751 recipients of HSCT with a MUD during the same period, the probabilities of survival were 78% and 68% for severe aplastic anemia patients under 18 years and greater than or equal to 18 years, respectively. We believe omidubicel may be able to provide a treatment option for those patients who are unable to locate such a donor in time.

The goal in treating these diseases is to replace defective bone marrow cells with cells derived from cord blood donors. Omidubicel is currently being evaluated in a Phase 1/2 NIH-sponsored clinical trial. In this trial, omidubicel is administered in combination with a reduced conditioning preparative protocol, which is designed to minimize toxicity, in up to 62 patients with severe aplastic anemia or hypoplastic myelodysplastic syndrome, another bone marrow failure disease. This research protocol is designed to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of transplantation with omidubicel to overcome the high incidence of graft rejection associated with standard cord blood HSCT in severe aplastic anemia patients, where graft rejection occurs in up to 50% of subjects. In December 2020, we reported updated and expanded data at the Annual Meeting of ASH that demonstrated that patients with severe aplastic anemia treated with omidubicel achieved sustained early engraftment.

Omidubicel for the Treatment of Non-Malignant Disorders

Omidubicel has also been tested in patients with sickle cell disease, or SCD, for which HSCT is currently the only clinically established cure. The results of our Phase 1/2 clinical trial were published in Blood. Overall, 16 patients with severe SCD were treated, 13 patients with omidubicel in conjunction with a standard unit of cord blood, and three patients with standalone omidubicel. All patients initially engrafted at a median of seven days for double cord and eight days for single cord. Two of the patients died, one due to chronic GvHD and the other due to secondary graft failure. The rate of grades II-IV acute GvHD was 69%, and the rate of grades III-IV acute GvHD was 23%. The engraftment results were favorable when compared to those from a study of 29 patients with SCD who underwent HSCT with cells from a MUD donor. In that study, 27 of the patients had neutrophil engraftment, and the median time to engraftment was 12 days. There were eight deaths, seven due to GvHD and one due to graft rejection; 19 of 29 were disease-free at two years. While the clinical study in patients with SCD is currently closed, we continue to believe that omidubicel has potential to replace other allogeneic HSCT procedures in certain hematologic diseases and some metabolic disorders.

Our NK Cell Pipeline

Our pipeline of NK cell-based cancer immunotherapies is comprised of GDA-201 and four additional preclinical programs that involve modifications intended to direct NK cells against specific tumor markers to improve their cancer killing capabilities in both hematological and solid tumors.

GDA-201 is our lead investigational NK cell-based cancer immunotherapy product candidate. GDA-201 addresses a key limitation in the therapeutic potential of NK cells by increasing the cytotoxicity and in vivo retention and proliferation in the bone marrow and lymphoid organs of NK cells expanded in culture conditions. GDA-201 is currently being evaluated in an investigator-sponsored Phase 1/2 trial for the treatment of NHL and MM. We believe that GDA-201 may have broad potential in both hematologic malignancies and in solid tumors.

In September 2021, we submitted an IND for a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of GDA-201 for the treatment of patients with follicular and diffuse large B-cell lymphomas. In October 2021, the FDA placed this IND on clinical hold prior to the initiation of patient dosing. The FDA has requested modifications in donor eligibility procedures and assay qualifications. We are in active communication with the FDA with the objective to address these requests and to enable IND acceptance. We expect to initiate our Phase 1/2 study of GDA-201 in patients with follicular and diffuse large B-cell lymphomas in 2022.

Limitations of Therapeutic Antibodies in Cancer Treatment

NHL is the most common malignancy of B cells. An estimated 77,240 new cases of NHL were diagnosed in the United States in 2020. The five-year survival rate for those with NHL is approximately 73%. The combination of an antibody such as rituximab and chemotherapy is the standard of care for patients with NHL. However, many patients develop resistance to rituximab, and when used as monotherapy, only 15% of patients respond. One mechanism that contributes to this resistance is the inability of patient or autologous NK cells to locate and kill tumor cells that rituximab has bound to. Treatment with donor-derived NK cells may overcome this resistance.

NK Cells: Broad Anti-Cancer Potential

Extensive research efforts are ongoing to generate cellular products for the treatment of cancer patients. There is much interest in the field in the potential of NK cells because they have potent anti-tumor properties. In contrast to other immune cell therapies, NK cells can be used independently from genetic matching, potentially enabling NK cells to serve as a universal donor-based therapy when combined with certain antibodies.

NK cells’ tumor killing activity is greatly enhanced by antibodies that recognize tumor cells, which trigger ADCC. In ADCC, the binding of an antibody to a cell marks it for destruction by NK cells. A number of antibody products have been approved by the FDA as therapeutics in oncology, each of which has limited efficacy as monotherapy. The effectiveness of these antibodies can potentially be enhanced through coadministration with NK cells. A key limitation in the application of NK cells in cell therapy has been the traditionally challenging task of generating sufficient numbers of highly functional NK cells in culture.

Our Solution: GDA-201

We have developed GDA-201, a cell therapy product candidate generated by expansion of NK cells using our NAM technology. We believe that GDA-201 has potential application in boosting the innate immune response to cancer. Functional studies have shown that our GDA-201 cells expanded in culture with our NAM technology and the cytokine IL-15 display increased tumor killing activity over NK cells expanded with IL-15 but without NAM. We have also demonstrated ADCC with GDA-201 in combination with antibodies, including rituximab.

An investigator-sponsored Phase 1/2 clinical study of GDA-201 in patients with MM or NHL was initiated in 2017 at the University of Minnesota. These patients have relapsed or refractory NHL or MM, meaning that their disease has come back after standard therapy and/or they are not responding to standard therapy for their disease. In combination with GDA-201, these patients also receive therapeutic antibodies, which, in the case of NHL, includes rituximab, and in the case of MM, elotuzumab. At the December 2021 Annual Meeting of ASH, we reported two-year follow-up data from the clinical trial on outcomes and cytokine biomarkers associated with survival. The safety profile was consistent with that reported previously: there were no dose limiting toxicities in the 35 treated patients. In 19 patients with lymphoma, the data demonstrated a median duration of response of 16 months (range 5- 36 months), an overall survival at two years of 78% (95% CI, 51%–91%).

Phase 1/2 Study of GDA-201 in Patients with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma or Multiple Myeloma

Treatment included lymphodepleting chemotherapy with fludarabine and cyclophosphamide followed by two doses of GDA-201 (Days 0 and 2) and low-dose IL-2 (6 million units subcutaneously). Three doses of monoclonal antibodies were administered pre and post GDA-201. The study was designed to determine the maximum tolerated dose of GDA-201 cells. Patients who derived clinical benefit received a second cycle of GDA-201 infusion without lymphodepleting chemotherapy. A total of 35 patients were treated in three cohorts of escalating cellular doses of GDA-201, with a maximum dose of 200 million cell/kg. Sixteen patients with MM and 19 patients with NHL were evaluable. The median age was 61 and the oldest patient was 83 years old. Among the patients with NHL, eight had diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, or DLBC, 10 had follicular lymphoma, or FL, and one had mantle cell lymphoma. Patients were heavily pre-treated with a median of three lines of prior chemotherapy (range 1-8 lines). Four of the NHL patients and three of the MM patients had prior HSCT.

There were no dose limiting toxicities at any of the doses administered. One patient, who initially was thought to have cytokine release syndrome, died of E-coli sepsis. The most common Grade 3 or 4 adverse events were decreased neutrophil count, febrile neutropenia, anemia and low platelet count, generally attributed to lymphodepleting chemotherapy. No neurotoxic events, GvHD or marrow aplasia were observed.

Among the 16 patients with MM, one patient achieved a complete response, and four patients achieved stable disease. Among the 19 patients with NHL, 13 achieved a complete response and one achieved a partial response. Overall response rate among the 19 NHL patients was 74%, with responses observed in 8 patients with FL and 5 patients with DLBCL. Median duration of response was 10 months with a range of 1 – 28 months. In three patients, an initial partial response deepened over time to a complete response: one (patient 009) without any further therapy, and two in the context of a second cycle of GDA-201 and rituximab. Two patients with complete response who received a second cycle of GDA-201 after initial complete response had maintained a complete response after a total of 6 and 12 months, respectively.

Responses in Patients with Lymphoma Treated with GDA-201

Given the results of this study, we have developed a cryopreserved, allogeneic, readily available formulation of GDA-201 to enable further clinical trials. In September 2021, we submitted an IND for a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of GDA-201 for the treatment of patients with follicular and diffuse large B-cell lymphomas. In October 2021, the FDA placed this IND on clinical hold prior to the initiation of patient dosing. The FDA has requested modifications in donor eligibility procedures and sterility assay qualification. We are in active communication with the FDA with the objective to address these requests and to enable IND acceptance. We expect to initiate our Phase 1/2 trial of GDA-201 in patients with follicular and diffuse large B-cell lymphomas in 2022.

Our Additional NK Cell Programs

We continue to advance the other programs in our NAM-enabled genetically modified NK cell pipeline, which utilize CAR, membrane bound- and CRISPR-mediated strategies to increase targeting, potency and persistence against hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. We plan to execute preclinical proof of concept studies and to select pipeline candidates for IND enabling studies in the following targets by the end of 2022:

Competition

The biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries are characterized by rapidly advancing technologies, intense competition and a strong emphasis on proprietary products. While we believe that our technology platform, development experience and scientific knowledge provide us with competitive advantages, we face potential competition from many different sources, including major pharmaceutical, specialty pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academic institutions and governmental agencies and public and private research institutions. Any product candidates that we successfully develop and commercialize will compete with existing therapies and new therapies that may become available in the future.

We anticipate intensifying competition in the field of cell therapies as new therapies are approved and advanced technologies become available.

Many of our competitors will have substantially greater financial, technical and human resources. Competitors may also have more experience developing, obtaining approval for, and marketing novel treatments in the indications we are pursuing. These factors could give our competitors an advantage over us in recruiting and retaining qualified personnel, completing clinical development, and commercializing their products. Competitors that are able to obtain FDA or other regulatory approval for their products more rapidly than we can for our products may also establish a stronger market position, diminishing our commercial opportunity. Key considerations that would impact our capacity to effectively compete include the efficacy, safety, ease of use, as well as pricing and reimbursement of our products.

There are several clinical-stage development programs that seek to improve human umbilical cord blood transplantation through the use of an allogeneic HSCT graft. In addition, there are clinical-stage development programs that focus on natural killer cells. Companies active in these areas include, but are not limited to:

Allogeneic HSCT Graft: Magenta Therapeutics, ExCellThera, Garuda Therapeutics and Bellicum Pharmaceuticals; and

Natural Killer Cell product: Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, Fate Therapeutics, Artiva, Sanofi, MiNK Therapeutics, ONK Therapeutics, Shoreline, Cellularity, NKarta, Wugen, Century Therapeutics, Appia Bio and FujiFilm Cellular Dynamics.

Manufacturing

Omidubicel is currently manufactured at our Kiryat Gat, Israel facility using a scalable self-assembly process with well-defined unit operations. This highly specialized and precisely controlled manufacturing process enables us to manufacture product candidates reproducibly and efficiently for clinical and commercial applications. We anticipate using the Kiryat Gat facility to also manufacture our other pipeline therapies, including our NK cell therapies.

We currently rely on third-party clinical cell processing facilities and contract manufacturers for all our required raw materials, active ingredients and finished products for our preclinical research and clinical trials. We previously relied on a third party, Lonza Netherlands B.V., or Lonza, to conduct a material portion of our product manufacturing for omidubicel until production was increased at our Kiryat Gat manufacturing facility.

In June 2019, we entered into a Manufacturing Services Agreement, or the Services Agreement, with Lonza, to provide for the future commercial production after potential FDA approval of omidubicel. Under the Services Agreement, Lonza agreed to construct and dedicate production suites prior to anticipated commercial launch. Additionally, the Services Agreement gives us the option to increase the number of Lonza’s dedicated production suites over time to ensure commercial supply of omidubicel.

The term of the Services Agreement is the shorter of seven years from the date of execution or five years from the date of the first FDA approval of omidubicel. The Services Agreement may be terminated in the event of an uncured material breach by one of the parties. The Services Agreement also provides that if we have not received FDA approval of omidubicel by December 31, 2021, we have the right to terminate the Services Agreement upon 30 days’ written notice. Either party may terminate without cause after the referenced time periods, but only after the Initial Term expires, which will happen on June 10, 2022. Further, the Services Agreement may be terminated by either party upon notice in the event of dissolution, termination of existence, liquidation or business failure of the other party, the uncured appointment of a custodian or receiver to the other party or un-dismissed institution of insolvency, reorganization or bankruptcy proceedings.

In December 2021, we engaged in discussions with Lonza executive leadership regarding our desire to wind down Lonza’s manufacturing of omidubicel under the Services Agreement and our desire to affect a mutual termination of the Services Agreement. These discussions are ongoing. As of December 31, 2021, we have paid Lonza an aggregate of approximately $28.2 million pursuant to the Services Agreement.

We have a contract through the end of 2022 with Hadasit Medical Research Services & Development Co. Ltd., a technology transfer company of Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, for the manufacture of GDA-201 and we plan to begin manufacturing GDA-201 at our Kiryat Gat facility in 2023.

Marketing, Sales and Distribution

Our strategy is to ensure omidubicel is made available to appropriate patients, and we are evaluating strategic alternatives for commercialization of omidubicel, if approved, which include commercializing omidubicel ourselves or entering into potential strategic alliances or licensing arrangements with pharmaceutical companies and other partners. We are preparing for potential approval of omidubicel and our commercial launch thereafter, and we have added sales, marketing, and supply chain personnel to our workforce. Our Chief Commercial and Chief Operating Officer, Michele Korfin, is based in the U.S., and we have a wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary, Gamida Cell Inc., to support our U.S. development efforts.

If we receive regulatory approvals for our products in markets outside of the United States, we intend, where appropriate, to pursue commercialization relationships, including strategic alliances and licensing arrangements with pharmaceutical companies and other strategic partners that are equipped to market or sell our products through their well-developed sales, marketing and distribution organizations in such countries.

Intellectual Property

We strive to protect and enhance the proprietary technologies, inventions, products and product candidates, methods of manufacture, methods of using our products and product candidates, and improvements thereof that are commercially important to our business. We protect our proprietary intellectual property by, among other things, filing patent applications in the United States and in jurisdictions outside of the United States covering our proprietary technologies, inventions, products and product candidates, methods, and improvements that are important to the development and implementation of our business.

As of January 12, 2022, we own 32 issued patents and 61 pending patent applications worldwide, including six U.S. issued patents, six pending U.S. non-provisional patent applications and three pending U.S. provisional patent applications.

We own two issued patents in the United States and 17 issued foreign patents related to our omidubicel product candidate. The patents that we own outside of the United States are granted in Australia, Canada, Europe, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Singapore, and South Africa. In addition, we own two pending U.S. non-provisional patent applications and 16 pending foreign patent applications related to our omidubicel product candidate. These patents and pending patent applications contain composition-of-matter claims to our omidubicel product candidate, and claims to methods of producing and methods of treatment using omidubicel. Not accounting for any patent term adjustment, regulatory extension or terminal disclaimers, and assuming that all annuity and/or maintenance fees are paid timely, these patents, and if granted, these patent applications, will expire from 2023 to 2038. In particular, U.S. Patent No. 7,955,852, EP Patent No. 1576089, EP Patent No. 2206773, JP Patent No. 4738738, and IL Patent No. 163180, which relate to methods of expanding a population of hematopoietic stem cells by culturing the cells with nicotinamide or nicotinamide analogs, and transplantable cell populations produced by these methods, expire in 2023, not accounting for any patent term adjustment, regulatory extension or terminal disclaimers, and assuming that all annuity and/or maintenance fees are paid timely and U.S. Patent No. 8,846,393, EP Patent No. 1974012, JP Patent No. 5102773 and IL Patent No. 191669, which relate to methods of enhancing cell homing and engraftment potential of hematopoietic stem cells by expansion in the presence of nicotinamide, expire in 2026, not accounting for any patent term adjustment, regulatory extension or terminal disclaimers, and assuming that all annuity and/or maintenance fees are paid timely.

We own nine issued foreign patents related to GDA-201. The patents that we own outside of the United States are granted in Australia, Canada, Europe, Hong Kong, Israel, Canada, and Japan. In addition, we own four pending U.S. non-provisional patent applications, one U.S. provisional patent applications and 36 pending foreign patent applications related to our GDA-201 product candidate. These patents and pending patent applications contain composition-of-matter claims to our GDA-201 product candidate, and claims to methods of producing and methods of treatment using our GDA-201 product candidate. Not accounting for any patent term adjustment, regulatory extension or terminal disclaimers, and assuming that all annuity and/or maintenance fees are paid timely, these patents, and if granted, the U.S. non-provisional patent applications and foreign patent applications, will expire from 2030 to 2040, and patents, and if granted, patent applications claiming priority to the U.S. provisional patent application will expire in 2042. In particular, EP Patent No. 2519239, EP Patent No. 3184109, JP Patent No. 5943843, JP Patent No. 6215394 and IL Patent No. 220660 and CA Patent No. 2,785,627, which relate to methods of expanding a population of natural killer cells by culturing the cells with nicotinamide or nicotinamide analogs, and transplantable cell populations produced by these methods, expire in 2030, not accounting for any patent term adjustment, regulatory extension or terminal disclaimers, and assuming that all annuity and/or maintenance fees are paid timely.

We own one U.S. provisional application related to GDA-301 and GDA-601. This pending provisional patent application contains composition-of-matter claims to our GDA-301 and GDA-601 product candidates, and claims to methods of producing and methods of treatment using our GDA-301 and GDA-601 product candidates. Not accounting for any patent term adjustment, regulatory extension or terminal disclaimers, and assuming that all annuity and/or maintenance fees are paid timely, patent applications claiming priority to this U.S. provisional application, if granted, would expire in 2042.

We own two U.S. provisional applications related to GDA-501. These pending provisional patent applications contain composition-of-matter claims to our GDA-501 product candidate, and claims to methods of producing and methods of treatment using our GDA-501 product candidate. Not accounting for any patent term adjustment, regulatory extension or terminal disclaimers, and assuming that all annuity and/or maintenance fees are paid timely, patent applications claiming priority to these U.S. provisional applications, if granted, would expire in 2042.

In addition, we filed for and obtained trademark registration in the China, Europe, Hong Kong, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Russian Federation, Israel, Great Britain and WIPO (International) for “Gamida Cell”, and in Israel for “Symrepliq”, “Gamida-Cell Assist”, “Nampluri”, “Namrepli”, “Namtypic”, “Omisirge” and “Omplusto”. We also rely upon trade secrets, know-how and continuing technological innovation to develop, strengthen and maintain our competitive position.

The term of individual patents depends upon the legal term for patents in the countries in which they are obtained. In most countries in which we have filed, including the United States, the patent term is 20 years from the earliest filing date of a non-provisional patent application. In the United States, a patent’s term may be lengthened by patent term adjustment, which compensates a patentee for administrative delays by the USPTO in examining and granting a patent or may be shortened if a patent is terminally disclaimed over an earlier filed patent. The term of a patent that covers a drug or biological product may also be eligible for patent term extension when FDA approval is granted for a portion of the term effectively lost as a result of the FDA regulatory review period, subject to certain limitations and provided statutory and regulatory requirements are met. Any such patent term extension can be for no more than five years, 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. 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. In the future, if and when our product candidates receive approval from the FDA or foreign regulatory authorities, we expect to apply for patent term extensions on issued patents we may obtain in the future covering those products, depending upon the length of the clinical trials for each product and other factors. There can be no assurance that any of our pending patent applications will issue or that we will benefit from any patent term extension or favorable adjustment to the term of any of our patents.

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.

As with other biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, our ability to establish and maintain our proprietary and intellectual property position for our product candidates will depend on our success in obtaining effective patent claims and enforcing those claims if granted. There can be no assurance that any of our current or future patent applications will result in the issuance of patents or that any of our current or future issued patents will provide any meaningful protection of our product candidates or technology. For more information regarding the risks related to our intellectual property, see “Item 1A: Risk Factors—Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property.”

Research Grants

Grants under the Innovation Law

Under the Encouragement of Research, Development and Technological Innovation in the Industry Law 5744-1984, and the provisions of the applicable regulations, rules, procedures and benefit tracks, (collectively, the “Innovation Law”), research and development programs that meet specified criteria and are approved by a committee of the IIA are eligible for grants. The grants awarded are typically up to 50% of the project’s expenditures, as determined by the research committee and subject to the benefit track under which the grant was awarded. A company that receives a grant from the IIA, or a grant recipient, is typically required to pay royalties to the IIA on income generated from products incorporating know-how developed using such grants (including income derived from services associated with such products), until 100% of the U.S. dollars linked grant plus annual LIBOR interest is repaid. The rate of royalties to be paid may vary between different benefits tracks, as shall be determined by the IIA. Under the regular benefits tracks the rate of royalties varies from 3% to 3.5% of the income generated from the IIA-supported products. The obligation to pay royalties is contingent on actual income generated from such products and services. In the absence of such income, no payment of such royalties is required.

The terms of the grants under the Innovation Law also generally require that the products developed as part of the programs under which the grants were given be manufactured in Israel and that the know-how developed thereunder may not be transferred outside of Israel, unless a prior written approval is received from the IIA (such approval is not required for the transfer of a portion of the manufacturing capacity which does not exceed, in the aggregate, 10% of the portion declared to be manufactured outside of Israel in the applications for funding, in which case only notification is required) and additional payments are required to be made to the IIA. It should be noted that this does not restrict the export of products that incorporate the funded know-how. See “Item 1A: Risk Factors—Risks Related to Israeli Law and Our Operations in Israel” for additional information.

