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

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

For The Transition Period FromTo

Commission file number: 001-40312

EQRx, Inc.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)


Delaware	86-1691173
(State or Other Jurisdiction of incorporation or Organization)	(I.R.S. Employer Identification No.)
50 Hampshire Street, Cambridge, MA	02139
(Address of principal executive offices)	(Zip code)

Registrant's telephone number, including area code: (617)315-2255

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


		Name Of Each Exchange
Title of Each Class	Trading Symbol(s)	On Which Registered
Common stock, par value $0.0001 per Share Warrants to purchase one share of common stock at an exercise price of $11.50	EQRX EQRXW	The Nasdaq Global Market The Nasdaq Global Market

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

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act.

Yes ☐ No ☒

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act.

Yes ☐ No ☒

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

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically; every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.0405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes ☒ No ☐

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


Large accelerated filer ☐	Accelerated filer ☐	Non-accelerated filer ☒	Smaller reporting company ☒	Emerging growth company ☒

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

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

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

Based on the closing price as reported on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, the aggregate market value of the registrant's common stock held by non-affiliates on June 30, 2021 (the last business day of the registrant's most recently completed second fiscal quarter) was approximately $569.7 million. Shares of common stock held by each executive officer and director and by each shareholder affiliated with a director or an executive officer have been excluded from this calculation because such persons may be deemed to be affiliates. This determination of affiliate status is not necessarily a conclusive determination for other purposes. The number of outstanding shares of the registrant's common stock as of March 16, 2022 was 487,632,615.

Documents Incorporated by Reference

None

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CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This annual report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act, and Section 21E of the Exchange Act. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations and projections about future events. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intends,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “possible,” “potential,” “predict,” “project,” “should,” “will,” “would” or the negative of such terms or other similar expressions. All statements, other than statements of present or historical fact included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, our future financial performance, strategy, expansion plans, future operations, future operating results, estimated revenues, losses, projected costs, prospects, plans and objectives of management are forward-looking statements. Any statements that refer to projections, forecasts or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements in this Annual Report on Form 10-K may include, for example, statements about:

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our ability to realize the anticipated benefits from the Business Combination (as defined below), which may be affected by, among other things, the costs of the Business Combination, competition and our ability to grow and manage growth profitably and retain our key employees;

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the success, cost and timing of our product development activities;

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our ability to obtain and maintain regulatory approval for our products, and any related restrictions and limitations of any approved product;

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our ability to maintain our existing license agreements and manufacturing arrangements;

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our ability to maintain our existing or enter into additional drug engineering collaborations;

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our ability to compete with other companies currently marketing or engaged in the development of innovative drug candidates, many of which have greater financial and marketing resources than us;

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our ability to develop and maintain our Global Buyers Club;

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our ability to locate and acquire complementary products or product candidates and integrate those into our business;

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the size and growth potential of the markets for our products, and the ability of each to serve those markets, either alone or in partnership with others;

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changes in applicable laws or regulations;

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our ability to raise financing in the future;

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our estimates regarding expenses, future revenue, capital requirements and needs for additional financing;

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our financial performance;

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our ability to compete effectively in a competitive industry;

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our ability to protect and enhance our corporate reputation and brand;

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expectations concerning our relationships and actions with third parties;

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potential liquidity and trading of our securities;

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the attraction and retention of qualified directors, officers, employees and key personnel; and

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the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on us.

These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions about us that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including those set forth under the heading “Risk Factors” in Part I, Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Given these risks and uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Additional cautionary statements or discussions of risks and uncertainties that could affect our results or the achievement of the expectations described in forward-looking statements may also be contained in any accompanying prospectus supplement. Should one or more of the risks or uncertainties described in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results and plans could differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking

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statements. Except as otherwise required by applicable law, we disclaim any duty to update any forward-looking statements, all of which are expressly qualified by the statements in this section, to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this annual report. We qualify all of our forward-looking statements by these cautionary statements.

SUMMARY OF RISK FACTORS

Our business involves significant risks. Below is a summary of the material risks that our business faces, which makes an investment in our securities speculative and risky. This summary does not address all these risks. These risks are more fully described below under the heading “Risk Factors” in Part I, Item 1A of this annual report on Form 10-K. Before making investment decisions regarding our securities, you should carefully consider these risks. The occurrence of any of the events or developments described below could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition, prospects and stock price. In such event, the market price of our securities could decline, and you could lose all or part of your investment. Further, there are additional risks not described below that are either not currently known to us or that we currently deem immaterial, and these additional risks could also materially impair our business, operations or market price of our securities.

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We do not have any products approved for commercial sale and have not generated any revenue to date, and so may never become profitable.

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Our business and pricing model is untested and may never be successful or generate sufficient revenue to lead to profitability.

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Our business model requires us to scale our pipeline through increasing the number of product candidates that we in-license, discover alone or in partnership, or acquire, and developing such product candidates, which we may be unable to successfully achieve or maintain.

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Our failure to manage growth effectively could cause our business to suffer and have an adverse effect on our ability to execute our business strategy, as well as operating results and financial condition.

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We may be unsuccessful in achieving broad market education and acceptance or changing prescribing or purchasing habits of healthcare system participants or keeping up to date with recent developments in the medical field regarding treatment options.

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We may be unable to continue to attract, acquire and retain third-party collaborators, including payers, collaboration partners and licensors, or may fail to do so in an effective manner. Our collaborations with third-party collaborators are also subject to certain risks.

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Our financial projections are subject to significant risks, assumptions, estimates and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially.

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If our preclinical studies and clinical trials are not sufficient to support regulatory approval of any of our product candidates, we may incur additional costs or experience delays in completing, or ultimately be unable to complete, the development of such product candidate.

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We have never successfully completed the regulatory approval process for any of our product candidates, and we may be unable to do so for any product candidates that we in-license, discover alone or in partnership, acquire or develop.

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If regulators do not accept data from our license partners generated in other jurisdictions as a basis for regulatory approvals in our target markets, or we experience delays in obtaining data from our license partners, or if we experience delays or difficulties in the initiation or enrollment of our clinical trials, our receipt of necessary regulatory approvals could be delayed or prevented.

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PART I

ITEM 1. BUSINESS

Our mission

Our mission is to improve health for all with great, innovative, affordable medicines so that people with life-changing or chronic conditions can gain access to the medicines they need, physicians can treat patients without barriers to prescribing, and health systems can afford to make those medicines available, without restrictions, to the populations they serve in a financially sustainable manner.

The EQRx business opportunity

Thanks to the powerful tools and technologies of the 21^st century, including genome sequencing, proteomics, and genomics, to name a few, society has made tremendous progress in elucidating the drivers of many, but not all, diseases at the molecular mechanism level. It is now possible to engineer innovative molecules around well-known targets, as evidenced by the expanding supply of innovative but overlapping drug candidates with their own intellectual property. For example, there are now 60 Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) programs and over 160 checkpoint inhibitors in various stages of development. With the proliferation of cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI), machine-learning and technology enabled experimental drug discovery engineering platforms, this trend is expected to further accelerate, leading to more rapid engineering of potential molecules against disease targets, reducing expensive failure rates and lowering costs of early development.

Yet, unlike other industries where prices fall with technology advances and spur competition, prices for innovative medicines have continued to increase. In 1990, prescription drug expenditure in the United States totalled $40 billion. This expenditure has since increased to over $350 billion in 2020, an almost 9-fold increase, or a 7.5% year-on-year increase over the past 30 years. Global prescription drug spend has increased over 200% from 2000 through 2020 and over 1,500% from 1989 through 2020, with global drug spend in 2021 estimated to be approximately $1 trillion.

Our catalog of more than 10 programs today is estimated to address more than $100 billion of global specialty drug spend by 2026. There is no guarantee that we will identify suitable assets to grow our addressable market and even if we do, we may not be able to acquire these assets or develop them successfully to achieve our targets. Further, our preclinical and early-stage discovery programs may not ever result in clinical development candidates.

As the average annual cost for new cancer therapies continues to increase, many patients struggle with the physical and emotional effects of high out-of-pocket medical costs. The clinical consequences are significant, either because of lack of access to the best therapy for a patient’s disease or due to worse outcomes. For instance, a number of recent studies have shown that there is a statistically significant correlation between out-of-pocket costs and increased mortality for lung cancer patients.

In some countries, rising drug prices have led to significant second-order challenges beyond the financial burden. When compared to the United States, innovative drugs in developed ex-U.S. markets often have price tags that exceed cost-effectiveness thresholds, resulting in launch delays for safe and efficacious drugs or reduced access.

At the same time, there are opportunities to making the drug development process significantly more efficient, as has been shown during the COVID-19 pandemic; the use of master protocols, decentralized trials including leveraging novel technology and data tools for data collection, remote and mobile monitoring, to name just a few of the levers that not only lower cost and increase speed but also have a positive effect on the patient experience.

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Time for something new — time for “New Pharma”

Our business model – “New Pharma”

So, it’s time for something new. Time for a new business model to leverage these scientific, technological, and medical advances together with a new commercial model; one based on trust and collaboration with payers and health systems, rather than one focused on adversarial negotiations. Time to focus on efficiency from inception, to create the required cost structure to sustain dramatically lower prices. Time for a model built to successfully develop and commercialize medicines at scale. It’s time for “New Pharma.”

Our “New Pharma” solution starts with assembling a catalog of medicines at significant scale, targeting some of the most innovative clinical opportunities and highest drug cost categories of today and tomorrow, with an initial focus on oncology and immune-inflammatory diseases. We are focused on developing programs that are innovative, branded, and patent-protected that, if approved, have the potential to be equivalent or superior to other therapies in their class. However, there is no guarantee our product candidates will be approved, or if approved will be equivalent or superior to such other therapies.

Through our team of leading drug hunters, we are building our catalog through:

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In-licensing clinical and preclinical stage programs to accelerate our business model

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Building alliances with cutting-edge drug engineering platforms to build an earlier-stage pipeline of programs

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Establishing partnerships with other biopharma companies to develop combination therapies

Assuming we are successful in obtaining regulatory approval for our medicines, we plan to offer our catalog of innovative medicines to payers and health systems at radically lower prices, through a simple and transparent pricing model without surprise price increases. However, we do not currently have, and may never have, any products approved for commercial sale, and our business and pricing model is untested and may never be successful.

We are also assembling a Global Buyers Club by entering into long-term, trusted strategic partnerships with private and public payers, providers and health systems so they and the patients they serve can gain access to, if approved, our future medicines at radically lower prices. We will offer simple and transparent pricing models to provide an opportunity for dramatic savings in these high-cost drug areas, while also providing broader access to important medicines for their patients in a sustainable matter. As part of this “New Deal” working collaboratively with our strategic partners, we ask that they make prescribing seamless for physicians, lower cost share for patients, and reduce utilization barriers that slow access to important medicines. We are effectively replacing the traditional “push” model with a “pull” model to drive adoption of our medicines.

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Designing a highly efficient model

The key to building a profitable business while offering radically lower prices is a lower cost structure, building the business at scale with a relentless focus on efficiency. There are several sources of efficiencies resulting in a significantly lower unit cost for our future medicines, driven both by significantly lower research and development as well as commercial expenses:

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Higher expected success rate: With a focus on validated targets, where we understand the mechanism of action and the underlying biology, we expect to create greater probability of success compared to the typical biopharma model. Our business model also contemplates that we will not need to burden the prices of our future therapies to compensate for the costs of prior drug failures. Whereas historical industry success rates have typically been between 10% to 20%, we are anticipating higher success rates for our clinical candidates due to our focus on validated targets. However, the drug development process is inherently uncertain and cannot be fully de-risked, and there can be no guarantee that our approach to drug development will achieve these success rates, or that we will be able to avoid the cost burdens as anticipated.

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Efficient drug development: With an eye towards lowering drug development costs, we are building a truly modern drug development organization. This includes incorporating the many ways in which incremental operational improvements can be incorporated into the end-to-end drug development process to run clinical trials better, faster, and at lower costs. We believe modern development processes that are data-science enabled will allow us to operate more seamlessly and more directly, creating less dependency on external service providers and a more direct control of the data we are generating. Our predictive screening and overall development approach have not yet been clinically validated, our chosen drug candidates may not function as anticipated in future clinical trials, and there can be no guarantee that we will be successful in creating a new and modern approach to drug development. Additionally, our model emphasizes the generation of a comprehensive body of clinical data to support the adoption of our future medicines, if approved, recognizing that trials intended solely for the purpose of regulatory approval often do not address issues important to prescribing decisions. These issues include establishing efficacy and safety in patient populations more typical of “real-world” practice, specific tolerability or safety questions, treatment adherence, optimization of dose and schedule, and associated medical resource utilization. While recognizing the need to secure appropriate approved indications, we expect that many of the trials we conduct to generate evidence to support adoption will be designed and executed in conjunction with prescribing physicians and associated payers, so that specific questions of relevance to the use of these medicines in established therapeutic classes can be addressed. We expect the result of our approach will be clinical evidence programs that strike a balance between studies conducted for regulatory use and those intended for physician and payer audiences, rather than programs that are heavily weighted towards traditional registrational clinical trials. However, our model is untested and there is no guarantee that clinical trials we conduct in the future will provide us with positive or actionable data that will facilitate efficient clinical development or that we will be able to address the relevance to the use of these medicines in established therapeutic classes as anticipated.

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Streamlined commercial model: In a traditional biopharma company, a significant proportion of operating costs are spent on large sales forces and marketing budgets, effectively “pushing” high-cost medicines to physicians and directly to consumers. We will not be building a traditional sales and marketing oriented commercial organization; rather, we expect that our ability to create greater pull-through of our future medicines by our strategic partners will enable us to significantly reduce commercial costs, effectively replacing the traditional “push” model with a “pull” model. Our model is untested, and there can be no guarantee that we will be successful in our attempt to replace the traditional sales organization with our “pull” model.

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Business model innovation in other industries

In the 1970s, Southwest Airlines (Southwest) disrupted the market with a single interstate route and now carries more air travelers flying nonstop within the United States than any other airline. One of the founding principles of the Southwest business model was offering radically lower fares to ensure air travel no longer discriminated across socioeconomic classes. To accomplish profitability with these fares, the company would also need to sustain a radically lower cost structure, which it achieved by moving to a single type of airplane, changing the traditional hub-and-spoke network approach to point-to-point, changing turnaround time, and simplifying fares.

Today, Southwest is one of the most honored airlines in the world, known for a “triple bottom line approach” that contributes to (i) the carrier’s performance and productivity, (ii) the importance of its people and the communities they serve, and (iii) an overall commitment to efficiency and the planet. The success of this business model is demonstrated by over 40 consecutive years of profitability, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, making it the only U.S. airline that can make that claim.

We believe there are parallels between Southwest’s business model and ours. We aim to remake a large, incumbent industry, democratizing access to innovative medicines through lowering prices and increasing access and transparency. We aim to operate profitably while also caring for our patients, our people, our partners, and the healthcare system ecosystem.

In another more recent example, Netflix has disrupted the media and entertainment industry, and we believe there are some parallels across our business models. Netflix initially introduced a low-cost offering with known high-quality content, conveniently delivered against the existing cable carriers. Traditional cable networks forced viewers to overpay as cable carriers would strategically package content to force customers to purchase bigger and more comprehensive cable packages in order to gain access to the content they wanted. Simply put, customers were being overcharged for what they wanted to subsidize the content that yielded lower demand. Netflix initially delivered content generated by other producers in a more transparent, simple, convenient format. Eventually, Netflix became a content creator and marketplace for its own and others’ content, maintaining a low, simple to understand subscription-based pricing model delivering content conveniently and at scale. Netflix democratized viewable content.

Our intent is to create a marketplace with a low, transparent pricing model expanding access to innovative medicines for everyone.

Our business and pricing model is untested in the pharmaceutical industry, and there can be no assurance that our business model will achieve market acceptance or be able to compete effectively in the pharmaceutical industry or generate sufficient revenue to lead to profitability. Please see the section entitled “Risk Factors — Risks Related to Our Common Stock and Warrants.”

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Our passionate team of changemakers

EQRx was founded on the premise of EQuity, EQuality, and EQual access to medicines for everyone who needs them. We have built a passionate team who are working relentlessly towards advancing our mission.

Our Rebel Rebuilders

To achieve our vision, we have brought together some of the best minds and executors across a range of disciplines, “Rebel Rebuilders” as we like to say, who are often not assembled in a single team. These are industry experts who know how the system works, with the experience, intimate knowledge, and collaborative spirit needed to work together to change the system from within.

These are the best in their respective disciplines:

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Drug hunters that know how to identify and create excellent molecules, such as Carlos Garcia-Echeverria, Ph.D., our Chief of Rx Creation, who brings deep expertise across platforms, modalities, and therapeutic categories including cutting-edge digital technologies, is an inventor on 45 patents and most recently, as chief operating officer of research and global head of research platforms, established Sanofi’s research strategy. Our drug hunters also include advisors Christoph Lengauer, Ph.D., who was a key contributor to close to 10 approved drugs, held leadership positions at Novartis, Sanofi, Blueprint Medicines, and was the founder of multiple innovative companies in therapeutics and diagnostics including Thrive Earlier Detection; Alan Huang, Ph.D. who is a recognized leader in translation research and target discovery, prior leadership roles at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, deep China connections, and currently Chief Scientific Officer of Tango Therapeutics.

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Drug developers and regulatory experts that can devise the most efficient clinical development path to generating clinical evidence required for adoption, including Eric Hedrick, M.D., who helped lead development of number of impactful cancer medicines, including Rituximab, Avastin, Imbruvica, and Brukinsa. Eric has specific expertise in the development of best-in-class oncology agents and in the generation and use of clinical trials data from China in support of global regulatory submissions; and Christian Antoni, M.D., Ph.D., who was part of the first anti-TNF program development and led the development of major drugs in chronic autoimmune diseases, Remicade, Cosentyx and Dupixent. It also includes Sandra Horning, M.D., who is an EQRx co-founder, serves on our Board of Directors and our Mission Advisory Board, has served as chief medical officer and global head of product development at Roche and Genentech where she helped bring 15 new medicines to patients across disease areas spanning cancer, multiple sclerosis, influenza, and blindness.

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Our “Rebel Rebuilders” also include some of the most experienced health tech assessors, payer and health system leaders, and population health experts to establish new population health deals with our growing Global Buyers Club. These include advisors Sir Andrew Dillon who served as chief executive officer of NICE until 2020; David Joyner who was executive vice president of sales & marketing at CVS Health; Michael Seiden, M.D., Ph.D., who was chief medical officer at McKesson Specialty Health as well as president of The US Oncology Network; and Kent Rogers, our Chief Customer Officer, who was most recently responsible for formulary and procurement contracting with pharmaceutical manufacturers for United Health Group’s commercial and government programs. Our Rebel Rebuilders also include our co-founder, Peter Bach, M.D., who, as the former Director of Health Policy & Outcomes for Memorial Sloan Kettering, has often been an outspoken advocate for policy reform and has provided input and perspective on numerous pricing and reimbursement policy proposals.

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Our founders include Alexis Borisy and Melanie Nallicheri. Alexis, our founding Chief Executive Officer and current Executive Chairman of the Board, carries a distinguished track record as a company builder. Of the 13 companies where he has been a founder, chairman, founding chief executive officer, and/or founding investor, nine have been publicly listed and two have been acquired for $2 billion and $5 billion respectively; and at Third Rock Ventures where, as a General Partner for a decade, he and his partners invested in dozens of innovative life science companies. Alexis has over 25 years of experience as a visionary founder of innovative and ground-breaking life science companies.

Melanie Nallicheri, co-founder, President and Chief Executive Officer, is an accomplished leader and executive with decades of experience across the biopharma and payer value chain. She was previously Chief Business Officer and Head of Biopharma at Foundation Medicine, SVP of Corporate Strategy and Business Development at McKesson, and has more than two decades of experience at Booz & Company advising leading biopharma companies and payers, integrated delivery networks, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Her experience and relationships span many aspects of the biotech, diagnostics, distribution and payer value chain including the associated economics of drugs.

As a further testament to our company and mission, we have also established a Mission Advisory Board, which includes the individuals below. Each brings world-leading expertise across key aspects of our business, lends credence to our efforts to build a world-class and new type of pharma company, and provides strategic input to further advance our mission. These deeply experienced, distinguished leaders have driven some of the greatest successes in pharmaceutical research and development, the strongest commitments to science and clinical advancement and patient advocacy, as well as the deepest connectivity with leading academic institutions, payers, and regulators.

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Our people and culture

As of December 31, 2021, we employ over 240 ‘changemakers’ who are committed to advancing our mission and contributing to our strong culture. We have a tremendous focus on execution, “GSD” or “Getting Stuff Done”, and we celebrate “Be you at EQ,” which encourages bold and creative thinking, transparency, trust, and collaboration in everything we do. Further, we have won over 30 industry awards to date, including awards for Best Company Culture and Best Company Leadership team, and we have been recognized for our commitment to diversity with our majority female workforce. We are tremendously proud of the recognition we have received for our people and culture.

Our Board of Directors

Our Board of Directors includes industry leaders and veterans, company builders and investors across life sciences, technology/data, and healthcare. They have been invested in our mission since our inception, and we are grateful for their ongoing guidance and support.

Our investors

We are supported by a top-tier investor base that includes leading life science specialists, world-class mutual funds and private equity funds, sovereign wealth and family offices, and market-leading payers and health systems. We are proud of this diversified group of investors, which includes many of our strategic partners and customers. In building our company, we have capitalized our business with approximately $2.2 billion of gross proceeds to date from this blue-chip syndicate of long-term oriented, preeminent investors, sharing our enthusiasm for our mission and our long-term goals to build “New Pharma” at scale.

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Our competitive advantage

Our business is built around several core tenets and capabilities that we believe will enable us to create “New Pharma” through patient-focused drug engineering, modern drug development and business model innovation, and sustain our competitive advantage over time. The biopharma industry, increasingly complex and burdened by legacy business models, needs a purpose-built solution, and incumbents may be unwilling or unable to replicate our business model. At the same time, new market entrants may find it difficult to replicate the people, assets, and capabilities that we have assembled at the scale required.

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We have assembled a team of world-class drug hunters and developers. Our team, with decades of experience across platforms and modalities, including cutting-edge life and data science tool knowledge, continues to be instrumental in identifying targets and assets that fit our target profile at attractive prices and creating an efficient development path for regulatory approval and adoption.

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We have quickly built a pipeline to accelerate our business model. Since starting operations in the fall of 2019, we have already assembled a pipeline of more than 10 programs, including two late-stage clinical programs, three additional clinical stage programs and several undisclosed preclinical and drug engineering programs. The current portfolio alone represents therapeutic classes and indications that cover more than an estimated $100 billion in global specialty drug spend by 2026.

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We are establishing innovative strategic partnerships with payers and health systems globally. These partnerships, forged by our team with deep expertise and relationships across the payer, provider and integrated delivery network landscape, form the basis of our “Global Buyers Club” — a collection of customers with aligned incentives and deep engagement. These collaborations are rooted in transparency, trust, and a shared vision of value. Assuming we obtain the necessary regulatory approvals, we plan to leverage this platform to commercialize our future medicines, removing costs from the system, providing quantifiable value to our partners and patients.

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We are building a purpose-built business model at scale. Our novel business model, a “first mover advantage” building scale rapidly, can become a competitive moat, which we believe would be successively more difficult to replicate over time as we expand our catalog of medicines, build out our Global Buyers Club, and generate greater savings for payers and patients.

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Building a catalog of affordable medicines

Our growing catalog of medicines in development is targeting therapeutic classes, like oncology and immune-inflammatory diseases, and including indications such as lung cancer, breast cancer, rheumatoid arthritis or atopic dermatitis, that are creating the highest-cost burden to patients and society. These include drug classes with therapies available to patients today that are pressuring healthcare budgets as well as classes of medicines that are anticipated to be blockbusters adding further cost pressure in new and evolving drug classes in the future. The targets we select generally still have multiple years of patent protection securing high prices and large revenues of incumbents before generic entry is anticipated potentially lowering prices. It is in these drug classes, with multi-billion spend and multi-year protection, that we have the opportunity to generate the greatest economic impact and significant savings for our payer and health system partners.

Equally importantly, we need to be convinced that we can create a potential therapy that, if approved, would be equally good or better than competing medicines. A strong efficacy and safety profile along with a significantly lower price creates the opportunity to be included as a therapy option and to be able to capture meaningful market share.

A final selection criterion for inclusion into our portfolio is to have an understanding of the mechanism of action and the underlying biology of disease. We believe this will result in a significantly higher probability of technical success, and while it does not eliminate all risk, we expect our probability of success will be improved versus the industry standard of one to two drug candidates out of ten.

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Our two late-stage clinical programs include:

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Aumolertinib (EQ143) is a third-generation epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR TKI), in-licensed from Hansoh (Shanghai) Healthtech Co., LTD and Jiangsu Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group Company LTD (collectively, Hansoh) in 2020. Aumolertinib has demonstrated clinical activity in late-stage clinical trials in initial treatment of patients with EGFR mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), including positive Phase 3 results, and in treatment of patients with EGFR-mutated NSCLC who have developed resistance after treatment with a first-generation EGFR inhibitor. Clinical trials of aumolertinib have treated over 700 patients. Aumolertinib obtained marketing approval in China for the treatment of patients with metastatic EGFR T790M mutation-positive NSCLC, who have progressed on or after prior EGFR TKI therapy in 2020, and for the first line (1L) treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic NSCLC whose tumors have EGFR sensitive mutations (exon 19 deletions or exon 21 L858R mutations) in 2021. In addition, aumolertinib is currently being investigated in multiple Phase 3 clinical trials in China.

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Sugemalimab (EQ165, also known as CS1001) is an anti-programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) antibody, in-licensed from CStone Pharmaceuticals (CStone) in 2020. Sugemalimab has demonstrated clinical activity in Phase 3 clinical trials in the treatment of Stage III and Stage IV NSCLC, respectively. We believe that sugemalimab is the only immune checkpoint inhibitor which has demonstrated positive Phase 3 results in broadly defined Stage III and Stage IV patient populations, including in patients with Stage III disease treated with either concurrent or sequential chemoradiotherapy. In clinical trials, over 1,600 patients have been treated with sugemalimab either as monotherapy or in combination with other therapies and sugemalimab has obtained marketing approval in China for the 1L treatment of patients with Stage IV NSCLC. In addition, sugemalimab is currently being investigated in a variety of solid tumors and lymphomas and has received orphan drug designation (ODD) in the U.S. for the treatment of T-cell lymphoma as well as breakthrough therapy designation (BTD) in the U.S. and China for the treatment of patients with relapsed or refractory extra-nodal natural killer/T-cell lymphoma (R/R ENKTL).

Based on industry publications and other available third-party market research, we currently anticipate the EGFR inhibitor market reach an expected $10 billion in global specialty drug spend by 2026. We further estimate the PD-1/PD-L1 market for the initial indications we are targeting, including NSCLC, gastric cancer and esophageal cancer, will reach $30 billion in global specialty drug spend by 2026. Taken together, our aumolertinib and sugemalimab programs are targeting indications with an expected $40 billion global specialty drug spend by 2026, with the immunotherapy drug class expected to see an incremental $20 billion in global specialty drug spend by 2026 beyond our initial indications.

We are in ongoing discussions with regulatory authorities in several geographies, and we anticipate our first regulatory filings for marketing approval will occur outside of the United States, starting in the second half of 2022. For aumolertinib, we expect to file for marketing approval for the treatment of NSCLC and for sugemalimab, we expect to file for marking approval for the treatment of Stage IV NSCLC. As we pursue interactions with regulatory authorities, we expect to have more clarity on our regulatory requirements and filing timelines.

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Our other programs in our growing pipeline include clinical and preclinical stage assets in both oncology and immune-inflammatory diseases:

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Lerociclib (EQ132) is a novel, oral, potent, and selective small molecule cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6 inhibitor, which has been studied in a Phase 1 clinical trial in patients with metastatic breast cancer and shown to be highly active in combination with estrogen receptor antagonists with an acceptable tolerability profile. Additionally, lerociclib is being evaluated in a Phase 2 trial in the United States and multiple other countries for the treatment of patients with metastatic breast cancer.

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Nofazinlimab (EQ176, also known as CS1003) is an anti-programmed death-1 (PD-1) antibody and is being evaluated in an ongoing global Phase 3 trial for the treatment of patients with primary liver cancer.

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EQ121 is a novel, highly selective janus kinase-1 (JAK-1) inhibitor that is currently in multiple Phase 1 trials. Additionally, EQ121 is being evaluated in multiple Phase 2 trials in China for the treatment of ankylosing spondylitis, atopic dermatitis, and rheumatoid arthritis.

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Additional undisclosed preclinical programs targeting large oncology and immune-inflammatory indications.

In order to rapidly assemble our portfolio, our current clinical-stage assets were in-licensed from biopharma companies around the world. In addition, in 2021, we have entered into multiple drug engineering collaborations with cutting-edge technology platform companies including leading technology enabled experimental platforms, machine-learning computational platforms and physics based computational platforms, to efficiently engineer molecules against well-specified targets for important chronic and life-threatening conditions. For example, we have announced collaborations with Exscientia and Relay Therapeutics for the engineering of small molecule therapeutics, AbCellera for the engineering of antibody-based therapeutics, Absci for the engineering of protein-based therapeutics, and Evotec for the engineering of multi-modality therapeutics.

With more than 10 programs today covering more than an estimated $100 billion in global specialty drug spend by 2026, our vision is to continue to grow our catalog of medicines in development. We aim to achieve this through a mix of in-licensing, drug engineering collaborations and working with partners that will use our drugs and drug candidates in combination with their experimental medicines. However, the drug development process is inherently uncertain, and there can be no guarantee that we will be able to scale as anticipated, nor that we will be successful in obtaining regulatory approvals or commercializing any approved therapies in these markets.

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Our Global Buyers Club

If our catalog of medicines in development represents our total addressable market, our ability to make our future medicines available to patients and to capture share in those markets is through strategic partnerships with our Global Buyers Club. The objectives of setting up these transparent, engaging, open, and trusted strategic partnerships is to improve access to important, new medicines, lowering patient out-of-pocket burden and to lower pharmacy spend for payers, providers, and integrated delivery networks.

Overview of the “New Deal”

We will enable those goals through radically lower pricing compared to market-leading medicines. In this “New Deal” that we are offering our strategic partners, we are asking them to help us achieve the following objectives:

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reduce administrative hassles for physicians to prescribe and/or administer our future medicines;

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make medicines more affordable for patients, through the elimination or reduction of patient out-of-pocket costs; and

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drive market adoption through “pull-through” efforts instead of traditional, expensive “push” models.

This level of transparency and engagement between a manufacturer and a payer is unprecedented in the biopharma industry. Our goal is to rebuild trust with payers, providers and healthcare systems as true partners, creating a new level of access and collaboration that is needed to drive change together from within the industry.

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Progress assembling the Global Buyers Club

Today, we have partnership arrangements or non-binding memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with strategic partners that cover more than 180 million lives. Importantly, some of our current and potential partners are also investors in our company and represent multiple categories of payers, including integrated delivery networks, regional and national U.S. payers, PBMs, and single-payer systems.

Additionally, we have a strategic collaboration agreement with Abdul Latif Jameel Health, part of the international diversified family business Abdul Latif Jameel. Through this agreement, Abdul Latif Jameel Health is our regulatory and commercial partner in selected markets throughout the Middle East region, as well as in Turkey and all of Africa.

We are working diligently to engage with potential future members of our Global Buyers Club in a dialog around shared goals of lowering the cost burden on patients, making innovative medicines more accessible, and reducing total drug costs to keep health budgets sustainable.

We expect that our future Global Buyers Club will ultimately include a range of private and public payers, including health insurance organizations, PBMs, integrated delivery networks, single payer systems and public payer organizations as well as health systems and clinical practice across geographies.

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Our growth horizons

We expect to incur rapid growth and create value for patients and customers across three growth horizons:

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Today: Building our pipeline and payer partnerships.

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We have announced positive Phase 3 results for our two late-stage clinical programs, aumolertinib and sugemalimab. We are in ongoing discussions with regulatory authorities in several geographies, and we anticipate our first regulatory filings for marketing approval will occur outside of the United States, starting in the second half of 2022.

o

Behind our lead assets are three mid-stage programs, our CDK4/6, PD-1, and JAK-1, as well as several other non-disclosed preclinical assets, creating additional opportunity for future value creation. In addition, we have signed multiple drug engineering collaborations to create additional molecules against pre-specified targets with well-defined profiles to further build our portfolio.

o

In parallel with our drug development efforts, we have partnership arrangements or non-binding MOUs with strategic public and private payers across multiple Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, currently covering more than 180 million lives, that serve as the foundation for the creation of our Global Buyers Club.

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2023 to 2027: Launching medicines, delivering revenue, and scaling our pipeline and payer partnerships.

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If approved, we expect to launch our lead programs – aumolertinib and sugemalimab – on a global basis outside Greater China and begin to generate significant revenue. Later in the decade, we expect to introduce our second wave of medicines, generating additional substantial revenue and delivering greater value to our strategic partners through savings and greater options to patients.

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We expect to sign commercial agreements with a significant number of private and public payers and health system partners in the United States and globally.

o

At this point, these proof points would validate “New Pharma” as an innovative, purpose-built business model that offers high quality, innovative drugs at lower prices through our new payer partnerships. While delivering these proof points, we anticipate that we will continue to grow our pipeline of in-licensed programs, drug engineering collaborations and combination partnerships, as we aim to access new targets and franchises, further adding to our catalog of medicines.

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2028 and beyond: Platform at scale with unprecedented access to innovate medicines for all.

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We expect to have significant commercial volume passing through our platform as members of our Global Buyers Club, including U.S. and international payers and providers, have access to our deep catalog of medicines across multiple therapeutic areas.

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With our platform fully established, we expect to demonstrate meaningful savings to healthcare systems, reinforcing the value of our business model to the Global Buyers Club. We would expect further demand to access our catalog, as well as an expansive list of commercial agreements.

o

We also foresee opportunities for other innovators to place their medicines into our marketplace, which would allow them to leverage our purpose-built business model and access our Global Buyers Club. We expect the combination of a growing catalog of drugs with trusted, strategic partnerships to create a mutually reinforcing flywheel effect, encouraging more innovators to join our marketplace, generating compounding value for all stakeholders, and driving our growth into the next decade.

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Additional information on our pipeline programs

Our late-stage clinical programs

Aumolertinib (EQ143) for treatment of 1L and adjuvant EGFR-mutated NSCLC

We are developing aumolertinib, a novel, irreversible, third generation EGFR TKI for the treatment of EGFR-mutated NSCLC. In July 2020, we in-licensed the exclusive development and commercialization rights of aumolertinib globally, excluding Greater China, from Hansoh. Hansoh retains rights to aumolertinib in Greater China, where it is approved by the National Medical Products Association (NMPA) of China for the treatment of patients with metastatic EGFR T790M mutation-positive NSCLC, who have progressed on or after prior EGFR TKI therapy, and for the 1L treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic NSCLC whose tumors have EGFR sensitive mutations (exon 19 deletions or exon 21 L858R mutations).

Based on the clinical data generated to date with aumolertinib, recent pivotal trial results, and commercial approval in China, we believe that aumolertinib has the potential to expand treatment options for patients with EGFR mutated NSCLC, a market expected to double in the next five years to $10 billion. Our recent discussions with our payer partners suggest strong receptivity for a differentiated therapy option for patients in this space.

As of December 31, 2021, aumolertinib clinical trials, sponsored by Hansoh and conducted in China, have treated over 700 patients including:

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The pivotal, Phase 3 randomized trial in the initial treatment of Chinese patients with locally advanced (Stage IIIB) or metastatic (Stage IV) NSCLC harboring sensitizing EGFR mutations (n=429). The trial compared aumolertinib 110 mg once daily (n=214) to gefitinib 250 mg once daily (n=215). The trial met its primary endpoint of improvement in progression-free survival (PFS). These data supported the approval by the NMPA of China for the 1L treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic NSCLC whose tumors have EGFR sensitive mutations (exon 19 deletions or exon 21 L858R mutations).

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The pivotal, Phase 2 open-label, single-arm trial in Chinese patients with metastatic EGFR-mutated NSCLC who had developed resistance to a first-generation EGFR inhibitor (EGFR T790M mutation-positive NSCLC) (n=244). The trial met the primary endpoint of overall response rate (ORR), and aumolertinib was well-tolerated. These data supported the approval by the NMPA of China for the treatment of patients with metastatic EGFR T790M mutation-positive NSCLC who have progressed on or after prior EGFR TKI therapy.

