 Hi, I'm Chris Thompson for Investor Intel and today I'm here with David Elsley, the president CEO and founder of Cardiotherapeutics, a clinical stage life sciences company Which is listed on the NASDAQ that focus on the development of new treatments for heart disease. How are you today David? I'm great Chris and thanks for having us today. It's great to be here What are the specific diseases that your company is targeting? The most important programs that we're targeting currently are two devastating forms of heart disease in that they manifest themselves in a generally younger Population who are typically otherwise healthy. So we have a global program in acute myocarditis Which you've most likely read about in the media Given that it's primarily caused by a viral infection Historically that would have been the influenza virus by way of example But now it is a secondary consequence or been described as a complication of the COVID virus It's a rare complication of mRNA vaccine strategies and it's an increasingly lethal combination or consequence of the increasing use of certain chemotherapeutic agents in the treatment of cancer. So that's Condition that remains the leading cause of sudden cardiac death and people under the age of 30 and there's currently no Accepted standard of care for that Condition and we have a global program in that and our second and perhaps equally important program is in recurrent Paryocarditis. This is a US-led study. This is another form of heart Inflammation or inflammation of the of the heart in this case as opposed to the heart muscle It's the sac that surrounds the heart. It's very debilitating because the heart pumps against friction caused by inflammation of this sac and it causes very Significant pain in these patients so much so that they're basically immobilized because if they increase their heart rate They this pain syndrome Intensifies and there's been one treatment approved for that indication over the past year and a half But that treatment comes at a very high cost It costs upwards of two hundred thousand dollars per patient per year. That's very powerful therapy So it's used as more a second or third line treatment And certainly young folks don't want to take such a powerful therapy because there could be side-effect issues or toxicological concerns down the downstream Now your treatments are in the category what is known as orphan drug Treatments and what is what is the importance or the advantages of targeting this type of treatment? The US FDA and other major regulators around the world basically incentivize the pharmaceutical industry to develop new important treatments for Rare diseases defined in the US as any disease that affects less than two hundred thousand Americans at any one time and The incentives they provide to the industry to focus on these rare conditions is they offer an accelerated path to development a reduced cost of Development fees and perhaps most importantly post market a period of prolonged market exclusivity that can range in the US seven to nine years, which is a monopoly enforced by The regulators or the FDA and then in other regions of the world up to ten years monopoly so this provides companies with basically an opportunity to Own the market that they've Taken the risk to develop and we're very pleased to be participating in this orphan drug designation program given that You know these conditions are Devastating and there's really not great treatment options for either of the lead orphan programs that we have underway And currently what stage of the is your programs at and you've had some recent news about some studies as well So maybe you could just touch on those points So our acute myocarditis program is a global trial. In fact, it's the largest clinical program It's a phase two program. It's the largest clinical program ever to be undertaken at acute myocarditis and Basically over 50 years since the steroid studies were conducted back in the 80s so that really underscores the need for new efforts to To resolve this issue that can lead to full-minute heart failure in a young healthy 20 year old with no history of cardiac risk factors and then with respect to Recurrent pericarditis. That's also a phase two program. That's a US based study We just recently announced which might be what you're referring to that the Cleveland Clinic One of the largest if not the largest recurrent pericarditis centers in the world Recruited the first patient into that trial. So now we have two orphan drug eligible programs Recruiting patients the acute myocarditis is global North America Latin America Europe as well as Israel and then in the context of recurrent pericarditis We have a US trial Underway which we believe has the potential to lead to a pivotal registration trial that could see our drug approved In the coming two years And how many patients you need for each study? So the acute myocarditis program is enrolling a hundred patients at centers throughout the world and the Recurrent pericarditis program is referred to as a pilot study or open label trial where we're recruiting 25 patients all of whom will receive active therapy so we can look for preliminary Signals of efficacy and use that information to design the pivotal registration trial Which has the potential to underpin FDA approval for the use of this treatment in recurrent pericarditis And these so I'm sorry I just thought it's important to mention that these conditions are not Inexpensive to care for so an average hospitalization for acute myocarditis for example In a young 20 year old can run over a hundred thousand dollars And in the context of recurrent pericarditis You have what we believe to be the most expensive cardiac drug is one therapeutic option at over two hundred thousand dollars and then hospitalizations run over thirty thousand dollars per hospitalization. So these are Not only have a profound adverse impact on quality of life in these young folks They also have a significant cost burden to the health care system That's great. What can investors expect for news flow for the rest of 2023? Over the next Certainly 2023 over the next 12 to 18 months. I think we have a very strong strong news flow So we'll complete the recruitment into our recurrent pericarditis Study and we'd expect data flow from that trial We'll complete recruitment into our global acute myocarditis trial And we'd expect important data from that study as well We're also working on a new formulation to target to larger markets potentially such as heart failure Which is a mass global market orders of magnitude larger in size Then the acute myocarditis and recurrent pericarditis market That we're speaking of and it's really driven by Increasing prevalence incidence of diabetes obesity and hypertension Around the world at any one time it affects upwards of 26 million people in the developed world And it's one of the most costly diseases to care for in the u.s It runs about 30 billion dollars in health care costs. It's the number one reason people are hospitalized So that's where the heart fails and in a large number of those patients Inflammation plays a role in that failure causing the heart to become fibrotic and inelastic So it doesn't feel efficiently. So the heart never has enough blood to meet metabolic demand And we potentially can Help resolve that issue with a new form of drug that we're developing and we look forward to speaking more to that over the next 12 to 15 months Well, that's great. I think that's a good update for investors and I thank you for your time. David. Have a great day. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having us