Since our incorporation, we have received grants from the IIA relating to various projects. We were members of Bereshit Consortium, sponsored by IIA in which certain of our technologies were developed, such program does not require payments of royalties to the IIA, but all other restrictions under the Innovation Law, such as local manufacturing obligations and know-how transfer limitations, as further detailed hereunder, are applicable to the know how developed by us with the funding received in such consortium program. No royalties have been paid to the IIA in respect of any grant. Our total outstanding obligation to the IIA, including the interest accrued through December 31, 2021, amounts to approximately $44.7 million.

Government Regulation

The FDA and other regulatory authorities at federal, state, and local levels, as well as in non-U.S. countries, extensively regulate, among other things, the research, development, testing, manufacture, quality control, import, export, safety, effectiveness, labeling, packaging, storage, distribution, record keeping, approval, advertising, promotion, marketing, post-approval monitoring, and post-approval reporting of biologics such as those we are developing. We, along with third-party contractors, will be required to navigate the various preclinical, clinical and commercial approval requirements of the governing regulatory agencies of the countries in which we wish to conduct studies or seek approval or licensure of our product candidates.

The process required by the FDA before biologic product candidates may be marketed in the United States generally involves the following:

Preclinical and Clinical Development

Prior to beginning the first clinical trial with a product candidate, we must submit an IND to the FDA. An IND is a request for authorization from the FDA to administer an investigational new drug product to humans. The central focus of an IND submission is on the general investigational plan and the protocol(s) for clinical studies. The IND also includes results of animal and in vitro studies assessing the toxicology, pharmacokinetics, pharmacology, and pharmacodynamic characteristics of the product; chemistry, manufacturing, and controls information; and any available human data or literature to support the use of the investigational product. An IND must become effective before human clinical trials may begin. The IND automatically becomes effective 30 days after receipt by the FDA, unless the FDA, within the 30-day time period, raises safety concerns or questions about the proposed clinical trial. In such a case, the IND may be placed on clinical hold and the IND sponsor and the FDA must resolve any outstanding concerns or questions before the clinical trial can begin. Submission of an IND therefore may or may not result in FDA authorization to begin a clinical trial.

For purposes of BLA approval, human clinical trials are typically conducted in three sequential phases that may overlap.

In some cases, the FDA may require, or companies may voluntarily pursue, additional clinical trials after a product is approved to gain more information about the product. These so- called Phase 4 studies may be made a condition to approval of the BLA. Concurrent with clinical trials, companies may complete additional animal studies and develop additional information about the biological characteristics of the product candidate, and must 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 candidate and, among other things, must develop methods for testing the identity, strength, quality and purity of the final product, or for biologics, the safety, purity and potency. Compliance with Good Tissue Practices, or GTPs, is also required to the extent applicable. These are FDA regulations and guidance documents that govern the methods used in, and the facilities and controls used for, the manufacture of human cells, tissues, and cellular and tissue based products, or HCT/Ps, which are human cells or tissue intended for implantation, transplant, infusion, or transfer into a human recipient. The primary intent of the GTP requirements is to ensure that cell and tissue based products are manufactured in a manner designed to prevent the introduction, transmission and spread of communicable disease. Good Tissue Practices regulations also require tissue establishments to register and list their HCT/Ps with the FDA and when applicable, to evaluate donors through screening and testing. Additionally, appropriate packaging must be selected and tested and stability studies must be conducted to demonstrate that the product candidate does not undergo unacceptable deterioration over its shelf life.

BLA Submission and Review

Assuming successful completion of all required testing in accordance with all applicable regulatory requirements, the results of product development, nonclinical studies and clinical trials are submitted to the FDA as part of a BLA requesting approval to market the product for one or more indications. The BLA must include all relevant data available from pertinent preclinical and clinical studies, including negative or ambiguous results as well as positive findings, together with detailed information relating to the product’s chemistry, manufacturing, controls, and propose labeling, among other things. The submission of a BLA requires payment of a substantial application user fee to FDA, unless a waiver or exemption applies.

Once a BLA has been submitted, the FDA’s goal is to review standard applications within ten months after it accepts the application for filing, or, if the application qualifies for priority review, six months after the FDA accepts the application for filing. The FDA may issue a refusal-to-file letter if the BLA is not sufficiently complete to permit substantive review. In both standard and priority reviews, the review process is often significantly extended by FDA requests for additional information or clarification. The FDA reviews a BLA to determine among other things, whether a product is safe, pure and potent and the facility in which it is manufactured, processed, packed, or held meets standards designed to assure the product’s continued safety, purity and potency. The FDA may convene an advisory committee to provide clinical insight on application review questions. Before approving a BLA, the FDA will typically inspect the facility or facilities where the product is manufactured. The FDA will not approve an application 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. Additionally, before approving a BLA, the FDA will typically inspect one or more clinical sites to assure compliance with GCP. If the FDA determines that the application, manufacturing process or manufacturing facilities are not acceptable, it will outline the deficiencies in the submission and often will request additional testing or information. Notwithstanding the submission of any requested additional information, the FDA ultimately may decide that the application does not satisfy the regulatory criteria for approval.

After the FDA evaluates a BLA and conducts inspections of manufacturing facilities where the investigational product will be produced, the FDA may issue an approval letter or a Complete Response letter. An approval letter authorizes commercial marketing of the product with specific prescribing information for specific indications. A Complete Response letter will describe all of the deficiencies that the FDA has identified in the BLA, except that where the FDA determines that the data supporting the application are inadequate to support approval, the FDA may issue the Complete Response letter without first conducting required inspections, testing submitted product lots, and/or reviewing proposed labeling. In issuing the Complete Response letter, the FDA may recommend actions that the applicant might take to place the BLA in condition for approval, including requests for additional information or clarification. The FDA may delay or refuse approval of a BLA if applicable regulatory criteria are not satisfied, require additional testing or information and/or require post-marketing testing and surveillance to monitor safety or efficacy of a product.

If regulatory approval of a product is granted, such approval will be granted for particular indications and may entail limitations on the indicated uses for which such product may be marketed. For example, the FDA may approve the BLA with a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, or REMS, to ensure the benefits of the product outweigh its risks. A REMS is a safety strategy to manage a known or potential serious risk associated with a product and to enable patients to have continued access to such medicines by managing their safe use, and could include medication guides, physician communication plans, or elements to assure safe use, such as restricted distribution methods, patient registries and other risk minimization tools. The FDA also may condition approval on, among other things, changes to proposed labeling or the development of adequate controls and specifications. Once approved, the FDA may withdraw the product approval if compliance with pre- and post-marketing requirements is not maintained or if problems occur after the product reaches the marketplace. The FDA may require one or more Phase 4 post-market studies and surveillance to further assess and monitor the product’s safety and effectiveness after commercialization, and may limit further marketing of the product based on the results of these post-marketing studies.

Post-Approval Requirements

Any products manufactured or distributed by us pursuant to FDA approvals are subject to pervasive and continuing regulation by the FDA, including, among other things, requirements relating to record-keeping, reporting of adverse experiences, periodic reporting, product sampling and distribution, and advertising and promotion of the product. After approval, most changes to the approved product, such as adding new indications or other labeling claims, are subject to prior FDA review and approval. There also are continuing user fee requirements, under which FDA assesses an annual program fee for each product identified in an approved BLA. Biologic manufacturers and their subcontractors are required to register their establishments with the FDA and certain state agencies, and are subject to periodic unannounced inspections by the FDA and certain state agencies for compliance with cGMP, which impose certain procedural and documentation requirements upon us and our third-party manufacturers.

Changes to the manufacturing process are strictly regulated, and, depending on the significance of the change, may require prior FDA approval before being implemented. FDA regulations also require investigation and correction of any deviations from cGMP and impose reporting requirements upon us and any third-party manufacturers that we may decide to use. Accordingly, manufacturers must continue to expend time, money and effort in the area of production and quality control to maintain compliance with cGMP and other aspects of regulatory compliance.

The FDA may withdraw approval if compliance with regulatory requirements and standards is not maintained or if problems occur after the product reaches the market. Later discovery of previously unknown problems with 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 restrictions or other restrictions under a REMS program. Other potential consequences include, among other things:

The FDA closely regulates the marketing, labeling, advertising and promotion of biologics. A company can make only those claims relating to safety and efficacy, purity and potency that are approved by the FDA and in accordance with the provisions of the approved label. The FDA and other agencies actively enforce the laws and regulations prohibiting the promotion of off-label uses. Failure to comply with these requirements can result in, among other things, adverse publicity, warning letters, corrective advertising and potential civil and criminal penalties. Physicians may prescribe legally available products for uses that are not described in the product’s labeling and that differ from those tested by us and approved by the FDA. Such off-label uses are common across medical specialties. Physicians may believe that such off-label uses are the best treatment for many patients in varied circumstances. The FDA does not regulate the behavior of physicians in their choice of treatments. The FDA does, however, restrict manufacturer’s communications on the subject of off-label use of their products.

Breakthrough Therapy Designation

A sponsor may seek FDA designation of a product candidate as a “breakthrough therapy” if the product is intended, alone or in combination with one or more other products, to treat a serious or life-threatening disease or condition and preliminary clinical evidence indicates that the product may demonstrate substantial improvement over existing therapies on one or more clinically significant endpoints, such as substantial treatment effects observed early in clinical development. The designation allows more intensive FDA interaction and guidance. The breakthrough therapy designation is a distinct status from both accelerated approval and priority review, which can also be granted to the same drug if relevant criteria are met. If a product is designated as breakthrough therapy, the FDA will work to expedite the development and review of such drug.

Other Healthcare Regulations

Our business operations and current and future arrangements with investigators, healthcare professionals, consultants, third-party payers, patient organizations and customers, may expose us to broadly applicable fraud and abuse and other healthcare laws and regulations. These laws may constrain the business or financial arrangements and relationships through which we conduct our operations, including how we research, market, sell and distribute our product candidates, if approved. Such laws include those described below.

The federal Anti-Kickback Statute prohibits, among other things, any person or entity, from knowingly and willfully offering, paying, soliciting or receiving any remuneration, directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly, in cash or in kind, to induce or reward, or in return for, the referral of an individual for, or purchasing, leasing, ordering, or arranging for the purchase, lease or order of, any good, facility, item or service reimbursable under Medicare, Medicaid or other federal healthcare programs. The federal Anti-Kickback Statute has been interpreted to apply to arrangements between pharmaceutical manufacturers on the one hand and prescribers, purchasers, and formulary managers on the other hand. The term remuneration has been interpreted broadly to include anything of value. There are a number of statutory exceptions and regulatory safe harbors protecting some common activities from prosecution. The exceptions and safe harbors are drawn narrowly and practices that involve remuneration that may be alleged to be intended to induce prescribing, purchasing or recommending may be subject to scrutiny if they do not qualify for an exception or safe harbor. Failure to meet all of the requirements of a particular applicable statutory exception or regulatory safe harbor does not make the conduct per se illegal under the federal Anti-Kickback Statute. Instead, the legality of the arrangement will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis based on a cumulative review of all facts and circumstances. Additionally, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, or collectively the PPACA, amended the intent requirement of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, and other healthcare criminal fraud statutes, so that a person or entity no longer needs to have actual knowledge of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, or the specific intent to violate it, to have violated the statute. The PPACA also provided that a violation of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute is grounds for the government or a whistleblower to assert that a claim for payment of items or services resulting from such violation constitutes a false or fraudulent claim for purposes of the federal civil False Claims Act.

The federal civil and criminal false claims laws, including the federal civil False Claims Act, or FCA, prohibit, among other things, any person or entity from knowingly presenting, or causing to be presented, a false claim for payment to, or approval by, the U.S. federal government, including the Medicare and Medicaid programs, or knowingly making, using, or causing to be made or used a false record or statement material to a false or fraudulent claim or to avoid, decrease or conceal an obligation to pay money to the federal government. As a result of a modification made by the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009, a claim includes “any request or demand” for money or property presented to the U.S. government.

In addition, manufacturers can be held liable under the FCA even when they do not submit claims directly to government payers if they are deemed to “cause” the submission of false or fraudulent claims. The FCA also permits a private individual acting as a “whistleblower” to bring actions on behalf of the federal government alleging violations of the FCA and to share in any monetary recovery. FCA liability is potentially significant in the healthcare industry because the statute provides for treble damages and mandatory penalties. Government enforcement agencies and private whistleblowers have investigated pharmaceutical companies for or asserted liability under the FCA for a variety of alleged impermissible promotional and marketing activities, such as providing free product to customers with the expectation that the customers would bill federal programs for the product; providing consulting fees and other benefits to physicians to induce them to prescribe products; engaging in promotion for “off-label” uses; and submitting inflated best price information to the Medicaid Rebate Program.

The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA, created additional federal criminal statutes that prohibits, among other things, knowingly and willfully executing, or attempting to execute, a scheme to defraud any healthcare benefit program or obtain, by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations or promises, any of the money or property owned by, or under the custody or control of, any healthcare benefit program, regardless of whether the payer is public or private, knowingly and willfully embezzling or stealing from a health care benefit program, willfully obstructing a criminal investigation of a health care offense and knowingly and willfully falsifying, concealing or covering up by any trick, scheme or device a material fact or making any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statements in connection with the delivery of, or payment for, healthcare benefits, items or services relating to healthcare matters. Additionally, the PPACA amended the intent requirement of some of these criminal statutes under HIPAA so that a person or entity no longer needs to have actual knowledge of the statute, or the specific intent to violate it, to have committed a violation.

Additionally, the federal Open Payments program pursuant to the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, created under Section 6002 of the PPACA and its implementing regulations, require some manufacturers of drugs, devices, biologicals and medical supplies for which payment is available under Medicare, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (with specified exceptions) to report annually information related to specified payments or other transfers of value provided to physicians (defined to include doctors, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists, and chiropractors), other healthcare professionals (such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners) and teaching hospitals, or to entities or individuals at the request of, or designated on behalf of, the physicians, and teaching hospitals and to report annually specified ownership and investment interests held by physicians and their immediate family members.

In addition, we may be subject to data privacy and security regulation of both the federal government and the states in which we conduct our business. HIPAA, as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, or HITECH, and their implementing regulations, impose requirements relating to the privacy, security and transmission of individually identifiable health information held by covered entities subject to the law, such as health plans, healthcare clearinghouses, and certain healthcare providers, and their business associates, defined as independent contractors or agents of covered entities that create, receive, maintain or transmit protected health information in connection with providing a service for or on behalf of a covered entity and their subcontractors that use, disclose, access, or otherwise process protected health information. Among other things, HITECH created new tiers of civil monetary penalties, amended HIPAA to make civil and criminal penalties and HIPAA’s security standards directly applicable to business associates, and gave state attorneys general new authority to file civil actions for damages or injunctions in federal courts to enforce the federal HIPAA laws and seek attorneys’ fees and costs associated with pursuing federal civil actions.

Many states have also adopted laws similar to each of the above federal laws, which may be broader in scope and apply to items or services reimbursed by any third-party payer, including commercial insurers. We may also be subject to state laws that require pharmaceutical companies to comply with the pharmaceutical industry’s voluntary compliance guidelines and the relevant compliance guidance promulgated by the federal government, state and local laws that require the registration of pharmaceutical sales representatives, state laws that require drug manufacturers to report information related to payments and other transfers of value to physicians and other healthcare providers or marketing expenditures and pricing information, and/or state laws governing the privacy and security of health information in certain circumstances, many of which differ from each other in significant ways and may not have the same effect, thus complicating compliance efforts.

Ensuring that our internal operations and business arrangements with third parties comply with applicable healthcare laws and regulations will likely be costly. It is possible that governmental authorities will conclude that our business practices do not comply with current or future statutes, regulations or case law involving applicable fraud and abuse or other healthcare laws and regulations. If our operations were found to be in violation of any of these laws or any other governmental regulations that may apply to us, we may be subject to significant civil, criminal and administrative penalties, damages, fines, disgorgement, imprisonment, possible exclusion from government funded healthcare programs, contractual damages, reputational harm, diminished profits and future earnings, additional reporting obligations and oversight if we become subject to a corporate integrity agreement or other agreement to resolve allegations of non-compliance with these laws, and curtailment of our operations, any of which could substantially disrupt our operations. If the physicians or other providers or entities with whom we expect to do business are found not to be in compliance with applicable laws, they may be subject to criminal, civil or administrative sanctions, including exclusions from government funded healthcare programs.

Coverage and Reimbursement

Significant uncertainty exists as to the coverage and reimbursement status of any product candidates for which we obtain regulatory approval. In the United States and markets in other countries, sales of any products for which we receive regulatory approval for commercial sale will depend, in part, on the extent to which third-party payers provide coverage, and establish adequate reimbursement levels for such products. In the United States, third-party payers include federal and state healthcare programs, private managed care providers, health insurers and other organizations.

The process for determining whether a third-party payer will provide coverage for a product may be separate from the process for setting the price of a product or for establishing the reimbursement rate that such a payer will pay for the product. Third-party payers may limit coverage to specific products on an approved list, or also known as a formulary, which might not include all of the FDA-approved products for a particular indication. Third-party payers are increasingly challenging the price, examining the medical necessity and reviewing the cost-effectiveness of medical products, therapies and services, in addition to questioning their safety and efficacy.

We may need to conduct expensive pharmaco-economic studies in order to demonstrate the medical necessity and cost-effectiveness of our products, in addition to the costs required to obtain the FDA approvals. Our product candidates may not be considered medically necessary or cost-effective. Payer’s decision to provide coverage for a product does not imply that an adequate reimbursement rate will be approved. Further, the determination of one payer to provide coverage for a product does not assure that other payers will also provide such coverage for the product.

Adequate third-party reimbursement may not be available to enable us to maintain price levels sufficient to realize an appropriate return on our investment in product development.

Different pricing and reimbursement schemes exist in other countries. In the EU, governments influence the price of pharmaceutical products through their pricing and reimbursement rules and control of national health care systems that in some countries subsidize a large part of the cost of those products for consumers. Some jurisdictions operate positive and negative list systems under which products may only be marketed once a reimbursement price has been agreed. To obtain reimbursement or pricing approval, some of these countries may require the completion of clinical trials that compare the cost-effectiveness of a particular product candidate to then available therapies. Other EU member states allow companies to fix their own prices for medicines, but monitor and control company profits. The downward pressure on health care costs has become very intense.

As a result, increasingly high barriers are being erected to the entry of new products. In addition, in some countries, cross-border imports from low-priced markets exert a commercial pressure on pricing within a country.

The marketability of any of product candidates for which we receive regulatory approval for commercial sale may suffer if the government and third-party payers fail to provide adequate coverage and reimbursement. In addition, emphasis on managed care in the United States has increased and we expect will continue to increase the pressure on healthcare pricing. Coverage policies and third-party reimbursement rates may change at any time. Even if favorable coverage and reimbursement status is attained for one or more products for which we receive regulatory approval, less favorable coverage policies and reimbursement rates may be implemented in the future.

Healthcare Reform Measures

The United States and some non-U.S. jurisdictions are considering or have enacted a number of legislative and regulatory proposals designed to change the healthcare system. Among policy makers and payers in the United States and elsewhere, there is significant interest in promoting changes in healthcare systems with the stated goals of containing healthcare costs, improving quality and/or expanding access. In the United States, the pharmaceutical industry has been a particular focus of these efforts and has been significantly affected by major legislative initiatives.

For example, the pharmaceutical industry in the United States has been affected by the passage of PPACA, which, among other things: imposed new fees on entities that manufacture or import certain branded prescription drugs; expanded pharmaceutical manufacturer obligations to provide discounts and rebates to certain government programs; implemented a licensure framework for follow-on biologic products; expanded health care fraud and abuse laws; revised the methodology by which rebates owed by manufacturers to the state and federal government under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program are calculated for certain drugs and biologics, including products that are inhaled, infused, instilled, implanted or injected; imposed an additional rebate similar to an inflation penalty on new formulations of drugs; extended the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program to utilization of prescriptions of individuals enrolled in Medicaid managed care organizations; expanded the 340B program which caps the price at which manufacturers can sell covered outpatient pharmaceuticals to specified hospitals, clinics and community health centers; and provided incentives to programs that increase the federal government’s comparative effectiveness research.

There have been judicial and Congressional challenges to certain aspects of the PPACA. While Congress has not passed comprehensive repeal legislation, several bills affecting the implementation of certain taxes under the PPACA have been signed into law. The Tax Act includes a provision repealing, effective January 1, 2019, the tax-based shared responsibility payment imposed by the PPACA 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 PPACA is unconstitutional in its entirety because the “individual mandate” was repealed by Congress. Thus, the PPACA 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 from February 26, 2021 through August 15, 2021 for purposes of obtaining health insurance coverage through the PPACA 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 PPACA. It is possible that the PPACA will be subject to judicial or Congressional challenges in the future. It is unclear how such challenges and the healthcare reform measures of the Biden administration.

Other legislative changes have been proposed and adopted in the United States since the PPACA was enacted. In August 2011, the Budget Control Act of 2011, among other things, included aggregate reductions of Medicare payments to providers of 2.0% per fiscal year, which went into effect in April 2013, and due to subsequent legislative amendments, including the BBA, will remain in effect through 2031 with the exception of a temporary suspension from May 1, 2020 through March 31, 2022 unless additional U.S. Congressional action is taken. 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. In addition, in January 2013, President Obama signed into law the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which, among other things, reduced Medicare payments to several categories of healthcare providers and increased the statute of limitations period for the government to recover overpayments to providers from three to five years. Additional changes that may affect our business include new quality and payment programs such as Medicare payment for performance initiatives for physicians under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, or MACRA, which ended the use of the statutory formula for clinician payment and established a quality payment incentive program, also referred to as the Quality Payment Program. In November 2019, CMS issued a final rule finalizing the changes to the Quality Payment Program but its overall impact remains unclear. Additionally, Congress is considering additional health reform measures.