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Phase 1 trials consisting of two components: a Phase 1a dose escalation phase (n=26) and a Phase 1b dose expansion phase (94 patients), with patients in China, the U.S., Australia, and Korea. The results demonstrated predictable pharmacokinetics (PK) and established the basis for the clinical activity and tolerability profile subsequently confirmed in pivotal trials.

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In February 2021, our partner, Hansoh, disclosed topline results of its Phase 3 trial which demonstrated that aumolertinib met its primary endpoint of improvement of PFS in 1L treatment of patients with locally advanced (Stage IIIB) or metastatic (Stage IV) EGFR-mutated NSCLC. Key secondary endpoints included overall survival (OS), ORR, duration of response (DoR), disease control rate (DCR) and depth in response (DepOR). Additional results from the trial, presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2021 Annual Meeting, demonstrated that aumolertinib has the potential to provide significant benefits as initial treatment for patients with locally advanced or metastatic EGFR-mutated NSCLC. Highlights from the trial include:

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The median PFS, as evaluated by investigators, was estimated at 19.3 months for aumolertinib versus 9.9 months for gefitinib with a hazard ratio of 0.46 (Log-rank p-value < 0.0001). The effect of aumolertinib on OS will be available at a future timepoint when these data are mature.

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At a one-year landmark, 69% of patients treated with aumolertinib were free of disease progression compared to 46% of patients treated with gefitinib.

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Improvement in PFS in patients who received aumolertinib over gefitinib was observed across relevant subgroups of patients, including those with brain metastases.

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Aumolertinib was generally well-tolerated and adverse events (AEs) resulting in patients temporarily stopping or discontinuing treatment were less common with aumolertinib than with gefitinib.

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Drug-related AEs were reported in 197 (92%) and 206 (96%) patients treated with aumolertinib or gefitinib, respectively. Drug-related severe (Grade 3 or higher) AEs were reported in 43 (20%) and 57 (27%) patients treated with aumolertinib or gefitinib, respectively.

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Drug-related serious AEs (SAEs) were reported in 9 (4%) and 24 (11%) patients treated with aumolertinib or gefitinib, respectively. Drug-related SAEs observed in ≥2 patients in either group were less commonly observed with aumolertinib versus gefitinib treatment: hepatic function abnormal (2 patients or 0.9% versus 9 patients or 4.2%), alanine aminotransferase increased (0 patients versus 4 patients or 1.9%), aspartate aminotransferase increased (0 patient versus 4 patients or 1.9%) and drug-induced liver injury (0 patient versus 2 patients or 0.9%).

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The table below describes the commonly reported AEs (≥20% of patients, all causality). In terms of AEs related to the inhibition of wild-type EGFR, both rash (50 patients or 23% versus 89 patients or 41%) and diarrhea (35 patients or 16% versus 77 patients or 36%) were less commonly observed with aumolertinib versus gefitinib. Conversely, elevations in creatine phosphokinase were more common with aumolertinib (76 patients or 35% versus 20 patients or 9.3%) but were not associated with clinical consequences such as kidney or cardiac damage.

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In August 2021, we initiated an open-label clinical trial to evaluate the comparative PK of aumolertinib following oral single dose administration in adult healthy volunteers of different racial and ethnic populations, for the purpose of establishing whether aumolertinib PK are sensitive to ethnicity. We enrolled 45 participants to this trial in the U.S. and New Zealand and completed the trial in December 2021. This trial demonstrated comparable PK in non-Chinese healthy volunteers with a diverse background.

Currently, aumolertinib is being investigated in multiple ongoing clinical trials. In addition to the aforementioned Phase 3 trial in NSCLC, these trials include:

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A Phase 3 trial evaluating the effects of aumolertinib versus placebo as adjuvant therapy in patients with surgically resected Stage II-IIIB EGFR-mutated NSCLC (n=192), being conducted in China and sponsored by Hansoh. The primary endpoint is disease free survival (DFS) as assessed by an independent review committee. The key secondary endpoints include DFS assessed by investigators and OS.

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A Phase 3 trial evaluating the effects of aumolertinib as a maintenance therapy in patients with Stage III unresectable NSCLC (n=150), being conducted in China and sponsored by Hansoh. The primary endpoint is PFS as assessed by an independent review committee. The key secondary endpoints include PFS as assessed by investigators, OS, ORR, DoR, DCR, and time to death/distant metastasis (TTDM).

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A Phase 3 trial evaluating the effects of aumolertinib versus platinum-based chemotherapy in non-canonical EGFR mutations (n=220), being conducted in China and sponsored by Hansoh. The primary endpoint is PFS as assessed by an independent review committee. The key secondary endpoints include PFS as assessed by investigators, ORR, DoR, DCR, DepOR and OS.

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A Phase 3 trial evaluating the effects of aumolertinib in combination with platinum-containing dual-agent agents vs. aumolertinib as 1L for locally advanced or metastatic NSCLC harboring sensitizing EGFR mutations (n=624), being conducted in China and sponsored by Hansoh. The primary endpoint is PFS as assessed by an independent review committee. The key secondary endpoints ORR, DoR, DCR, DepOR, PFS and OS.

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We intend to conduct additional, multi-regional clinical trials to support the approval and adoption of aumolertinib in multiple geographies. We are currently in ongoing regulatory discussions and expect these trials to support the expansion of access to aumolertinib globally for the initial treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic EGFR-mutated NSCLC.

As part of our differentiated business model and collaboration agreements with payers, we also intend to conduct clinical trials to generate evidence to support the adoption of aumolertinib in multiple geographies across the globe.

Sugemalimab (EQ165) for NSCLC and other cancers

We are developing sugemalimab, a monoclonal antibody targeting PD-L1, for the treatment of NSCLC, with Phase 3 clinical trials in both metastatic (Stage IV) and locally advanced/unresectable (Stage III) disease, as well as additional solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. Authorized by a company based in the U.S., Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Nasdaq: LGND), sugemalimab was developed using the OmniRat transgenic animal platform, which can generate fully human antibodies in one stop. In October 2020, we in-licensed the exclusive development and commercialization rights of sugemalimab globally, excluding Greater China, from CStone. Pfizer, Inc. holds the exclusive development and commercialization rights to sugemalimab within Greater China, where it is approved by the NMPA of China for 1L treatment of patients with Stage IV NSCLC. Sugemalimab is the only PD-L1 inhibitor to have demonstrated the potential for progression-free survival benefit in broadly defined Stage III (locally advanced/unresectable) and Stage IV (metastatic) NSCLC patient populations, inclusive of Stage III patients treated with either concurrent or sequential chemoradiotherapy.

In October 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted sugemalimab ODD for the treatment of patients with T-cell lymphoma and both the FDA and the NMPA granted BTD for the treatment of patients with R/R ENKTL, a subtype of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Based on clinical data generated to date and recent pivotal trial results, we believe that sugemalimab has the potential to treat patients with Stage III and Stage IV NSCLC, a market estimated to be approximately $25 billion in global specialty drug spend by 2026. Our recent payer discussions suggest strong receptivity for a broadly effective and competitively priced immune checkpoint inhibitor.

As of December 31, 2021, sugemalimab clinical trials, sponsored by CStone, have treated over 1,600 patients including, but not limited to:

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The Phase 3 double-blind, randomized GEMSTONE-302 trial, conducted in China, evaluating the addition of sugemalimab to platinum-based chemotherapy as an initial treatment for Stage IV squamous or non-squamous NSCLC. The GEMSTONE-302 trial met its primary endpoint of improvement in PFS for sugemalimab plus chemotherapy (n=320) as compared to chemotherapy alone (n=159). The benefit of adding sugemalimab to chemotherapy was observed regardless of PD-L1 expression level or pathologic subtype of NSCLC (squamous versus non-squamous), and the tolerability profile was acceptable. In a planned interim analysis, sugemalimab combined with chemotherapy met its key secondary endpoint of prolongation of OS and the benefit was observed regardless of PD-L1 expression level or pathologic subtype of NSCLC.

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The Phase 3 double-blind, randomized GEMSTONE-301 trial, conducted in China, evaluating sugemalimab as consolidation therapy in patients with locally advanced, unresectable Stage III NSCLC without disease progression after either concurrent or sequential chemoradiotherapy. The GEMSTONE-301 trial met its primary endpoint of improvement in PFS for sugemalimab (n=255) as compared to placebo (n=126). Sugemalimab demonstrated an acceptable tolerability profile, with no new safety signals observed.

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An ongoing Phase 2 single-arm, registrational trial, conducted in the U.S. and China, evaluating the activity and tolerability of sugemalimab in the treatment of adult patients with relapsed/refractory ENKTL (n=80).

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Completed Phase 1 and 1b trials for patients with a variety of advanced solid tumors.

In August 2020, our partner, CStone, first announced that its Phase 3 GEMSTONE-302 trial met its primary endpoint in Stage IV NSCSLC. The most recent data, as of March 2021, was presented in September 2021 at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer 2021 World Conference on Lung Cancer (IASLC 2021 WCLC) and was published in January 2022 in The Lancet Oncology. Highlights from the GEMSTONE-302 trial include:

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Sugemalimab combined with chemotherapy met the primary endpoint of improvement in PFS, as evaluated by investigators as compared with chemotherapy and placebo at the time of the pre-specified event-driven analysis. In a planned interim analysis, sugemalimab combined with chemotherapy met its key secondary endpoint of prolongation of OS and the benefit was observed regardless of PD-L1 expression level or pathologic subtype of NSCLC.

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Other key secondary endpoints included PFS as assessed by an independent review committee, PFS as assess by investigator in patients with PD-L1 expression ≥1%, ORR, DoR, and safety.

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The findings showed that sugemalimab plus chemotherapy in Stage IV NSCLC patients resulted in statistically significant improvement in PFS. The median PFS was estimated at 9.0 months for the sugemalimab and chemotherapy combination group versus 4.9 months for the chemotherapy and placebo group with a hazard ratio of 0.48 (Log-rank p-value <0.0001).

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A higher ORR (63% versus 40%, p-value < 0.0001) and longer median DoR (9.8 versus 4.4 months) were significantly improved with the addition of sugemalimab to chemotherapy as compared to chemotherapy alone.

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The benefit of the addition of sugemalimab to chemotherapy was observed regardless of PD-L1 expression level, patient functional status, and the presence or absence of brain or liver metastases.

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Sugemalimab added to chemotherapy was generally well-tolerated and no new safety signals were identified.

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Treatment-related AEs were reported in nearly all patients in both groups with 317 (99%) and 153 (96%) patients in the sugemalimab/chemotherapy and chemotherapy groups, respectively. Treatment-related severe (Grade 3 or higher) AEs were reported in 182 (57%) and 91 (57%) of patients in the sugemalimab/chemotherapy and chemotherapy groups, respectively.

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Treatment-related SAEs were reported in 73 (23%) and 31 (20%) patients in the sugemalimab/chemotherapy and chemotherapy groups, respectively. Commonly reported (≥2% of patients in either group) treatment-related SAEs included the following (sugemalimab/chemotherapy versus chemotherapy, respectively): anaemia (3.4% versus 3.1%), pneumonia (3.1% versus 4.4%), platelet count decreased (3.1% versus 2.5%), and neutrophil count decreased (1.9% versus 2.5%).

In May 2021, our partner, CStone, first announced that its Phase 3 GEMSTONE-301 trial met its primary endpoint in Stage III NSCLC. The most recent data, as of March 2021, was presented in September 2021 at

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the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2021 and was published in January 2022 in The Lancet Oncology. Highlights from the GEMSTONE-301 trial include:

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Sugemalimab met the primary endpoint of improvement of PFS, as assessed by an independent review committee compared to placebo at the time of the pre-specified interim analysis. Key secondary endpoints included OS, PFS as assessed by investigators, ORR, DoR, and time to death/distant metastasis (TTDM).

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The findings showed that sugemalimab as a consolidation therapy in Stage III NSCLC patients without disease progression after chemoradiotherapy resulted in statistically significant improvement in PFS as assessed by an independent review committee. The median PFS was estimated at 9.0 months for the sugemalimab group versus 5.8 months for the placebo group with a hazard ratio of 0.64 (Log-rank p-value = 0.0026).

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The clinical benefit of sugemalimab as a consolidation therapy in Stage III NSCLC patients without disease progression after chemoradiotherapy was observed regardless of whether patients received concurrent or sequential chemoradiotherapy prior to sugemalimab.

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Sugemalimab was generally well-tolerated and no new safety signals were identified.

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Treatment-related AEs were reported in 193 (76%) and 73 (58%) patients in the sugemalimab and placebo groups, respectively. Treatment-related severe (Grade 3 or higher) AEs were reported in 26 (10%) and 7 (6%) patients in the sugemalimab and placebo groups, respectively. Commonly reported (≥ 2% of patients in either group) treatment-related severe AEs included the following (sugemalimab versus placebo, respectively): immune-mediated pneumonitis (2.4% versus 0) and pneumonia (2.4% versus 0.8%).

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Treatment-related SAEs were reported in 38 (15%) and 12 (10%) patients in the sugemalimab and placebo groups, respectively.

We believe the results of the GEMSTONE-301 and GEMSTONE-302 trials will advance the clinical application of immune checkpoint inhibitors and improve the availability of treatment for many patients with Stage III and Stage IV NSCLC. We expect these trials will support our ongoing regulatory discussions in multiple geographies regarding approval of sugemalimab for the treatment of Stage III and Stage IV NSCLC.

Currently, sugemalimab is being investigated in multiple ongoing clinical trials. In addition to the aforementioned Phase 3 studies in NSCLC, these studies include:

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A Phase 2 pivotal trial evaluating sugemalimab in the treatment of relapsed/refractory extranodal natural killer T-cell lymphoma (n=80), being conducted in China and the U.S. and sponsored by CStone. The primary endpoint is ORR, as assessed by an independent review committee according to Lugano 2014 classification. The key secondary endpoints include ORR assessed by investigators, complete remission rate (CRR), partial remission rate (PRR), time to response (TTR), and DoR.

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A Phase 3 trial evaluating sugemalimab in addition to chemotherapy in the initial treatment of metastatic gastric cancer (n=480), being conducted in China and sponsored by CStone. This trial has co-primary endpoints of overall and progression-free survival, as assessed by an independent review committee. Key secondary endpoints include ORR, DoR, and safety.

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A Phase 3 trial evaluating sugemalimab in addition to chemotherapy in the initial treatment of metastatic esophageal cancer (n=540), being conducted in China and sponsored by CStone. This trial has co-primary endpoints of overall and progression-free survival. Key secondary endpoints include ORR, DoR, and safety.

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We intend to conduct additional, multi-regional clinical trials to support the approval and adoption of sugemalimab in multiple geographies. We are currently in ongoing regulatory discussions and expect these trials to support the expansion of access to sugemalimab globally for the treatment of NSCLC patients.

As part of our differentiated business model and collaboration agreements with payers, we also intend to conduct clinical trials to generate evidence to support the adoption of sugemalimab in multiple geographies across the globe.

Additional clinical-stage assets

Lerociclib (EQ132) for estrogen receptor positive (HR+)/HER2- receptor negative (HER2-) breast cancer

We are developing lerociclib, a novel, oral, potent, and selective small molecule cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6 inhibitor for use in combination with other targeted therapies for the treatment of patients with HR+/HER2-metastatic breast cancer (mBC). In July 2020, we in-licensed the exclusive development and commercialization rights of lerociclib for the U.S., Europe, Japan, and all other global markets, excluding the Asia-Pacific region (except Japan), from G1 Therapeutics (G1), a U.S. based, Nasdaq listed biotech company. Genor Biopharma (Genor) holds the development and commercialization rights to lerociclib within the Asia-Pacific region (except Japan).

Currently, lerociclib is being evaluated in the following clinical trials:

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A Phase 2 trial evaluating lerociclib in addition to standard endocrine therapy patients with HR+/HER2- mBC in the initial treatment or relapsed disease settings (n=100), being conducting in the United States and multiple other countries and sponsored by us. The primary endpoint is safety, including the incidence of AEs and SAEs by line of therapy.

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A Phase 1/2 clinical trial evaluating lerociclib in combination with the estrogen receptor antagonist fulvestrant in patients with HR+/HER2-negative locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer after endocrine therapy failure (n=110), being conducted in the United Kingdom, Georgia, Moldova, and Bulgaria, and sponsored by G1. The trial is designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability and antitumor activity and identify the dose and schedule for future trials of lerociclib.

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A Phase 1/2 clinical trial evaluating lerociclib in combination with osimertinib in EGFR-mutated NSCLC (n=36), being conducted in the U.S., Hong Kong, Korea, and Taiwan, and sponsored by G1. The trial is designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability and antitumor activity and identify the dose and schedule for future trials of lerociclib.

At the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) in December 2019, G1 reported preliminary Phase 1/2 clinical data in HR+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer. Highlights from the trial included:

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Continuously dosed, twice-daily lerociclib, in combination with fulvestrant, was well tolerated. Additionally, lerociclib could be dosed continuously without need for interruption for management of neutropenia.

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Coadministration of fulvestrant had minimal impact on the PK of lerociclib.

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The clinical activity data were consistent with those from other approved CDK4/6 inhibitors when used in combination with fulvestrant.

Taken together, these results demonstrate the potentially differentiated clinical profile of lerociclib in combination with fulvestrant versus currently marketed CDK4/6 inhibitors, and suggest that lerociclib can be administered without need for dose interruption due to neutropenia, one of the main toxicities associated with

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CDK4/6 inhibition. Some CDK4/6 therapies require frequent blood testing for neutropenia and lerociclib has the potential to offer fewer office visits and blood draws, improving the experience for patients and reducing the burden on physician offices and costs to the healthcare system.

Nofazinlimab (EQ176) for advanced solid tumors

We are developing nofazinlimab, a novel, anti-programmed death-1 (PD-1) monoclonal antibody for the treatment of advanced solid tumors. In July 2020, the FDA granted nofazinlimab ODD for the treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and in October 2020, we in-licensed the exclusive development and commercialization rights of nofazinlimab globally, excluding Greater China, from CStone. CStone retains rights to nofazinlimab (CS1003) in Greater China.

Our partner, CStone, reported that its Phase 1 trial in China (n=19) demonstrated that nofazinlimab monotherapy was well-tolerated at 60mg and 200mg Q3W with no dose-limiting toxicities (DLT) observed and the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) not reached. CStone’s Phase 1b trial (n=20) evaluated nofazinlimab in combination with lenvatinib for the treatment of HCC and demonstrated an ORR of 40% and median PFS of 8.4 months. Currently, a global, randomized, Phase 3 trial is evaluating nofazinlimab in combination with lenvatinib in initial treatment of patients with advanced unresectable HCC (n=525). The trial is being conducted in multiple countries, including China and the U.S., and is sponsored by CStone. The co-primary endpoints are PFS, as assessed by an independent review committee, and OS. The key secondary endpoints include PFS as assessed by investigators, ORR, DCR, DoR, and time to progression (TTP).

EQ121 for rheumatoid arthritis and other I&I indications

We are developing EQ121, a highly selective, novel, JAK-1 inhibitor for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other immune-inflammatory diseases. In April 2020, we in-licensed the exclusive development and commercialization rights of EQ121 globally, excluding Greater China, from Lynk Pharmaceutical (Hangzhou) Co, Ltd. (Lynk Pharmaceuticals). Lynk Pharmaceuticals retains rights to EQ121 (LNK-207) in Greater China.

Currently, we are conducting multiple Phase 1 trials in Australia and New Zealand which include both healthy subjects as well as RA patients. In the first substudy, the primary endpoint is to evaluate the safety and tolerability of EQ121 following oral single and multiple ascending dose administration in adult healthy volunteers; the key secondary endpoint is to characterize the PK of EQ121 following single and multiple ascending dose administration. In the second substudy, the primary endpoint is to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and PK of multiple doses of EQ121 in adults with RA who are on a stable oral methotrexate (MTX) regimen; key secondary endpoints include evaluation of the effect of MTX on the PK of EQ121 and the effect of EQ121 on the PK of MTX. Lynk Pharmaceuticals is also conducting a Phase 1 trial in China in healthy subjects, and multiple Phase 2 trials in China for the treatment ankylosing spondylitis, atopic dermatitis, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Preclinical programs and drug engineering collaborations

In additional to our five clinical-stage programs, our preclinical pipeline includes several undisclosed preclinical assets and discovery programs through our drug engineering collaborations. These assets and programs are focused on oncology and immune-inflammatory diseases that are expected to have large, multi-billion-dollar market opportunities.

We have entered into multiple drug engineering collaborations with cutting-edge technology platform companies including leading technology enabled experimental platforms, machine-learning computational platforms and physics based computational platforms. These are multi-year, multi-target collaborations intended to accelerate the engineering of therapeutic drug candidates against selective targets across a range of therapeutic areas, further expanding the breadth of our pipeline of novel therapies when combined with our internal drug development efforts. We will carefully evaluate additional opportunities to collaborate with

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additional drug discovery companies on cost-effectively creating new molecules should that make sense financially and from a business point of view.

In June 2021, we entered into our first drug engineering collaboration with Exscientia, which we then followed by agreements with AbCellera (August 2021), Relay Therapeutics (August 2021), Absci (October 2021) and Evotec (November 2021). We believe these drug engineering collaborations have the potential to help accelerate growth of our catalog of medicines.

We do not currently have, and may never have, any products approved for commercial sale and have not generated any revenue to date, and so may never become profitable. In addition, our business and pricing model is untested and may never be successful or generate sufficient revenue to lead to profitability. We also note that the drug development process is inherently uncertain and cannot be fully de-risked, and there is no guarantee that the clinical trials we may conduct in the future will provide us with positive or actionable data that will facilitate efficient clinical development. For more details regarding these and other risks that are material to our business, operations and future share price, please see the section entitled “Risk Factors — Risks Related to Our Common Stock and Warrants.”

Licenses and collaborations

A key component of our strategy is to build our catalog of affordable medicines. We plan to do this using multiple strategies, including entering into agreements to in-license assets, drug engineering collaborations, and combination programs.

Material license agreements

We believe that the license and collaboration agreements for our two late-stage clinical assets, aumolertinib (EQ143) and sugemalimab (EQ165) are material agreements in light of our current near-term business plans and development strategy. Our agreement with CStone, described in more detail below, also gives us rights to nofazinlimab (EQ176, also known as CS1003), an anti-PD-1 antibody that is in an ongoing Phase 3 trial for the treatment of liver cancer patients, and our agreements with Lynk Pharmaceuticals for EQ121 and with G1 for Lerociclib, also described below, further support our near-term business plans and development strategy. We intend to continue into additional in-licenses for assets in various stages of development to build our catalog of affordable medicines.

Aumolertinib (EQ143)

In July 2020, we entered into a license agreement with Hansoh under which we acquired a worldwide exclusive license for the research, development, and commercialization of aumolertinib (EQ143) (also/previously known as almonertinib), for any and all uses for the treatment of cancer, cancer-related and immune-inflammatory diseases in humans at our own cost and expense, with the exception of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and its territories and possessions, including, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan (the Hansoh Territory). We also received a non-exclusive license in the Hansoh Territory to research, develop and export aumolertinib for purposes of obtaining regulatory approval for, and commercialization of aumolertinib for use outside of the Hansoh Territory.

We made an upfront non-refundable, non-creditable payment of $25.0 million to Hansoh, and if we succeed in developing and commercializing aumolertinib (EQ143), Hansoh will be eligible to receive (i) up to $90.0 million in development and regulatory milestone payments, and (ii) up to $420.0 million in commercial sales milestone payments. In the event that Hansoh elects to opt out of sharing certain global development costs in accordance with the terms of the license agreement, the total potential development and regulatory payments Hansoh is eligible to receive will be reduced to $55.0 million, and the total potential commercial sales milestone payments will be reduced to $350.0 million.

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Hansoh is also eligible to receive royalties on worldwide net sales of any products containing aumolertinib (EQ143), which range from mid-single digits to low teens, subject to potential reduction following the launch of certain generic products. The royalties for aumolertinib (EQ143) will expire on a product-by-product and country-by-country basis upon the later to occur of (i) the expiration of all valid patent claims covering the compounds in such country, (ii) the expiration of all regulatory exclusivities for aumolertinib (EQ143) in a country, or (iii) 11 years following the first commercial sale of aumolertinib (EQ143) in such country.

We have the right to terminate the license agreement with Hansoh for any or no reason upon at least 180 days prior written notice to Hansoh. Either party may terminate the license agreement in its entirety for the other party’s material breach if such party fails to cure the breach. Either party may also terminate the agreement in its entirety upon certain insolvency events involving the other party.

Sugemalimab (EQ165) and Nofazinlimab (EQ176)

In October 2020, we entered into a license agreement with CStone under which we acquired a worldwide exclusive license for the research, development, and commercialization of sugemalimab (EQ165) and nofazinlimab (EQ176) for any and all uses at our own cost and expense, with the exception of Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau (the CStone Territory).

We made an upfront non-refundable, non-creditable payment of $150.0 million, including $10.0 million as CStone received notification that the FDA designated sugemalimab (EQ165) as a breakthrough therapy. If we succeed in developing and commercializing sugemalimab (EQ165), CStone will be eligible to receive (i) up to $107.5 million in development and regulatory milestone payments, and (ii) up to $565.0 million in sales milestone payments. If we succeed in developing and commercializing nofazinlimab (EQ176), CStone will be eligible to receive (i) up to $75.0 million in development and regulatory milestone payments, and (ii) up to $405.0 million in sales milestone payments.

CStone is also eligible to receive royalties on worldwide (excluding the CStone Territory) net sales of any products containing sugemalimab (EQ165) or nofazinlimab (EQ176) ranging from the low teens to the high teens for sugemalimab and from the mid-single digits to teens for nofazinlimab (EQ176), subject to potential reduction following the launch of certain generic products. The royalties for sugemalimab (EQ165) and nofazinlimab (EQ176) will expire on a product-by-product and country-by-country basis upon the later to occur of (i) the expiration of all valid patent claims covering the compounds in a country, (ii) the expiration of all regulatory exclusivities for sugemalimab (EQ165) or nofazinlimab (EQ176) in a country, or (iii) eleven years following the first commercial sale of sugemalimab (EQ165) or nofazinlimab (EQ176) in a country.

We are responsible for the costs associated with the development and regulatory approvals of sugemalimab (EQ165) and of nofazinlimab (EQ176) in our territory. We are also required to reimburse CStone for any costs it incurs in our territory following the execution of the license agreement for development activities that were ongoing at the time the license agreement became effective. Additionally, during the term of the license agreement, either party may propose the development of a combination study with sugemalimab (EQ165) or nofazinlimab (EQ176). If both parties agree to participate in the combination study, the costs incurred will be split between the two parties based upon the terms provided for in a separate written agreement detailing each party’s rights and obligations with respect to the development of the combination regimen.

We have the right to terminate the license agreement with CStone prior to the first regulatory approval for a licensed product (EQ165 or EQ176) in the EQRx Territory for any or no reason upon providing prior written notice to CStone and after the first regulatory approval for a licensed product (EQ165 or EQ176) in the EQRx Territory or any or no reason upon at least nine months prior written notice to CStone. Either party may terminate the license agreement in its entirety for the other party’s material breach if such party fails to cure the breach. Either party may also terminate the agreement in its entirety upon certain insolvency events involving the other party.

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Lerociclib

In July 2020, we entered into a license agreement with G1 under which we acquired an exclusive license for the research, development, and commercialization of lerociclib for the treatment, using an oral-only dosage administration by continuous administration for any and all indications in humans through the inhibition of CDK4/6 worldwide, with the exception of Australia, Bangladesh, Hong Kong Special Administration Region, India, Indonesia, Macau Special Administration Region, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Pakistan, People’s Republic of China, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam (the G1 Territory). The license agreement also provides us with a non-exclusive license in the G1 Territory to manufacture lerociclib for purposes of obtaining regulatory approval for, and commercialization of lerociclib for the treatment, using an oral-only dosage administration by continuous administration for any and all indications in humans through the inhibition of CDK4/6 outside of the G1 Territory. We are obligated to use diligent efforts to develop lerociclib and maintain at least one regulatory approval for one indication in each major market in the territory.

Under the terms of our license agreement with G1, we received an exclusive license to develop lerociclib using an oral-only dosage administration by continuous administration for any and all indications in humans through the inhibition of CDK4/6 at our own cost and expense in our license territory. We are also required to reimburse G1 for any costs it incurs in our territory following the execution of the license agreement for development activities that were ongoing at the time the license agreement became effective.

We made an upfront non-refundable, non-creditable payment of $20.0 million. If we succeed in developing and commercializing lerociclib, G1 will be eligible to receive (i) up to $40.0 million in development and regulatory milestone payments, and (ii) up to $250.0 million in sales milestone payments. G1 is also eligible to receive royalties on worldwide net sales of any products containing lerociclib which range from mid-single digits to mid-teens, subject to potential reduction following the launch of certain generic products. The royalties will expire on a product-by-product and country-by-country basis until the later to occur of (i) the expiration of all valid patent claims covering lerociclib in a country, or (ii) 10 years following the first commercial sale of lerociclib in a country.

We have the right to terminate the license agreement with G1 for any or no reason upon prior written notice to G1. Either party may terminate the license agreement in its entirety for the other party’s material breach if such other party fails to cure the breach. Either party may also terminate the agreement in its entirety upon certain insolvency events involving the other party.

EQ121

In April 2020, we entered into a license agreement with Lynk Pharmaceuticals under which we acquired an exclusive license for the research, development and commercialization of LNK-207, a novel, highly selective JAK-1 inhibitor which we refer to as EQ121, worldwide, with the exception of the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan (the Lynk Territory). The license agreement also provides us with a non-exclusive license in the Lynk Territory to research and develop EQ121 for purposes of obtaining regulatory approval, and to manufacture and/or package EQ121 for use outside of the Lynk Territory. We are obligated to use diligent efforts to develop and commercialize at least one product containing EQ121.

Under the terms of our license agreement with Lynk Pharmaceuticals, we received an exclusive license to develop EQ121 for any and all uses at our own cost and expense in our territory. We made an upfront non-refundable, non-creditable payment. If we succeed in developing and commercializing EQ121, Lynk Pharmaceuticals will be eligible to receive up to (i) $52.0 million in development and regulatory milestone payments, and (ii) $120.0 million in sales milestone payments. Lynk Pharmaceuticals is also eligible to receive royalties on worldwide net sales of any products containing EQ121 which range from mid-single digits to low teens, subject to potential reduction following the launch of certain generic products. The royalties will expire on a product-by-product and country-by-country basis until the latest to occur of (i) the expiration date in such country of the last to expire issued patent with a valid claim covering such product in such country, (ii) the

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expiration of non-patent regulatory exclusivity in such country and (iii) a fixed time period following the first commercial sale of a product in a country.

We have the right to terminate the license agreement with Lynk Pharmaceuticals for any or no reason upon prior written notice to Lynk Pharmaceuticals. Either party may terminate the license agreement in its entirety for the other party’s material breach if such party fails to cure the breach. Either party may also terminate the agreement in its entirety upon certain insolvency events involving the other party.

Competition

Since our founding, our strategy has been focused on developing an innovative business model where we have the potential to bring novel, patent-protected medicines to the market at radically lower prices through our strategic partnerships with our Global Buyers Club. While we do not believe there are currently any direct competitors that are positioned to offer their customers the broad and growing catalog of programs and shared economic incentives that we do, there are many companies that compete with certain components of our “New Pharma” solution.

The biopharma industry is highly competitive and dynamic, driven by rapidly advancing technologies and resulting in a proliferation of assets within drug classes. Our pipeline faces competition from many different sources, including major pharmaceutical, specialty pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, drug engineering platforms, academic institutions, government agencies and public and private research institutions. Any product candidates that we successfully develop and commercialize will compete with existing treatments and new treatments that may become available in the future.

Many of our competitors, either alone or with their collaboration partners, have significantly greater financial resources and expertise in research and development, preclinical testing, clinical trials, manufacturing, and marketing than we do. Smaller or early-stage companies may also prove to be significant competitors, particularly through collaborative arrangements with larger and more established companies. These competitors will also compete with us in recruiting and retaining qualified scientific and management personnel, establishing clinical trial sites and in patient accrual to clinical trials, and acquiring programs complementary to our pipeline, among others.

Further, biopharma companies have not historically offered one transparent price for a branded drug but instead multiple prices that can vary widely for each payer, based on financial incentives offered to each gatekeeper in the value chain between the drug manufacturer to the patient. Due to this lack of transparency, we may not be aware of the financial or other incentives that our competitors are offering their customers or how their customer value proposition compares to ours.

Our commercial potential could be negatively impacted if competitors:

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Develop and commercialize products that are safer, more effective, have fewer or less severe side effects, or are more convenient.

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Develop and implement strategies that erode our anticipated cost advantage, including by lowering list prices, developing partnerships with payers, or offering other incentives.

With respect to the key success factors in our industry, including clinical efficacy and safety, breadth and depth of programs, affordability for patients and health systems, and quality of payer partnerships, we believe that our company and innovative business model will allow us to compete favorably.

Intellectual property

We seek to protect the intellectual property and proprietary technology that we consider important to our business, including by pursuing patent applications that cover our product candidates and methods of using

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the same, as well as any other relevant inventions and improvements that are considered commercially important to the development of our business. We also rely on trade secrets, know-how and continuing technological innovation to develop and maintain our proprietary and intellectual property position. Our commercial success depends, in part, on our ability to obtain, maintain, enforce, and protect our intellectual property and other proprietary rights for the technology, inventions, and improvements we consider important to our business, and to defend any patents we may own or in-license in the future, prevent others from infringing any patents we may own or in-license in the future, preserve the confidentiality of our trade secrets, and operate without infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating the valid and enforceable patents and proprietary rights of third parties.

As with other biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, our ability to maintain and solidify our proprietary and intellectual property position for our product candidates and technologies will depend on our success in obtaining effective patent claims and enforcing those claims, if granted. However, our pending patent applications, and any patent applications that we may in the future file or license from third parties, may not result in the issuance of patents and any issued patents we may obtain do not guarantee us the right to practice our technology in relation to the commercialization of our products.

Patent portfolio

Aumolertinib (EQ143)

As of March 15, 2021, we exclusively licensed three patent families from Hansoh that cover aumolertinib. The first patent family, covering the composition of matter and methods of using aumolertinib, includes two U.S. granted patents with claims covering aumolertinib. This family includes cases that are granted in Australia, Europe, Japan, Russia and South Africa and pending in Brazil, Canada, India, South Korea and Mexico. The United States granted patents and any foreign patent issuing from this patent family are scheduled to expire in 2035, excluding any additional term for patent term extension. The second patent family, covering certain solid forms and salts of aumolertinib, includes a granted U.S. patent with claims covering a specific crystalline form of aumolertinib and a pending U.S. application. This family also includes cases that are granted in Australia, Europe and Russia and pending in Canada, Japan and South Korea. The U.S. granted patent and any U.S. or foreign patent issuing from this patent family are scheduled to expire in 2036, excluding any additional term for patent term extension. The third patent family, covering certain formulations of aumolertinib, is pending in the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. Any U.S. or foreign patent issuing from this patent family is scheduled to expire in 2037, excluding any additional term for patent term adjustment or patent term extension.

Sugemalimab (EQ165)

As of March 15, 2021, we exclusively licensed one patent family from CStone that covers compositions of matter and methods of using sugemalimab. This family includes a granted U.S. patent covering the composition of matter, and a pending U.S. application covering additional compositions and methods of treatment. This family also includes cases that are granted in Russia and pending in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Europe, Indonesia, India, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Thailand. The U.S. granted patent accrued patent term adjustment and will expire in 2037, excluding any additional term for patent term extension. Any additional U.S. or foreign patent issuing from this patent family is scheduled to expire in 2036, excluding any additional term for patent term extension.

