Neurocrine Biosciences Inc (NBIX) 2011 Q4 法說會逐字稿

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  • Operator

  • Good day everyone, and welcome to today's Neurocrine Biosciences fourth quarter and year end 2011 results conference call. (Operator Instructions). It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Mr. Kevin Gorman, CEO of Neurocrine Biosciences. Please go ahead.

  • Kevin Gorman - President, CEO

  • Thank you very much. Thank you all for joining us for the fourth quarter earnings call. I'm joined here by Chris O'Brien, our Chief Medical Officer and Tim Coughlin, our CFO. Before we get started I would like to have Jane Sorenson read our Safe Harbor Statement, please.

  • Jane Sorenson - IR

  • Good afternoon. I want to remind you of Neurocrine's Safe Harbor cautions. Certain statements made in the course of this conference call that state the Company's or managements' intentions, hopes, beliefs, expectations or predictions of the future are forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties.

  • Information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in or implied by the forward-looking statements is contained in the Company's SEC filings, including but not limited to, the Company's annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Copies of these filings may be obtainedby visiting the Investor Relations page on the Company's website at www.neurocrine.com. Any forward looking statements are made only as of today's date and we undertake no obligations to update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. Kevin.

  • Kevin Gorman - President, CEO

  • Thank you, Jane. As usual, Chris is going to give you an update on our clinical programs.

  • Tim will review the fourth quarter full year financials, and in addition, Tim is going to update those financials with the financing that we closed on last month. He will also give you guidance on our burn for 2012. So with that, Tim, why don't you start off.

  • Tim Coughlin - VP, CFO

  • Thank you, Kevin,and good afternoon all. After the market closed today we filed our earnings for both the fourth quarter and for the full calendar year of 2011. We had another good quarter and met our overall financial plan for 2011.

  • At the beginning of 2011, we guided to net income of $37 million to $39 million. Our net income for the year was $37.6 million.

  • We also guided to a net cash burn of $3 million to $6 million, and to end 2011 with approximately $130 million in cash, investments and receivables. We met both of these goals ending 2011 with a net cash burn of $4 million, and with $131.7 million in cash, investments and receivables.

  • Our net income for the fourth quarter is $1.3 million or $0.02 of income per fully diluted share compared to net income of $2.5 million or $0.04 of income per fully diluted share in the fourth quarter of last year. Our 2011 net income of $37.6 million, or $0.67 per fully diluted share compares favorably to a net loss of $8 million or loss of $0.15 per share for 2010. This significant improvement in operating results for 2011 is a direct result of two items.

  • The first is a full year of revenue recognition under our collaboration agreements with Abbott and Boehringer Ingelheim. These collaborations both commenced in June of 2010. Second, during 2011 we recognized $30 million in milestones under the Abbott agreement related to the Elagolix endometriosis and uterine fibroids programs.

  • Revenue recognized under our collaboration agreements was $11.1 millionin the fourth quarter of 2011 and $77.4 million for the full year. Amortization of upfront licensing fees was $9.2 million for the quarter and $37 million for the year.

  • Reimbursement of internal and external research and development expenses resulted in revenue of $1.9 million and $10.5 million for the fourth quarter and year to date 2011, respectively. Research and development costs were relatively flat year-over-year. Increased external development costs related to our VMAT2 program and other research and development costs for earlier stage programs were offset by lower external development expenses related to Elagolix as these activities continue to transition to Abbott.

  • General and administrative costs decreased 6% year over year, primarily due to lower building overhead costs and continued cost containment efforts.

  • Other income for the fourth quarter of 2011 was $1.7 million, lower than the same period in 2010. This decrease is due to a one time investment gain of $700,000 coupled with $1 million received under the Qualified Therapeutic Program that was part of the Healthcare Reform bill. Both of these events occurred in the fourth quarter of 2010, and this fourth quarter difference of $1.7 million explains a majority of the difference in the year-to-date change in other income.

  • For 2012, our financial guidance is a net loss from operations of approximately $9 million to $14 million, or $0.14 to $0.21 per share based on 66 million basic shares outstanding. Revenue for 2012 is expected to be $40 million to $45 million which includes noncash revenue from amortization from upfront license fees of approximately $34 million.

  • We do not expect to receive any milestones in 2012. This lack of milestone funding accounts for the majority of the decrease in revenue from 2011 to 2012.

  • Expenses for 2012 should approximate $55 million to $60 million, general administrative expenses should be relatively flat year-over-year. The overall anticipated increase in expenses is driven by research and development, specifically around our VMAT2 program and earlier research programs which we will look to accelerate both through and into the clinic. Noncash option expense, or FAS 123R expense, is currently estimated at approximately $6 million for 2012. Our net cash burn for 2012 is expected to be $40 million to $45 million, and we expect to end the year with approximately $170 million in cash, investments and receivables.

  • In mid January we completed a public offering of approximately 10.9 million shares of common stock yielding gross proceeds of approximately $88 million. This offering was very successful, completed in less than a day, with top tier long focus funds taking the overwhelming majority of the new shares. We have been very pleased with the post market performance of the stock as it is risen to new 52 week highs on the heels of the stock offering. A testament to the quality of the funds and the portfolio managers with whom the new shares were placed.

  • That concludes our prepared marks on the financials and the projections for 2012. We will be glad to entertain any questions on the financials later in the call. And for those looking for additional details, our 10-K should be filed with the SEC later this week. With that, I will turn it back over to Kevin.

  • Kevin Gorman - President, CEO

  • Thanks, Tim. As Tim said, we couldn't be more pleased with the conduct of the offering and how smoothly it went. We couldn't come close to satisfying the demand that we realized in the offering, and again, that is showing up in the performance of the stock since we went out.

  • What that additional funds allows us to do is really accelerate our VMAT2 program to commercialization more quickly with a much more robust program than what we had planned previously. We've been able to see now through animal model work that we've been doing that truly the VMAT2 compound that we have in hand with our three month tox now done is behaving quite nicely in both species, and also it is shown us in animal models to have a potential impact on the underlying symptoms of schizophrenia. Now we will be able to really track that down in our Phase II and Phase III program. The funds will also support VMAT going into an additional movement disorder indication that we hope to start later this year.

  • And then finally, with the funds our research group has been very active and we have several compounds now that are moving their way out of research and into development. This allows us now to take several of those compounds forward, and we plan on doing that, and by the end of this year be in a position to file an IND in a completely novel neuroscience area with the novel compound.

  • So we're looking very forward to that. And as that matures this year, we're going to be speaking more about that. So at this point, I'd like to turn it over to Chris, so that he can give you a review of our main clinical program.

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • Thanks very much, Kevin, and good afternoon all. The key things to talk about, of course, are VMAT2 and Elagolix.

  • The Elagolix program is obviously being driven by our partner, Abbott Laboratories, and we had a successful meeting with Abbott and the FDA at the end of the year. And Abbott has memorialized the results of those type C discussions in the form of an SPA which was submitted a few days ago, and the plan is as noted. The start of the endometriosis Phase III pivotal trial should be later in the Q2. So Abbott has geared up for this, the study sites have been qualified, the clinical trial materials, the study medication prepared, the vendors engaged, et cetera. So things are moving ahead there. We're very excited about the start of this Phase III initiative in endometriosis.

  • While that is going on, the uterine fibroid Phase II has been recruiting to schedule -- to plan. This is a 300 subject trial. Details are publicly available at clinicaltrials.gov for the Elagolix uterine fibroid trial. Our partners have stated that they would anticipate some data from this Phase II uterine fibroid study later this year.

  • So Phase III endometriosis, Phase II uterine fibroid, and of course in the background the usual supportive studies that round out an NDA submission are underway. The rest of the drug-drug interaction and Phase I type studies are underway. Very intensive effort with all the resources that Abbott can bring to bear to this important women's health initiative. So that's the Elagolix program.

  • What gets us obviously excited, and as both Tim and Kevin have mentioned, is the VMAT2 program. You know that probably the biggest driving event for us on this program was having in hand the Phase III -- sorry the three month toxicology data from two species, rodent and non rodent species, that became available in December.

  • It's really hard to have that sense of confidence that you can move a molecule into long-term clinical studies until you have that under your belt, and our preclinical toxicology group under the guidance of Haig Bozigian, they did a great job getting this done. The results were supportive of going into long-term treatment into humans, and so that's what we are going to be able to do. And I will outline that approach here in just a second.

  • So we got that information in December. As you know, prior to that we had just two weeks of toxicology data in animals and that allowed us only to do two weeks of dosing in humans. So in order to get a jump on the program and get data as quickly as possible, after we completed the Phase I healthy volunteer studies in Canada and the small open label trial in-patient in Canada, we opened the IND here in the US. That allowed us to start the current randomized double blind placebo controlled trial that we call the 1101 study.

  • This study was started in the fall with recruitment, and we ended up finishing randomization of subjects in December. I'm happy to report that we have one subject left to finish treatment tomorrow. So the study has moved along well.

  • Of course, we have some additional post treatment safety follows up to do with the subjects that were randomized, and we will then put that data through the QA/QC, clean and scrub process, and the unblinding will occur in March, and we will be reporting top line data toward the end of March. So far this study has gone very well.

  • We have had excellent investigators at ten sites here in the US. There have been no safety signals from the trial in terms of drug related serious adverse events, and we are very pleased with the conduct of the trial to date.

  • So that two week randomized placebo controlled cross over trial, it's worth making a comment about this study. The primary end point is the validated and gold standard scale for dyskinesia, namely the abnormal involuntary movement scale, or AIMS. What we will be reporting out and what you can anticipate is we will be comparing the AIMS score at the end of one treatment period, to the AIMS score at the end of the other treatment program. Of course, subjects are randomized. The either get randomized active drug for two weeks and then placebo for two weeks or vice versa.

  • We are also studying two different doses of 854 rVMAT2 inhibitor. This report then will be a comparison of the AIMS score on drug verses the AIMS score off drug, regardless of order of exposure. And the active will be compared to the placebo period.

  • What we expect is that the AIMS total score, which is anywhere from a zero to 28, will show a significant difference between placebo and active treatment periods. And to give you an idea of how the numbers work, so subjects with moderate or severe tardive dyskinesia have been randomized into this trial. The inclusion criteria included an AIMS score of at least nine with at least two of the body regions having scores of three. That is a moderate.

  • What I can tell you is that to date, in a blinded fashion, I can look at what the base line scores are and they are coming in at around 15. Obviously we don't have the final number until the study is done and the data is all scrubbed, but that is very reassuring. That tells me we have been successful in recruiting patients with at least moderate or severe TD.

  • And because it's a within subject comparison trial, that is a crossover trial, we expect a smaller placebo effect than one normally sees in a parallel group placebo control trial. If you look in the literature, parallel group placebo control trials with tardive dyskinesia typically have a 20% to 30% placebo effect, if you will, but we think with a crossover trial this will be smaller. We had designed the study with 90% power to detect statistically significant and clinically meaningful difference between treatment groups. So that kind of puts you a context to think of it. So by the time end of March comes along and we have reported top line results, you will have a way of interpreting that data set.

  • Assuming that trial is positive and supports this validated mechanism of action for treatment of hyper kinetic movements, we will rapidly move into setting up and implementing the next Phase II trial. And this next trial, of course, can be a three month duration treatment now that we have the long-term tox to support it. In this trial we'll be doing two Phase IIb studies. The first will be in schizophrenic patients with moderate or severe TD. I'm anticipating about 120 subject trial looking at several doses of our study drug with treatment over 12 months. The -- sorry, 12 weeks. Tim was getting excited. Twelve weeks. And because of the way the trial is designed and the use of electronic data capture, I'm anticipating that if recruitment goes well we'll be able to report top line data out from that trial toward the very end of this year.

  • The second study will start in a staggered fashion after the schizophrenia trial, and that will be in a population of patients with bipolar disease or depression who have tardive dyskinesia of moderate to severe state. That will be otherwise a very similar designed study. The primary difference as Kevin hinted at, in the schizophrenia trial we will also include the standardized assessments for schizophrenia such as the PANSS, and this will allow us to look at the impact of our study drug on the underlying schizophrenia symptoms while we're looking at tardive dyskinesia as the primary end point. We also will for the bipolar and depression population, have a Hamilton Rating Scale, more appropriate for measuring depression.

  • So a lot of work is getting set as we start to qualify investigator sites for those Phase II studies. We're doing some intensive work to make sure that we have high quality investigators and that we learn as much as we can from this crossover study to prepare us for those Phase IIb studies.

  • Meanwhile while that's all going on, we are waiting for our friends and academic colleagues in Christchurch, New Zealand to report out on the Urocortin 2 data from the Unicorn trial in patients with Acute Decompensated Heart Failure. The final subject of the 50 in the study population underwent treatment in December, came back in late January for a safety follow up visit and now we are awaiting their stats group to finish going through that data and to tell us whether this was a positive study or not. So as soon as we get those results, obviously, we will share that publicly.

  • So that's an update on Elagolix with Abbott, VMAT2 for tardive dyskinesia in [abneurocrine] and the Unicorn/Urocortin 2 study in New Zealand. If there are questions I will be more than happy to answer that during the Q&A.

  • Kevin Gorman - President, CEO

  • Thanks, Chris. So as you can see, we've got a lot going on this year. Just in the next 12 months we're going to have initiated a Phase III program, [read out four], Phase II trials and launch a new program out of research and clinical developments. So a lot for us to do this year.

  • It is worth noting that on a couple of these programs, as we said before, the plan that we have is to retain the VMAT2 rights in North America all the way through commercialization. This is a very tractable market that we believe we can handle ourselves. And at the appropriate time, we will bring on a partner in rest the world. That's not something we plan on doing right away because even though it is a outside US partner that we would be bringing on, it nevertheless would slow our efforts within the United States, and we are in a position, a very strong position now to take this forward quite aways ourself. So we are not in any hurry to bring that partner on until we have advanced the program more.

  • And then finally with the Urocortin 2, as Chris said, we should be getting those results also this quarter. If those are very strong results then we will take the time and the effort in order to outlicense that program to a strong cardiovascular company. If they are negative, obviously, we won't. And if they aren't really that strong, we'll probably only expend limited efforts initially in looking for a partner. We have much more valuable activities that our business development group and Chris have to get to this year in that because we do hope to move VMAT2 into it's Phase III pivotal programs next year.

  • So that's what quite a bit of our internal focus is on. With that, I'd like to open it up for questions now.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Ian Somaiya with Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.

  • Ian Somaiya - Analyst

  • Thank you very much. Chris, thank you for all the comments related to the VMAT2 data (inaudible). I was hoping to get your thoughts on the other product, Elagolix, and how we should think about the uterine fibroid results. Give us the timing, but I would expect them to be released some point this year. Just what is the goal of the study? How should we think about the trial, and what would you consider to be successful results?

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • Thanks, Ian. So on clinicaltrials.gov you will see that the primary end point for that study is uterine bleeding. And that is in this particular case measured by a quantitative method called alkaline hematin which basically quantifies the amount of blood loss during menses. And the threshold for heavy or excessive uterine bleeding is the criteria that must be met for a woman with fibroids to be in the trial.

  • So what you would anticipate the sponsor, or Abbott, reporting is the reduction in alkaline hematin as a primary end point. It is also important to remember that, again as you can see on clinicaltrials.gov, that this is an early Phase II study, so they are looking at multiple doses and regimens of Elagolix as a way of helping them understand how they want to use this going forward.

  • Ian Somaiya - Analyst

  • And then I just had a question on the guidance. The range $55 million to $60 million, I'm assuming the variability of delta is specifically related to R&D. Can you just help us understand what would drive a R&D number that's on the low end or that high end of that $5 million delta?

  • Tim Coughlin - VP, CFO

  • It really is going to depend. It's a $5 million range there, Ian, and really depends upon timing. Because it's so narrow, it's just how fast you can get things done, how fast enrollment goes and when certain things hit.

  • If we have certain programs that we can move a little more quickly, it will be at the higher end of that range. If they move basically how we think they are going to move, it will be at the midpoint. If they move a little bit slower it will be at the lower end. But $5 million is a pretty narrow range I think. When you look across it is 10% of the burn.

  • Ian Somaiya - Analyst

  • Thank you. I'll get back in queue.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. Our next question comes from Phil Nadeau with Cowen and Company. Please go ahead.

  • Philip Nadeau - Analyst

  • Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. First, on the VMAT2 inhibitor, I found your comments on the lack of SEs in the current trialpretty encouraging. Can you talk a little bit more act that? Specifically in the Xenazine trials did the AEs appear within the first two weeks? Was there a real increase in depression and suicide early in those Xenazine trials?

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • Hi, Phil, thanks. So the Xenazine trials in Huntingston's chorea, and then the general literature about tetrabenazine, report acute kinds of adverse events that are basically what you see if you have excessive dopamine depletion presynaptically. So things like akathisia, some motor restlessness, or parkinsonism, or sedation. You don't see depression in a short-term trial with clinically reasonable doses of these drugs.

  • And the suicidality, that's a little bit -- if you go and look at the published Xenazine trials that were done as pivotal efforts by [prestowick], you will see that there is no suicidality that is associated with the drug. There was a suicide in a Phase III trial patient with Huntingston's Disease, and as you may know, in Huntington's Disease there is a very high background rate of suiciderelated primarily to disinhibition, not depression. Impulse control problems. It is a devastating disease.

  • And so the basic statement there is we are glad we don't see any of that. We don't think that is going to be an associated problem with our drug for a whole bunch of reasons which we can talk about at some other time perhaps. But we think we've addressed some of those risks with our specific molecule, the way it is designed and dosed.

  • I would not expect to see things like depression or suicidality in a short-term two week crossover trial. Obviously, with long duration trials you have a better chance of picking up low frequency events in larger populations, and hence our urgency to do 12 week, 120 subject trials as a way of demonstrating safety and tolerability.

  • Philip Nadeau - Analyst

  • Okay, fair enough. In those dopamine depletion side effects would those have shown up in the two weeks?

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • Yes.

  • Philip Nadeau - Analyst

  • Okay. And then my second question is on the SPA that Abbott has decided to get. I guess I'm still a little unclear as to why they are going after the SPA. It seems like you guys at Neurocrine has really nailed down most of the major design elements of the Phase III a year ago. It doesn't seem like any of those have really been changed by Abbott. So why do they feel the formality of an SPA is necessary?

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • Because the FDA recommended it.

  • Philip Nadeau - Analyst

  • They did. Okay.

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • And the bottom line is there are a lot of ways to skin a cat, and Abbott went through the process of making sure they were comfortable addressing all the details that they wanted to address. And at the end of the series of the end of Phase II, and the two additional type C meetings they were addressed. And the trial design is what Abbott wanted and the agency was happy with that, and said basically memorialize all these things in an SPA

  • Philip Nadeau - Analyst

  • Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for taking my questions.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. Our next question comes from Jon LeCroy with MKM. Please go ahead.

  • Jon LeCroy - Analyst

  • Thanks, I just have a couple questions. One, does the quarter or so delay in Elagolix for endometriosis delay your timing for when the drug could launch in the US?

  • Kevin Gorman - President, CEO

  • The timings for the drug are ones that are dictated by Abbott. And so Abbott's guidance is on there website from an October presentation they gave. And October 21, I believe is when that presentation is on there. And they show there that NDA filing is in 2015, and then in 2016 they anticipate an approval.

  • Jon LeCroy - Analyst

  • Okay. And then any update on the uterine fibroids enrollment? Is it that going quickly?

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • It is well. It is going exactly to plan.

  • Jon LeCroy - Analyst

  • Okay. And then just a little bit on the VMAT. Do you expect placebo differences depending on when the drug was dosed, or I guess I'm asking is there a residual effect of the drug that might go over into placebo on patients that are started on drug for the first two weeks?

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • Well, Jon, you have asked a good question. The half life of the drug is such that since I'm comparing only the end of the first two weeks to the end of the second two weeks there will be no drug onboard. It is completely washed out within that first six, seven, eight days. And we know that when you stop this drug, the hyperkinetic movements start to reemerge after a few days. After a week or so.

  • So the study is specifically designed so that is not a problem in terms of pharmocokinetic exposure. You don't see anything at the end of that placebo two week period.

  • Now there is another subtle carry over type effect, that is a behavioral effect not a pharmacologic effect. And so that's simply the sequence effect of being in a trial. And obviously you can't avoid that. But we have a large enough sample size that we think that we can we'll still be able to show a nice separation of active from placebo.

  • Jon LeCroy - Analyst

  • So are you expecting a similar delta from baseline for the placebo group regardless of when they are dosed?

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • So it will be interesting -- you know, I don't know. We'll see. It will be interesting to see how much sequence effect is there. We have a whole series of analyses prepared to help us answer those questions.

  • Jon LeCroy - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • But the primary comparison, just so we are clear, is simply AIMS at the end of the active period to AIMS at the end of the placebo period. There is no change from baseline calculation there at all.

  • Jon LeCroy - Analyst

  • Okay. And then on Urocortin 2 can and you talk about any discussions you have had with Pharma potential partners or how you think the demand for this if it works would be?

  • Kevin Gorman - President, CEO

  • Well, we've had contact with several companies that are in the Acute Decompensated Heart Failure space. As you know, that has been a much more difficult space. So there's about a handful, half dozen that are really seriously in that space.

  • They know when these results are coming out. They've got a familiarity with the program. So the way we have left it with all of them is when the results are out then we will be recontacting.

  • Jon LeCroy - Analyst

  • Okay, and have you thought about market potential for a drug like this?

  • Kevin Gorman - President, CEO

  • No, actually we haven't. As you know we haven't invested one dime in this program for almost five years now, since we restructured the Company. So this is really something that as I said before, if the results are very good, then we will go out and outlicense it. And by outlicensing, I mean just that. It won't be a collaborative effort like all of our other partnerships are. It will be a true outlicensing.

  • Jon LeCroy - Analyst

  • Okay. Great. That was it.

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • Thanks, Jon.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. (Operator Instructions). We will go next to Jason Napodano with Zacks. Please go ahead.

  • Jason Napodano - Analyst

  • Hi, guys. Just a quick question on the Phase II VMAT2 program. I understand the crossover design, but there's two doses in there. So Chris, can you just give me a sense of what the dose range -- it's a pretty wide range, 12.5-milligrams and then up to 50-milligrams. Can you give me a sense of what you are looking for with that dose? With those doses?

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • Absolutely. So the goal of this two week study was to secure efficacy as well as understand what the low end of the minimally effective dose might be. So that when I go into my parallel group, long-term trials, I'll have an informed and intelligent basis of dose selection.

  • And so we did that by the 50-milligram dose was very well tolerated by healthy volunteers, and the small open label patient trial. We believe that dose is above that which is necessary for efficacy. So that was the really strong shot on goal to see the effect.

  • The 12.5-milligram dose is at the low end, where we think it is just about the minimally effective dose. And it would be extremely informative if that worked as well as 50-milligram, or didn't work, or only worked in half the patients. That will help me with my dose selection.

  • The way the trial is set up, when the subject is randomized, there are basically four paths they can go. Placebo, then 12.5-milligram, or 12.5-milligram then placebo. Placebo then 50-milligram, or 50-milligram then placebo.

  • So nobody is getting both drugs, both doses. It's just active versus placebo. And with eight subjects in each of those four arms it shows you the magnitude of effect that we expect. It doesn't have to be a very big trial in a crossover design to read out for statistical and clinically significant separation.

  • Jason Napodano - Analyst

  • Appreciate that, thanks.

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • Thanks, Jason.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. We'll go next to Thomas Wei of Jefferies. Please go ahead.

  • Thomas Wei - Analyst

  • Thanks. Just a couple of questions. First on the VMAT2 program, can you say it all on a blinded basis? Maybe what you are seeing in terms of safety, anything unusual there that might be expected mechanistically, or even not?

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • Hi, Thomas. No, so far I have obviously reviewed every piece of clinical chemistry, and ECG and lab data that has come in. So there are no safety signals to date in a blinded fashion. We've had no treatment related SAEs, so that's good.

  • I have seen the adverse events that you see in any study and they are all the usual stuff. There's nothing that catches my eye as being unusual.

  • I mean in every trial particularly in CNS, you're going to see headache, fatigue, nausea, headache, fatigue nausea, headache fatigue, nausea. So that's all. So we will have to wait until the blind is broken to really have a comment. But nothing unusual.

  • Thomas Wei - Analyst

  • And with the VMAT2 inhibitor, can you just remind us from the early dosing work that you had done where had you figured out that you did start seeing some of the problems that have emerged with Xenazine? What sort of window do you have dosing wise, do you think?

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • I think it is pretty good. In our Phase I studies, what I considered signs of pharmacology were things like trouble focusing your attention, sedation, and we saw that with single dose healthy volunteers at 150-milligrams. And in a couple healthy volunteers after repeated dosing for eight days at 100-milligrams. My guess is the clinically relevant dose is going to be more than the 25-milligram range, so we have a very broad (inaudible -- technical difficulty).

  • Thomas Wei - Analyst

  • And can you remind me with the PK, is it linear through this whole dose range and --

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • Yes.

  • Thomas Wei - Analyst

  • Is there overlap at the edges between those who are dosed at 25-milligrams on a multi dose basis and those who are dosed at 100-milligrams on a multi dose basis?

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • So first, it is very dose proportional. It is a very well behaved molecule with good exposures and narrow coefficient variation. As you would expect with a long half life drug, once you reach steady state, there is -- I may have misunderstood your question, but let's say for example at a single dose of 100-milligrams, can overlap or actually just barely overlap with maybe the 50-milligram repeated dose. But just barely there.

  • Thomas Wei - Analyst

  • That's helpful. And then just lastly on the uterine fibroids program, can you confirm that's still is the primary strategy for European regulatory approval. Can you also remind me what you said about whether or not this set of Phase II data that we are going to get is sufficient to go directly into Phase III trials?

  • Chris O'Brien - Chief Medical Officer

  • I really can't comment on Abbott's strategies. Maybe Kevin has a word.

  • Kevin Gorman - President, CEO

  • I would say that Abbott is still doing a lot of work over in Europe as they are in the United States on uterine fibroids. So we'll leave it to them when they'll talk about that. And as far as we're aware of, this Phase II that they are doing with uterine fibroids is to set up a true dose response Phase IIb clinical trial with uterine fibroids to follow.

  • Thomas Wei - Analyst

  • All right, thank you very much.

  • Operator

  • Thank you, it appears we have no further questions at this time. I will turn it back to Kevin Gorman for any closing remarks.

  • Kevin Gorman - President, CEO

  • Thank you very much. And we're going to be looking forward to the two Phase II clinical trial results that we are going to be cutting this quarter. The one in VMAT2 on the 32 patient study in March, and then some time between now and March to get the Phase II results on Urocortin 2. We'll be speaking at several conferences over the next two months. So we look forward to meeting all of you there, and presenting that data as it comes through. Once again, thank you very much for your attention, and we will be presenting data shortly. Take care.

  • Operator

  • This concludes today's program. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect at anytime. Have a great day.