In addition, there has been particular and increasing legislative and enforcement interest in the United States with respect to drug pricing practices in recent years, particularly with respect to drugs that have been subject to relatively large price increases over relatively short time periods. Specifically, there have been several recent U.S. Presidential executive orders, Congressional inquiries and proposed and enacted federal and state legislation designed to, among other things, bring more transparency to product pricing, review the relationship between pricing and manufacturer patient programs, reduce the cost of prescription drugs under Medicare and reform government program reimbursement methodologies for pharmaceutical products. For example, on July 24, 2020 and September 13, 2020, the Trump administration announced several executive orders related to prescription drug pricing that seek 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, HHS finalized a regulation removing safe harbor protection for price reductions from pharmaceutical manufacturers to plan sponsors under Part D, either directly or through pharmacy benefit managers, unless the price reduction is required by law. The implementation of the rule has been delayed by the Biden administration from January 1, 2022 to January 1, 2023 in response to ongoing litigation. The 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 by the Biden administration until January 1, 2023. 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 rescinds the Most Favored Nation model interim final rule.

Additionally, 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 as well as potential administrative actions HHS can take to advance these principles. No legislation or administrative actions have been finalized to implement these principles. It is unclear whether these or similar policy initiatives will be implemented in the future.

In addition, individual states in the United States have 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 the future, there will likely continue to be proposals relating to the reform of the U.S. healthcare system, some of which could further limit coverage and reimbursement of products. It is also possible that additional governmental action is taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, prohibits any U.S. individual or business from paying, offering or authorizing payment or offering of anything of value, directly or indirectly, to any non-U.S. official, political party or candidate for the purpose of influencing any act or decision of the non-U.S. entity in order to assist the individual or business in obtaining or retaining business. The FCPA also obligates companies whose securities are listed in the United States to comply with accounting provisions requiring the companies to maintain books and records that accurately and fairly reflect all transactions of the companies, including international subsidiaries, and to devise and maintain an adequate system of internal accounting controls for international operations.

Non-U.S. Government Regulation

To the extent that any of our product candidates, once approved, are sold in a country outside of the United States, we may be subject to similar non-U.S. laws and regulations, which may include, for instance, applicable post-marketing requirements, including safety surveillance, anti-fraud and abuse laws and implementation of corporate compliance programs and reporting of payments or other transfers of value to healthcare professionals.

In order to market our future products in the EEA (which is comprised of the 27 Member States of the European Union plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) and many other jurisdictions, we must obtain regulatory approvals from such jurisdictions. More precisely, in the EEA, medicinal products can only be commercialized after obtaining a Marketing Authorization, or MA. There are two types of marketing authorizations:

Under the above-described procedures, before granting the MA, the EMA or the competent authorities of the Member States of the EEA make an assessment of the risk-benefit balance of the product on the basis of scientific criteria concerning its quality, safety and efficacy.

Data and Marketing Exclusivity

In the EEA, new products authorized for marketing, or reference products, qualify for eight years of data exclusivity and an additional two years of market exclusivity upon marketing authorization. The data exclusivity period prevents generic or biosimilar applicants from relying on the preclinical and clinical trial data contained in the dossier of the reference product when applying for a generic or biosimilar marketing authorization in the European Union during a period of eight years from the date on which the reference product was first authorized in the European Union. The market exclusivity period prevents a successful generic or biosimilar applicant from commercializing its product in the European Union until 10 years have elapsed from the initial authorization of the reference product in the European Union. The 10-year market exclusivity period can be extended to a maximum of eleven years if, during the first eight years of those 10 years, the marketing authorization holder obtains an authorization for one or more new therapeutic indications which, during the scientific evaluation prior to their authorization, are held to bring a significant clinical benefit in comparison with existing therapies.

Pediatric Investigation Plan

In the EEA, marketing authorization applications for new medicinal products not authorized have to include the results of studies conducted in the pediatric population, in compliance with a pediatric investigation plan, or PIP, agreed with the EMA’s Pediatric Committee, or PDCO. The PIP sets out the timing and measures proposed to generate data to support a pediatric indication of the drug for which marketing authorization is being sought. The PDCO can grant a deferral of the obligation to implement some or all of the measures of the PIP until there are sufficient data to demonstrate the efficacy and safety of the product in adults. Further, the obligation to provide pediatric clinical trial data can be waived by the PDCO when these data is not needed or appropriate because the product is likely to be ineffective or unsafe in children, the disease or condition for which the product is intended occurs only in adult populations, or when the product does not represent a significant therapeutic benefit over existing treatments for pediatric patients. Once the marketing authorization is obtained in all Member States of the European Union and study results are included in the product information, even when negative, the product is eligible for six months’ supplementary protection certificate extension.

Orphan Drug Designation

In the EEA, a medicinal product can be designated as an orphan drug if its sponsor can establish that the product is intended for the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of a life-threatening or chronically debilitating condition affecting not more than five in ten thousand persons in the European Union when the application is made, or that the product is intended for the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of a life-threatening, seriously debilitating or serious and chronic condition in the European Community and that without incentives it is unlikely that the marketing of the drug in the EU would generate sufficient return to justify the necessary investment. For either of these conditions, the applicant must demonstrate that there exists no satisfactory method of diagnosis, prevention or treatment of the condition in question that has been authorized in the EU or, if such method exists, the drug will be of significant benefit to those affected by that condition.

In the EEA, 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 ten-year period of market exclusivity. During this market exclusivity period, the EMA or the member state competent authorities, cannot accept another application for a marketing authorization, or grant a marketing authorization, for a similar medicinal product for the same indication. The period of market exclusivity is extended by two years for medicines that have also complied with an agreed PIP.

This period may, however, be reduced to six years if, at the end of the fifth year, it is established that the product no longer meets the criteria for orphan drug designation, for example because the product is sufficiently profitable not to justify market exclusivity. Market exclusivity can be revoked only in very selected cases, such as consent from the marketing authorization holder, inability to supply sufficient quantities of the product, demonstration of “clinical superiority” by a similar medicinal product, or, after a review by the Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products, requested by a member state in the fifth year of the marketing exclusivity period (if the designation criteria are believed to no longer apply). Medicinal products designated as orphan drugs pursuant are eligible for incentives made available by the European Union and its Member States to support research into, and the development and availability of, orphan drugs.

Employees

As of December 31, 2021, we had 166 full-time employees and 2 part-time employees, 120 of whom are based in Israel and 48 of whom are based in the United States. Of these employees, 122 are primarily engaged in research and development activities and 46 are primarily engaged in general and administrative and commercialization matters. A total of 16 employees have an M.D. or Ph.D. degree. None of our employees is represented by a labor union. We have never experienced any employment-related work stoppages and believe our relationships with our employees are good Israeli labor laws govern the length of the workday and workweek, minimum wages for employees, procedures for hiring and dismissing employees, determination of severance pay, annual leave, sick days, advance notice of termination, payments to the National Insurance Institute, and other conditions of employment and include equal opportunity and anti-discrimination laws. While none of our employees is party to any collective bargaining agreements, certain provisions of the collective bargaining agreements between the Histadrut (General Federation of Labor in Israel) and the Coordination Bureau of Economic Organizations (including the Industrialists’ Associations) are applicable to our employees in Israel by order of the Israeli Ministry of Economy and Industry. These provisions primarily concern pension fund benefits for all employees, insurance for work-related accidents, recuperation pay and travel expenses. We generally provide our employees with benefits and working conditions beyond the required minimums.

On January 31, 2022, we announced a workforce reduction plan, or the Plan, pursuant to which we downsized our then current workforce by approximately 10%. The Plan was enacted to better align our resources to fund operations into mid-2023 which is the anticipated timeline for potential approval of omidubicel in the United States. Affected employees were offered separation benefits, including severance payments and temporary healthcare coverage assistance, which severance payments, in Israel, are required under applicable law.

We are an equal opportunity employer that pledges to not discriminate against employees based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetic information. Our human capital resources objectives include, as applicable, identifying, recruiting, retaining, incentivizing and integrating our existing and additional employees. The principal purposes of our equity incentive plans are to attract, retain and motivate selected employees, consultants and directors through the granting of equity-based compensation awards. We strive to create a diverse environment, and our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion begins with our leadership team of diverse backgrounds and experiences, including three women on the board of directors.

We are committed to the Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) safety of our employees. We continuously strive to maintain our strong safety performance as we continue to grow our business around the globe. The keys to our EHS success are a workforce that is engaged, a management team who supports and invests in employee safety, and the leadership of our skilled EHS team. In the last several years, the team has added dedicated EHS professionals to individual sites to train employees and ensure compliance with applicable safety standards and regulations. The team hosts regular meetings to share information and discuss best practices across plants.

We are also committed to developing our future leaders at every level. Our talent processes start with understanding what current and future talent is needed to deliver business goals, followed by a talent review process to assist managers with evaluating talent. Learning and development is a critical part of creating our culture of high performance, innovation, and inclusion. We believe on-the-job experience is an outstanding way to learn, and performance and development plans ensure that managers and employees have conversations about career aspirations, mobility, developmental goals and interests.

We are committed to creating an open and accountable workplace where employees feel empowered to speak up and raise issues. In an ongoing effort to understand our employees’ needs, and deliver on our values of trust, accountability and collaboration, we listen. We regularly host company-wide and business unit town halls to offer employees an opportunity to ask questions about Company activities and policies that impact them. We solicit and receive questions and feedback from our employees through this process. We also provide multiple channels to speak up, ask for guidance, and report concerns.

Environmental, Health and Safety Matters

We are subject to extensive environmental, health and safety laws and regulations in a number of jurisdictions, primarily Israel, governing, among other things: the use, storage, registration, handling, emission and disposal of chemicals, waste materials and sewage; chemicals, air, water and ground contamination; air emissions and the cleanup of contaminated sites, including any contamination that results from spills due to our failure to properly dispose of chemicals, waste materials and sewage. Our operations use chemicals and produce waste materials and sewage and require permits from various governmental authorities including, local municipal authorities, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Health. The Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Health, local authorities and the municipal water and sewage company conduct periodic inspections in order to review and ensure our compliance with the various regulations. These laws, regulations and permits could potentially require the expenditure by us of significant amounts for compliance or remediation. If we fail to comply with such laws, regulations or permits, we may be subject to fines and other civil, administrative or criminal sanctions, including the revocation of permits and licenses necessary to continue our business activities. In addition, we may be required to pay damages or civil judgments in respect of third-party claims, including those relating to personal injury (including exposure to hazardous substances we use, store, handle, transport, manufacture or dispose of), property damage or contribution claims. Some environmental, health and safety laws allow for strict, joint and several liability for remediation costs, regardless of comparative fault. We may be identified as a responsible party under such laws. Such developments could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. In addition, laws and regulations relating to environmental, health and safety matters are often subject to change. In the event of any changes or new laws or regulations, we could be subject to new compliance measures or to penalties for activities that were previously permitted.

Our Values

At Gamida Cell, our actions are guided by five core values that are the foundation of who we are and who we aspire to be. We live these values on a daily basis. For our values to impact our goal of bringing life-changing cell therapies to patients, they must be at the center of everything we do:

We are committed to promoting integrity, honesty and professionalism and maintaining the highest standards of ethical conduct in all of the Company’s activities. The Company’s success depends on its reputation for integrity and fairness. Therefore, it is essential that the highest standards of conduct and professional integrity be observed in all contacts made by the Company’s directors and employees, including officers, with customers, shareholders, suppliers, government officials, fellow employees and members of the general public. In this regard, Gamida Cell has established this written set of policies dealing with the rules and policies of conduct to be used in conducting the business affairs of the Company, which is available on our website (https://investors.gamida-cell.com/corporate-governance/documents-charters).

Environmental matters

By the nature of our operations and the size of our facility in Kiryat Gat, Israel, we do not consume a significant amount of energy. Our clean rooms are designed to limit our energy consumption, and we do not have significant emissions from our operations. We will continue to assess the environmental impact of our operations.

ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS

Investing in our ordinary shares involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, in addition to the other information set forth in this annual report on Form 10-K, including the consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this annual report on Form 10-K, before purchasing our ordinary shares. If any of the following risks actually occurs, our business, financial condition, cash flows and results of operations could be negatively impacted. In that case, the trading price of our ordinary shares would likely decline and you might lose all or part of your investment. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently deem immaterial also may impair our business operations.

Principal Risk Factors

Our business is subject to numerous risks that you should be aware of before making an investment decision. These risks are described more fully in this “Risk Factors” section and include, among others:

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

We are a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. We have incurred net losses each year since our inception in 1998, including net losses of $89.8 million and $61.6 million for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively. As of December 31, 2021, we had an accumulated deficit of $337.5 million.

We have devoted substantially all our financial resources to designing and developing our product candidates, including conducting preclinical studies and clinical trials, building a manufacturing facility at Kiryat Gat, Israel and providing general and administrative support for these operations. We expect to continue to incur significant expenses and increasing operating losses for the foreseeable future. Our ability to ultimately achieve recurring revenue and profitability, which we do not expect to occur for at least several years, is dependent upon our ability to successfully complete the development of our product candidates, and to obtain necessary regulatory approvals for and successfully manufacture, market and commercialize our products.

We anticipate that our expenses will increase substantially based on a number of factors, including to the extent that we:

To date, we have financed our operations primarily through our public offerings of equity securities, private placements of debt and equity securities and royalty-bearing grants that we received from the Israeli Innovation Authority, or the IIA, formerly known as the Office of the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Economy and Industry, including from Bereshit Consortium, sponsored by the IIA. The amount of our future net losses will depend, in part, on the rate of our future expenditures and our ability to obtain funding through equity or debt financings, strategic collaborations, or grants. Even if we obtain regulatory approval to market omidubicel or any other product candidates, our future revenue will depend upon the size of any markets in which such product candidates receive approval, and our ability to achieve sufficient market acceptance, pricing and reimbursement from third-party payers for such product candidates. Further, the net losses that we incur may fluctuate significantly from quarter to quarter and year to year, such that a period-to-period comparison of our results of operations may not be a good indication of our future performance. We may also incur other unanticipated costs from our operations.

Operating our business and servicing our debt requires a significant amount of cash, and we will need to obtain additional funding in the future to continue to sufficiently fund our operations and pay our substantial debt, including our convertible senior notes that mature in February 2026.

In order to fund further operations we will be required to raise additional funds, seek alternative means of financial support, or both, in order to continue operations. We may seek these funds through a combination of private and public equity offerings, debt financings, government grants, strategic collaborations and licensing arrangements. Additional financing may not be available when we need it or may not be available on terms that are favorable to us. If we are unable to raise the requisite funds, we will need to curtail or cease operations.

Developing our product candidates is expensive, and we expect our research and development expenses to increase substantially in connection with our ongoing activities, particularly as we advance our product candidates through preclinical studies and clinical development in an effort to obtain regulatory approval. We recently initiated submission of a Biologics License Application, or BLA, for omidubicel on a rolling basis, and we plan to submit the full BLA to the FDA in the first half of 2022. We also plan to continue our Phase 1/2 investigator-sponsored clinical trial of omidubicel for the treatment of severe aplastic anemia and, pending FDA clearance of our IND for a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of GDA-201 in patients with follicular and diffuse large B-cell lymphomas, we expect to initiate a clinical trial of GDA-201 in 2022.

In addition, our ability to make scheduled payments of the principal of, to pay interest on, or to refinance our indebtedness, including the Notes, depends on our future performance, which is subject to economic, financial, competitive and other factors beyond our control. Our business may never generate cash flow from operations sufficient to support our operations, service our debt and make necessary capital expenditures. As a result, we may be required to adopt one or more alternatives, subject to the restrictions contained in the Indenture between Gamida Cell Ltd., Gamida Cell Inc., and Wilmington Savings Fund Society, FSB, entered into on February 16, 2021, or the Indenture, governing the Notes, such as selling assets, restructuring debt or obtaining additional equity capital on terms that may be onerous and which are likely to be highly dilutive. As of December 31, 2021, we had cash and cash equivalents and trading financial assets of $95.9 million. In February 2021, we raised an additional $75.0 million through a sale of convertible notes, and we currently believe that our existing capital resources will be sufficient to meet our projected operating requirements into mid-2023. We will require significant additional financing in the future to fund our operations. Our future funding requirements will depend on many factors, including, but not limited to:

Identifying potential product candidates and conducting preclinical testing 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 marketing approval and achieve product sales. In addition, our product candidates, if approved, may not achieve commercial success. Our product revenue, if any, will be derived from or based on sales of product candidates that may not be commercially available for many years, if at all. Accordingly, we will need to continue to rely on additional financing to achieve our business objectives. Any additional fundraising efforts may divert our management from their day-to-day activities, which may adversely affect our ability to develop and commercialize our product candidates. We cannot guarantee that future financing will be available in sufficient amounts or on terms acceptable to us, if at all, and the terms of any financing may adversely affect the interests or rights of our shareholders.

We may not have the ability to raise the funds necessary to repurchase the Notes for cash upon a fundamental change.

Holders of the Notes have the right to require us to repurchase their Notes for cash upon the occurrence of a fundamental change at a repurchase price equal to 100% of the principal amount of the Notes to be repurchased, plus accrued and unpaid interest, if any. This use of cash may have a material adverse effect on our liquidity. Furthermore, we may not have enough available cash or be able to obtain financing at the time we are required to repurchase the Notes. In addition, our ability to repurchase the Notes for cash may be limited by law, regulatory authority or agreements governing our future indebtedness. Our failure to repurchase Notes for cash at a time when the repurchase is required by the Indenture pursuant to which the Notes were issued would constitute a default under the Indenture.

The Indenture governing the Notes contains restrictions and other provisions regarding events of default that may make it more difficult to execute our strategy or to effectively compete or that could adversely affect our liquidity.

Subject to certain exceptions and qualifications, the Indenture governing the Notes restricts our ability to, among other things, (i) pay dividends or make other payments or distributions on capital stock, or purchase, redeem, defease or otherwise acquire or retire for value any capital stock, (ii) incur indebtedness or issue preferred stock, other than certain forms of permitted debt, (iii) sell assets or dispose of certain material assets, (iv) enter into certain transactions with affiliates or (v) merge, consolidate or sell all or substantially all assets. The Indenture also requires us to make an offer to repurchase the Notes upon the occurrence of certain asset sales or disposition of certain material assets. These restrictions may make it difficult to successfully execute our business strategy or effectively compete with companies that are not similarly restricted. The Indenture governing the Notes also provides that a number of events will constitute an event of default, including, among other things, (i) a failure to pay interest or additional amounts for 30 days, (ii) failure to pay the principal of the notes when due at maturity, upon redemption, upon any required repurchase, upon declaration of acceleration or otherwise, (iii) failure to comply with our obligation to exchange the Notes in accordance with the Indenture upon a holder’s exercise of its exchange right, (iv) not issuing certain notices required by the Indenture within a timely manner, (v) failure to comply with the other covenants or agreements in the Notes or the Indenture, (vi) a default or other failure by us to make required payments under our other indebtedness having an outstanding principal amount of $10.0 million or more, (vii) failure by us to pay final judgments aggregating in excess of $20.0 million, and (viii) certain events of bankruptcy or insolvency. In the case of an event of default arising from certain events of bankruptcy or insolvency with respect to us, all outstanding Notes will become due and payable immediately without further action or notice. If any other event of default occurs and is continuing, the trustee or the holders of at least 25% in aggregate principal amount of the then outstanding Notes may declare all the Notes to be due and payable immediately. Such acceleration of our debt could have a material adverse effect on our liquidity if we are unable to negotiate mutually acceptable terms with the holders of the Notes or if alternate funding is not available to us. Furthermore, if we are unable to repay the Notes upon an acceleration or otherwise, we would be forced into bankruptcy or liquidation.

Raising additional capital may cause dilution to our shareholders and our share price to fall, restrict our operations or require us to relinquish rights to our technologies or product candidates.

Until such time, if ever, as we can generate substantial product revenue, we expect to obtain additional capital through a combination of equity offerings, debt financings, collaborations and strategic 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 such securities may include liquidation or other preferences that adversely affect your rights as a shareholder. Debt financing, if available, may involve covenants restricting our operations or our ability to incur additional debt. If we raise additional funds through collaboration and licensing arrangements with third parties, it may be necessary to relinquish certain rights to our technologies or our product candidates, or to grant licenses on terms that are not favorable to us.

Even if we believe that we have sufficient funds for our current or future operating plans, we may seek additional capital if market conditions are favorable or if we have specific strategic considerations. The issuance of additional securities, whether equity or debt, by us, or the possibility of such issuance, may cause the market price of our shares to decline.

We have also entered into an Open Market Sale Agreement, or the Sales Agreement under which we may offer and sell our ordinary shares having an aggregate gross sales price of up to $50 million from time to time through Jefferies LLC. Pursuant to the Sales Agreement and upon delivery of notice by the Company, Jefferies may sell our ordinary shares under an “at the market offering”. The sale of a substantial amount of our ordinary shares in this manner may depress the market price for our ordinary shares.

If we are unable to obtain funding on acceptable terms and on a timely basis, we may be required to significantly curtail, delay or discontinue one or more of our research, development or manufacturing programs or the commercialization of any approved product, or be unable to expand our operations or otherwise capitalize on our business opportunities, as desired, which could materially affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

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

We have no products approved for marketing in any jurisdiction, and we have never generated any revenue from product sales. Our ability to generate revenue and achieve profitability depends on our ability, alone or with strategic collaboration partners, to successfully complete the development of, and obtain the regulatory and marketing approvals necessary to commercialize one or more of our product candidates. Our ability to generate future revenue from the commercialization of omidubicel is uncertain. If we decide to commercialize omidubicel on our own, we will have to undertake sufficient costs to build out a sales and distribution team. If we enter into one or more partnerships for the commercialization of omidubicel, we will surrender a portion of our revenue to our partner or partners, and if we securitize royalty streams related to omidubicel, future revenues would be held in trust for beneficiaries of the financing in exchange for which we would receive certain payments based on an assessment of future sales. Furthermore, revenue from product sales will depend heavily on our ability to:

Even if one or more of our product candidates is approved for marketing and sale, we anticipate incurring significant incremental costs associated with commercializing such product candidates. Our expenses could increase beyond expectations if we are required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or the FDA, the European Medicines Agency, or the EMA, or other regulatory agencies or ethical committees in medical centers, to change our manufacturing processes or assays or to perform clinical, nonclinical, or other types of studies in addition to those that we currently anticipate. Even if we are successful in obtaining regulatory approvals to market one or more of our product candidates, our revenue earned from such product candidates will be dependent in part upon the size of the markets in the territories for which we gain regulatory approval for such products, the accepted price for such products, our ability to obtain reimbursement for such products at any price, whether we own the commercial rights for that territory in which such products have been approved and the expenses associated with manufacturing and marketing such products for such markets. Therefore, we may not generate significant revenue from the sale of such products, even if approved. Further, if we are not able to generate significant revenue from the sale of our approved products, we may be forced to curtail or cease our operations. Due to the numerous risks and uncertainties involved in product development, it is difficult to predict the timing or amount of increased expenses, or when, or if, we will be able to achieve or maintain profitability.