Lerociclib (EQ132)

As of March 15, 2021, we exclusively licensed 12 patent families from G1. The first family covers the composition of matter of lerociclib and includes six granted U.S. patents and a pending U.S. application. This family also includes cases that are granted in Canada, Israel, Japan, Mexico and Russia and pending in Brazil. The U.S. granted patents and any U.S. or foreign patent issuing from this patent family is scheduled to expire in 2031, excluding any additional term for patent term extension. The second family covers methods of using

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lerociclib for the treatment of certain retinoblastoma protein (Rb) positive cancers and includes three granted U.S. patents and a pending U.S. application. This family also includes cases that are granted in Japan and pending in Europe and Canada. The U.S. granted patents and any U.S. or foreign patent issuing from this patent family are scheduled to expire in 2034, excluding any additional term for patent term extension. The third family covers methods of using lerociclib for the treatment of certain B and T cell cancers and includes one granted U.S. patent and one pending U.S. application. This family also includes cases that are granted in Japan and pending in Canada and Europe. The granted U.S. patent and any U.S. or foreign patent issuing from this patent family is scheduled to expire in 2034, excluding any additional term for patent term extension. The fourth family covers methods of using lerociclib using certain combinations and dosing regimens in Rb positive cancers, and includes one granted U.S. patent, one pending U.S. application, and one pending European application. The granted U.S. patent and pending applications, if granted, will expire in 2035, excluding any additional term for patent term extension. The fifth patent family covers methods of synthesizing lerociclib and includes one granted U.S. patent and one pending U.S. application. This family also includes cases that are pending in the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), Brazil, Canada, the Eurasian Patent convention, Europe, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa. The U.S. granted patent and any U.S. or foreign patent issuing from this patent family is scheduled to expire in 2037. The sixth patent family covers certain solid forms of lerociclib. This patent family includes cases that are pending in the United States, the ARIPO, Brazil, Canada, the Eurasian Patent convention, Europe, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa. The pending applications, if granted, will expire in 2038, excluding any additional term for patent term adjustment or patent term extension. The seventh family covers certain methods of synthesizing lactams, and includes two granted U.S. patents and patents granted in Canada and Israel. The U.S. granted patents, and any U.S. foreign patent issuing from this patent family, are scheduled to expire in 2033. The remaining patent families are directed to additional methods of treatment and dosage forms, and are pending in the U.S. and other major jurisdictions, including Brazil, Canada, Europe, Israel, Japan, and Mexico. Any U.S. or foreign patent issuing from these patent families is scheduled to expire ranging from 2038 to 2040, excluding any additional term for patent term adjustment or patent term extension.

Nofazinlimab (EQ176)

As of March 15, 2021, we exclusively licensed one patent family from CStone that covers compositions of matter and methods of using nofazinlimab (EQ176). This family includes a pending U.S. patent, as well as cases that are granted in Australia and South Korea and pending in Brazil, Canada, Europe, Israel, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Thailand. Any U.S. or foreign patent issuing from this patent family is scheduled to expire in 2036, excluding any additional term for patent term adjustment or patent term extension.

EQ121

As of March 15, 2021, we exclusively licensed one patent family from Lynk Pharmaceuticals that covers compositions of matter and methods of using EQ121. This family includes a pending U.S. patent as well as cases that are pending in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Europe, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Thailand. Any U.S. or foreign patent issuing from this patent family is scheduled to expire in 2039, excluding any additional term for patent term adjustment or patent term extension.

Trade secrets

In addition to patents, we rely on trade secrets and know-how to develop and maintain our competitive position. We typically rely on trade secrets to protect aspects of our business that are not amenable to, or that we do not consider appropriate for, patent protection. We protect our trade secrets and know-how by establishing confidentiality agreements and invention assignment agreements with our employees, consultants, scientific advisors, contractors, and partners. These agreements generally require that all confidential information developed or made known during the course of an individual or entity’s relationship with us be kept confidential during and after the relationship. These agreements also generally provide that all inventions resulting from

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work performed for us or relating to our business and conceived or completed during the period of employment or assignment, as applicable, shall be our exclusive property. In addition, we take other appropriate precautions, such as physical and technological security measures, to guard against misappropriation of our proprietary information by third parties.

Government regulation

The FDA and other regulatory authorities at federal, state, and local levels, as well as in foreign countries, extensively regulate, among other things, the research, development, testing, manufacture, quality control, import, export, safety, effectiveness, labeling, packaging, storage, distribution, recordkeeping, approval, advertising, promotion, marketing, post-approval monitoring and post-approval reporting of drugs and biologics. We, along with our vendors, contract research organizations (CROs), clinical investigators, and contract manufacturing organizations, or CMOs, will be required to comply with the various preclinical, clinical, manufacturing, and commercial approval requirements of the governing regulatory agencies of the countries in which we wish to conduct studies or seek approval of our product candidates. The process of obtaining and regulatory approvals of drugs and biologics and ensuring subsequent compliance with appropriate federal, state, local, and foreign statutes and regulations requires the expenditure of substantial time and financial resources.

In the United States, the FDA regulates drug products under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, or FD&C Act, and biologics under the FD&C Act and the Public Health Service Act, or PHSA, as amended, and their implementing regulations. Both drugs and biologics are also subject to other federal, state, and local statutes and regulations. If we fail to comply with applicable FDA or other regulatory requirements at any time with respect to product development, clinical testing, approval, or any other requirements relating to product manufacture, processing, handling, storage, quality control, safety, marketing, advertising, promotion, packaging, labeling, export, import, distribution, or sale, we may become subject to administrative or judicial sanctions or other legal consequences. These sanctions or consequences could include, among other things, the FDA’s refusal to approve pending applications, issuance of clinical holds for ongoing studies, suspension or revocation of approved applications, warning or untitled letters, product withdrawals or recalls, product seizures, relabeling or repackaging, total or partial suspensions of manufacturing or distribution, injunctions, fines, civil penalties, or criminal prosecution.

Our product candidates must be approved for therapeutic indications by the FDA before they may be marketed in the U.S. For drug product candidates regulated under the FD&C Act, the FDA must approve a New Drug Application, or NDA. For biologic product candidates regulated under the FD&C Act and PHSA, the FDA must approve a Biologics License Application, or BLA. The process is similar and generally involves the following:

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completion of extensive preclinical studies in accordance with applicable regulations, including studies conducted in accordance with good laboratory practice, or GLP, requirements;

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completion of the manufacture, under current Good Manufacturing Practices, or cGMP, conditions, of the drug substance and drug product that the sponsor intends to use in human clinical trials along with required analytical and stability testing;

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submission to the FDA of an investigational new drug application (IND), which must become effective before clinical trials may begin and must be updated annually and when certain changes are made;

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approval by an institutional review board, or IRB, or independent ethics committee at each clinical trial site before each trial may be initiated;

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performance of adequate and well-controlled clinical trials in accordance with applicable IND regulations, good clinical practice, or GCP, requirements and other clinical trial-related regulations to establish the safety and efficacy of the investigational product for each proposed indication;

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preparation and submission to the FDA of an NDA or BLA;

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a determination by the FDA within 60 days of its receipt of an NDA or BLA to file the application for review;

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satisfactory completion of one or more FDA pre-approval or pre-license inspections of the manufacturing facility or facilities where the drug will be produced to assess compliance with cGMP requirements to assure that the facilities, methods, and controls are adequate to preserve the drug or biologic product’s identity, strength, quality, and purity;

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satisfactory completion of an FDA audit of the clinical trial sites that generated the data in support of the NDA or BLA;

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payment of user fees for FDA review of the NDA or BLA; and

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FDA review and approval of the NDA or BLA, including, where applicable, consideration of the views of any FDA advisory committee, prior to any commercial marketing or sale of the drug in the U.S.

Preclinical studies and clinical trials for drugs and biologics

Before testing any drug or biologic in humans, a product candidate must undergo rigorous preclinical testing. Preclinical studies include laboratory evaluations of product chemistry, formulation, and stability, as well as in vitro and animal studies to assess safety and in some cases to establish the rationale for therapeutic use. The conduct of preclinical studies is subject to federal and state regulation and requirements, including GLP requirements for safety/toxicology studies. The results of the preclinical studies, together with manufacturing information and analytical data, must be submitted to the FDA as part of an IND.

An IND is a request for authorization from the FDA to administer an investigational product to humans and must become effective before clinical trials may begin. The central focus of an IND submission is on the general investigational plan and the protocol(s) for clinical studies related to the product. The IND also includes the results of animal and in vitro studies assessing the toxicology, PK, 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. Some long-term preclinical testing may continue after the IND is submitted. The IND automatically becomes effective 30 days after receipt by the FDA, unless the FDA, within the 30-day time period, raises concerns or questions about the conduct of the clinical trial, including concerns that human research subjects will be exposed to unreasonable health risks, and imposes a full or partial clinical hold. The FDA must notify the sponsor of the grounds for the hold, and the sponsor must resolve any identified deficiencies before the clinical trial can begin. Submission of an IND may result in the FDA’s not allowing clinical trials to commence or not allowing clinical trials to commence on the terms originally specified in the IND. A clinical hold can also be imposed once a trial has already begun, thereby halting the trial until the deficiencies articulated by the FDA are corrected.

The clinical stage of development involves the administration of the product candidate to healthy volunteers or patients under the supervision of qualified investigators, who generally are physicians not employed by or under the trial sponsor’s control, in accordance with GCP requirements, which include the requirements that all research subjects provide their informed consent for their participation in the relevant clinical trial. Clinical trials are conducted under protocols detailing, among other things, the objectives of the clinical trial, dosing procedures, subject selection and exclusion criteria, and the parameters and criteria to be used in monitoring the product candidate’s safety and evaluating its effectiveness. Each protocol, and any subsequent amendments to the protocol, must be submitted to the FDA as part of the IND. Furthermore, each clinical trial must be reviewed and approved by an IRB for each institution at which the clinical trial will be conducted to ensure that the risks to individuals participating in the clinical trials are minimized and are reasonable compared to the anticipated benefits. The IRB also approves the informed consent form that must be provided to each clinical trial subject or his or her legal representative and must monitor the clinical trial until completed. The

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FDA, the IRB, or the sponsor may suspend or discontinue a clinical trial at any time on various grounds, including a finding that the subjects are being exposed to an unacceptable health risk. Some studies also include oversight by an independent group of qualified experts organized by the clinical trial sponsor, known as a data safety monitoring board (DSMB), which provides authorization for whether a study may move forward at designated checkpoints based on access to certain data from the study and may halt the clinical trial if it determines that there is an unacceptable safety risk for subjects or other grounds, such as no demonstration of the product candidate’s efficacy. There also are requirements governing the reporting of ongoing clinical trials and completed clinical trials to public registries. Information about clinical trials, including results for clinical trials other than Phase 1 investigations, must be submitted within specific timeframes for publication on www.ClinicalTrials.gov, a clinical trials database maintained by the National Institutes of Health.

A sponsor that wishes to conduct a clinical trial outside of the United States may, but need not, obtain FDA authorization to conduct the clinical trial under an IND. If a foreign clinical trial is not conducted under an IND, the FDA will nevertheless accept the results of the study in support of an NDA or BLA if the study was well-designed and well-conducted in accordance with GCP requirements, including requirements for the design, conduct, performance, monitoring, auditing, recording, analysis, and reporting of the clinical trial in a way that provides assurance that the data and reported results are credible and accurate and that the rights, safety, and well-being of trial subjects are protected, and the FDA is able to validate the data through an on-site inspection if deemed necessary. In cases where data from foreign clinical trials are intended to serve as the sole basis for marketing approval in the U.S., the FDA will generally not approve the application on the basis of foreign data alone unless (i) the data are applicable to the U.S. population and U.S. medical practice; (ii) the trials were performed by clinical investigators of recognized competence; and (iii) the data may be considered valid without the need for an on-site inspection by the FDA or, if the FDA considers such an inspection to be necessary, the FDA is able to validate the data through other appropriate means.

Clinical trials to evaluate therapeutic indications to support NDAs and BLAs for marketing approval are typically conducted in three sequential phases, which may overlap.

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Phase 1 — Phase 1 clinical trials typically involve the initial introduction of the investigational product in a limited population of healthy human volunteers or patients with the target disease or condition. These studies are typically designed to test the safety, dosage tolerance, absorption, metabolism, and distribution of the investigational product in humans, excretion, the side effects associated with increasing doses, and, if possible, to gain early evidence of effectiveness.

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Phase 2 — Phase 2 clinical trials typically involve the administration of the investigational product to a limited patient population with a specified disease or condition to evaluate the drug’s potential efficacy, to determine the optimal dosages and dosing schedule, and to identify possible adverse side effects and safety risks.

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Phase 3 — Phase 3 clinical trials typically involve the administration of the investigational product to an expanded patient population to further evaluate dosage, to provide statistically significant evidence of clinical efficacy, and to further test for safety, generally at multiple geographically dispersed clinical trial sites. These clinical trials are intended to establish the overall risk/benefit ratio of the investigational product and to provide an adequate basis for product approval and physician labeling. Generally, two adequate and well-controlled Phase 3 trials are required by the FDA for approval of an NDA or BLA.

In August 2018, the FDA released a draft guidance entitled “Expansion Cohorts: Use in First-In-Human Clinical Trials to Expedite Development of Oncology Drugs and Biologics,” which outlines how drug developers can utilize an adaptive trial design commonly referred to as a seamless trial design in early stages of oncology drug development (i.e., the first-in-human clinical trial) to compress the traditional three phases of trials into one continuous trial called an expansion cohort trial. Information to support the design of individual expansion cohorts is included in IND applications and assessed by FDA. Expansion cohort trials can potentially bring efficiency to drug development and reduce development costs and time.

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Post-approval trials, sometimes referred to as Phase 4 clinical trials or post-marketing studies, may be conducted after initial marketing approval. These trials are used to gain additional experience from the treatment of patients in the intended therapeutic indication and are commonly intended to generate additional safety data regarding use of the product in a clinical setting. In certain instances, the FDA may mandate the performance of Phase 4 clinical trials as a condition of NDA or BLA approval.

Progress reports detailing the results of the clinical trials, among other information, must be submitted at least annually to the FDA. Written IND safety reports must be submitted to the FDA and the investigators within 15 calendar days after the trial sponsor determines the information qualifies for reporting for serious and unexpected suspected AEs, findings from other studies or animal or in vitro testing that suggest a significant risk for human volunteers and any clinically important increase in the rate of a serious suspected adverse reaction over that listed in the protocol or investigator brochure. The sponsor must also notify the FDA of any unexpected fatal or life-threatening suspected adverse reaction as soon as possible but in no case later than seven calendar days after the sponsor’s initial receipt of the information.

Concurrent with clinical trials, companies usually complete additional animal studies and must also develop additional information about the chemistry and physical characteristics of the product candidate and finalize a process for manufacturing the drug 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 manufacturers must develop, among other things, methods for testing the identity, strength, quality, and purity of the final drug product. 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.

Expanded access

Expanded access, sometimes called “compassionate use,” is the use of investigational products outside of clinical trials to treat patients with serious or immediately life-threatening diseases or conditions when there are no comparable or satisfactory alternative treatment options. FDA regulations allow access to investigational products under an IND by the company or the treating physician for treatment purposes on a case-by-case basis for: individual patients (single-patient IND applications for treatment in emergency settings and non-emergency settings); intermediate-size patient populations; and larger populations for use of the investigational product under a treatment protocol or treatment IND application.

There is no requirement for a company to provide expanded access to its investigational products. However, if a company decides to make its investigational product available for expanded access, FDA reviews each request for expanded access and determines if treatment may proceed. Expanded access may be appropriate when all of the following criteria apply: the patient has a serious or immediately life-threatening disease or condition, and there is no comparable or satisfactory alternative therapy to diagnose, monitor, or treat the disease or condition; the potential benefit justifies the potential risks of the treatment, and the potential risks are not unreasonable in the context of the disease or condition to be treated; and providing the investigational product for the requested use will not interfere with the initiation, conduct, or completion of clinical investigations that could support marketing approval of the expanded access use or otherwise compromise the potential development of the expanded access use.

In addition, on May 30, 2018, the Right to Try Act was signed into law. The law, among other things, provides a federal framework for certain patients to access certain investigational new drug products that have completed a Phase 1 clinical trial and that are undergoing investigation for FDA approval. Under certain circumstances, eligible patients can seek treatment without enrolling in clinical trials and without obtaining FDA permission under the FDA expanded access program. While there is no obligation for a drug manufacturer to make its drug products available to eligible patients under the Right to Try Act, the 21^st Century Cures Act requires the manufacturer to develop a policy for evaluating and responding to patient requests for expanded access. This policy must be made public and readily available and include company contact information and expected response times.

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U.S. marketing approval for drugs and biologics

Assuming successful completion of the required clinical testing, the results of the preclinical studies and clinical trials, together with detailed information relating to the product’s chemistry, manufacture, controls, and proposed labeling, among other things, are submitted to the FDA as part of an NDA or BLA requesting approval to market the product for one or more indications. An NDA is a request for approval to market a new drug for one or more specified indications and must contain proof of the drug’s safety and efficacy for the requested indications. A BLA is a request for approval to market a new biologic for one or more specified indications and must contain proof of the biologic’s safety, purity, and potency for the requested indications. The marketing application is required to include both negative and ambiguous results of preclinical studies and clinical trials, as well as positive findings. Data may come from company-sponsored clinical trials intended to test the safety and efficacy of a product’s use or from a number of alternative sources, including studies initiated by investigators. To support marketing approval, the data submitted must be sufficient in quality and quantity to establish the safety and efficacy of the investigational drug, or the safety, purity and potency of the investigational biologic, to the satisfaction of the FDA. The FDA must approve an NDA or BLA before a drug or biologic may be marketed in the United States.

The FDA reviews all submitted NDAs and BLAs to ensure they are sufficiently complete to permit substantive review before it accepts them for filing and may request additional information rather than accepting the NDA or BLA for filing. The FDA must make a decision on accepting an NDA or BLA for filing within 60 days of receipt, and such decision could include a refusal to file by the FDA. Once the submission is accepted for filing, the FDA begins an in-depth substantive review of the NDA or BLA. The FDA reviews an NDA or BLA to determine, among other things, whether the product is safe and effective for the indications sought and whether the facilities in which it is manufactured, processed, packaged, or held and meets standards, including cGMP requirements, designed to assure and preserve the product’s continued identity, strength, quality, and purity. Under the goals and polices agreed to by the FDA under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) the FDA targets ten months, from the filing date, in which to complete its initial review of a new molecular entity NDA or BLA and respond to the applicant, and six months from the filing date of a new molecular entity NDA or BLA for priority review. The FDA does not always meet its PDUFA goal dates for standard or priority NDAs or BLAs, and the review process is often extended by the FDA’s requests for additional information or clarification.

Further, under PDUFA, as amended, each NDA or BLA must be accompanied by a substantial user fee. The FDA adjusts PDUFA user fees on an annual basis. Fee waivers or reductions are available in certain circumstances, including a waiver of the application fee for the first application filed by a small business. Additionally, no user fees are assessed on NDAs or BLAs for products designated as orphan drugs, unless the product also includes a non-orphan indication.

The FDA also may require submission of a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) if it believes that a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy is necessary to ensure that the benefits of the drug outweigh its risks. A REMS can include use of risk evaluation and mitigation strategies like medication guides, physician communication plans, assessment plans, and/or elements to assure safe use, such as restricted distribution methods, patient registries, special monitoring, or other risk-minimization tools.

The FDA may refer an application for a novel drug or biologic to an advisory committee. An advisory committee is a panel of independent experts, including clinicians and other scientific experts, which reviews, evaluates, and provides a recommendation as to whether the application should be approved and under what conditions. The FDA is not bound by the recommendations of an advisory committee, but it considers such recommendations carefully when making decisions.

Before approving an NDA or BLA, the FDA typically will 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 are adequate to assure consistent production of the product within required specifications. Additionally, before approving an NDA or BLA, the FDA may inspect

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one or more clinical trial sites to assure compliance with GCP and other requirements and the integrity of the clinical data submitted to the FDA.

After evaluating the NDA or BLA and all related information, including the advisory committee recommendation, if any, and inspection reports regarding the manufacturing facilities and clinical trial sites, the FDA may issue an approval letter, or, in some cases, a Complete Response Letter. A Complete Response Letter indicates that the review cycle of the application is complete, but the application is not ready for approval. A Complete Response Letter generally contains a statement of specific conditions that must be met in order to secure final approval of the NDA or 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 require additional clinical or preclinical testing or recommend other actions, such as requests for additional information or clarification, that the applicant might take in order for the FDA to reconsider the application. Even with submission of this additional information, the FDA ultimately may decide that the application does not satisfy the regulatory criteria for approval. If and when those conditions have been met to the FDA’s satisfaction, the FDA will typically issue an approval letter. An approval letter authorizes commercial marketing of the product with specific prescribing information for specific indications.

Even if the FDA approves a product, depending on the specific risk(s) to be addressed, it may limit the approved indications for use of the product, require that contraindications, warnings or precautions be included in the product labeling, require that post-approval studies, including Phase 4 clinical trials, be conducted to further assess a product’s safety after approval, require testing and surveillance programs to monitor the product after commercialization, or impose other conditions, including distribution and use restrictions or other risk management mechanisms under a REMS, which can materially affect the potential market and profitability of the product. The FDA may prevent or limit further marketing of a product based on the results of post-marketing studies or surveillance programs. After approval, some types of changes to the approved product, such as adding new indications, manufacturing changes, and additional labeling claims, are subject to further testing requirements and FDA review and approval.

Orphan drug designation and exclusivity

Under the Orphan Drug Act, the FDA may grant ODD to a drug or biologic intended to treat a rare disease or condition, which is a disease or condition with either a patient population of fewer than 200,000 individuals in the U.S., or a patient population greater than 200,000 individuals in the U.S. when there is no reasonable expectation that the cost of developing and making the product available in the U.S. for the disease or condition will be recovered from sales of the product. ODD must be requested before submitting an NDA or BLA. After the FDA grants ODD, the generic identity of the therapeutic agent and its potential orphan use are disclosed publicly by the FDA. ODD does not convey any advantage in or shorten the duration of the regulatory review and approval process, although companies developing orphan products are eligible for certain incentives, including tax credits for qualified clinical testing and waiver of application fees.

If a product that has ODD subsequently receives the first FDA approval for the disease or condition for which it has such designation, the product is entitled to a seven-year period of marketing exclusivity during which the FDA may not approve any other applications to market the same therapeutic agent for the same indication, except in limited circumstances, such as a subsequent product’s showing of clinical superiority over the product with orphan exclusivity or where the original applicant cannot produce sufficient quantities of product. Competitors, however, may receive approval of different therapeutic agents for the indication for which the orphan product has exclusivity or obtain approval for the same therapeutic agent for a different indication than that for which the orphan product has exclusivity. Orphan product exclusivity could block the approval of one of our products for seven years if a competitor obtains approval for the same therapeutic agent for the same indication before we do, unless we are able to demonstrate that our product is clinically superior. If an orphan designated product receives marketing approval for an indication broader than what is designated, it may not be entitled to orphan exclusivity. Further, orphan drug exclusive marketing rights in the United States may be lost if the FDA later determines that the request for designation was materially defective or the manufacturer of

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the approved product is unable to assure sufficient quantities of the product to meet the needs of patients with the rare disease or condition.

Rare pediatric disease designation and priority review vouchers

Under the FD&C Act, the FDA incentivizes the development of products that meet the definition of a “rare pediatric disease,” defined to mean a serious or life-threatening disease in which the serious or life-threatening manifestations primarily affect individuals aged from birth to 18 years and the disease affects fewer than 200,000 individuals in the United States or affects more than 200,000 in the United States and for which there is no reasonable expectation that the cost of developing and making in the United States a drug for such disease or condition will be recovered from sales in the United States of such drug. The sponsor of a product candidate for a rare pediatric disease may be eligible for a voucher that can be used to obtain a priority review for a subsequent human drug application after the date of approval of the rare pediatric disease drug product, referred to as a priority review voucher (PRV). A sponsor may request rare pediatric disease designation from the FDA prior to the submission of its NDA or BLA. A rare pediatric disease designation does not guarantee that a sponsor will receive a PRV upon approval of its NDA or BLA. Moreover, a sponsor that chooses not to submit a rare pediatric disease designation request may nonetheless receive a PRV upon approval of its marketing application if it requests such a voucher in its original marketing application and meets all of the eligibility criteria. If a PRV is received, it may be sold or transferred an unlimited number of times. Congress has extended the PRV program through September 30, 2024, with the potential for PRVs to be granted through September 30, 2026.

Expedited development and review programs for drugs and biologics

The FDA maintains several programs intended to facilitate and expedite development and review of new drugs and biologics to address unmet medical needs in the treatment of serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions. These programs include fast track designation, BTD, priority review and accelerated approval. The purpose of these programs is to expedite the development or review of important new drugs and biologics to get them to patients more quickly than standard FDA review timelines typically permit.

A new drug or biologic is eligible for fast track designation if it is intended to treat a serious or life-threatening disease or condition and demonstrates the potential to address unmet medical needs for such disease or condition. Fast track designation applies to the combination of the product candidate and the specific indication for which it is being studied. Fast track designation provides increased opportunities for sponsor interactions with the FDA during preclinical and clinical development, in addition to the potential for rolling review once a marketing application is filed. Rolling review means that the FDA may review portions of the marketing application before the sponsor submits the complete application.

In addition, a new drug or biologic may be eligible for BTD if it is intended to treat a serious or life-threatening disease or condition and preliminary clinical evidence indicates that the drug or biologic, alone or in combination with one or more other drugs or biologics, may demonstrate substantial improvement over existing therapies on one or more clinically significant endpoints, such as substantial treatment effects observed early in clinical development. BTD provides all the features of fast track designation in addition to intensive guidance on an efficient product development program beginning as early as Phase 1, and the FDA’s organizational commitment to expedited development, including involvement of senior managers and experienced review staff in a cross-disciplinary review, where appropriate.

Any product submitted to the FDA for approval, including a product with fast track or BTD, may also be eligible for additional FDA programs intended to expedite the review and approval process, including priority review designation and accelerated approval. A product is eligible for priority review once an NDA or BLA is submitted, if the product that is the subject of the marketing application has the potential to provide a significant improvement in safety or effectiveness in the treatment, diagnosis or prevention of a serious disease or condition. Under priority review, the FDA’s goal date to take action on the marketing application is six months compared to ten months for a standard review. Products are eligible for accelerated approval if they can be

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shown to have an effect on a surrogate endpoint that is reasonably likely to predict clinical benefit, or an effect on a clinical endpoint that can be measured earlier than an effect on irreversible morbidity or mortality, which is reasonably likely to predict an effect on irreversible morbidity or mortality or other clinical benefit, taking into account the severity, rarity, or prevalence of the condition and the availability or lack of alternative treatments.

Accelerated approval is usually contingent on a sponsor’s agreement to conduct, in a diligent manner, adequate and well-controlled additional post-approval confirmatory studies to verify and describe the product’s clinical benefit. The FDA may withdraw approval of a drug or an indication approved under accelerated approval if, for example, the confirmatory trial fails to verify the predicted clinical benefit of the product. In addition, for products being considered for accelerated approval, the FDA generally requires, unless otherwise informed by the agency, that all advertising and promotional materials intended for dissemination or publication within 120 days of marketing approval be submitted to the agency for review during the pre-approval review period. After the 120 day period has passed, all advertising and promotional materials must be submitted at least 30 days prior to the intended time of initial dissemination or publication.

Even if a product qualifies for one or more of these programs, the FDA may later decide that the product no longer meets the conditions for qualification or the time period for FDA review, or approval may not be shortened. Furthermore, fast track designation, BTD, priority review and accelerated approval do not change the scientific or medical standards for approval or the quality of evidence necessary to support approval, although they may expedite the development or review process.

Pediatric information and pediatric exclusivity

Under the Pediatric Research Equity Act (PREA), as amended, certain NDAs and BLAs and certain NDA and BLA supplements must contain data that can be used to assess the safety and efficacy of the product candidate for the claimed indications in all relevant pediatric subpopulations and to support dosing and administration for each pediatric subpopulation for which the product is safe and effective. The FDA may grant deferrals for submission of pediatric data or full or partial waivers. The FD&C Act requires that a sponsor that is planning to submit a marketing application for a product candidate that includes a new active ingredient, new indication, new dosage form, new dosing regimen or new route of administration submit an initial Pediatric Study Plan (PSP) within 60 days of an end-of-Phase 2 meeting or, if there is no such meeting, as early as practicable before the initiation of the Phase 3 or Phase 2/3 study. The initial PSP must include an outline of the pediatric study or studies that the sponsor plans to conduct, including study objectives and design, age groups, relevant endpoints and statistical approach, or a justification for not including such detailed information, and any request for a deferral of pediatric assessments or a full or partial waiver of the requirement to provide data from pediatric studies along with supporting information. The FDA and the sponsor must reach an agreement on the PSP. A sponsor can submit amendments to an agreed-upon initial PSP at any time if changes to the pediatric plan need to be considered based on data collected from preclinical studies, early phase clinical trials and/or other clinical development programs. Unless otherwise required by regulation, PREA does not apply to a drug or biologic for an indication for which orphan drug designation has been granted, except that PREA will apply to an original NDA or BLA for a new active ingredient that is orphan-designated if the drug or biologic is a molecularly targeted cancer product intended for the treatment of an adult cancer and is directed at a molecular target that FDA determines to be substantially relevant to the growth or progression of a pediatric cancer.

A product can also obtain pediatric market exclusivity in the United States. Pediatric exclusivity, if granted, adds six months to existing exclusivity periods and patent terms. This six-month exclusivity, which runs from the end of other exclusivity protection or patent term, may be granted based on the voluntary completion of a pediatric study in accordance with an FDA-issued “Written Request” for such a study.

U.S. post-approval requirements for drugs and biologics

Drugs and biologics manufactured or distributed pursuant to FDA approvals are subject to continuing regulation by the FDA, including, among other things, requirements relating to recordkeeping, periodic reporting, product sampling and distribution, reporting of AEs with the product, complying with promotional and advertising

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requirements, which include restrictions on promoting products for unapproved uses or in patient populations that are not described in the product’s approved label (known as “off-label use”) and limitations on industry-sponsored scientific and educational activities. Although physicians may prescribe approved products for off-label uses, manufacturers may not market or promote such uses. The FDA does not regulate the behavior of physicians in their choice of treatments, but it does impose stringent restrictions on manufacturers’ communications regarding off-label uses. The FDA and other agencies actively enforce the laws and regulations prohibiting the promotion of off-label uses, including not only by company employees but also by agents of the company or those speaking on the company’s behalf, and a company that is found to have improperly promoted off-label uses may be subject to significant liability, including investigation by federal and state authorities. Failure to comply with these requirements can result in, among other things, adverse publicity, warning letters, corrective advertising and potential civil and criminal penalties. Promotional materials for approved drugs and biologics must be submitted to the FDA in conjunction with their first use or first publication, and may be required to be reviewed in advance in certain circumstances such as for products that receive accelerated approval. Further, if there are any modifications to the drug or biologic, including changes in indications, labeling or manufacturing processes or facilities, the applicant may be required to submit and obtain FDA approval of a new NDA or BLA or NDA or BLA supplement, which may be denied or may require the development of additional data or preclinical studies and clinical trials.

The FDA may impose a number of post-approval requirements as a condition of approval of an NDA or BLA. For example, the FDA may require post-market testing, including Phase 4 clinical trials, and surveillance to further assess and monitor the product’s safety and effectiveness after commercialization. In addition, manufacturers and their subcontractors involved in the manufacture and distribution of approved drugs and biologics are required to register their facilities with the FDA and certain state agencies and are subject to periodic unannounced inspections by the FDA and certain state agencies for compliance with ongoing regulatory requirements, including cGMPs, which impose certain procedural and documentation requirements on sponsors and their CMOs. Changes to the manufacturing process are strictly regulated, and, depending on the significance of the change, may require 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 a sponsor may use. Additionally, manufacturers and other parties involved in the drug supply chain for prescription drug and biologic products must also comply with product tracking and tracing requirements and for notifying FDA of counterfeit, diverted, stolen, and intentionally adulterated products or products that are otherwise unfit for distribution in the United States. 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. Failure to comply with statutory and regulatory requirements may subject a manufacturer to possible legal or regulatory action, such as warning letters, suspension of manufacturing, product seizures, injunctions, civil penalties, or criminal prosecution. There is also a continuing, annual program user fee for any marketed product.

The FDA may withdraw approval of a product 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 AEs 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, requirements for post-market studies or clinical trials to assess new safety risks, or imposition of distribution or other restrictions under a REMS. Other potential consequences include, among other things:

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restrictions on the marketing or manufacturing of the product, complete withdrawal of the product from the market, or product recalls;

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the issuance of safety alerts, Dear Health Care Provider letters, press releases, or other communications containing warnings or other safety information about the product;

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fines, warning letters, or holds on post-approval clinical trials;

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refusal of the FDA to approve applications or supplements to approved applications, or suspension or revocation of product approvals;

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product seizure or detention, or refusal to permit the import or export of products;

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injunctions or the imposition of civil or criminal penalties;

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consent decrees, corporate integrity agreements, debarment, or exclusion from federal healthcare programs; and

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mandated modification of promotional materials and labeling and issuance of corrective information.

United States patent term restoration and marketing exclusivity

Depending upon the timing, duration and specifics of FDA approval of a drug or biologic, some United States patents may be eligible for limited patent term extension under the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, commonly referred to as the Hatch-Waxman Amendments. The Hatch-Waxman Amendments permit restoration of the patent term of up to five years as compensation for patent term lost during the FDA regulatory review process. Patent term restoration, however, cannot extend the remaining term of a patent beyond a total of 14 years from the product’s approval date and only those claims covering such approved drug product, a method for using it or a method for manufacturing it may be extended. The patent term restoration period is generally one-half the time between the effective date of an IND and the submission date of an NDA or BLA, plus the time between the submission date of an NDA or BLA and the approval of that application, except that the review period is reduced by any time during which the applicant failed to exercise due diligence. Only one patent applicable to an approved drug is eligible for the extension, and the application for the extension must be submitted prior to the expiration of the patent. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO, in consultation with the FDA, reviews and approves the application for any patent term extension or restoration. An NDA or BLA applicant may apply for restoration of the patent term for its currently owned or licensed patents to add patent life beyond a patent’s current expiration date, depending on the expected length of the clinical trials and other factors involved in the filing of the relevant NDA or BLA.

Marketing exclusivity provisions under the FDCA also can delay the submission or the approval of certain applications. The FDCA provides a five-year period of non-patent marketing exclusivity within the United States to the first applicant to gain approval of an NDA for a new chemical entity. A drug is considered a new chemical entity if the FDA has not previously approved any other new drug containing the same active moiety, which is the molecule or ion responsible for the action of the drug substance. During the exclusivity period, the FDA may not accept for review an Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA), or a 505(b)(2) NDA submitted by another company for another version of such drug where the applicant does not own or have a legal right of reference to all the data required for approval. However, an application may be submitted after four years if it contains a certification of patent invalidity or non-infringement. The FDCA also provides for three years of marketing exclusivity for an NDA, 505(b)(2) NDA or supplement to an existing NDA if new clinical investigations, other than bioavailability studies, that were conducted or sponsored by the applicant are deemed by the FDA to be essential to the approval of the application, for example, new indications, dosages or strengths of an existing drug. This three-year exclusivity covers only the conditions of use associated with the new clinical investigations and does not prohibit the FDA from approving ANDAs for drugs containing the original active agent. Five-year and three-year exclusivity will not delay the submission or approval of a full NDA. However, an applicant submitting a full NDA would be required to conduct or obtain a right of reference to all of the preclinical studies and adequate and well-controlled clinical trials necessary to demonstrate safety and effectiveness.

United States biosimilars and exclusivity

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, (collectively, the ACA), signed into law in 2010, includes a subtitle called the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA), which created an abbreviated approval pathway for biologic products

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that are biosimilar to or interchangeable with an FDA-licensed reference biologic product. The FDA has issued several guidance documents outlining an approach to review and approval of biosimilars in the U.S. Biosimilarity, which requires that there be no clinically meaningful differences between the biologic product and the reference product in terms of safety, purity, and potency, can be shown through analytical studies, animal studies, and a clinical study or studies. Interchangeability requires that a product is biosimilar to the reference product and the product must demonstrate that it can be expected to produce the same clinical results as the reference product in any given patient and, for products that are administered multiple times to an individual, the biologic and the reference biologic may be alternated or switched after one has been previously administered without increasing safety risks or risks of diminished efficacy relative to exclusive use of the reference product.