Our business could be adversely affected by the evolving and ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic in regions where we or third parties on which we rely have significant manufacturing facilities, concentrations of clinical trial sites or other business operations. The COVID-19 pandemic could adversely affect our operations, as well as the business or operations of our manufacturers, CROs or other third parties with whom we conduct business.

Our business could be adversely affected by the effects of the recent and evolving COVID-19 pandemic, which was declared by the World Health Organization as a global pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in travel and other restrictions in order to reduce the spread of the disease including in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where our U.S. operations are focused.

Some of our third-party manufacturers which we use for the supply of materials for product candidates or other materials necessary to manufacture product to conduct preclinical tests and clinical trials are located in countries affected by COVID-19. Quarantines, shelter-in-place and similar government orders, or the perception that such orders, shutdowns or other restrictions on the conduct of business operations could occur, whether related to COVID-19 or other infectious diseases could impact personnel at third-party manufacturing facilities, or the availability or cost of materials, which would disrupt our supply chain, and should they experience additional disruptions, such as temporary closures or suspension of services, we would likely experience delays in advancing these tests and trials. Currently, we expect no material impact on the clinical supply of omidubicel or GDA-201.

Our clinical trials may also be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Clinical site initiation and patient enrollment may be delayed due to prioritization of hospital resources toward the COVID-19 pandemic. Some patients may not be able to comply with clinical trial protocols if quarantines impede patient movement or interrupt healthcare services. Similarly, our ability to recruit and retain patients and principal investigators and site staff who, as healthcare providers, may have heightened exposure to COVID-19 and adversely impact our clinical trial operations.

The spread of COVID-19, which has caused a broad impact globally, may materially affect us economically. While the potential economic impact brought by, and the duration of, COVID-19 may be difficult to assess or predict, a widespread pandemic could result in significant disruption of global financial markets, reducing our ability to access capital, which could in the future negatively affect our liquidity. In addition, a recession or other market corrections resulting from the spread of COVID-19 could materially affect our business and the value of our ordinary shares.

The global pandemic of COVID-19 continues to rapidly evolve. The extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic impacts our business, our clinical development and regulatory efforts will depend on future developments that are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted with confidence, such as the ultimate geographic spread of the disease, the duration of the outbreak, efficacy of vaccines, travel restrictions, quarantines, social distancing requirements and business closures in the United States and other countries, business disruptions and the effectiveness of actions taken in the United States and other countries to contain and treat the disease. Accordingly, we do not yet know the full extent of potential delays or impacts on our business, our clinical and regulatory activities, healthcare systems or the global economy as a whole. However, these impacts could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and growth prospects.

In addition, to the extent the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic adversely affects our business and results of operations, it may also have the effect of heightening many of the other risks and uncertainties described in this “Risk Factors” section and in the “Risk Factors” incorporated by reference herein.

Risks Related to the Discovery, Development and Clinical Testing of Our Product Candidates

We are heavily dependent on the success of our product candidates, including obtaining regulatory approval to market our product candidates in the United States, the European Union and other geographies.

To date, we have deployed all our efforts and financial resources to: (i) research and develop our NAM, or nicotinamide, cell expansion platform, our lead product candidate, omidubicel, for the treatment of hematologic malignancies, and our second product candidate, GDA-201, for the treatment of NHL, and our other potential product candidates, including conducting preclinical and clinical studies and providing general and administrative support for these operations; and (ii) develop and secure our intellectual property portfolio for our product candidates. Our future success is dependent on our ability to successfully develop, obtain regulatory approval for and commercialize one or more of our current and future product candidates. Our product candidates’ marketability is subject to significant risks associated with successfully completing current and future clinical trials and commercializing our product candidates that receive regulatory approval, including:

Many of these clinical, regulatory and commercial risks are beyond our control. Accordingly, we cannot assure you that we will be able to advance any of our product candidates through clinical development, or to obtain regulatory approval of or commercialize any of our product candidates. If we fail to achieve these objectives or overcome the challenges presented above, we could experience significant delays or an inability to successfully commercialize our product candidates. Accordingly, we may not be able to generate sufficient revenue through the sale of our product candidates to enable us to continue our business.

We may be unable to obtain regulatory approval for our product candidates.

The research, development, testing, manufacturing, labeling, packaging, approval, promotion, advertising, storage, recordkeeping, marketing, distribution, post-approval monitoring and reporting and export and import of drug products are subject to extensive regulation by the FDA, the EMA and by regulatory authorities in other countries. These regulations differ from country to country. To gain approval to market our product candidates, we must provide data from well-controlled clinical trials that adequately demonstrate the safety and efficacy of the product for the intended indication to the satisfaction of the FDA, EMA or other regulatory authority. We have not yet obtained regulatory approval to market any of our product candidates in the United States or any other country. The FDA, EMA or other regulatory agencies can delay, limit or deny approval of our product candidates for many reasons, including:

In the United States, we are required to submit a BLA to obtain FDA approval before marketing omidubicel or any of our product candidates. A BLA must include extensive preclinical and clinical data and supporting information to establish the product candidate’s safety, purity and potency, or efficacy, for each desired indication. The BLA must also include significant information regarding the chemistry, manufacturing and controls for the product. In November 2021, we completed a Type B Pre-Biologics License Application, or pre-BLA meeting with the FDA for omidubicel during which the FDA requested that we provide revised analysis of the manufacturing data generated at our wholly-owned commercial manufacturing facility in Kiryat Gat, Israel to demonstrate the comparability to the omidubicel that was produced at the clinical manufacturing sites for the Phase 3 study. Although the FDA has agreed that we established analytical comparability between the omidubicel product that is manufactured at our commercial manufacturing facility and the omidubicel product that was manufactured for the Phase 3 trial, there is no guarantee that we will continue to meet the FDA’s manufacturing requirements in the future.

In connection with our BLA submission, the FDA may conduct an inspection of our Kiryat Gat, Israel manufacturing facility to ensure that it can manufacture omidubicel and our other product candidates, if and when approved, in compliance with the applicable regulatory requirements. The FDA may also inspect our clinical trial sites to ensure that our studies are properly conducted. Obtaining approval of a BLA is a lengthy, expensive and uncertain process, and approval may not be obtained. Upon submission of a BLA, the FDA must make an initial determination that the application is sufficiently complete to accept the submission for filing. We cannot be certain that our rolling BLA submission for omidubicel, or any future submissions, will be accepted for filing and review by the FDA, or ultimately be approved. If our planned application for omidubicel is not accepted for review or approval, the FDA may require that we conduct additional clinical or preclinical trials, or take other actions before it will reconsider our application. If the FDA requires additional studies or data, we would incur increased costs and delays in the marketing approval process, which may require us to expend more resources than we have available. In addition, the FDA may not consider any additional information to be complete or sufficient to support approval.

Regulatory authorities outside of the United States, such as in the European Union, also have requirements for approval of biologics for commercial sale with which we must comply prior to marketing in those areas. Regulatory requirements can vary widely from country to country and could delay or prevent the introduction of our product candidates. Clinical trials conducted in one country may not be accepted by regulatory authorities in other countries, and obtaining regulatory approval in one country does not mean that regulatory approval will be obtained in any other country.

However, the failure to obtain regulatory approval in one jurisdiction could have a negative impact on our ability to obtain approval in a different jurisdiction. Approval processes vary among countries and can involve additional product candidate testing and validation and additional administrative review periods. Seeking additional regulatory approvals outside the United States and European Union could require additional nonclinical studies or clinical trials, which could be costly and time consuming. These regulatory approvals may include all of the risks associated with obtaining FDA or EMA approval. For all of these reasons, if we seek such regulatory approvals for any of our other product candidates, we may not obtain such approvals on a timely basis, if at all.

Even if we receive approval of any regulatory filing for omidubicel, the FDA may grant any such approval contingent on the performance of costly and potentially time-consuming additional post-approval clinical trials or subject to contraindications, black box warnings, restrictive surveillance or a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, or REMS. Further, the FDA, EMA or other regulatory authorities may also approve our product candidates for a more limited indication or a narrower patient population than we originally requested, and these regulatory authorities may not approve the labeling that we believe is necessary or desirable for the successful commercialization of our product candidates. Following any approval for commercial sale of omidubicel or our product candidates, certain changes to the product, such as changes in manufacturing processes and additional labeling claims, as well as new safety information, will be subject to additional FDA notification, or review and approval. Also, regulatory approval for any of our product candidates may be withdrawn. To the extent we seek regulatory approval in jurisdictions outside of the United States and European Union, we may face challenges similar to those described above with regulatory authorities in applicable jurisdictions.

Any delay in obtaining, or inability to obtain, applicable regulatory approval for any of our product candidates would delay or prevent commercialization of our product candidates and would thus negatively impact our business, results of operations and prospects.

Clinical development is difficult to design and implement and involves a lengthy and expensive process with uncertain outcomes.

Clinical testing is expensive and can take many years to complete, and its outcome is inherently uncertain. Bone marrow transplant and cell-based therapies that appear promising in the early phases of development may fail to reach the market. Further, a failure of one or more of our clinical trials can occur at any time during the clinical trial process. We do not know whether future clinical trials, if any, will begin on time, need to be redesigned, enroll an adequate number of patients on time or be completed on schedule, if at all. Clinical trials can be delayed, suspended or terminated for a variety of reasons, including failure to:

We may also experience numerous unforeseen events during, or as a result of, clinical trials that could delay or prevent our ability to receive marketing approval or commercialize our product candidates, including:

We may also encounter delays if a clinical trial is suspended or terminated by us, by the IRBs of the institutions in which such trials are being conducted, by the trial’s data safety monitoring board, by the FDA, EMA or other regulatory agencies. Such authorities may suspend or terminate one or more of our clinical trials due to a number of factors, including our failure to conduct the clinical trial in accordance with relevant regulatory requirements or clinical protocols, inspection of the clinical trial operations or trial site by the FDA, EMA or other regulatory agencies resulting in the imposition of a clinical hold, unforeseen safety issues or adverse side effects, failure to demonstrate a benefit from using a drug, changes in governmental regulations or administrative actions or lack of adequate funding to continue the clinical trial.

Further, conducting clinical trials in countries outside of the United States and European Union, as we plan to do for our product candidates, presents additional risks that may delay completion of our clinical trials. These risks include the failure of enrolled patients in foreign countries to adhere to clinical protocol as a result of differences in healthcare services or cultural customs, managing additional administrative burdens associated with jurisdiction-specific regulatory schemes, as well as political and economic risks relevant to such jurisdictions.

In addition, disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may increase the likelihood that we encounter difficulties or delays in initiating, screening, enrolling, conducting, or completing our ongoing and planned preclinical studies and clinical trials. Clinical site initiation and patient screening and enrollment may be delayed due to prioritization of hospital resources toward the COVID-19 pandemic. Investigators and patients may not be able to comply with clinical trial protocols if quarantines impede patient movement or interrupt healthcare services. Similarly, our ability to recruit and retain patients and principal investigators and site staff who, as healthcare providers, may have heightened exposure to COVID-19, could be limited, which in turn could adversely impact our clinical trial operations. Additionally, we may experience interruption of key clinical trial activities, such as clinical trial site monitoring, due to limitations on travel, quarantines or social distancing protocols imposed or recommended by federal or state governments, employers and others in connection with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have faced and may continue to face delays in meeting our anticipated timelines for our ongoing and planned clinical trials. Specifically, the initial timeline for submission of our BLA for omidubicel was delayed, in part, as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our operations.

If we experience delays in carrying out or completing any clinical trial of our product candidates, the commercial prospects of our product candidates may be harmed, and our ability to generate product revenue from any of these product candidates will be delayed. In addition, any delays in completing our clinical trials will increase our costs, slow down our product candidate development and approval process and jeopardize our ability to commence product sales and generate revenue. Any of these occurrences may significantly harm our business and financial condition. In addition, many of the factors that cause, or lead to, a delay in the commencement or completion of clinical trials may also ultimately lead to the denial of regulatory approval of our product candidates.

The results of earlier studies and trials may not be predictive of future trial results, and our clinical trials may fail to adequately demonstrate the safety and efficacy of our product candidates.

Results from preclinical studies or early-stage clinical trials are not necessarily predictive of future clinical trial results, and interim results of a clinical trial are not necessarily indicative of final results. For example, our Phase 1/2 clinical trial of GDA-201 demonstrated significant clinical activity in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, with 13 complete responses and one partial response observed in 19 patients, for a response rate of 74%. However, further clinical trials may show that the response rate in a larger sample size is lower than 74%. A decrease in the response rate could cause us to abandon further development of GDA-201 in this indication.

There is a high failure rate for product candidates proceeding through clinical trials. Many companies in the pharmaceutical industry have suffered significant setbacks in late-stage clinical trials even after achieving promising results in preclinical testing and earlier-stage clinical trials. Data obtained from preclinical and clinical activities are subject to varying interpretations, including conclusions about relapse rates that are based on small sample sizes of data, which may delay, limit or prevent regulatory approval. In addition, we may experience regulatory delays or rejections as a result of many factors, including due to changes in regulatory policy during the period of our product candidate development. Success in preclinical testing and early clinical trials does not ensure that later clinical trials will generate the same results or otherwise provide adequate data to demonstrate the efficacy and safety of a product candidate.

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

From time to time, we may publish interim, “top-line” or preliminary data from our clinical studies. Interim data from clinical trials that we may complete are subject to the risk that one or more of the clinical outcomes may materially change as patient enrollment continues and more patient data become available. Preliminary or “top-line” data also remain subject to audit and verification procedures that may result in the final data being materially different from the preliminary data previously published. In addition, successful results in one or a few patients may not be indicative of the final results after completion of treatment of all patients in a clinical trial. As a result, interim and preliminary data should be viewed with caution until the final data are available. Adverse changes between preliminary or interim data and final data could significantly harm our business prospects.

The success of our NAM technology platform and our product candidates is substantially dependent on developments within the emerging field of cellular therapies, some of which are beyond our control.

Our NAM expansion technology platform and our product candidates are designed to increase the therapeutic functionality of cell therapy products, which represents a novel development within the field of cellular therapeutics. Stem cell therapies in turn represent a relatively new therapeutic area that presents a number of scientific, clinical, regulatory and ethical challenges. Any adverse developments in the field of stem cell therapies generally, and in the practice of hematopoietic stem cell transplant in particular, will negatively impact our ability to develop and commercialize our product candidates. In particular, we currently anticipate that omidubicel and any additional product candidates that we develop from our NAM technology platform would be adopted into the current standard of care for hematopoietic stem cell transplant, or HSCT, procedures. If the market for HSCT procedures declines or fails to grow at anticipated levels for any reason, or if the development and commercialization of therapies targeted at the underlying cause of diseases addressed by omidubicel obviate the need for patients to undergo HSCT procedures, our business prospects will be significantly harmed.

Because our product candidates are based on novel technologies, it is difficult to predict the time and cost of development and our ability to successfully complete clinical development of these product candidates and obtain the necessary regulatory approvals for commercialization.

Our product candidates are based on our novel NAM technology platform, and unexpected problems related to this new technology may arise that could cause us to delay, suspend or terminate our development efforts. Regulatory approval of novel product candidates such as ours can be more expensive and take longer, than for other more well-known or extensively studied pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical product candidates due to our and regulatory agencies’ lack of experience with them. Stem cell therapies represent a relatively new therapeutic area, and the FDA has cautioned consumers about potential safety risks associated with these therapies. To date, there are relatively few approved stem cell products.

Regulatory requirements governing cell therapy products have changed frequently and may continue to change in the future. For example, the FDA established the Office of Cellular, Tissue and Gene Therapies within its Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, or CBER, to consolidate the review of gene therapy and related products, and the Cellular, Tissue and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee to advise CBER on its review. In addition, adverse developments in clinical trials of potential stem cell therapies conducted by others may cause the FDA or other regulatory bodies to change the requirements for approval of any of our product candidates. These regulatory authorities and advisory groups and the new requirements or guidelines they promulgate may lengthen the regulatory review process, require us to perform additional studies, increase our development costs, lead to changes in regulatory positions and interpretations, delay or prevent approval and commercialization of our product candidates or lead to significant post-approval limitations or restrictions.

We may find it difficult to enroll patients in our clinical studies, which could delay or prevent us from proceeding with clinical trials.

Identifying and qualifying patients to participate in clinical studies of our product candidates is critical to our success. The timing of our clinical trials depends in part on the speed at which we can recruit patients to participate in testing our product candidates, and we may experience delays in our clinical trials if we encounter difficulties in enrollment. Patient enrollment and retention in clinical trials depends on many factors, including the size of the patient population, the nature of the trial protocol, our ability to recruit clinical trial investigators with the appropriate competencies and experience, the existing body of safety and efficacy data with respect to the study drug, the number and nature of competing treatments and ongoing clinical trials of competing drugs for the same indication, the proximity of patients to clinical sites, clinicians’ and patients’ perceptions as to the potential advantages of the product candidate being studied in relation to other available therapies, including any drugs that may be approved for the indications we are investigating, the eligibility criteria for the study, our ability to obtain and maintain patient consents and the risk that patients enrolled in clinical trials will drop out of the trials before completion. For example, patients may prefer to undergo treatment with stem cell transplantation with cells sourced from matched related donors, matched unrelated donors or haploidentical donors, as opposed to being treated with omidubicel, which would adversely affect the enrollment of our clinical trials.

We may not be able to identify, recruit and enroll a sufficient number of patients to complete our clinical studies because of the perceived risks and benefits of the product candidate under study, the availability and efficacy of competing therapies and clinical studies, the proximity and availability of clinical study sites for prospective patients and the patient referral practices of physicians. If patients are unwilling to participate in our studies for any reason, the timeline for recruiting patients, conducting studies, and obtaining regulatory approval of potential products will be delayed.

In addition, any negative results we may report in clinical trials of our product candidate may make it difficult or impossible to recruit and retain patients in other clinical trials of that same product candidate. Delays or failures in planned patient enrollment or retention may result in increased costs, program delays or both, which could have a harmful effect on our ability to develop our product candidates, or could render further development impossible. For example, the impact of public health epidemics, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, may delay or prevent patients from enrolling or from receiving treatment in accordance with the protocol and the required timelines, which could delay our clinical trials, or prevent us from completing our clinical trials at all, and harm our ability to obtain approval for such product candidate. Further, if patients drop out of our clinical trials, miss follow-up visits, or otherwise fail to follow clinical trial protocols, whether as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic or actions taken to slow the spread of COVID-19 or otherwise, the integrity of data from our clinical trials may be compromised or not accepted by the FDA or other regulatory authorities, which would represent a significant setback for the applicable program. In addition, we may rely on CROs and clinical trial sites to ensure proper and timely conduct of our future clinical trials and, while we intend to enter into agreements governing their services, we will be limited in our ability to compel their actual performance.

Our product candidates and the administration process may cause undesirable side effects or have other properties that could delay or prevent their regulatory approval, limit the commercial profile of an approved label or result in significant negative consequences following marketing approval, if any, and result in costly and damaging product liability claims against us.

Undesirable side effects, including toxicology, caused by our product candidates, or the drugs encapsulated by our product candidates, could cause us or regulatory authorities to interrupt, delay or halt clinical studies and could result in a more restrictive label or the delay or denial of regulatory approval by the FDA, EMA or other regulatory agencies. Results of our studies could reveal a high and unacceptable severity and prevalence of these or other side effects. In such an event, our clinical studies could be suspended or terminated, and the FDA, EMA or other regulatory agencies could order us to cease further development of or deny or withdraw approval of our product candidates for any or all targeted indications. Moreover, during the conduct of clinical trials, patients report changes in their health, including illnesses, injuries and discomforts, to their study doctor. Often, it is not possible to determine whether or not the product candidate being studied caused these conditions.

Drug-related, drug-product related, formulation-related and administration-related side effects could affect patient recruitment, the ability of enrolled patients to complete the clinical study or result in potential product liability claims, which could exceed our clinical trial insurance coverage. We obtain clinical trial insurance policies with respect to all our clinical studies. The insurance policies are in accordance with the local regulations applicable in the jurisdictions where the studies are performed outside of clinical trials.

Further, patients with the diseases targeted by our product candidates are often already in severe and advanced stages of disease and have both known and unknown significant pre-existing and potentially life-threatening health risks. Severe (grade 4) infusion reactions have also been reported in approximately 4% of patients treated with omidubicel. The most common adverse events related to omidubicel were graft versus host disease, or GvHD, (10%), pain (8%), transplant failure (4%), hypertension (4%), and dyspnea (2%). During the course of treatment, patients may suffer adverse events, including death, for reasons that may be related to our product candidates. In our Phase 1/2 clinical trial of omidubicel for the treatment of sickle cell disease, or SCD, which is a chronic illness, two of the patients died: one due to chronic GvHD and the other due to secondary graft failure. In our Phase 1/2 trial of omidubicel for the treatment of hematologic malignancies, approximately 10% of patients who received omidubicel experienced serious GvHD. In our Phase 1/2 clinical trial of GDA-201, adverse events included one patient who died of E. coli sepsis. There was also a low level of sporadic engraftment failures. Such events could subject us to costly litigation, require us to pay substantial amounts of money to injured patients, delay, negatively impact or end our opportunity to receive or maintain regulatory approval to market our products, or require us to suspend or abandon our commercialization efforts.

Even in a circumstance in which we do not believe that an adverse event is related to our products, the investigation into the circumstance may be time-consuming or inconclusive. For instance, allogeneic bone marrow transplant, the area in which omidubicel is being used, is associated with serious complications, including death. In addition, there are expected toxicities for patients who receive an allogeneic bone marrow transplant, such as infertility. Thus, while not directly associated with omidubicel, there are attendant risks with the space in which our product candidates operate, and any related investigations may interrupt our development and commercialization efforts, delay our regulatory approval process, or impact and limit the type of regulatory approvals our product candidates receive or maintain. As a result of these factors, a product liability claim, even if successfully defended, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Additionally, if one or more of our product candidates receives marketing approval, and we or others later identify undesirable side effects caused by such products, a number of potentially significant negative consequences could result, including, but not limited to:

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, results of operations and prospects.

Risks Related to Government Regulation

Even if we complete the necessary clinical trials, we cannot predict when, or if, we will obtain regulatory approval to commercialize any of our product candidates, and the approval may be for a narrower indication than we seek or be subject to other limitations or restrictions that limit its commercial profile.

We cannot commercialize a product candidate until the appropriate regulatory authorities have reviewed and approved the product candidate. Even if our current or future product candidates meet safety and efficacy endpoints in clinical trials, the regulatory authorities may not complete their review processes in a timely manner, or we may not be able to obtain regulatory approval. Additional delays may result if an FDA Advisory Committee or other regulatory authority recommends non-approval or restrictions on approval. In addition, we may experience delays or rejections based upon additional government regulation from future legislation or administrative action, or changes in regulatory authority policy during the period of product development, clinical trials and the review process.

Regulatory authorities also may approve a product candidate for more limited indications than requested or they may impose significant limitations in the form of warnings or a REMS. These regulatory authorities may require precautions or contra-indications with respect to conditions of use or they may grant approval subject to the performance of costly post-marketing clinical trials. In addition, regulatory authorities may not approve the labeling claims that are necessary or desirable for the successful commercialization of any of our product candidates. Any of the foregoing scenarios could materially harm the commercial prospects for our product candidates and materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Even if we obtain regulatory approval for a product candidate, our products will remain subject to regulatory scrutiny.

If one of our product candidates is approved, it will be subject to ongoing regulatory requirements for manufacturing, labeling, packaging, storage, advertising, promotion, sampling, record-keeping, conduct of post-marketing studies, and submission of safety, efficacy, and other post- market information, including both federal and state requirements in the United States and European Union and requirements of comparable regulatory authorities.

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

We will have to comply with requirements concerning advertising and promotion for our products. Promotional communications with respect to prescription drugs and biologics are subject to a variety of legal and regulatory restrictions and must be consistent with the information in the product’s approved label. As such, we may not promote our products “off-label” for indications or uses for which they do not have approval. The holder of an approved application must submit new or supplemental applications and obtain approval for certain changes to the approved product, product labeling, or manufacturing process. We could also be asked to conduct post-marketing clinical studies to verify the safety and efficacy of our products in general or in specific patient subsets. An unsuccessful post- marketing study or failure to complete such a study could result in the withdrawal of marketing approval.

If a regulatory agency discovers previously unknown problems with a product, such as adverse events of unanticipated severity or frequency, or problems with the facility where the product is manufactured, or disagrees with the promotion, marketing or labeling of a product, such regulatory agency may impose restrictions on that product or us, including requiring withdrawal of the product from the market. If we fail to comply with applicable regulatory requirements, a regulatory agency or enforcement authority may, among other things:

Any government investigation of alleged violations of law could require us to expend significant time and resources in response and could generate negative publicity. Any failure to comply with ongoing regulatory requirements may significantly and adversely affect our ability to commercialize and generate revenue from our products. If regulatory sanctions are applied or if regulatory approval is withdrawn, the value of our company and our operating results will be adversely affected.

Moreover, the policies of the FDA and of other regulatory authorities may change and additional government regulations may be enacted that could prevent, limit or delay regulatory approval of our product candidates. We cannot predict the likelihood, nature or extent of government regulation that may arise from future legislation or administrative or executive 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.

A Breakthrough Therapy Designation by the FDA may not lead to a faster development or regulatory review or approval process and it does not increase the likelihood that our product candidates will receive marketing approval.

We have obtained Breakthrough Therapy Designation for omidubicel for the treatment of hematologic malignancies and may receive it in the future if the clinical data support such a designation for one or more of our other product candidates. A breakthrough therapy is defined as a drug or biologic that is intended, alone or in combination with one or more other drugs or biologics, to treat a serious or life-threatening disease or condition and preliminary clinical evidence indicates that the drug, or biologic, may demonstrate substantial improvement over existing therapies on one or more clinically significant endpoints, such as substantial treatment effects observed early in clinical development. For product candidates that have been designated as breakthrough therapies, interaction and communication between the FDA and the sponsor of the trial can help to identify the most efficient path for clinical development while minimizing the number of patients placed in ineffective control regimens. Biologics designated as breakthrough therapies by the FDA may also be eligible for accelerated approval.

Designation as a breakthrough therapy is within the discretion of the FDA. Accordingly, even if we believe one of our current or future product candidates meets the criteria for designation as a breakthrough therapy, the FDA may disagree and instead determine not to make such designation.

In any event, the receipt of a Breakthrough Therapy Designation for omidubicel for the treatment of hematologic malignancies may not result in a faster development process, review or approval compared to drugs considered for approval under non-expedited FDA review procedures and does not assure ultimate approval by the FDA. In addition, the FDA may later decide that the product no longer meets the conditions to qualify for Breakthrough Therapy Designation.

We may be unable to maintain the benefits associated with orphan drug designations that we have obtained, including market exclusivity, which may cause our revenue, if any, to be reduced.

We have obtained orphan drug designation for omidubicel from the FDA and the EMA for the treatment of hematologic malignancies, and we may pursue orphan drug designation for certain of our future product candidates. Under the Orphan Drug Act, the FDA may designate a drug or biologic product as an orphan drug if it is intended to treat a rare disease or condition, defined as a patient population of fewer than 200,000 in the United States, or a patient population greater than 200,000 in the United States where there is no reasonable expectation that the cost of developing the drug will be recovered from sales in the United States. In the European Union, the EMA’s Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products, or COMP, grants orphan drug designation to promote the development of products that are 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. Additionally, designation is granted for products intended for the diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of a life-threatening, seriously debilitating or serious and chronic condition when, without incentives, it is unlikely that sales of the drug in the European Union would be sufficient to justify the necessary investment in developing the drug or biological product or where there is no satisfactory method of diagnosis, prevention, or treatment, or, if such a method exists, the medicine must be of significant benefit to those affected by the condition.

In the United States, orphan drug designation entitles a party to financial incentives such as opportunities for grant funding towards clinical trial costs, tax advantages, and application fee waivers. In addition, if a product receives the first FDA approval for the indication for which it has orphan designation, the product is entitled to orphan drug exclusivity, which means the FDA may not approve any other application to market the same drug for the same indication for a period of seven years, except in limited circumstances, such as a showing of clinical superiority over the product with orphan exclusivity or where the manufacturer is unable to assure sufficient product quantity the orphan patient population. In the European Union, orphan drug designation entitles a party to financial incentives such as reduction of fees or fee waivers and ten years of market exclusivity following drug or biological product approval. This period may be reduced to six years if the orphan drug designation criteria are no longer met, including where it is shown that the product is sufficiently profitable not to justify maintenance of market exclusivity.

Even though we have obtained orphan drug designation for omidubicel from the FDA and the EMA for the treatment of hematologic malignancies, we may not be the first to obtain marketing approval for such indication due to the uncertainties associated with developing pharmaceutical products. Further, orphan drug exclusivity may not effectively protect the product candidate from competition because different drugs with different active moieties can be approved for the same condition. Even after an orphan drug is approved, the FDA or EMA can subsequently approve the same drug with the same active moiety for the same condition if the FDA or EMA concludes that the later drug is clinically superior in that it is safer, more effective, or makes a major contribution to patient care. Orphan drug designation neither shortens the development time or regulatory review time of a drug or biologic nor gives the drug or biologic any advantage in the regulatory review or approval process.

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

In the United States, the European Union and other jurisdictions, there have been, and we expect there will continue to be, a number of legislative and regulatory changes and proposed changes to the healthcare system that could affect our future results of operations. In particular, there have been and continue to be a number of initiatives at the U.S. federal and state levels that seek to reduce healthcare costs and improve the quality of healthcare. For example, in March 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, or collectively the PPACA, was enacted, which substantially changed the way healthcare is financed by both governmental and private payers. Among the provisions of the PPACA, those of greatest importance to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries include the following: an annual, non-deductible fee payable by any entity that manufactures or imports certain branded prescription drugs and biologic agents (other than those designated as orphan drugs), which is apportioned among these entities according to their market share in certain government healthcare programs;

There have been judicial and Congressional challenges to certain aspects of the PPACA. For example, tax legislation enacted on December 22, 2017, titled “an Act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to titles II and V of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018,” or the Tax Act, included a provision repealing, effective January 1, 2019, the tax-based shared responsibility payment imposed by the PPACA 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 PPACA is unconstitutional in its entirety because the “individual mandate” was repealed by Congress. Thus, the PPACA 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 from February 26, 2021 through August 15, 2021 for purposes of obtaining health insurance coverage through the PPACA 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 PPACA. It is possible that the PPACA will be subject to judicial or Congressional challenges in the future. It is unclear how such challenges and the healthcare reform measures of the Biden administration.

In addition, other legislative changes have been proposed and adopted in the United States since the PPACA was enacted. In August 2011, the Budget Control Act of 2011, among other things, led to aggregate reductions of Medicare payments to providers of 2% per fiscal year. These reductions went into effect in April 2013 and, due to subsequent legislative amendments to the statute, will remain in effect through 2031 with the exception of a temporary suspension from May 1, 2020 through March 31, 2022 unless additional action is taken by Congress. 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. In January 2013, the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 was signed into law, 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. Additionally, Congress is considering additional health reform measures. These new laws or any other similar laws introduced in the future may result in additional reductions in Medicare and other health care funding, which could negatively affect our customers and accordingly, our financial operations.

Moreover, payment methodologies are subject to changes in healthcare legislation and regulatory initiatives. For example, CMS has developed value-based payment models for a variety of care settings, including the inpatient prospective payment system used for reimbursing inpatient hospital services. In addition, recently there has been heightened governmental scrutiny over the manner in which manufacturers set prices for their marketed products, which has resulted in several U.S. Presidential executive orders, Congressional inquiries and proposed and enacted federal and state legislation designed to, among other things, bring more transparency to drug pricing, reduce the cost of prescription drugs under government payer programs, and review the relationship between pricing and manufacturer patient programs. 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 seek to implement several of the administration’s proposals. As a result, the FDA concurrently released a final rule and guidance in September2020, providing pathways for states to build and submit importation plans for drugs from Canada. Further, on November 20, 2020, HHS finalized a regulation removing safe harbor protection for price reductions from pharmaceutical manufacturers to plan sponsors under Part D, either directly or through pharmacy benefit managers, unless the price reduction is required by law. The implementation of the rule has been delayed by the Biden administration from January 1, 2022 to January 1, 2023 in response to ongoing litigation. The 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 by the Biden administration until January 1, 2023. 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 rescinds the Most Favored Nation model interim final rule. Additionally, 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 as well as potential administrative actions HHS can take to advance these principles. No legislation or administrative actions have been finalized to implement these principles. It is unclear whether these or similar policy initiatives will be implemented in the future.

We expect that additional U.S. federal healthcare reform measures will be adopted in the future, any of which could limit the amounts that the U.S. federal government will pay for healthcare products and services, which could result in reduced demand for our product candidates or additional pricing pressures.

Individual states in the United States have also increasingly passed legislation and implemented regulations designed to control pharmaceutical and biological product pricing, including price or patient reimbursement constraints, discounts, restrictions on certain product access and marketing cost disclosure and transparency measures, and, in some cases, designed to encourage importation from other countries and bulk purchasing. Legally mandated price controls on payment amounts by third- party payers or other restrictions could harm our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects. 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. This could reduce the ultimate demand for our product candidates or put pressure on our product pricing.

In the European Union, similar political, economic and regulatory developments may affect our ability to profitably commercialize our product candidates, if approved. In addition to continuing pressure on prices and cost containment measures, legislative developments at the European Union or member state level may result in significant additional requirements or obstacles that may increase our operating costs. The delivery of healthcare in the European Union, including the establishment and operation of health services and the pricing and reimbursement of medicines, is almost exclusively a matter for national, rather than European Union, law and policy. National governments and health service providers have different priorities and approaches to the delivery of health care and the pricing and reimbursement of products in that context. In general, however, the healthcare budgetary constraints in most European Union member states have resulted in restrictions on the pricing and reimbursement of medicines by relevant health service providers. Any increase in European Union and national regulatory burdens on those wishing to develop and market products could prevent or delay marketing approval of our product candidates, restrict or regulate post- approval activities and affect our ability to commercialize our product candidates, if approved. In markets outside of the United States and European Union, reimbursement and healthcare payment systems vary significantly by country, and many countries have instituted price ceilings on specific products and therapies.

We cannot predict the likelihood, nature or extent of government regulation that may arise from future legislation or administrative action in the United States, the European Union or any other jurisdiction. It is also possible that additional government action is taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. If we or any third parties we may engage are slow or unable to adapt to changes in existing requirements or the adoption of new requirements or policies, or if we or such third parties are not able to maintain regulatory compliance, our product candidates may lose any regulatory approval that may have been obtained and we may not achieve or sustain profitability.

Our business operations and current and future relationships with investigators, healthcare professionals, consultants, third-party payers, patient organizations and customers will be subject to applicable healthcare regulatory laws, which could expose us to penalties.

Our business operations and current and future arrangements with investigators, healthcare professionals, consultants, third-party payers, patient organizations and customers, may expose us to broadly applicable fraud and abuse, privacy and security and other healthcare laws and regulations. These laws may constrain the business or financial arrangements and relationships through which we conduct our operations, including how we research, market, sell and distribute our product candidates, if approved. Such laws include:

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 government-funded healthcare programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid or similar programs in other countries or jurisdictions, integrity oversight and reporting obligations to resolve allegations of non-compliance, disgorgement, individual imprisonment, contractual damages, reputational harm, diminished profits and the curtailment or restructuring of our operations. If any of the physicians or other providers or entities with whom we expect to do business are found to not be in compliance with applicable laws, they may be subject to criminal, civil or administrative sanctions, including exclusions from government funded healthcare programs and imprisonment, which could affect our ability to operate our business. Further, defending against any such actions can be costly, time-consuming and may require significant 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.

Legislative or regulatory healthcare reforms in the United States may make it more difficult and costly for us to obtain regulatory clearance or approval of our product candidates and to produce, market and distribute our products after clearance or approval is obtained.

From time to time, legislation is drafted and introduced in Congress that could significantly change the statutory provisions governing the regulatory clearance or approval, manufacture and marketing of regulated products or the reimbursement thereof. In addition, FDA regulations and guidance are often revised or reinterpreted by the FDA in ways that may significantly affect our business and our products. Any new regulations or revisions or reinterpretations of existing regulations may impose additional costs or lengthen review times of our product candidates. We cannot determine what effect changes in regulations, statutes, legal interpretation or policies, when and if promulgated, enacted or adopted may have on our business in the future. Such changes could, among other things, require:

We face competition from other biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, and our operating results will suffer if we fail to compete effectively.

The biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries are intensely competitive and subject to rapid and significant technological change. We face competition from major multinational pharmaceutical companies, established and early-stage biotechnology companies, and universities and other research institutions. Many of our competitors have greater financial and other resources, such as larger research and development staff and more experienced marketing and manufacturing organizations. Large pharmaceutical companies, in particular, have extensive experience in clinical testing, obtaining regulatory approvals, recruiting patients and manufacturing pharmaceutical products. These companies also have significantly greater research, sales and marketing capabilities and collaborative arrangements in our target markets with leading companies and research institutions.

Established pharmaceutical companies may also invest heavily to accelerate discovery and development of novel therapeutics or to in-license novel therapeutics that could make the product candidates that we develop obsolete. As a result of all of these factors, our competitors may succeed in obtaining patent protection or FDA approval or discovering, developing and commercializing treatments in the rare disease indications that we are targeting before we do. Smaller or early-stage companies may also prove to be significant competitors, particularly through collaborative arrangements with large, established companies.

Doctors may recommend that patients undergo stem cell transplantation using cells from matched related donors, matched or mismatched unrelated donors, haploidentical donors or unmodified umbilical cord blood instead of using omidubicel or may choose other therapy options instead of our other NAM-derived product candidates. In addition, there are several clinical-stage development programs that seek to improve umbilical cord blood transplantation through the use of ex vivo expansion technologies to increase the quantity of hematopoietic stem cells for use in HSCT or the use of ex vivo differentiation technologies to increase the quantity of hematopoietic progenitor cells for use in HSCT. We are aware of several other companies with product candidates in various stages of development for allogeneic HSCT grafts, including Magenta Therapeutics, ExCellThera, Garuda Therapeutics and Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, and for NK cells, including, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Fate Therapeutics, Artiva, Sanofi, MiNK Therapeutics, ONK Therapeutics, Shoreline, Cellularity, NKarta, Wugen, Century Therapeutics, Appia Bio and FujiFilm Cellular Dynamics. In addition, many universities and private and public research institutes may develop technologies of interest to us but license them to our competitors. Our competitors may succeed in developing, acquiring or licensing on an exclusive basis, technologies and drug products that are more effective or less costly than omidubicel or any other product candidates that we are currently developing or that we may develop, which could render our products obsolete and noncompetitive.

We believe that our ability to successfully compete will depend on, among other things:

If our competitors market products that are more effective, safer or less expensive than our future products, if any, or that reach the market sooner than our future products, if any, we may not achieve commercial success. Any inability to successfully compete effectively will adversely impact our business and financial prospects.

Even if we obtain and maintain approval for omidubicel or our other product candidates from the FDA, we may never obtain approval outside of the United States, which would limit our market opportunities and adversely affect our business.

Approval of a product candidate in the United States by the FDA does not ensure approval of such product candidate by regulatory authorities in other countries or jurisdictions, and approval by non-U.S. regulatory authority does not ensure approval by regulatory authorities in other countries or by the FDA. However, the failure to obtain approval from the FDA or other regulatory authorities may negatively impact our ability to obtain approval in non-U.S. countries. Sales of omidubicel or our other product candidates outside of the United States will be subject to the regulatory requirements of other jurisdictions governing clinical trials and marketing approval. Even if the FDA grants marketing approval for a product candidate, comparable regulatory authorities in other countries also must approve the manufacturing and marketing of the product candidate in those countries. Approval procedures vary among jurisdictions and can involve requirements and administrative review periods different from, and more onerous than, those in the United States, including additional preclinical studies or clinical trials. In many countries outside the United States, a product candidate must be approved for reimbursement before it can be approved for sale in that country. In some cases, the price that we intend to charge for our product candidates, if approved, is also subject to approval.

We intend to submit a marketing authorization application to the EMA for approval of omidubicel in the European Union, but obtaining such approval from the European Commission following the opinion of the EMA is a lengthy and expensive process. Even if a product candidate is approved, the applicable regulatory agency may limit the indications for which the product may be marketed, require extensive warnings on the product labeling or require expensive and time-consuming additional clinical trials or reporting as conditions of approval. Regulatory authorities in countries outside of the United States and the European Union also have requirements for approval of product candidates with which we must comply prior to marketing in those countries. Obtaining non-U.S. regulatory approvals and compliance with non-U.S. regulatory requirements could result in significant delays, difficulties and costs for us and could delay or prevent the introduction of our product candidates in certain countries.

Further, clinical trials conducted in one country may not be accepted by regulatory authorities in other countries. Also, regulatory approval for a product candidate may be withdrawn. If we fail to comply with the regulatory requirements, our target market will be reduced and our ability to realize the full market potential of omidubicel or our other product candidates will be harmed and our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects will be adversely affected.

The misuse or off-label use of our products may harm our reputation in the marketplace, result in injuries that lead to product liability suits or result in costly investigations, fines or sanctions by regulatory bodies if we are deemed to have engaged in the promotion of these uses, any of which could be costly to our business.

We initially intend to seek marketing approval for omidubicel for the treatment of hematologic malignancies. We will train our marketing and sales personnel or the marketing and sales personnel of any strategic partner to not promote our products, if approved, for any other uses outside of any FDA-cleared indications for use, known as “off-label use.”

We cannot, however, prevent a physician from using our products off-label, when in the physician’s independent professional medical judgment, he or she deems it appropriate. As a result, there may be increased risk of injury to patients if physicians attempt to use our products for these uses for which they are not approved. Furthermore, the use of our products for indications other than those approved by the FDA or any non-U.S. regulatory body may not effectively treat such conditions, which could harm our reputation in the marketplace among physicians and patients.

If the FDA, EMA or any other regulatory body in a jurisdiction in which we operate determines that our promotional materials or training constitute promotion of an off-label use, it could request that we modify our training or promotional materials or subject us to regulatory or enforcement actions, including the issuance or imposition of an untitled letter, which is used for violators that do not necessitate a warning letter, injunction, seizure, civil fine or criminal penalties. It is also possible that other federal, state or non-U.S. enforcement authorities might take action under other regulatory authority, such as false claims laws, if they consider our business activities to constitute promotion of an off-label use, which could result in significant penalties, including, but not limited to, criminal, civil and administrative penalties, damages, fines, disgorgement, exclusion from participation in government healthcare programs and the curtailment of our operations.