Under the BPCIA, an application for a biosimilar product may not be submitted to the FDA until four years following the date that the reference product was first licensed by the FDA. In addition, the approval of a biosimilar product may not be made effective by the FDA until 12 years from the date on which the reference product was first licensed. During this 12-year period of exclusivity, another company may still market a competing version of the reference product if the FDA approves a full BLA for the competing product containing that applicant’s own preclinical data and data from adequate and well-controlled clinical trials to demonstrate the safety, purity, and potency of its product. The BPCIA also created certain exclusivity periods for biosimilars approved as interchangeable products. At this juncture, it is unclear whether products deemed “interchangeable” by the FDA will, in fact, be readily substituted by pharmacies, which are governed by state pharmacy law.

Other regulatory matters

Manufacturing, labeling, packaging, distribution, sales, promotion, and other activities of product candidates following product approval, where applicable, or commercialization are also potentially subject to federal, state, and local consumer protection and unfair competition laws, among other requirements to which we may be subject. Additionally, the activities associated with the commercialization of product candidates is subject to regulation by numerous regulatory authorities in the United States in addition to the FDA, which may include the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, other divisions of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and state and local governments and government agencies.

The distribution of pharmaceutical products is subject to additional requirements and regulations, including extensive recordkeeping, licensing, storage, and security requirements intended to prevent the unauthorized sale of pharmaceutical products.

The failure to comply with any of these laws or regulatory requirements may subject companies to legal or regulatory action. Depending on the circumstances, failure to meet applicable regulatory requirements can result in criminal prosecution, fines or other penalties, injunctions, exclusion from federal healthcare programs, requests for recall, seizure of products, total or partial suspension of production, denial or withdrawal of product approvals, relabeling or repackaging, or refusal to allow a company to enter into supply contracts, including government contracts. Any claim or action against us for violation of these laws, even if we successfully defended against it, could cause us to incur significant legal expenses and divert our management’s attention from the operation of our business. Prohibitions or restrictions on marketing, sales, or withdrawal of future products marketed by us could materially affect our business in an adverse way.

Changes in statutes, regulations, or the interpretation of existing regulations could impact our business in the future by requiring, for example: (i) changes to our manufacturing arrangements; (ii) additions or modifications to product labeling or packaging; (iii) the recall or discontinuation of our products; or (iv) additional recordkeeping requirements. If any such changes were to be imposed, they could adversely affect the operation of our business.

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Other healthcare laws

Coverage and reimbursement

Government authorities and third-party payers, such as private health insurers and health maintenance organizations, determine which medications they will pay for and establish reimbursement levels. In the United States and markets in other countries, patients generally rely on these governments or payers to reimburse all or part of the costs associated with their treatment. Adequate coverage and reimbursement from governmental healthcare programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, and private payers is critical to new product acceptance. Our ability to successfully commercialize our product candidates will depend in part on the extent to which coverage and adequate reimbursement for these products and related treatments will be available from government health administration authorities, private health insurers, and other organizations. Even if coverage is provided, the approved reimbursement amount may not be high enough to allow us to establish or maintain pricing sufficient to realize a sufficient return on our investment.

There is also significant uncertainty related to the insurance coverage, and reimbursement of newly approved products and coverage may be more limited than the purposes for which the medicine is approved by the FDA or comparable regulatory authorities. In the United States, the principal decisions about reimbursement for new medicines are typically made by CMS, an agency within the HHS. CMS determines whether and to what extent a new medicine will be covered and reimbursed under Medicare, and private payers tend to follow CMS to a substantial degree. Further, due to the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic, millions of individuals have lost or may lose employer-based insurance coverage, which may adversely affect our ability to commercialize our products.

Payers determining reimbursement level consider multiple factors, including whether the product is:

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a covered benefit under its health plan;

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safe, effective, and medically necessary;

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appropriate for the specific patient;

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cost-effective; and

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neither experimental nor investigational.

In addition, many pharmaceutical manufacturers must calculate and report certain price reporting metrics to the U.S. government, such as average sales price (ASP) and best price. Penalties may apply in some cases when such metrics are not submitted accurately and timely. Further, these prices for drugs may be reduced by mandatory discounts or rebates required by government healthcare programs.

In addition, in some foreign countries, the proposed pricing for a drug must be approved before it may be lawfully marketed. The requirements governing drug pricing vary widely from country to country. For example, the European Union provides options for its Member States to restrict the range of medicinal products for which their national health insurance systems provide reimbursement and to control the prices of medicinal products for human use. 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 currently available therapies. A Member State may approve a specific price for the medicinal product, or it may instead adopt a system of direct or indirect controls on the profitability of the company placing the medicinal product on the market. There can be no assurance that any country that has price controls or reimbursement limitations for pharmaceutical products will allow favorable reimbursement and pricing arrangements for any of our product candidates. Historically, products launched in the European Union do not follow price structures of the U.S., and generally prices in the European Union tend to be significantly lower than those in the United States.

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Other healthcare laws and compliance requirements

In the United States, our current and future operations are subject to regulation by various federal, state, and local authorities in addition to the FDA, including but not limited to, CMS, other divisions of HHS (such as the Office of Inspector General (OIG), Office for Civil Rights and the Health Resources and Service Administration), the DOJ, and individual U.S. Attorney offices within the DOJ, and state and local governments. Our clinical research, sales, marketing, scientific/educational grant programs, collaboration agreements, and partnerships with third-party payers, providers, PBMs, and other entities may be subject to the following laws, each as amended, as applicable:

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the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, which prohibits, among other things, knowingly and willfully soliciting, receiving, offering or paying any remuneration (including any kickback, bribe, or rebate), directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly, in cash or in kind, to induce, or in return for, either the referral of an individual, or the purchase, lease, order, arrangement or recommendation of any good, facility, item or service for which payment may be made, in whole or in part, under a federal healthcare program, such as the Medicare and Medicaid programs. A person or entity does not need to have actual knowledge of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute or specific intent to violate it to have committed a violation. This statute has been interpreted to apply to arrangements between pharmaceutical manufacturers on the one hand, and providers, prescribers, purchasers, and formulary managers, among others, on the other. The HHS and OIG, heavily scrutinizes relationships between pharmaceutical companies and persons in a position to generate referrals for or the purchasing of their products such as healthcare providers and PBMs;

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the federal civil and criminal false claims laws and civil monetary penalty laws, including the False Claims Act, which prohibit, among other things, individuals or entities from knowingly presenting, or causing to be presented, false or fraudulent claims for payment to, or approval by, Medicare, Medicaid, or other federal healthcare programs, knowingly making, using or causing to be made or used a false record or statement material to a false or fraudulent claim or obligation to pay or transmit money or property to the federal government, or knowingly concealing or knowingly and improperly avoiding or decreasing or concealing an obligation to pay money to the federal government. A claim that includes items or services resulting from a violation of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute constitutes a false or fraudulent claim under the False Claims Act. Manufacturers can be held liable under the False Claims Act 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 False Claims Act also permits a private individual acting as a “whistleblower” to bring actions on behalf of the federal government alleging violations of the False Claims Act and to share in any monetary recovery;

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The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), which created additional federal criminal statutes that prohibit 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 the payer (e.g., public or private) and knowingly and willfully falsifying, concealing or covering up by any trick or device a material fact or making any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or representations in connection with the delivery of, or payment for, healthcare benefits, items or services relating to healthcare matters. Similar to the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, a person or entity does not need to have actual knowledge of the statute or specific intent to violate it in order to have committed a violation;

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HIPAA, as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 (HITECH), and their respective implementing regulations, which imposes requirements on certain covered healthcare providers, health plans, and healthcare clearinghouses (collectively, covered entities) as well as their respective business associates that perform services for them that involve the use, or disclosure of, individually identifiable health information, relating to the privacy, security and transmission of individually identifiable health information, or protected health information. HITECH

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also created new tiers of civil monetary penalties, amended HIPAA to make civil and criminal penalties 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;

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the federal transparency requirements under the ACA, including the provision commonly referred to as the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, and its implementing regulations, which require applicable manufacturers of drugs, devices, biologics, and medical supplies for which payment is available under Medicare, Medicaid, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (with certain exceptions) to report annually to CMS, information related to payments or other transfers of value made to physicians (defined to include doctors, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists and chiropractors) and teaching hospitals, as well as ownership and investment interests held by physicians and their immediate family members. Effective January 1, 2022, these reporting obligations extend to include transfers of value made to certain non-physician providers such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners;

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federal government price reporting laws, which require us to calculate and report complex pricing metrics in an accurate and timely manner to government programs; and

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federal consumer protection and unfair competition laws, which broadly regulate marketplace activities and activities that potentially harm consumers.

Additionally, we are subject to state and foreign analogs of each of the healthcare laws and regulations described above, among others, some of which may be broader in scope and may apply regardless of the payer. Many U.S. states have also adopted laws similar to the federal Anti-Kickback Statute and False Claims Act, and may apply to our business practices, including, but not limited to, research, distribution, sales or marketing arrangements and claims involving healthcare items or services reimbursed by non-governmental payers, including private insurers. In addition, some states have passed laws that require pharmaceutical companies to comply with the April 2003 Office of Inspector General Compliance Program Guidance for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and/or the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America’s Code on Interactions with Healthcare Professionals. Several states also impose other marketing restrictions or require pharmaceutical companies to make marketing or price disclosures to the state and require the registration of pharmaceutical sales representatives. State and foreign laws, including for example the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679, or the GDPR, which became effective on May 25, 2018, also govern the privacy and security of personal data, including health information in some circumstances, many of which differ from each other in significant ways and often are not preempted by HIPAA, thus complicating compliance efforts. There are ambiguities as to what is required to comply with these state requirements, and, if we fail to comply with an applicable state law requirement, we could be subject to penalties.

Healthcare reform

Payers, whether domestic or foreign, or governmental or private, are developing increasingly sophisticated methods of controlling healthcare costs and those methods are not always specifically adapted for new technologies. In both the United States and certain foreign jurisdictions, there have been a number of legislative and regulatory changes to the healthcare system that could impact our ability to sell our products profitably. In particular, in 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, or collectively, the ACA, was enacted, which, among other things, subjected biologic products to potential competition by lower-cost biosimilars; addressed a new methodology by which rebates owed by manufacturers under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program are calculated for drugs that are inhaled, infused, instilled, implanted, or injected; increased the minimum Medicaid rebates owed by most manufacturers under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program; extended the Medicaid Drug Rebate program to utilization of prescriptions of individuals enrolled in Medicaid managed care organizations; subjected manufacturers to new annual fees and taxes for certain branded prescription drugs; created a new Medicare Part D coverage gap discount program, in which manufacturers must agree to offer 50% (increased to 70%

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pursuant to the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, effective as of January 1, 2019) point-of-sale discounts off negotiated prices of applicable brand drugs to eligible beneficiaries during their coverage gap period, as a condition for the manufacturer’s outpatient drugs to be covered under Medicare Part D; and provided incentives to programs that increase the federal government’s comparative effectiveness research.

Since its enactment, there have been numerous judicial, administrative, executive, and legislative challenges to certain aspects of the ACA. On June 17, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the most recent judicial challenge to the ACA brought by several states without specifically ruling on the constitutionality of the ACA. Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision, President Biden issued an Executive Order to initiate a special enrollment period from February 15, 2021 through August 15, 2021 for purposes of obtaining health insurance coverage through the ACA marketplace. The Executive Order also instructed certain governmental agencies to review and reconsider their existing policies and rules that limit access to healthcare, including among others, reexamining Medicaid demonstration projects and waiver programs that include work requirements, and policies that create unnecessary barriers to obtaining access to health insurance coverage through Medicaid or the ACA. It is unclear how other healthcare reform measures of the Biden administration or other efforts, if any, to challenge repeal or replace the ACA, will impact our business.

Prior to the Biden administration, on October 13, 2017, former President Trump signed an Executive Order terminating the cost-sharing subsidies that reimburse insurers under the ACA. The former Trump administration concluded that cost-sharing reduction payments, or CSRs, to insurance companies required under the ACA have not received necessary appropriations from Congress and announced that it will discontinue these payments immediately until those appropriations are made. Several state Attorneys General filed suit to stop the administration from terminating the subsidies, but their request for a restraining order was denied by a federal judge in California on October 25, 2017. On August 14, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in two separate cases that the federal government is liable for the full amount of unpaid CSRs for the years preceding and including 2017. For CSR claims made by health insurance companies for years 2018 and later, further litigation will be required to determine the amounts due, if any. Further, on June 14, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the federal government was not required to pay more than $12 billion in ACA risk corridor payments to third-party payers that argued the payments were owed to them. On April 27, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's decision and remanded the case to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, concluding that the government has an obligation to pay these risk corridor payments under the relevant formula. It is unclear what impact these rulings will have on our business.

In addition, CMS published a final rule that would give states greater flexibility as of 2020 in setting benchmarks for insurers in the individual and small group marketplaces, which may have the effect of relaxing the essential health benefits required under the ACA for plans sold through such marketplaces.

On December 20, 2019, former President Trump signed into law the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 1865), which repeals the Cadillac tax, the health insurance provider tax, and the medical device excise tax. It is impossible to determine whether similar taxes could be instated in the future.

Other legislative changes have been proposed and adopted in the United States since the ACA was enacted. For example, on March 11, 2021, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 into law, which eliminates the statutory Medicaid drug rebate cap, currently set at 100% of a drug’s average manufacturer price, for single source and innovator multiple source drugs, beginning January 1, 2024. Further, in August 2011, the Budget Control Act of 2011, among other things, created measures for spending reductions by Congress. A Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, tasked with recommending a targeted deficit reduction of at least $1.2 trillion for the years 2013 through 2021, was unable to reach required goals, thereby triggering the legislation’s automatic reduction to several government programs, including 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 2030 unless additional action is taken by Congress. Pursuant to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the CARES Act), as well as subsequent legislation, these reductions have been suspended from May 1, 2020 through

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March 31, 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the temporary suspension, a 1% payment reduction will occur beginning April 1, 2022 through June 30, 2022, and the 2% payment reduction will resume on July 1, 2022. Additionally, in May 2019, CMS issued a final rule to allow Medicare Advantage Plans the option of using step therapy for Part B drugs beginning January 1, 2020. However, it is unclear whether the Biden administration will challenge, reverse, revoke, or otherwise modify these executive and administrative actions after January 20, 2021.

Further, on May 30, 2018, the Right to Try Act was signed into law. The law, among other things, provides a federal framework for certain patients to access certain investigational new drug products that have completed a Phase 1 clinical trial and that are undergoing investigation for FDA approval. Under certain circumstances, eligible patients can seek treatment without enrolling in clinical trials and without obtaining FDA permission under the FDA expanded access program. There is no obligation for a pharmaceutical manufacturer to make its drug products available to eligible patients as a result of the Right to Try Act.

Additionally, there has been increasing legislative and enforcement interest in the United States with respect to specialty drug pricing practices. Specifically, there have been several recent U.S. 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 Medicare, review the relationship between pricing and manufacturer patient programs, and reform government program reimbursement methodologies for drugs. At a federal level, President Biden signed an Executive Order on July 9, 2021 affirming the administration’s policy to (i) support legislative reforms that would lower the prices of prescription drug and biologics, including by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, by imposing inflation caps, and, by supporting the development and market entry of lower-cost generic drugs and biosimilars; and (ii) support the enactment of a public health insurance option. Among other things, the Executive Order also directs HHS to provide a report on actions to combat excessive pricing of prescription drugs, enhance the domestic drug supply chain, reduce the price that the federal government pays for drugs, and address price gouging in the industry; and directs the FDA to work with states and Indian Tribes that propose to develop section 804 Importation Programs in accordance with the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, and the FDA’s implementing regulations. The FDA released such implementing regulations on September 24, 2020, which went into effect on November 30, 2020, providing guidance for states to build and submit importation plans for drugs from Canada. Further, on November 20, 2020 CMS issued an Interim Final Rule implementing the Most Favored Nation (MFN), Model under which Medicare Part B reimbursement rates will be calculated for certain drugs and biologics based on the lowest price drug manufacturers receive in OECD countries with a similar gross domestic product per capita. The MFN Model regulations mandate participation by identified Part B providers and would have applied to all U.S. states and territories for a seven-year period beginning January 1, 2021 and ending December 31, 2027. The MFN is currently subject to ongoing litigation. Further, authorities in Canada have passed rules designed to safeguard the Canadian drug supply from shortages. If implemented, importation of drugs from Canada and the MFN Model may materially and adversely affect the price we receive for any of our product candidates in Canada and other OECD countries. Although a number of these and other proposed measures may require authorization through additional legislation to become effective, and the Biden administration may reverse or otherwise change these measures, both the Biden administration and Congress have indicated that they will continue to seek new legislative measures to control drug costs.

At the state level, legislatures have increasingly passed legislation and implemented 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, to encourage importation from other countries and bulk purchasing.

Other U.S. environmental, health, and safety laws and regulations

We may be subject to numerous environmental, health, and safety laws and regulations, including those governing laboratory procedures and the handling, use, storage, treatment, and disposal of hazardous materials and wastes. From time to time and in the future, our operations may involve the use of hazardous and flammable materials, including chemicals and biological materials, and may also produce hazardous waste

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products. Even if we contract with third parties for the disposal of these materials and waste products, we cannot eliminate the risk of contamination or injury resulting from these materials. In the event of contamination or injury resulting from the use or disposal of our hazardous materials, we could be held liable for any resulting damages, and any liability could exceed our resources. We also could incur significant costs associated with civil or criminal fines and penalties for failure to comply with such laws and regulations.

We maintain workers’ compensation insurance to cover us for costs and expenses we may incur due to injuries to our employees, but this insurance may not provide adequate coverage against potential liabilities. However, we do not maintain insurance for environmental liability or toxic tort claims that may be asserted against us.

In addition, we may incur substantial costs in order to comply with current or future environmental, health, and safety laws and regulations. Current or future environmental laws and regulations may impair our research, development or production efforts. In addition, failure to comply with these laws and regulations may result in substantial fines, penalties, or other sanctions.

Personal data processing

The collection, use, transfer, disclosure, retention, security, and other processing of personal data (including, without limitation, clinical trial data and other personal health data) (collectively, Process or Processing) may be subject to independent and overlapping data security and privacy regulatory frameworks in the various jurisdictions in which we operate. These frameworks are evolving and may impose potentially conflicting obligations. For example, in the European Economic Area (EEA), the GDPR, which became effective May 25, 2018, governs the Processing of personal data (GDPR). The GDPR applies to any company established in the EEA and to companies established outside the EEA that Process personal data in connection with the offering of goods or services to data subjects in the EEA or the monitoring of the behavior of data subjects in the EEA. The GDPR enhances data protection obligations for data controllers (such as clinical trial sponsors) of personal data, including stringent requirements relating to the consent of data subjects, expanded disclosures about how personal data is used, requirements to conduct privacy impact assessments for “high risk” Processing, limitations on retention of personal data, special provisions for “sensitive information” including health and genetic information of data subjects, mandatory data breach notification and “privacy by design” requirements, and direct obligations on service providers acting as data processors. The GDPR also imposes strict rules on the transfer of personal data outside of the EEA to countries that do not ensure an adequate level of protection for personal data, like the United States. Such transfers of personal data outside of the EEA require the use of a valid “transfer mechanism” and, in many cases, the implementation of supplementary technical, organizational and/or contractual measures. Failure to comply with the requirements of the GDPR and the related national data protection laws of the EEA Member States may result in fines of up to €20 million or 4% of a company’s global annual revenues for the preceding financial year, whichever is higher. Moreover, the GDPR grants data subjects the right to request deletion of personal data in certain circumstances, and claim material and non-material damages resulting from infringement of the GDPR. Notwithstanding the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, by operation of the so-called “UK GDPR”, the GDPR continues to apply in substantially equivalent form in the context of the United Kingdom (UK), UK establishments and UK-focused personal data Processing operations. Non-compliance with the UK GDPR may result in monetary penalties of up to £17.5 million or 4% of worldwide revenue, whichever is higher. Although the EU Commission recently adopted adequacy decisions for the United Kingdom to facilitate data transfers between the EU and the United Kingdom, the respective provisions and enforcement of the GDPR and UK GDPR may diverge in the future and create additional regulatory challenges and uncertainties. Additionally, other countries outside of Europe have enacted or are considering enacting similar privacy and data protection laws, which could increase the cost and complexity of delivering our services and operating our business. For example, Brazil enacted the General Data Protection Law, New Zealand enacted the New Zealand Privacy Act, China enacted its Personal Information Protection Law, and Canada introduced the Digital Charter Implementation Act.

In the United States, California recently enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA, which creates new individual privacy rights for California consumers (as defined in the law) and places increased privacy and security obligations on entities handling personal data of consumers or households. The CCPA requires

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covered businesses to provide certain disclosures to consumers about their data collection, use and sharing practices, and to provide affected California residents with ways to opt-out of certain sales or transfers of personal information, as well as the right to request, modify, and delete personal information. The CCPA went into effect on January 1, 2020, and the California State Attorney General submitted final regulations for review on June 2, 2020, which were finalized and are now effective. The California State Attorney General has commenced enforcement actions against violators as of July 1, 2020. Further, a new California privacy law, the California Privacy Rights Act, or CPRA, was passed by California voters on November 3, 2020. The CPRA will create additional obligations with respect to processing and storing personal information that are scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2023 (with certain provisions having retroactive effect to January 1, 2022). Other U.S. states also are considering omnibus privacy legislation and industry organizations regularly adopt and advocate for new standards in these areas. For example, Virginia recently enacted the Consumer Data Protection Act that will become effective on January 1, 2023, and is similar to the CCPA and CPRA, and Colorado recently enacted the Colorado Privacy Act, which will become effective on July 1, 2023, and which is similar to the CCPA and Virginia law. While the CCPA and CPRA provide exceptions for certain activities involving data collected in the context of clinical trials, health data governed by California’s Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, and PHI governed by HIPAA, and other state laws may contain similar exceptions, we cannot yet determine the impact the CCPA, CPRA, or other such existing or future laws, regulations and standards may have on our business.

Given the breadth and depth of changes in data protection obligations, achieving, and maintaining compliance with applicable data protection laws and regulations such as the GDPR, UK GDPR and CCPA will require significant time, resources and expense, and we may be required to put in place new or additional mechanisms to ensure compliance with current, evolving and new data protection requirements. This may be an onerous undertaking and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Government regulation of drugs and biologics outside of the United States

European drug development

Our future products may also be subject to extensive regulatory requirements in the European Union. As in the United States, medicinal products can be marketed only if a marketing authorization from the competent regulatory agencies has been obtained.

Similar to the United States, the various phases of preclinical and clinical research in the European Union are subject to significant regulatory controls.

In April 2014, the European Union adopted a new Clinical Trials Regulation (EU) No 536/2014, which replaced the Clinical Trials Directive 2001/20/EC on January 31, 2022. The transitory provisions of the new Regulation offer sponsors the possibility to choose between the requirements of the previous Directive and the new Regulation if the request for authorization of a clinical trial is submitted in the year after the new Regulation became applicable. If the sponsor chooses to submit under the previous Directive, the clinical trial continues to be governed by the Directive until three years after the new Regulation became applicable. If a clinical trial continues for more than three years after the Regulation became applicable, the new Regulation will at that time begin to apply to the clinical trial. The new Regulation is directly applicable in all Member States (and so does not require national implementing legislation in each Member State), and aims at simplifying and streamlining the approval of clinical studies in the European Union. The main characteristics of the new Regulation include: a streamlined application procedure via a single-entry point through the Clinical Trials Information System, or CTIS; a single set of documents to be prepared and submitted for the application as well as simplified reporting procedures for clinical trial sponsors; and a harmonized procedure for the assessment of applications for clinical trials, which is divided in two parts (Part I contains scientific and medicinal product documentation and Part II contains the national and patient-level documentation). Part I is assessed by a coordinated review by the competent authorities of all European Union Member States in which an application for authorization of a clinical trial has been submitted (Concerned Member States) of a draft report

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prepared by a Reference Member State. Part II is assessed separately by each Concerned Member State. Strict deadlines have also been established for the assessment of clinical trial applications.

European drug review and approval

In the European Union, medicinal products can only be commercialized after obtaining a marketing authorization (MA). There are two main types of MAs:

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The centralized MA is issued by the European Commission through the centralized procedure, based on the opinion of the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP), of the EMA, and is valid throughout the entire territory of the European Union and the additional Member States of the European Economic Area (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), or EEA. The centralized procedure is mandatory for certain types of products, including products produced by certain biotechnological process, products designated as orphan medicinal products, advanced-therapy medicinal products (i.e., gene-therapy, somatic cell therapy, or tissue-engineered medicines) and medicinal products containing a new active substance indicated for the treatment of HIV, AIDS, cancer, neurodegenerative disorders, diabetes, auto-immune and other immune dysfunctions, and viral diseases. The centralized procedure is optional for products containing a new active substance not yet authorized in the European Union, or for products that constitute a significant therapeutic, scientific, or technical innovation or which are in the interest of public health in the European Union. Under the centralized procedure, the maximum timeframe for the evaluation of a MA application by the European Medicines Agency, or EMA, is 210 days, excluding clock stops, when additional written or oral information is to be provided by the applicant in response to questions asked by the CHMP. Clock stops may extend the timeframe of evaluation of an MA application considerably beyond 210 days. Where the CHMP gives a positive opinion, the EMA provides the opinion together with supporting documentation to the European Commission, which makes the final decision to grant a marketing authorization within 67 days of receipt of the EMA’s recommendation. Accelerated assessment might be granted by the CHMP in exceptional cases, when a medicinal product is expected to be of a major public health interest, particularly from the point of view of therapeutic innovation. The timeframe for the evaluation of a MA application under the accelerated assessment procedure is 150 days, excluding stop clocks, but it is possible that the CHMP may revert to the standard time limit for the centralized procedure if it determines that the application is no longer appropriate to conduct an accelerated assessment.

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National MAs, which are issued by the competent authorities of the Member States of the European Union and only cover their respective territory, are available for products not falling within the mandatory scope of the centralized procedure. Where a product has already been authorized for marketing in a Member State of the European Union, this national MA can be recognized in other Member States through the mutual recognition procedure. If the product has not received a national MA in any Member State at the time of application, it can be approved simultaneously in various Member States through the decentralized procedure. Under the decentralized procedure, an identical dossier is submitted to the competent authorities of each of the Member States in which the MA is sought, one of which is selected by the applicant as the Reference Member State, or RMS. The competent authority of the RMS prepares a draft assessment report, a draft summary of the product characteristics, or SmPC, and a draft of the labeling and package leaflet, all of which are sent to the other Member States (referred to as the Concerned Member States) for their approval. If the Concerned Member States raise no objections, based on a potential serious risk to public health, to the assessment report, SmPC, labeling, or packaging proposed by the RMS, the product is subsequently granted a national MA in all of the Member States (i.e., in the RMS and the Concerned Member States).

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

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European data and market exclusivity

In the European Union, innovative medicinal products (including both small molecules and biologic medicinal products), sometimes referred to as new active substances, approved on the basis of a complete independent data package, qualify for eight years of data exclusivity upon marketing authorization and an additional two years of market exclusivity. The data exclusivity, if granted, prevents generic or biosimilar applicants from referencing the innovator’s 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, for a period of eight years from the date on which the reference product was first authorized in the European Union. During the additional two-year period of market exclusivity, a generic or biosimilar marketing authorization can be submitted, and the innovator’s data may be referenced, but no generic or biosimilar product can be marketed in the European Union until the expiration of the market exclusivity period. The overall ten-year period will be extended to a maximum of 11 years if, during the first eight years of those ten 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 determined to bring a significant clinical benefit in comparison with currently approved therapies. Even if an innovative medicinal product gains the prescribed period of data exclusivity, another company could nevertheless also market another version of the product if such company obtained a marketing authorization based on an application with a complete and independent data package of pharmaceutical tests, preclinical tests, and clinical trials.

European orphan drug designation and exclusivity

In the European Union, the EMA’s Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products grants orphan designation to promote the development of products that: (1) are intended for the diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of life-threatening or chronically debilitating conditions; (2) either (i) such condition affects no more than 5 in 10,000 persons in the European Union when the application is made, or (ii) it is unlikely that the product, without the benefits derived from orphan status, would generate sufficient return in the European Union to justify the necessary investment in its development; and (3) there exists no satisfactory method of diagnosis, prevention or treatment of such condition authorized for marketing in the European Union, or, if such a method exists, the product in question would be of significant benefit to those affected by the condition.

In the European Union, orphan designation entitles a party to financial incentives such as reduction of fees or fee waivers, and ten years of market exclusivity is granted following marketing approval for the orphan product. This period may be reduced to six years if, at the end of the fifth year, it is established that 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. During the period of market exclusivity, marketing authorization may only be granted to a “similar medicinal product” for the same therapeutic indication if: (i) a second applicant can establish that its product, although similar to the authorized product, is safer, more effective or otherwise clinically superior; (ii) the marketing authorization holder for the authorized product consents to a second orphan medicinal product application; or (iii) the marketing authorization holder for the authorized product cannot supply enough orphan medicinal product. A “similar medicinal product” is defined as a medicinal product containing a similar active substance or substances as contained in an authorized orphan medicinal product, and which is intended for the same therapeutic indication. Orphan designation must be requested before submitting an application for marketing approval. Orphan designation does not convey any advantage in, or shorten the duration of, the regulatory review and approval process in the EEA.

European pediatric investigation plan

In the European Union, companies developing a new medicinal product must agree upon a pediatric investigation plan, or PIP, with the EMA’s Pediatric Committee, or the PDCO, and must conduct pediatric clinical trials in accordance with that PIP, unless the EMA has granted a product-specific waiver, a class waiver, or a deferral for one or more of the measures included in the PIP. This requirement also applies when a company wants to add a new indication, pharmaceutical form or route of administration for a medicine that is already authorized. The PIP sets out the timing and measures proposed to generate data to support a pediatric

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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 this 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. Products that are granted a marketing authorization with the results of the pediatric clinical trials conducted in accordance with the PIP (even where such results are negative) are eligible for six months’ supplementary protection certificate extension (if any is in effect at the time of approval). In the case of orphan medicinal products, a two-year extension of the orphan market exclusivity may be available. This pediatric reward is subject to specific conditions and is not automatically available when data in compliance with the PIP are developed and submitted.

PRIME designation

In March 2016, the EMA launched an initiative to facilitate development of product candidates in indications, often rare, for which few or no therapies currently exist. The PRIority MEdicines (PRIME), scheme is intended to encourage drug development in areas of unmet medical need and provides accelerated assessment of products representing substantial innovation, where the marketing authorization application will be made through the centralized procedure. Eligible products must target conditions for which there is an unmet medical need (meaning there is no satisfactory method of diagnosis, prevention, or treatment in the European Union or, if there is, the new medicine will bring a major therapeutic advantage), and they must demonstrate the potential to address the unmet medical need by introducing new methods of therapy or improving existing ones. Products from small- and medium-sized enterprises may qualify for earlier entry into the PRIME scheme than larger companies. Many benefits accrue to sponsors of product candidates with PRIME designation, including but not limited to, early and proactive regulatory dialogue with the EMA, frequent discussions on clinical trial designs and other development program elements, and accelerated marketing authorization application assessment once a dossier has been submitted. Importantly, a dedicated contact and rapporteur from the EMA’s CHMP or Committee for Advanced Therapies are appointed early in the PRIME scheme facilitating increased understanding of the product at EMA’s Committee level. A kick-off meeting initiates these relationships and includes a team of multidisciplinary experts at the EMA to provide guidance on the overall development and regulatory strategies. Where, during the course of development, a medicine no longer meets the eligibility criteria, support under the PRIME scheme may be withdrawn.

Post-approval requirements

Similar to the United States, in the EEA, both MA holders and manufacturers of medicinal products are subject to comprehensive regulatory oversight by the EMA, the European Commission and/or the competent regulatory authorities of the Member States. The holder of an MA must establish and maintain a pharmacovigilance system and appoint an individual qualified person for pharmacovigilance who is responsible for oversight of that system. This obligation to appoint a qualified person for pharmacovigilance similarly applies in the United Kingdom. Key obligations include expedited reporting of suspected serious adverse reactions and submission of periodic safety update reports (PSURs).

All new MA applications must include a risk management plan, or RMP, describing the risk management system that the company will put in place and documenting measures to prevent or minimize the risks associated with the product. The regulatory authorities may also impose specific obligations as a condition of the MA. Such risk-minimization measures or post-authorization obligations may include additional safety monitoring, more frequent submission of PSURs, or the conduct of additional clinical trials or post-authorization safety studies.

The advertising and promotion of medicinal products is also subject to laws concerning promotion of medicinal products, interactions with physicians, misleading and comparative advertising, and unfair commercial practices. All advertising and promotional activities for the product must be consistent with the approved summary of product characteristics, and therefore all off-label promotion is prohibited. Direct-to-consumer

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advertising of prescription medicines is also prohibited in the European Union. Although general requirements for advertising and promotion of medicinal products are established under European Union directives, the details are governed by regulations in each Member State and can differ from one country to another.

Much like the Anti-Kickback Statue prohibition in the United States, the provision of benefits or advantages to physicians or other health care professionals to induce or encourage the prescription, recommendation, endorsement, purchase, supply, order or use of medicinal products is also prohibited in the European Union. The provision of benefits or advantages to induce or reward improper performance generally is usually governed by the national anti-bribery laws of European Union Member States, and the Bribery Act 2010 in the United Kingdom. Infringement of these laws could result in substantial fines and imprisonment. EU Directive 2001/83/EC, which is the EU Directive governing medicinal products for human use, further provides that, where medicinal products are being promoted to persons qualified to prescribe or supply them, no gifts, pecuniary advantages or benefits in kind may be supplied, offered or promised to such persons unless they are inexpensive and relevant to the practice of medicine or pharmacy. This provision has been transposed into the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 and so remains applicable in the United Kingdom despite its departure from the European Union.

Payments made to physicians or other healthcare professionals in certain European Union Member States must be publicly disclosed. Moreover, agreements with physicians often must be the subject of prior notification and approval by the physician’s employer, his or her competent professional organization and/or the regulatory authorities of the individual European Union Member States. These requirements are provided in the national laws, industry codes or professional codes of conduct, applicable in the European Union Member States. Failure to comply with these requirements could result in reputational risk, public reprimands, administrative penalties, fines or imprisonment.

The aforementioned European Union rules are generally applicable in the EEA.

Pricing and reimbursement

In the European Union, pricing and reimbursement schemes vary widely from country to country. 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 healthcare and the pricing and reimbursement of products in that context. Some countries provide that products may be marketed only after a reimbursement price has been agreed. Some countries may require the completion of additional studies that compare the cost-effectiveness of a particular product candidate to currently available therapies (so-called health technology assessments (HTAs)) in order to obtain reimbursement or pricing approval.

The European Union provides options for its Member States to restrict the range of products for which their national health insurance systems provide reimbursement and to control the prices of medicinal products for human use. European Union Member States may approve a specific price for a product or may instead adopt a system of direct or indirect controls on the profitability of the company placing the product on the market. Other Member States allow companies to fix their own prices for products but monitor and control prescription volumes and issue guidance to physicians to limit prescriptions. Recently, many countries in the European Union have increased the amount of discounts required on pharmaceuticals, and these efforts could continue as countries attempt to manage healthcare expenditures, especially in light of the severe fiscal and debt crises experienced by many countries in the European Union. The downward pressure on health care costs in general, particularly prescription products, has become intense. As a result, increasingly high barriers are being erected to the entry of new products. Political, economic and regulatory developments may further complicate pricing negotiations, and pricing negotiations may continue after reimbursement has been obtained. Reference pricing used by various European Union Member States and parallel trade (arbitrage between low-priced and high-priced Member States) can further reduce prices. Special pricing and reimbursement rules may apply to orphan medicinal products. Inclusion of orphan medicinal products in reimbursement systems tends to focus on the

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medical usefulness, need, quality and economic benefits to patients and the healthcare system as for any drug. Acceptance of any medicinal product for reimbursement may come with cost, use, and often volume restrictions, which again can vary by country. In addition, results-based rules of reimbursement may apply.

Brexit and the regulatory framework in the United Kingdom

On June 23, 2016, the electorate in the United Kingdom voted in favor of leaving the European Union, commonly referred to as Brexit, and the United Kingdom officially withdrew from the European Union on January 31, 2020. Pursuant to the formal withdrawal arrangements agreed between the United Kingdom and the European Union, the United Kingdom was subject to a transition period until December 31, 2020 (Transition Period), during which the European Union’s rules continued to apply. However, the European Union and the United Kingdom have concluded a trade and cooperation agreement, or TCA, which was provisionally applicable since January 1, 2021 and has been formally applicable since May 1, 2021. The TCA includes specific provisions concerning pharmaceuticals, which include the mutual recognition of GMP, inspections of manufacturing facilities for medicinal products and GMP documents issued, but does not foresee wholesale mutual recognition of UK and European Union pharmaceutical regulations. At present, Great Britain has implemented European Union legislation on the marketing, promotion and sale of medicinal products through the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 (as amended) (under the Northern Ireland Protocol, the European Union regulatory framework will continue to apply in Northern Ireland). The regulatory regime in Great Britain therefore largely aligns with current European Union regulations, however it is possible that these regimes will diverge in future now that Great Britain’s regulatory system is independent from the European Union and the TCA does not provide for mutual recognition of United Kingdom and European Union pharmaceutical legislation.

Great Britain is no longer covered by the European Union’s procedures for the grant of centralized marketing authorizations (as a result of the Northern Ireland Protocol, Northern Ireland will be covered by the centralized authorization procedure and can be covered as a Concerned Member State under the decentralized or mutual recognition procedures). A separate marketing authorization will therefore be required to market drugs in Great Britain. All medicinal products with a valid centralized MA on January 1, 2021 were automatically converted into Great Britain MAs (unless the MA holder opted out of such a conversion). For two years starting on January 1, 2021, the United Kingdom’s regulator, Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), may adopt decisions taken by the European Commission on the approval of new marketing authorizations through the centralized procedure, and the MHRA will have regard to marketing authorizations approved in a country in the EEA (although in both cases a marketing authorization will only be granted if any Great Britain-specific requirements are met). Various national procedures are now available to place a drug on the market in the United Kingdom, Great Britain, or Northern Ireland, with the main national procedure having a maximum timeframe of 150 days (excluding time taken to provide any further information or data required).

Since January 1, 2021, a separate process for orphan designation has applied in Great Britain. There is now no pre-marketing authorization orphan designation (as there is in the European Union) in Great Britain and the application for orphan designation will be reviewed by the MHRA at the time of a marketing authorization application for a United Kingdom or Great Britain MA. The criteria for orphan designation are the same as in the European Union, save that they apply to Great Britain only (e.g., there must be no satisfactory method of diagnosis, prevention or treatment of the condition concerned in Great Britain, as opposed to the European Union, and the prevalence of the condition must be no more than 5 in 10,000 persons in Great Britain).

The UK has implemented the now repealed Clinical Trials Directive 2001/20/EC into national law through the Medicines for Human Use (Clinical Trials) Regulations 2004 (as amended). The extent to which the regulation of clinical trials in the UK will mirror the new Clinical Trials Regulation now that has come into effect is not yet known, however the MHRA has opened a consultation on a set of proposals designed to improve and strengthen the UK clinical trials legislation. Such consultation is open until 14 March 2022.

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China – Human Genetic Resources Approval

According to the Interim Measures for the Administration of Human Genetic Resources, promulgated by China’s Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Health (MOH) jointly on June 10, 1998, an additional approval is required for any foreign companies or foreign affiliates that conduct trials in China. Prior to beginning a trial, the foreign sponsor and the Chinese clinical trial site are required to obtain approval from the Human Genetic Resources Administration of China, or HGRAC, which is an agency under the Ministry of Science and Technology, to collect any biological samples that contain the genetic material of Chinese human subjects, and to transfer cross-border the samples or associated data. Furthermore, one of the key matters that is subject to the HGRAC review and approval process is the IP sharing arrangement between Chinese and foreign parties. The parties are required to share patent rights to inventions arising from the analysis of the samples. Conducting a clinical trial in China without obtaining the relevant HGRAC preapproval will subject the sponsor and trial site to administrative liability, including confiscation of HGRAC samples and associated data, and administrative fines.

On July 2, 2015, the Ministry of Science and Technology issued the Service Guide for Administrative Licensing Items concerning Examination and Approval of Sampling, Collecting, Trading, Exporting Human Genetic Resources, or Taking Such Resources out of the People’s Republic of China, or PRC, which provides that foreign-invested sponsors that sample, collect, or research human genetic resources in clinical trials shall be required to apply for approval of the China Human Genetic Resources Management Office through its online system. On October 26, 2017, the Ministry of Science and Technology issued the Circular on Optimizing the Administrative Examination and Approval of Human Genetic Resources, which simplified the approval for sampling and collecting human genetic resources for the purpose of commercializing a drug in the PRC. On May 28, 2019, the State Council of PRC issued the HGR Regulation, which became effective on July 1, 2019. The HGR Regulation regulates the collection, preservation, usage and provision abroad of China’s human genetic resources. According to this regulation, “human genetic resource” includes human genetic resource materials and information. Human genetic resource materials refer to organs, tissues, cells and other genetic materials containing human genome, genes and other genetic materials. Human genetic resource information refers to information, such as data, generated by human genetic resources materials. The Ministry of Science and Technology is responsible for the management of human genetic resources at the national level, and the administrative departments of science and technology under the provincial governments are responsible for the management of human genetic resources at local level. Foreign entities, individuals and such entities established or actually controlled by foreign entities are not allowed to collect or preserve China’s human genetic resources or provide human genetic resources abroad. If foreign entities and individuals and foreign-established or foreign-controlled entities intend to use China’s human genetic resources for conducting scientific research, they must comply with the applicable Chinese laws, regulations and rules (including any approval requirements) and carry out such research through collaboration with Chinese research institutions, universities, medical institutions or enterprises. The HGR Regulation formalized the approval requirements pertinent to research collaborations between Chinese and foreign-owned entities. Pursuant to the new rule, a new notification system (as opposed to the advance approval approach originally in place) is put in place for clinical trials using China’s human genetic resources at clinical institutions without involving the export of human genetic resources outside of China.

Rest of the world regulation

For other countries outside of the EEA, the United Kingdom, and the United States, such as countries in Eastern Europe, Latin America or Asia, the requirements governing the conduct of clinical trials, privacy, information security, product licensing, pricing and reimbursement vary from country to country. Additionally, the clinical trials must be conducted in accordance with GCP requirements and the applicable regulatory requirements and the ethical principles that have their origin in the Declaration of Helsinki.

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Manufacturing

We developed our manufacturing strategy with the aim to deliver reliability, quality, and affordability for our future customers, the Global Buyers Club. We do not own or operate, and currently have no plans to establish, any manufacturing facilities. As such, we are developing robust and replicable manufacturing processes and analytical methods in concert with world-class, global CMOs. Additionally, we plan to maintain efficient use of inventory, leveraging advanced supply chain planning capabilities and storing inventory at the most strategic points of the value chain to also ensure reliability of supply for us and our combination partners, as appropriate.

For clinical supply, we use CMOs that act in accordance with the FDA’s cGMP for the manufacturing of drug substance and product. We expect to rely on third parties for the production of all clinical supply drug substance and drug product. We use additional contract manufacturers to fill, label, package, store and distribute investigational drug products. It is our intent to identify and qualify additional manufacturers to provide drug substance and drug product services (including packaging and distribution) as products move into the regulatory approval stage for any product candidates that complete clinical development. In parallel, we are designing our supply chains for late-stage clinical programs with dual sourcing of both drug substance manufacturing and drug product formulation.

All of our CMOs have Quality Management Systems in line with U.S., EU and UK regulatory expectations and our internal quality function has full oversight responsibility, including on-site pre- and post-approval inspections, for those suppliers. The quality oversight is ensured through the supply and quality agreements agreed with all of our suppliers.

As our portfolio expands, we will continue to evaluate whether there is strategic benefit to internalizing certain technologies or processes. This assessment will be based on our priorities of quality, reliability, and affordability, as well as risk management factors, including geopolitical.

Human Capital

As of December 31, 2021, we had 242 full-time employees, of which 57 have M.D. or Ph.D. degrees. At such date, we also had two part-time employees, and approximately 50 consultants/contractors. Within our workforce, 129 employees are engaged in research and development and 115 are engaged in business development, finance, legal, and general management and administration. None of our employees are represented by labor unions or covered by collective bargaining agreements. We consider our relationship with our employees to be very strong, as evidenced by our more than 30 awards for company culture and leadership.

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 stock-based compensation awards.

Corporate Information

The mailing address for our principal executive office is 50 Hampshire Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, and our telephone number is (617) 315-2255. Our website address is https://eqrx.com. The information contained in or accessible from our website is not incorporated into this annual report on Form 10-K, and you should not consider it part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. We have included our website address in this Annual Report on Form 10-K solely as an inactive textual reference.

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ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS

Our business faces significant risks and uncertainties. Certain important factors may have a material adverse effect on our business prospects, financial condition and results of operations, and you should carefully consider them. Accordingly, in evaluating our business, we encourage you to consider the following discussion of risk factors, in its entirety, in addition to other information contained in or incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10 K and our other public filings with the SEC, including our financial statements and the related notes and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” The occurrence of any of the events or developments described below could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition, prospects and price of our securities. In addition, there are additional risks not described below that either are not presently known to us or that we currently deem immaterial, and these additional risks could also materially impair our business, operations or market price of our securities.

Risks Related to Our Financial Status, Business Model and Growth Plans

We do not currently have, and may never have, any products approved for commercial sale and have not generated any revenue to date, and so may never become profitable.

To become and remain profitable, we must develop and eventually commercialize a product or products with significant market potential. This will require us to be successful in a range of challenging activities, including establishing our business model and key third-party relationships with payers, completing preclinical studies and clinical trials of our product candidates, obtaining marketing approval for these product candidates, manufacturing, marketing, and selling those products for which we may obtain marketing approval and satisfying any post-marketing requirements.

We currently do not have any products approved for commercial sale and cannot guarantee that we will ever receive necessary regulatory approvals to commercialize any products. Further, we have not generated any revenue to date. Our ability to become and remain profitable depends upon our ability to generate revenue from product sales or execute other business arrangements. Our current product candidates are in various stages of development, and we do not expect to generate any revenue from the sale of approved products in the near future. We do not expect to generate significant revenue unless and until we obtain regulatory approval of, and begin to sell, one or more of our products, if approved. Our ability to generate revenue depends on a number of factors, including, but not limited to, our ability to:

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successfully complete our ongoing and planned preclinical and clinical studies for our pipeline programs;

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timely file and gain acceptance of investigational new drug applications (INDs) for our programs in order to commence planned clinical trials or future clinical trials;

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successfully enroll subjects in, and complete, our ongoing and planned clinical trials;

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obtain data and other development support from our third-party collaborators, including Hansoh, CStone, G1, Genor and others;

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initiate and successfully complete all safety and efficacy studies required to obtain regulatory approval for our product candidates, and additional clinical trials or other studies beyond those planned to support the approval and commercialization of our product candidates;

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successfully demonstrate to the satisfaction of the FDA, EMA, MHRA, or comparable regulatory authorities the safety and efficacy and acceptable risk to benefit profile of our product candidates or any future product candidates;

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successfully manage the prevalence, duration and severity of potential side effects or other safety issues experienced with our product candidates, if any;

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obtain the timely receipt of necessary marketing approvals from the FDA, EMA, MHRA or comparable regulatory authorities;

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establish commercial manufacturing capabilities or make arrangements with third-party manufacturers for clinical supply and commercial manufacturing;

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obtain and maintain patent and trade secret protection or regulatory exclusivity for our product candidates;

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launch commercial sales of our products, if and when approved, whether alone or in collaboration with others;

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obtain and maintain acceptance of the products, if and when approved, by patients, the medical community and third-party payers;

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position our product candidates to effectively compete with other therapies;

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obtain and maintain healthcare coverage and adequate reimbursement for our products;

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enforce and defend intellectual property rights and claims; and

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maintain a continued acceptable safety profile of our products following approval.

Due to the uncertainties and risks associated with these activities, we are unable to accurately and precisely predict the timing and amount of revenues, the extent of any further losses or if or when we might achieve profitability. We may never succeed in these activities and, even if we succeed in commercializing one or more of our product candidates, we may never generate revenue that is sufficient to achieve profitability. If we do achieve profitability, we may not be able to sustain or increase profitability on a quarterly or annual basis, and we will continue to incur substantial research and development and other expenditures to develop and market additional product candidates. Our failure to become and remain profitable could decrease the value of our shares and impair our ability to raise capital, maintain our research and development efforts, expand our business or continue our operations.

Our business and pricing model is untested and may never be successful or generate sufficient revenue to lead to profitability.

We are building a pipeline of innovative new product candidates to address diseases like cancer and immune-inflammatory diseases that are the top categories of drug spend today and which we expect will continue to be in the future. By leveraging proven druggable targets and a focus on efficiency, together with building deep strategic partnerships with health systems and payers, we anticipate a higher probability of program development and regulatory success, a lower risk-adjusted cost of drug development and a more streamlined access model, which we intend to translate into significantly reduced operating expenses for us and lower product prices for payers and providers. When coupled with the power of our planned Global Buyers Club built at scale and re-calibrating market demand to our lower-priced products, we believe our model will change drug pricing dynamics for the benefit of patients worldwide. However, each aspect of our business and pricing model is untested in the pharmaceutical industry, and any of the assumptions underlying our expectations may be incorrect. There can be no assurance that our pricing model will achieve market acceptance or be able to compete effectively with existing models or models introduced in the future. Moreover, there is no guarantee that we will be able to implement our pricing model in all markets, and we may determine not to seek approval

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of certain product candidates, or market certain products, in jurisdictions where we do not consider it to fit within our overall strategy.

In addition, our Global Buyers Club may not achieve the size, scale or market power that we intend, for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to, it not generating enough interest from health systems and payers, or not being able to create strategic partnerships with health systems and payers, or not converting our existing strategic partnerships, partnership arrangements, or non-binding MOUs into commercial contracts into definitive agreements with terms acceptable to us. Given the novel nature of these contractual arrangements, external pricing and market pressures, and differing views on our ability to change the pharmaceutical pricing model, we are unable to accurately and precisely predict the timing or number of relationships we will establish, if any. Price competition from large pharmaceutical companies may persist or even increase despite any changes in market dynamics, which may further limit our ability to affect drug pricing discussions from a market demand standpoint. Our business and pricing model may never be successful or generate sufficient revenue to lead to profitability. Our competitors or new market entrants may adopt similar pricing models, or novel or otherwise more favorable pricing models, including increasing rebates or implementing higher rebates across their portfolio of products, leading to significant price competition and/or reducing or eliminating our competitive advantage, each of which could adversely affect our revenues.

Our business model requires us to scale through the development or acquisition of many additional product candidates, which we may be unable to achieve or maintain. Our business model requires that we continually review, evaluate and consider potential acquisitions of additional product candidates. In such evaluations, we will be required to make difficult judgments regarding the value of such additional product candidates. We may not be successful in identifying attractive acquisition opportunities. Even if we are successful in identifying attractive asset acquisition opportunities, we may not successfully execute the transaction on terms acceptable to us, due to lack of financial resources or other reasons. We may also experience increased competition for attractive assets from other pharmaceutical companies, many of which have significantly more resources than we do. We may also experience additional challenges in the acquisition of certain assets, including but not limited to geopolitical considerations when acquiring assets from outside the United States. The time and effort involved in attempting to identify acquisition candidates and consummate acquisitions may also divert the attention of members of our management from the operations of our company.

Even if we are successful in acquiring additional product candidates, we may not successfully integrate them into our existing operations or derive the anticipated benefits of such acquisitions, which may result in the investment of our capital resources without realizing the expected returns on such investments. Given our limited resources, we may also forego acquisition of product candidates that later prove to have greater commercial potential. Product candidates that we acquire will also be subject to the risks and uncertainties associated with developing product candidates.

In addition, we may not be successful in our efforts to identify, engineer, or develop additional product candidates in the future either internally or through our current or future collaboration partners. Research programs to identify new product candidates require substantial technical, financial and human resources. Product candidates that we develop internally through our own efforts or with our research collaboration partners may be more expensive to discover, develop or manufacture than we expect, which could require us to adjust our pricing model or de-emphasize certain development efforts in the near or long-term. Moreover, several of our collaboration partners rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches for target selection, product development, and product testing, and these approaches remain unproven as dependable drug discovery and engineering methods. Our research programs may initially show promise in identifying potential product candidates, yet fail to yield product candidates for clinical development for a number of reasons, including our inability to design such product candidates with the properties that we desire. Potential product candidates may, on further study, be shown to have harmful side effects or other characteristics that

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indicate that they are unlikely to be products that will receive marketing approval and achieve market acceptance. We may also be limited in our ability to pursue multiple indications with any one product candidate, due to financial or other resource constraints, development issues or regulatory obstacles. Even if we are able to pursue multiple indications, we may not be able to do so as quickly or successfully as our competitors, which may impact our ability to gain market acceptance across multiple indications for any one product candidate. If we are unable to identify suitable additional candidates for development, our opportunities to successfully develop and commercialize therapeutic products will be limited.

Failure to manage our growth effectively could cause our business to suffer and have an adverse effect on our ability to execute our business strategy, as well as operating results and financial condition.

As of December 31, 2022, we had 242 full-time employees, two part-time employees, and approximately 50 consultants/contractors. As we continue development of our product candidates, as well as function as a public company, we will need to expand our financial, development, regulatory, manufacturing, commercial and other capabilities or contract with third parties to provide these capabilities for us. As our operations expand, we expect that we will need to manage additional relationships with various collaborators, suppliers, and other third parties. Future growth will impose significant added responsibilities on members of our management. Our management may have to divert a disproportionate amount of its attention away from our day-to-day activities and devote a substantial amount of time to these growth activities, including identifying, recruiting, integrating, maintaining, and motivating additional employees, managing our research and development efforts effectively, including the clinical trials and the FDA’s or other regulatory authorities’ review process for our product candidates, while complying with our contractual obligations to contractors and other third parties and improving our operational, financial and management controls, reporting systems and procedures. Our future financial performance and our ability to develop and commercialize our product candidates and to compete effectively will depend, in part, on our ability to manage any future growth effectively. We may not be able to accomplish these tasks, and our failure to accomplish any of them could prevent us from successfully growing our company or could disrupt our operations. We may acquire additional technology or complementary businesses in the future. The competition to acquire or in-license rights to promising products, product candidates, research programs, and companies is fierce, and many of our competitors are large, multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies with considerably more financial, development, and commercialization resources and personnel than we have. Therefore, even if appropriate opportunities are available, we may not be able to acquire rights to them on acceptable terms, or at all. Furthermore, acquisitions involve many risks, any of which could materially harm our business, including the diversion of management’s attention from core business concerns, failure to effectively exploit acquired technologies, failure to successfully integrate the acquired business or realize expected synergies, or the loss of key employees from either our business or the acquired businesses. If we fail to integrate or otherwise manage an acquired business successfully and in a timely manner, resulting operating inefficiencies could increase our costs more than we planned, could negatively impact the price of our securities and could otherwise distract us from execution of our strategy.

Our success depends on our ability to respond and adapt to changes in the drug development industry, including payer, medical practice, medical provider and prescriber behavior. We may be unsuccessful in achieving broad market education and acceptance or changing prescribing or purchasing habits of healthcare system participants, or keeping up to date with recent developments in the medical field regarding treatment options.

Our success and future growth largely depend on our ability to increase awareness of our platform and offerings, and on the willingness of healthcare system participants to purchase our lower-priced future medicines for the treatment of patients. We believe most healthcare system participants make prescribing or purchasing decisions for healthcare products and services on the basis of traditional factors, such as clinical data, insurance coverage and availability at nearby pharmacies. To effectively market our platform and products, we must educate healthcare system participants about the benefits of our platform and offerings. We cannot provide assurances that we will be successful in changing prescribing or purchasing habits of healthcare system participants or that we will achieve broad market education or awareness among healthcare system participants. Even if we are able to raise awareness among healthcare system participants, they may be slow

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in changing their habits and may be hesitant to use our platform and offerings for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to:

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lack of experience with our company and products, and concerns that we are relatively new to the industry;

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existing perceptions that medicines that are priced at lower prices are inferior in safety or efficacy to higher priced market leaders;

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perceived health, safety or quality risks associated with the use of a new platform or product;

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perception that we do not provide adequate discounted prices or only offer savings for a limited selection of medications;

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traditional or existing relationships with pharmacies, pharmacists, PBMs, group purchasing organizations or other providers;

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competition and negative selling efforts from competitors, including competing offerings and price matching programs;

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concerns that our product candidates are not as safe or effective as first-to-market medicines, including because clinical development of our product candidates in some cases will have been performed by third parties; and

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pre-existing or intractable prescribing habits among doctors or guidelines among payers that limit products like ours from gaining market share.

If we fail to achieve broad market education and adoption, or if we are unsuccessful in changing prescribing or purchasing habits of healthcare system participants, our business, financial condition and results of operations would be adversely affected.

Our success depends in part on our ability to effectively attract and acquire third-party collaborators and retain our existing collaborators, across several strategic areas, including acquiring additional product candidates, establishing our Global Buyers Club, and conducting research collaborations. We have made significant investments related to attracting, acquiring and retaining third-party collaborators but cannot assure you that our efforts will be effective or that benefits realized from our partnerships with any new third-party collaborators will ultimately exceed the costs incurred in attracting, acquiring or retaining such collaborators. If we fail to deliver products at significantly lower prices, we may be unable to attract or retain payer purchasers, which may impede our efforts to attract, acquire or retain third-party business collaborators. If we are unable to attract, acquire or retain third-party collaborators at a rate sufficient to grow our business, we may be unable to maintain the scale necessary for operational efficiency and to drive beneficial and self-reinforcing network effects across the broader healthcare ecosystem, which may adversely impact consumer interest in our offerings, in which case our business, financial condition and results of operations would be adversely affected.

Our collaborations with third-party business collaborators are also subject to a number of risks, including but not limited to:

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adverse decisions by a third party regarding the amount and timing of resource expenditures for the development and commercialization of product candidates;

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possible disagreements as to the timing, nature and extent of development plans, including clinical trials or regulatory approval strategy;

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delays or non-performance by our collaborators in performance of their contractual obligations, including delivery of data to us;

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lack of alignment between specifications for products and specifications that have or might be approved by regulatory authorities;

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the right of a third-party business collaborator to terminate its agreement with us on limited notice upon the occurrence of certain defined events;

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loss of significant rights if we fail to meet our obligations under a collaboration agreement;

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withdrawal of support by a third-party business collaborator following change of that collaborator’s corporate strategy or due to competing priorities;

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changes in key management personnel at a third-party business collaborator that are members of the collaboration’s various operating committees; and

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possible disagreements with a third-party business collaborator regarding a collaboration agreement or ownership of proprietary rights, including with respect to inventions discovered under the applicable collaboration agreement.

Due to these factors and other possible disagreements with a third-party collaborator, including potential disputes over intellectual property ownership or timely access to clinical data, we may be delayed or prevented from developing, manufacturing or commercializing product candidates or we may become involved in litigation or arbitration, which would be time-consuming and expensive.

For additional information regarding the risks that may apply to our relationships with third parties, see the section entitled “— Risks Related to Our Strategic Agreements and Relationships with Third Parties” appearing elsewhere.

Risks Related to Our Financial Position, Capital Requirements and Limited Operating History

We have incurred significant losses since inception and anticipate that we will incur continued losses for the foreseeable future.

We have incurred significant operating losses since inception. Our net losses were $100.0 million and $250.0 million for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively. We had an accumulated deficit of $358.5 million and $258.5 million as of December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively. We have funded our operations principally from the sale of equity securities and our merger with receipt of funds from the trust account in the Business Combination. We have devoted most of our financial resources to the research and development of product candidates and the acquisition of products and development rights through business development transactions. We expect to continue to incur significant expenses and operating losses for the foreseeable future as we continue to invest in the acquisition of additional assets to scale our business and development of our product candidates. In addition, we expect to incur additional costs associated with operating as a public company, including expenses related to legal, accounting, and regulatory requirements, maintaining compliance with exchange listing and SEC requirements, director and officer insurance premiums and investor relations. We will need to generate significant additional revenue to achieve and sustain profitability. Our failure to achieve or sustain profitability could negatively impact the value of our securities.

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Our limited operating history and our evolving business make it difficult to evaluate our future prospects and the risks and challenges we may encounter.

Our limited operating history and our evolving business make it difficult to evaluate and assess the success of our business to date, our future prospects and the risks and challenges that we may encounter. These risks and challenges include our ability to:

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accurately forecast our revenue and plan our expenses;

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attract new payers and retain and expand relationships with existing payers;

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successfully introduce new products and services;

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successfully compete with current and future competitors;

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successfully expand our business in existing markets and enter new markets and geographies;

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comply with existing and new laws and regulations applicable to our business and the industry in which we operate;

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anticipate and respond to macroeconomic changes as well as changes in the markets and geographies in which we operate;

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maintain and enhance the value of our reputation and brand;

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maintain and expand our relationships with partners and payers;

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successfully execute on our sales and marketing strategies;

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hire, integrate and retain talented people at all levels of our organization;

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expand through future acquisitions and successfully identify and integrate acquired entities;

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successfully in-license or acquire other products and technologies and the terms of these transactions;

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pursue viable product candidates across a variety of indications and disease areas with a lower cost model;

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successfully prepare, file, prosecute, maintain, expand, defend and enforce patent claims related to our programs; and

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effectively manage our growth.

If we fail to address the risks and difficulties that we face, including those associated with the challenges listed above as well as those described in this “Risk Factors” section and elsewhere in this Annual Report, our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects could be adversely affected. Further, because we have limited historical financial data and our business continues to evolve, any predictions about our future revenue and expenses may not be as accurate as they would be if we had a longer operating history, operated a more predictable business or operated in a less regulated industry. We have encountered and will continue to encounter multiple risks and uncertainties that are frequently experienced by growing companies with limited operating histories and evolving business that operate in rapidly changing, highly regulated and competitive industries. If our assumptions regarding these risks and uncertainties, which we use to plan and operate our business, are incorrect or change, or if we do not address these risks successfully, our results of operations

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could differ materially from our expectations, and our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected.

Our financial projections are subject to significant risks, assumptions, estimates and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially.

Our financial projections are subject to significant risks, assumptions, estimates and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially. These estimates and assumptions include estimates of the total addressable market for our product candidates, assumptions regarding consumer demand and performance and assumptions regarding our ability to meet increased demand. These estimates and assumptions are subject to various factors beyond our control, including, for example, changes in consumer demand, increased costs in the supply chain, increased labor costs, changes in the regulatory environment, the impact of global health crises and changes in our executive team. Our financial projections constitute forward-looking statements, are for illustrative purposes only and should not be relied upon as necessarily being indicative of future results. The assumptions and estimates underlying such financial projections are inherently uncertain and are subject to a wide variety of significant business, economic, competitive and other risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the results contemplated by the financial projections. Our independent auditors have not studied, reviewed, compiled or performed any procedures with respect to the projections, and accordingly, they did not express an opinion or provide any other form of assurance with respect thereto. While all financial projections, estimates and targets are necessarily speculative, we believe that the preparation of financial projections involves increasingly higher levels of uncertainty the further out the projection, estimate or target extends from the date of preparation. Accordingly, there can be no assurance that the prospective results are indicative of our future performance or that actual results will not differ materially from those presented in the financial projections.

We have estimated the sizes of the market opportunities for our current and future products, and these market opportunities may be smaller than we estimate.

Our estimates of the total addressable markets for our product candidates, the portions of those markets that we may be able to capture, and related expected timelines are based on a number of internal and third-party estimates and the prices at which we expect our competitors to sell their products in the future. If our estimates are incorrect, or if our competitors adapt their pricing strategy, the total addressable market through which we can sell our current and future product candidates may be significantly smaller than we estimate. While we believe our assumptions and the data underlying our estimates are reasonable, these assumptions and estimates may not be correct, and the conditions supporting our assumptions or estimates may change at any time, thereby reducing the predictive accuracy of these underlying factors. For example, if we are delayed in obtaining approvals in certain markets for any of our product candidates, our estimated revenue opportunity will be lower as we will not be able to commercialize products as early as anticipated (such as if we are delayed in filing for FDA approval of sugemalimab or aumolertinib in the United States). This may in turn limit or slow our ability to grow at scale. As a result, our estimates of the annual addressable market for our product candidates may prove to be incorrect. If our estimates regarding total addressable market or patient populations, the price at which we can sell future products or the addressable market for our products candidates is smaller than we have estimated, it may impair our sales prospects and have an adverse impact on our business.

We have broad discretion in the use of capital from the Business Combination and may invest or spend the proceeds in ways with which you do not agree and in ways that may not increase the value of your investment.

Our management has broad discretion in the application of our cash and cash equivalents and could spend the proceeds in ways that do not enhance the value of our securities. We may expend our resources to pursue a particular product candidate or indication and fail to capitalize on product candidates or indications that may be

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more profitable or for which there is a greater likelihood of success. The failure by our management to apply these funds effectively could result in a negative impact on our business, cause the price of our securities to decline and delay the development of our product candidates. Pending their use, we may invest our cash and cash equivalents, including the net proceeds from the Business Combination, in a manner that does not produce income or that loses value. If we do not invest or apply the proceeds of this offering in ways that improve our operating results, we may fail to achieve expected financial results, which could cause our stock price to decline.

Raising additional capital may cause dilution to our stockholders, 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 revenue, we expect to finance our cash needs through a combination of private and public equity offerings, debt financings, collaborations, strategic alliances and licensing arrangements. Our future need for additional funding depends on many factors, including:

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the scope, progress, results and costs of researching and developing our current product candidates, as well as other additional product candidates we may develop and pursue in the future;

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the timing of, and the costs involved in, obtaining marketing approvals for our product candidates and any other additional product candidates we may develop and pursue in the future;

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the number of future product candidates that we may pursue and their development requirements;

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the costs of commercialization activities for our product candidates, to the extent such costs are not the responsibility of any current or future collaborators, including the costs and timing of establishing product sales, marketing, distribution and manufacturing capabilities;

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subject to receipt of regulatory approval, revenue, if any, received from commercial sales of our product candidates or any other additional product candidates we may develop and pursue in the future;

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the extent to which we in-license or acquire rights to other products, product candidates or technologies;

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our ability to establish collaboration arrangements for the development of our product candidates on favorable terms, if at all;

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our headcount growth and associated costs as we expand our research and development and establish a commercial infrastructure;

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the costs of preparing, filing and prosecuting patent applications, maintaining and protecting our intellectual property rights, including enforcing and defending intellectual property related claims; and

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the costs of operating as a public company.

The terms of any financing may adversely affect the holdings or the rights of our stockholders and the issuance of additional securities, whether equity or debt, by us, or the possibility of such issuance, may cause the market price of our securities to decline. To the extent that we raise additional capital through the sale of common stock or securities convertible or exchangeable into common stock, your ownership interest may be diluted, and the terms of those securities may include liquidation or other preferences that may adversely affect your rights as a common stockholder. Debt financing, if available, may involve agreements that include covenants limiting or restricting our ability to take specific actions, such as incurring additional debt, acquiring, selling or licensing intellectual property rights, and making capital expenditures, declaring dividends or other operating restrictions that could adversely impact our ability to conduct our business. We could also be required to meet certain milestones in connection with debt financing and the failure to achieve such milestones by certain dates may

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force us to relinquish rights to some of our technologies or product candidates or otherwise agree to terms unfavorable to us which could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and prospects.

We also could be required to seek funds through arrangements with additional collaborators. If we raise funds through additional collaborations, strategic alliances or licensing arrangements with third parties, we may have to relinquish valuable rights to our intellectual property, future revenue streams, research programs or product candidates, grant licenses on terms that may not be favorable to us or grant rights to develop and market our product candidates that we would otherwise prefer to develop and market ourselves, any of which may have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and prospects.

Risks Related to the Discovery, Development and Regulatory Approval of Our Product Candidates

We have not yet demonstrated our ability to successfully complete clinical trials, obtain regulatory approvals, manufacture a commercial scale product, or arrange for a third party to do so on our behalf, or conduct sales and marketing activities necessary for successful commercialization. Certain of our programs are still in preclinical development and may never advance to clinical development. If we are required to conduct additional preclinical studies or clinical trials of our product candidates beyond those that we currently contemplate, if we are unable to successfully complete clinical trials of our product candidates or other testing, if the results of these trials or tests are not positive or are only modestly positive or if there are safety concerns, we may:

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be delayed in obtaining regulatory approval for our product candidates;

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not obtain regulatory approval at all;

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obtain regulatory approval for indications or patient populations that are not as broad as intended or desired;

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be subject to post-marketing testing requirements after obtaining regulatory approval; or

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experience having the product removed from the market after obtaining regulatory approval.

Drug development is a lengthy, expensive and uncertain process. The results of preclinical studies and clinical trials are not always predictive of future results. If our preclinical studies and clinical trials are not sufficient to support regulatory approval of any of our product candidates, we may incur additional costs or experience delays in completing, or ultimately be unable to complete, the development of such product candidate.

Currently, all our product candidates are in preclinical and clinical development. It is impossible to predict when or if any of our product candidates will receive regulatory approval. Before obtaining regulatory approval from regulatory authorities for the sale of any product candidate, we must complete preclinical studies and then conduct extensive clinical trials to demonstrate in humans the safety and efficacy of our drug product candidates or the safety, purity and potency of our biologic product candidates to the satisfaction of the FDA, EMA, MHRA or comparable regulatory authorities. Clinical testing is expensive, difficult to design and implement, can take many years to complete and outcomes are uncertain. A failure of one or more clinical trials can occur at any stage of testing. Our preclinical studies and ongoing and future clinical trials may not be successful, which will limit our ability to execute on our business model effectively.

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Results from preclinical studies and clinical trials can be interpreted in different ways. Even if we believe that the preclinical or clinical data for our product candidates are promising, such data may not be sufficient to support approval by the FDA, EMA, MHRA or comparable regulatory authorities. The FDA or other regulatory authorities may also require us to conduct additional preclinical studies or clinical trials for our product candidates either prior to or post-approval, or they may object to elements of our clinical development program, requiring their alteration. For example, the FDA may not accept the data from our Chinese license partners for aumolertinib or sugemalimab. See “—If regulators do not accept data from our license partners generated in other jurisdictions as a basis for regulatory approvals in our target markets, or we experience delays in obtaining data from our license partners, or if we experience delays or difficulties in the initiation or enrollment of our clinical trials, our receipt of necessary regulatory approvals could be delayed or prevented” below. Moreover, preclinical and clinical data are often susceptible to varying interpretations and analyses, and many companies that have believed their product candidates performed satisfactorily in preclinical studies and clinical trials have nonetheless failed to obtain regulatory approval of their product candidates. Furthermore, the outcome of preclinical development testing and early clinical trials may not be predictive of the success of later clinical trials, and interim results of a clinical trial do not necessarily predict final results. For example, there is no assurance the clinical data from any of our planned clinical trials or clinical trials sponsored by our collaboration partners in China, where the patients are predominately of Chinese descent, will produce similar results in patients of different races, ethnicities or those of non-Chinese descent.

If we are required to conduct additional clinical trials or other testing of our product candidates beyond those that we currently contemplate, if we are unable to successfully complete clinical trials of our product candidates or other testing, if the results of these trials or tests are not positive or are not as positive as we expect or if there are safety concerns, our business and results of operations may be adversely affected, and we may incur significant additional costs.

In addition, even if the clinical trials are successfully completed, because preclinical and clinical data are often susceptible to varying interpretations and analyses, we cannot guarantee that the FDA, EMA, MHRA or comparable regulatory authorities will interpret the results as we do, and more clinical trials could be required before we submit our product candidates for approval. To the extent that the results of the clinical trials are not satisfactory to the FDA, EMA, MHRA or comparable regulatory authorities for support of a marketing application, approval of our product candidates may be significantly delayed, or we may be required to expend significant additional resources, which may not be available to us, to conduct additional clinical trials in support of potential approval of our product candidates.

Any preclinical studies or clinical trials that we may conduct may not demonstrate the safety and efficacy necessary to obtain regulatory approval to market our product candidates. If the results of our ongoing or future preclinical studies and clinical trials are inconclusive with respect to the safety and efficacy of our product candidates, if we do not meet the clinical endpoints with statistical and clinically meaningful significance, or if there are safety concerns associated with our product candidates, we may be prevented or delayed in obtaining marketing approval for such product candidates. In some instances, there can be significant variability in safety or efficacy results between different clinical trials of the same product candidate due to numerous factors, including changes in trial procedures set forth in protocols, differences in the size and type of the patient populations, changes in and adherence to the clinical trial protocols and the rate of dropout among clinical trial participants. If the results of our ongoing or future clinical trials are inconclusive with respect to the efficacy of our product candidates, if we do not meet the clinical endpoints with statistical and clinically meaningful significance, or if there are safety concerns associated with our product candidates, we may be delayed in or prevented from obtaining marketing approval.

Additionally, some of the clinical trials that we conduct may be open-label in study design and may be conducted at a limited number of clinical sites on a limited number of patients. An “open-label” clinical trial is one where both the patient and investigator know whether the patient is receiving the investigational product candidate or either an existing approved drug or placebo. Typically, open-label clinical trials test only the investigational product candidate and sometimes may do so at different dose levels. Open-label clinical trials are subject to various limitations that may exaggerate any therapeutic effect as patients in open-label clinical trials are aware

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when they are receiving treatment. Open-label clinical trials may be subject to a “patient bias” where patients perceive their symptoms to have improved merely due to their awareness of receiving an experimental treatment. Moreover, patients selected for early clinical trials often include the most severe sufferers, and their symptoms may have been bound to improve notwithstanding the new treatment. In addition, open-label clinical trials may be subject to an “investigator bias” where those assessing and reviewing the physiological outcomes of the clinical trials are aware of which patients have received treatment and may interpret the information of the treated group more favorably given this knowledge. The results from an open-label clinical trial may not be predictive of future clinical trial results when studied in a controlled environment with a placebo or active control.

For additional information regarding the risks that may apply to government regulation of our product candidates and operations, see the section entitled “—Risks Related to Government Regulation.”

We are relying on Phase 3 trials conducted in China by our partners, Hansoh and CStone, to form the basis of filings for approval for certain regulatory agencies for aumolertinib and sugemalimab, based on our view that the proposed development plans for both of these programs meet the guidelines of generalizability of foreign data set forth in the ICH Harmonized Tripartite Guideline (ICH E5). However, it is possible that all or some of the regulatory agencies in our territory will require additional clinical trials to support the regulatory application(s) for initial approval. Regulatory acceptance of this pivotal trial data is not a guarantee. The proposed use of trial data from clinical trials conducted in foreign countries as the basis for approval by regulatory authorities may be subject to certain conditions or may not be accepted at all.

On February 10, 2022, FDA held a public Oncology Drug Advisory Committee (ODAC) for a program that had its pivotal trial conducted exclusively in China. There was a single voting question of “Should additional clinical trial(s) demonstrating applicability to U.S. patients and U.S. medical care be required prior to a final regulatory decision?” On the single voting question, the advisory committee voted that additional clinical trial(s) should be required to demonstrate applicability to the U.S. population and U.S. medical practice prior to a final regulatory decision. In order to receive FDA approval, we will likely have to conduct additional clinical trials for aumolertinib and sugemalimab in the United States and other countries to gain approvals in the United States, which may delay our U.S. launches beyond the 2023-2025 timeline that we previously anticipated.

In the event that additional trials are required, it may result in significant additional development costs and/ or timeline delay, and therefore result in product candidate development undergoing significant delay or a failure to receive approval for commercialization. If we are unable to conduct or complete such additional trials in a manner acceptable to the applicable regulatory authority, we may be forced to abandon development and commercialization of the affected product candidates in the applicable jurisdiction.

Other regulatory authorities may implement similar approval requirements. It is also possible that we may have to conduct additional clinical trials to gain approvals in the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and other regions. In addition, such foreign trials would be subject to the applicable local laws of the foreign jurisdictions where the trials are conducted. There can be no assurance that the FDA, the EMA, the MHRA, or any comparable foreign regulatory authority will accept data from our license partners generated from trials conducted outside of the United States or the applicable jurisdiction, now or in the future. If the FDA, the EMA, the MHRA or any comparable foreign regulatory authority does not accept such data, or if they accept such data and later change their policies regarding the use or acceptance of such data, it could result in the need for additional trials, up to and including full reproduction of clinical trials currently intended to support the regulatory application in question.

In addition, our ability to access and use clinical trial data for ongoing trials and any new trials conducted in China will be highly dependent on acceptance and approvals from the HGRAC of China. There is no guarantee

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that the HGRAC will not impede our ability to obtain and use clinical trial data for trials conducted in China by our partners in a timely manner or in a way that facilitates our use of such data. We rely on our license partners to provide us with significant data and other information related to our product candidates, including preclinical and clinical data. We do not independently verify or audit all of such data (including possibly material portions thereof). As a result, such data may be inaccurate, misleading, or incomplete.

Our reliance on license partners also subjects us to the risk that we may experience delays in obtaining data from such license partners, delays or difficulties in the initiation or enrollment of clinical trials, or the occurrence of avoidable adverse events or serious adverse events in such studies, all of which could delay or prevent our receipt of necessary regulatory approvals for our product candidates.

Our current or future product candidates may cause adverse or other 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 regulatory approval, if obtained.

Undesirable side effects caused by any of our product candidates could cause us or regulatory authorities to interrupt, delay or halt clinical trials and could result in a more restrictive label or the delay or denial of regulatory approval by the FDA, EMA, MHRA or comparable regulatory authorities. In our ongoing and future clinical trials of our product candidates, we may observe a more unfavorable safety and tolerability profile than was observed in earlier-stage testing of these candidates. In addition, our third-party collaborators, including Hansoh and CStone, among others, may also report AEs or undesirable side effects in their studies using the same or similar compounds as ours, which may cause the market to perceive our product candidate to be less safe.

We may also observe additional safety or tolerability issues with our product candidates in ongoing or future clinical trials. Many compounds that initially showed promise in clinical or earlier-stage testing have later been found to cause undesirable or unexpected side effects that prevent further development of the compound. Results of future clinical trials of our product candidates could reveal a high and unacceptable severity and prevalence of side effects or unexpected characteristics, despite a favorable tolerability profile observed in earlier-stage testing.

If unacceptable side effects arise in the development of our product candidates, we, the FDA, EMA, MHRA or comparable regulatory authorities, the IRBs, or independent ethics committees at the institutions in which our trials are conducted, could suspend, limit or terminate our clinical trials, or the independent safety data monitoring board (DSMB) could recommend that we suspend, limit or terminate our trials, or the FDA, EMA, MHRA or comparable regulatory authorities could order us to cease clinical trials or deny approval of our product candidates for any or all targeted indications. Treatment-emergent side effects that are deemed to be drug-related could delay recruitment of clinical trial subjects or may cause subjects that enroll in our clinical trials to discontinue participation in our clinical trials. In addition, these side effects may not be appropriately recognized or managed by the treating medical staff. We may need to train medical personnel using our product candidates to understand the side effect profiles for our clinical trials and upon any commercialization of any of our product candidates. Inadequate training in recognizing or managing the potential side effects of our product candidates could result in harm to patients that receive our product candidates. Any of these occurrences may adversely affect our business, financial condition and prospects significantly.

Moreover, clinical trials of our product candidates are conducted in carefully defined sets of patients who have agreed to enter into clinical trials. Consequently, it is possible that our clinical trials may indicate an apparent positive effect of a product candidate that is greater than the actual positive effect, if any, or alternatively fail to identify undesirable side effects.

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We may incur additional costs or experience delays in initiating or completing, or ultimately be unable to complete, the development and commercialization of our product candidates.

We may experience delays in initiating or completing our preclinical studies or clinical trials for various reasons, including as a result of delays in obtaining, or failure to obtain, the FDA’s clearance to initiate clinical trials under future INDs. Additionally, we cannot be certain that preclinical studies or clinical trials for our product candidates will not require redesign, will enroll an adequate number of subjects on time, or will be completed on schedule, if at all. We may experience numerous unforeseen events during, or as a result of, preclinical studies and clinical trials that could delay or prevent our ability to receive regulatory approval or commercialize our product candidates, including the following:

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we may receive feedback from regulatory authorities that require us to modify the design or implementation of our preclinical studies or clinical trials or to delay or terminate a clinical trial;

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regulators or IRBs or ethics committees may delay or may not authorize us or our investigators to commence a clinical trial or conduct a clinical trial at a prospective trial site;

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we may experience delays in reaching, or fail to reach, agreement on acceptable terms with prospective trial sites and prospective CROs, the terms of which can be subject to extensive negotiation and may vary significantly among different CROs and trial sites;

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preclinical studies or clinical trials of our product candidates may fail to show safety or efficacy or otherwise produce negative or inconclusive results, and we may decide, or regulators may require us, to conduct additional preclinical studies or clinical trials, or we may decide to abandon product research or development programs;

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preclinical studies or clinical trials of our product candidates may not produce differentiated or clinically significant results;

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the number of patients required for clinical trials of our product candidates may be larger than we anticipate, enrollment in these clinical trials may be slower than we anticipate or participants may drop out of these clinical trials or fail to return for post-treatment follow-up at a higher rate than we anticipate;

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our third-party contractors may fail to comply with regulatory requirements, maintain adequate quality controls, provide us with sufficient product supply to conduct or complete preclinical studies or clinical trials, meet their contractual obligations to us in a timely manner, or at all, or they may deviate from the clinical trial protocol or drop out of the trial, which may require that we add new clinical trial sites or investigators;

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we may elect to, or regulators or IRBs or ethics committees may require us or our investigators to, suspend or terminate clinical research for various reasons, including noncompliance with regulatory requirements or a finding that the participants in our clinical trials are being exposed to unacceptable health risks;

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the cost of clinical trials of our product candidates may be greater than we anticipate;

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clinical trials of our product candidates may be delayed due to complications associated with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic;

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the supply or quality of our product candidates or other materials necessary to conduct clinical trials of our product candidates may be insufficient or inadequate;

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our product candidates may have undesirable side effects or other unexpected characteristics, causing us or our investigators, regulators or IRBs or ethics committees to suspend or terminate the trials, or reports may arise from preclinical or clinical testing of other therapies that raise safety or efficacy concerns about our product candidates;

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collaborators may conduct clinical trials in ways they view as advantageous to them but that are suboptimal for us;

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regulators may revise the requirements for approving our product candidates, or such requirements may not be as we anticipate;

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the FDA may require us to conduct clinical trials comparing our product candidates against the current standard of care in the U.S.; and

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the FDA may refuse to file a NDA or Biologics License Application (BLA) within 60 days of our submission if it is incomplete or insufficient, including if the FDA believes the data from a clinical trial conducted outside of the United States are not generalizable to the United States population or otherwise do not meet regulatory requirements.

We could encounter delays if a clinical trial is suspended or terminated by us or our partners, by the IRBs of the institutions at which such trials are being conducted, by the DSMB for such trial or by the FDA or other regulatory authorities. Such authorities may impose such a suspension or termination or clinical hold due to a number of factors, including failure to conduct the clinical trial in accordance with regulatory requirements or our clinical protocols, adverse findings upon an inspection of the clinical trial operations or trial site by the FDA or other regulatory authorities, unforeseen safety issues or adverse side effects, failure to demonstrate a benefit from using a product, changes in governmental regulations or administrative actions or lack of adequate funding to continue the clinical trial. 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. Further, the FDA or another regulatory authority may disagree with our clinical trial design or our interpretation of data from clinical trials or may change the requirements for approval even after it has reviewed and commented on the design for our clinical trials.

Our product development costs will also increase if we experience delays in testing or regulatory approvals. We do not know whether any of our future clinical trials will begin as planned, or whether any of our current or future clinical trials will need to be restructured or will be completed on schedule, if at all. Significant preclinical study or clinical trial delays, including those caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, also could shorten any periods during which we may have the exclusive right to commercialize our product candidates or allow our competitors to bring products to market before we do, which would impair our ability to successfully commercialize our product candidates and may significantly harm our business, operating results, financial condition and prospects.

We may investigate our product candidates in combination with other therapies, which exposes us to additional risks.

We may investigate our product candidates in combination with one or more other approved or unapproved therapies to treat cancer or other diseases. Even if any product candidate we develop were to receive marketing approval or be commercialized for use in combination with other therapies, we would continue to be subject to the risks that the FDA or comparable regulatory authorities outside of the United States could revoke approval of the therapy used in combination with our product or that safety, efficacy, manufacturing or supply issues could arise with any of those other therapies. If the therapies we use in combination with our product candidates are replaced as the standard of care for the indications we choose for any of our product candidates, the FDA or comparable regulatory authorities may require us to conduct additional clinical trials. The occurrence of any of these risks could result in our own products, if approved, being removed from the market or being less successful commercially.

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We also may choose to evaluate our current product candidates or any other future product candidates in combination with one or more cancer therapies that have not yet been approved for marketing by the FDA or comparable regulatory authorities. We will not be able to market and sell our current product candidates or any product candidate we develop in combination with an unapproved cancer therapy for a combination indication if that unapproved therapy does not ultimately obtain marketing approval either alone or in combination with our product. In addition, unapproved cancer therapies face the same risks described with respect to our product candidates currently in development and clinical trials, including the potential for serious adverse effects, delay in their clinical trials and lack of FDA approval.

If the FDA or comparable regulatory authorities do not approve these other products or revoke their approval of, or if safety, efficacy, quality, manufacturing or supply issues arise with, the products we choose to evaluate in combination with any of our product candidates, we may be unable to obtain approval of or market such combination therapy.

Risks Related to Our Business Operations and Industry

We may experience fluctuations in our operating results, which could make our future operating results difficult to predict or cause our operating results to fall below analysts’ and investors’ expectations.

Our quarterly and annual operating results may fluctuate significantly in the future due to a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control and may be difficult to predict, including the following:

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the timing and success or failure of clinical trials for our product candidates or competing product candidates, or any other change in the competitive landscape of our industry, including consolidation among our competitors or partners;

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our ability to successfully recruit and retain subjects for clinical trials, and any delays caused by difficulties in such efforts;

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our ability to obtain marketing approval for our product candidates, and the timing and scope of any such approvals we may receive;

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the timing and cost of, and level of investment in, research and development activities relating to our product candidates, which may change from time to time;

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the cost of manufacturing our product candidates, which may vary depending on the difficulty of manufacture, quantity of production and the terms of our agreements with manufacturers;

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our ability to attract, hire and retain qualified personnel;

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expenditures that we will or may incur to develop additional product candidates;

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the level of demand for our product candidates should they receive approval, which may vary significantly;

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the risk/benefit profile, cost and reimbursement policies with respect to our product candidates, if approved, and existing and potential future therapeutics that compete with our product candidates;

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general market conditions or extraordinary external events, such as recessions or the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic;

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the changing and volatile U.S. and global economic environments; and

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future accounting pronouncements or changes in our accounting policies.

The cumulative effects of these factors could result in large fluctuations and unpredictability in our quarterly and annual operating results. As a result, comparing our operating results on a period-to-period basis may not be meaningful. This variability and unpredictability could also result in our failing to meet the expectations of industry or financial analysts or investors for any period. If our operating results fall below the expectations of analysts or investors or below any forecasts we may provide to the market, or if the forecasts we provide to the market are below the expectations of analysts or investors, the price of our securities could decline substantially. Such price decline could occur even when we have met any previously publicly stated guidance we may provide.

Our success depends on broad market acceptance of our products, if approved, which we may never achieve.

We have never commercialized a product candidate. Even if our current product candidates and any future product candidates are approved by the appropriate regulatory authorities for marketing and sale, they may not gain acceptance among physicians, patients, third-party payers, and others in the medical community. If any product candidates for which we obtain regulatory approval do not gain an adequate level of market acceptance, we may not generate significant revenue and may not become profitable or may be significantly delayed in achieving profitability. Market acceptance of our current product candidates and any future product candidates by the medical community, patients and third-party payers will depend on a number of factors, some of which are beyond our control. For example, physicians are often reluctant to switch their patients, and patients may be reluctant to switch, from existing therapies even when new and potentially more effective or safer treatments enter the market. If public perception is influenced by claims that the use of our products is unsafe, our products, once approved, may not be accepted by the general public or the medical community. Future AEs could also result in greater governmental regulation, stricter labelling requirements and potential regulatory delays in the testing or approvals of our product candidates.

Efforts to educate the medical community and third-party payers on the benefits of our current product candidates and any future product candidates may require significant resources and may not be successful. If our current product candidates or any future product candidates are approved but do not achieve an adequate level of market acceptance, we could be prevented from or significantly delayed in achieving profitability. The degree of market acceptance of any of our current product candidates and any future product candidates will depend on a number of factors, including:

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the efficacy of our current product candidates and any future product candidates;

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the prevalence and severity of AEs associated with our current product candidates and any future product candidates or those products with which they may be co-administered;

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the clinical indications for which our product candidates are approved and the approved claims that we may make for the products;

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limitations or warnings contained in the product’s FDA-approved labelling or that of comparable regulatory authorities, including potential limitations or warnings for our current product candidates and any future product candidates that may be more restrictive than other competitive products;

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changes in the standard of care for the targeted indications for our current product candidates and any future product candidates, or in applicable clinical practice guidelines, any of which could reduce the marketing impact of any claims that we could make following FDA approval or approval by comparable regulatory authorities, if obtained;

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the relative convenience and ease of administration of our current product candidates and any future product candidates and any products with which they are co-administered;

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the cost of treatment compared with the economic and clinical benefit of alternative treatments or therapies;

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the availability of adequate coverage or reimbursement by third party payers;

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the price concessions required by third-party payers to obtain coverage;

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the willingness of patients to pay out-of-pocket in the absence of adequate coverage and reimbursement;

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the extent and strength of our marketing and distribution of our current product candidates and any future product candidates;

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the cost, safety, efficacy, and other potential advantages over, and availability of, alternative treatments already used or that may later be approved;

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distribution and use restrictions imposed by the FDA or comparable regulatory authorities with respect to our current product candidates and any future product candidates or to which we agree as part of a REMS or voluntary risk management plan;

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the timing of market introduction of our current product candidates and any future product candidates, as well as competitive products;

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the willingness of the target patient population to try new therapies and of physicians to prescribe these therapies;

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the extent and strength of our third-party manufacturer and supplier support;

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the actions of companies that market any products with which our current product candidates and any future product candidates may be co-administered;

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the approval of other new products;

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adverse publicity about our current product candidates and any future product candidates or any products with which they are co-administered, or favorable publicity about competitive products; and

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potential product liability claims.

We may not be successful in addressing these or other factors that might affect the market acceptance of our product candidates. Failure to achieve widespread market acceptance of our product candidates would materially harm our business, operating results, financial condition and prospects.

Our business will depend on the strength of our brand, and if we are not able to maintain and enhance our brand, we may be unable to sell our products, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Our brand name and image are integral to the growth of our business and to the implementation of our strategies for expanding our business. Maintaining and enhancing our brand may require us to make substantial investments in areas other than research and development.

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We anticipate that, as our business expands into new markets and new product candidate categories, and as the industries in which we operate become increasingly competitive, maintaining and enhancing our brand may become difficult and expensive. For example, any new international markets into which we expand may not know or accept our brand, resulting in increased costs to market and attract business related to our brand. Our brand may also be adversely affected if our public image or reputation is tarnished by negative publicity, including negative social media campaigns or poor reviews of our products. Maintaining and enhancing our brand will depend largely on our ability to continue to be a leader in the industry in which we operate and to offer a range of high-quality products as well as our aggressive pricing strategy. Failure to maintain the strength of our brand could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Our employees, agents, contractors, consultants, commercial partners and vendors as well as our license, research and collaboration partners may engage in misconduct or other improper activities, including noncompliance with regulatory standards and requirements.

We cannot provide assurance that our compliance controls, policies, and procedures will in every instance protect us from acts committed by our employees, agents, contractors, consultants, commercial partners, and vendors that would violate the law or regulation of the jurisdictions in which we operate, including, without limitation, healthcare, employment, foreign corrupt practices, environmental, competition, and patient privacy and other privacy laws and regulations. Such improper actions could subject us to civil or criminal investigations and monetary and injunctive penalties, and could adversely impact our ability to conduct business, operating results, and reputation. We are exposed to the risk of employee fraud or other illegal activity by our employees, agents, contractors, consultants, commercial partners, and vendors. Misconduct by these parties could include intentional, reckless, and/or negligent conduct that fails to comply with the laws and regulations enforced by the FDA or comparable regulatory authorities, fails to provide true, complete and accurate information to the FDA or comparable regulatory authorities, fails to comply with manufacturing standards, fails to comply with healthcare fraud and abuse laws in the United States and similar foreign laws, or fails to report financial information or data accurately or to disclose unauthorized activities to us. If we obtain FDA approval of any of our product candidates and begin commercializing those products in the United States, our potential exposure under these laws will increase significantly, and our costs associated with compliance with these laws are also likely to increase. 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. Activities subject to these laws could also involve the improper use of information obtained in the course of clinical trials or creating fraudulent data in our preclinical studies or clinical trials, which could result in regulatory sanctions and cause serious harm to our reputation. Additionally, we are subject to the risk that a person could allege such fraud or other misconduct, even if none occurred. These laws and regulations may impact, among other things, our current activities with principal investigators, as well as proposed and future sales, marketing, and education programs. It is not always possible to identify and deter employee misconduct, 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 government investigations or other actions or lawsuits stemming from a failure to comply with these laws or regulations. 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. If our operations are found to be in violation of any of the laws and regulations that may apply to us, we may be subject to the imposition of civil, criminal, and administrative penalties, damages, monetary fines, possible exclusion from participation in Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal and state healthcare programs, contractual damages, reputational harm, diminished profits and future earnings, and curtailment of our operations, any of which could adversely affect our ability to operate our business and our results of operations.

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Negative media coverage could adversely affect our business, and commitments to self-regulation may subject us to investigations and litigation.

The healthcare industry receives a high degree of media coverage in the United States. Unfavorable publicity regarding, for example, the healthcare industry, litigation or regulatory activity, our offerings and products, medication pricing, pricing structures in place amongst the industry participants, our privacy or data security practices or our revenue could adversely affect our reputation. Such negative publicity also could have an adverse effect on our ability to attract and retain collaborators, partners, or employees, and result in decreased revenue, which would adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operation.

In addition, commitments to self-regulation in the healthcare industry may subject us to investigation by government or self-regulatory bodies, government or private litigation, and harm our reputation, brand, business, operating results and financial condition.

We are subject to risks and uncertainties associated with the continued growth of our international operations, which may harm our business.

We have international operations and plan to continue expanding abroad. Accordingly, our business is subject to risks and uncertainties associated with doing business outside of the United States and could be adversely affected by a variety of factors, including:

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multiple, conflicting and changing laws and regulations such as privacy, security, and data use regulations, tax laws, export and import restrictions, economic and trade sanctions and embargoes, employment laws, anticorruption laws, regulatory requirements, reimbursement or payer regimes and other governmental approvals, permits and licenses;

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failure by us, our collaborators or our distributors to obtain regulatory clearance, authorization or approval for the use of our product candidates in various countries;

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additional potentially relevant third-party patent rights;

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complexities and difficulties in obtaining intellectual property protection and enforcing our intellectual property;

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difficulties in staffing and managing foreign operations;

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complexities associated with managing multiple payer reimbursement regimes, government payers or patient self-pay systems;

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difficulties in negotiating favorable reimbursement levels with governmental authorities;

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logistics and regulations associated with shipping, including infrastructure conditions and transportation delays;

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financial risks, such as longer payment cycles, difficulty collecting accounts receivable, the impact of local and regional financial crises on demand and payment for our product candidates and exposure to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations;

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natural disasters, political and economic instability, including wars, terrorism and political unrest, outbreak of disease, boycotts, curtailment of trade and other business restrictions;

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regulatory and compliance risks that relate to maintaining accurate information and control over sales and distributors’ activities that may fall within the purview of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

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(FCPA), its books and records provisions, or its anti-bribery provisions, or laws similar to the FCPA in other jurisdictions in which we may now or in the future operate, such as the United Kingdom’s Bribery Act of 2010; and

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anti-bribery requirements of several Member States in the European Union and other countries that may change and require disclosure of information to which U.S. legal privilege may not extend.

Any of these factors could significantly harm our business, operating results, financial condition and prospects.

We could be adversely affected by violations of the FCPA and other worldwide anti-bribery laws.

We are subject to the FCPA, which prohibits companies and their intermediaries from making payments in violation of law to non-U.S. government officials for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business or securing any other improper advantage. Other U.S. companies in the life sciences industry have faced criminal penalties under the FCPA for allowing their agents to deviate from appropriate practices in doing business with non-U.S. government officials. We are also subject to similar anti-bribery laws in other jurisdictions in which we operate. These laws are complex and far-reaching in nature. In addition, our collaborators or any third-party distributors could be deemed to be our agents, and we could be held responsible for their actions, including violations of the FCPA or similar anti-bribery laws. The international nature of our operations demand a high degree of vigilance, and any violations of these laws, or allegations of such violations, could disrupt our operations, involve significant management distraction, involve significant costs and expenses, including legal fees, and could result in a material adverse effect on our business, prospects, financial condition or results of operations. We could also suffer severe penalties, including criminal and civil penalties, disgorgement and other remedial measures.

Our success depends on our ability to retain key members of our management team and on our ability to hire, train, retain and motivate new employees.

Our success depends on the skills, experience and performance of key members of our senior management team. The individual and collective efforts of these and other members of our senior management team will be important as we continue to develop product candidates, establish strategic partnerships and build out our operations. The loss or incapacity of existing members of our executive management team could adversely affect our operations if we experience difficulties in hiring qualified successors. Our executive officers have signed employment agreements with us, but their service is at-will and may end at any point in time.

Our research and development initiatives and laboratory operations depend on our ability to attract and retain highly skilled scientists, clinical personnel, technicians and software engineers. We may not be able to attract or retain qualified scientists, clinical personnel, technicians or software engineers in the future due to the competition for qualified personnel among life science and technology businesses, particularly near our headquarters located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We also face competition from universities and public and private research institutions in recruiting and retaining highly qualified scientific personnel. We may have difficulties attracting, recruiting or retaining qualified personnel across functions that we deem critical to our success. Recruiting, training and retention difficulties can limit our ability to support our research and development and commercialization efforts. All of our employees are at-will, which means that either we or the employee may terminate their employment at any time.

In addition, we rely on consultants and advisors, including scientific and clinical advisors, to assist us in formulating our research and development, regulatory and commercialization strategies. Our consultants and advisors may provide services to other organizations and may have commitments under consulting or advisory contracts with other entities that may limit their availability to us. The loss of the services of one or more of our current consultants or advisors might impede the achievement of our research and development, regulatory and commercialization objectives.

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Our corporate culture has contributed to our success, and if we cannot maintain our corporate culture as the business grows, our business, operating results and financial condition may be harmed.

We believe that our corporate culture has been and will continue to be a critical contributor to our success and defines who we are and how we operate our business. We expect to hire aggressively as we expand, and we believe our corporate culture has been crucial in our success and our ability to attract highly skilled personnel. If we do not continue to develop our corporate culture or maintain and preserve our core values as we grow and evolve, we may be unable to foster the innovation, curiosity, creativity, focus on execution, teamwork and the facilitation of critical knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing we believe we need to support our growth. Our anticipated headcount growth and our recent transition from a private company to a public company may result in a change to our corporate culture, which could harm our business, operating results, financial condition and prospects.

Risks Related to Our Strategic Agreements and Relationships with Third Parties

We are currently party to several in-license agreements under which we obtained rights to use, develop, manufacture and/or commercialize certain of our product candidates, and expect to enter into additional collaborations in the future. If these collaborations are not successful, our business could be adversely affected.

We have entered into in-license agreements with multiple licensors and in the future may seek and form strategic alliances, create joint ventures or collaborations, or enter into acquisitions or additional licensing arrangements with third parties that we believe will complement or augment our existing technologies and product candidates. We may not realize the benefits of any in-licenses, acquisitions, or strategic alliances that we enter into. These transactions can entail numerous operational and financial risks, including exposure to unknown liabilities, disruption of our business and diversion of our management’s time and attention in order to manage a collaboration or develop acquired products, product candidates or technologies, incurrence of substantial debt or dilutive issuances of equity securities to pay transaction consideration or costs, higher than expected collaboration, acquisition or integration costs, write-downs of assets or goodwill or impairment charges, increased amortization expenses, difficulty and cost in facilitating the collaboration or combining the operations and personnel of any acquired business, impairment of relationships with key suppliers, manufacturers or customers of any acquired business due to changes in management and ownership and the inability to retain key employees of any acquired business. As a result, we may not be able to realize the benefits of such existing or future in-licenses or acquisitions if we are unable to successfully integrate them into our operations and company culture. Following a strategic transaction or license, we may not achieve the revenue or specific net income that justifies such transaction or such other benefits that led us to enter into the arrangement. If we breach our obligations under these agreements, we may be required to pay damages, lose our rights to these programs or both, which would adversely affect our business and prospects.

Any collaborations we enter into, including our license agreements with Hansoh and CStone, among others, and our drug engineering collaborations and any future collaborations, may pose several risks, including the following:

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Collaborators may have significant discretion in determining the efforts and resources that they will apply to these collaborations;

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Collaborators may not perform their obligations as expected;

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The clinical trials conducted as part of these collaborations may not be successful;

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Collaborators may not pursue development and/or commercialization of any product candidates that achieve regulatory approval or may elect not to continue or renew development or commercialization programs based on clinical trial results, changes in the collaborators’ strategic focus or available funding or external factors, such as an acquisition, that divert resources or create competing priorities;

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Collaborators may delay or provide insufficient funding for development efforts or undertake efforts that create questions of safety and efficacy regarding or related programs, and they may not provide us with the necessary data and support needed to facilitate our planned development and regulatory strategy;

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Collaborators could independently develop, or develop with third parties, products that compete directly or indirectly with our product candidates if the collaborators believe that competitive products are more likely to be successfully developed or can be commercialized under terms that are more economically attractive than ours;

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Product candidates developed in collaboration with us may be viewed by collaborators as competitive with their own product candidates or products, which may cause collaborators to cease to devote resources to the commercialization of our product candidates;

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Disagreements with collaborators, including disagreements over proprietary rights, contract interpretation or the preferred course of development of any programs or product candidates, may cause delays or termination of the research, development, manufacture or commercialization of such programs or product candidates, may lead to additional responsibilities for us with respect to such programs or product candidates or may result in litigation or arbitration, any of which would be time-consuming and expensive;

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Collaborators may not properly maintain or defend our intellectual property rights or may use our proprietary information in such a way as to invite litigation that could jeopardize or invalidate our intellectual property or proprietary information or expose us to potential litigation;

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Disputes may arise with respect to the ownership of intellectual property developed pursuant to our collaborations;

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Collaborators may infringe the intellectual property rights of third parties, which may expose us to litigation and potential liability; and

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Collaborations may be terminated for the convenience of the collaborator and, if so terminated, we could be required to raise additional capital to pursue further development or commercialization of the applicable product candidates.

If our collaborations do not result in the successful development and commercialization of products, or if one of any collaborator terminates its agreement with us, we may not receive any milestone or royalty payments under the collaboration. If we do not receive the payments we expect under these agreements, our development of product candidates could be delayed and we may need additional resources to develop our product candidates. All of the risks relating to product development, regulatory approval and commercialization summarized and described in this report also apply to the activities of our collaborators.

In addition, if any collaborator terminates its agreement with us, we may find it more difficult to attract new collaborators, and our reputation among the business and financial communities could be adversely affected.

We may seek to establish additional collaborations, and, if we are not able to establish them on commercially reasonable terms, or at all, we may have to alter our development and commercialization plans.

Our product development programs and the potential commercialization of our product candidates will require substantial additional cash to fund expenses. For some of our product candidates, we may decide to collaborate with additional pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies for the development and potential commercialization of those product candidates.

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We face significant competition in seeking appropriate collaborators. Whether we reach a definitive agreement for a collaboration will depend, among other things, upon our assessment of the collaborator’s resources and expertise, the terms and conditions of the proposed collaboration and the proposed collaborator’s evaluation of a number of factors. Those factors may include the design or results of clinical trials, the likelihood of approval by the FDA or similar regulatory authorities outside the United States, the potential market for the subject product candidate, the costs and complexities of manufacturing and delivering such product candidate to patients, the potential of competing products, the existence of uncertainty with respect to our ownership of (or rights in) technology, which can exist if there is a challenge to such ownership (or rights) without regard to the merits of the challenge and industry and market conditions generally. The collaborator may also consider alternative product candidates or technologies for similar indications that may be available to collaborate on and whether such a collaboration could be more attractive than the one with us for our product candidate. The terms of any additional collaborations or other arrangements that we may establish may not be favorable to us.

We may also be restricted under collaboration agreements from entering into future agreements on certain terms with potential collaborators. Collaborations are complex and time-consuming to negotiate and document. In addition, there have been a significant number of recent business combinations among large pharmaceutical companies that have resulted in a reduced number of potential future collaborators.

We may not be able to negotiate additional collaborations on a timely basis, on acceptable terms to us, or at all. If we are unable to do so, we may have to curtail the development of the product candidate for which we are seeking to collaborate, reduce or delay its development program or one or more of our other development programs, delay its potential commercialization or reduce the scope of any sales or marketing activities, or increase our expenditures and undertake development or commercialization activities at our own expense. If we elect to increase our expenditures to fund development or commercialization activities on our own, we may need to obtain additional capital, which may not be available to us on acceptable terms or at all. If we do not have sufficient funds, we may not be able to further develop our product candidates or bring them to market and generate product revenue.

We may be required to pay certain milestones and royalties under our license or collaboration agreements with third-party licensors or collaborators.

Under our current and future license or collaboration agreements, we may be required to pay milestones, royalties and other payments based on our revenues, including revenues from product sales, and these milestones and royalty payments could adversely affect the overall profitability of any products that we may seek to commercialize. In order to maintain our rights under these agreements, we may need to meet certain specified milestones in the development of our product candidates. Further, our licensors (or their licensors), licensees or other strategic collaborators may dispute the terms, including amounts, that we are required to pay under the respective license or collaboration agreements. If these claims result in a material increase in the amounts that we are required to pay to our licensors or collaborators, or in a claim of breach of the applicable agreement, our ability to research, develop and obtain approval of product candidates or to commercialize our products could be significantly impaired.

We do not control the actions of our third-party business collaborators, and breaches of our agreements by any of them as well as disagreements over strategic goals could affect our business, regulatory approvals of our product candidates and/or our reputation.

We have agreements in place with several third-party business collaborators, including Hansoh, CStone and our drug engineering collaborators, among others, and we expect that any future third-party business collaborators would similarly be engaged under agreements. Nevertheless, for reasons that we may not have an ability to foresee or control, any of our third-party business collaborators may breach their respective agreements. Depending on its nature, a breach could affect regulatory approvals for our product candidates and could affect our reputation if the consequences of a breach are imputed to us. We may need to engage in costly litigation to enforce our rights, and we may not prevail in such litigation. We may also disagree with our third-party business collaborators as to strategic issues or the manner in which our rights should be enforced.

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A breach by, or disagreement with, one of our third-party business collaborators may lead to termination of the applicable agreement, which could have a material adverse effect on our business and financial condition.

We currently rely and expect to continue to rely on third parties to conduct our future clinical trials, as well as investigator-sponsored clinical trials of our product candidates, in the United States and other jurisdictions. If these third parties do not successfully carry out their contractual duties, comply with regulatory requirements or meet expected deadlines, we may not be able to obtain regulatory approval for or commercialize our product candidates and our business could be substantially harmed.

We do not have the ability to independently conduct clinical trials. We currently rely and expect to continue to rely on medical institutions, clinical investigators, contract laboratories and other third parties, such as CROs, to conduct or otherwise support clinical trials for our product candidates. We currently rely and expect to continue to rely on academic and private non-academic institutions to conduct and sponsor clinical trials relating to our product candidates. We do not control the design or conduct of the investigator-sponsored trials, and it is possible that the FDA or non-U.S. regulatory authorities will not view these investigator-sponsored trials as providing adequate support for future clinical trials, whether controlled by us or third parties, for one or more reasons, including elements of the design or execution of the trials or safety concerns or other trial results.

Such arrangements will likely provide us certain information rights with respect to the investigator-sponsored trials, including access to and the ability to use and reference the data, including for our own regulatory filings, resulting from the investigator-sponsored trials. However, we would not have control over the timing and reporting of the data from investigator-sponsored trials, nor would we own the data from the investigator-sponsored trials. If we are unable to confirm or replicate the results from the investigator-sponsored trials, or if negative results are obtained, we would likely be further delayed or prevented from advancing further clinical development of our product candidates. Further, if investigators or institutions breach their obligations with respect to the clinical development of our product candidates, or if the data prove to be inadequate compared to the first-hand knowledge we might have gained had the investigator-sponsored trials been sponsored and conducted by us, then our ability to design and conduct any future clinical trials ourselves may be adversely affected.

We, our principal investigators and our CROs are required to comply with regulations, including GCP regulations, for conducting, monitoring, recording and reporting the results of clinical trials to ensure that the data and results are scientifically credible and accurate, and that the trial patients are adequately informed of the potential risks of participating in clinical trials and their rights are protected. These regulations are enforced by the FDA, the Competent Authorities of the Member States of the EEA and comparable foreign regulatory authorities for any products in clinical development. The FDA enforces GCP regulations through periodic inspections of clinical trial sponsors, principal investigators and trial sites. If we, our principal investigators or our CROs fail to comply with applicable GCP regulations, the clinical data generated in our clinical trials may be deemed unreliable and the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may require us to perform additional clinical trials before approving our marketing applications. We cannot provide assurances that, upon inspection, the FDA will determine that any of our ongoing or future clinical trials will comply with GCP regulations. In addition, our clinical trials must be conducted with product candidates produced under cGMP regulations. Our failure or the failure of our principal investigators or CROs to comply with these regulations may require us to repeat clinical trials, which would delay the regulatory approval process, significantly increase our expenditures and could also subject us to enforcement action. We also are required to register certain ongoing clinical trials and post the results of completed clinical trials on a U.S. government-sponsored database, ClinicalTrials.gov, within certain timeframes. Failure to do so can result in fines, adverse publicity and civil and criminal sanctions.

Many of our current and planned clinical trials are conducted by CROs, and we expect CROs will conduct all of our future clinical trials. As a result, many important aspects of our development programs, including their conduct and timing, are outside of our direct control. Our reliance on third parties to conduct future clinical trials also results in less direct control over the management of data developed through clinical trials than would be

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the case if we were relying entirely upon our own staff. Communicating with outside parties can also be challenging, potentially leading to mistakes as well as difficulties in coordinating activities. Outside parties may:

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have staffing difficulties;

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fail to comply with contractual obligations;

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experience regulatory compliance issues;

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undergo changes in priorities or become financially distressed; or

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form relationships with other entities, some of which may be our competitors.

These factors may adversely affect the willingness or ability of third parties to conduct our clinical trials and may subject us to unexpected cost increases that are beyond our control. If our principal investigators or CROs do not perform clinical trials in a satisfactory manner, breach their obligations to us or fail to comply with regulatory requirements, the development, regulatory approval and commercialization of our product candidates may be delayed, we may not be able to obtain regulatory approval and commercialize our product candidates or our development program may be materially and irreversibly harmed. If we are unable to rely on clinical data collected by our principal investigators or CROs, we could be required to repeat, extend the duration of, or increase the size of any of our clinical trials, which could significantly delay commercialization and require significantly greater expenditures.

If any of our relationships with these third-party principal investigators or CROs terminate, we may not be able to enter into arrangements with alternative CROs. If principal investigators or CROs do not successfully carry out their contractual 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 or regulatory requirements or for other reasons, the clinical trials such principal investigators or CROs are associated with may be extended, delayed or terminated, and we may not be able to obtain regulatory approval for, or successfully commercialize, our product candidates. As a result, we believe that our financial results and the commercial prospects for our product candidates in the subject indication would be harmed, our costs could increase and our ability to generate revenue could be delayed.

We contract with third parties for the manufacture of our product candidates for preclinical development, clinical testing, and expect to continue to do so for commercialization. This reliance on third parties increases the risk that we will not have sufficient quantities of our product candidates or products or such quantities at an acceptable cost, which could delay, prevent or impair our development or commercialization efforts.

We do not currently own or operate, nor do we have any plans to establish, any manufacturing facilities or personnel. We rely, and expect to continue to rely, on third parties for the manufacture of our product candidates for preclinical development and clinical testing, as well as for the commercial manufacture of our products if any of our product candidates receive marketing approval. This reliance on third parties increases the risk that we will not have sufficient quantities of our product candidates or products or such quantities at an acceptable cost or quality, which could delay, prevent or impair our development or commercialization efforts.

The facilities used by our contract manufacturers to manufacture our product candidates must be inspected by the FDA or a comparable regulatory authorities pursuant to pre-approval inspections that will be conducted after we submit our marketing applications to the FDA or a comparable regulatory authorities. We do not control the manufacturing process of, and will be completely dependent on, our contract manufacturers for compliance with cGMPs in connection with the manufacture of our product candidates. If our contract manufacturers cannot successfully manufacture material that conforms to our specifications and the strict regulatory requirements of the FDA or other regulatory authorities, they will not be able to pass regulatory inspections and/or maintain regulatory compliance for their manufacturing facilities. In addition, we have no control over the ability of our

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contract manufacturers to maintain adequate quality control, quality assurance and qualified personnel. If the FDA or a comparable regulatory authority finds deficiencies with or does not approve these facilities for the manufacture of our product candidates or if it finds deficiencies or withdraws any such approval in the future, we may need to find alternative manufacturing facilities, which would significantly impact our ability to develop, obtain regulatory approval for or market our product candidates, if approved.

If any CMO, with which we contract fails to perform its obligations, we may be forced to enter into an agreement with a different CMO, which we may not be able to do on reasonable terms, if at all. In such scenario, our supply of our product candidates for clinical trials could be delayed significantly as we establish alternative supply sources. In some cases, the technical skills required to manufacture our products or product candidates may be unique or proprietary to the original CMO, which would increase our reliance on such CMO or require us to obtain a license from such CMO in order to have another CMO manufacture our product candidates. We may have difficulty, or there may be contractual restrictions prohibiting us from, transferring such skills to a back-up or alternate supplier, or we may be unable to transfer such skills at all. In addition, if we are required to change CMOs for any reason, we will be required to verify that the new CMO maintains facilities and procedures that comply with quality standards and with all applicable regulations. We will also need to verify, such as through a manufacturing comparability study, that any new manufacturing process will produce our product candidate according to the specifications previously submitted to the FDA or a comparable regulatory authority. The delays associated with the verification of a new CMO could negatively affect our ability to develop product candidates or commercialize our products in a timely manner or within budget. In addition, changes in manufacturers often involve changes in manufacturing procedures and processes, which could require that we conduct bridging studies between our prior clinical supply used in our clinical trials and that of any new manufacturer. We may be unsuccessful in demonstrating the comparability of clinical supplies which could require the conduct of additional clinical trials.

Further, our failure, or the failure of our third-party manufacturers, to comply with applicable regulations could result in sanctions being imposed on us, including clinical holds, fines, injunctions, civil penalties, delays, suspension or withdrawal of approvals, license revocation, seizures or recalls of product candidates or products, if approved, operating restrictions and criminal prosecutions, any of which could significantly and adversely affect our business and supplies of our product candidates.

We may be unable to establish any agreements with third-party manufacturers or to do so on acceptable terms. Even if we are able to establish agreements with third-party manufacturers, reliance on third-party manufacturers entails additional risks, including:

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reliance on the third party for regulatory compliance and quality assurance;

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the possible breach of the manufacturing agreement by the third party;

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the possible misappropriation of our proprietary information, including our trade secrets and know-how; and

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the possible termination or nonrenewal of the agreement by the third party at a time that is costly or inconvenient for us.

Our product candidates and any products that we may develop may compete with other product candidates and approved products for access to manufacturing facilities. There are a limited number of manufacturers that operate under cGMP regulations and that might be capable of manufacturing for us.

Any performance failure on the part of our existing or future manufacturers could delay clinical development or marketing approval. If our current contract manufacturers cannot perform as agreed, we may be required to replace such manufacturers. We may incur added costs and delays in identifying and qualifying any such replacement.

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Our current and anticipated future dependence upon others for the manufacture of our product candidates or products may adversely affect our future profit margins and our ability to commercialize any products that receive marketing approval on a timely and competitive basis.

The manufacture of biologics is complex, and our third-party manufacturers may encounter difficulties in production. If any of our third-party manufacturers encounter such difficulties, our ability to provide supply of our current product candidates or any future product candidates for clinical trials or our products for patients, if approved, could be delayed or prevented.

Manufacturing biologics, especially in large quantities, is often complex and may require the use of innovative technologies to handle living cells. Each lot of an approved biologic must undergo thorough testing for identity, strength, quality, purity and potency. Manufacturing biologics requires facilities specifically designed for and validated for this purpose, and sophisticated quality assurance and quality control procedures are necessary. Slight deviations anywhere in the manufacturing process, including filling, labeling, packaging, storage, shipping and quality control and testing, may result in lot failures, product recalls or spoilage. When changes are made to the manufacturing process, we may be required to provide preclinical and clinical data showing the comparable identity, strength, quality, purity and potency of the products before and after such changes. If microbial, viral or other contaminations are discovered at the facilities of our manufacturers, such facilities may need to be closed for an extended period of time to investigate and remedy the contamination, which could delay clinical trials and adversely harm our business.

In addition, there are risks associated with large scale manufacturing for clinical trials or commercial scale including, among others, cost overruns, potential problems with process scale-up, process reproducibility, stability issues, compliance with cGMP, lot consistency and timely availability of raw materials. Even if we obtain marketing approval for any of our current product candidates or any future product candidates, there is no assurance that our manufacturers will be able to manufacture the approved product to specifications acceptable to the FDA or other comparable regulatory authorities, to produce such candidates in sufficient quantities to meet the requirements for the potential commercial launch of the products or to meet potential future demand. If our manufacturers are unable to produce sufficient quantities for clinical trials or for commercialization, our development and commercialization efforts would be impaired, which would have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and growth prospects.

The third parties upon which we rely for the supply of the active pharmaceutical ingredients and drug product to be used the preclinical testing and clinical trials for our product candidates are currently our sole source of supply, and the loss of any of these suppliers could significantly harm our business.

The active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and drug product we expect to use in all of our product candidates are supplied to us from single-source suppliers. Our ability to successfully develop our product candidates, and to ultimately supply our commercial products in quantities sufficient to meet the market demand, depends in part on our ability to obtain the API and drug product for these products in accordance with regulatory requirements and in sufficient quantities for clinical testing and commercialization. We are also unable to predict how changing global economic conditions or potential global health concerns such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will affect our third-party suppliers and manufacturers. Any negative impact of such matters on our third-party suppliers and manufacturers may also have an adverse impact on our results of operations or financial condition.

For all of our product candidates, we intend to identify and qualify additional manufacturers to provide such API and drug product prior to submission of an application for approval with the FDA, EMA MHRA, or other comparable regulatory authority. We are not certain, however, that our single-source suppliers will be able to meet our demand for these products, either because of the nature of our agreements with those suppliers, our limited experience with those suppliers or our relative importance as a customer to those suppliers. It may be difficult for us to assess their ability to timely meet our demand in the future based on past performance. While our suppliers have generally met our demand for their products on a timely basis in the past, they may subordinate our needs in the future to their other customers.

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Establishing additional or replacement suppliers for the API and drug product used in our product candidates, if required, may not be accomplished quickly, if at all. If we are able to find a replacement supplier, such replacement supplier would need to be qualified and may require additional regulatory inspection or approval, which could result in further delay. While we seek to maintain adequate inventory of the API and drug product used in our product candidates, any interruption or delay in the supply of components or materials, or our inability to obtain such API and drug product from alternate sources at acceptable prices in a timely manner could impede, delay, limit or prevent our development efforts, which could harm our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

Raising additional capital may cause dilution to our stockholders, 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 revenue, we expect to finance our cash needs through a combination of equity offerings, debt financings, collaborations, strategic alliances and licensing arrangements. Our future need for additional funding depends on many factors, including:

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the scope, progress, results and costs of researching and developing our current product candidates, as well as other additional product candidates we may develop and pursue in the future;

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the timing of, and the costs involved in, obtaining marketing approvals for our product candidates and any other additional product candidates we may develop and pursue in the future;

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the number of future product candidates that we may pursue and their development requirements;

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the extent to which we in-license or acquire rights to other products, product candidates or technologies;

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our ability to establish collaboration arrangements for the development of our product candidates on favorable terms, if at all;

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our headcount growth and associated costs as we expand our research and development and establish a commercial infrastructure;

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the costs of operating as a public company.

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milestones in connection with debt financing, and the failure to achieve such milestones by certain dates may force us to relinquish rights to some of our technologies or product candidates or otherwise agree to terms unfavorable to us which could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and prospects.

Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property

If we are unable to obtain and maintain patent and other intellectual property protection for our technology and product candidates, or if the scope of the intellectual property protection obtained is not sufficiently broad, or we are delayed in bringing product candidates to market such that those products have a shorter period of patent exclusivity than we expect, our competitors could develop and commercialize technology and drugs similar or identical to ours, and our ability to successfully commercialize our technology and drugs may be impaired.

Our commercial success depends in part on our ability to obtain and maintain proprietary or intellectual property protection in the United States and other countries for our current product candidates, including aumolertinib and sugemalimab, and our other future product candidates, as well as for their respective compositions, formulations, methods used to manufacture them, and methods of treatment, in addition to successfully defending these patents against third-party challenges. We seek to protect our proprietary and intellectual property position by, among other methods, filing patent applications in the United States and abroad related to our proprietary technology, inventions, and improvements that are important to the development and implementation of our business. Our ability to stop unauthorized third parties from making, using, selling, offering to sell, or importing our product candidates is dependent upon the extent to which we have rights under valid and enforceable patents or trade secrets that cover these activities. We also rely on trade secrets, know-how and continuing technological innovation to develop and maintain our proprietary and intellectual property position.

The patent position of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies generally is highly uncertain, involves complex legal and factual questions and has in recent years been the subject of much litigation. The degree of patent protection we require to successfully commercialize our current and future product candidates may be unavailable or severely limited in some cases and may not adequately protect our rights or permit us to gain or keep any competitive advantage. We cannot provide any assurances that any of our patents have, or that any of our pending patent applications that mature into issued patents will include, claims with a scope sufficient to protect aumolertinib and sugemalimab or our other current or future product candidates. In addition, if the breadth or strength of protection provided by our patent applications or any patents we may own or in-license is threatened, it could dissuade companies from collaborating with us to license, develop or commercialize current or future product candidates.

In addition, the laws of foreign countries may not protect our patent rights to the same extent as the laws of the United States. For example, in jurisdictions outside the United States, a license may not be enforceable unless all the owners of the intellectual property agree or consent to the license. Accordingly, any actual or purported co-owner of our patent rights could seek monetary or equitable relief requiring us to pay it compensation for, or refrain from, exploiting these patents due to such co-ownership. Furthermore, patents have a limited lifespan. In the United States, and most other jurisdictions in which we have undertaken patent filings, the natural expiration of a patent is generally 20 years after it is filed, assuming all maintenance fees are paid. Various extensions may be available, on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction basis; however, the life of a patent, and thus the protection it affords, is limited. Given the amount of time required for the development, testing and regulatory review of new product candidates, patents protecting such candidates might expire before or shortly after such

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candidates are commercialized. As a result, patents we may own or in-license may not provide us with adequate and continuing patent protection sufficient to exclude others from commercializing drugs similar or identical to our current or future product candidates, including generic versions of such drugs.

Other parties have developed technologies that may be related or competitive to our own, and such parties may have filed or may file patent applications, or may have received or may receive patents, claiming inventions that may overlap or conflict with those claimed in our own patent applications or issued patents, with respect to either the same compounds, methods, formulations or other subject matter, in either case that we may rely upon to dominate our patent position in the market. 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 at least 18 months after the earliest priority date of patent filing, or, in some cases, not at all. Therefore, we cannot know with certainty whether we were the first to make the inventions claimed in patents we may own or in-license patents or pending patent applications, or that we were the first to file for patent protection of such inventions. As a result, the issuance, scope, validity, enforceability and commercial value of our patent rights cannot be predicted with any certainty.

In addition, the patent prosecution process is expensive and time-consuming, and we may not be able to file and prosecute all necessary or desirable patent applications at a reasonable cost or in a timely manner. Further, with respect to certain pending patent applications covering our current or future product candidates, prosecution has yet to commence. Patent prosecution is a lengthy process, during which the scope of the claims initially submitted for examination to the relevant patent office(s) may be significantly narrowed by the time they issue, if they ever do. It is also possible that we (or our collaboration partners) will fail to identify patentable aspects of our research and development output before it is too late to obtain patent protection. Moreover, in some circumstances, we may not have the right to control the preparation, filing and prosecution of patent applications, or to maintain the patents, covering technology that we license from or to third parties. Therefore, these patents and applications may not be prosecuted and enforced in a manner consistent with the best interests of our business.

Even if we acquire patent protection that we expect should enable us to establish and/or maintain a competitive advantage, third parties may challenge the validity, enforceability or scope thereof, which may result in such patents being narrowed, invalidated or held unenforceable. The issuance of a patent is not conclusive as to its inventorship, scope, validity or enforceability, and our patents may be challenged in the courts or patent offices in the United States and abroad. We may become involved in post-grant proceedings such as opposition, derivation, reexamination, inter partes review, post-grant review, or interference proceedings challenging our patent rights or the patent rights of third parties from which we may in the future obtain licenses to such rights, in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the European Patent Office (EPO), or in other countries. In addition, we may be subject to a third-party submission to the USPTO, the EPO, or elsewhere, that may reduce the scope or preclude the granting of claims from our pending patent applications. Competitors may allege that they invented the inventions claimed in our issued patents or patent applications prior to us, or may file patent applications before we do. Competitors may also claim that we are infringing their patents and that we therefore cannot practice our technology as claimed under our patents or patent applications. Competitors may also contest our patents by claiming to an administrative patent authority or judge that the invention was not patent-eligible, was not original, was not novel, was obvious, and/or lacked inventive step, and/or that the patent application filing failed to meet relevant requirements relating to description, basis, enablement, and/or support. In litigation, a competitor could claim that our patents, if issued, are not valid or are unenforceable for a number of reasons. If a court or administrative patent authority agrees, we would lose our protection of those challenged patents.

In addition, we may in the future be subject to claims by our former employees, consultants, advisors, or other third parties asserting an ownership right in our patents or patent applications, as a result of the work they performed on our behalf. Although we generally require all of our employees, consultants and advisors and any other third parties who have access to our proprietary know-how, information or technology to assign or grant similar rights to their inventions to us, we cannot be certain that we have executed such agreements with all parties who may have contributed to our intellectual property, nor can we be certain that our agreements with

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such parties will be upheld in the face of a potential challenge, or that they will not be breached, for which we may not have an adequate remedy.

An adverse determination in any such submission or proceeding may result in loss of exclusivity or freedom to operate 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 drugs, without payment to us, or could limit the duration of the patent protection covering our technology and current and future product candidates. Such challenges may also result in our inability to manufacture or commercialize our current and future product candidates without infringing third-party patent rights. In addition, if the breadth or strength of protection provided by our patents and patent applications is threatened, it could dissuade companies from collaborating with us to license, develop or commercialize current or future product candidates.

Even if they are unchallenged, our issued patents and our pending patent applications, if issued, may not provide us with any meaningful protection or prevent competitors from designing around our patent claims to circumvent patents we may own or in-license by developing similar or alternative technologies or drugs in a non-infringing manner. For example, a third-party may develop a competitive drug that provides benefits similar to one or more of our current or future product candidates but that has a different composition that falls outside the scope of our patent protection. If the patent protection provided by the patents and patent applications we hold or pursue with respect to our current or future product candidates is not sufficiently broad to impede such competition, our ability to successfully commercialize our current and future product candidates could be negatively affected, which would harm our business, operating results, financial condition and prospects.

Furthermore, even if we are able to issue patents with claims of valuable scope in one or more jurisdictions, we may not be able to secure such claims in all relevant jurisdictions, or in a sufficient number to meaningfully reduce competition. Our competitors may be able to develop and commercialize their products, including products identical to ours, in any jurisdiction in which we are unable to obtain, maintain, or enforce such patent claims.

Obtaining and maintaining our patent protection depends on compliance with various procedural, document submission, deadlines, fee payment and other requirements imposed by governmental patent agencies, and our patent protection could be reduced or eliminated if we fail to comply with these requirements. We may miss a filing deadline for patent protection on these inventions.

The USPTO and foreign governmental patent agencies require compliance with a number of procedural, documentary, timing, fee payment and other similar provisions during the patent application process and after issuance of any patent. In addition, periodic maintenance fees, renewal fees, annuity fees and/or various other government fees are required to be paid periodically. While an inadvertent lapse can, in some cases, be cured by payment of a late fee, or by other means in accordance with the applicable rules, there are situations in which noncompliance can result in abandonment or lapse of the patent or patent application, resulting in partial or complete loss of patent rights in the relevant jurisdiction. Noncompliance events that could result in abandonment or lapse of a patent include, but are not limited to, failure to respond to official actions within prescribed time limits, non-payment of fees and failure to properly legalize and submit formal documents. In such an event, our competitors might be able to enter the market with similar or identical products or platforms, which could have a material adverse effect on our business prospects and financial condition.

If our trademarks and trade names for our products or company name are not adequately protected in one or more countries where we intend to market our products, we may delay the launch of product brand names, use different trademarks or tradenames in different countries, or face other potentially adverse consequences to building our product brand recognition.

Our trademarks or trade names may be challenged, infringed, diluted, circumvented or declared generic or determined to be infringing on other marks. We intend to rely on both registration and common law protection for our trademarks. We may not be able to protect our rights to these trademarks and trade names or may be forced to stop using these names, which we need for name recognition by potential partners or customers in

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our markets of interest. During the trademark registration process, we may receive Office Actions from the USPTO or from comparable agencies in foreign jurisdictions objecting to the registration of our trademark. Although we would be given an opportunity to respond to those objections, we may be unable to overcome such rejections. In addition, in the USPTO and in comparable agencies in other jurisdictions, third parties are given an opportunity to oppose pending trademark applications and to seek the cancellation of registered trademarks. Opposition or cancellation proceedings may be filed against our trademark applications or registrations, and our trademark applications or registrations may not survive such proceedings. If we are unable to obtain a registered trademark or establish name recognition based on our trademarks and trade names, we may not be able to compete effectively, and our business may be adversely affected.

If we are unable to adequately protect and enforce our trade secrets, our business and competitive position would be harmed.

In addition to the protection afforded by patents we may own or in-license, we seek to rely on trade secret protection, confidentiality agreements, and partnership and license agreements to protect proprietary know-how that may not be patentable, processes for which patents are difficult to enforce and any other elements of our product discovery and development processes or our business processes that involve proprietary know-how, information, or technology that may not be covered by patents. Although we require all of our employees, consultants, advisors, and any third parties who have access to our proprietary know-how, information, or technology to enter into confidentiality agreements, trade secrets can be difficult to protect, and we have limited control over the protection of trade secrets used by our collaborators and suppliers. We cannot be certain that we have or will obtain these agreements in all circumstances, and we cannot guarantee that we have entered into such agreements with each party that may have or have had access to our trade secrets or proprietary information.

Moreover, any of these parties might breach the agreements and intentionally or inadvertently disclose our trade secret information, and we may not be able to obtain adequate remedies for such breaches. In addition, competitors may otherwise gain access to our trade secrets or independently develop substantially equivalent information and techniques. Furthermore, the laws of some foreign countries do not protect proprietary rights and trade secrets 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. If we are unable to prevent unauthorized material disclosure of our intellectual property and trade secrets to third parties, we will not be able to establish or maintain a competitive advantage in our market, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and future prospects.

Enforcing a claim that a party illegally disclosed or misappropriated a trade secret is difficult, expensive and time-consuming, and the outcome is unpredictable. If we choose to go to court to stop a third-party from using any of our trade secrets, we may incur substantial costs. These lawsuits may consume our time and other resources even if we are successful. Although we take steps to protect our proprietary information and trade secrets, including through contractual means with our employees and consultants, third parties may independently develop substantially equivalent proprietary information and techniques or otherwise gain access to our trade secrets or disclose our technology. If any of our trade secrets were to be lawfully obtained or independently developed by a competitor or other third party, we would have no right to prevent them from using that technology or information to compete with us.

Thus, we may not be able to meaningfully protect our trade secrets. It is our policy to require our employees, consultants, outside scientific collaborators, sponsored researchers and other advisors to execute confidentiality agreements upon the commencement of employment or consulting relationships with us. These agreements provide that all confidential information concerning our business or financial affairs developed or made known to the individual or entity during the course of the party’s relationship with us is to be kept confidential and not disclosed to third parties except in specific circumstances. In addition, we take other appropriate precautions, such as physical and technological security measures, to guard against misappropriation of our proprietary technology by third parties. In the case of employees, the agreements provide that all inventions conceived by the individual, and which are related to our current or planned business

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or research and development or made during normal working hours, on our premises or using our equipment or proprietary information, are our exclusive property. Although we require all of our employees to assign their inventions to us, we may be unsuccessful in executing such an agreement with each party who, in fact, conceives or develops intellectual property that we regard as our own. The assignment of intellectual property rights may not be self-executing, or the assignment agreements may be breached, and 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. Such claims could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

We may initiate, become a defendant in, or otherwise become party to lawsuits to protect or enforce our intellectual property rights, which could be expensive, time-consuming, and unsuccessful.

Competitors may infringe any patents we may own or in-license. In addition, any patents we may own or in-license also may become involved in inventorship, priority, validity or unenforceability disputes. To counter infringement or unauthorized use, we may be required to file infringement claims, which can be expensive and time-consuming. We may not prevail in any lawsuits that we initiate, and the damages or other remedies awarded, if any, may not be commercially meaningful. In addition, in an infringement proceeding, a court may decide that one or more of any patents we may own or in-license is not valid or is unenforceable or that the other party’s use of our technology that may be patented falls under the safe harbor to patent infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(e)(1). There is also the risk that, even if the validity of these patents is upheld, the court may refuse to stop the other party from using the technology at issue on the grounds that any patents we may own or in-license do not cover the technology in question or that such third-party’s activities do not infringe our patent applications or any patents we may own or in-license. An adverse result in any litigation or defense proceedings could put one or more of any patents we may own or in-license at risk of being invalidated, held unenforceable, or interpreted narrowly and could put our patent applications at risk of not issuing. Such litigation or proceedings could substantially increase our operating losses and reduce the resources available for development activities or any future sales, marketing, patient support or distribution activities. We may not have sufficient financial or other resources to conduct such litigation or proceedings adequately. Some of our competitors may be able to sustain the costs of such litigation or proceedings more effectively than we can because of their greater financial resources and more mature and developed intellectual property portfolios. Uncertainties resulting from the initiation and continuation of patent litigation or other proceedings could have a material adverse effect on our ability to compete in the marketplace.

Post-grant proceedings instituted by third-parties or brought by the USPTO may be necessary to determine the validity or priority of inventions with respect to our patent applications or any patents we may own or in-license. These proceedings are expensive and an unfavorable outcome could result in a loss of our current patent rights and 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. In addition to potential USPTO post-grant proceedings, we may become a party to patent opposition proceedings in the EPO, or similar proceedings in other comparable patent offices or courts where our patents may be challenged. The costs of these proceedings could be substantial, and may result in a loss of scope of some claims or a loss of the entire patent. An unfavorable result in a post-grant challenge proceeding may result in the loss of our right to exclude others from practicing one or more of our inventions in the relevant country or jurisdiction, which could have a material adverse effect on our business. Litigation or post-grant proceedings within patent offices may result in a decision adverse to our interests and, even if we are successful, may result in substantial costs and distract our management and other employees. We may not be able to prevent misappropriation of our trade secrets or confidential information, 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. In addition, there could 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 substantial adverse effect on the price of our securities.

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We may not be able to detect infringement against any patents we may own or in-license. Even if we detect infringement by a third party of any patents we may own or in-license, we may choose not to pursue litigation against or settlement with the third-party. If we later sue such third party for patent infringement, the third party may have certain legal defenses available to it, which otherwise would not be available except for the delay between when the infringement was first detected and when the suit was brought. Such legal defenses may make it impossible for us to enforce any patents we may own or in-license against such third party.

Intellectual property litigation and administrative patent office patent validity challenges in one or more countries could cause us to spend substantial resources and distract our personnel from their normal responsibilities.

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

We may be subject to damages or settlement costs resulting from claims that we or our employees have violated the intellectual property rights of third parties, or are in breach of our agreements. We may be accused of, or otherwise become party to lawsuits or disputes alleging, wrongful disclosure of third-party confidential information by us or by another party, including current or former employees, contractors or consultants. In addition to diverting attention and resources to such disputes, such disputes could adversely impact our business reputation and/or protection of our proprietary technology.

The intellectual property landscape relevant to our product candidates and programs is crowded, and third parties may initiate legal proceedings alleging that we are infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating their intellectual property rights, the outcome of which would be uncertain and could have a material adverse effect on our business. Our commercial success depends upon our ability to develop, manufacture, market and sell our current and future product candidates and use our proprietary technologies without infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating the intellectual property rights of third parties. There is a substantial amount of litigation involving patents and other intellectual property rights in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, as well as administrative proceedings for challenging patents, including derivation, interference, reexamination, inter partes review and post-grant review proceedings before the USPTO or oppositions and other comparable proceedings in foreign jurisdictions. We or any of our current or future licensors or strategic partners may be party to, exposed to, or threatened with, future adversarial proceedings or litigation by third parties having patent or other intellectual property rights alleging that our current or future product candidates and/or proprietary technologies infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate their intellectual property rights. We cannot assure you that our current or future product candidates and other technologies that we have developed, are developing or may develop in the future do not or will not infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate existing or future patents or other intellectual property rights owned by third parties. For example, many of our employees were previously employed at other biotechnology or pharmaceutical companies. Although we try to ensure that our employees, consultants and advisors do not use the proprietary information or know-how of others in their work for us, we may be subject to claims that we or

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these individuals have used or disclosed intellectual property, including trade secrets or other proprietary information, of any such individual’s former employer. We may also be subject to claims that patents and applications we have filed to protect inventions of our employees, consultants and advisors, even those related to one or more of our current or future product candidates, are rightfully owned by their former or concurrent employer. Litigation may be necessary to defend against these claims.

While certain activities related to development and clinical testing of our current or future product candidates may be subject to safe harbor of patent infringement under 35 U.S.C. §271(e)(1), upon receiving FDA approval for such candidates we or any of our future licensors or strategic partners may immediately become party to, exposed to, or threatened with, future adversarial proceedings or litigation by third parties having patent or other intellectual property rights alleging that such product candidates infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate their intellectual property rights. Numerous U.S. and foreign issued patents and pending patent applications, which are owned by third parties, exist in the fields in which we are developing our current or future product candidates. As the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries expand and more patents are issued, the risk increases that our current or future product candidates may give rise to claims of infringement of the patent rights of others. Moreover, it is not always clear to industry participants, including us, which patents cover various types of drugs, products or their methods of use or manufacture. Thus, because of the large number of patents issued and patent applications filed in our fields, there may be a risk that third parties may allege they have patent rights encompassing our current or future product candidates, technologies or methods.

If a third party claims that we infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate its intellectual property rights, we may face a number of issues, including, but not limited to:

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infringement, misappropriation and other intellectual property claims which, regardless of merit, may be expensive and time-consuming to litigate and may divert our management’s attention from our core business and may impact our reputation;

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substantial damages for infringement, misappropriation or other violations, which we may have to pay if a court decides that the product candidate or technology at issue infringes, misappropriates or otherwise violates the third party’s rights, and, if the court finds that the infringement was willful, we could be ordered to pay treble damages and the patent owner’s attorneys’ fees;

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a court prohibiting us from developing, manufacturing, marketing or selling our current product candidates or future product candidates or from using our proprietary technologies, unless the third-party licenses its product rights to us, which it is not required to do, on commercially reasonable terms or at all;

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if a license is available from a third party, we may have to pay substantial royalties, upfront fees and other amounts, and/or grant cross-licenses to intellectual property rights for our products, or the license to us may be non-exclusive, which would permit third parties to use the same intellectual property to compete with us;

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redesigning our current or future product candidates or processes so they do not infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate third-party intellectual property rights, which may not be possible or may require substantial monetary expenditures and time; and

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public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim proceedings or developments, and, if securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a substantial adverse effect on the price of our securities.

Some of our competitors may be able to sustain the costs of complex patent litigation more effectively than we can because they have substantially greater resources. In addition, any uncertainties resulting from the initiation and continuation of any litigation could have a material adverse effect on our ability to raise the funds necessary to continue our operations or could otherwise have a material adverse effect on our business, results of

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operations, financial condition and prospects. The occurrence of any of the foregoing could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations or prospects.

We may choose to challenge the patentability of claims in a third party’s U.S. patent by requesting that the USPTO review the patent claims in an ex parte reexamination, inter partes review or post-grant review proceedings. These proceedings are expensive and may consume our time or other resources. We may choose to challenge a third party’s patent in patent opposition proceedings in the EPO, or other comparable patent office. The costs of these opposition proceedings could be substantial, and may consume our time or other resources. If we fail to obtain a favorable result at the USPTO, EPO or other comparable office, then we may be exposed to litigation by a third party alleging that the patent may be infringed by our current or future product candidates or proprietary technologies.

Third parties may assert that we are employing their proprietary technology without authorization. Patents issued in the United States by law enjoy a presumption of validity that can be rebutted in U.S. courts only with evidence that is “clear and convincing,” a heightened standard of proof. There may be issued third-party patents of which we are currently unaware with claims to compositions, formulations, methods of manufacture or methods for treatment related to the use or manufacture of our current or future product candidates. Patent applications can take many years to issue. In addition, because some patent applications in the United States and certain other jurisdictions may be maintained in secrecy until the patents are issued, patent applications in the United States and many foreign jurisdictions are typically not published until 18 months after their earliest priority filing date, and publications in the scientific literature often lag behind actual discoveries, we cannot be certain that others have not filed patent applications covering our current or future product candidates or technology. If any such patent applications issue as patents, and if such patents have priority over our patent applications or patents we may own or in-license, we may be required to obtain rights to such patents owned by third parties which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all, or may only be available on a non-exclusive basis. There may be currently pending third-party patent applications which may later result in issued patents that our current or future product candidates may infringe. It is also possible that patents owned by third parties of which we are aware, but which we do not believe are relevant to our current or future product candidates or other technologies, could be found to be infringed by our current or future product candidates or other technologies. In addition, third parties may obtain patents in the future and claim that use of our technologies infringes upon these patents. Moreover, we may fail to identify relevant patents or incorrectly conclude that a patent is invalid, not enforceable, exhausted, or not infringed by our activities. If any third-party patents were held by a court of competent jurisdiction to cover the manufacturing process of our current or future product candidates, molecules used in or 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 the product candidate unless we obtained a license under the applicable patents, or until such patents expire or they are finally determined to be held invalid or unenforceable. Similarly, if any third-party patent were held by a court of competent jurisdiction to cover aspects of our formulations, processes for manufacture or methods of use, including combination therapy or patient selection methods, the holders of any such patent may be able to block our ability to develop and commercialize the product candidate unless we obtained a license or until such patent expires or is finally determined to be held invalid or unenforceable. In either case, such a license may not be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all. If we are unable to obtain a necessary license to a third-party patent on commercially reasonable terms, or at all, our ability to commercialize our current or future product candidates may be impaired or delayed, which could in turn significantly harm our business. Even if we obtain a license, it may be non-exclusive, thereby giving our competitors access to the same technologies licensed to us.

Parties making claims against us may seek and obtain injunctive or other equitable relief, which could effectively block our ability to further develop and commercialize our current or future product candidates. Defense of these claims, regardless of their merit, could 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, misappropriation or other violation against us, we may have to pay substantial damages, including treble damages and attorneys’ fees for willful infringement, obtain one or more licenses from third parties, pay royalties or redesign our infringing products, which may be impossible or require substantial time and monetary

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expenditure. We cannot predict whether any such license would be available at all or whether it would be available on commercially reasonable terms. Furthermore, even in the absence of litigation, we may need or may choose to obtain licenses from third parties to advance our research or allow commercialization of our current or future product candidates. We may fail to obtain any of these licenses at a reasonable cost or on reasonable terms, if at all. In that event, we would be unable to further develop and commercialize our current or future product candidates, which could harm our business significantly.

We may be unable to obtain patent or other intellectual property protection for our current or future product candidates or our future products, if any, in all jurisdictions throughout the world, and we may not be able to adequately enforce our intellectual property rights even in the jurisdictions where we seek protection.

We may not be able to obtain patent coverage of our current or future product candidates in all countries. Filing, prosecuting and defending patents on current or future product candidates in all countries throughout the world would be prohibitively expensive, and intellectual property rights in some countries outside the United States can be less extensive than those in the United States. In addition, the laws of some foreign countries do not protect intellectual property rights to the same extent as federal and state laws in the United States. Consequently, we may not be able to prevent third parties from practicing our inventions in all countries outside the United States, or from selling or importing products made using our inventions in and into the United States or other jurisdictions. Competitors may use our technologies in jurisdictions where we have not obtained patent protection to develop their own products and further, may export otherwise infringing products to territories where we have patent protection, but where enforcement is not as strong as that in the United States. These products may compete with our current or future product candidates and, in jurisdictions where we do not have any issued patents, our patent applications or other intellectual property rights may not be effective or sufficient to prevent them from competing. We will need to decide whether and in which jurisdictions to pursue protection for the various inventions in our portfolio prior to applicable deadlines.

Many companies have encountered significant problems in protecting and defending intellectual property rights in foreign 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, particularly those relating to pharmaceutical products, which could make it difficult for us to stop the infringement of any patents we may own or in-license or the marketing of competing products in violation of our proprietary rights generally. Proceedings to enforce any rights we may have in our patent applications or any patents we may own or in-license in foreign jurisdictions could result in substantial costs and divert our efforts and attention from other aspects of our business, put any patents we may own or in-license at risk of being invalidated or interpreted narrowly and our patent applications at risk of not issuing, and 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.

Many countries have compulsory licensing laws under which a patent owner may be compelled to grant licenses to third parties. In addition, many countries limit the enforceability of patents against government agencies or government contractors. In these countries, the patent owner may have limited remedies, which could materially diminish the value of such patent. If we are forced to grant a license to third parties with respect to any patents we may own or license that are relevant to our business, our competitive position may be impaired, and our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects may be adversely affected.

If we fail to comply with our obligations in any agreements under which we may license intellectual property rights from third parties or otherwise experience disruptions to our business relationships with our licensors, we could lose license rights that are important to our business.

We may from time to time be party to license and collaboration agreements with third parties to advance our research or allow commercialization of current or future product candidates. Such agreements may impose

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numerous obligations, such as development, diligence, payment, commercialization, funding, milestone, royalty, sublicensing, insurance, patent prosecution, enforcement and other obligations on us and may require us to meet development timelines, or to exercise commercially reasonable efforts to develop and commercialize licensed products, in order to maintain the licenses covered under those agreements. In spite of our efforts, our collaborators might conclude that we have materially breached our agreements and might therefore terminate the agreements, thereby removing or limiting our ability to develop and commercialize products and technologies covered by the agreements.

Any termination of these licenses, or if the underlying patents fail to provide the intended exclusivity, could result in the loss of significant rights and could harm our ability to commercialize our current or future product candidates, and competitors or other third parties would have the freedom to seek regulatory approval of, and to market, products identical to ours and we may be required to cease our development and commercialization of certain of our current or future product candidates. Any of the foregoing could have a material adverse effect on our competitive position, business, financial conditions, results of operations, and prospects.

Disputes may also arise between us and our licensors regarding intellectual property subject to a license agreement, including:

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the scope of rights granted under the license agreement and other interpretation-related issues;

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whether and the extent to which our technology and processes infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate intellectual property rights of the licensor that is not subject to the licensing agreement;

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our right to sublicense patent and other rights to third parties under collaborative development relationships;

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our diligence obligations with respect to the use of the licensed technology in relation to our development and commercialization of our current or future product candidates, and what activities satisfy those diligence obligations;

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the priority of invention of any patented technology; and

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the ownership of inventions and know-how resulting from the joint creation or use of intellectual property by our future licensors and us and our partners.

In addition, the agreements under which we may license intellectual property or technology from third parties are likely to be complex, and certain provisions in such agreements may be susceptible to multiple interpretations. The resolution of any contract interpretation disagreement that may arise could narrow what we believe to be the scope of our rights to the relevant intellectual property or technology, or increase what we believe to be our financial or other obligations under the relevant agreement, either of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. Moreover, if disputes over intellectual property that we may license prevent or impair our ability to maintain future licensing arrangements on acceptable terms, we may be unable to successfully develop and commercialize the affected current or future product candidates, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial conditions, results of operations and prospects.

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Any granted patents we may own or in-license covering our current or future product candidates or other valuable technology could be narrowed or found invalid or unenforceable if challenged in court or before administrative bodies in the United States or abroad, including the USPTO and the EPO. A patent asserted in a judicial court could be found invalid or unenforceable during the enforcement proceeding. Administrative or judicial proceedings challenging the validity of our patents or individual patent claims could take months or years to resolve.

If we or our licensors or strategic partners initiate legal proceedings against a third party to enforce a patent covering one of our current or future product candidates, the defendant could counterclaim that the patent covering our product candidate, as applicable, is invalid and/or unenforceable. In patent litigation in the United States, defendant counterclaims alleging invalidity and/or unenforceability are commonplace, and there are numerous grounds upon which a third party can assert invalidity or unenforceability of a patent. Grounds for a validity challenge could be an alleged failure to meet any of several statutory requirements, including lack of patentable subject matter, lack of written description, lack of novelty, obviousness, or non-enablement. Grounds for an unenforceability assertion could be an allegation that someone connected with prosecution of the patent withheld relevant information from the USPTO, or made a misleading statement, in the process of obtaining the patent during patent prosecution. 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 reexamination, inter partes review, post-grant review and equivalent proceedings in other jurisdictions (such as opposition proceedings). Such proceedings could result in revocation or amendment to our patent applications or any patents we may own or in-license in such a way that they no longer cover our current or future product candidates. The outcome following legal assertions of invalidity and unenforceability is unpredictable. An adverse determination in any such submission, proceeding or litigation could reduce the scope of, or invalidate or render unenforceable, any rights we may have from our patent applications or any patents we may own or in-license, allow third parties to commercialize our current or future product candidates or other technologies and compete directly with us, without payment to us, or result in our inability to manufacture or commercialize products without infringing third-party patent rights. Moreover, we may have to participate in interference proceedings declared by the USPTO to determine priority of invention or in post-grant challenge proceedings, such as oppositions in a foreign patent office, that challenge our or our future licensors’ priority of invention or other features of patentability with respect to our patent applications and any patents we may own or in-license. Such challenges may result in loss of patent rights, loss of exclusivity, or in patent claims being narrowed, invalidated, or held unenforceable, which could limit our ability to stop others from using or commercializing similar or identical technology and products, or limit the duration of the patent protection of our current or future product candidates and other technologies. With respect to the validity question, for example, we cannot be certain that there is no invalidating prior art, of which we or our future licensing partners and the patent examiner were unaware during prosecution. If a defendant were to prevail on a legal assertion of invalidity and/or unenforceability, or if we are otherwise unable to adequately protect our rights, we would lose at least part, and perhaps all, of the patent protection on the applicable current or future product candidate. Such a loss of patent protection could have a material adverse impact on our business and our ability to commercialize or license our technology and such product candidate.

Such proceedings also may result in substantial cost and require significant time from our scientists and management, even if the eventual outcome is favorable to us. If we are unsuccessful in any such proceeding or other priority or inventorship dispute, we may be required to obtain and maintain licenses from third parties, including parties involved in any such interference proceedings or other priority or inventorship disputes. Such licenses may not be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all, or may be non-exclusive. If we are unable to obtain and maintain such licenses, we may need to cease the development, manufacture, and commercialization of one or more of the current or future product candidates we may develop. The loss of exclusivity or the narrowing of our patent application claims could limit our ability to stop others from using or commercializing similar or identical technology and products. Any of the foregoing could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

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

As is the case with other biopharmaceutical companies, our success is heavily dependent on intellectual property, particularly patents. Obtaining and enforcing patents in the biopharmaceutical industry involve both technological and legal complexity and is therefore costly, time consuming and inherently uncertain. Recent patent reform legislation in the United States and other countries, including the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, or Leahy-Smith Act, signed into law on September 16, 2011, could increase those uncertainties and costs. The Leahy-Smith Act included a number of significant changes to U.S. patent law. These include provisions that affect the way patent applications are prosecuted, redefine prior art and provide more efficient and cost-effective avenues for competitors to challenge the validity of patents. In addition, the Leahy-Smith Act has transformed the U.S. patent system into a “first-inventor-to-file” system. The first-inventor-to-file provisions, however, became effective on March 16, 2013. Accordingly, it is not yet clear what, if any, impact the Leahy-Smith Act will have on the operation of our business. However, the Leahy-Smith Act and its implementation could make it more difficult to obtain patent protection for our inventions and increase the uncertainties and costs surrounding the prosecution of our patent applications and the enforcement or defense of our issued patents, all of which could harm our business, operating results, financial condition and prospects.

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. Additionally, there have been recent proposals for additional changes to the patent laws of the United States and other countries that, if adopted, could impact our ability to obtain patent protection for our proprietary technology or our ability to enforce our proprietary technology. Depending on future actions by the U.S. Congress, the U.S. courts, the USPTO and the relevant law-making bodies in other countries, the laws and regulations governing patents could change in unpredictable ways that would weaken our ability to obtain new patents or to enforce our existing patents and patents that we might obtain in the future.

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

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

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

Intellectual property rights do not guarantee commercial success of current or future product candidates or other business activities. Numerous factors may limit any potential competitive advantage provided by our intellectual property rights.

The degree of future protection afforded by our intellectual property rights, whether owned or in-licensed, is uncertain because intellectual property rights have limitations, and may not adequately protect our business, provide a barrier to entry against our competitors or potential competitors, or permit us to maintain our competitive advantage. Moreover, if a third party has intellectual property rights that cover the practice of our technology, we may not be able to fully exercise or extract value from our intellectual property rights. The following examples are illustrative:

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patent applications that we own or may in-license may not lead to issued patents;

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patents, should they issue, that we may own or in-license, may not provide us with any competitive advantages, may be narrowed in scope, or may be challenged and held invalid or unenforceable;

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others may be able to develop and/or practice technology, including compounds that are similar to the chemical compositions of our current or future product candidates, that is similar to our technology or aspects of our technology but that is not covered by the claims of any patents we may own or in-license, should any patents issue;

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third parties may compete with us in jurisdictions where we do not pursue and obtain patent protection;

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we, or our licensors or collaborators, might not have been the first to make the inventions covered by a patent application that we own or may in-license;

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we, or our licensors or collaborators, might not have been the first to file patent applications covering a particular invention;

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others may independently develop similar or alternative technologies without infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating our intellectual property rights;

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our competitors might conduct research and development activities in the United States and other countries that provide a safe harbor from patent infringement claims for certain research and development activities, as well as in countries where we do not have patent rights, and may then use the information learned from such activities to develop competitive products for sale in our major commercial markets;

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we may not be able to obtain and/or maintain necessary licenses on reasonable terms or at all;

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third parties may assert an ownership interest in our intellectual property and, if successful, such disputes may preclude us from exercising exclusive rights, or any rights at all, over that intellectual property;

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we may choose not to file a patent in order to maintain certain trade secrets or know-how, and a third-party may subsequently file a patent covering such trade secrets or know-how;

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we may not be able to maintain the confidentiality of our trade secrets or other proprietary information;

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we may not develop or in-license additional proprietary technologies that are patentable; and

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the patents of others may have an adverse effect on our business.

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

Risks Related to Government Regulation

Obtaining and maintaining regulatory approval of our product candidates in one jurisdiction does not mean that we will be successful in obtaining regulatory approval of our product candidates in other jurisdictions.

We plan to submit marketing applications in multiple countries. Regulatory authorities in jurisdictions outside of the United States have requirements for approval of product candidates with which we must comply prior to marketing in those jurisdictions. Obtaining foreign regulatory approvals and compliance with foreign regulatory requirements could result in significant delays, difficulties and costs for us and could delay or prevent the introduction of our products in certain countries. If we fail to comply with the regulatory requirements in international markets and/or receive applicable marketing approvals, our target market will be reduced and our ability to realize the full market potential of our product candidates will be harmed.

Obtaining and maintaining regulatory approval of our product candidates in one jurisdiction does not guarantee that we will be able to obtain or maintain regulatory approval in any other jurisdiction, while a failure or delay in obtaining regulatory approval in one jurisdiction may have a negative effect on the regulatory approval process in others. For example, even if the FDA grants marketing approval of a product candidate, comparable regulatory authorities in other jurisdictions must also approve the manufacturing, marketing and promotion of the product candidate in those countries. Approval procedures vary among jurisdictions and can involve requirements and administrative review periods different from, and greater than, those in the United States, including additional nonclinical studies or clinical trials as clinical trials conducted in one jurisdiction may not be accepted by regulatory authorities in other jurisdictions. In short, the foreign regulatory approval process involves many of the same risks associated with FDA approval. In addition, in many jurisdictions outside the United States, a product candidate must be approved for reimbursement before it can be approved for sale in that jurisdiction. In some cases, the prices that we may intend to charge for our products will also be subject to approval.

Our product candidates may be subject to government price controls in certain jurisdictions that may affect our revenue.

There has been heightened governmental scrutiny in the United States, China, the European Union, Japan and other jurisdictions of pharmaceutical pricing practices in light of the rising cost of prescription drugs. In the United States, such scrutiny has resulted in several recent Congressional inquiries and proposed and enacted federal legislation designed to, among other things, bring more transparency to product pricing, review the relationship between pricing and manufacturer patient programs, and reform government program reimbursement methodologies for products. At the federal level, Congressional leadership and the Biden administration have each indicated that they will continue to seek new legislative and/or administrative measures to control drug costs. At the state level, legislatures have increasingly enacted legislation and implemented regulations designed to control pharmaceutical and biologic product pricing, including price or patient reimbursement constraints, discounts, restrictions on certain product access and marketing cost

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disclosure and transparency measures, and, in some cases, designed to encourage importation from other countries and bulk purchasing.

Outside of the United States, particularly in the European Union, the pricing of prescription pharmaceuticals is subject to governmental control. In these countries, pricing negotiations with governmental authorities can take considerable time after the receipt of marketing approval for a product. To obtain coverage and reimbursement or pricing approval in some countries, we may be required to conduct a clinical trial that compares the cost-effectiveness of our product candidate to other available therapies. If reimbursement of our products is unavailable or limited in scope or amount, or if pricing is set at unsatisfactory levels, our business could be harmed.

We may seek priority review designation for one or more of our other product candidates, but we might not receive such designation, and even if we do, such designation may not lead to a faster regulatory review or approval process.

If the FDA determines that a product candidate offers a treatment for a serious condition and, if approved, the product would provide a significant improvement in safety or effectiveness, the FDA may designate the product candidate for priority review. A priority review designation means that the goal for the FDA to take action on an application is six months, rather than the standard review period of ten months. We may request priority review for some of our product candidates. The FDA has broad discretion with respect to whether to grant priority review status to a product candidate, so even if we believe a particular product candidate is eligible for such designation or status, the FDA may decide not to grant it. Moreover, a priority review designation does not necessarily result in an expedited regulatory review or approval process or necessarily confer any advantage with respect to approval compared to conventional FDA procedures. Receiving priority review from the FDA does not guarantee approval within the six-month review cycle or at all.

We have received orphan drug designation from the FDA for sugemalimab for the treatment of T-cell lymphoma, and we may seek orphan drug designation for certain of our product candidates, but we may be unsuccessful or may be unable to maintain the benefits associated with orphan drug designation, including the potential for market exclusivity.

We have received orphan drug designation from the FDA for sugemalimab for the treatment of T-cell lymphoma and we may seek orphan drug designation for other of our product candidates, and we may be unsuccessful. Regulatory authorities in some jurisdictions, including the United States and Europe, may designate drugs for relatively small patient populations as orphan drugs. Under the Orphan Drug Act, the FDA may designate a drug or biologic as an orphan drug if it is a product intended to treat a rare disease or condition, which is generally defined as a patient population of fewer than 200,000 individuals annually in the United States, or a patient population of 200,000 or more in the United States where there is no reasonable expectation that the cost of developing the product will be recovered from sales in the United States. 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 user-fee waivers.

Similarly, in Europe, the European Commission, upon the recommendation of the EMA’s Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products, grants orphan designation to promote the development of drugs that are intended for the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of life-threatening or chronically debilitating conditions affecting not more than five in 10,000 persons in Europe and for which no satisfactory method of diagnosis, prevention, or treatment has been authorized (or the product would be a significant benefit to those affected). Additionally, designation may be granted for drugs intended for the diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of a life-threatening, seriously debilitating or serious and chronic condition and when, without incentives, it is unlikely that sales of the drug in Europe would be sufficient to justify the necessary investment in developing the drug. In Europe, orphan designation entitles a party to financial incentives such as reduction of fees or fee waivers.

Generally, if a product with an orphan drug designation subsequently receives the first regulatory approval for the indication for which it has such designation, the product is entitled to a period of marketing exclusivity, which

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precludes the FDA or the EMA from approving another marketing application for the same product and indication for that time period, except in limited circumstances. The applicable period is seven years in the United States and ten years in Europe. The European exclusivity period can be reduced to six years if a product no longer meets the criteria for orphan designation or if the product is sufficiently profitable so that market exclusivity is no longer justified.

Even if we obtain orphan drug exclusivity for one of our product candidates, that exclusivity may not effectively protect our product candidate from competition because different products can be approved for the same condition. Even after an orphan drug is approved, the FDA can subsequently approve the same product for the same condition if the FDA concludes that the later product is clinically superior in that it is shown to be safer, more effective or makes a major contribution to patient care. In addition, a designated orphan drug may not receive orphan drug exclusivity if it is approved for a use that is broader than the indication for which it received orphan designation. Moreover, orphan drug exclusive marketing rights in the United States may be lost if the FDA later determines that the request for designation was materially defective or if the manufacturer is unable to assure sufficient quantity of the product to meet the needs of patients with the rare disease or condition or if another product with the same active moiety is determined to be safer, more effective, or represents a major contribution to patient care. Orphan drug designation neither shortens the development time or regulatory review time of a product nor gives the product any advantage in the regulatory review or approval process. While we may seek additional orphan drug designations for our product candidates, we may never receive such designations. Even if we do receive such designations, there is no guarantee that we will enjoy the benefits of those designations.

We may seek breakthrough therapy designations or fast track designations by the FDA for one or more of our product candidates, but we may not receive such designations, and even if we do, such designations 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.

Sugemalimab received BTD from the FDA in 2020 for extranodal NK/T cell lymphoma. We may seek a BTD for other of our 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. Products designated as breakthrough therapies by the FDA may also be eligible for priority review and accelerated approval. Designation as a breakthrough therapy is within the discretion of the FDA. Accordingly, even if we believe one of our 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 BTD for a product candidate may not result in a faster development process, review or approval compared to therapies considered for approval under conventional FDA procedures and does not assure ultimate approval by the FDA. In addition, even if one or more of our product candidates qualify as breakthrough therapies, the FDA may later decide that such product candidates no longer meet the conditions for qualification or decide that the time period for FDA review or approval will not be shortened.

We may seek fast track designation for some of our product candidates. If a drug or biologic is intended, whether alone or in combination with one or more other products, for the treatment of a serious or life-threatening condition, and the drug or biologic demonstrates the potential to address unmet medical needs for this condition, the product may be eligible for fast track designation. The FDA has broad discretion whether to grant this designation, so even if we believe a particular product candidate is eligible for this designation, the FDA may decide not to grant it. Even if we do receive fast track designation, we may not experience a faster development process, review or approval compared to conventional FDA procedures. Additionally, the FDA may withdraw fast track designation if it believes that the designation is no longer supported by data from our clinical

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development program. Fast track designation alone does not guarantee qualification for the FDA’s priority review procedures.

Accelerated approval by the FDA, even if granted for any of our product candidates, 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 regulatory approval.

We may seek accelerated approval of our current or future product candidates using the FDA’s accelerated approval pathway. A product may be eligible for accelerated approval if it treats a serious or life-threatening condition. In addition, it must demonstrate an effect on a surrogate endpoint that is reasonably likely to predict clinical benefit or on a clinical endpoint that can be measured earlier than irreversible morbidity or mortality (IMM), that is reasonably likely to predict an effect on IMM or other clinical benefit, taking into account the severity, rarity, or prevalence of the condition and the availability or lack of alternative treatments. As a condition of approval, the FDA requires that a sponsor of a drug or biologic receiving accelerated approval perform adequate and well-controlled post-marketing clinical trials. These confirmatory trials must be completed with due diligence. In addition, the FDA currently requires, unless otherwise informed by the agency, as a condition for accelerated approval pre-approval of promotional materials for products being considered for accelerated approval, which could adversely impact the timing of the commercial launch of the product. Even if we do receive accelerated approval, we may not experience a faster development or regulatory review or approval process, and receiving accelerated approval does not provide assurance of ultimate FDA approval.

The FDA and other regulatory agencies actively enforce the laws and regulations prohibiting the promotion of off-label uses.

If any of our product candidates are approved, and we are found to have improperly promoted off-label uses of those products, we may become subject to significant liability. The FDA and other regulatory agencies strictly regulate the promotional claims that may be made about prescription products, if approved. In particular, in August 2021, the FDA finalized a rule clarifying its position on the types of evidence it will consider when determining a medical product’s intended us. In the final rule, the FDA declined to narrow its interpretation of evidence of intended use to a firm’s promotional claims and indicated its intent to look broadly at any relevant evidence to establish intended use. While the FDA and certain other regulatory agencies permit the dissemination of truthful and non-misleading information about an approved product, a manufacturer may not promote a product for uses that are not approved by the FDA or such other regulatory agencies as reflected in the product’s approved labeling. If we are found to have promoted such off-label uses, intentionally or unintentionally, we may become subject to significant liability. The U.S. government has levied large civil and criminal fines against companies for alleged improper promotion of off-label use and has enjoined several companies from engaging in off-label promotion. The FDA has also requested that companies enter into consent decrees, corporate integrity agreements or permanent injunctions under which specified promotional conduct must be changed or curtailed. If we cannot successfully manage the promotion of our product candidates, if approved, we could become subject to significant liability, which would materially and adversely affect our business and financial condition.

If the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities approve generic versions of our product candidates, or such authorities do not grant our products appropriate periods of non-patent exclusivity before approving generic versions of such products, the sales of such products could be adversely affected.

Once an NDA is approved, the product covered thereby becomes a “listed drug” in the FDA’s publication, “Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations,” or the Orange Book. Manufacturers may seek approval of generic versions of reference listed drugs through submission of ANDAs, in the United States. In support of an ANDA, a generic manufacturer generally must show that its product has the same active ingredient(s), dosage form, strength, route of administration, conditions of use and labeling as the reference listed drug and that the generic version is bioequivalent to the reference listed drug, meaning, in part, that it is absorbed in the body at the same rate and to the same extent. Generic products may be significantly less costly

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to bring to market than the reference listed drug, and companies that produce generic products are generally able to offer them at lower prices. Moreover, many states allow or require substitution of therapeutically equivalent generic drugs at the pharmacy level even if the branded drug is prescribed. Thus, following the introduction of a generic drug, a significant percentage of the sales of any branded product or reference listed drug may be lost to the generic product.

The FDA may not approve an ANDA for a generic product until any applicable period of non-patent exclusivity for the reference listed drug has expired. The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act provides a period of five years of non-patent exclusivity for a new drug containing a new chemical entity. Specifically, in cases where such exclusivity has been granted, an ANDA may not be filed with the FDA until the expiration of five years unless the submission is accompanied by a Paragraph IV certification that a patent covering the listed drug is invalid, unenforceable or will not be infringed by the generic product, in which case the applicant may submit its application four years following approval of the listed drug. Three-year exclusivity is given to a drug if it contains an active moiety that has previously been approved, and the NDA includes reports of one or more new clinical investigations, other than bioavailability or bioequivalence studies, that were conducted by or for the applicant and are essential to the approval of the NDA. If approved, manufacturers may seek to launch generic products following the expiration of the applicable marketing exclusivity period, even if we still have patent protection for our product.

Competition that our products, if approved, may face from generic versions of our products could negatively impact our future revenue, profitability and cash flows and substantially limit our ability to obtain a return on our investments in those product candidates.

If approved, our investigational products regulated as biologics may face competition from biosimilars approved through an abbreviated regulatory pathway.

The ACA includes a subtitle called the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 (BPCIA), which created an abbreviated approval pathway for biologic products that are biosimilar to or interchangeable with an FDA-licensed reference biologic product. Under the BPCIA, an application for a biosimilar product may not be submitted to the FDA until four years following the date that the reference product was first licensed by the FDA. In addition, the approval of a biosimilar product may not be made effective by the FDA until 12 years from the date on which the reference product was first licensed. During this 12-year period of exclusivity, another company may still market a competing version of the reference product if the FDA approves a BLA for the competing product containing the sponsor’s own preclinical data and data from adequate and well-controlled clinical trials to demonstrate the safety, purity, and potency of the other company’s product.

We believe that any of our product candidates approved as a biologic product under a BLA should qualify for the 12-year period of exclusivity. However, there is a risk that this exclusivity could be shortened due to congressional action or otherwise, or that the FDA will not consider our investigational medicines to be reference products for competing products, potentially creating the opportunity for generic competition sooner than anticipated. Other aspects of the BPCIA, some of which may impact the BPCIA exclusivity provisions, have also been the subject of recent litigation. Moreover, the extent to which a biosimilar, once licensed, will be substituted for any one of our products in a way that is similar to traditional generic substitution for non-biologic products is not yet clear, and will depend on a number of marketplace and regulatory factors that are still developing.

If competitors are able to obtain marketing approval for biosimilars referencing our products, our products may become subject to competition from such biosimilars, with the attendant competitive pressure and consequences.

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The FDA, EMA, MHRA and other comparable regulatory authorities may implement additional regulations or restrictions on the development and commercialization of our product candidates, and such changes can be difficult to predict.

The FDA, the EMA, MHRA and other comparable regulatory authorities have each expressed interest in further regulating biotechnology products. Agencies at both the federal and state level in the United States, as well as the U.S. Congressional committees and other governments or governing agencies, have also expressed interest in further regulating the biotechnology industry. Such action may delay or prevent commercialization of some or all of our product candidates. Adverse developments in clinical trials conducted by others may cause the FDA or other oversight bodies to change the requirements for approval of any of our product candidates. These regulatory review agencies and committees and the new requirements or guidelines they promulgate may lengthen the regulatory review process, require us to perform additional studies or trials, 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, restrictions, or other commitments. As we advance our product candidates, we will be required to consult with these regulatory agencies and comply with applicable requirements and guidelines. If we fail to do so, we may be required to delay or discontinue development of such product candidates. These additional processes may result in a review and approval process that is longer than we otherwise would have expected. Delays as a result of an increased or lengthier regulatory approval process or further restrictions on the development of our product candidates could be costly and could negatively impact our ability to complete clinical trials and commercialize our current and future product candidates in a timely manner, if at all.

Even if we receive regulatory approval for any of our product candidates, we will be subject to ongoing regulatory obligations and continued regulatory review, which may result in significant additional expense. Additionally, our product candidates, if approved, could be subject to post-market study requirements, marketing and labeling restrictions, and even recall or market withdrawal if unanticipated safety issues are discovered following approval. In addition, we may be subject to penalties or other enforcement action if we fail to comply with regulatory requirements.

If the FDA or a comparable regulatory authority approves any of our product candidates, the manufacturing processes, labeling, packaging, distribution, tracking and tracing, import, export, adverse event reporting, storage, advertising, promotion, monitoring, and recordkeeping for the product will be subject to extensive and ongoing regulatory requirements. These requirements include submissions of safety and other post-marketing information and reports, establishment registration and listing, as well as continued compliance with cGMPs and GCPs for any clinical trials that we conduct post-approval. Any regulatory approvals that we receive for our product candidates may also be subject to limitations on the approved indicated uses for which the product may be marketed or to the conditions of approval, or contain requirements for potentially costly post-marketing studies, including Phase 4 clinical trials, and surveillance to monitor the safety and efficacy of the product. The FDA may also require a REMS in order to approve our product candidates, which could entail requirements for a medication guide, physician communication plans or additional elements to ensure safe use, such as restricted distribution methods, patient registries and other risk minimization tools. Later discovery of previously unknown problems with a product, including AEs of unanticipated severity or frequency, or with our third-party manufacturers or manufacturing processes, or failure to comply with regulatory requirements, may result in, among other things:

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restrictions on the marketing or manufacturing of the product, withdrawal of the product from the market, or voluntary or mandatory product recalls;

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manufacturing delays and supply disruptions where regulatory inspections identify observations of noncompliance requiring remediation;

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revisions to the labeling, including limitation on approved uses or the addition of additional warnings, contraindications or other safety information, including boxed warnings;

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imposition of a REMS. which may include distribution or use restrictions;

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requirements to conduct additional post-market clinical trials to assess the safety of the product;

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clinical trial holds;

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fines, warning letters or other regulatory enforcement action;

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refusal by the FDA to approve pending applications or supplements to approved applications filed by us or suspension or revocation of approvals;

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product seizure or detention, or refusal to permit the import or export of products; and

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injunctions or the imposition of civil or criminal penalties.

The FDA’s and other comparable regulatory authorities’ policies may change, and additional government regulations may be enacted that could prevent, limit or delay regulatory approval of our product candidates. 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 regulatory approval that we may have obtained, which would adversely affect our business, prospects and ability to achieve or sustain profitability.

Our relationships with third-party payers will be subject to applicable anti-kickback, fraud and abuse and other healthcare laws and regulations, which could expose us to criminal sanctions, civil penalties, exclusion from government healthcare programs, contractual damages, reputational harm and diminished profits and future earnings.

Although we do not currently have any products on the market, once we begin commercializing our product candidates, we will be subject to additional healthcare statutory and regulatory requirements and enforcement by the federal government and the states and foreign governments in which we conduct our business. Healthcare providers, physicians and third-party payers play a primary role in the recommendation and prescription of any product candidates for which we plan to seek regulatory approval. Our future arrangements with third-party payers may expose us to broadly applicable fraud and abuse and other healthcare laws and regulations that may constrain the business or financial arrangements and relationships through which we market, sell and distribute our product candidates for which we obtain regulatory approval. Restrictions under applicable U.S. federal and state healthcare laws and regulations include the following:

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the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, which prohibits, among other things, persons from knowingly and willfully soliciting, offering, receiving or providing remuneration, directly or indirectly, in cash or in kind, to induce or reward either the referral of an individual for, or the purchase, order or recommendation of, any good or service, for which payment may be made under federal and state healthcare programs such as Medicare and Medicaid;

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the federal civil and criminal false claims and civil monetary penalties laws, including the federal False Claims Act (FCA), which imposes criminal and civil penalties, including through civil whistleblower or qui tam actions, against individuals or entities for knowingly presenting, or causing to be presented, to the federal government, claims for payment that are false or fraudulent or making a false statement to avoid, decrease or conceal an obligation to pay money to the federal government;

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HIPAA, which imposes criminal and civil liability for executing a scheme to defraud any healthcare benefit program (e.g., public or private), or knowingly and willfully falsifying, concealing or covering up a material fact or making any materially false statement in connection with the delivery of or payment for healthcare benefits, items or services;

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the federal physician payment transparency requirements, sometimes referred to as the “Sunshine Act” under the ACA, which require manufacturers of drugs, devices, biologics and medical supplies that are reimbursable under Medicare, Medicaid, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program to report to the U.S. Department of HHS information related to transfers of value made to physicians (currently defined to include doctors, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists and chiropractors) and teaching hospitals, as well as ownership and investment interests of such physicians and their immediate family members;

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HITECH, and its implementing regulations, which impose obligations on certain covered entity healthcare providers, health plans, and healthcare clearinghouses as well as their business associates that perform certain services involving the use or disclosure of individually identifiable health information, including mandatory contractual terms, with respect to safeguarding the privacy, security and transmission of individually identifiable health information;

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federal consumer protection and unfair competition laws, which broadly regulate marketplace activities and activities that potentially harm consumers; and

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federal price reporting laws, which require manufacturers to calculate and report complex pricing metrics to government programs, where such reported prices may be used in the calculation of reimbursement and/or discounts on approved products.

Additionally, we are subject to state and foreign equivalents of each of the healthcare laws and regulations described above, among others, some of which may be broader in scope and may apply regardless of the payer. Many U.S. states have adopted laws similar to the federal Anti-Kickback Statute and False Claims Act, and may apply to our business practices, including, but not limited to, research, distribution, sales or marketing arrangements and claims involving healthcare items or services reimbursed by non-governmental payers, including private insurers. In addition, some states have passed laws that require pharmaceutical companies to comply with the April 2003 Office of Inspector General Compliance Program Guidance for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and/or the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America’s Code on Interactions with Healthcare Professionals. Several states also impose other marketing restrictions or require pharmaceutical companies to make marketing or price disclosures to the state and require the registration of pharmaceutical sales representatives. State and foreign laws, including, for example, GDPR, which became effective May 2018, also govern the privacy and security of health information in some circumstances, many of which differ from each other in significant ways and often are not preempted by HIPAA, thus complicating compliance efforts. There are ambiguities as to what is required to comply with these state requirements and if we fail to comply with an applicable state law requirement, we could be subject to penalties. Finally, there are state and foreign laws governing the privacy and security of health information, many of which differ from each other in significant ways and often are not preempted by HIPAA, thus complicating compliance efforts.

Healthcare legislative reform discourse and potential or enacted measures may have a material adverse impact on our business and results of operations and legislative or political discussions surrounding the desire for and implementation of pricing reforms may adversely impact our business.

Payers, whether domestic or foreign, or governmental or private, are developing increasingly sophisticated methods of controlling healthcare costs, and those methods are not always specifically adapted for new technologies. In both the United States and certain foreign jurisdictions, there have been a number of legislative and regulatory changes to the health care system that could impact our ability to sell our products profitably.

Since its enactment, there have been numerous judicial, administrative, executive, and legislative challenges to certain aspects of the ACA. It is unclear how other healthcare reform measures or other efforts, if any, to challenge repeal or replace the ACA, will impact our business.

Other legislative changes have been proposed and adopted in the United States since the ACA was enacted. Additionally, there has been increasing legislative and enforcement interest in the United States with respect to specialty drug pricing practices. Specifically, there have been several recent U.S. Congressional inquiries and

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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 Medicare, review the relationship between pricing and manufacturer patient programs, and reform government program reimbursement methodologies for drugs. For a discussion of these recent legislative and administrative actions, see Item 1 “Business—Government Regulation.”

At the state level, legislatures have increasingly passed legislation and implemented 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.

The effect of all of these legislative and executive activities on our business model and operations is currently unclear.

Inadequate funding for the FDA, the SEC and other government agencies, including from government shutdowns, or other disruptions to these agencies’ operations, could hinder their ability to hire and retain key leadership and other personnel, prevent new products and services from being developed or commercialized in a timely manner or otherwise prevent those agencies from performing normal business functions on which the operation of our business may rely, which could negatively impact our business.

The ability of the FDA to review and approve new products can be affected by a variety of factors, including government budget and funding levels, ability to hire and retain key personnel, and accept payment of user fees, and statutory, regulatory, and policy changes. Average review times at the agency have fluctuated in recent years as a result. In addition, government funding of the SEC and other government agencies on which our operations may rely, including those that fund research and development

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PART I

Item 1. Business	1

Item 1A. Risk Factors	60

Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments	124

Item 2. Properties	124

Item 3. Legal Proceedings	124

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures	125

PART II

Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities	125

Item 6. Reserved	126

Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations	127

Item 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk	140

Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data	141

Item 9. Changes in and Disagreements with Accountants on Accounting and Financial Disclosure	141

Item 9A. Controls and Procedures	141

Item 9B. Other Information	141

Item 9C. Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdictions that Prevent Inspections	142

PART III

Item 10. Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance	143

Item 11. Executive Compensation	152

Item 12. Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters	161

Item 13. Certain Relationships and Related Transactions, and Director Independence	164

Item 14. Principal Accounting Fees and Services	171

PART IV

Item 15. Exhibits and Financial Statement Schedules	172

Item 16. Form 10-K Summary	177

Signatures	178