Collection and use of data, including personal information, is governed by restrictive regulations that could lead to government enforcement actions, private litigation, adverse publicity, or other adverse actions that could negatively affect our operating results of business

The collection and use of personal health data in the European Union are governed by the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679), or GDPR. This legislation imposes requirements relating to (a) having legal bases for processing personal information relating to identifiable individuals and transferring such information outside the European Economic Area including to the United States, (b) providing details to those individuals regarding the processing of their personal information, (c) keeping personal information secure and confidential, (d) having data processing agreements with third parties who process personal information, (e) responding to individuals’ requests to exercise their rights in respect of their personal information, (f) reporting security breaches involving personal data to the competent national data protection authority and, possibly, affected individuals, (g) appointing data protection officers, (h) conducting data protection impact assessments and (i) recordkeeping. The GDPR imposes additional responsibilities and liabilities in relation to personal data that we process and we may be required to put in place additional mechanisms ensuring compliance with the new data protection rules. Further, the GDPR prohibits the transfer of personal data to countries outside the European Economic Area, such as the United States, which are not considered by the European Commission to provide an adequate level of data protection. Switzerland has adopted similar restrictions. Although there are legal mechanisms to allow for the transfer of personal data from the EEA and Switzerland to the United States, they are subject to legal challenges and uncertainty regarding compliance with the European Union data protections laws. Failure to comply with the requirements of the GDPR and related national data protection laws of the member states of the European Union may result in substantial fines (up to or the great of €20 million or 4% of annual global revenue), other administrative penalties and civil claims being brought against us, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition. Such civil claims, based on a private right of actions in the GDPR, allow data subjects and consumer associations to lodge complaints with supervisory authorities, seek judicial remedies, and obtain compensation for damages resulting from violations of the GDPR.

Risks Related to our Reliance on Third Parties

We rely on third parties to conduct certain elements of our preclinical studies and clinical trials and perform other tasks for us. If these third parties do not successfully carry out their contractual duties, meet expected deadlines or comply with regulatory requirements, we may not be able to obtain regulatory approval for or commercialize our product candidates.

We have relied upon, and plan to continue to rely upon, third-party vendors, including CROs, to monitor and manage data for our ongoing preclinical studies and clinical trials. We rely on these parties for execution of our preclinical studies and clinical trials, and we control only certain aspects of their activities. Nevertheless, we are responsible for ensuring that each of our studies is conducted in accordance with the applicable protocol, legal, regulatory and scientific standards, and our reliance on the vendors and CROs does not relieve us of our regulatory responsibilities.

We and our CROs and other vendors are required to comply with good clinical practice, or GCP, cGMP, the Helsinki Declaration, the International Council for Harmonization Guideline for Good Clinical Practice, applicable European Commission Directives on Clinical Trials, laws and regulations applicable to clinical trials conducted in other territories, good laboratory practices, or GLP, which are regulations and guidelines enforced by the FDA, the Competent Authorities of the Member States of the European Economic Area, or EEA, and comparable regulatory authorities for all our product candidates in clinical development as well as rules and regulations regarding the collection and use of personal data such as the GDPR.

Regulatory authorities enforce these regulations through periodic inspections of study sponsors, principal investigators, study sites and other contractors. If we or any of our CROs or vendors fail to comply with applicable regulations, including GCP and cGMP regulations, the clinical data generated in our clinical studies may be deemed unreliable and the FDA, EMA or comparable regulatory authorities may require us to perform additional clinical studies before approving our marketing applications. Our failure to comply with these regulations may require us to repeat clinical studies, which would delay the regulatory approval process.

If any of our relationships with these third-party CROs or vendors terminate, we may not be able to enter into arrangements with alternative CROs or vendors or do so on commercially reasonable terms. In addition, our CROs are not our employees, and, except for remedies available to us under our agreements with such CROs, we cannot control whether or not they devote sufficient time and resources to our ongoing clinical, nonclinical and preclinical programs. If CROs do not successfully carry out their contractual duties or obligations or meet expected deadlines, if they need to be replaced or if the quality or accuracy of the clinical data they obtain is compromised due to the failure to adhere to our clinical protocols, regulatory requirements or for other reasons, our clinical studies may be extended, delayed or terminated, and we may not be able to obtain regulatory approval for or successfully commercialize our product candidates. CROs may also generate higher costs than anticipated, which could adversely affect our results of operations and the commercial prospects for our product candidates, increase our costs and delay our ability to generate revenue.

Replacing or adding additional CROs involves additional cost and requires management time and focus. In addition, there is a natural transition period when a new CRO commences work. As a result, delays occur, which can materially impact our ability to meet our desired clinical development timelines. Though we carefully manage our relationships with our CROs, we may encounter similar challenges or delays in the future, which could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition and prospects.

Independent clinical investigators and CROs that we engage to conduct our clinical trials may not devote sufficient time or attention to our clinical trials or be able to repeat their past success.

We expect to continue to depend on third parties, including independent clinical investigators and CROs, to conduct our clinical trials. CROs may also assist us in the collection and analysis of data. There is a limited number of third-party service providers and vendors that specialize or have the expertise required to achieve our business objectives. Identifying, qualifying and managing performance of third-party service providers can be difficult, time consuming and cause delays in our development programs.

These investigators and CROs will not be our employees and we will not be able to control, other than through contract, the amount of resources, including time, which they devote to our product candidates and clinical trials. If independent investigators or CROs fail to devote sufficient resources to the development of our product candidates, or if their performance is substandard, it may delay or compromise the prospects for approval and commercialization of any product candidates that we develop.

Investigators for our clinical trials may serve as scientific advisors or consultants to us from time to time and receive compensation in connection with such services. Under certain circumstances, we may be required to report some of these relationships to the FDA or other regulatory authorities. The FDA or other regulatory authorities may conclude that a financial relationship between us and an investigator has created a conflict of interest or otherwise affected interpretation of the study. The FDA or other regulatory authorities may therefore question the integrity of the data generated at the applicable clinical trial site and the utility of the clinical trial itself may be jeopardized. This could result in a delay in approval or rejection of our marketing applications by the FDA or other regulatory authorities, as the case may be, and may ultimately lead to the denial of marketing approval of one or more of our product candidates.

In addition, the use of third-party service providers requires us to disclose our proprietary information to these parties, which could increase the risk that this information will be misappropriated. Further, the FDA and other regulatory authorities require that we comply with standards, commonly referred to as GCP, for conducting, recording and reporting clinical trials to assure that data and reported results are credible and accurate and that the rights, integrity and confidentiality of trial subjects are protected. Failure of clinical investigators or CROs to meet their obligations to us or comply with GCP procedures could adversely affect the clinical development of our product candidates and harm our business.

We rely on a limited number of suppliers to provide the raw materials other than cord blood (serum and growth factor) needed to produce our product candidates. We have a relationship with a single supplier, Miltenyi Biotec GmbH, for certain equipment (columns and beads) necessary to create our product candidates.

We do not have any control over the availability of these raw materials or pieces of equipment. If we or our providers are unable to purchase these raw materials or equipment on acceptable terms, at sufficient quality levels, or in adequate quantities, if at all, the development and commercialization of our product candidates or any future product candidates, could be delayed or there could be a shortage in supply, which could impair our ability to meet our development objectives for our product candidates or generate revenue from the sale of any approved products.

Even following our establishment of our own planned cGMP-compliant manufacturing capabilities, we intend to continue to rely on third-party suppliers for these raw materials and pieces of equipment, which will expose us to risks including:

We rely on a single facility located in Kiryat Gat, Israel to manufacture omidubicel. Severe natural or other disaster, power outages or disruption at this site could have a material adverse effect on our ability to manufacture sufficient commercial supply.

After the termination of the Services Agreement with Lonza and unless and until we establish an alternative supplier, we will be solely dependent on our facility in Kiryat Gat, Israel for the manufacture of the commercial supply of omidubicel, if omidubicel is approved. We have completed construction on the facility in Kiryat Gat and we are now working to qualify our manufacturing process and facility with the FDA’s cGMP regulations. Severe natural or other disasters, power outages, ongoing or revived hostilities or other political or economic factors could severely disrupt our manufacturing operations at our Kiryat Gat facility. If any event occurred that prevented us from using all or a significant portion of this facility or otherwise disrupted operations, it may be difficult or, in certain cases, impossible for us to continue manufacturing omidubicel for a substantial period of time in sufficient quantities, or at all. The disaster recovery and business continuity plans we have in place currently are limited and are unlikely to prove adequate to guarantee a sufficient continuation of supply in the event of a serious disaster or similar event. Although we intend to establish an alternative source supplier or manufacturer for the commercial supply of omidubicel, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to establish an alternative source, supplier or partner for the manufacturing of omidubicel at acceptable commercial terms, or at all.

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

Because we rely on third parties to provide us with the materials that we use to develop and manufacture our product candidates, we may, at times, share trade secrets and other intellectual property with such third parties. 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 and intellectual property. Despite the contractual provisions employed when working with third parties, the need to share 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 have a material adverse effect on our business.

Despite our efforts to protect our trade secrets, our competitors or other third parties may discover our trade secrets, either through breach of these agreements, independent development or publication of information including our trade secrets by third parties. A competitor’s or other third party’s discovery of our trade secrets would impair our competitive position and have an adverse impact on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

We face a variety of challenges and uncertainties associated with our dependence on the availability of human umbilical cord blood units, or CBUs, at cord blood banks for the manufacture of omidubicel.

CBUs are one of the raw materials for the manufacture of omidubicel. The CBUs currently used in the manufacture of omidubicel are procured directly by the clinical cell processing facilities from cord blood banks, which hold more than 800,000 CBUs that have been donated, processed and cryopreserved. However, the availability of CBUs for the manufacture of omidubicel depends on a number of regulatory, political, economic and technical factors outside of our control, including:

Additionally, we do not have control over the types of CBUs used in the manufacture of omidubicel. We rely heavily on these clinical cell processing facilities to procure CBUs from cord blood banks that are compliant with government regulations and within the current standard of care. In addition, we may identify specific characteristics of CBUs, such as their volume and red blood cell content, that may limit their ability to be used to manufacture omidubicel even though these CBUs may otherwise be suitable for use in allogeneic transplant. As a result, the requirement for CBUs to meet our specifications may limit the potential inventory of CBUs eligible for use in the manufacture of omidubicel. There is a large variability in the tests, methods and equipment utilized by cord blood banks in testing CBUs before storage. This could result in CBUs that are found to be unsuitable for production after their arrival at the manufacturing site. In the United States, cord blood banks are required to file a BLA and meet certain continued regulatory requirements in order to bank and provide CBUs for transplantation. Despite these requirements, most of the cord blood banks in the United States are not licensed. While the FDA currently allows CBUs from unlicensed cord blood banks to be used for transplantation and we have used CBUs from such facilities in the manufacture of omidubicel for our clinical trials, the FDA may later prohibit the use of such CBUs for transplantation. Additionally, although CBUs from non-U.S. cord blood banks, which are generally unlicensed, are currently available in the United States for use in transplantation and we have used CBUs from non-U.S. cord blood banks in our clinical trials, we anticipate we will not be able to use cord blood from non-U.S. cord blood banks for the manufacturing of omidubicel. Any inability to procure adequate supplies of CBUs will adversely impact our ability to develop and commercialize omidubicel.

Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property

If we are unable to obtain, maintain or protect intellectual property rights related to any of our product candidates or any future product candidates, we may not be able to compete effectively in our market.

We rely upon a combination of patents, trade secret protection and confidentiality agreements to protect the intellectual property related to our technologies and product candidates. Our success depends in large part on our ability to obtain and maintain patent and other intellectual property protection in the United States and in other countries with respect to our proprietary technology and product candidates.

We have sought to protect our proprietary position by filing patent applications in the United States and in other countries, with respect to our novel technologies and product candidates, which are important to our business. Patent prosecution is expensive and time consuming. We may not be able to prepare, file and prosecute all necessary or desirable patent applications at a reasonable cost or in a timely manner or in all jurisdictions. It is also possible that we will fail to identify patentable aspects of our research and development activities before it is too late to obtain patent protection.

Further, the patent position of biopharmaceutical companies generally is highly uncertain and involves complex legal and factual questions for which legal principles remain unsettled. This renders the patent prosecution process particularly expensive and time-consuming. There is no assurance that all potentially relevant prior art relating to our patent applications has been found and that there are no material defects in the form, preparation, or prosecution of our patent applications, which can invalidate a patent or prevent a patent from issuing from a pending patent application. Even if patents do successfully issue, and even if such patents cover our product candidates, because the issuance of a patent is not conclusive as to its inventorship, scope, validity or enforceability, our patents or pending patent applications may be challenged in the courts or patent offices in the United States and abroad, which may result in such patents being narrowed, found unenforceable or invalidated. For example, we may be subject to a third party pre-issuance submission of prior art to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO, or become involved in post-grant review procedures, oppositions, derivations, reexaminations, inter parts review, or IPR, or interference proceedings, in the United States or elsewhere, challenging our patent rights or the patent rights of others. An adverse determination in any such challenges may result in loss of exclusivity or in patent claims being narrowed, invalidated or held unenforceable, in whole or in part, 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 products. Furthermore, even if they are unchallenged, our patent applications and any future patents may not adequately protect our intellectual property, provide exclusivity for our product candidates, or prevent others from designing around our claims. Any of these outcomes could impair our ability to prevent competition from third parties, which may have an adverse impact on our business.

If we cannot obtain and maintain effective patent rights for our product candidates, we may not be able to compete effectively and our business and results of operations would be harmed.

In addition to the protection afforded by any patents that have been or may be granted, we rely on trade secret protection and confidentiality agreements to protect proprietary know-how that is not patentable or that we elect not to patent, processes for which patents are difficult to enforce and any other elements of our product candidate discovery and development processes that involve proprietary know-how, information or technology that is not covered by patents. However, trade secrets can be difficult to protect. We seek to protect our proprietary technology and processes, in part, by entering into confidentiality agreements with our employees, consultants, scientific advisors and contractors. We also seek to preserve the integrity and confidentiality of our data, trade secrets and intellectual property by maintaining the physical security of our premises and physical and electronic security of our information technology systems. Notwithstanding these measures, organizations and systems, agreements or security measures may be breached, and we may not have adequate remedies for any breach. In addition, our trade secrets and intellectual property may otherwise become known or be independently discovered by competitors. Although we expect all our employees and consultants and other third parties who may be involved in the development of intellectual property for us to assign their inventions to us, and all of our employees, consultants, advisors and any third parties who have access to our proprietary knowhow, information, or technology to enter into confidentiality agreements, we cannot provide any assurances that we have entered into such agreements with all applicable third parties or that all such agreements have been duly executed. Even if we have entered into such agreements, we cannot assure you that our counterparties will comply with the terms of such agreements or that the assignment of intellectual property rights under such agreements is self-executing. We may be forced to bring claims against third parties, or defend claims that 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. Even if we are successful in prosecuting or defending against such claims, litigation could result in substantial costs and be a distraction to our senior management and scientific personnel.

We also cannot assure you that our trade secrets and other confidential proprietary information will not be disclosed or that competitors will not otherwise gain access to our trade secrets or independently develop substantially equivalent information and techniques. Misappropriation or unauthorized disclosure of our trade secrets and intellectual property could impair our competitive position and may have a material adverse effect on our business. Additionally, if the steps taken to maintain our trade secrets and intellectual property are deemed inadequate, we may have insufficient recourse against third parties for misappropriating the trade secret. Any of the foregoing could significantly harm our business, results of operations and prospects.

Patent reform legislation and rule changes could increase the uncertainties and costs surrounding the prosecution of our patent applications and the enforcement or defense of any issued patents.

Our ability to obtain patents is highly uncertain because, to date, some legal principles remain unsettled, there has not been a consistent policy regarding the breadth or interpretation of claims allowed in patents in the United States and the specific content of patents and patent applications that are necessary to support and interpret patent claims is highly uncertain due to the complex nature of the relevant legal, scientific, and factual issues. Changes in either patent laws or interpretations of patent laws in the United States and other countries may diminish the value of our intellectual property or narrow the scope of our patent protection.

For example, on September 16, 2011, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, or the Leahy-Smith Act, was signed into law. The Leahy-Smith Act includes a number of significant changes to United States patent law. These include provisions that affect the way patent applications will be prosecuted and may also affect patent litigation. The USPTO has developed new and untested regulations and procedures to govern the full implementation of the Leahy-Smith Act and many of the substantive changes to patent law associated with the Leahy-Smith Act, and in particular, the first to file provisions only became effective in March 2013. Prior to March 2013, in the United States, the first to invent was entitled to the patent. As of March 2013, assuming the other requirements for patentability are met, the first to file a patent application is generally entitled to the patent. Publications of discoveries in the scientific literature often lag behind the actual discoveries, and patent applications in the United States and other jurisdictions are typically not published until 18 months after filing, or in some cases not at all. Therefore, we cannot be certain that we were the first to make the inventions claimed in our patents or pending patent applications, or that we were the first to file for patent protection of such inventions. The Leahy-Smith Act has also introduced procedures making it easier for third parties to challenge issued patents, as well as to intervene in the prosecution of patent applications. Finally, the Leahy-Smith Act contains new statutory provisions that require the USPTO to issue new regulations for their implementation, and it may take the courts years to interpret the provisions of the new statute. It is too early to tell what, if any, impact the Leahy-Smith Act will have on the operation of our business and the protection and enforcement of our intellectual property.

However, the Leahy-Smith Act and its implementation could increase the uncertainties and costs surrounding the prosecution of our patent applications and the enforcement or defense of our issued patents. Further, 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. In addition to increasing uncertainty with regard to our ability to obtain patents in the future, this combination of events has created uncertainty with respect to the value of patents, once obtained. Depending on actions by the U.S. Congress, the federal courts, and the USPTO, the laws and regulations governing patents could change in unpredictable ways that would weaken our ability to obtain new patents or to enforce patents that we have owned or licensed or that we might obtain in the future. Any inability to obtain, enforce, and defend patents covering our proprietary technologies would materially and adversely affect our business prospects and financial condition.

Similarly, changes in patent laws and regulations in other countries or jurisdictions or changes in the governmental bodies that enforce them or changes in how the relevant governmental authority enforces patent laws or regulations may weaken our ability to obtain new patents or to enforce patents that we own or that we may obtain in the future. Further, the laws of some countries do not protect proprietary rights to the same extent or in the same manner as the laws of the United States. As a result, we may encounter significant problems in protecting and defending our intellectual property both in the United States and abroad. For example, if the issuance to us, in a given country, of a patent covering an invention is not followed by the issuance, in other countries, of patents covering the same invention, or if any judicial interpretation of the validity, enforceability, or scope of the claims, or the written description or enablement, in a patent issued in one country is not similar to the interpretation given to the corresponding patent issued in another country, our ability to protect our intellectual property in those countries may be limited. Changes in either patent laws or in interpretations of patent laws in the United States and other countries may materially diminish the value of our intellectual property or narrow the scope of our patent protection. Any of the foregoing could significantly harm our business, results of operations and prospects.

If our trademarks and trade names are not adequately protected, then we may not be able to build name recognition in our markets of interest and our business may be adversely affected.

Our registered or unregistered trademarks or trade names may be challenged, infringed, circumvented or declared generic or determined to be infringing on other marks. We may not be able to protect our rights to these trademarks and trade names, which we need to build name recognition by potential partners or customers in our markets of interest. Over the long term, if we are unable to establish name recognition based on our trademarks and trade names, then we may not be able to compete effectively and our business may be adversely affected. If other entities use trademarks similar to ours in different jurisdictions, or have senior rights to ours, it could interfere with our use of our current trademarks throughout the world.

Intellectual property rights of third parties could adversely affect our ability to commercialize our product candidates, and we might be required to litigate or obtain licenses from third parties in order to develop or market our product candidate. Such litigation or licenses could be costly or not available on commercially reasonable terms.

It is inherently difficult to conclusively assess our freedom to operate without infringing on or otherwise violating third-party rights. Our competitive position may suffer if patents issued to third parties or other third-party intellectual property rights cover our product candidates or elements thereof, or our manufacturing or uses relevant to our development plans. In such cases, we may not be in a position to develop or commercialize products or our product candidates unless we successfully pursue litigation to nullify or invalidate the third-party intellectual property right concerned, or enter into a license agreement with the intellectual property right holder, if available on commercially reasonable terms.

There may also be pending patent applications that if they result in issued patents, could be alleged to be infringed by our product candidates. If such an infringement claim should be brought and be successful, we may be required to pay substantial damages, including treble damages and attorneys’ fees if we are found to have willfully infringed, we may be forced to cease the development and commercialization of and otherwise abandon our product candidates, or we may need to seek a license from any patent holders. No assurances can be given that a license will be available on commercially reasonable terms, if at all. Even if we were able to obtain such a license, it could be granted on non-exclusive terms, thereby providing our competitors and other third parties access to the same technologies licensed to us.

It is also possible that we have failed to identify relevant third-party patents or applications. For example, U.S. applications filed before November 29, 2000 and certain U.S. applications filed after that date that will not be filed outside the U.S. remain confidential until patents issue. Patent applications in the U.S. and elsewhere are published approximately 18 months after the earliest filing to which priority is claimed, with such earliest filing date being commonly referred to as the priority date. Therefore, patent applications covering our product candidates or platform technology could have been filed by others without our knowledge. Additionally, pending patent applications which have been published can, subject to certain limitations, be later amended in a manner that could cover our platform technologies, our product candidates or the use of our product candidates. Third-party intellectual property right holders may also actively bring infringement claims against us. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to successfully defend, settle or otherwise resolve such infringement claims. If we are unable to successfully settle future claims on terms acceptable to us, we may be required to engage in or continue costly, unpredictable and time-consuming litigation and may be prevented from or experience substantial delays in pursuing the development of and/or marketing of our product candidates. If we fail in any such dispute, in addition to being forced to pay damages, we may be temporarily or permanently prohibited from commercializing our product candidates that are held to be infringing. We might, if possible, also be forced to redesign our product candidates so that we no longer infringe the third-party intellectual property rights, which may not be commercially feasible. 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 otherwise significantly harm our business, results of operations and prospects.

Third-party claims of intellectual property infringement may prevent or delay our development and commercialization efforts.

Our commercial success depends in part on our avoiding infringing or otherwise violating the patents and proprietary rights of third parties. There have been many lawsuits and other proceedings involving patent and other intellectual property rights in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, including patent infringement lawsuits, interferences, oppositions, post grant review, IPR, and reexamination proceedings before the USPTO and corresponding non-U.S. patent offices. Numerous U.S. and non-U.S. issued patents and pending patent applications, which are owned by third parties, exist in the fields in which we are developing product candidates. As the pharmaceutical industry expands and more patents are issued, the risk increases that our product candidates may be subject to claims of infringement of the patent rights of third parties or other intellectual property claims.

Third parties may assert that we are employing their proprietary technology without authorization. There may be third-party patents or patent applications with claims to materials, formulations, methods of manufacture, or methods for treatment related to the use or manufacture of our product candidates. Because patent applications can take many years to issue, there may be currently pending patent applications that may later result in issued patents that our product candidates may infringe. In addition, third parties may obtain patents in the future and claim that use of our technologies infringes upon these patents. If any third-party patents were held by a court of competent jurisdiction to cover the manufacturing process of any of our product candidates, any materials formed during the manufacturing process or any final product itself, the holders of any such patents may be able to block our ability to commercialize such product candidates unless we obtain a license under the applicable patents, or until such patents expire or are finally determined to be invalid or unenforceable.

Similarly, if any third-party patents were held by a court of competent jurisdiction to cover aspects of our formulations, processes for manufacture, or methods of use, the holders of any such patents may be able to block our ability to develop and commercialize the applicable product candidate unless we obtain a license or until such patent expires or is finally determined to be invalid or unenforceable. In either case, such a license may not be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all.

Parties making claims against us may obtain injunctive or other equitable relief, which could effectively block our ability to further develop and commercialize one or more of our product candidates. Defense of these claims, regardless of their merit, would involve substantial litigation expense and would be a substantial diversion of employee resources from our business. 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, redesign our infringing products or obtain one or more licenses from third parties, which may be impossible or require substantial time and monetary expenditure.

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. There could also be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions, or other interim proceedings or developments. If securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a material adverse effect on the price of our ordinary shares. Any of the foregoing could significantly harm our business, results of operations and prospects.

We may not be successful in obtaining or maintaining necessary rights to our product candidates through acquisitions and in-licenses.

Because our programs may require the use of intellectual property or proprietary rights held by third parties, the growth of our business will likely depend in part on our ability to acquire, in-license, or use these intellectual property and proprietary rights. In addition, our product candidates may require specific formulations to work effectively and efficiently and the rights to these formulations may be held by others. We may be unable to acquire or in-license any compositions, methods of use, processes, or other third-party intellectual property rights from third parties that we identify as necessary for our product candidates. The licensing and acquisition of third-party intellectual property rights is a competitive area, and a number of more established companies are also 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, cash resources, and greater clinical development and commercialization capabilities. In addition, the Indenture governing our Notes contain restrictions that may limit our ability to enter into acquisition or in-licensing agreements.

For example, we sometimes collaborate with academic institutions to accelerate our preclinical research or development under written agreements with these institutions, some of which provide that the applicable institution will own certain rights in any technology developed thereunder.

Typically, these institutions provide us with an option to negotiate a license to any of the institution’s rights in technology resulting from the collaboration. Regardless of such option, we may be unable to negotiate a license within the specified timeframe or under terms that are acceptable to us. If we are unable to do so, the institution may offer the intellectual property rights to other parties, potentially blocking our ability to pursue our program.

In addition, companies that perceive us to be a competitor may be unwilling to assign or license rights to us. We are also subject to certain restrictions regarding obtaining licenses of third-party intellectual property pursuant to the terms of the indenture governing the Notes, and we may be unable to license or acquire third-party intellectual property rights on terms that would allow us to make an appropriate return on our investment. If we are unable to successfully obtain rights to required third-party intellectual property rights, we may have to abandon development of that program and our business and financial condition could suffer.

We may be involved in lawsuits to protect or enforce our intellectual property, which could be expensive, time consuming and unsuccessful.

Competitors may infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate our intellectual property or that of our licensors that we may acquire in the future. To counter infringement or unauthorized use, we may be required to file infringement claims, which can be expensive and time-consuming. If we initiate legal proceedings against a third party to enforce a patent covering one of our product candidates, the defendant could counterclaim that the patent covering our product or product candidate is invalid and/or unenforceable. In patent litigation in the United States, defendant counterclaims alleging invalidity and/or unenforceability are common, and there are numerous grounds upon which a third party can assert invalidity or unenforceability of a patent. In an infringement proceeding, a court may decide that a patent of ours is not valid or is unenforceable, or may refuse to stop the other party from using the technology at issue on the grounds that our patents do not cover the technology in question. Third parties may also raise similar claims before administrative bodies in the United States or abroad, even outside the context of litigation. Such mechanisms include re-examination, post grant review, inter parties review, or IPR, and equivalent proceedings in non-U.S. jurisdictions (e.g., opposition proceedings). Such proceedings could result in revocation of or amendment to our patents in such a way that they no longer cover our product candidates. 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, our patent counsel, and the patent examiner were unaware during prosecution. If a defendant were to prevail on a legal assertion of invalidity and/or unenforceability, we would lose at least part, and perhaps all, of the patent protection on our product candidates. An adverse result in any litigation or defense proceedings could put one or more of our patents at risk of being invalidated or interpreted narrowly, could put our patent applications at risk of not issuing and could have a material adverse impact on our business.

Interference proceedings provoked by third parties or brought by us may be necessary to determine the priority of inventions with respect to our 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. Our business could be harmed if the prevailing party does not offer us a license on commercially reasonable terms. Our defense of litigation or interference proceedings may fail and, even if successful, may result in substantial costs and distract our management and other employees. We may not be able to prevent misappropriation of our intellectual property rights, particularly in countries where the laws may not protect those rights as fully as in the United States.

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. There could also be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions, or other interim proceedings or developments. If securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a material adverse effect on the price of our ordinary shares. Any of the foregoing could significantly harm our business, results of operations and prospects.

We may be subject to claims that our employees, consultants, or independent contractors have wrongfully used or disclosed confidential information of third parties or that our employees have wrongfully used or disclosed alleged trade secrets of their former employers.

We employ individuals who were previously employed at universities or other biotechnology or pharmaceutical companies, including our competitors or potential competitors. Although we try to ensure that our employees, consultants and independent contractors 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 our employees, consultants, or independent contractors have inadvertently or otherwise used or disclosed intellectual property, including trade secrets or other proprietary information, of any of our employees’ former employers or other third parties. Litigation may be necessary to defend against these claims. If we fail in defending any such claims, in addition to paying monetary damages, we may lose valuable intellectual property rights or personnel, which could adversely impact our business. Even if we are successful in defending against such claims, litigation could result in substantial costs and be a distraction to management and other employees. Any of the foregoing could significantly harm our business, results of operations and prospects.

We may be subject to claims challenging the inventorship of our intellectual property.

We may be subject to claims that former employees, collaborators or other third parties have an interest in or right to compensation with respect to our current patent and patent applications, future patents or other intellectual property as an inventor or co-inventor. For example, we may have inventorship disputes arise from conflicting obligations of consultants or others who are involved in developing our product candidates. Litigation may be necessary to defend against these and other claims challenging inventorship or claiming the right to compensation. If we fail in defending any such claims, in addition to paying monetary damages, we may lose valuable intellectual property rights, such as exclusive ownership of, or right to use, valuable intellectual property. Such an outcome could have a material adverse effect on our business. Even if we are successful in defending against such claims, litigation could result in substantial costs and be a distraction to management and other employees. To the extent that our employees have not effectively waived the right to compensation with respect to inventions that they helped create, they may be able to assert claims for compensation with respect to our future revenue. As a result, we may receive less revenue from future products if such claims are successful which in turn could impact our future profitability, business, results of operations and prospects.

We may become subject to claims for remuneration or royalties for assigned service invention rights by our employees, which could result in litigation and adversely affect our business.

A significant portion of our intellectual property has been developed by our employees in the course of their employment for us. Under the Israeli Patent Law, 5727-1967, or the Patent Law, inventions conceived by an employee in the course and as a result of or arising from his or her employment with a company are regarded as “service inventions,” which belong to the employer, absent a specific agreement between the employee and employer giving the employee service invention rights. The Patent Law also provides that if there is no such agreement between an employer and an employee, the Israeli Compensation and Royalties Committee, or the Committee, a body constituted under the Patent Law, shall determine whether the employee is entitled to remuneration for his inventions. Case law clarifies that the right to receive consideration for “service inventions” can be waived by the employee and that in certain circumstances, such waiver does not necessarily have to be explicit. The Committee will examine, on a case-by-case basis, the general contractual framework between the parties, using interpretation rules of the general Israeli contract laws. Further, the Committee has not yet determined one specific formula for calculating this remuneration (but rather uses the criteria specified in the Patent Law). Although we generally enter into assignment-of-invention agreements with our employees pursuant to which such individuals assign to us all rights to any inventions created in the scope of their employment or engagement with us, we may face claims demanding remuneration in consideration for assigned inventions. As a consequence of such claims, we could be required to pay additional remuneration or royalties to our current and/or former employees, or be forced to litigate such claims, which could negatively affect our business.

Obtaining and maintaining our patent protection depends on compliance with various procedural, document submission, fee payment and other requirements imposed by government patent agencies, and our patent protection could be reduced or eliminated for non-compliance with these requirements.

Periodic maintenance fees, renewal fees, annuity fees and various other government fees on patents and/or applications will be due to be paid to the USPTO and various government patent agencies outside of the United States over the lifetime of our patents and/or applications and any patent rights we may own or license in the future. We rely on our outside counsel or third-party service providers to pay these fees due to the USPTO and non-U.S. patent agencies. The USPTO and various non-U.S. government patent agencies require compliance with several procedural, documentary, fee payment and other similar provisions during the patent application process. We employ reputable law firms and other professionals to help us comply. In many cases, an inadvertent lapse can be cured by payment of a late fee or by other means in accordance with the applicable rules. There are situations, however, in which non-compliance can result in abandonment or lapse of the patents or patent applications, resulting in partial or complete loss of patent rights in the relevant jurisdiction. In such an event, potential competitors might be able to enter the market and this circumstance could harm our business.

We may enjoy only limited geographical protection with respect to certain patents and we may not be able to protect our intellectual property rights throughout the world.

Filing and prosecuting patent applications and defending patents covering our product candidates in all countries throughout the world would be prohibitively expensive. Competitors may use our technologies in jurisdictions where we have not obtained patent protection to develop their own products and, further, may export otherwise infringing products to territories where we have patent protection, but enforcement rights are not as strong as that 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.

In addition, we may decide to abandon national and regional patent applications before grant. The examination of each national or regional patent application is an independent proceeding. As a result, patent applications in the same family may issue as patents in some jurisdictions, such as in the United States, but may issue as patents with claims of different scope or may even be refused in other jurisdictions. It is also quite common that depending on the country, the scope of patent protection may vary for the same product candidate or technology. The laws of some jurisdictions do not protect intellectual property rights to the same extent as the laws or rules and regulations in the United States, and many companies have encountered significant difficulties in protecting and defending such rights in such jurisdictions. The legal systems of certain countries, particularly certain developing countries, do not favor the enforcement of patents, trade secrets and other intellectual property protection, which could make it difficult for us to stop the infringement of our patents or marketing of competing products in violation of our proprietary rights generally. Proceedings to enforce our patent rights in other jurisdictions, whether or not successful, 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 as patents, 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.

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. Furthermore, while we intend to protect our intellectual property rights in our expected significant markets, we cannot ensure that we will be able to initiate or maintain similar efforts in all jurisdictions in which we may wish to market our product candidates. Accordingly, our efforts to protect our intellectual property rights in such countries may be inadequate, which may have an adverse effect on our ability to successfully commercialize our product candidates in all our expected significant non-U.S. markets. If we encounter difficulties in protecting, or are otherwise precluded from effectively protecting, the intellectual property rights important for our business in such jurisdictions, the value of these rights may be diminished and we may face additional competition from others in those jurisdictions.

Some countries also have compulsory licensing laws under which a patent owner may be compelled to grant licenses to third parties. In addition, some countries limit the enforceability of patents against government agencies or government contractors. In those countries, the patent owner may have limited remedies, which could materially diminish the value of such patents. If we are forced to grant a license to third parties with respect to any patents relevant to our business, our competitive position may be impaired.

Patent terms may be inadequate to protect our competitive position on 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 biosimilar and 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 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 similar legislation in the European Union. 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, 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.

Intellectual property rights do not necessarily address all potential threats to our competitive advantage.

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

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

Risks Related to Our Business Operations

Our future success depends in part on our ability to retain our senior management team and to attract, retain and motivate other qualified personnel.

We are highly dependent on the members of our senior management team. The loss of their services without a proper replacement may adversely impact the achievement of our objectives. Our employees may leave our employment at any time. Recruiting and retaining other qualified employees, consultants and advisors for our business, including scientific and technical personnel, will also be critical to our success. There is currently a shortage of skilled personnel in our industry, which is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. This is particularly the case in Israel and Boston, Massachusetts, where our operations are focused and where there is a “war for talent” between members in our industry. As a result, competition for skilled personnel is intense, and the turnover rate can be high. We may not be able to attract and retain personnel on acceptable terms given the competition among numerous pharmaceutical companies for individuals with similar skill sets. In addition, failure to succeed in preclinical or clinical studies may make it more challenging to recruit and retain qualified personnel. The inability to recruit and retain qualified personnel, or the loss of the services of any members of our senior management team without proper replacement, may impede the progress of our research, development and commercialization objectives.

We will need to expand our organization, and we may experience difficulties in managing this growth, which could disrupt our operations.

Our future financial performance and our ability to commercialize product candidates and compete effectively will depend, in part, on our ability to effectively manage any future growth. As our development and commercialization plans and strategies develop, we expect to need additional managerial, operational, sales, marketing, financial and legal personnel. Our management may need to divert a disproportionate amount of its attention away from our day-to-day activities and devote a substantial amount of time to managing these growth activities. We may not be able to effectively manage the expansion of our operations, which may result in weaknesses in our infrastructure, operational mistakes, loss of business opportunities, loss of employees and reduced productivity among remaining employees. Our expected growth could require significant capital expenditures and may divert financial resources from other projects, such as the development of additional product candidates. If our management is unable to effectively manage our growth, our expenses may increase more than expected, our ability to generate and/or grow revenue could be reduced, and we may not be able to implement our business strategy.

Due to our limited resources and access to capital, we must, and have in the past decided to, prioritize development of certain product candidates over other potential candidates. These decisions may prove to have been wrong and may adversely affect our revenue.

Because we have limited resources and access to capital to fund our operations, we must decide which product candidates to pursue and the amount of resources to allocate to each. Our decisions concerning the allocation of research, collaboration, management and financial resources toward particular product candidates may not lead to the development of viable commercial products and may divert resources away from better opportunities. Similarly, our decisions to delay, terminate or collaborate with third parties in respect of certain product development programs may also prove not to be optimal and could cause us to miss valuable opportunities. For instance, we made the decision to prioritize the development of omidubicel for the treatment of hematologic malignancies over SCD because our hematologic malignancy program is at a more advanced stage of development, while our sickle cell program remains exploratory. In addition, we are evaluating alternatives for commercialization of omidubicel, if approved, which may include commercializing omidubicel ourselves or entering into potential strategic alliances or licensing arrangements with pharmaceutical companies and other partners. If we make the decision to commercialize omidubicel ourselves, we may have to significantly expand our commercial organization in time for omidubicel approval, which may jeopardize the success of a timely commercial launch and may reduce or delay our anticipated revenue from sales of omidubicel. Commercializing omidubicel ourselves will also require additional capital to fund an increase in workforce as well as operating expenses and capital expenses to expand our manufacturing facility in Kiryat Gat, Israel. If we decide to enter into licensing arrangements or other forms of collaboration, the potential for us to generate revenue from royalties on sales of such out-licensed products depends on the performance of our partners. If our partners do not perform in the manner we expect, fail to fulfill their responsibilities in a timely manner or at all, if the FDA, EMA or other similar regulatory authorities decline to grant a marketing authorization to them, or provide them with a restricted authorization, if our agreements with them terminate, they abandon the collaboration or if the quality or accuracy of the clinical data they obtain is compromised, the clinical development, regulatory approval and commercialization efforts related to our out-licensed product candidates could be delayed or terminated, and it could become necessary for us to assume the responsibility at our own expense, or seek new partners on reduced commercial terms, for the clinical development of such product candidates. If we make incorrect determinations regarding the market potential of our product candidates or misread trends in the pharmaceutical industry, in particular for our lead product candidate, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be materially adversely affected.

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

Our operations and those of our third-party suppliers and collaborators could be subject to earthquakes, power shortages, telecommunications failures, water shortages, floods, hurricanes or other extreme weather conditions, medical epidemics, labor disputes, war or other business interruptions. Although we have limited business interruption insurance policies in place, any interruption could come with high costs for us, as salaries and loan payments would usually continue. Moreover, any interruption could seriously harm one or more of our research, development or manufacturing programs, the commercialization of any approved product or our clinical trial operations. For example, the current COVID-19 pandemic has, at points, caused an interruption in our ongoing and planned clinical trials activities. In addition, the initial timeline for submission of our BLA for omidubicel was delayed, in part, as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our operations. Moreover, at the end of 2021 and into 2022, tensions between the United States and Russia escalated when Russia amassed large numbers of military ground forces and support personnel on the Ukraine-Russia border and, in February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. In response, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO has deployed additional military forces to Eastern Europe, including to Lithuania, and the Biden administration implemented certain sanctions against Russia. The invasion of Ukraine and the retaliatory measures that have been taken, or could be taken in the future, by the United States, NATO, and other countries have created global security concerns that could result in a regional conflict and otherwise have a lasting impact on regional and global economies, any or all of which could disrupt our supply chain, adversely affect our ability to conduct ongoing and future clinical trials of our product candidates or commercialize our products. In addition, the conflict has had significant ramifications on global financial markets, which may adversely impact our ability to raise capital on favorable terms or at all.

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

Although a substantial amount of our effort will focus on the continued clinical testing, potential approval and commercialization of omidubicel and GDA-201, the success of our business also depends upon our ability to identify, discover or license additional product candidates, including within our NK-cell pipeline. Our research programs or licensing efforts may fail to yield additional product candidates for clinical development for a number of reasons, including but not limited to the following:

If any of these events occur, we may be forced to abandon our development efforts for a program or programs, or we may not be able to identify, license, or discover additional product candidates, which would have a material adverse effect on our business and could potentially cause us to cease operations. Research programs to identify new product candidates require substantial technical, financial and human resources. We may focus our efforts and resources on potential programs or product candidates that ultimately prove to be unsuccessful.

Our business and operations would suffer in the event of computer system failures, cyber-attacks or a deficiency in our cybersecurity.

Despite the implementation of security measures, our internal computer systems, and those of third parties on which we rely, are vulnerable to damage from a variety of causes, including computer viruses, malware, intentional or accidental mistakes or errors by users with authorized access to our computer systems, natural disasters, terrorism, war, telecommunication and electrical failures, cyber-attacks or cyber-intrusions over the Internet, or attachments to emails. The risk of a security breach or disruption, particularly through cyber-attacks or cyber intrusions, including by computer hackers, non-U.S. governments, extra-state actors and cyber terrorists, has generally increased as the number, intensity and sophistication of attempted attacks and intrusions from around the world have increased. If such an event were to occur and cause interruptions in our operations, it could result in a material disruption of our drug development programs. For example, the loss or compromise of clinical trial data from completed or ongoing or planned clinical trials could result in delays in our regulatory approval efforts and significantly increase our costs to recover or reproduce the data. To the extent that any disruption or security breach was to result in a loss of or damage to our data or applications, or inappropriate disclosure of confidential or proprietary information, we could incur material legal claims and liability, damage to our reputation, and the further development of our drug candidates could be delayed. Further, any breach, loss or compromise of clinical study participant personal data may also subject us to civil fines and penalties, including under GDPR and relevant member state law in the European Union, or, potentially, other relevant state and federal privacy laws in the United States.

In the current environment, there are numerous and evolving risks to cybersecurity and privacy, including criminal hackers, hacktivists, state-sponsored intrusions, industrial espionage, employee malfeasance and human or technological error. High-profile security breaches at other companies and in government agencies have increased in recent years, and security industry experts and government officials have warned about the risks of hackers and cyber-attacks targeting businesses such as ours. Computer hackers and others routinely attempt to breach the security of technology products, services and systems, and to fraudulently induce employees, customers, or others to disclose information or unwittingly provide access to systems or data. We can provide no assurance that our current IT systems, software, or third party services, or any updates or upgrades thereto will be fully protected against third-party intrusions, viruses, hacker attacks, information or data theft or other similar threats.

Legislative or regulatory action in these areas is also evolving, and we may be unable to adapt our IT systems to accommodate these changes. We have experienced and expect to continue to experience sophisticated attempted cyber-attacks of our IT networks. Although none of these attempted cyber-attacks has had a material adverse impact on our operations or financial condition, we cannot guarantee that any such incidents will not have such an impact in the future.

We incur significant costs as a result of operating as a public company in the United States, and our management is required to devote substantial time to compliance initiatives.

As a public company whose ordinary shares are listed in the United States, we are subject to an extensive regulatory regime, requiring us, among other things, to maintain various internal controls and facilities and to prepare and file periodic and current reports and statements, including reports on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Complying with these requirements is costly and time consuming. In the event that we are unable to demonstrate compliance with our obligations as a public company in a timely manner, or are unable to produce timely or accurate financial statements, we may be subject to sanctions or investigations by regulatory authorities, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC, or The Nasdaq Global Market, and investors may lose confidence in our operating results and the price of our ordinary shares could decline.

Our independent registered public accounting firm is not engaged to perform an audit of our internal control over financial reporting, and as long as we remain an emerging growth company, as such term is defined in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012, or the JOBS Act, we will be exempt from the requirement to have an independent registered public accounting firm perform such audit. Accordingly, no such opinion was expressed or will be expressed any during any such period. Once we cease to qualify as an emerging growth company, our independent registered public accounting firm will be required to attest to our management’s annual assessment of the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting, which will entail additional costs and expenses.

In addition, we organize significant management functions in Boston, Massachusetts, where business expenses and salaries exceed the level of such expenses in Israel.

International expansion of our business exposes us to business, regulatory, political, operational, financial and economic risks associated with doing business outside of the United States or Israel.

Other than substantial operations in Israel (as further described below), we currently have limited international operations, but our business strategy incorporates potentially significant international expansion, particularly in anticipation of approval of our product candidates. We plan to retain sales representatives and third-party distributors and conduct physician, infectious disease specialist, hospital pharmacist and patient association outreach activities, as well as clinical trials, outside of the United States, EU and Israel. Doing business internationally involves a number of risks, including but not limited to:

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

We may be subject to extensive environmental, health and safety, and other laws and regulations in multiple jurisdictions.

Our business involves the controlled use, directly or indirectly through our service providers, of hazardous materials, various biological compounds and chemicals; therefore, we, our agents and our service providers may be subject to various environmental, health and safety laws and regulations, including those governing air emissions, water and wastewater discharges, noise emissions, the use, management and disposal of hazardous, radioactive and biological materials and wastes and the cleanup of contaminated sites. The risk of accidental contamination or injury from these materials cannot be eliminated. If an accident, spill or release of any regulated chemicals or substances occurs, we could be held liable for resulting damages, including for investigation, remediation and monitoring of the contamination, including natural resource damages, the costs of which could be substantial. We are also subject to numerous environmental, health and workplace safety laws and regulations, including those governing laboratory procedures, exposure to blood-borne pathogens and the handling of biohazardous materials and chemicals. Although we maintain workers’ compensation insurance to cover the costs and expenses that may be incurred because of injuries to our employees resulting from the use of these materials, this insurance may not provide adequate coverage against potential liabilities. Additional or more stringent federal, state, local or non-U.S. laws and regulations affecting our operations may be adopted in the future. We may incur substantial capital costs and operating expenses and may be required to obtain consents to comply with any of these or certain other laws or regulations and the terms and conditions of any permits or licenses required pursuant to such laws and regulations. For instance, we have undergone inspections and obtained approvals from various governmental agencies. We hold a general business license from the City of Jerusalem that is valid until December 31, 2022.

We also hold a toxic substances permit from the Ministry of Environmental Protection (the Hazardous Material Division) and a Certificate of GMP Compliance of a Manufacturer from the Israeli Ministry of Health - Pharmaceutical Administration. Failure to renew any of the foregoing licenses and permits may harm our on-going and future operations. In addition, fines and penalties may be imposed for noncompliance with environmental, health and safety and other laws and regulations or for the failure to have, or comply with the terms and conditions of our business license, or required environmental or other permits or consents.

Our employees and independent contractors may engage in misconduct or other improper activities, including noncompliance with regulatory standards and requirements.

We are exposed to the risk of fraud or other misconduct by our employees and independent contractors. Misconduct by these parties could include intentional failures to comply with FDA regulations, provide accurate information to the FDA, comply with manufacturing standards we may establish, comply with federal and state healthcare fraud and abuse laws and regulations, report financial information or data accurately or disclose unauthorized activities to us. 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. Employee and independent contractor misconduct could also involve the improper use of information obtained in the course of clinical trials, including individually identifiable information, creating fraudulent data in our preclinical studies or clinical trials or illegal misappropriation of product candidates. If our operations are found to be in violation of any of these laws, we may be subject to significant penalties, including civil, criminal and administrative penalties, damages, fines, exclusion from government-funded healthcare programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid or similar programs in other countries or jurisdictions, integrity oversight and reporting obligations to resolve allegations of non-compliance, disgorgement, imprisonment, contractual damages, reputational harm, diminished profits and the curtailment or restructuring of our operations. 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 fines or other sanctions.

Under current Israeli law, we may not be able to enforce employees’ covenants not to compete and therefore may be unable to prevent our competitors from benefiting from the expertise of some of our former employees.

We generally enter into non-competition agreements with our key employees, in most cases within the framework of their employment agreements.

These agreements prohibit our key employees, if they cease working for us, from competing directly with us or working for our competitors for a limited period. Under applicable Israeli law, we may be unable to enforce these agreements or any part thereof. If we cannot enforce our noncompetition agreements with our employees, then we may be unable to prevent our competitors from benefiting from the expertise of our former employees, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations and ability to capitalize on our proprietary information.

We are vulnerable to interest rate risk with respect to the grants received from the Israel Innovation Authority

Since our incorporation, we have received grants from the IIA relating to various projects. We were members of Bereshit Consortium, sponsored by IIA in which certain of our technologies were developed, such program does not require payments of royalties to the IIA, but all other restrictions under the Innovation Law, such as local manufacturing obligations and know-how transfer limitations, as further detailed hereunder, are applicable to the know how developed by us with the funding received in such consortium program. No royalties have been paid to the IIA in respect of any grant. Our total outstanding obligation to the IIA, including the interest accrued through December 31, 2021, amounts to approximately $44.7 million.

The United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority, which regulates the London Interbank Offered Rate, or LIBOR, announced that it will no longer persuade or require banks to submit rates for LIBOR after January 1, 2022. The grants received from the IIA bear an annual interest rate based on the 12-month LIBOR. Accordingly, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the interest accrued to the IIA grants. While it is not currently possible to determine precisely whether, or to what extent, the withdrawal and replacement of LIBOR would affect us, the implementation of alternative benchmark rates to LIBOR may increase our financial liabilities to the IIA. Management continues to monitor the status and discussions regarding LIBOR. We are not yet able to reasonably estimate the expected impact. To date, the IIA has not issued any clarification regarding an alternative interest to be used instead of the LIBOR.

Risks Related to Commercialization of Our Product Candidates

We do not have experience producing our product candidates at commercial levels or operating a cGMP manufacturing facility and may not obtain the necessary regulatory approvals or produce our product candidates at the quality, quantities, locations and timing needed to support commercialization.

The Israeli Ministry of Health issued a GMP certificate for our manufacturing facility at Kiryat Gat, Israel in July 2021 and we are working to establish cGMP compliance under the FDA’s regulations. We do not have an extensive number of employees with the experience or ability to manufacture our product candidates at commercial levels. We may encounter technical or scientific issues related to manufacturing or development that we may be unable to resolve in a timely manner or with available funds. We also have not completed all of the characterization and validation activities necessary for commercialization and regulatory approval of omidubicel. If we do not conduct all such necessary activities this year, our commercialization efforts will be delayed.

We also may encounter problems hiring and retaining the experienced specialist scientific, quality control and manufacturing personnel needed to operate our manufacturing process, which could result in delays in our production or difficulties in maintaining compliance with applicable regulatory requirements. Any problems in our manufacturing process or facilities could make us a less attractive collaborator for potential partners, including larger pharmaceutical companies, which could limit our access to additional attractive development programs. Problems in our manufacturing process or facilities also could restrict our ability to meet market demand for our product candidates.

If the market opportunities for our product candidates are smaller than we believe they are, our revenue may be adversely affected, and our business may suffer.

Our projections of the number of people who have the potential to benefit from treatment with our product candidates are based on our beliefs and estimates. These estimates have been derived from a variety of sources, including the scientific literature, surveys of clinics and other market research, and may prove to be incorrect. Our target patient populations may be lower than expected, may not be otherwise amenable to treatment with our product candidates or patients may become increasingly difficult to identify and access, all of which would adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. In addition, medical advances may reduce our target markets. For example, new processes and advances in oral antibiotic medications or new operative procedures may limit the need for localized delivery systems like our product candidates. Further, advances in treatments in the fields in which we are conducting research programs that reduce side effects and have better deliverability to target organs may limit the market for our future product candidates.

We currently have limited marketing and sales organization. If we are unable to establish adequate sales and marketing capabilities to support the potential commercial launch of omidubicel or enter into agreements with third parties to market and sell omidubicel, if approved, we may be unable to generate any product revenue.

Although we have a chief commercialization officer to lead our efforts to commercialize omidubicel should it receive regulatory approval and we decide to commercialize omidubicel ourselves, we currently have a limited sales and marketing organization, and we have limited experience selling and marketing our product candidates. To successfully commercialize any product candidates that may result from our development programs, we will need to develop these capabilities, either on our own or with others. If omidubicel or any other product candidate receives regulatory approval, we may establish a sales and marketing organization independently or by utilizing experienced third parties with technical expertise and supporting distribution capabilities to commercialize our product candidates in major markets, all of which will be expensive, difficult and time consuming. Any failure or delay in the development of our internal sales, marketing and distribution capabilities or identification of appropriate strategic partnering would adversely impact our ability to commercialize our product candidates.

Further, our initial estimate of the size of the required sales force may be materially more or less than the size of the sales force actually required to effectively commercialize our product candidates. As such, we may be required to hire sales representatives and third-party partners to adequately support the commercialization of our product candidates, or we may incur excess costs if we hire more sales representatives than necessary. With respect to certain geographical markets, we may enter into collaborations with other entities to utilize their local marketing and distribution capabilities, but we may be unable to enter into such agreements on favorable terms, if at all. We also may enter into collaborations with large pharmaceutical companies to develop and commercialize product candidates. If our future collaborators do not commit sufficient resources to develop and commercialize our future products, if any, and we are unable to develop the necessary marketing capabilities on our own, we will be unable to generate sufficient product revenue to sustain our business. We may compete with companies that currently have extensive and well-funded marketing and sales operations. Without an internal team or the support of a third party to perform marketing and sales functions, we may be unable to compete successfully against these more established companies.

Our efforts to educate the medical community, including physicians, hospital pharmacists and infectious disease specialists, and third-party payers on the benefits of our product candidates may require significant resources and may never be successful. If any of our product candidates are approved, but fail to achieve market acceptance among physicians, patients or third-party payers, we will not be able to generate significant revenue from such product, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Delays in establishing and obtaining regulatory approval of our manufacturing process and facility or disruptions in our manufacturing process may delay or disrupt our product development and commercialization efforts.

We are working to establish our own cGMP compliant manufacturing facility at Kiryat Gat, Israel. We have completed construction on the facility, and we are now working to qualify our manufacturing process and facility with the FDA’s cGMP regulations. Before we can begin to commercially manufacture omidubicel or any product candidate in our facility, we must pass a pre-approval inspection of our manufacturing facility by the FDA before omidubicel or any product candidate can obtain marketing approval. A manufacturing authorization must also be obtained from the appropriate regulatory authorities in the European Union, Israel and worldwide. Such manufacturing authorizations must also be obtained for any third-party manufacturing facility and process. In order to obtain approval, we will need to ensure that all our processes, methods and equipment are compliant with cGMP, and perform extensive audits of vendors, contract laboratories and suppliers. If any of our vendors, contract laboratories or suppliers is found to be out of compliance with cGMP, we may experience delays or disruptions in manufacturing while we work with these third parties to remedy the violation or while we work to identify suitable replacement vendors. If we do not demonstrate to the satisfaction of the applicable regulator that our manufacturing facilities, or those of our contract manufacturers, are in compliance with applicable requirements, we may be materially delayed in the development of our product candidates, which would materially harm our business. The cGMP requirements govern quality control of the manufacturing process and documentation policies and procedures. In complying with cGMP, we will be obligated to expend time, money and effort in production, record keeping and quality control to assure that the product meets applicable specifications and other requirements. If we fail to comply with these requirements, we would be subject to possible regulatory action and may not be permitted to sell any product candidate that we may develop. While we continue to work to establish the cGMP compliance of our manufacturing facility at Kiryat Gat in Israel, we do not have another long-term partner for the manufacturing of omidubicel.

Qualifying our manufacturing facility is subject to other delays, including because of COVID-19 related shortages of labor and governmentally imposed shut-downs. Unexpected problems in the qualification of our manufacturing facility may adversely impact our ability to provide supply for the development and commercialization of omidubicel as well as our financial condition.

If we receive marketing approval for our product candidates, sales will be limited unless the product achieves broad market acceptance by physicians, patients, third-party payers, hospital pharmacists and others in the medical community.

The commercial success of our product candidates will depend upon the acceptance of the product by the medical community, including physicians, patients, healthcare payers and hospital personnel, including transplant teams and pharmacists. The degree of market acceptance of any approved product will depend on a number of factors, including:

There are a number of alternatives to our product candidates, including stem cell transplantation using cells from matched related donors, matched unrelated donors, haploidentical donors or unmodified umbilical cord blood. If our product candidates are approved but do not achieve an adequate level of acceptance by physicians, patients, healthcare payers and hospital personnel, including transplant teams and pharmacists, we may not generate sufficient revenue from the product, and we may not become or remain profitable. In addition, our efforts to educate the medical community and third-party payers on the benefits of our product candidates may require significant resources and may never be successful.

It may be difficult for us to profitably sell our product candidates if coverage and reimbursement for these products is limited by government authorities and/or third-party payer policies.

Significant uncertainty exists as to the coverage and reimbursement status of any product candidates for which we obtain regulatory approval. In the United States and markets in other countries, sales of any products for which we receive regulatory approval for commercial sale will depend, in part, on the extent to which third-party payers provide coverage, and establish adequate reimbursement levels, for such products. In the United States, third-party payers include federal and state healthcare programs, private managed care providers, health insurers and other organizations.

The process for determining whether a third-party payer will provide coverage for a product may be separate from the process for setting the price of a product or for establishing the reimbursement rate that such a payer will pay for the product. Third-party payers may limit coverage to specific products on an approved list, or also known as a formulary, which might not include all of the FDA-approved products for a particular indication.

Third-party payers are increasingly challenging the price, examining the medical necessity and reviewing the cost-effectiveness of medical products, therapies and services, in addition to questioning their safety and efficacy.

We may need to conduct expensive pharmaco-economic studies in order to demonstrate the medical necessity and cost-effectiveness of our products, in addition to the costs required to obtain the FDA approvals. Our product candidates may not be considered medically necessary or cost-effective. Payer’s decision to provide coverage for a product does not imply that an adequate reimbursement rate will be approved. Further, the determination of one payer to provide coverage for a product does not assure that other payers will also provide such coverage for the product. Adequate third-party reimbursement may not be available to enable us to maintain price levels sufficient to realize an appropriate return on our investment in product development.

Different pricing and reimbursement schemes exist in other countries. In the EU, governments influence the price of pharmaceutical products through their pricing and reimbursement rules and control of national health care systems that in some countries subsidize a large part of the cost of those products for consumers. Some jurisdictions operate positive and negative list systems under which products may only be marketed once a reimbursement price has been agreed. To obtain reimbursement or pricing approval, some of these countries may require the completion of clinical trials that compare the cost-effectiveness of a particular product candidate to then available therapies. Other EU member states allow companies to fix their own prices for medicines, but monitor and control company profits. The downward pressure on health care costs has become very intense. As a result, increasingly high barriers are being erected to the entry of new products. In addition, in some countries, cross-border imports from low-priced markets exert a commercial pressure on pricing within a country.

The marketability of any of our product candidates for which we receive regulatory approval for commercial sale may suffer if the government and third-party payers fail to provide adequate coverage and reimbursement. In addition, emphasis on managed care in the United States has increased and we expect will continue to increase the pressure on healthcare pricing. Coverage policies and third-party reimbursement rates may change at any time. Even if favorable coverage and reimbursement status is attained for one or more products for which we receive regulatory approval, less favorable coverage policies and reimbursement rates may be implemented in the future.

In addition to any healthcare reform measures that may affect reimbursement, market acceptance and sales of our product candidates, if approved, will depend on, in part, the extent to which the procedures utilizing our product candidates, performed by health care providers, will be covered by third-party payers, such as government health care programs, commercial insurance and managed care organizations. In the event health care providers and patients accept our product candidates as medically useful, cost effective and safe, there is uncertainty on how exactly our products will be reimbursed. Third-party payers determine the extent to which new products will be covered as a benefit under their plans and the level of reimbursement for any covered product or procedure that may utilize a covered product. Coverage will be dependent on FDA-approval and other factors; reimbursement may vary across payers which is a risk for our product candidates. Establishment of reimbursement guidelines for products is difficult to predict at this time what third-party payers will decide with respect to the coverage and reimbursement for our product candidates.

A primary trend in the U.S. healthcare industry and elsewhere has been cost containment, including price controls, restrictions on coverage and reimbursement and requirements for substitution of less expensive products. Third-party payers decide which products and procedures they will pay for and establish reimbursement and co-payment levels. Government and other third-party payers are increasingly challenging the prices charged for health care products and procedures, examining the cost effectiveness of procedures, and the products used in such procedures, in addition to their safety and efficacy, and payers limit coverage and reimbursement to the appropriate patient per a products label. We cannot be sure that coverage will be available for our product candidates, if approved, or, if coverage is available, the level of direct or indirect reimbursement.

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 and other treatments, has become increasingly intense. As a result, high barriers exist to the successful commercialization of new products. Further, the adoption and implementation of any future governmental cost containment or other health reform initiative may result in additional downward pressure on the price that we may receive for any approved product.

Reimbursement by a third-party payer may depend upon a number of factors including the third-party payer’s determination that use of a product is:

There is significant uncertainty related to the insurance coverage and reimbursement of newly approved products. In the United States, the principal decisions about reimbursement are typically made by The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as CMS decides whether and to what extent products, and the procedures that utilize such products, will be covered and reimbursed under Medicare. Private payers may follow CMS, but have their own methods and approval processes for determining reimbursement for new products and the procedures that utilize such products. It is difficult to predict what CMS as well as other payers will decide with respect to reimbursement for fundamentally novel products such as ours, as there is no body of established practices and precedents for these new products.

In addition, under current Medicare hospital inpatient reimbursement policies CMS offers a process whereby manufacturers may apply for the temporary New Technology Add-on Payment or NTAP program for a new medical technology when the applicable Diagnosis-Related Group, or DRG, based inpatient prospective payment rate is inadequate to cover the cost of a new product. As part of our commercialization efforts, we are evaluating the potential application for omidubicel to be eligible under the NTAP program. To obtain add-on payment, a technology must be considered “new,” represent an advance in medical technology that substantially improves, relative to technologies previously available, the diagnosis or treatment of Medicare beneficiaries, and data reflecting the cost of the new technology must not yet be available in the data used to recalibrate the DRGs and the sponsor much show that admissions involving the furnishing of the technology exceed cost thresholds established by CMS for each applicable DRG. If an application is approved, new technology add-on payments are made to hospitals for no less than two years and no more than three years. We must demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of our technology to the FDA in addition to meeting CMS’s requirements for the NTAP program before add-on payments can be made, and we cannot assure that CMS will agree to provide such incremental payments for omidubicel or any of our other product candidates.

Obtaining coverage and reimbursement approval for a product from a government or other third-party payer 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 payer. We may not be able to provide data sufficient to gain acceptance with respect to coverage and reimbursement. Further, no uniform policy requirement for coverage and reimbursement exists among third-party payers in the United States. Similarly, health care providers enter into participation agreements with third-party payers wherein reimbursement rates are negotiated. Therefore, coverage and reimbursement can differ significantly from payer to payer and health care provider to health care provider. As a result, we cannot be sure that coverage or adequate reimbursement will be available for our product candidates, if approved or procedures utilizing such products. Also, we cannot be sure that reimbursement amounts will not reduce the demand for, or the price of, our future products. If reimbursement is not available, or is available only to limited levels, we may not be able to commercialize our product candidates, or achieve profitably at all, even if approved.

Our business entails a significant risk of product liability and our ability to obtain sufficient insurance coverage could have a material effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations or prospects.

Our business exposes us to significant product liability risks inherent in the development, testing, manufacturing and marketing of therapeutic treatments. Product liability claims could delay or prevent completion of our development programs. If we succeed in marketing products, such claims could result in an FDA investigation of the safety and effectiveness of our products, our manufacturing processes and facilities or our marketing programs and potentially a recall of our products or more serious enforcement action, limitations on the approved indications for which they may be used or suspension or withdrawal of approvals. Regardless of the merits or eventual outcome, liability claims may also result in decreased demand for our products, injury to our reputation, costs to defend the related litigation, a diversion of management’s time and our resources, substantial monetary awards to trial participants or patients and a decline in our share price. We do not currently have product liability insurance and do not anticipate obtaining product liability insurance until such time as we have received FDA or other comparable authority approval for a product and there is a product that is being provided to patients outside of clinical trials. Any insurance we have or may obtain may not provide sufficient coverage against potential liabilities. Furthermore, product liability insurance is becoming increasingly expensive. As a result, we may be unable to obtain sufficient insurance at a reasonable cost to protect us against losses caused by product liability claims that could have a material adverse effect on our business.

Risks Related to Ownership of our Ordinary Shares

Our executive officers, directors and principal shareholders maintain the ability to exert significant control over matters submitted to our shareholders for approval.

Certain of our executive officers, directors and holders of more than 5% of our voting securities beneficially owned as of December 31, 2021 hold shares representing approximately 38.8% of our share capital. As a result, if these shareholders were to act together, they would be able to control all matters submitted to our shareholders for approval, as well as our management and affairs. For example, these persons, if they act together, would control the election of directors and approval of any merger, consolidation or sale of all or substantially all our assets. This concentration of voting power could delay or prevent an acquisition of our company on terms that other shareholders may desire or result in management of our company that our public shareholders disagree with.

The market price of our ordinary shares may fluctuate significantly, which could result in substantial losses by our investors.

The stock market in general, and the market for pharmaceutical companies in particular, has experienced extreme volatility that has often been unrelated to the operating performance of particular companies. As a result of this volatility, you may not be able to sell your ordinary shares at or above the initial public offering price. The following factors, in addition to other risk factors described in this section, may have a significant impact on the market price of our ordinary shares: