株探米国株
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UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

WASHINGTON, DC 20549

 

FORM 10-Q

 

(Mark One)

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

For the quarterly period ended March 31, 2026

OR

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

For the transition period from __________________ to __________________

Commission File Number: 001-39979

 

VOR BIOPHARMA INC.

(Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in its Charter)

 

Delaware

81-1591163

(State or other jurisdiction of

incorporation or organization)

(I.R.S. Employer

Identification No.)

500 Boylston Street

Suite 1350

Boston, Massachusetts

02116

(Address of principal executive offices)

(Zip Code)

 

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (617) 655-6580

N/A

(Former name or former address, if changed since last report)

 

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

 

Title of each class

 

Trading

Symbol(s)

 

Name of each exchange on which registered

Common Stock, $0.0001 par value per share

 

VOR

 

Nasdaq Global Select Market

 

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

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes ☒ No ☐

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

 

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 is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes ☐ No ☒

Number of shares of the registrant’s Common Stock outstanding as of May 7, 2026 was 54,185,877.

 


 

Table of Contents

 

Page

PART I.

FINANCIAL INFORMATION

1

 

 

 

Item 1.

Financial Statements (Unaudited)

1

Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets as of March 31, 2026 and December 31, 2025

1

Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations and Comprehensive Loss for the Three Months Ended March 31, 2026 and 2025

2

 

Condensed Consolidated Statements of Stockholders’ Equity (Deficit) for the Three Months Ended March 31, 2026 and 2025

3

Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows for the Three Months Ended March 31, 2026 and 2025

4

Notes to Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements (Unaudited)

5

Item 2.

Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations

14

Item 3.

Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk

20

Item 4.

Controls and Procedures

20

 

 

 

PART II.

OTHER INFORMATION

22

 

 

 

Item 1.

Legal Proceedings

22

Item 1A.

Risk Factors

22

Item 5.

Other Information

64

Item 6.

Exhibits

66

 

Signatures

68

 

 

i


 

Note Regarding Company References

Throughout this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, the “Company,” “Vor,” “Vor Bio,” “Vor Biopharma Inc.,” “we,” “us,” and “our,” except where the context requires otherwise, refer to Vor Biopharma Inc. and its consolidated subsidiary, and “our board of directors” refers to the board of directors of Vor Biopharma Inc.

Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q contains forward-looking statements that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, contained in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, including statements regarding our strategy, future operations, future financial position, future revenue, projected costs, prospects, plans and objectives of management, are forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expect,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “could,” “might,” “intend,” “target,” “ongoing,” “project,” “estimate,” “believe,” “predict,” “potential” or “continue” or the negative of these terms or other similar expressions intended to identify statements about the future. These statements speak only as of the date of this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements.

We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections about future events and financial trends that we believe may affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. These forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements about:

the timing, progress and results of our clinical trials of our product candidate and any future product candidates, including statements regarding the timing and pace of initiation, enrollment and completion of studies or trials and related preparatory work, the period during which the results of the trials will become available and plans with respect to our research and development programs;
the timing of any submission of filings for regulatory approval of, and our ability to obtain and maintain regulatory approvals for, our product candidate and any future product candidates for any indication;
our ability to identify patients with the diseases treated by our product candidate and any future product candidates, and to enroll patients in clinical trials;
our expectations regarding the market acceptance and opportunity for and clinical utility of our product candidate and any future product candidates, if approved for commercial use;
our expectations regarding the scope of any approved indication for any product candidate;
our ability to successfully commercialize our product candidate or any future product candidates;
our estimates of our expenses, ongoing losses, future revenue and capital requirements and our need for or ability to obtain additional funding;
our ability to establish or maintain collaborations or strategic relationships;
our ability to identify, recruit and retain key personnel, including executive officers and members of management;
our reliance upon intellectual property licensed from third parties and our ability to obtain such licenses on commercially reasonable terms or at all;
our ability to protect and enforce our intellectual property position for our product candidate or any future product candidates, and the scope of such protection;
our financial performance;
the period over which we estimate our existing cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities will be sufficient to fund our future operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements;
our competitive position and the development of and projections relating to our competition or our industry;
the impact of laws and regulations; and
our expectations regarding the time during which we will be an emerging growth company under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012.

You should read this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and the documents that we have filed as exhibits to this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q completely and with the understanding that our actual future results may be materially different from what we expect. The forward-looking statements contained in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q are made as of the date of this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and we do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

ii


 

You should refer to the “Risk Factors” section in this Quarterly Report and the “Summary Risk Factors” and “Risk Factors” sections in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 for a discussion of material factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements that we make.

This Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q includes statistical and other industry and market data, which we obtained from our own internal estimates and research, as well as from industry and general publications and research, surveys, and studies conducted by third parties. Industry publications, studies, and surveys generally state that they have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, although they do not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of such information. While we believe that each of these studies and publications is reliable, we have not independently verified market and industry data from third-party sources. While we believe our internal company research is reliable and the market definitions are appropriate, neither such research nor these definitions have been verified by any independent source.

All brand names or trademarks appearing in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q are the property of their respective owners.

Summary Risk Factors

Our business is subject to a number of risks that if realized could materially affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows and access to liquidity. These risks are discussed more fully in the “Risk Factors” section of this Quarterly Report. Our principal risks include the following:

We have incurred significant net losses since inception. We expect to incur net losses for the foreseeable future and may never achieve or maintain profitability.
We will need substantial additional funding. If we are unable to raise capital when needed, we would be forced to delay, reduce or eliminate our research and product development programs or future commercialization efforts.
We have a limited operating history, have not yet completed any clinical trials and have no history of commercializing products, which may make it difficult to evaluate the success of our business to date and to assess our future viability.
We are substantially dependent on the success of our lead product candidate, telitacicept. If we are unable to complete development of, obtain approval for and commercialize telitacicept in a timely manner, our business will be harmed.
We may derive results and data for telitacicept from clinical trials conducted by RemeGen in China; our access to the clinical results and data may be limited and there is no assurance that the clinical data from any such trials will be accepted or considered by the FDA, or other comparable regulatory authorities.
We are dependent on third parties accurately generating and reporting data related to our product candidate, and their conduct could adversely affect our business.
We face significant competition in an environment of rapid technological change, and there is a possibility that our competitors may achieve regulatory approval before us or develop therapies that are safer or more advanced or effective than ours, which may harm our financial condition and our ability to successfully market or commercialize our product candidates, if approved.
Success in preclinical studies or clinical trials may not be indicative of results in future clinical trials, particularly for our clinical trials that involve only a small number of patients.
If we experience significant delays or difficulties in the enrollment or retention of patients in clinical trials, the cost of developing product candidates could increase and our receipt of necessary regulatory approvals could be delayed or prevented.
We have contracted and will continue to contract with third parties for the manufacture and supply of materials for development of our product candidates, advancement of our current and future clinical trials, and potential commercialization of our product candidates. This reliance on third parties increases the risk that we will not have sufficient quantities and quality of such materials, product candidates or any products that we may develop and commercialize, or that such supply will not be available to us at an acceptable cost, which could delay, prevent or impair our development or commercialization efforts.
We are highly dependent on intellectual property licensed from third parties and termination of these licenses could result in the loss of significant rights, which would harm our business.

iii


 

Third-party claims of intellectual property infringement, misappropriation or other violations may prevent or delay our product discovery and development efforts and have a material adverse effect on our business.

iv


 

PART I—FINANCIAL INFORMATION

Item 1. Financial Statements (Unaudited).

VOR BIOPHARMA INC.

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS

(UNAUDITED)

 

 

 

March 31,

 

 

December 31,

 

(in thousands, except share and per share amounts)

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

Assets

 

 

 

 

 

 

Current assets:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cash and cash equivalents

 

$

169,873

 

 

$

396,486

 

Marketable securities

 

 

321,652

 

 

 

58,722

 

Prepaid expenses

 

 

6,394

 

 

 

1,152

 

Other current assets

 

 

2,859

 

 

 

1,745

 

Total current assets

 

 

500,778

 

 

 

458,105

 

Restricted cash

 

 

168

 

 

 

168

 

Property and equipment, net

 

 

565

 

 

 

533

 

Operating lease right-of-use assets

 

 

2,827

 

 

 

2,936

 

Other assets

 

 

2,408

 

 

 

2,384

 

Total assets

 

$

506,746

 

 

$

464,126

 

Liabilities and stockholders’ deficit

 

 

 

 

 

 

Current liabilities:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Accounts payable

 

$

1,043

 

 

$

5,127

 

Accrued liabilities

 

 

14,727

 

 

 

19,764

 

Operating lease liabilities

 

 

307

 

 

 

280

 

Total current liabilities

 

 

16,077

 

 

 

25,171

 

Non-current liabilities:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Operating lease liabilities, less current portion

 

 

2,632

 

 

 

2,720

 

Warrant liabilities

 

 

638,461

 

 

 

600,547

 

Total liabilities

 

 

657,170

 

 

 

628,438

 

Stockholders’ deficit(1):

 

 

 

 

 

 

Preferred stock, $0.0001 par value; 10,000,000 shares authorized as of March 31, 2026 and December 31, 2025; 0 shares issued and outstanding as of March 31, 2026 and December 31, 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

Common stock, $0.0001 par value; 800,000,000 and 400,000,000 shares authorized as of March 31, 2026 and December 31, 2025, respectively; 54,185,582 and 38,720,196 shares issued and outstanding as of March 31, 2026 and December 31, 2025, respectively

 

 

19

 

 

 

18

 

Additional paid-in capital

 

 

1,222,823

 

 

 

988,604

 

Accumulated other comprehensive (loss) income

 

 

(706

)

 

 

41

 

Accumulated deficit

 

 

(1,372,560

)

 

 

(1,152,975

)

Total stockholders’ deficit

 

 

(150,424

)

 

 

(164,312

)

Total liabilities and stockholders’ deficit

 

$

506,746

 

 

$

464,126

 

 

(1) All share and per share amounts have been restated for prior periods on a retroactive basis to reflect a one-for-twenty reverse stock split effected in September 2025. See Note 2 for details.

 

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these condensed consolidated financial statements.

1


 

VOR BIOPHARMA INC.

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS AND COMPREHENSIVE LOSS

(UNAUDITED)

 

 

 

Three Months Ended
March 31,

 

(in thousands, except share and per share amounts)

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

Operating expenses:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research and development

 

$

17,595

 

 

$

26,701

 

General and administrative

 

 

17,565

 

 

 

6,590

 

Total operating expenses

 

$

35,160

 

 

$

33,291

 

Loss from operations

 

 

(35,160

)

 

 

(33,291

)

Other income (expense):

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interest income

 

 

3,935

 

 

 

805

 

Change in fair value of warrant liabilities

 

 

(188,360

)

 

 

 

Total other (expense) income

 

 

(184,425

)

 

 

805

 

Net loss

 

$

(219,585

)

 

$

(32,486

)

Net loss per share attributable to common stockholders,
   basic and diluted(1)

 

$

(5.11

)

 

$

(5.21

)

Weighted-average common shares outstanding,
   basic and diluted(1)

 

 

43,011,544

 

 

 

6,241,207

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other comprehensive income (loss):

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unrealized (loss) gain on available for sale marketable securities

 

 

(747

)

 

 

1

 

Total other comprehensive (loss) income:

 

 

(747

)

 

 

1

 

Comprehensive loss

 

$

(220,332

)

 

$

(32,485

)

 

(1) All share and per share amounts have been restated for prior periods on a retroactive basis to reflect a one-for-twenty reverse stock split effected in September 2025. See Note 2 for details.

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these condensed consolidated financial statements.

2


 

VOR BIOPHARMA INC.

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OFSTOCKHOLDERS’ EQUITY (DEFICIT)

(UNAUDITED)

 

 

 

Common
Stock(1)

 

 

Additional
Paid-In

 

 

Accumulated other
comprehensive

 

 

Accumulated

 

 

Total
Stockholders’

 

(in thousands, except share amounts)

 

Shares

 

 

Amount

 

 

Capital

 

 

income

 

 

Deficit

 

 

Deficit

 

Balance at December 31, 2025

 

 

38,720,196

 

 

$

18

 

 

$

988,604

 

 

$

41

 

 

$

(1,152,975

)

 

$

(164,312

)

Issuance of common stock upon vesting of RSUs, net of shares withheld for taxes

 

 

352

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2

)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2

)

Issuance of common stock from private placement, net of issuance costs

 

 

5,338,078

 

 

 

 

 

 

74,906

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

74,906

 

Stock-based compensation expense

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8,870

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8,870

 

Issuance of common stock from exercise of pre-funded warrants

 

 

10,126,956

 

 

 

1

 

 

 

150,445

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

150,446

 

Other comprehensive income

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(747

)

 

 

 

 

 

(747

)

Net loss

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(219,585

)

 

 

(219,585

)

Balance at March 31, 2026

 

 

54,185,582

 

 

$

19

 

 

$

1,222,823

 

 

$

(706

)

 

$

(1,372,560

)

 

$

(150,424

)

 

 

 

Common
Stock

 

 

Additional
Paid-In

 

 

Accumulated other comprehensive

 

 

Accumulated

 

 

Total
Stockholders’

 

(in thousands, except share amounts)

Shares

 

 

Amount

 

 

Capital

 

 

loss (income)

 

 

Deficit

 

 

Equity

 

Balance at December 31, 2024

 

6,238,799

 

 

$

13

 

 

$

553,623

 

 

$

22

 

 

$

(456,994

)

 

$

96,664

 

Issuance of common stock upon vesting of RSUs, net of shares withheld for taxes, and exercise of stock options

 

3,769

 

 

 

 

 

 

(55

)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(55

)

Issuance costs for private placement

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12

 

Stock-based compensation expense

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1,933

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1,933

 

Other comprehensive loss

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

 

Net loss

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(32,486

)

 

 

(32,486

)

Balance at March 31, 2025

 

6,242,568

 

 

$

13

 

 

$

555,513

 

 

$

23

 

 

$

(489,480

)

 

$

66,069

 

 

(1) All share and per share amounts have been restated for prior periods on a retroactive basis to reflect a one-for-twenty reverse stock split effected in September 2025. See Note 2 for details.

 

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these condensed consolidated financial statements.

3


 

VOR BIOPHARMA INC.

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS

(UNAUDITED)

 

 

 

Three Months Ended March 31,

 

(in thousands)

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

Cash flows from operating activities

 

 

 

 

 

 

Net loss

 

$

(219,585

)

 

$

(32,486

)

Adjustments to reconcile net loss to net cash used in operating activities:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Depreciation expense

 

 

28

 

 

 

825

 

Non-cash lease expense

 

 

109

 

 

 

1,310

 

Stock-based compensation

 

 

8,870

 

 

 

1,933

 

Change in fair value of warrant liabilities

 

 

188,360

 

 

 

 

Interest amortization on marketable securities

 

 

(488

)

 

 

(11

)

Loss on sale of property and equipment

 

 

 

 

 

1

 

Changes in operating assets and liabilities:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Operating lease liabilities, net

 

 

(61

)

 

 

(1,048

)

Prepaid expenses and other current assets

 

 

(6,359

)

 

 

(231

)

Accounts payable, accrued liabilities and other current liabilities

 

 

(9,100

)

 

 

(1,373

)

Other assets

 

 

(20

)

 

 

14

 

Net cash used in operating activities

 

 

(38,246

)

 

 

(31,066

)

Cash flows from investing activities

 

 

 

 

 

 

Purchases of marketable securities

 

 

(276,500

)

 

 

 

Proceeds from maturities of marketable securities

 

 

13,311

 

 

 

1

 

Purchases of property and equipment

 

 

(48

)

 

 

(231

)

Net cash used in investing activities

 

 

(263,237

)

 

 

(230

)

Cash flows from financing activities

 

 

 

 

 

 

Payment of issuance costs related to private placement

 

 

(127

)

 

 

(551

)

Repurchases of shares for tax withholdings upon vesting of restricted stock unit awards

 

 

(2

)

 

 

(55

)

Proceeds from issuance of common stock in private placement

 

 

74,999

 

 

 

 

Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities

 

 

74,870

 

 

 

(606

)

Net decrease in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash equivalents

 

 

(226,613

)

 

 

(31,902

)

Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash equivalents,
   beginning of period

 

$

396,654

 

 

$

84,362

 

Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash equivalents, end of period

 

$

170,041

 

 

$

52,460

 

Supplemental disclosure of non-cash activities

 

 

 

 

 

 

Purchases of property and equipment in accounts payable and accrued liabilities

 

$

12

 

 

$

 

Unrealized (loss) gain on available-for-sale securities

 

$

(747

)

 

$

145

 

Issuance costs related to private placement included in accounts payable and accrued expenses

 

$

93

 

 

$

 

 

A reconciliation of the cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash equivalents reported within the condensed consolidated balance sheets that sum to the total of the same amounts shown in the condensed consolidated statements of cash flows is as follows:

 

 

For the Three Months Ended March 31,

 

(in thousands)

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

Cash and cash equivalents

 

$

169,873

 

 

$

50,047

 

Restricted cash equivalents

 

 

168

 

 

 

2,413

 

Total cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash equivalents as shown on the
   statements of cash flows

 

$

170,041

 

 

$

52,460

 

 

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these condensed consolidated financial statements.

4


 

 

VOR BIOPHARMA INC.

NOTES TO CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

(UNAUDITED)

1. Nature of the Business

Vor Biopharma Inc. (the “Company”) is a clinical-stage company advancing telitacicept, a novel, dual-target recombinant fusion protein that inhibits both BLyS (BAFF) and APRIL—two key cytokines involved in B cell survival and autoantibody production. This dual-target mechanism reduces autoreactive B cells and autoantibody production, key drivers of autoimmune pathology. The Company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The Company was incorporated on December 30, 2015.

Risks and Uncertainties

The Company is subject to a number of risks common to development stage companies in the biotechnology industry, including, but not limited to, risks of failure of clinical trials, dependence on key personnel, protection of proprietary technology, reliance on third party organizations, uncertainty of obtaining regulatory approval for any product candidate that it may develop, development by competitors of technological innovations, compliance with government regulations, adverse macroeconomic conditions and the need to obtain additional financing.

Liquidity and Capital Resources

The Company expects that its existing cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities as of March 31, 2026 of $491.5 million will be sufficient to allow the Company to fund its current planned operations through at least a period of one year after the date the financial statements are issued.

As of March 31, 2026, the Company has an accumulated deficit of $1,372.6 million. The Company anticipates that it will continue to incur significant operating losses for the next several years as it continues to develop its product candidate. As a result, the Company's continued operations are dependent on its ability to raise additional funding. If the Company is unable to obtain additional funding on a timely basis, it may be forced to significantly curtail, delay, or discontinue one or more of its planned research or development programs or be unable to expand its operations.

2. Summary of Significant Accounting Policies

Basis of Presentation

The accompanying condensed consolidated financial statements have been prepared in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (“GAAP”). Any reference in these notes to applicable guidance is meant to refer to the authoritative GAAP as found in the Accounting Standards Codification (“ASC”) and Accounting Standards Updates (“ASU”) issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”).

September 2025 Reverse Stock Split

On August 25, 2025, the Company’s stockholders approved a proposal to authorize the Company’s board of directors to amend the Company’s Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation to effect a reverse stock split. The Board approved the reverse stock split on August 27, 2025 and, on September 18, 2025, the Company effected a 1-for-20 reverse stock split of its common stock. The par value and the number of authorized shares of the common stock were not adjusted as a result of the reverse stock split. All share and per share amounts for periods prior to the effective date presented in these condensed consolidated financial statements and the notes thereto have been adjusted retroactively, where applicable, to reflect the effect of this reverse stock split.

Use of Estimates

The preparation of the condensed consolidated financial statements in conformity with GAAP requires the Company’s management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities at the date of the condensed consolidated financial statements and the reported amount of expenses during the reporting period. Actual results could differ from those estimates. Management considers many factors in selecting appropriate financial accounting policies in developing the estimates and assumptions that are used in the preparation of the condensed consolidated financial statements. Management must apply significant judgment in this process. Management’s estimation process often may yield a range of potentially reasonable estimates and management must select an amount that falls within that range of reasonable estimates.

5


 

Estimates are used in the following areas, among others: accrued expenses and stock-based compensation expense.

Unaudited Interim Financial Information

The condensed consolidated financial statements of the Company included herein have been prepared pursuant to the rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). The unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements include the accounts of the Company and its wholly owned subsidiary. All intercompany transactions and balances have been eliminated in consolidation. In the opinion of management, the information furnished reflects all adjustments, all of which are of a normal and recurring nature, necessary for a fair presentation of the results for the reported interim periods. The results of operations for interim periods are not necessarily indicative of results to be expected for the full year or any other interim period.

The accompanying condensed consolidated balance sheet as of December 31, 2025 has been derived from the Company’s audited consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2025. Certain information and footnote disclosures normally included in financial statements prepared in accordance with GAAP have been condensed or omitted pursuant to GAAP or the rules and regulations of the SEC. However, the Company believes that the disclosures are adequate to make the information presented not misleading. These unaudited interim condensed consolidated financial statements should be read in conjunction with the audited annual consolidated financial statements and related notes included in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 (the “2025 Annual Report”).

There have been no material changes to the Company’s significant accounting policies as described in the 2025 Annual Report.

3. Marketable Securities

The amortized cost and estimated fair value of marketable securities, by remaining contractual maturity, are as follows:

 

 

March 31, 2026

 

(in thousands)

 

Amortized Cost

 

 

Gross Unrealized Holding Gains

 

 

Gross Unrealized Holding Losses

 

 

Fair Value

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maturing in one year or less

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Corporate bonds

 

$

51,194

 

 

 

 

 

$

(145

)

 

$

51,049

 

U.S. Treasuries

 

 

100,623

 

 

 

 

 

 

(96

)

 

 

100,527

 

U.S. Treasury bills

 

 

54,914

 

 

 

 

 

 

(10

)

 

 

54,904

 

Maturing after one year through five years

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

$

 

Corporate bonds

 

 

57,572

 

 

 

 

 

 

(275

)

 

$

57,297

 

U.S. Treasuries

 

 

55,544

 

 

 

 

 

 

(170

)

 

$

55,374

 

Yankee bonds

 

 

2,511

 

 

 

 

 

 

(10

)

 

$

2,501

 

Total

 

$

322,358

 

 

$

 

 

$

(706

)

 

$

321,652

 

 

 

 

December 31, 2025

 

(in thousands)

 

Amortized Cost

 

 

Gross Unrealized Holding Gains

 

 

Gross Unrealized Holding Losses

 

 

Fair Value

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maturing in one year or less

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

U.S. Treasuries

 

$

25,772

 

 

$

16

 

 

$

 

 

$

25,788

 

U.S. Treasury bills

 

 

13,636

 

 

 

6

 

 

 

 

 

 

13,642

 

Maturing after one year through five years

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

U.S. Treasuries

 

 

19,273

 

 

 

19

 

 

 

 

 

 

19,292

 

Total

 

$

58,681

 

 

$

41

 

 

$

 

 

$

58,722

 

The following table presents the fair value of the Company’s securities that were in an unrealized loss position as of March 31, 2026, and the total unrealized loss by each type of security. The Company did not record any impairments to marketable securities or reserves for credit losses related to its marketable debt securities during the periods presented. There were no securities in an unrealized loss position as of December 31, 2025.

 

6


 

 

 

March 31, 2026

 

 

 

Less than twelve months

 

 

Greater than twelve months

 

 

Total

 

(in thousands)

 

Fair value

 

 

Unrealized loss

 

 

Fair value

 

 

Unrealized loss

 

 

Fair value

 

 

Unrealized loss

 

Corporate bonds

 

$

108,346

 

 

$

(420

)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

$

108,346

 

 

$

(420

)

U.S. Treasury bills

 

 

54,904

 

 

 

(10

)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

54,904

 

 

 

(10

)

U.S. Treasuries

 

 

155,901

 

 

 

(266

)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

155,901

 

 

 

(266

)

Yankee bonds

 

 

2,501

 

 

 

(10

)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2,501

 

 

 

(10

)

Total

 

$

321,652

 

 

$

(706

)

 

$

 

 

$

 

 

$

321,652

 

 

$

(706

)

 

4. Fair Value Measurements

The following tables present information about the Company’s financial assets and liabilities measured at fair value on a recurring basis:

 

 

March 31, 2026

 

(in thousands)

 

Level 1

 

 

Level 2

 

 

Level 3

 

 

Total

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cash equivalents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Money market funds

 

$

167,627

 

 

$

 

 

$

 

 

$

167,627

 

U.S. Treasury bills

 

 

 

 

 

1,996

 

 

 

 

 

 

1,996

 

Total cash equivalents

 

 

167,627

 

 

 

1,996

 

 

 

 

 

 

169,623

 

Marketable securities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Corporate bonds

 

 

 

 

 

108,346

 

 

 

 

 

 

108,346

 

U.S. Treasury bills

 

 

 

 

 

54,904

 

 

 

 

 

 

54,904

 

U.S. Treasuries

 

 

 

 

 

155,901

 

 

 

 

 

 

155,901

 

Yankee bonds

 

 

 

 

 

2,501

 

 

 

 

 

 

2,501

 

Total marketable securities

 

 

 

 

 

321,652

 

 

 

 

 

 

321,652

 

Restricted cash equivalents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Money market funds

 

 

168

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

168

 

Liabilities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warrant liabilities

 

 

 

 

 

638,461

 

 

 

 

 

 

638,461

 

 

 

 

December 31, 2025

 

(in thousands)

 

Level 1

 

 

Level 2

 

 

Level 3

 

 

Total

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cash equivalents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Money market funds

 

$

392,803

 

 

$

 

 

$

 

 

$

392,803

 

U.S. Treasury bills

 

 

 

 

 

3,434

 

 

 

 

 

 

3,434

 

Total cash equivalents

 

 

392,803

 

 

 

3,434

 

 

 

 

 

 

396,237

 

Marketable securities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

U.S. Treasury bills

 

 

 

 

 

13,642

 

 

 

 

 

 

13,642

 

U.S. Treasuries

 

 

 

 

 

45,080

 

 

 

 

 

 

45,080

 

Total marketable securities

 

 

 

 

 

58,722

 

 

 

 

 

 

58,722

 

Restricted cash equivalents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Money market funds

 

 

168

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

168

 

Liabilities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warrant liabilities

 

 

 

 

 

600,547

 

 

 

 

 

 

600,547

 

The fair value of the Company’s cash equivalents and restricted cash equivalents is determined based on quoted market prices in active markets with no valuation adjustment. The fair value of marketable securities and warrant liabilities is determined based on observable market inputs. There were no transfers between levels during the three months ended March 31, 2026.

Prepaid expenses, accounts payable and accrued expenses are stated at their respective historical carrying values, which approximate fair value due to their short-term nature.

7


 

5. Property and Equipment, Net

Property and equipment, net consisted of the following:

 

 

 

March 31,

 

 

December 31,

 

(in thousands)

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

Furniture, fixtures and other

 

 

 

618

 

 

 

558

 

Total

 

 

 

618

 

 

 

558

 

Less: Accumulated depreciation

 

 

 

(53

)

 

 

(25

)

Property and equipment, net

 

$

 

565

 

 

$

533

 

An immaterial amount of depreciation was recognized during the three months ended March 31, 2026. Depreciation expense for the three months ended March 31, 2025 was $0.8 million.

6. Accrued Liabilities

Accrued liabilities consisted of the following:

 

 

 

March 31,

 

 

December 31,

 

(in thousands)

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

Employee-related expenses

 

$

2,226

 

 

$

3,066

 

Professional fees

 

 

1,005

 

 

 

1,366

 

Clinical expenses

 

 

7,380

 

 

 

8,466

 

Manufacturing expenses

 

 

3,230

 

 

 

6,071

 

Other research and development expenses

 

 

188

 

 

 

241

 

Other

 

 

698

 

 

 

554

 

Total accrued liabilities

 

$

14,727

 

 

$

19,764

 

 

7. Stockholders' Equity and Warrants

2024 Private Placement

On December 27, 2024, the Company entered into a purchase agreement with certain institutional investors (collectively, the “2024 Purchasers”), pursuant to which the Company issued and sold to the 2024 Purchasers in a private placement an aggregate of (i) 2,793,562 shares of the Company's common stock and (ii) warrants to purchase up to 3,491,953 shares of the Company's common stock (the “2024 Warrants”) at the closing of the private placement on December 30, 2024. Net proceeds from the private placement were $52.7 million, after deducting placement fees and issuance costs payable by the Company.

The 2024 Warrants have an exercise price of $16.76 per share and are immediately exercisable, subject to certain limitations on exercise set forth in the 2024 Warrants. The 2024 Warrants will terminate seven years from issuance on December 30, 2031.

The Company determined that the 2024 Warrants are freestanding instruments that do not meet the definition of a liability or derivative. The 2024 Warrants are indexed to the Company’s common stock and meet all other conditions for equity classification. Accordingly, the 2024 Warrants were classified as equity and accounted for as a component of additional paid-in capital at the time issued. The Company also determined that the 2024 Warrants should be included in the determination of diluted net loss per share if their impact is dilutive. However, they are not included within diluted net loss per share for the three months ended March 31, 2026 or 2025 as their effect would be antidilutive.
 

As of March 31, 2026, none of the 2024 Warrants have been exercised.

June 2025 Private Placement

On June 25, 2025, the Company entered into a purchase agreement with certain institutional investors (collectively, the “2025 Purchasers”), pursuant to which the Company issued and sold to the 2025 Purchasers in a private placement warrants to purchase up to an aggregate of 34,999,999 shares of the Company's common stock (the “2025 PIPE Warrants”) at the closing on June 27, 2025. Net proceeds from the private placement were $174.4 million, after deducting issuance costs payable by the Company. In addition to the 2025 PIPE Warrants, on June 25, 2025 the Company issued a warrant to purchase up to 16,000,000 shares of the Company’s common stock as partial consideration for the Telitacicept License Agreement (as defined below) to a subsidiary of RemeGen Co., Ltd.

8


 

(“RemeGen Warrant”). Refer to Note 10 for additional information on the license arrangement. The 2025 PIPE Warrants and RemeGen Warrant are collectively referred to as the 2025 Warrants.

The 2025 Warrants have an exercise price of $0.002 per share and became exercisable upon stockholder approval of the issuance of the underlying shares and an amendment to the certificate of incorporation to increase the number of authorized shares, subject to certain limitations on exercise set forth in the 2025 Warrants. On August 25, 2025, the stockholders approved the issuance of the underlying shares and on September 17, 2025, the Company filed a Certificate of Amendment to its Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation with the Secretary of State of the State of Delaware to effect a reverse stock split, resulting in sufficient available authorized shares for warrant holders to exercise the 2025 Warrants. The 2025 Warrants do not expire.

Upon issuance, the 2025 Warrants were liability-classified as they are not considered indexed to the Company’s common stock. The 2025 Warrants are measured at fair value each period with changes in fair value presented within the condensed consolidated statements of operations and comprehensive loss. The valuation of the 2025 Warrants is classified within Level 2 of the fair value hierarchy due to the use of observable market inputs, primarily the quoted price of the Company’s common stock underlying the warrants. The initial carrying value of the 2025 PIPE Warrants and the RemeGen Warrant at issuance was $175.0 million and $177.4 million, respectively. Issuance costs related to the 2025 PIPE Warrants were expensed as incurred.

The Company also determined the 2025 Warrants should be included in the determination of diluted net loss per share if their impact is dilutive. However, they are not included within diluted net loss per share for the three months ended March 31, 2026 as the effect would be antidilutive.

During the three months ended March 31, 2026, 10,128,187 of the 2025 Warrants were exercised for an immaterial amount of net proceeds. Some of the exercises were completed via cashless exercise, which resulted in slightly less shares issued than warrants exercised for such transactions. The remaining 35,792,172 outstanding 2025 Warrants have a fair value of $638.5 million as of March 31, 2026.

November 2025 Public Offering

On November 10, 2025, the Company entered into an underwriting agreement relating to the issuance and sale in a public offering of 11,500,000 shares of the Company’s common stock, including 1,500,000 shares purchased by the underwriters under a 30-day option to purchase additional shares (the “November 2025 Offering”) at a public offering price of $10.00 per share. The net proceeds to the Company from the November 2025 Offering were $107.7 million after deducting the underwriting discounts and commissions and offering expenses.

December 2025 Private Placement

On December 15, 2025, the Company entered into a securities purchase agreement with certain investors pursuant to which the Company, in a private placement, issued and sold an aggregate of 13,876,032 shares of common stock, at a price per share of $10.81, for net proceeds of $149.9 million after deducting offering expenses (the “December 2025 Private Placement”).

March 2026 Private Placement

On March 26, 2026 the Company entered into a securities purchase agreement with entities affiliated with TCG Crossover Management, LLC (“TCGX”) pursuant to which the Company, in a private placement, issued and sold an aggregate of 5,338,078 shares of common stock, at a price per share of $14.05, for net proceeds of $74.9 million after deducting offering expenses (the “March 2026 Private Placement”). The private placement closed on March 30, 2026.

 

8. Stock-Based Compensation

2023 Inducement Plan

As of March 31, 2026, the Company had 2,455,518 shares of its common stock available for future issuance under the 2023 Inducement Plan.

Amended and Restated 2021 Equity Incentive Plan

As of March 31, 2026, the Company had 1,497,093 shares of its common stock available for future issuance under its Amended and Restated 2021 Equity Incentive Plan.

9


 

Stock Options

The Company’s stock options generally vest ratably over a four-year period and have a contractual term of ten years. The weighted-average assumptions used principally in determining the fair value of new options granted during the periods presented were as follows:

 

 

Three Months Ended March 31,

 

 

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

Expected term (in years)

 

 

6.1

 

 

 

6.0

 

Expected volatility

 

 

102.4

%

 

 

85.5

%

Risk-free interest rate

 

 

3.7

%

 

 

4.4

%

Dividend yield

 

 

 

 

 

 

During the three months ended March 31, 2026 and 2025, the Company granted new stock options to purchase 420,500 shares and 202,163 shares of its common stock, respectively, with a weighted-average grant-date fair value of $11.75 and $19.80 per share, respectively. As of March 31, 2026, total unrecognized compensation expense related to stock options was $109.8 million, which is expected to be recognized over a weighted-average period of 3.3 years. There were no stock options exercised during the three months ended March 31, 2026. There were 7,017,122 options outstanding as of March 31, 2026.

Restricted Stock Units

During the three months ended March 31, 2026 and 2025, the Company granted 161,415 restricted stock units and 61,200 restricted stock units, respectively, with a weighted-average grant date fair value of $14.86 and $26.40 per share, respectively. As of March 31, 2026, total unrecognized compensation expense related to restricted stock units was $7.8 million, which is expected to be recognized over a weighted-average period of 3.6 years. There were 346,325 unvested restricted stock units as of March 31, 2026.

Employee Stock Purchase Plan

As of March 31, 2026, the Company had 205,932 shares of its common stock available for issuance under its Employee Stock Purchase Plan (“ESPP”). The Company did not issue any shares of common stock under the ESPP during the three months ended March 31, 2026 or 2025.

Stock-Based Compensation

Stock-based compensation expense was allocated as follows:

 

 

Three Months Ended March 31,

 

 

(in thousands)

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

 

Research and development

 

$

601

 

 

$

1,042

 

 

General and administrative

 

 

8,269

 

 

 

891

 

 

Total stock-based compensation expense

 

$

8,870

 

 

$

1,933

 

 

 

9. Leases

Boylston Lease

In August 2025, the Company entered into a lease agreement for office space (“Boylston Lease”) with 500 Boylston & 222 Berkeley Owner (DE) LLC (the “Boylston Landlord”). The commencement date of the lease was September 1, 2025, and the Boylston Lease will expire on August 31, 2031, unless terminated earlier in accordance with the lease agreement. The Company has the option to extend the term for one additional five-year period.

Payments due associated with the Boylston Lease include both fixed and variable payments. Total fixed lease payments under the lease agreement are $3.8 million. Variable payments relate to the Company’s share of the Boylston Landlord’s operating costs associated with the underlying assets and are recognized when the event on which those payments are assessed occurs. The Boylston Lease does not contain a residual value guarantee.

In conjunction with the Boylston Lease, the Company was required to execute an irrevocable standby letter of credit of $0.2 million for the benefit of the Boylston Landlord. As of March 31, 2026, the funds securing the letter of credit were presented as restricted cash equivalents on the condensed consolidated balance sheets.

10


 

The elements of lease expense were as follows:

 

 

Three Months Ended March 31,

 

(in thousands)

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

Operating lease cost

 

$

158

 

 

$

1,951

 

Variable lease cost

 

 

59

 

 

 

711

 

Total lease cost

 

$

217

 

 

$

2,662

 

Amounts reported in the condensed consolidated balance sheets and the weighted-average lease term and discount rate information were as follows:

(in thousands except weighted-average amounts)

 

March 31, 2026

 

 

December 31, 2025

 

Assets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Operating lease right-of-use assets

 

$

 

2,827

 

 

$

 

2,936

 

Liabilities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Operating lease liabilities, current

 

$

 

307

 

 

$

 

280

 

Operating lease liabilities, non-current

 

 

 

2,632

 

 

 

 

2,720

 

Total lease liabilities

 

$

 

2,939

 

 

$

 

3,000

 

Weighted-Average Lease Term and Discount Rate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weighted-average remaining lease term (years)

 

 

 

5.4

 

 

 

5.7

 

Weighted-average discount rate

 

 

 

6.7

%

 

 

 

6.7

%

The following table represents other lease activity:

 

 

Three Months Ended March 31,

 

(in thousands)

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

Other Information

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cash paid for amounts included in the measurement of lease liabilities

 

 

 

 

 

 

Operating cash flows for operating leases

 

$

110

 

 

$

1,688

 

 

10. Significant Agreements

Telitacicept License Agreement

On June 25, 2025, the Company and RemeGen Co., Ltd. (“RemeGen”) entered into a license agreement (the “Telitacicept License Agreement”) granting the Company exclusive rights to develop and commercialize RemeGen’s proprietary fusion protein compound, telitacicept (the “Licensed Compound”), outside of the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan (collectively, “Greater China”). RemeGen retains all rights to the Licensed Compound in Greater China. Under the License Agreement, the Company received an exclusive (even as to RemeGen) license under RemeGen’s patents and know-how to exploit, develop and commercialize the Licensed Compound in all territories other than Greater China, with the right to grant sublicenses. The Company also received a non-exclusive license to manufacture the Licensed Compound and any resulting licensed products (“Licensed Products”) worldwide solely for use in the licensed territory. The Company is responsible for all development, regulatory and commercialization activities and costs in the licensed territory, including the conduct of clinical trials and regulatory submissions. The Telitacicept License Agreement established a joint steering committee (“JSC”) to oversee the ongoing development and commercialization of telitacicept. The JSC comprises an equal number of senior-level executives from each party; however, final decision-making authority as it relates to the development and commercialization of the Licensed Compound outside Greater China lies with the Company.

As consideration for the rights granted, the Company agreed to make an upfront cash payment in the amount of $45.0 million and issued the RemeGen Warrant to a subsidiary of RemeGen, which was initially valued at $177.4 million. Refer to Note 7 for details on the terms of the RemeGen Warrant. The $45.0 million cash payment due to RemeGen was paid during the year ended December 31, 2025. The Company incurred $0.2 million in transaction costs related to the Telitacicept License Agreement during the year ended December 31, 2025.

The Company accounted for the Telitacicept License Agreement as an asset acquisition as substantially all of the value received was concentrated in the Licensed Compound which does not have an alternate future use as it is not yet approved for commercial sale in the licensed territory. Accordingly, the Company recognized a $222.6 million charge to research and development expense on the condensed consolidated statement of operations and comprehensive loss during the year ended December 31, 2025 associated with this asset acquisition.

11


 

The Company’s accounting policy is to classify the cost of asset acquisitions as an operating cash outflow on the condensed consolidated statement of cash flows.

Pursuant to the terms of the Telitacicept License Agreement, RemeGen is eligible to receive up to $330 million in regulatory milestone payments and up to $3.775 billion in sales milestone payments. In addition, RemeGen is entitled to receive tiered royalties on net sales of the Licensed Products in the licensed territory, ranging from high single digit to mid-teen percentages of net sales, subject to customary reductions. If the Company enters into a sublicense or divests rights to the Licensed Products prior to a specified development event and other than in connection with a change of control, RemeGen is entitled to receive a single digit percentage of certain net proceeds from such transactions. The Telitacicept License Agreement also provides for technology transfer, mutual indemnification and confidentiality. As of March 31, 2026, no milestone or royalty payments have been accrued for as the consideration is not yet payable per the terms of the Agreement.

The Telitacicept License Agreement may be terminated, in its entirety or on a region-by-region basis, by either party for material breach (subject to cure periods and dispute resolution) or insolvency of the other party, by the Company for convenience with advance notice, or by RemeGen if the Company challenges the validity of licensed patents. Upon termination, all rights and licenses in the terminated region will revert to RemeGen, with a wind-down period for the Company to cease activities.

 

11. Net Loss Per Share

The following table sets forth the computation of the Company’s basic and diluted net loss per share for the three months ended March 31, 2026 and 2025:

 

 

Three Months Ended March 31,

 

(in thousands, except share and per share amounts)

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

Numerator:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Net loss attributable to common stockholders

 

$

(219,585

)

 

$

(32,486

)

Denominator:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weighted-average number of common shares outstanding, basic and diluted

 

 

43,011,544

 

 

 

6,241,207

 

Net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted

 

$

(5.11

)

 

$

(5.21

)

The Company’s potentially dilutive securities were stock options, restricted stock units, and warrants. Based on the amounts outstanding as of March 31, 2026 and 2025, the Company excluded the following potential common shares from the computation of diluted net loss per share attributable to common stockholders because including them would have had an anti-dilutive effect:

 

 

As of March 31,

 

 

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

Options to purchase common stock

 

 

7,017,122

 

 

 

621,875

 

Restricted stock units

 

 

346,325

 

 

 

115,221

 

Warrants

 

 

39,284,125

 

 

 

3,491,953

 

 

 

12. Segments

 

The Company operates and manages its business as one reportable and operating segment, centered around the commercial development of its product candidates. The Company’s chief operating decision maker (“CODM”) is the Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”).

The Company’s CODM reviews consolidated operating results, manages the business on a consolidated basis and utilizes consolidated net loss from the condensed consolidated statements of operations and comprehensive loss to make decisions about allocating resources and assessing performance for the entire Company. Consolidated net loss is also used to monitor budget to actual results. The CODM is additionally regularly provided with more detailed expense information at the program level.

The following table is a summary of the segment profit or loss, including significant segment expenses:

12


 

 

 

Three Months Ended
March 31,

 

(in thousands)

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

Segment expenses:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Telitacicept - gMG(a)

 

$

 

9,793

 

 

$

 

 

Telitacicept - SjD(a)

 

 

 

2,500

 

 

 

 

 

Trem-cel(a)

 

 

 

250

 

 

 

 

6,382

 

VCAR33(a)

 

 

 

73

 

 

 

 

3,636

 

Other research and development(a)

 

 

 

776

 

 

 

 

2,995

 

Salaries and benefits

 

 

 

7,555

 

 

 

 

11,613

 

General corporate activities

 

 

 

4,974

 

 

 

 

5,169

 

Other segment items(b)

 

 

 

193,664

 

 

 

 

2,691

 

Segment expenses:

 

 

 

219,585

 

 

 

 

32,486

 

Segment net loss

 

$

 

(219,585

)

 

$

 

(32,486

)

 

(a) Includes only external research and development expenditures.

(b) Other segment items are primarily comprised of interest income on marketable securities and certain non-cash expenses such as change in fair value of warrant liabilities, stock-based compensation, and depreciation expense.

 

The measure of segment assets is reported on the condensed consolidated balance sheets as total assets. The CODM additionally reviews cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities when reviewing segment assets. As of March 31, 2026, the Company’s cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities were $491.5 million. The Company does not provide its CODM with any more detailed segment asset information than what is included on the Company’s condensed consolidated balance sheets.

 

13. Related Party Transactions

March 2026 Private Placement

As discussed in Note 7, on March 26, 2026, the Company entered into a securities purchase agreement with entities affiliated with TCGX pursuant to which the Company issued and sold an aggregate of 5,338,078 shares of common stock, at a price per share of $14.05, for net proceeds of $74.9 million after deducting offering expenses. Upon the execution of the March 2026 Private Placement on March 30, 2026, TCGX became a greater than 10% owner of the Company’s common stock and therefore became a principal owner in accordance with ASC 850, Related Party Transactions.

 

13


 

Item 2. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.

You should read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations together with the unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and with the consolidated financial statements and related notes included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 (the “2025 Annual Report”). Some of the information contained in this discussion and analysis or set forth elsewhere in this Quarterly Report, including information with respect to our plans and strategy for our business, includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. As a result of many factors, including those factors set forth in the section titled “Risk Factors” in our 2025 Annual Report and in other reports we have filed or may file with the SEC, our actual results could differ materially from the results described in or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in the following discussion and analysis.

Overview

Vor Bio is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing a novel therapy in the treatment of autoimmune diseases. In June 2025, we in-licensed telitacicept from RemeGen Co., Ltd. (“RemeGen”).

Pursuant to our license agreement with RemeGen, we were granted an exclusive license to develop and commercialize telitacicept outside of the Greater China region, which includes mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. RemeGen retains development and commercialization rights in Greater China. Telitacicept is approved in China for the treatment of generalized myasthenia gravis (“gMG”), systemic lupus erythematosus (“SLE”) and rheumatoid arthritis (“RA”), and has two Biologics License Applications (“BLAs”) filed and pending in China for the treatment of Sjögren’s disease (“SjD”) and IgA nephropathy (“IgAN”).

Telitacicept is currently being evaluated in a global Phase 3 clinical trial, for which we have assumed responsibility from RemeGen in connection with the license agreement, for the treatment of gMG. The trial is currently recruiting patients in North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia to support potential approval in the United States, Europe, Japan and other countries. In July 2024, the clinical trial enrolled a patient in the United States, the first in the global clinical trial. Topline data from the trial is anticipated in the first half of 2027.

Telitacicept was evaluated by RemeGen in a Phase 3 clinical trial in patients with gMG in China. Most recently, the 48-week data from Part B of the Phase 3 trial were presented at the American Association of Neuromuscular & Electrodiagnostic Medicine (“AANEM”) Annual Meeting in October 2025.

 

We are also evaluating telitacicept in a global Phase 3 clinical trial for the treatment of SjD. The first patient in this trial was dosed in March 2026, and we expect to recruit a total of approximately 250 adults with SjD in the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia. The trial is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

Telitacicept was evaluated by RemeGen in a Phase 3 clinical trial in patients with active SjD in China. Most recently, the 48-week data including Stage A and B from the Phase 3 trial were presented at the American College of Rheumatology (“ACR”) Annual Meeting in October 2025.

We have incurred significant operating losses since inception, including net losses of $219.6 million and $32.5 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026 and 2025, respectively. As of March 31, 2026, we had an accumulated deficit of $1,372.6 million.

As of March 31, 2026, we had cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $491.5 million. Based on our current operating plan, we expect that our cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities will enable us to fund our operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements into early 2029.

Critical Accounting Estimates

Our management’s discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations is based on our condensed consolidated financial statements, which have been prepared in accordance with United States generally accepted accounting principles. The preparation of our condensed consolidated financial statements requires us to make judgments and estimates that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, costs, and expenses, and the disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities in our condensed consolidated financial statements. We base our estimates on historical experience, known trends and events, and various other factors that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances. Actual results may differ from these estimates under different assumptions or conditions. On an ongoing basis, we evaluate our judgments and estimates in light of changes in circumstances, facts, and experience. The effects of material revisions in estimates, if any, will be reflected in the condensed consolidated financial statements prospectively from the date of change in estimates. There have been no changes to our critical accounting estimates from those described in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in our 2025 Annual Report.

14


 

Financial Operations Overview

Revenue

We have not generated any revenue since our inception and do not expect to generate any revenue from the sale of products in the near future, if at all. If our development efforts for our current or future product candidates are successful and result in marketing approval, or if we enter into collaboration or license agreements with third parties, we may generate revenue in the future from a combination of product sales or payments from such agreements.

Expenses

Research and Development Expenses

Research and development expenses consist primarily of external and internal expenses incurred in connection with our research and development activities, including our drug discovery efforts and the development of our product candidates. External expenses include:

research and development expenses incurred under agreements with clinical research organizations (“CROs”) and other scientific development services;
costs of consultants, including their fees and related travel expenses;
costs related to compliance with quality and regulatory requirements;
costs of laboratory supplies and acquiring and developing preclinical and clinical trial materials, including expenses associated with our clinical manufacturing organizations (“CMOs”); and
payments made and consideration issued under third party licensing agreements.

Internal expenses include:

personnel-related expenses, including salaries, bonuses, benefits and stock-based compensation expenses, for employees involved in research and development activities; and
facilities, depreciation and other allocated expenses, which include direct and allocated expenses for rent, insurance, and other internal operating costs.

We expense research and development costs as incurred. We recognize external development costs based on an evaluation of the progress to completion of specific tasks using information provided to us by our vendors. Payments for these activities are based on the terms of the individual agreements, which may differ from the pattern of costs incurred, and are reflected in our condensed consolidated financial statements as prepaid expenses or accrued research and development expenses. Nonrefundable advance payments for goods or services to be received in the future for use in research and development activities are deferred and capitalized, even when there is no alternative future use for the research and development. The capitalized amounts are expensed as the related goods are delivered or the services are performed.

A significant portion of our research and development costs have been external costs, which we track by program.

Research and development activities are central to our business model. We expect that our research and development expenses will increase significantly for the foreseeable future as we continue to identify and develop product candidates, particularly as our product candidate continues through the later stages of clinical development.

The successful development of our product candidates in the future is highly uncertain. Therefore, we cannot reasonably estimate or know the nature, timing and estimated costs of the efforts that will be necessary to complete the development and commercialization of any of our product candidates. We are also unable to predict when, if ever, material net cash inflows will commence from the sale of our product candidates, if approved. This is due to the numerous risks and uncertainties associated with developing product candidates, many of which are outside of our control, including the uncertainty of:

the timing and progress of clinical development activities;
the number and scope of clinical programs we decide to pursue;
our ability to maintain our current research and development programs and to establish new ones;
establishing an appropriate safety profile with IND-enabling studies;
the number of sites and patients included in the clinical trials;
the countries in which the clinical trials are conducted; successful patient enrollment in, and the initiation of, clinical trials, as well as drop out or discontinuation rates;
per patient trial costs;

15


 

the successful completion of clinical trials with safety, tolerability and efficacy profiles that are satisfactory to the FDA or any comparable foreign regulatory authority;
the number of trials required for regulatory approval;
the timing, receipt and terms of any regulatory approvals from applicable regulatory authorities;
our ability to establish new licensing or collaboration arrangements;
the performance of our current and future collaborators, if any;
establishing commercial manufacturing capabilities or making arrangements with third-party manufacturers;
significant and changing government regulation and regulatory guidance;
the impact of any business interruptions to our operations or to those of the third parties with whom we work;
obtaining, maintaining, defending and enforcing patent claims and other intellectual property rights;
launching commercial sales of our product candidates, if approved, whether alone or in collaboration with others; and
maintaining a continued acceptable safety profile of the product candidates following approval.

Any changes in the outcome of any of these variables could mean a significant change in the costs and timing associated with the development of our product candidates.

General and Administrative Expenses

General and administrative expenses consist primarily of personnel-related costs, including salaries, bonuses, benefits and stock-based compensation expenses for employees involved in our executive, finance, corporate, business development and administrative functions, as well as expenses for outside professional services, including legal, audit, accounting and tax-related services and other consulting fees, facility-related expenses, which include depreciation costs and other allocated expenses for rent and maintenance of facilities, insurance costs, recruiting costs, travel expenses and other general administrative expenses.

We expect that our general and administrative expenses will increase as our business expands and we hire additional personnel to support our continued development of our clinical programs. We also anticipate continued increased expenses associated with being a public company, including costs for legal, audit, accounting, investor and public relations, regulatory and tax-related services related to compliance with the rules and regulations of the SEC, Nasdaq listing standards and director and officer insurance premiums.

Other Income (Expense), net

Interest Income

Interest income consists of interest income earned on our cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities held in financial institutions.

Change in Fair Value of Warrant Liabilities

Change in fair value of warrant liabilities represents the change in the fair value of liability-classified warrants due to changes in their intrinsic value resulting from changes in the quoted price of the Company’s common stock underlying the warrants.

16


 

Results of Operations

Comparison of Three Months Ended March 31, 2026 and 2025

The following table summarizes our results of operations for the periods indicated (amounts in thousands):

 

 

Three Months Ended
March 31,

 

 

 

 

 

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

 

Change

 

Operating expenses:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research and development

 

$

17,595

 

 

$

26,701

 

 

$

(9,106

)

General and administrative

 

 

17,565

 

 

 

6,590

 

 

 

10,975

 

Total operating expenses

 

 

35,160

 

 

 

33,291

 

 

 

1,869

 

Loss from operations

 

 

(35,160

)

 

 

(33,291

)

 

 

(1,869

)

Other income (expense):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interest income

 

 

3,935

 

 

 

805

 

 

 

3,130

 

Change in fair value of warrant liabilities

 

 

(188,360

)

 

 

 

 

 

(188,360

)

Total other (expense) income

 

 

(184,425

)

 

 

805

 

 

 

(185,230

)

Net loss

 

$

(219,585

)

 

$

(32,486

)

 

$

(187,099

)

 

Research and Development Expenses

The following table summarizes our research and development expenses incurred for the periods indicated (amounts in thousands):

 

 

Three Months Ended
March 31,

 

 

 

 

 

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

 

Change

 

External research expenses:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Telitacicept - gMG

 

$

9,793

 

 

$

 

 

$

9,793

 

Telitacicept - SjD

 

 

2,500

 

 

 

 

 

 

2,500

 

Trem-cel

 

 

250

 

 

 

6,382

 

 

 

(6,132

)

VCAR33

 

 

73

 

 

 

3,636

 

 

 

(3,563

)

Other research and development

 

 

776

 

 

 

2,995

 

 

 

(2,219

)

Internal research expenses:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Salaries and benefits

 

 

3,497

 

 

 

9,057

 

 

 

(5,560

)

Stock-based compensation

 

 

601

 

 

 

1,042

 

 

 

(441

)

Manufacturing, facilities, and other research expenses

 

 

105

 

 

 

3,589

 

 

 

(3,484

)

Total research and development expenses

 

$

17,595

 

 

$

26,701

 

 

$

(9,106

)

 

Research and development expenses were $17.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026, compared to $26.7 million for the three months ended March 31, 2025. The decrease of $9.1 million was primarily due to $9.7 million in reduced spend on our previous programs, trem-cel and VCAR33, a $5.6 million decrease in personnel costs as we had lower headcount compared to the prior year, a $3.5 million decrease in manufacturing and facilities costs as our manufacturing activities and leased properties have both been reduced compared to the prior year, a $2.2 million decrease in other research and development costs, and a $0.4 million decrease in stock-based compensation. These decreases were partially offset by a $12.3 million increase in spend for our new programs, telitacicept - gMG and telitacicept - SjD.

General and Administrative Expenses

General and administrative expenses were $17.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026, compared to $6.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2025. The increase of $11.0 million was primarily due to a $7.4 million increase in stock-based compensation expense, a $1.4 million increase in personnel-related expenses, a $1.2 million increase in commercial-related expenses, and a $1.0 million increase in professional fees. The increase in stock-based compensation was primarily driven by grants to the new executives hired after the quarter ended March 31, 2025, as well as an appreciation in our stock price and incremental expense recognized from award modifications which took place at the end of the year ended December 31, 2025. The increase in personnel-related expenses was due primarily to new general administrative employees hired during 2025, including new executives.

17


 

Other Income (Expense)

Other income (expense) decreased by $185.2 million during the three months ended March 31, 2026, compared to the three months ended March 31, 2025. The decrease in other income (expense) was primarily due to the change in fair value of the warrant liabilities resulting from changes in the quoted price of the Company’s common stock underlying the warrants.

Liquidity and Capital Resources

Sources of Liquidity

Since our inception, we have not recognized any revenue and have incurred operating losses and negative cash flows from our operations. We have not yet commercialized any product and we do not expect to generate revenue from sales of any products for several years, if at all. We have funded our operations primarily through the sale of equity securities and have received aggregate net proceeds from these transactions of approximately $1,094.1 million as of March 31, 2026.

In order to fund our future operations, including our ongoing and planned clinical trials, we filed a universal shelf registration statement, which was declared effective on March 31, 2025, to provide for aggregate offerings of up to $350.0 million of common stock, preferred stock, debt securities, warrants or any combination thereof. As of March 31, 2026, $164.2 million remains available under this Shelf Registration Statement, including $48.9 million reserved for at-the-market offerings discussed below.

At-the-Market Sales Agreements

In December 2022, we entered into a Sales Agreement with Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated (“Stifel”) as the agent (the "Stifel ATM Facility"). Pursuant to the Stifel ATM Facility, we may offer and sell shares of common stock with an aggregate value of up to $125.0 million. We pay Stifel a commission of up to 3.0% of the gross proceeds of any common stock sold through Stifel. We did not sell any shares of our common stock under the Stifel ATM Facility during the three months ended March 31, 2026. As of March 31, 2026, $48.9 million remained available to be sold under the Stifel ATM Facility.

March 2026 Private Placement

 

On March 26, 2026, we entered into a purchase agreement with institutional investors pursuant to which we agreed to issue and sell an aggregate of 5,338,078 shares of common stock, at a price per share of $14.05, for net proceeds of $74.9 million after deducting offering expenses payable by us. The private placement closed on March 30, 2026.

Cash Requirements

As of March 31, 2026, we had cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $491.5 million. We will need to raise additional capital in the future to fund our planned future operations.

We expect that our existing cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities will enable us to fund our operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements into early 2029. We have based this estimate on assumptions that may prove to be wrong and we could exhaust our capital resources sooner than we expect.

We expect our expenses to increase substantially if, and as, we:

continue clinical development of our product candidate and any future product candidates, including in particular the expenses associated with our clinical trials;
incur third party manufacturing costs to support our clinical trials of our product candidate and any future product candidates and, if approved, their commercialization;
seek to identify and develop additional product candidates;
seek regulatory and marketing approvals for our product candidate and any future product candidates;
establish a sales, marketing and distribution infrastructure to commercialize any approved product candidates;
adapt our regulatory compliance efforts to incorporate requirements to applicable marketed products;
acquire or in-license products, product candidates, or technologies;
maintain, expand, enforce, defend and protect our intellectual property;
hire additional clinical, quality control, manufacturing and other scientific personnel; add operational, financial and management information systems and personnel;

18


 

expand our office facility or establish dedicated laboratory and manufacturing facilities; and
experience any delays or encounter any issues with any of the above.

In addition, we expect to continue to incur additional costs associated with operating as a public company, including significant legal, audit, accounting, investor and public relations, regulatory, tax-related, director and officer insurance premiums, investor relations and other expenses. Developing pharmaceutical products, including conducting clinical trials, is a time-consuming, expensive and uncertain process that takes years to complete, and we may never generate the necessary data or results required to obtain marketing approval for any product candidates or generate revenue from the sale of any product candidate for which we may obtain marketing approval. In addition, our product candidates, if approved, may not achieve commercial success. Our commercial revenues, if any, will be derived from sales of products that we do not expect to be commercially available for at least several years, if ever.

As a result, we will need substantial additional funding to support our continuing operations and pursue our growth strategy. Until such time as we can generate significant revenue from product sales, if ever, we expect to finance our operations through the public or private sale of our equity, government or private party grants, debt financings or other capital sources, including potential collaborations with other companies or other strategic transactions. To the extent that we raise additional capital through the sale of our equity or convertible debt securities, including through the use of the Stifel ATM Facility, the ownership interest of our shareholders will be or could be diluted, and the terms of these securities may include liquidation or other preferences that adversely affect the rights of our stockholders. Debt financing and equity financing, if available, may involve agreements that include covenants limiting or restricting our ability to take specific actions, such as incurring additional debt, making capital expenditures or declaring dividends. If we are unable to obtain additional funding, we could be forced to delay, reduce or eliminate some or all of our research and development programs, product portfolio expansion or any commercialization efforts, which could adversely affect our business prospects, or we may be unable to continue operations. If we raise funds through strategic collaborations or other similar arrangements with third parties, we may have to relinquish valuable rights to our intellectual property, future revenue streams, research programs or product candidates or may have to grant licenses on terms that may not be favorable to us and/or may reduce the value of our common stock. Our ability to raise additional funds may be adversely impacted by worsening global economic conditions and disruptions to and volatility in the credit and financial markets in the United States and worldwide resulting from worsening geopolitical tensions and adverse macroeconomic conditions or otherwise. Because of the numerous risks and uncertainties associated with product development, we cannot predict the timing or amount of increased expenses, and there is no assurance that we will ever be profitable or generate positive cash flow from operating activities.

We did not have during the periods presented, and we do not currently have, any off-balance sheet arrangements that have, or are reasonably likely to have, a material current or future effect on our financial condition, changes in financial condition, revenues or expenses, results of operations, liquidity, cash requirements or capital resources.

Cash Flows

The following table provides information regarding our cash flows for the periods presented (in thousands):

 

 

Three Months Ended March 31,

 

 

 

2026

 

 

2025

 

Net cash used in operating activities

 

$

(38,246

)

 

$

(31,066

)

Net cash used in investing activities

 

 

(263,237

)

 

 

(230

)

Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities

 

 

74,870

 

 

 

(606

)

Net decrease in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash equivalents

 

$

(226,613

)

 

$

(31,902

)

Operating Activities

Net cash used in operating activities was $38.2 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026, reflecting a net loss of $219.6 million, offset by changes in operating assets and liabilities of $15.5 million and non-cash charges of $196.9 million. The non-cash charges primarily consisted of the change in fair value of warrant liabilities of $188.4 million and $8.9 million of stock-based compensation expense. The change in operating assets and liabilities was primarily due to a decrease of $9.1 million of accounts payable and accrued expenses as much of the accrued expenses relating to the prior period were paid in the three months ended March 31, 2026. The change was also due to the increase of $6.4 million of prepaid expense and other current assets, primarily driven by the increase of prepayments made for our clinical programs and an increase in accrued interest on marketable securities.

Net cash used in operating activities was $31.1 million for the three months ended March 31, 2025, reflecting a net loss of $32.5 million and net cash used of $2.6 million for operating assets and liabilities, which were partially offset by non-cash charges of $4.1 million. The non-cash charges primarily consisted of stock-based compensation expense of $1.9 million, non-cash lease expense of $1.3 million and depreciation expense of $0.8 million.

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Investing Activities

Net cash used in investing activities was $263.2 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026, which consisted of the purchases of $276.5 million of marketable securities and $0.1 million of equipment, partially offset by $13.3 million of proceeds from the maturities of marketable securities. Net cash used in investing activities was $0.2 million for the three months ended March 31, 2025, which primarily consisted of purchases of $0.2 million of property and equipment.

Financing Activities

Net cash provided by financing activities was $74.9 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026, which primarily consisted of $75.0 million in gross proceeds from the issuance of common stock in the March 2026 private placement, partially offset by $0.1 million of payments made in the period for issuance costs relating to the December 2025 private placement. Net cash used in financing activities was $0.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2025, which primarily consisted of $0.6 million of payments for issuance costs relating to the December 2024 private placement.

Contractual Obligations and Other Commitments

Contractual obligations relate to future minimum lease payments for an existing non-cancellable lease relating to corporate office space, with a term expiring in August 2031.

Other commitments include license and collaboration agreements we have entered into with certain parties including the Telitacicept License Agreement discussed in Note 10 to the unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. Such arrangements require ongoing payments, including payments upon the achievement of certain development, regulatory and commercial milestones, receipt of sublicense income, as well as royalties on commercial sales. Payments under these arrangements will generally be expensed as incurred.

There were no significant changes in contractual obligations and other commitments from that described under the heading “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Contractual Obligations and Other Commitments” in our 2025 Annual Report.

We also have agreements with certain vendors for various services, including services related to clinical operations and support, which we are not contractually able to terminate for convenience and avoid any and all future obligations to the vendors. Under such agreements, we are contractually obligated to make certain payments to vendors to reimburse them for their unrecoverable outlays incurred prior to cancellation. The exact amounts of such obligations are dependent on the timing of termination and the exact terms of the relevant agreement and cannot be reasonably estimated. We do not include these payments in this summary as they are not fixed and estimable.

Recent Accounting Pronouncements

There are no new significant recent accounting pronouncements which may materially impact our financial statements.

Item 3. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk.

We are a smaller reporting company as defined by Item 10 of Regulation S-K and are not required to provide the information otherwise required under this item.

Item 4. Controls and Procedures.

Evaluation of Disclosure Controls and Procedures

Our management, with the participation of our Chief Executive Officer and our Chief Financial Officer, evaluated, as of the end of the period covered by this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures. The term “disclosure controls and procedures,” as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), means controls and other procedures of a company that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by a company in the reports that it files or submits under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized and reported, within the time periods specified in the SEC’s rules and forms. Disclosure controls and procedures include, without limitation, controls and procedures designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by a company in the reports that it files or submits under the Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to the company’s management, including its principal executive and principal financial officers, or persons performing similar functions, as appropriate to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure. Our management recognizes that any controls and procedures, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable assurance of achieving their objectives, and our management necessarily applies its judgment in evaluating the cost-benefit relationship of possible controls and procedures.

20


 

Based on the evaluation of our disclosure controls and procedures as of March 31, 2026, our Chief Executive Officer and our Chief Financial Officer concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures as of such date were effective at the reasonable assurance level.

Changes in Internal Control over Financial Reporting

There were no changes in our internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) under the Exchange Act) during the quarter ended March 31, 2026 that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.

 

21


 

PART II—OTHER INFORMATION

We are not currently a party to any material legal proceedings. From time to time, we may become involved in other litigation or legal proceedings relating to claims arising from the ordinary course of business.

Item 1A. Risk Factors.

The following risk factors and other information included in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (“Quarterly Report”), including our condensed consolidated financial statements and related notes thereto, as well as our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025 (“Annual Report”), including our financial statements and related notes thereto, should be carefully considered. The risks and uncertainties described below are not the only risks and uncertainties we face. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we presently deem less significant may also impair our business operations. Please see the discussion regarding some of the forward-looking statements that are qualified by these risk factors contained elsewhere in this Quarterly Report. If any of the following risks occur, our business, financial condition, results of operations and future growth prospects could be materially and adversely affected.

Risks Related to Our Financial Position and Need for Additional Capital

We have incurred significant net losses since inception. We expect to incur net losses for the foreseeable future and may never achieve or maintain profitability.

Since inception, we have not generated any revenue and have incurred significant operating losses. For the three months ended March 31, 2026 and 2025 our net loss was $219.6 million and $32.5 million, respectively. As of March 31, 2026, we had an accumulated deficit of $1,372.6 million. We have financed our operations primarily through the sale of our capital stock, including the sale of warrants to purchase our common stock. We have devoted all of our efforts to organizing and staffing our company, business and scientific planning, raising capital, acquiring and developing technology, identifying potential product candidates, undertaking studies of potential product candidates and evaluating a clinical path for our pipeline programs. We expect to continue to incur significant expenses and increasing operating losses for the foreseeable future. The net losses we incur may fluctuate significantly from quarter to quarter. We anticipate that our expenses will increase substantially if and as we:

advance and complete clinical trials of telitacicept in gMG and SjD;
initiate clinical development of telitacicept in additional indications;
initiate additional research programs and development of other potential product candidates;
initiate preclinical testing and clinical trials for any other product candidates we identify and develop;
maintain, expand, enforce, defend and protect our intellectual property portfolio and provide reimbursement of third-party expenses related to our patent portfolio;
seek marketing approvals for any product candidates that successfully complete clinical trials;
adapt our regulatory compliance efforts to incorporate requirements applicable to marketed products;
hire additional research and development and clinical personnel;
hire commercial personnel and advance market access and reimbursement strategies;
add operational, financial and management information systems and personnel, including personnel to support our product development;
acquire or in-license product candidates, intellectual property and technologies;
develop or in-license manufacturing and distribution technologies;
rely on collaborators or other third parties to manufacture current good manufacturing practices (“cGMP”) material for clinical trials or potential commercial sales;
establish a commercialization infrastructure and develop internal and external manufacturing and distribution capabilities to commercialize any product candidates for which we may obtain regulatory approval;
should we decide to do so and receive approval for any of our product candidates, build and maintain, or purchase and validate, commercial-scale manufacturing facilities designed to comply with cGMP requirements; and operate as a public company.

22


 

We have not completed clinical development of any product candidate and expect that it will be years, if ever, before we have a product candidate ready for commercialization. To become and remain profitable, we must develop and, either directly or through collaborators, eventually commercialize a product or products with significant market potential. This will require us to be successful in a range of challenging activities, including identifying product candidates, completing preclinical testing and clinical trials of 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 may never succeed in these activities and, even if we do, may never generate revenues that are significant or large enough to achieve profitability. Our product candidate and research programs are currently in clinical development. Because of the numerous risks and uncertainties associated with developing product candidates, we are unable to predict the extent of any future losses or when we will become profitable, if at all. If we do achieve profitability, we may not be able to sustain or increase profitability on a quarterly or annual basis. Our failure to become and remain profitable would decrease the value of our company and could impair our ability to raise capital, maintain our research and development efforts, expand our business or continue our operations. A decline in the value of our company could also cause our stockholders to lose all or part of their investments in us.

We will need substantial additional funding. If we are unable to raise capital when needed, we would be forced to delay, reduce or eliminate our research and product development programs or future commercialization efforts.

We expect our expenses to increase in connection with our ongoing activities, particularly as we continue the clinical development of telitacicept for the treatment of gMG and SjD and initiate clinical development of telitacicept in additional indications, and otherwise continue to advance our research programs in support of our pipeline. In addition, if we obtain marketing approval for any of our product candidates, we expect to incur significant commercialization expenses related to product sales, marketing, manufacturing and distribution to the extent that such sales, marketing, manufacturing and distribution are not the responsibility of a collaborator. Further, we expect to continue to incur significant additional costs associated with operating as a public company this year and in future years. Accordingly, we will need to obtain substantial additional funding in order to maintain our continuing operations. If we are unable to raise capital when needed or on attractive terms, we would be forced to delay, reduce or eliminate our research and product development programs or future commercialization efforts.

As of March 31, 2026, our cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities were $491.5 million. We expect that our existing cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities as of March 31, 2026, will enable us to fund our operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements into early 2029. However, our operating plan may change as a result of factors currently unknown to us, and we may need to seek funding sooner than planned. Our future capital requirements will depend on many factors, including:

the progress, results and costs of clinical trials for telitacicept;
the costs of researching, developing, and initiating clinical trials of telitacicept in additional indications;
the scope, progress, results, costs of discovery, acquisition or in-licensing, preclinical development, formulation, development and clinical trials for other product candidates;
the costs of acquiring and expanding facilities to accommodate corporate, laboratory, and manufacturing needs;
the costs of preparing, filing and prosecuting patent applications, maintaining and enforcing our intellectual property and proprietary rights and defending intellectual property-related claims in the United States and internationally;
the costs, timing and outcome of regulatory review of any product candidates;
the costs of future activities, including product sales, medical affairs, marketing, manufacturing, distribution, coverage and reimbursement for any product candidates for which we receive regulatory approval;
our ability to establish and maintain collaborations on favorable terms, if at all;
the success of our collaborations, including ones we may establish, and of our license agreements;
the achievement of milestones or occurrence of other developments that trigger payments under any collaboration agreements we enter;
the extent to which we acquire or in-license product candidates, intellectual property and technologies;
the extent to which we develop or in-license manufacturing and distribution technologies; and
the costs of operating as a public company.

23


 

Conducting preclinical testing and clinical trials is a time-consuming, expensive and uncertain process that takes years to complete, and we may never generate the necessary data or results required to obtain marketing approval and achieve product sales. In addition, even if we successfully develop product candidates and those are approved, we may not achieve commercial success. Our commercial revenues, if any, will be derived from sales of products that we do not expect to be commercially available for years, if at all. Accordingly, we will need to continue to rely on additional financing to achieve our business objectives.

Any additional fundraising efforts may divert our management from their day-to-day activities, which may adversely affect our ability to develop and commercialize product candidates. We cannot be certain that additional funding will be available on acceptable terms, or at all. We have no committed source of additional capital and, if we are unable to raise additional capital in sufficient amounts or on terms acceptable to us, we may have to significantly delay, scale back or discontinue the development or commercialization of product candidates or other research and development initiatives. Our license agreements and any future collaboration agreements may also be terminated if we are unable to meet the payment or other obligations under the agreements. We could be required to seek collaborators for product candidates at an earlier stage than otherwise would be desirable or on terms that are less favorable than might otherwise be available or relinquish or license on unfavorable terms our rights to product candidates in markets where we otherwise would seek to pursue development or commercialization ourselves.

If we are unable to obtain funding on a timely basis, we may be required to significantly curtail, delay or discontinue one or more of our research or development programs or the commercialization of any product candidate, or be unable to expand our operations or otherwise capitalize on our business opportunities, as desired, which could materially affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. Any of the above events could significantly harm our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operations and cause the price of our common stock 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 product revenues, we expect to finance our cash needs through a combination of equity offerings, government or private party grants, debt financings, collaborations, strategic alliances and licensing arrangements. We do not currently have any committed external source of funds. To the extent that we raise additional capital through the sale of equity or convertible debt securities, including through the use of our at-the-market facility, our stockholders’ ownership interest will be diluted, and the terms of these securities may include liquidation or other preferences that adversely affect rights of our common stockholders. Debt financing and preferred equity financing, if available, may involve agreements that include covenants limiting or restricting our ability to take specific actions, such as incurring additional debt, making capital expenditures, declaring dividends and possibly other restrictions.

For example, we have raised substantial amounts of capital through the issuance and sale of 11,500,000 shares of common stock in an underwritten public offering in November 2025, the issuance and sale of 13,876,032 shares of common stock in a private placement in December 2025, the issuance and sale of 5,338,078 shares of common stock in a private placement in March 2026, and sales made pursuant to our at-the-market facility. In addition, in December 2024, we issued and sold to certain institutional investors an aggregate of (i) 2,793,562 shares of common stock and (ii) warrants to purchase up to 3,491,953 shares of common stock (the “2024 Warrants”). In June 2025, we issued and sold to certain institutional investors warrants to purchase up to 34,999,999 shares of common stock (the “2025 PIPE Warrants”), and we also issued a warrant to purchase up to 16,000,000 shares of common stock (the “RemeGen Warrant”) as partial consideration for the Telitacicept License Agreement to a subsidiary of RemeGen. As of March 31, 2026, the 2024 Warrants and RemeGen Warrant remain outstanding and unexercised, and 19,792,712 of the 2025 PIPE Warrants remain outstanding and unexercised. In addition, as of March 31, 2026, we have outstanding options to purchase 7,017,122 shares of common stock and 346,325 restricted stock units, and we have 2,455,518 shares of common stock available for future issuance under our 2023 Inducement Plan, 1,497,093 shares of common stock available for future issuance under our Amended and Restated 2021 Equity Incentive Plan and 205,932 shares of common stock available for issuance under our Employee Stock Purchase Plan. Should all of these shares be issued, you would experience substantial dilution in ownership of our common stock.

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

24


 

We have a limited operating history, have not yet completed any clinical trials and have no history of commercializing products, which may make it difficult to evaluate the success of our business to date and to assess our future viability.

We are a clinical-stage company with no products approved for marketing. We were founded in December 2015 and commenced operations in February 2016. Our operations to date have been limited to organizing and staffing our company, business planning, raising capital, acquiring and developing our platform and technology, identifying product candidates and undertaking studies. Prior to our in-license of telitacicept in June 2025, our efforts were focused on developing engineered hematopoietic stem cell transplants, chimeric antigen receptor-T cell therapies and antibody drug conjugates for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia. We are currently developing telitacicept in global Phase 3 clinical trials for the treatment of gMG and SjD. The risk of failure for these activities is high. We have not yet demonstrated an ability to successfully complete any clinical trials, including large-scale, pivotal clinical trials, obtain marketing 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. Consequently, any predictions made about our future success or viability may not be as accurate as they could be if we had a longer operating history.

Our limited operating history may make it difficult to evaluate our technology and industry and predict our future performance. Our short history as an operating company makes any assessment of our future success or viability subject to significant uncertainty. We expect to encounter risks and difficulties frequently experienced by early stage companies in new and rapidly evolving fields. If we do not address these risks and difficulties successfully, our business could suffer.

In addition, we may encounter other unforeseen expenses, difficulties, complications, delays and other known and unknown factors. We will need to transition from a company with a research focus to a company capable of supporting commercial activities. We may not be successful in such a transition.

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

Our ability to generate revenue from product sales and achieve profitability depends on our ability, alone or with collaborators, to successfully complete the development of, and obtain the regulatory approvals necessary to commercialize, product candidates. We do not anticipate generating revenues from product sales for the next several years, if ever. Our ability to generate future revenue from product sales depends heavily on our, or our current or future collaborators’, ability to successfully:

advance and complete clinical trials of our product candidates, including telitacicept;
complete research and preclinical and clinical development of any other product candidates we may identify;
seek and obtain regulatory and marketing approvals for any product candidates for which we complete clinical trials;
launch and commercialize any product candidates for which we obtain regulatory and marketing approval by establishing a sales force, marketing and distribution infrastructure or, alternatively, collaborating with a commercialization partner;
qualify for coverage and adequate reimbursement by government and third-party payors for any product candidates for which we obtain regulatory and marketing approval;
establish and maintain supply and manufacturing relationships with third parties that can provide adequate, in both amount and quality, products and services to support clinical development and the market demand for any product candidates for which we obtain regulatory and marketing approval;
obtain market acceptance of product candidates as viable treatment options;
address competing technological and market developments;
implement internal systems and infrastructure, as needed;
negotiate favorable terms in any collaboration, licensing or other arrangements into which we may enter and perform our obligations in such arrangements;
maintain, protect, enforce, defend and expand our portfolio of intellectual property rights, including patents, trade secrets and know-how, in the United States and internationally;
avoid and defend against third-party interference, infringement and other intellectual property claims in the United States and internationally; and
attract, hire and retain qualified personnel.

25


 

Even if one or more of the product candidates we develop are approved for commercial sale, we anticipate incurring significant costs associated with commercializing any approved product candidate. Our expenses could increase beyond expectations if we are required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (the “FDA”), the European Medicines Agency (the “EMA”) or other regulatory authorities to perform clinical and other studies in addition to those that we currently anticipate. Even if we are able to generate revenues from the sale of any approved product candidates, we may not become profitable and may need to obtain additional funding to continue operations.

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

Our ability to utilize our net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes to offset taxable income or taxes may be limited.

As of December 31, 2025, we had gross federal net operating loss carryforwards of $411.7 million including $409.8 million that had an indefinite carryforward period and $1.9 million that were subject to expiration at various dates through 2037. Furthermore, we have state and local net operating loss carryforwards of $389.4 million which will expire at various dates through 2045. Portions of these net operating loss carryforwards could expire unused and be unavailable to offset future income tax liabilities. Under the legislation enacted in 2017, informally titled the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the “Tax Act”), as modified by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (the “CARES Act”) U.S. federal net operating losses incurred in taxable years beginning after December 31, 2017, may be carried forward indefinitely, but the deductibility of such federal net operating losses in taxable years beginning after December 31, 2020, may be limited. It is uncertain how various states will respond to the Tax Act and the CARES Act. For state income tax purposes, there may be periods during which the use of net operating loss carryforwards is suspended or otherwise limited, which could accelerate or permanently increase state taxes owed. In addition, under Sections 382 and 383 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the “Code”), and corresponding provisions of state law, if a corporation undergoes an “ownership change,” which is generally defined as a greater than 50% change, by value, in its equity ownership over a three-year period, the corporation’s ability to use its pre-change net operating loss carryforwards and other pre-change tax attributes to offset its post-change income or taxes may be limited. The completion of our initial public offering, together with private placements and other transactions that have occurred since our inception, may trigger such an ownership change pursuant to Section 382 of the Code. We have not yet completed a Section 382 analysis, and therefore, there can be no assurances that our net operating losses are not already limited. We may experience ownership changes as a result of subsequent shifts in our stock ownership, some of which may be outside of our control. If an ownership change occurs and our ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards is materially limited, it would harm our future operating results by effectively increasing our future tax obligations. There is a full valuation allowance for net deferred tax assets, including net operating loss carryforwards.

Risks Related to Development, Manufacturing and Commercialization

We are substantially dependent on the success of our lead product candidate, telitacicept. If we are unable to complete development of, obtain approval for and commercialize telitacicept in a timely manner, our business will be harmed.

Our future success is dependent on our ability to timely advance and complete clinical trials, obtain marketing approval for and successfully commercialize our lead product candidate, telitacicept. We are investing significant efforts and financial resources in the research and development of telitacicept. Telitacicept is currently in global Phase 3 clinical trials for the treatment of gMG and SjD, and will require additional clinical development, evaluation of clinical and manufacturing activities, marketing approval from government regulators, substantial investment and significant marketing efforts before we can generate any revenues from product sales. We are not permitted to market or promote telitacicept or any other product candidate before we receive marketing approval from the FDA and comparable foreign regulatory authorities, and we may never receive such marketing approvals.

The success of telitacicept will depend on several factors, including the following:

the approval or acceptance to initiate clinical trials by the applicable regulatory authorities in each country where we plan to conduct clinical trials;
the acceptance of individual investigational review boards (“IRBs”) and scientific review committees at each clinical trial site as to the adequacy of the preclinical data package to support clinical development of telitacicept and their overall general agreement with the use of telitacicept in the intended patient population in the intended manner;
the willingness of clinical investigators to place patients in clinical trials, and the willingness of patients to enroll in clinical trials; the successful and timely completion of the global Phase 3 clinical trials of telitacicept in gMG and SjD;

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the initiation and successful patient enrollment and completion of additional clinical trials of telitacicept on a timely basis;
maintaining and establishing relationships with contract research organizations (“CROs”) and clinical sites for the clinical development of these programs both in the United States and internationally;
the frequency and severity of adverse events in the clinical trials;
the results of clinical trials conducted by third parties, including RemeGen, in autoimmune disorders if such trials result in changes to the standard of care for autoimmune disorders;
the efficacy, safety and tolerability profiles that are satisfactory to the FDA, the EMA or any comparable foreign regulatory authority for marketing approval;
the timely receipt of marketing approvals for our programs from applicable regulatory authorities;
the extent of any required post-marketing approval commitments to applicable regulatory authorities;
the maintenance of existing or the establishment of new supply arrangements with third-party suppliers and manufacturers for clinical development of our programs;
our ability to obtain and maintain arrangements with third-party manufacturers to produce finished products that are appropriate for commercial sale of our programs, if approved;
obtaining and maintaining patent protection, trade secret protection and regulatory exclusivity, both in the United States and internationally;
the protection of our rights in our intellectual property portfolio;
the successful launch of commercial sales following any marketing approval;
a continued acceptable safety profile following any marketing approval;
commercial acceptance by patients, the medical community and third-party payors;
our ability to obtain coverage and adequate reimbursement from third-party payors for our products and patients’ willingness to pay out-of-pocket in the absence of such coverage and adequate reimbursement; and
our ability to compete with other treatments.

We do not have complete control over many of these factors, including certain aspects of clinical development and the regulatory submission process, potential threats to our intellectual property rights and the manufacturing, marketing, distribution and sales efforts of any future collaborator. If we are not successful with respect to one or more of these factors in a timely manner or at all, we could experience significant delays or an inability to successfully commercialize telitacicept, which would materially harm our business. If we do not receive marketing approval for telitacicept, we may not be able to continue our operations.

We may derive results and data for telitacicept from clinical trials conducted by RemeGen in China; our access to the clinical results and data may be limited and there is no assurance that the clinical data from any such trials will be accepted or considered by the FDA, or other comparable regulatory authorities.

RemeGen has received regulatory approval in China for telitacicept for the treatment of gMG, RA and SLE, and RemeGen is developing telitacicept in clinical trials in China in additional indications. While these trials may provide us with clinical data that can inform our future development strategy, we do not have control over the protocols, administration, or conduct of the trials or their compliance with regulatory requirements. There is also no assurance that the clinical data from any such clinical trials will be accepted or considered by the FDA or other comparable regulatory authorities. We have no control over the conduct and timing of, and communications with the National Medical Products Administration (“NMPA”) or other foreign regulatory agencies in Greater China with respect to, the trials that RemeGen is conducting for telitacicept. Any data integrity issues or patient safety issues arising out of any of these trials would be beyond our control, yet could adversely affect our reputation and damage the clinical and commercial prospects for our product candidates.

We are dependent on third parties accurately generating and reporting data related to our product candidates, and their conduct could adversely affect our business.

We have and may in the future acquire or in-license our product candidates at various stages of development. For example, we in-licensed telitacicept from RemeGen. Our assumptions about the potential of telitacicept are partially based on data generated from preclinical studies and clinical trials conducted by RemeGen.

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We are dependent on RemeGen having conducted its research and development in accordance with the applicable protocols, informed consent, legal and regulatory requirements, and scientific standards, having accurately reported the results of all studies conducted, and having correctly collected the data from these studies. If these activities were not compliant, accurate or correct, the clinical development, regulatory approval or commercialization of telitacicept will be adversely affected.

Additionally, in cases where third parties conduct clinical trials using our product candidates through partnership or licensing agreements, we face additional risks related to the conduct and outcome of those trials that are outside of our direct control. For example, issues such as poor data integrity, safety concerns, protocol violations, or failure to meet endpoints in these third-party trials could adversely impact the development timeline and regulatory approval process for those product candidates in other indications or territories, require additional studies, create negative market perception affecting future commercial potential, impact our ability to pursue strategic alternatives for such product candidates, or result in increased regulatory scrutiny across our programs.

Our clinical trials may fail to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of our product candidates, or serious adverse or unacceptable side effects may be identified during the development of our product candidates, which could increase our costs or necessitate the abandonment or limitation of the development of our product candidates.

If our product candidates are associated with side effects in clinical trials or have characteristics that are unexpected, our costs could increase or we may need to abandon their development or limit development to more narrow uses in which the side effects or other characteristics are less prevalent, less severe or more acceptable from a risk-benefit perspective. The FDA or an IRB may also require that we suspend, discontinue, or limit our clinical trials based on safety information. Such findings could further result in regulatory authorities failing to provide marketing authorization for our product candidates. Many product candidates that initially showed promise in early-stage testing have later been found to cause side effects that prevented further development of the product candidate.

Before we can obtain marketing approvals for the commercial sale of our product candidates, we must demonstrate through lengthy, complex and expensive preclinical testing and clinical trials that our product candidates are both safe and effective for use in each target indication, and failures can occur at any stage of testing. Clinical trials often fail to demonstrate safety and efficacy of the product candidate studied for the target indication.

Additionally, if we or others identify undesirable side effects caused by our product candidates, a number of potentially significant negative consequences could result, including:

we may need to abandon the development or limit the further development of our product candidates, including in various populations and for certain indications;
regulatory authorities may withdraw approval to market such product;
regulatory authorities may require additional warnings on the labels;
a medication guide outlining the risks of such side effects for distribution to patients may be required;
we could be sued and held liable for harm caused to patients; and
our reputation and physician or patient acceptance of our product candidates, if approved, may suffer.

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

From time to time, we may publicly disclose interim, topline or preliminary data from our clinical trials, which are based on a preliminary analysis of then-available data, and the results and related findings and conclusions are subject to change following a full analysis of all data related to the particular trial. We also make assumptions, estimations, calculations and conclusions as part of our analyses of data, and we may not have received or had the opportunity to fully and carefully evaluate all data. In addition, we may report preliminary analyses of only certain endpoints rather than all endpoints. As a result, the interim, topline or preliminary results that we report may differ from future results of the same trials, or different conclusions or considerations may qualify such results, once additional data have been received and fully evaluated. Topline data also remain subject to audit and verification procedures that may result in the final data being materially different from the preliminary data we previously published. As a result, interim, topline and preliminary data should be viewed with caution until the final data are available. We may also disclose interim data from our clinical trials. Interim data from clinical trials that we may complete are subject to the risk that one or more of the clinical outcomes may materially change as subject enrollment continues and more subject data become available. Adverse differences between interim, topline or preliminary data and final data could significantly harm our reputation and business prospects.

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Further, disclosure of interim, topline or preliminary data by us or by our competitors could result in volatility in the price of our common stock.

Further, others, including regulatory agencies, may not accept or agree with our assumptions, estimates, calculations, conclusions or analyses or may interpret or weigh the importance of data differently, which could impact the potential of the particular program, the likelihood of marketing approval or commercialization of the particular product candidate, any approved product, and our company in general. In addition, the information we choose to publicly disclose regarding a particular study or clinical trial is derived from information that is typically extensive, and you or others may not agree with what we determine is material or otherwise appropriate information to include in our disclosure, and any information we determine not to disclose may ultimately be deemed significant with respect to future decisions, conclusions, views, activities or otherwise regarding a particular program, product candidate or our business.

If the interim, topline or preliminary data that we report differ from actual results, or if others, including regulatory authorities, disagree with the conclusions reached, our ability to further develop, obtain marketing approval for and/or commercialize our product candidates may be harmed, which could harm our business, operating results, prospects or financial condition.

 

Success in preclinical studies or clinical trials may not be indicative of results in future clinical trials, particularly for clinical trials that involve only a small number of patients.

 

Results from preclinical studies are not necessarily predictive of future clinical trial results, and interim results of a clinical trial are not necessarily indicative of final results. This risk is heightened when clinical trials involve only a small number of patients, which makes it difficult to predict whether early results from these trials will be indicative of the final results of the trials or be replicated in future trials. Further, success in preclinical studies and earlier stage clinical trials of telitacicept conducted by RemeGen, or the fact that telitacicept has received marketing approval in China in multiple indications, does not ensure that later clinical trials conducted by us will generate the same results or otherwise provide adequate data to demonstrate the efficacy and safety of telitacicept for regulatory approval by the FDA or other comparable foreign regulatory authorities. For example, the results of RemeGen’s Phase 3 clinical trials of telitacicept in gMG and SjD may not be replicated in our ongoing global Phase 3 clinical trials of telitacicept in gMG and SjD due to a variety of factors, including differences in trial design, patient demographics and enrollment and placebo rates. Our product candidates may fail to show the desired safety and efficacy in clinical development despite positive results in preclinical studies or having successfully advanced through initial clinical trials. This failure to establish sufficient efficacy and safety could cause us to abandon clinical development of our product candidates.

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

Because we have limited financial and managerial resources, we focus on product candidates and research programs that we identify for specific indications among many potential options. As a result, we may forego or delay pursuit of opportunities with other product candidates or for other indications that later prove to have greater commercial potential. Our resource allocation decisions may cause us to fail to capitalize on viable commercial products or profitable market opportunities. Our spending on current and future product candidates and research and development programs for specific indications may not yield any commercially viable products. For example, in 2025 we wound down our then-ongoing clinical and manufacturing operations and clinical trials and, after a strategic evaluation process, in June 2025 we entered into a license agreement with RemeGen related to telitacicept and focused our operations on the development of that clinical program. Further, if we do not accurately evaluate the commercial potential or target market for a particular product candidate, we may relinquish valuable rights to that product candidate through collaboration, licensing or other royalty arrangements in cases in which it would have been more advantageous for us to retain sole development and commercialization rights to such product candidate. Any such event could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Even if a product candidate receives marketing approval, it may fail to achieve the degree of market acceptance by physicians, patients, healthcare payors and others in the medical community necessary for commercial success.

The commercial success of our product candidates, if approved, will depend upon their degree of market acceptance by physicians, patients, third-party payors and others in the medical community. Even if any product candidate we develop receives marketing approval, it may nonetheless fail to gain sufficient market acceptance by physicians, patients, healthcare payors and others in the medical community. The degree of market acceptance of any product candidate we develop, if approved for commercial sale, will depend on a number of factors, including:

the efficacy and safety of such product candidate as demonstrated in clinical trials;
the efficacy and safety of other products that are used in combination or in sequence with our product; the potential and perceived advantages of our product candidates compared to alternative treatments;

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the limitation to our targeted patient population and limitations or warnings contained in approved labeling by the FDA or other regulatory authorities;
the ability to offer our products for sale at competitive prices;
convenience and ease of administration compared to alternative treatments;
the clinical indications for which the product candidate is approved by the FDA, the EMA or other regulatory authorities;
the willingness of the target patient population to try novel biologics and of physicians to prescribe these treatments;
product labeling or product insert requirements of the FDA, the EMA or other regulatory authorities, including any limitations or warnings contained in a product’s approved labeling;
relative convenience and ease of administration;
the timing of market introduction of competitive products;
publicity concerning our products or competing products and treatments;
the strength of marketing and distribution support;
availability of third-party coverage and sufficiency of reimbursement; and
the prevalence and severity of any side effects.

Even if a product candidate is approved, such product may not achieve an adequate level of acceptance, we may not generate significant product revenues, and we may not become profitable.

If, in the future, we are unable to establish sales and marketing capabilities or enter into agreements with third parties to sell and market our product candidates, we may not be successful in commercializing those product candidates if and when they are approved.

We do not have a sales or marketing infrastructure and have limited experience in the sale, marketing or distribution of pharmaceutical products. To achieve commercial success for any approved product for which we retain sales and marketing responsibilities, we must either develop a sales and marketing organization or outsource these functions to third parties. In the future, we may choose to build a focused sales, marketing and commercial support infrastructure to sell, or participate in sales activities with our collaborators for, some of our product candidates if and when they are approved.

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

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

our inability to recruit and retain adequate numbers of effective sales, marketing, reimbursement, customer service, medical affairs and other support personnel;
the inability of sales personnel to obtain access to physicians or educate adequate numbers of physicians on the benefits of prescribing any future products;
the inability of reimbursement professionals to negotiate arrangements for formulary access, reimbursement and other acceptance by payors;
restricted or closed distribution channels that make it difficult to distribute our product candidates to segments of the patient population;
the lack of complementary products to be offered by sales personnel, which may put us at a competitive disadvantage relative to companies with more extensive product lines; and
unforeseen costs and expenses associated with creating an independent commercialization organization.

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If we enter into arrangements with third parties to perform sales, marketing, commercial support and distribution services, our product revenues or the profitability of these product revenues to us may be lower than if we were to market and sell products ourselves. In addition, we may not be successful in entering into arrangements with third parties to commercialize our product candidates or may be unable to do so on terms that are favorable to us. We may have little control over such third parties, and any of them may fail to devote the necessary resources and attention to sell and market our products effectively. If we do not establish commercialization capabilities successfully, either on our own or in collaboration with third parties, we will not be successful in commercializing our product candidates.

We face significant competition in an environment of rapid technological change, and there is a possibility that our competitors may achieve regulatory approval before us or develop therapies that are safer or more advanced or effective than ours, which may harm our financial condition and our ability to successfully market or commercialize product candidates, if approved.

The development and commercialization of new drug and biologic products is highly competitive. We will face competition with respect to our product candidates that we develop or commercialize in the future from major pharmaceutical companies, specialty pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology companies worldwide. Potential competitors also include academic institutions, government agencies and other public and private research organizations that conduct research, seek patent protection and establish collaborative arrangements for research, development, manufacturing and commercialization.

Competition in the autoimmune field is intense and involves multiple monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), other biologics and small molecules either already marketed or in development by many different companies including large pharmaceutical companies such as Alexion (Solaris and Ultomiris/Myasthenia Gravis), Amgen, Inc. (Uplinza/Myasthenia Gravis), Argenx (VYVGART and VYVGART HYTRULO/Myasthenia Gravis), UCB (Restage/Myasthenia Gravis), Johnson & Johnson (Imaavy/Myasthenia Gravis), GlaxoSmithKline plc (Benlysta/lupus), F. Hoffman-La Roche AG (Rituxan/often used off label).

We face and expect to continue to face intense competition from other biopharmaceutical companies, who have launched or are developing products for the treatment of gMG and other autoimmune diseases. Competition for other indications is also fierce, with significant development in almost all of the indications we may develop for our product candidates. Novartis AG, CSL Behring, Grifols, S.A., Curavac, Inc., Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, Immunovant, Inc., Cartesian Therapeutics, Inc., Amgen, Kyverna, Dianthus, and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc./Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc., among others, are developing drugs that may have utility for the treatment of myasthenia gravis (MG) or Sjögren’s Disease (SjD).

Any product candidates that we successfully develop and commercialize will compete with existing therapies and new therapies that may become available in the future that are approved to treat the same diseases for which we may obtain approval for our product candidates. This may include other types of therapies, such as small molecule, CAR-T, antibody and/or protein therapies.

Many of our current or potential competitors, either alone or with their collaboration partners, may have significantly greater financial resources and expertise in research and development, manufacturing, preclinical testing, conducting clinical trials, obtaining regulatory approvals and marketing approved products than we do. Mergers and acquisitions in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries may result in even more resources being concentrated among a smaller number of our competitors. Smaller or early-stage companies may also prove to be significant competitors, particularly through collaborative arrangements with large and established companies. These competitors also compete with us in recruiting and retaining qualified scientific and management personnel and establishing clinical trial sites and patient registration for clinical trials, as well as in acquiring technologies complementary to, or necessary for, our programs. Our commercial opportunity could be reduced or eliminated if our competitors develop and commercialize product candidates that are safer, more effective, have fewer or less severe side effects, are more convenient or are less expensive than our product candidates or that would render our product candidates obsolete or non-competitive. Our competitors also may obtain FDA or other regulatory approval for their product candidates more rapidly than we may obtain approval for ours, which could result in our competitors establishing a strong market position before we are able to enter the market. Additionally, technologies developed by our competitors may render our product candidates uneconomical or obsolete, and we may not be successful in marketing any product candidates against competitors.

In addition, as a result of the expiration or successful challenge of our patent rights, we could face more litigation with respect to the validity and/or scope of patents relating to our competitors’ products. The availability of our competitors’ products could limit the demand, and the price we are able to charge, for our product candidates, if approved.

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Negative developments in the field of protein-based therapies, including in particular fusion protein therapies or approved therapies or therapies in development for the treatment of B cell-mediated autoimmune diseases, could damage public perception of our product candidate and negatively affect our business.

The commercial success of our product candidate will depend in part on public acceptance of the use of fusion protein therapies constructed by joining two or more domains encoded by different genes, as well as protein-based therapies more generally, including in particular approved therapies or therapies that are in development for the treatment of B cell-mediated autoimmune diseases. Telitacicept is a novel fusion protein in development for treating B cell mediated autoimmune diseases that inhibits both BLyS (BAFF) and APRIL. Adverse events in post marketing use in any country in any approved indication or off label use, in clinical trials of our product candidate or in clinical trials of others developing similar product candidates, including RemeGen, and the resulting publicity, as well as any other negative developments that may occur in the future, including in connection with competitors’ therapies, could result in a decrease in demand for our product candidate. These events could also result in the suspension, discontinuation, or clinical hold of, or modifications to, our clinical trials. Our product candidate may not be accepted by the general public or the medical community and potential clinical trial subjects may be discouraged from enrolling in our clinical trials or early terminated from the clinical trials. As a result, we may not be able to continue, or may be delayed in conducting, our development programs.

If product liability lawsuits are brought against us, we may incur substantial liabilities and may be required to limit commercialization of our product candidates.

We face an inherent risk of product liability exposure related to the testing in human clinical trials of our product candidates and will face an even greater risk if we commercially sell any products that we may develop. For example, we may be sued if our product candidates cause, or are perceived to cause, injury or are found to be otherwise unsuitable during clinical trials, manufacturing, marketing or sale. Any such product liability claims may include allegations of defects in manufacturing, defects in design, a failure to warn of dangers inherent in the product, negligence, strict liability or a breach of warranties. Claims could also be asserted under state consumer protection acts. If we cannot successfully defend ourselves against claims that our product candidates or products caused injuries, we could incur substantial liabilities. Regardless of merit or eventual outcome, liability claims may result in:

the inability to commercialize any products that we may develop;
decreased demand for our product candidates or products that we may develop;
injury to our reputation and significant negative media attention;
withdrawal of clinical trial participants;
significant time and costs to defend the related litigation;
substantial monetary awards to trial participants or patients; and
loss of revenue.

Insurance coverage is also increasingly expensive and we may not be able to maintain insurance coverage at a reasonable cost or in an amount adequate to satisfy any liability that may arise.

Fusion protein therapies are novel, complex and difficult to manufacture. We could experience manufacturing problems that result in delays in the development or commercialization of telitacicept or other product candidates or otherwise harm our business.

The manufacture of fusion proteins, such as telitacicept, is technically complex and necessitates substantial expertise and capital investment. Production difficulties caused by unforeseen events may delay the availability of material for clinical trials and commercial products for telitacicept, if approved, or any fusion protein product that we may develop in the future. Additionally, because biologic products are complex, the manufacture of such product candidates is more difficult and costly. We may not be able to have such products reliably manufactured in accordance with the applicable regulatory requirements in sufficient quantities to support our development programs and, if ultimately approved, commercial supply.

There are a limited number of contract manufacturers who specialize in the manufacture of biologic products and those that do may still be developing appropriate processes, controls and facilities for large-scale production. While we believe that there will be sufficient sources of supply that can satisfy our clinical and commercial requirements, we cannot be certain that we will be able to identify and establish additional relationships with such sources, if necessary, in a timely manner or at all, and what the terms and costs of such new arrangements would be, or that such suppliers would be able to supply our potential commercial needs.

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Furthermore, in the event our primary manufacturer cannot meet our needs, any switch to an alternative manufacturer, if available, would result in a significant delay, would require FDA approval, and cause material additional costs.

The manufacturers of biologic products must comply with strictly enforced cGMP requirements, state and federal regulations, as well as foreign requirements when applicable. Any failure by us or our contract manufacturing organizations to adhere to or document compliance with such regulatory requirements could lead to a delay or interruption in the availability of drug product for clinical trials or commercial use, among other consequences. If we or our manufacturers fail to comply with the FDA, EMA, or other regulatory authorities, it could result in sanctions being imposed on us, including fines, injunctions, civil penalties, delays, suspension or withdrawal of approvals, clinical holds or termination of clinical trials, Form 483s, warning or untitled letters, regulatory communications warning the public about safety issues with a product, import or export refusals, license revocation, seizures, detentions, or recalls of product candidates or product, operating restrictions, criminal prosecutions or debarment, suits under the civil False Claims Act, corporate integrity agreements, or consent decrees any of which could significantly and adversely affect supplies of our product candidates and our business, financial conditions and results of operations could be materially adversely affected.

Our current dependence upon others for the manufacture of our product candidates may also adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition, and our ability to commercialize any product candidates that receive regulatory approval on a timely and competitive basis.

If we or any contract manufacturers and suppliers that we engage fail to comply with environmental, health and safety laws and regulations, we could become subject to fines or penalties or incur costs that could have a material adverse effect on the success of our business.

We and any contract manufacturers and suppliers we engage are subject to numerous federal, state and local environmental, health and safety laws, regulations and permitting requirements, including those governing laboratory procedures; the generation, handling, use, storage, treatment and disposal of hazardous and regulated materials and wastes; the emission and discharge of hazardous materials into the ground, air and water; and employee health and safety. Under certain environmental laws, we could be held responsible for costs relating to any contamination at our current or past facilities and at third-party facilities. We also could incur significant costs associated with civil or criminal fines and penalties.

Compliance with applicable environmental laws and regulations may be expensive, and current or future environmental laws and regulations may impair our product development and research efforts. In addition, we cannot eliminate the risk of accidental injury or contamination from these materials or wastes. Although we maintain workers’ compensation insurance to cover us for costs and expenses we may incur due to injuries to our employees resulting from the use of hazardous materials, this insurance may not provide adequate coverage against potential liabilities. We do not carry specific biological or hazardous waste insurance coverage, and our property, casualty and general liability insurance policies specifically exclude coverage for damages and fines arising from biological or hazardous waste exposure or contamination. Accordingly, in the event of contamination or injury, we could be held liable for damages or be penalized with fines in an amount exceeding our resources, and our clinical trials or regulatory approvals could be suspended, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

In addition, we may incur substantial costs to comply with current or future environmental, health and safety laws, regulations and permitting requirements. These current or future laws, regulations and permitting requirements may impair our research, development or production efforts. Failure to comply with these laws, regulations and permitting requirements also may result in substantial fines, penalties or other sanctions or business disruption, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Any third-party contract manufacturers and suppliers we engage will also be subject to these and other environmental, health and safety laws and regulations. Liabilities they incur pursuant to these laws and regulations could result in significant costs or an interruption in operations, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Risks Related to Regulatory Review

If clinical trials of any of our product candidates fail to demonstrate safety and efficacy to the satisfaction of regulatory authorities or do not otherwise produce positive results, we may incur additional costs or experience delays in completing, or ultimately be unable to complete, the development and commercialization of such product candidates.

Before obtaining marketing approval from regulatory authorities for the sale of our product candidates, we must complete extensive clinical trials to demonstrate the safety and efficacy in humans. Clinical testing is expensive, difficult to design and implement, can take many years to complete and is uncertain as to outcome.

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A failure of one or more clinical trials can occur at any stage of testing. The outcome of preclinical 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.

Moreover, preclinical and clinical data are often susceptible to varying interpretations and analyses. Many companies that have believed their product candidates performed satisfactorily in preclinical studies and clinical trials have nonetheless failed to obtain marketing approval of their product candidates.

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

delays in reaching a consensus with regulators on clinical development plans, trial designs or regulatory approval data packages;
regulators, IRBs, independent ethics committees or scientific review boards may not authorize us or our investigators to commence a clinical trial or conduct a clinical trial at a prospective trial site;
delays in reaching or failing to reach agreement on acceptable clinical trial contracts or clinical trial protocols with prospective CROs, and clinical trial sites;
clinical trials of product candidates may produce negative or inconclusive results, and we may decide, or regulators may require us, to conduct additional clinical trials or abandon product development or research programs;
difficulty in designing well-controlled clinical trials due to ethical considerations which may render it inappropriate to conduct a trial with a control arm that can be effectively compared to a treatment arm;
difficulty in designing clinical trials and selecting endpoints for diseases that have not been well-studied and for which the natural history and course of the disease is poorly understood;
the number of patients required for clinical trials may be larger than we anticipate; enrollment of suitable participants in these clinical trials, which may be particularly challenging for some of the rare diseases we are targeting in our most advanced programs, may be delayed or slower than we anticipate; or patients may drop out of these clinical trials at a higher rate than we anticipate;
our third-party contractors may fail to comply with regulatory requirements or meet their contractual obligations to us in a timely manner, or at all;
regulators, IRBs or independent ethics committees may require that we or our investigators suspend or terminate clinical research or clinical trials for various reasons, including noncompliance with regulatory requirements, a finding of undesirable side effects or other unexpected characteristics, or that the participants are being exposed to unacceptable health risks or after an inspection of our clinical trial operations or trial sites;
the cost of clinical trials may be greater than we anticipate;
the supply or quality of product candidates or other materials necessary to conduct clinical trials may be insufficient or inadequate, including as a result of delays in the testing, validation, manufacturing and delivery of product candidates to the clinical sites by us or by third parties with whom we have contracted to perform certain of those functions;
delays in having patients complete participation in a trial or return for post-treatment follow-up;
clinical trial sites dropping out of a trial;
selection of clinical endpoints that require prolonged periods of clinical observation or analysis of the resulting data;
occurrence of serious adverse events associated with product candidates that are viewed to outweigh their potential benefits;
occurrence of serious adverse events in trials of the same class of agents conducted by other sponsors;
changes in regulatory requirements and guidance that require amending or submitting new clinical protocols;
disruption in the supply or availability of drug product; and
changes in the standard of care treatment guidelines.

If we or our collaborators are required to conduct additional clinical trials or other testing of product candidates beyond those that we currently contemplate, if we or our collaborators are unable to successfully complete clinical trials or other testing of product candidates, or if the results of these trials or tests are not positive or are only modestly positive or if there are safety concerns, we or our collaborators may:

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be delayed in obtaining marketing approval for any such product candidates or not obtain marketing approval at all;
obtain approval for indications or patient populations that are not as broad as intended or desired;
obtain approval with labeling that includes significant use or distribution restrictions or safety warnings, including boxed warnings;
be subject to changes in the way the product is administered;
be required to perform additional clinical trials to support approval or be subject to additional post-marketing testing requirements;
have regulatory authorities withdraw or suspend their approval of the product or impose restrictions on its distribution in the form of a REMS or through modification to an existing REMS;
be sued; or
experience damage to our reputation.

Product development costs will also increase if we or our collaborators experience delays in clinical trials or other testing or in obtaining marketing approvals. We do not know whether any clinical trials will begin as planned, will need to be restructured or will be completed on schedule, or at all. Significant clinical trial delays also could shorten any periods during which we may have the exclusive right to commercialize product candidates, could allow our competitors to bring products to market before we do and could impair our ability to successfully commercialize product candidates, any of which may harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Even if we complete the necessary clinical trials, we cannot predict when, or if, we will obtain regulatory approval to commercialize telitacicept or any other product candidate we may develop in the United States or any other jurisdiction, and any such approval may be for a more narrow indication than we seek.

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

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

Marketing approval by the FDA in the United States, if obtained, does not ensure approval by regulatory authorities in other countries or jurisdictions. In addition, clinical trials conducted in one country may not be accepted by regulatory authorities in other countries, and regulatory approval in one country does not guarantee regulatory approval in any other country. Approval processes vary among countries and can involve additional product candidate testing and validation and additional administrative review periods. Seeking foreign regulatory approval could result in difficulties and costs for us and require additional preclinical studies or clinical trials which could be costly and time-consuming. Regulatory requirements can vary widely from country to country and could delay or prevent the introduction of our product candidates in those countries. The foreign regulatory approval process involves all of the risks associated with FDA approval. We do not have any product candidates approved for sale in any jurisdiction, including international markets, and we do not have experience in obtaining regulatory approval in international markets. If we fail to comply with regulatory requirements in international markets or to obtain and maintain required approvals, or if regulatory approvals in international markets are delayed, our target market will be reduced and our ability to realize the full market potential of our product candidates will be unrealized.

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If we experience significant delays or difficulties in the enrollment or retention of patients in clinical trials, the cost of developing product candidates could increase and our receipt of necessary regulatory approvals could be delayed or prevented.

Patient enrollment is a significant factor in the timing of clinical trials. The timing of our clinical trials depends, in part, on the speed at which we can recruit patients to participate in our trials. We or our collaborators may not be able to advance clinical trials for our product candidates if we are unable to locate and enroll a sufficient number of eligible patients to participate in these trials as required by the FDA, the EMA or other analogous regulatory authorities outside the United States, or as needed to provide appropriate statistical power for a given trial. Patients may be unwilling to participate in our clinical trials because of negative publicity from adverse events related to the biotechnology field, RemeGen’s telitacicept products or clinical trials, competitive clinical trials for similar patient populations, clinical trials in competing products or for other reasons. As a result, the timeline for recruiting patients, conducting trials and obtaining regulatory approval of product candidates could be delayed. In addition, if an unexpected number of patients drop out from a trial early, it would negatively impact the integrity of the trial results.

Patient enrollment and retention is also affected by other factors, including:

severity of the disease under investigation;
size of the patient population and process for identifying patients;
design of the trial protocol;
ability to obtain and maintain patient informed consent;
risk that enrolled patients will drop out before completion of the trial, including due to side effects or characteristics that are unrelated to our product candidate;
eligibility and exclusion criteria for the trial in question;
perceived risks and benefits of the product candidate under trial;
efforts to facilitate timely enrollment in clinical trials;
patient referral practices of physicians;
ability to monitor patients adequately during and after treatment;
new therapies that are or become approved and available to the same patient population; and
changes in standard of care treatment guidelines.

Significant enrollment delays or poor patient retention in our clinical trials may result in increased development costs for our product candidates, which would cause the value of our company to decline and limit our ability to obtain additional financing. If we or our collaborators have difficulty enrolling a sufficient number of patients to conduct our clinical trials as planned, or have difficulty retaining patients, we may need to delay, limit or terminate ongoing or planned clinical trials, any of which would have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Risks Related to Our Relationships with Third Parties

We rely on third parties to conduct our clinical trials, and those third parties may not perform satisfactorily, including failing to meet deadlines for the completion of such trials, research or testing.

We rely on third parties, such as CROs, clinical data management organizations, and clinical investigators, to conduct our clinical trials. Any of these third parties may terminate their engagements with us at any time under certain criteria. If we need to enter into alternative arrangements, it may delay our product development activities.

Our reliance on these third parties for clinical activities will reduce our control over these activities but will not relieve us of our responsibilities. For example, we will remain responsible for ensuring that each of our clinical trials is conducted in accordance with the general investigational plan and protocols for the trial. Moreover, the FDA, EMA and other regulatory authorities require us to comply with standards, commonly referred to as Good Clinical Practices, for conducting, recording and reporting the results of clinical trials to assure that data and reported results are credible and accurate and that the rights, integrity and confidentiality of trial participants are protected. In the United States, we also are required to register ongoing clinical trials and post the results of completed clinical trials on a government-sponsored database, ClinicalTrials.gov, within certain timeframes. Failure to do so can result in fines, adverse publicity and civil and criminal sanctions.

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Although we intend to design the future clinical trials for our product candidates, CROs will conduct some or all of the clinical trials. As a result, many important aspects of our development programs, including their conduct and timing, will be outside of our direct control. Our reliance on third parties to conduct clinical trials will also result in less direct control over the management of data developed through clinical trials than would be 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:

have staffing difficulties;
fail to comply with contractual obligations;
experience regulatory compliance issues;
undergo changes in priorities or become financially distressed; or
form relationships with other entities, some of which may be our competitors.

These factors may materially 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 the CROs and other third parties 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 programs may be materially and irreversibly harmed. If we are unable to rely on preclinical and clinical data collected by our CROs and other third parties, we could be required to repeat, extend the duration of or increase the size of any preclinical studies or clinical trials we conduct and this could significantly delay commercialization and require greater expenditures.

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

We also rely on other third parties to store and distribute drug supplies for our clinical trials. Any performance failure on the part of our distributors could delay clinical development or marketing approval of our product candidates or commercialization of our products, producing additional losses and depriving us of potential product revenue.

We will continue to contract with third parties for the manufacture and supply of materials for development of our product candidates, advancement of our current and future clinical trials, and potential commercialization of our product candidates. This increases the risk that we will not have sufficient quantities and quality of such materials, for the development of our product candidates, or that such supply will not be available to us at an acceptable cost, which could delay, prevent or impair our development or commercialization efforts.

We will rely on third-party manufacturers, including certain single source suppliers, for the manufacture and supply of materials for development of our product candidates and advancement of our current clinical trial, and expect to continue to do so for future clinical testing and for commercial supply of our product candidates for which we or any future collaborators obtain marketing approval. We do not have a long-term agreement with many of these third-party manufacturers or suppliers. We may be unable to establish any agreements with third-party manufacturers or suppliers or to do so on acceptable terms. Even if we are able to establish agreements with third-party manufacturers or suppliers, reliance on third-party manufacturers entails additional risks, including:

the possible breach of the manufacturing or supply agreement by the third party;
the possible termination or nonrenewal of the agreement by the third party at a time that is costly or inconvenient for us; and
reliance on the third party for regulatory compliance, quality assurance, safety and pharmacovigilance and related reporting.

Third-party manufacturers may not be able to comply with cGMP regulations or similar regulatory requirements outside the United States. Our failure, or the failure of our third-party manufacturers or suppliers, to comply with applicable regulations could result in sanctions being imposed on us, including fines, injunctions, civil penalties, delays, suspension or withdrawal of approvals, license revocations, seizures or recalls of product candidates or products, operating restrictions and criminal prosecutions, any of which could significantly and adversely affect supplies of our products and harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

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Our product candidates may compete with other product candidates and products for access to manufacturing facilities and other supplies. There are a limited number of manufacturers that operate under cGMP regulations and that might be capable of manufacturing for us. Also, prior to the approval of our product candidates, we would need to identify a contract manufacturer that could produce our products at a commercial scale and that could successfully complete FDA pre-approval inspection and inspections by other health authorities. Agreements with such manufacturers or suppliers may not be available to us at the time we would need to have that capability and capacity.

Any performance failure on the part of our existing or future manufacturers or suppliers, or any decision by a manufacturer or supplier to remove its products from the market or restrict access to its products, could delay clinical development or marketing approval. Although we believe that there are several potential alternative manufacturers who could replace our contract manufacturers, we may incur added costs and delays in identifying and qualifying any such replacement.

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

We have and may enter into collaborations with third parties for the research, development and commercialization of our product candidates. If any such collaborations are not successful, we may not be able to capitalize on the market potential of those product candidates.

We have and may seek third-party collaborators for the research, development and commercialization of certain our product candidates. If we enter into any such arrangements with any third parties in the future, we will likely have limited control over the amount and timing of resources that our collaborators dedicate to the development or commercialization our product candidates. Our ability to generate revenues from these arrangements will depend on our collaborators’ abilities to successfully perform the functions assigned to them in these arrangements. We cannot predict the success of collaborations that we have entered into or may enter into in the future.

Collaborations involving our current or future product candidates or research programs pose numerous risks to us, including the following:

Collaborators have significant discretion in determining the efforts and resources that they will apply to these collaborations.
Collaborators may not pursue development and commercialization of our product candidates or may elect not to continue or renew development or commercialization programs based on clinical trial results, changes in the collaborator’s strategic focus or available funding or external factors such as an acquisition that diverts resources or creates competing priorities.
Collaborators may delay clinical trials, provide insufficient funding for a clinical trial program, stop a clinical trial or abandon a product candidate, repeat or conduct new clinical trials or require a new formulation of a product candidate for clinical testing.
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.
Collaborators with marketing and distribution rights to one or more products may not commit sufficient resources to the marketing and distribution of such products.
Collaborators may not properly obtain, maintain, enforce or defend our intellectual property or proprietary rights or may use our proprietary information in such a way as to invite litigation that could jeopardize or invalidate our proprietary information or expose us to potential litigation.
Disputes may arise between the collaborators and us that result in the delay or termination of the research, development or commercialization of our products or product candidates or that result in costly litigation or arbitration that diverts management attention and resources.
We may lose certain valuable rights under circumstances identified in our collaborations, including if we undergo a change of control.

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Collaborations may be terminated and, if terminated, may result in a need for additional capital to pursue further development or commercialization of the applicable product candidates.
Collaboration agreements may not lead to development or commercialization of product candidates in the most efficient manner or at all. If a present or future collaborator of ours were to be involved in a business combination, the continued pursuit and emphasis on our product development or commercialization program under such collaboration could be delayed, diminished or terminated.

If our collaborations do not result in the successful development and commercialization of product candidates, or if one of our collaborators terminates its agreement with us, we may not receive any future research funding or milestone or royalty payments under the collaboration. If we do not receive the funding we expect under these agreements, our development of product candidates could be delayed, and we may need additional resources to develop product candidates. In addition, if one of our collaborators terminates its agreement with us, we may find it more difficult to find a suitable replacement collaborator or attract new collaborators, and our development programs may be delayed or the perception of us in the business and financial communities could be adversely affected. All of the risks relating to product development, regulatory approval and commercialization described in this “Risk Factors” section apply to the activities of our collaborators.

These relationships, or those like them, may require us to incur non-recurring and other charges, increase our near- and long-term expenditures, issue securities that dilute our existing stockholders, or disrupt our management and business. In addition, we could face significant competition in seeking appropriate collaborators, and the negotiation process is time-consuming and complex. Our ability to reach a definitive collaboration agreement 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 several factors. If we license rights to our product candidates, we may not be able to realize the benefit of such transactions if we are unable to successfully integrate them with our existing operations and company culture.

If we are not able to establish collaborations on commercially reasonable terms, we may have to alter our development and commercialization plans.

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

We would 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, the EMA 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 technology, which can exist if there is a challenge to such ownership without regard to the merits of the challenge, and industry and market conditions generally. The collaborator may also consider alternative product candidates or technologies for similar indications that may be available to collaborate on and whether such a collaboration could be more attractive than the one with us.

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 collaborations on a timely basis, on acceptable terms, 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 develop product candidates or bring them to market and generate product revenue.

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Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property

We are highly dependent on intellectual property licensed from third parties and termination of these licenses could result in the loss of significant rights, which would harm our business.

In June 2025, we entered into a license agreement with RemeGen granting us an exclusive (even as to RemeGen) license under RemeGen’s patents and know-how to exploit, develop and commercialize telitacicept in all territories other than Greater China, with the right to grant sublicenses, and a non-exclusive license to manufacture the telitacicept worldwide for use in the licensed territory.

We are dependent on the patents, know-how and proprietary technology licensed from RemeGen for the development and, if approved, commercialization of telitacicept. Any termination of this license, or a finding that such intellectual property lacks legal effect, could result in the loss of significant rights and could harm our ability to commercialize our product candidate.

The RemeGen license agreement imposes certain obligations on us, and non-compliance with such obligations may result in termination of the license agreement or in legal and financial consequences. If RemeGen terminates the license agreement, we may not be able to develop, commercialize or sell our product candidate covered by the agreement. Such an occurrence could materially adversely affect the value of the product candidate being developed under the agreement or using rights granted under such agreement. Termination of our license agreement or reduction or elimination of our rights thereunder may result in our having to negotiate a new or reinstated agreement, which may not be available to us on equally favorable terms, or at all, which may mean we are unable to develop, commercialize or sell the affected product candidate or may cause us to lose our rights under the agreement.

In addition, our licensors may make decisions in prosecuting, maintaining, enforcing and defending any licensed intellectual property rights, for example, any licensed patents or patent applications, that may not be in our best interest. Moreover, if our licensors take any action with respect to any licensed intellectual property rights, for example, any licensed patents or patent applications, that results in a successful challenge to the licensed intellectual property by a third party, such patents may be invalidated or held to be unenforceable, and we may lose our rights under such patents, which could materially harm our business.

Further, license agreements under which we license intellectual property from third parties are complex, and certain provisions in such agreements may be susceptible to multiple interpretations. Accordingly, disputes may arise between us and our licensors regarding intellectual property subject to a license agreement, including those relating to:

the scope of rights, if any, granted under the license agreement and other interpretation-related issues;
whether and the extent to which our technology and processes infringe on intellectual property of the licensor that is not subject to the license agreement;
whether our licensor or its licensor had the right to grant the license agreement;
whether third parties are entitled to compensation or equitable relief, such as an injunction, for our use of the intellectual property without their authorization;
our right to sublicense patent and other rights to third parties under collaborative development relationships;
whether we are complying with our obligations with respect to the use of the licensed technology in relation to our development and commercialization of product candidates;
our involvement in the prosecution and enforcement of the licensed patents and our licensors’ overall patent prosecution and enforcement strategy;
the allocation of ownership of inventions and know-how resulting from the joint creation or use of intellectual property by our licensors and by us and any future partners or collaborators; and
the amounts of royalties, milestones or other payments due under the license agreement.

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.

If disputes over intellectual property that we have licensed prevent or impair our ability to maintain our current licensing arrangements on acceptable terms, or are insufficient to provide us the necessary rights to use the intellectual property, we may be unable to successfully develop and commercialize the affected product candidates.

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If we or any of our licensors fail to adequately protect this intellectual property, our ability to commercialize our products could suffer. Any disputes with our licensors or any termination of the licenses on which we depend could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Our commercial success depends on our ability to obtain, maintain and protect our intellectual property and proprietary technology.

Our commercial success depends in large part on our ability to obtain, maintain and protect intellectual property rights through patents, trademarks and trade secrets in the United States and other countries with respect to our proprietary product candidates. If we do not adequately protect our intellectual property rights, competitors may be able to erode, negate or preempt any competitive advantage we may have, which could harm our business and ability to achieve profitability.

To protect our proprietary position, we own and have in-licensed certain intellectual property rights, including certain issued patents and patent applications, and have filed and may file provisional and non-provisional patent applications in the United States or abroad related to our product candidates that are important to our business. Provisional patent applications are not eligible to become issued patents until, among other things, we file a non-provisional patent application within 12 months of the filing of one or more of our related provisional patent applications. If we do not timely file non-provisional patent applications, we may lose our priority date with respect to our provisional patent applications and any patent protection on the inventions disclosed in our provisional patent applications. While we intend to timely file non-provisional patent applications relating to our provisional patent applications, we cannot predict whether any such patent applications will result in the issuance of patents that provide us with any competitive advantage. Moreover, the patent application and approval process is expensive and time-consuming. We may not be able to file and prosecute all necessary or desirable patent applications at a reasonable cost or in a timely manner.

The patent application, prosecution and enforcement processes are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, and there can be no assurance that we, our licensors, or any of our current or future collaborators will be successful in protecting our product candidates by obtaining, defending and/or asserting patent rights. These risks and uncertainties include the following:

the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (the “USPTO”) and various foreign governmental patent agencies require compliance with a number of procedural, documentary, fee payment and other provisions during the patent process. There are situations in which noncompliance can result in abandonment or lapse of a patent or patent application, resulting in partial or complete loss of patent rights in the relevant jurisdiction. In such an event, competitors might be able to enter the market earlier than would otherwise have been the case;
patent applications may not result in any patents being issued;
patents that may be issued or in-licensed may be challenged, invalidated, modified, revoked, circumvented, found to be unenforceable or otherwise may not provide any competitive advantage;
our competitors, many of whom have substantially greater resources and many of whom have made significant investments in competing technologies, may seek or may have already obtained patents that will limit, interfere with or eliminate our ability to make, use, and sell our potential product candidates;
there may be significant pressure on the U.S. government and international governmental bodies to limit the scope of patent protection both inside and outside the United States for disease treatments that prove successful, as a matter of public policy regarding worldwide health concerns; and
countries other than the United States may have patent laws less favorable to patentees than those upheld by U.S. courts, allowing foreign competitors a better opportunity to create, develop and market competing product candidates.

In some instances, agreements through which we license intellectual property rights may not give us control over patent prosecution or maintenance, so that we may not be able to control which claims or arguments are presented, how claims are amended, and may not be able to secure, maintain, or successfully enforce necessary or desirable patent protection from those patent rights. While we have the first right to prosecute patents and patent applications we license under our license agreement with RemeGen in the licensed territory, RemeGen retains the right to prosecute these patents and patent applications in the remaining territory, and therefore we cannot guarantee that these patents and applications will be prosecuted or maintained in a manner consistent with the best interests of our business. We cannot be certain that patent prosecution and maintenance activities by our licensors have been or will be conducted in compliance with applicable laws and regulations or will result in valid and enforceable patents.

Moreover, some of our in-licensed patents and patent applications may be, and some of our future owned and licensed patents may be, co-owned with third parties. If we are unable to obtain an exclusive license to any such third-party co-owners’ interest in such patents or patent applications, such co-owners may be able to license their rights to other third parties, including our competitors, and our competitors could market competing products and technology.

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In addition, we may need the cooperation of any such co-owners of our patents in order to enforce such patents against third parties, and such cooperation may not be provided to us.

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

Our owned and licensed patents and pending patent applications, if issued, may not provide us with any meaningful protection or may not prevent competitors from designing around our patent claims to circumvent our patents by developing similar or alternative technologies or therapeutics in a non-infringing manner. For example, a third party may develop a competitive product that provides benefits similar to one or more of our product candidates but falls outside the scope of our patent protection or license rights. If the patent protection provided by the patents and patent applications we hold or pursue with respect to our product candidates is not sufficiently broad to impede such competition, our ability to successfully commercialize our product candidates could be negatively affected, which would harm our business. Currently, a significant portion of our patents and patent applications are in-licensed, though similar risks would apply to any patents or patent applications that we now own or may own or in-license in the future.

It is possible that defects of form in the preparation or filing of our patents or patent applications may exist, or may arise in the future, for example with respect to proper priority claims, inventorship, claim scope, or requests for patent term adjustments. If we or our partners, collaborators, licensees, or licensors, whether current or future, fail to establish, maintain or protect such patents and other intellectual property rights, such rights may be reduced or eliminated. If our partners, collaborators, licensees, or licensors, are not fully cooperative or disagree with us as to the prosecution, maintenance or enforcement of any patent rights, such patent rights could be compromised. If there are material defects in the form, preparation, prosecution, or enforcement of our patents or patent applications, such patents may be invalid and/or unenforceable, and such applications may never result in valid, enforceable patents. Any of these outcomes could impair our ability to prevent competition from third parties, which may have an adverse impact on our business.

In addition, the determination of patent rights with respect to clinical compositions of matter and treatment methods commonly involves complex legal and factual questions, which are dependent upon the current legal and intellectual property context, extant legal precedent and interpretations of the law by individuals. As a result, the issuance, scope, validity, enforceability and commercial value of our patent rights are characterized by uncertainty.

Changes in either the patent laws or interpretation of the patent laws in the United States and other countries may diminish the value of our patents or narrow the scope of our patent protection. In addition, the laws of foreign countries may not protect our rights to the same extent or in the same manner as the laws of the United States. For example, patent laws in various jurisdictions, including significant commercial markets such as Europe, restrict the patentability of methods of treatment of the human body more than U.S. law does. If these changes were to occur, they could have a material adverse effect on our ability to generate revenue.

Pending patent applications cannot be enforced against third parties practicing the technology claimed in such applications unless and until a patent issues from such applications. Assuming the other requirements for patentability are met, currently, the first party to file a patent application is generally entitled to the patent. However, prior to March 16, 2013, in the United States the first party to invent was entitled to the patent. Publications of discoveries in the scientific literature often lag behind the actual discoveries, and patent applications in the United States and other jurisdictions are not published until 18 months after filing, or in some cases not at all. Therefore, we cannot be certain that we were the first to make the inventions claimed in our patents or pending patent applications, or that we were the first to file for patent protection of such inventions. Similarly, we cannot be certain that parties from whom we do or may license or purchase patent rights were the first to make relevant claimed inventions, or were the first to file for patent protection for them. If third parties have filed prior patent applications on inventions claimed in our patents or applications that were filed on or before March 15, 2013, an interference proceeding in the United States can be initiated by such third parties to determine who was the first to invent any of the subject matter covered by the patent claims of our applications. If third parties have filed such prior applications after March 15, 2013, a derivation proceeding in the United States can be initiated by such third parties to determine whether our invention was derived from theirs.

Moreover, because the issuance of a patent is not conclusive as to its inventorship, scope, validity or enforceability, our owned and licensed patents or pending patent applications may be challenged in the courts or patent offices in the United States and abroad. There is no assurance that all of the potentially relevant prior art relating to our patents and patent applications has been found. If such prior art exists, it may be used to invalidate a patent, or may prevent a patent from issuing from a pending patent application. For example, such patent filings may be subject to a third-party submission of prior art to the USPTO, or to other patent offices around the world. Alternately or additionally, we may become involved in post-grant review procedures, oppositions, derivation proceedings, ex parte reexaminations, inter partes review, supplemental examinations, or interference proceedings or challenges in district court, in the United States or in various foreign patent offices, including both national and regional, challenging patents or patent applications in which we have rights, including patents on which we rely to protect our business.

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An adverse determination in any such challenges may result in loss of the patent or in patent claims being narrowed, invalidated or held unenforceable, in whole or in part, or in denial of the patent application or loss or reduction in the scope of one or more claims of the patent application, any of which could limit our ability to stop others from using or commercializing similar or identical technology and products, or limit the duration of the patent protection of our technology and products. In addition, 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 candidates are commercialized.

Issued patents that we have or may obtain or license may not provide us with any meaningful protection, prevent competitors from competing with us or otherwise provide us with any competitive advantage. Our competitors may be able to circumvent our patents by developing similar or alternative technologies or products in a non-infringing manner. Our competitors may also seek approval to market their own products similar to or otherwise competitive with our products. Alternatively, our competitors may seek to market generic versions of any approved products, for example, by submitting a Section 351(k) Biologics License Application (”BLA”) to the FDA, or pursue similar strategies in the United States or other jurisdictions, in which they claim that patents owned or licensed by us are invalid, unenforceable or not infringed. In these circumstances, we may need to defend or assert our patents, or both, including by filing lawsuits alleging patent infringement. In any of these types of proceedings, a court or other agency with jurisdiction may find our patents invalid or unenforceable, or that our competitors are competing in a non-infringing manner. Thus, even if we have valid and enforceable patents, these patents still may not provide protection against competing products or processes sufficient to achieve our business objectives. Any of the foregoing could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Other parties have developed or may develop technologies that may be related to or competitive with our approach, and may have filed or may file patent applications and may have been issued or may be issued patents with claims that overlap or conflict with our patent applications, either by claiming the same materials, formulations or methods, or by claiming subject matter that could dominate our patent position. In addition, certain parts or all of the patent portfolios licensed to us are, or may be, licensed to third parties and such third parties may have or may obtain certain enforcement rights. If the scope of the patent protection we or our licensors obtain is not sufficiently broad, we may not be able to prevent others from developing and commercializing technology and products similar or identical to ours. The degree of patent protection we require to successfully compete in the marketplace 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 licensed patents have, or that any of our pending owned or licensed patent applications that mature into issued patents will include, claims with a scope sufficient to protect our product candidates or otherwise provide any competitive advantage, nor can we provide any assurance that our licenses will remain in force.

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

In addition to the protection afforded by patents, we rely upon trade secret protection, know-how and continuing technological innovation to develop and maintain our competitive position. We seek to protect our proprietary technology and processes, in part, by entering into confidentiality agreements with our contractors, collaborators, scientific advisors, employees and consultants and invention assignment agreements with our consultants and employees. However, we may not obtain these agreements in all circumstances, and individuals with whom we have these agreements may not comply with their terms. The assignment of intellectual property rights under these agreements 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. In addition, we may not be able to prevent the unauthorized disclosure or use of our technical know-how or other trade secrets by the parties to these agreements despite the existence of confidentiality agreements and other contractual restrictions. Monitoring unauthorized uses and disclosures is difficult and we do not know whether the steps we have taken to protect our proprietary technologies will be effective. If any of the contractors, collaborators, scientific advisors, employees and consultants who are parties to these agreements breaches or violates the terms of any of these agreements, we may not have adequate remedies for any such breach or violation. As a result, we could lose our trade secrets. Enforcing a claim against a third party that illegally obtained and is using our trade secrets, like patent litigation, is expensive and time-consuming and the outcome is unpredictable. In addition, courts outside the United States are sometimes less willing or unwilling to protect trade secrets. Any of the foregoing could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

Moreover, our trade secrets could otherwise become known or be independently discovered by our competitors or other third parties. Competitors and other third parties could attempt to replicate some or all of the competitive advantages we derive from our development efforts, willfully infringe our intellectual property rights, design around our protected technology or develop their own competitive technologies that fall outside of our intellectual property rights. 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, or those to whom they communicate it, from using that technology or information to compete with us. If our trade secrets are not adequately protected or sufficient to provide an advantage over our competitors, our competitive position could be adversely affected, as could our business.

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Additionally, if the steps taken to maintain our trade secrets are deemed inadequate, we may have insufficient recourse against third parties for misappropriating our trade secrets.

We may not be successful in acquiring or in-licensing necessary rights to key technologies underlying our product candidates.

We currently have rights to intellectual property, through licenses from third parties, to develop our product candidates, and we expect to seek to expand our intellectual property footprint related to our product candidate pipeline in part by in-licensing the rights to key technologies. The future growth of our business will depend in part on our ability to in-license or otherwise acquire the rights to develop additional product candidates and technologies. Although we have succeeded in licensing technologies from third party licensors, including RemeGen, in the past, we can give no assurance that we will be able to in-license or acquire the rights to other technologies relevant to our product candidates from third parties on acceptable terms or at all.

In order to market our product candidates, we may find it necessary or prudent to obtain licenses from such third party intellectual property holders. However, it may be unclear who owns the rights to intellectual property we wish to obtain, or we may be unable to secure such licenses or otherwise acquire or in-license intellectual property rights from third parties that we identify as necessary for our product candidates and technology we employ. We currently conduct our clinical trials under 35 U.S.C. § 271(e)(1), which provides a safe harbor from patent infringement for uses of patented technology reasonably related to the development and submission of information under a federal law which regulates the manufacture, use, or sale of drugs.

The licensing or acquisition of third party intellectual property rights is a highly competitive area, and other companies may pursue strategies to license or acquire third party intellectual property rights that we may consider attractive or necessary. Such companies may have a competitive advantage over us, e.g., due to their size, capital resources and greater clinical development and commercialization capabilities. In addition, companies that perceive us to be a competitor may be unwilling to assign or license rights to us. We also may be unable to license or acquire third party intellectual property rights on terms that would allow us to make an appropriate return on our investment or at all. If we are unable to successfully obtain rights to required third party intellectual property rights or maintain the existing intellectual property rights we have, we may have to abandon development of the relevant program or product candidate, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Even if we were able to obtain such a license, it could be non-exclusive, thereby giving our competitors and other third parties access to the same technologies licensed to us, and it could require us to make substantial licensing and royalty payments. If we are unable to obtain a necessary license to a third-party patent on commercially reasonable terms, we may be unable to commercialize our product candidates or such commercialization efforts may be significantly delayed, which could in turn significantly harm our business.

Third-party claims of intellectual property infringement, misappropriation or other violations may prevent or delay our product discovery and development efforts and have a material adverse effect on our business.

Our commercial success depends in part on our avoiding infringement, misappropriation and other violations of the patents and proprietary 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 interference and reexamination proceedings before the USPTO or oppositions and other comparable proceedings in foreign jurisdictions. Recently, under U.S. patent reform, new procedures including inter partes review and post grant review have been implemented. This reform will bring uncertainty to the possibility of challenge to our patents in the future. 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 product candidates, and third parties may allege they have patent rights encompassing our product candidates, technologies or methods. Third parties may assert that we are employing their proprietary technology without authorization and may file patent infringement claims or lawsuits against us, and if we are found to infringe such third-party patents, we may be required to pay damages, cease commercialization of the infringing technology or obtain a license from such third parties, which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all.

There may also be third-party patents of which we are currently unaware with patent rights to materials, formulations, methods of manufacture or methods of treatment related to the use or manufacture of our product candidates. Because patent applications can take many years to issue, there may be currently pending patent applications which may later result in issued patents that our product candidates may infringe. In addition, third parties may obtain patents in the future and claim that use of our technologies infringes upon these patents. Further, we or our licensors may fail to identify even those relevant third-party patents that have issued or may incorrectly interpret the relevance, scope or expiration of such patents. 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 scope of a patent or a pending application may be incorrect. If any third-party patents were held by a court of competent jurisdiction to cover the manufacturing process of our product candidates, materials 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.

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Similarly, if any third-party patent were held by a court of competent jurisdiction to cover aspects of our materials, formulations or methods, including without limitation, 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.

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 product candidates. Defense of these claims, regardless of their merit, would involve substantial litigation expense and would involve a substantial diversion of employee resources from our business. We may not have sufficient resources to bring these actions to a successful conclusion, which may result in significant cost and may impede our inability to pursue any affected products or product candidates. There could also be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim proceedings or developments. If securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a material adverse effect on the price of shares of our common stock.

In the event of a successful claim of infringement against us, we may have to pay substantial damages, including treble damages and attorneys’ fees for willful infringement, 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 expenditure.

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

Periodic maintenance fees on any issued patent are due to be paid to the USPTO and foreign patent agencies in several stages over the lifetime of the patent. The USPTO and various foreign governmental patent agencies require compliance with a number of procedural, documentary, fee payment and other similar provisions during the patent application process. While an inadvertent lapse can in many cases be cured by payment of a late fee or by other means in accordance with the applicable rules, there are situations in which 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 or patent application 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 earlier than would otherwise have been the case, which would have a material adverse effect on our business.

Some intellectual property that we have in-licensed may have been discovered through government funded programs and thus may be subject to federal regulations such as “march-in” rights, certain reporting requirements and a preference for U.S.-based companies. Compliance with such regulations may limit our exclusive rights and limit our ability to contract with non-U.S. manufacturers.

Any of the intellectual property rights that we have licensed or we may license in the future and that have been generated through the use of U.S. government funding are subject to certain federal regulations. As a result, the U.S. government may have certain rights to intellectual property embodied in our current or future product candidates pursuant to the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 (the “Bayh-Dole Act”). These U.S. government rights in certain inventions developed under a government-funded program include a non-exclusive, non-transferable, irrevocable worldwide license to use inventions for any governmental purpose. In addition, the U.S. government has the right to require us to grant exclusive, partially exclusive, or non-exclusive licenses to any such intellectual property rights to a third party if it determines that: (i) adequate steps have not been taken to commercialize the invention; (ii) government action is necessary to meet public health or safety needs; or (iii) government action is necessary to meet requirements for public use under federal regulations (also referred to as “march-in rights”). The U.S. government also has the right to take title to such intellectual property rights if we, or the applicable licensor, fail to disclose the invention to the government and fail to file an application to register the intellectual property within specified time limits. Intellectual property generated under a government funded program is also subject to certain reporting requirements, compliance with which may require us or the applicable licensor to expend substantial resources. We cannot be certain that our current or future licensors will comply with the disclosure or reporting requirements of the Bayh-Dole Act at all times, or be able to rectify any lapse in compliance with these requirements.

In addition, the U.S. government requires that any products embodying the subject invention or produced through the use of the subject invention be manufactured substantially in the United States. The manufacturing preference requirement can be waived if the owner of the intellectual property can show that reasonable but unsuccessful efforts have been made to grant licenses on similar terms to potential licensees that would be likely to manufacture substantially in the United States or that under the circumstances domestic manufacture is not commercially feasible. This preference for U.S. manufacturers may limit our ability to contract with non-U.S.

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product manufacturers for products covered by such intellectual property. To the extent any of our current or future intellectual property is generated through the use of U.S. government funding, the provisions of the Bayh-Dole Act may similarly apply.

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

Competitors may infringe our patents, trademarks, copyrights or other intellectual property. To counter infringement or unauthorized use, we may be required to file infringement claims, which can be expensive and time-consuming and divert the time and attention of our management and scientific personnel. Any claims we assert against perceived infringers could provoke these parties to assert counterclaims against us alleging that we infringe their patents, in addition to counterclaims asserting that our patents are invalid or unenforceable, or both. In any patent infringement proceeding, there is a risk that a court will decide that a patent of ours is invalid or unenforceable, in whole or in part, and that we do not have the right to stop the other party from using the invention at issue. There is also a risk that, even if the validity of such patents is upheld, the court will construe the patent’s claims narrowly or decide that we do not have the right to stop the other party from using the invention at issue on the grounds that our patent claims do not cover the invention. An adverse outcome in a litigation or proceeding involving our patents could limit our ability to assert our patents against those parties or other competitors, and may curtail or preclude our ability to exclude third parties from making and selling similar or competitive products. Any of these occurrences could adversely affect our competitive business position, business prospects and financial condition. Similarly, if we assert trademark infringement claims, a court may determine that the marks we have asserted are invalid or unenforceable, or that the party against whom we have asserted trademark infringement has superior rights to the marks in question. In this case, we could ultimately be forced to cease use of such trademarks.

Even if we establish infringement, the court may decide not to grant an injunction against further infringing activity and instead award only monetary damages, which may or may not be an adequate remedy. 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 litigation. There could also be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim proceedings or developments. If securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a material adverse effect on the price of shares of our common stock. Moreover, there can be no assurance that we will have sufficient financial or other resources to file and pursue such infringement claims, which typically last for years before they are concluded. Even if we ultimately prevail in such claims, the monetary cost of such litigation and the diversion of the attention of our management and scientific personnel could outweigh any benefit we receive as a result of the proceedings. Any of the foregoing may have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Changes to patent law in the United States and other jurisdictions could diminish the value of patents in general, thereby impairing our ability to protect our 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 involves both technological and legal complexity, and is therefore costly, time-consuming and inherently uncertain. In addition, the United States has recently enacted and is currently implementing wide-ranging patent reform legislation. Recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings have narrowed the scope of patent protection available in certain circumstances and weakened the rights of patent owners in certain situations. In addition to increasing uncertainty with regard to our ability to obtain patents in the future, this combination of events has created uncertainty with respect to the value of patents, once obtained. Depending on decisions by the Congress, the federal courts, and the USPTO, the laws and regulations governing patents could change in unpredictable ways that would weaken our ability to obtain new patents or to enforce our existing patents and patents that we might obtain in the future. For example, in the case, Assoc. for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., the Supreme Court held that certain claims to DNA molecules are not patentable. In addition, the case Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi affects the way antibody claims are examined and litigated. While we do not believe that any of the patents owned or licensed by us will be found invalid based on these decisions, we cannot predict how future decisions by the courts, the Congress or the USPTO may impact the value of our patents.

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

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

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These drugs may compete with our product candidates and our patents or other intellectual property rights may not be effective or sufficient to prevent them from competing.

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

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

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

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

If we do not obtain patent term extension and data exclusivity for patents related to any of our product candidates, our business may be materially harmed.

Depending upon the timing, duration and conditions of any FDA marketing approval of our product candidates, one or more of our U.S. patents may be eligible for limited patent term extension under the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, referred to as the Hatch-Waxman Amendments, and similar legislation in the European Union. The Hatch-Waxman Amendments permit a patent term extension of up to five years for a patent covering an approved product as compensation for effective patent term lost during product development and the FDA regulatory review process. However, we may not receive an extension if we fail to exercise due diligence during the testing phase or regulatory review process, fail to apply within applicable deadlines, fail to apply prior to expiration of relevant patents or otherwise fail to satisfy applicable requirements. Moreover, the length of the extension could be less than we request. Only one patent per approved product can be extended, the extension cannot extend the total patent term beyond 14 years from approval and only those claims covering the approved drug, a method for using it or a method for manufacturing it may be extended. If we are unable to obtain patent term extension or the term of any such extension is less than we request, the period during which we can enforce our patent rights for the applicable product candidate will be shortened and our competitors may obtain approval to market competing products sooner. As a result, our revenue from applicable products could be reduced. Further, if this occurs, our competitors may take advantage of our investment in development and trials by referencing our clinical and preclinical data and launch their product earlier than might otherwise be the case, and our competitive position, business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects could be materially harmed.

Third parties may assert that our employees or consultants have wrongfully used or disclosed confidential information or misappropriated trade secrets.

We employ individuals who were previously employed at universities or other biopharmaceutical companies, including our competitors or potential competitors. Although we try to ensure that our employees and consultants do not use the proprietary information or know-how of others in their work for us, we may be subject to claims that we or our employees, consultants or independent contractors have inadvertently or otherwise used or disclosed intellectual property, including trade secrets or other proprietary information, of a former employer or other third parties. We may also be subject to claims that patents and applications that we may file to protect inventions of our employees or consultants are rightfully owned by their former employers or other third parties. Litigation may be necessary to defend against these claims. If we fail in defending any such claims, in addition to paying monetary damages, we may lose valuable intellectual property rights or personnel.

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Even if we are successful in defending against such claims, litigation could result in substantial costs and be a distraction to management and other employees. Any of the foregoing would harm our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

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

Our registered or unregistered trademarks or trade names may be challenged, infringed, circumvented or declared generic or determined to be infringing on other marks. We may not be able to protect our rights to these trademarks and trade names, which we need to build name recognition among potential partners or customers in our markets of interest. At times, competitors or other third parties may adopt trade names or trademarks similar to ours, thereby impeding our ability to build brand identity and possibly leading to market confusion. In addition, there could be potential trade name or trademark infringement claims brought by owners of other registered trademarks or trademarks that incorporate variations of our registered or unregistered trademarks or trade names. Over the long term, if we are unable to establish name recognition based on our trademarks and trade names, then we may not be able to compete effectively and our business may be adversely affected. Our efforts to enforce or protect our proprietary rights related to trademarks, trade secrets, domain names, copyrights or other intellectual property may be ineffective and could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources and could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and growth prospects.

Intellectual property rights do not necessarily address all potential threats.

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

Our product candidates may eventually become available in generic or biosimilar product forms;
others may be able to make products that are similar to our product candidates or utilize similar technology but that are not covered by the claims of the patents that we license or own;
we, or our current or future licensors might not have been the first to make the inventions covered by the issued patent or pending patent application that we license or own;
we, or our current or future licensors might not have been the first to file patent applications covering certain of our or their inventions;
we, or our license partners or current or future collaborators, may fail to meet our obligations to the U.S. government regarding any in-licensed patents and patent applications funded by U.S. government grants, leading to the loss or unenforceability of patent rights;
others may independently develop similar or alternative technologies or duplicate any of our technologies without infringing our owned or licensed intellectual property rights;
it is possible that our pending, owned or licensed patent applications or those that we may own in the future will not lead to issued patents;
it is possible that there are prior public disclosures that could invalidate our owned or in-licensed patents, or parts of our owned or in-licensed patents;
it is possible that there are unpublished applications or patent applications maintained in secrecy that may later issue with claims covering our product candidates or technology similar to ours;
it is possible that our owned or in-licensed patents or patent applications omit individual(s) that should be listed as inventor(s) or include individual(s) that should not be listed as inventor(s), which may cause these patents or patents issuing from these patent applications to be held invalid or unenforceable;
it is possible that our pending owned or licensed patent applications or those that we may own or license in the future will not lead to issued patents;
issued patents that we hold rights to may be held invalid or unenforceable, including as a result of legal challenges by our competitors;
the claims of our owned or in-licensed issued patents or patent applications, if and when issued, may not cover our product candidates; the laws of foreign countries may not protect our proprietary rights or the proprietary rights of license partners or current or future collaborators to the same extent as the laws of the United States;

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the inventors of our owned or in-licensed patents or patent applications may become involved with competitors, develop products or processes that design around our patents or become hostile to us or the patents or patent applications on which they are named as inventors;
our competitors might conduct research and development activities in countries where we do not have patent rights and then use the information learned from such activities to develop competitive products for sale in our major commercial markets;
we have engaged in scientific collaborations in the past and will continue to do so in the future and our collaborators may develop adjacent or competing products that are outside the scope of our patents;
we may not develop additional proprietary technologies that are patentable;
any product candidates we develop may be covered by third parties’ patents or other exclusive rights;
the patents of others may harm our business; and
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 intellectual property.

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

Risks Related to Regulatory and Other Legal Compliance Matters

Failure to obtain marketing approval in foreign jurisdictions would prevent product candidates from being marketed in such jurisdictions, which, in turn, would materially impair our ability to generate revenue.

In order to market and sell product candidates in the European Union and other foreign jurisdictions, we or our third-party collaborators must obtain separate marketing approvals (a single one for the European Union) and comply with numerous and varying regulatory requirements. The approval procedure varies among countries and can involve additional testing. The time required to obtain approval may differ substantially from that required to obtain FDA approval. The regulatory approval process outside the United States generally includes all of the risks associated with obtaining FDA approval. In addition, in many countries outside the United States, it is required that the product candidate be approved for reimbursement before the product candidate can be approved for sale in that country. We or these third parties may not obtain approvals from regulatory authorities outside the United States on a timely basis, if at all. Approval by the FDA does not ensure approval by regulatory authorities in other countries or jurisdictions, and approval by one regulatory authority outside the United States does not ensure approval by regulatory authorities in other countries or jurisdictions or by the FDA. We may not be able to file for marketing approvals and may not receive necessary approvals to commercialize our products in any jurisdiction, which would materially impair our ability to generate revenue.

Even if we, or any collaborators we may have, obtain marketing approvals for our product candidates, the terms of approvals and ongoing regulation of our product candidates could require the substantial expenditure of resources and may limit how we, or they, manufacture and market our product candidates, which could materially impair our ability to generate revenue.

Any product candidate for which we obtain marketing approval, along with the manufacturing processes, post-approval clinical data, labeling, advertising and promotional activities for such product, will be subject to continual requirements of and review by the FDA, EMA, the Competent Authorities of the Member States of the European Union and other regulatory authorities. These requirements include submissions of safety and other post-marketing information and reports, facility registration and drug listing requirements, cGMP requirements relating to quality control, quality assurance and corresponding maintenance of records and documents, and requirements regarding the distribution of samples to physicians and recordkeeping. Even if marketing approval of a product candidate is granted, the approval may be subject to limitations on the indicated uses for which the product may be marketed or to the conditions of approval, or contain requirements for costly post-marketing testing and surveillance to monitor the safety or efficacy of the product. The FDA and other regulatory authorities may restrict the use of our products to certain specialists and/or institutions and require formal reporting and approval of a REMS program. Such restrictions or requirements could deter use of our products by certain individuals or institutions.

Accordingly, assuming we, or any of our collaborators, receive marketing approval for one or more product candidates, we, such collaborators and our and their contract manufacturers will continue to expend time, money, and effort in all areas of regulatory compliance, including manufacturing, production, product surveillance and quality control. If we and such collaborators are not able to comply with post-approval regulatory requirements, we and such collaborators could have the marketing approvals for our products withdrawn by regulatory authorities and our, or such collaborators’, ability to market any future products could be limited, which could adversely affect our ability to achieve or sustain profitability.

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Further, the cost of compliance with post-approval regulations may have a negative effect on our business, operating results, financial condition and prospects.

Even if we receive regulatory approval for any product candidate, we will be subject to ongoing obligations and continued regulatory review, which may result in significant additional expense. Additionally, our product candidates for which we obtain marketing approval could be subject to labeling and other restrictions or withdrawal from the market, and we may be subject to substantial penalties if we fail to comply with regulatory requirements or if we experience unanticipated problems with our products, when and if any of them are approved.

If the FDA or a comparable foreign regulatory authority approves any of our product candidates, the manufacturing processes, testing, safety, efficacy, labeling, packaging, distribution, import, export, adverse event reporting, storage, advertising, promotion 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, registration, as well as continued compliance with cGMPs and GCPs for any clinical trials that we conduct post-approval, all of which may result in significant expense and limit our ability to commercialize such products. In addition, any regulatory approvals that we receive for our product candidates may also be subject to limitations on the approved indicated uses for which the product may be marketed or to the conditions of approval, or contain requirements for potentially costly post-marketing testing, including Phase 4 clinical trials, and surveillance to monitor the safety and efficacy of the product candidate.

The FDA, the EMA, the Competent Authorities of the Member States of the European Union and other regulatory authorities closely regulate the post-approval marketing and promotion of products to ensure that they are marketed only for the approved indications and in accordance with the provisions of the approved labeling. The FDA, the Competent Authorities of the Member States of the European Union and other regulatory authorities impose stringent restrictions on manufacturers’ communications regarding off-label use, and if we market our products for off-label use, we may be subject to enforcement action for off-label marketing by the FDA and other federal and state enforcement agencies, including the Department of Justice. While physicians may prescribe products for off-label uses as the FDA and other U.S. regulatory agencies do not regulate a physician’s choice of drug treatment made in the physician’s independent medical judgment, they do restrict promotional communications from companies or their sales force with respect to off-label uses of products for which marketing clearance has not been issued. Companies may only share truthful and not misleading information that is otherwise consistent with a product’s FDA approved labeling. Violation of the Federal Food, Product, and Cosmetic Act and other statutes, including the False Claims Act and equivalent legislation in other countries relating to the promotion and advertising of prescription products may also lead to investigations or allegations of violations of federal and state and other countries’ health care fraud and abuse laws and state consumer protection laws. Even if it is later determined we were not in violation of these laws, we may be faced with negative publicity, incur significant expenses defending our actions and have to divert significant management resources from other matters.

In addition, later discovery of previously unknown problems with our products, manufacturers or manufacturing processes, or failure to comply with regulatory requirements, may yield various negative consequences, including:

restrictions on such products, manufacturers or manufacturing processes;
restrictions on the labeling or marketing of a product;
restrictions on the distribution or use of a product;
requirements to conduct post-marketing clinical trials;
receipt of warning or untitled letters;
withdrawal of the products from the market;
refusal to approve pending applications or supplements to approved applications that we submit;
recall of products;
fines, restitution or disgorgement of profits or revenue;
restrictions on future procurements with governmental authorities;
suspension or withdrawal of marketing approvals;
suspension of any ongoing clinical trials;
refusal to permit the import or export of our products; injunctions or the imposition of civil or criminal penalties.

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product seizure; and

Any government investigation of alleged violations of law could require us to expend significant time and resources in response and could generate negative publicity. The occurrence of any event or penalty described above may inhibit our ability to commercialize any of our product candidates, if approved, and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Moreover, the policies of the FDA and of comparable foreign regulatory authorities may change and additional government regulations may be enacted that could prevent, limit or delay regulatory approval of our product candidates. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo overturned the longstanding Chevron doctrine, under which courts were required to give deference to regulatory agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous federal statutes. The Loper decision could result in additional legal challenges to regulations and decisions issued by federal agencies, including the FDA, on which we rely. Any such legal challenges, if successful, could have a material impact on our business. Additionally, the Loper decision may result in increased regulatory uncertainty, inconsistent judicial interpretations, and other impacts to the agency rulemaking process, any of which could adversely impact our business and operations. We cannot predict the likelihood, nature or extent of government regulation that may arise from future legislation or administrative or executive action, either in the United States or abroad. If we are slow or unable to adapt to changes in existing requirements or the adoption of new requirements or policies, or if we are not able to maintain regulatory compliance, we may be subject to enforcement action and we may not achieve or sustain profitability.

Disruptions at the FDA and other government agencies caused by funding shortages, layoffs, shifting policy priorities or global health concerns could hinder their ability to hire, retain or deploy key leadership and other personnel, or otherwise prevent new or modified products from being developed, approved or commercialized in a timely manner or at all, 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, statutory, regulatory, and policy changes, layoffs, the FDA’s ability to hire and retain key personnel and accept the payment of user fees, and other events that may otherwise affect the FDA’s ability to perform routine functions. Average review times at the agency have fluctuated in recent years as a result. Disruptions at the FDA and other agencies may also slow the time necessary for new biologics or modifications to cleared or approved biologics to be reviewed and/or approved by necessary government agencies, which would adversely affect our business. Additionally, over the last several years, the U.S. government has shut down multiple times and certain regulatory agencies, such as the FDA and the SEC, have had to furlough critical FDA, SEC and other government employees and stop critical activities. If funding for the FDA is reduced, FDA priorities change, or a prolonged government shutdown occurs, it could significantly impact the ability of the FDA to timely review and process our regulatory submissions, which could have a material adverse effect on our business.

Our relationships with healthcare providers, including physicians, and third-party payors will be subject to applicable anti-kickback, fraud and abuse, health data privacy, transparency, anti-bribery and other healthcare laws and regulations, which could expose us to criminal sanctions, civil penalties, contractual damages, reputational harm and diminished profits and future earnings.

Healthcare providers and third-party payors play a primary role in the recommendation and prescription of any product candidates for which we obtain marketing approval. Our current and future arrangements with healthcare providers, third-party payors and customers may expose us to broadly applicable federal and state fraud and abuse, transparency, health data privacy, and other healthcare laws and regulations that may constrain the business or financial arrangements and relationships through which we research as well as market, sell and distribute our products for which we obtain marketing approval.

Efforts to ensure that our business arrangements with third parties will comply with applicable healthcare laws and regulations will involve substantial costs. Given the breadth of the laws and regulations and evolving government interpretations of the laws and regulations, governmental authorities may possibly conclude that our business practices, including certain of our advisory board arrangements with physicians, some of whom are compensated in the form of stock or stock options, may not comply with healthcare laws and regulations. If our operations are found to be in violation of any healthcare laws or any other federal or state government regulations that apply to us, we may be subject to significant penalties, including administrative, civil and criminal penalties, damages, fines, disgorgement, exclusion from participation in government health care programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, imprisonment, integrity oversight and reporting obligations, contractual damages, reputational harm, diminished profits and future earnings, and the curtailment or restructuring of our operations, any of which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

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Additionally, some state and local laws require certain regulatory licenses to manufacture or distribute our products commercially and/or the registration of pharmaceutical sales representatives in the jurisdiction. Further, some state laws require pharmaceutical companies to comply with the pharmaceutical industry’s voluntary compliance guidelines and the relevant compliance guidance promulgated by the federal government in addition to requiring manufacturers to report information related to payments to physicians and other health care providers or marketing expenditures.

Healthcare and other reform legislation, may increase the difficulty and cost for us and any collaborators we may have to obtain marketing approval of and commercialize our product candidates, if approved, and affect the prices we, or they, may obtain.

In the United States and some foreign jurisdictions, there have been and continue to be ongoing efforts to implement legislative and regulatory changes regarding the healthcare system. Such changes could prevent or delay marketing approval of our product candidates, restrict or regulate post-approval activities and affect our ability to profitably sell any product candidates for which we obtain marketing approval. Although we cannot predict what healthcare or other reform efforts will be successful, such efforts may result in more rigorous coverage criteria, in additional downward pressure on the price that we, or our future collaborators, may receive for any approved products or in other consequences that may adversely affect our ability to achieve or maintain profitability.

Within the United States, the federal government and individual states have aggressively pursued healthcare reform, as evidenced by the passing of the Affordable Care Act (the “ACA”). The ACA substantially changed the way healthcare is financed by both governmental and private insurers and contains a number of provisions that affect coverage and reimbursement of drug products and/or that could potentially reduce the demand for pharmaceutical products. There have been executive, judicial and Congressional challenges and amendments, to certain aspects of the ACA. For example, on July 4, 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (the “OBBBA”) was signed into law, which narrowed access to ACA marketplace exchange enrollment and declined to extend the ACA enhanced advanced premium tax credits that expired at the end of 2025, which, among other provisions in the law, are anticipated to reduce the number of Americans with health insurance. The OBBBA also is expected to reduce Medicaid spending and enrollment by implementing work requirements for some beneficiaries, capping state-directed payments, reducing federal funding, and limiting provider taxes used to fund the program. Congress is considering proposed legislation intended to further reduce healthcare costs with alternatives to replace the expired ACA subsidies.

The current administration is pursuing policies to reduce regulations and expenditures across government agencies including at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”), the FDA, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) and related agencies. These actions, presently directed by executive orders or memoranda from the Office of Management and Budget, may propose policy changes that create additional uncertainty for our business. For example, the current administration has announced agreements with several pharmaceutical companies that require the drug manufacturers to offer, through a direct to consumer platform (“TrumpRx”) U.S. patients and Medicaid programs prescription drug Most-Favored Nation pricing equal to or lower than those paid in other developed nations, with additional mandates for direct-to-patient discounts and repatriation of foreign revenues. Other recent actions, for example, include (1) directing agencies to reduce agency workforce and cut programs; (2) directing HHS and other agencies to lower prescription drug costs through a variety of initiatives; (3) imposing tariffs on imported pharmaceutical products; and (4) as part of the Make America Healthy Again (“MAHA”) Commission’s Strategy Report released in September 2025, working across government agencies to increase enforcement on direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. Additionally, the current administration recently called on Congress to enact "The Great Healthcare Plan," to codify and expand Most-Favored Nation pricing, lower government subsidies to private insurance companies, increase healthcare price transparency, expand pharmaceutical drugs available for over-the-counter purchase, and enact restrictions on pharmacy benefit manager (“PBM”) payment methodologies, among other things. These actions and policies may significantly reduce U.S. drug prices, potentially impacting manufacturers’ global pricing strategies and profitability, while increasing their operational costs and compliance risks. In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision greatly reduced judicial deference to regulatory agencies, which could increase successful legal challenges to federal regulations affecting our operations. Congress may introduce and ultimately pass health care related legislation that could impact the drug approval process and make changes to the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program.

 

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

The availability and adequacy of coverage and reimbursement by governmental healthcare programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, private health insurers and other third-party payors are essential for most patients to be able to afford prescription medications such as our product candidates, if approved. Our ability to achieve acceptable levels of coverage and reimbursement for products by governmental authorities, private health insurers and other organizations will have an effect on our ability to successfully commercialize our product candidates. Obtaining coverage and adequate reimbursement for our products may be particularly difficult because of the higher prices often associated with drugs administered under the supervision of a physician. Even if we obtain coverage for our product candidates by a third-party payor, the resulting reimbursement payment rates may not be adequate or may require co-payments that patients find unacceptably high.

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For products administered under the supervision of a physician, obtaining coverage and adequate reimbursement may be particularly difficult because of the higher prices often associated with such drugs. Additionally, separate reimbursement for the product itself or the treatment or procedure in which the product is used may not be available, which may impact physician utilization. We cannot be sure that coverage and reimbursement in the United States, the EU or elsewhere will be available for our product candidates or any product that we may develop, and any reimbursement that may become available may be decreased or eliminated in the future.

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

There is significant uncertainty related to the insurance coverage and reimbursement of newly approved products. In the United States, third-party payors, including private and governmental payors, such as the Medicare and Medicaid programs, play an important role in determining the extent to which new drugs and biologics will be covered. The Medicare and Medicaid programs increasingly are used as models in the United States for how private payors and other governmental payors develop their coverage and reimbursement policies for drugs and biologics. Some third-party payors may require pre-approval of coverage for new or innovative devices or drug therapies before they will reimburse healthcare providers who use such therapies. We cannot predict at this time what third-party payors will decide with respect to the coverage and reimbursement for our product candidates.

Further, HHS imposes rebates on many Medicare Part B and Medicare Part D products to penalize price increases that outpace inflation on an annual basis. HHS has also been empowered to negotiate the price of certain single-source biologics that have been on the market for at least eleven (11) years covered under Medicare as part of the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program. Each year up to twenty (20) products will be selected by HHS for the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program. Products subject to the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program are expected to experience a significant reduction in reimbursement from the Medicare program on a per unit basis.

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

Outside the United States, international operations are generally subject to extensive governmental price controls and other market regulations, and we believe the increasing emphasis on cost-containment initiatives in Europe and other foreign jurisdictions have and will continue to put pressure on the pricing and usage of our product candidates. In many countries, the prices of medical products are subject to varying price control mechanisms as part of national health systems. Other countries allow companies to fix their own prices for medical products but monitor and control company profits. Additional foreign price controls or other changes in pricing regulation could restrict the amounts that we are able to charge for our product candidates. Accordingly, in markets outside the United States, the reimbursement for our product candidates may be reduced compared with the United States and may be insufficient to generate commercially reasonable revenue and profits.

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

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Our employees, principal investigators, consultants and commercial partners may engage in misconduct or other improper activities, including non-compliance with regulatory standards and requirements and insider trading.

We are exposed to the risk of fraud or other misconduct by our employees, consultants and commercial partners, and, if we commence clinical trials, our principal investigators. Misconduct by these parties could include intentional failures to comply with FDA regulations or the regulations applicable in the European Union and other jurisdictions, provide accurate information to the FDA, the EMA and other regulatory authorities, comply with healthcare fraud and abuse laws and regulations in the United States and abroad, report financial information or data accurately or disclose unauthorized activities to us. In particular, sales, marketing and business arrangements in the healthcare industry are subject to extensive laws and regulations intended to prevent fraud, misconduct, kickbacks, self-dealing and other abusive practices. These laws and regulations restrict or prohibit a wide range of pricing, discounting, marketing and promotion, sales commission, customer incentive programs and other business arrangements. Such misconduct also could involve the improper use of information obtained in the course of clinical trials or interactions with the FDA, the EMA or other regulatory authorities, which could result in regulatory sanctions and cause serious harm to our reputation. We have adopted a code of conduct applicable to all of our employees, but 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 such actions are instituted against us, and we are not successful in defending ourselves or asserting our rights, those actions could have a significant impact on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects, including the imposition of significant fines or other sanctions.

Laws and regulations governing any international operations we may have in the future may preclude us from developing, manufacturing and selling certain product candidates outside of the United States and require us to develop and implement costly compliance programs.

We may be subject to numerous laws and regulations in each jurisdiction outside the United States in which we may operate. The creation, implementation and maintenance of international business practices compliance programs is costly and such programs are difficult to enforce, particularly where reliance on third parties is required.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (the “FCPA”) prohibits any U.S. individual or business from paying, offering, authorizing payment or offering of anything of value, directly or indirectly, to any foreign official, political party or candidate for the purpose of influencing any act or decision of the foreign entity in order to assist the individual or business in obtaining or retaining business. The FCPA also obligates companies whose securities are listed in the United States to comply with certain accounting provisions requiring the company to maintain books and records that accurately and fairly reflect all transactions of the corporation, including international subsidiaries, and to devise and maintain an adequate system of internal accounting controls for international operations. The anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA are enforced primarily by the Department of Justice. The SEC is involved with enforcement of the books and records provisions of the FCPA.

Similarly, the U.K. Bribery Act 2010 has extra-territorial effect for companies and individuals having a connection with the United Kingdom. The U.K. Bribery Act prohibits inducements both to public officials and private individuals and organizations. Compliance with the FCPA and the U.K. Bribery Act is expensive and difficult, particularly in countries in which corruption is a recognized problem. In addition, the FCPA presents particular challenges in the pharmaceutical industry, because, in many countries, hospitals are operated by the government, and doctors and other hospital employees are considered foreign officials. Certain payments to hospitals in connection with clinical trials and other work have been deemed to be improper payments to government officials and have led to FCPA enforcement actions.

Various laws, regulations and executive orders also restrict the use and dissemination outside of the United States, or the sharing with certain non-U.S. nationals, of information classified for national security purposes, as well as certain products and technical data relating to those products. Our expansion outside of the United States has required, and will continue to require, us to dedicate additional resources to comply with these laws, and these laws may preclude us from developing, manufacturing or selling certain product candidates outside of the United States, which could limit our growth potential and increase our development costs. The failure to comply with laws governing international business practices may result in substantial penalties, including suspension or debarment from government contracting. Violation of the FCPA can result in significant civil and criminal penalties. Indictment alone under the FCPA can lead to suspension of the right to do business with the U.S. government until the pending claims are resolved. Conviction of a violation of the FCPA can result in long-term disqualification as a government contractor. The termination of a government contract or relationship as a result of our failure to satisfy any of our obligations under laws governing international business practices would have a negative impact on our operations and harm our reputation and ability to procure government contracts. The SEC also may suspend or bar issuers from trading securities on U.S. exchanges for violations of the FCPA’s accounting provisions.

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We and the third parties with whom we work are subject to stringent and evolving privacy and information security laws, regulations, industry standards, policies, contractual obligations and other obligations related to privacy and information security. Our (or the third parties with whom we work) actual or perceived failure to comply with such obligations could adversely affect our business.

In the ordinary course of business, we collect, receive, store, process, generate, use, transfer, disclose, make accessible, protect, secure, dispose of, transmit, and share (collectively, “process”) personal data and other sensitive information, including proprietary and confidential business data, trade secrets, intellectual property, sensitive third-party data, business plans, transactions, information about patients and clinical trial data (collectively, sensitive data).

Our data processing activities subject us to numerous data privacy and security obligations, such as various laws, regulations, guidance, industry standards, external and internal privacy and security policies, contractual requirements, and other obligations. The legislative and regulatory landscape for privacy and data protection continues to evolve in jurisdictions worldwide, and there has been an increasing focus on privacy and data protection issues with the potential to affect our business. Actual or perceived failure to comply with any of these laws and regulations could result in enforcement action against us, including fines, imprisonment of company officials and public censure, claims for damages by affected individuals, damage to our reputation and loss of goodwill, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations or prospects.

In the United States, federal, state, and local governments have enacted numerous data privacy and security laws, including data breach notification laws, personal data privacy laws, consumer protection laws (e.g., Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act), and other similar laws (e.g., wiretapping laws). For example, the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”), as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (“HITECH”), imposes specific requirements relating to the privacy, security, and transmission of individually identifiable protected health information. In addition, numerous U.S. states have enacted comprehensive privacy laws that impose certain obligations on covered businesses, including providing specific disclosures in privacy notices and affording residents with certain rights concerning their personal data. As applicable, such rights may include the right to access, correct, or delete certain personal data, and to opt-out of certain data processing activities, such as targeted advertising, profiling, and automated decision-making. The exercise of these rights may impact our business and ability to provide our products and services. Certain states also impose stricter requirements for processing certain personal data, including sensitive information, such as conducting data privacy impact assessments. These state laws allow for statutory fines for noncompliance. For example, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (collectively, “CCPA”), applies to personal data of consumers, business representatives, and employees who are California residents, and requires businesses to provide specific disclosures in privacy notices and honor requests of such individuals to exercise certain privacy rights. Although there are minimum revenue thresholds for companies to be subject to these laws and there are limited exemptions for clinical trial data under the CCPA and similar state comprehensive privacy laws, such laws may impact (possibly significantly) our business activities depending on how they are interpreted, should we become subject to the CCPA or such state comprehensive privacy laws in the future. Similar laws are being considered in several other states, as well as at the federal and local levels, and we expect more states to pass similar laws in the future. These developments may further complicate compliance efforts and increase legal risk and compliance costs for us and the third parties with whom we work.

Outside the United States, and increasing number of laws govern data privacy and security. For example, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“EU GDPR)”, the United Kingdom’s GDPR (“UK GDPR”)(collectively, “GDPR”) and China’s Personal Information Protection Law (“PIPL) impose strict requirements for processing personal data. For example, under the GDPR, companies may face temporary or definitive bans on data processing and other corrective actions; fines of up to 20 million Euros under the EU GDPR, 17.5 million pounds sterling under the UK GDPR or, in each case, 4% of annual global revenue, whichever is greater; or private litigation related to processing of personal data brought by classes of data subjects or consumer protection organizations authorized at law to represent their interests.

In the ordinary course of business, we transfer personal data from Europe and other jurisdictions to the United States or other countries. Europe and other jurisdictions have enacted laws requiring data to be localized or limiting the transfer of personal data to other countries. In particular, the European Economic Area (EEA) and the United Kingdom (UK) have significantly restricted the transfer of personal data to the United States and other countries whose privacy laws it generally believes are inadequate. Other jurisdictions may adopt or have already adopted similarly stringent data localization and cross-border data transfer laws. Although there are currently various mechanisms that may be used to transfer personal data from the EEA and UK to the United States in compliance with law, such as the EEA standard contractual clauses, the UK’s International Data Transfer Agreement / Addendum, and the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and the UK extension thereto (which allows for transfers to relevant U.S.-based organizations who self-certify compliance and participate in the Framework), these mechanisms are subject to legal challenges, and there is no assurance that we can satisfy or rely on these measures to lawfully transfer personal data to the United States.

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If there is no lawful manner for us to transfer personal data from the EEA, the UK or other jurisdictions to the United States, or if the requirements for a legally-compliant transfer are too onerous, we could face significant adverse consequences, including the interruption or degradation of our operations, the need to relocate part of or all of our business or data processing activities to other jurisdictions (such as Europe) at significant expense, increased exposure to regulatory actions, substantial fines and penalties, the inability to transfer data and work with partners, vendors and other third parties, and injunctions against our processing or transferring of personal data necessary to operate our business. Additionally, companies that transfer personal data out of the EEA and UK to other jurisdictions, particularly to the United States, are subject to increased scrutiny from regulators, individual litigants, and activist groups.

 

Additionally, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a rule entitled Preventing Access to U.S. Sensitive Personal Data and Government-Related Data by Countries of Concern or Covered Persons, which places additional restrictions on certain data transactions involving countries of concern (e.g., China, Russia, Iran) and covered individuals (i.e., individuals and entities located in or controlled by individuals or entities located in those jurisdictions) that may impact certain business activities such as vendor engagements, employment of certain individuals and investor agreements. Violations of the rule could lead to significant civil and criminal fines and penalties. The rule applies regardless of whether data is anonymized, key-coded, pseudonymized, de-identified or encrypted.

Our employees and personnel use generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies to perform their work, and the disclosure and use of personal data in generative AI technologies is subject to various privacy laws and other privacy obligations. Governments have passed and are likely to pass additional laws and regulations regulating generative AI. Our use of this technology could result in additional compliance costs, regulatory investigations and actions, and lawsuits. If we are unable to use generative AI, it could make our business less efficient and result in competitive disadvantages.

In addition to data privacy and security laws, we are bound by other contractual obligations related to data privacy and security, and our efforts to comply with such obligations may not be successful. We publish privacy policies and other statements concerning data privacy and security. Regulators in the United States are increasingly scrutinizing these statements, and if these policies, materials, or statements are found to be deficient, lacking in transparency, deceptive, unfair, misleading, or misrepresentative of our practices, we may be subject to investigation, enforcement actions by regulators, or other adverse consequences.

Obligations related to data privacy and security (and consumers’ data privacy expectations) are quickly changing, becoming increasingly stringent, and creating uncertainty. Additionally, these obligations may be subject to differing applications and interpretations, which may be inconsistent or conflict among jurisdictions. Preparing for and complying with these obligations requires us to devote significant resources, which may necessitate changes to our services, information technologies, systems, and practices and to those of any third parties that process personal data on our behalf. We may at times fail (or be perceived to have failed) in our efforts to comply with our data privacy and security obligations. Moreover, despite our efforts, our personnel or third parties with whom we work may fail to comply with such obligations, which could negatively impact our business operations. If we are unable to properly protect the privacy and security of sensitive data in our possession, we could be found to have breached our contracts. Further, if we fail to comply with applicable privacy and security laws, including applicable HIPAA privacy and security standards, we could face significant consequences, including but not limited to: government enforcement actions (e.g., administrative, civil and criminal penalties, investigations, audits, inspections, and similar); litigation (including class-action claims); additional reporting requirements and/or oversight; bans on processing personal data (including clinical trial data); and orders to destroy or not use personal data. In addition, our ongoing efforts to comply with evolving privacy and data security laws and regulations have been and may in the future be costly and require ongoing modifications to our policies, procedures and systems. In particular, plaintiffs have become increasingly more active in bringing privacy-related claims against companies, including class claims and mass arbitration demands. Some of these claims allow for the recovery of statutory damages on a per violation basis, and, if viable, carry the potential for monumental statutory damages, depending on the volume of data and the number of violations.

Risks Related to Employee Matters, Managing Growth and Information Technology

Our future success depends on our ability to retain our Chief Executive Officer and other key executives and to attract, retain and motivate qualified personnel.

We are highly dependent on Jean-Paul Kress, our Chief Executive Officer, as well as the other principal members of our management and scientific teams. Dr. Kress and such other principal members are employed “at will,” meaning we or they may terminate the employment at any time. We do not maintain “key person” insurance for any of our executives or other employees. The loss of the services of any of these persons could impede the achievement of our research, development and commercialization objectives.

Recruiting and retaining qualified scientific and clinical personnel and, if we progress the development of our product candidates toward scaling up for commercialization, manufacturing and sales and marketing personnel will also be critical to our success. We may not be able to attract and retain these personnel on acceptable terms given the competition among numerous pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies for similar personnel.

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We also experience competition for the hiring of scientific and clinical personnel from universities and research institutions. In addition, we rely on consultants and advisors, including scientific and clinical advisors, to assist us in formulating our research and development and commercialization strategy. Our consultants and advisors, including our scientific founder, may be employed by employers other than us and may have commitments under consulting or advisory contracts with other entities that may limit their availability to us. The inability to recruit, or loss of services of certain executives, key employees, consultants or advisors, may impede the progress of our research, development and commercialization objectives and have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

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

In connection with the growth and advancement of our pipeline, we expect to increase the number of our employees and the scope of our operations, particularly in the areas of drug development, regulatory affairs, manufacturing and, as our product candidates advance through later stages of clinical development, sales and marketing. To manage our anticipated future growth, we must continue to implement and improve our managerial, operational and financial systems, expand our facilities and continue to recruit and train additional qualified personnel. Due to our limited financial resources and the limited experience of our management team in managing a company with such anticipated growth, we may not be able to effectively manage the expected expansion of our operations or recruit and train additional qualified personnel. Moreover, the expected physical expansion of our operations may lead to significant costs and may divert our management and business development resources. Any inability to manage growth could delay the execution of our business plans or disrupt our operations.

As a growing biotechnology company, we are actively pursuing new platforms and product candidates in many therapeutic areas and across a wide range of diseases. Successfully developing product candidates for and fully understanding the regulatory and manufacturing pathways to all of these therapeutic areas and disease states requires a significant depth of talent, resources and corporate processes in order to allow simultaneous execution across multiple areas. Due to our limited resources, we may not be able to effectively manage this simultaneous execution and the expansion of our operations or recruit and train additional qualified personnel. This may result in weaknesses in our infrastructure, give rise to operational mistakes, legal or regulatory compliance failures, loss of business opportunities, loss of employees and reduced productivity among remaining employees. The physical expansion of our operations may lead to significant costs and may divert financial resources from other projects, such as the development of our product candidates. If our management is unable to effectively manage our expected development and expansion, our expenses may increase more than expected, our ability to generate or increase our revenue could be reduced and we may not be able to implement our business strategy. Our future financial performance and our ability to compete effectively and commercialize our product candidates, if approved, will depend in part on our ability to effectively manage the future development and expansion of our company.

Our insurance policies may be inadequate and potentially expose us to unrecoverable risks.

We have limited director and officer insurance and commercial insurance policies. Any significant insurance claims would have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Insurance availability, coverage terms and pricing continue to vary with market conditions. We endeavor to obtain appropriate insurance coverage for insurable risks that we identify; however, we may fail to correctly anticipate or quantify insurable risks, we may not be able to obtain appropriate insurance coverage, and insurers may not respond as we intend to cover insurable events that may occur. We have observed rapidly changing conditions in the insurance markets relating to nearly all areas of traditional corporate insurance. Such conditions have resulted in higher premium costs, higher policy deductibles and lower coverage limits. For some risks, we may not have or maintain insurance coverage because of cost or availability.

If our information technology systems, or those of our third-party vendors, collaborators, or other contractors or consultants or other third parties with whom we work, or our data are or were compromised, we could experience adverse consequences resulting from such compromise, including but not limited to a material disruption of our product development programs, regulatory investigations or actions, litigation, fines and penalties, reputational harm and other adverse consequences.

In the ordinary course of our business, we and the third parties with whom we work process sensitive data, and, as a result, we and such third parties face a variety of evolving threats that could cause security incidents. Our information technology systems and those of our current and any future third-party vendors, collaborators, consultants or other third parties with whom we work are subject to damage or interruption from a variety of evolving threats, including but not limited to social-engineering attacks (including through deep fakes, which are increasingly more difficult to identify as fake, and phishing attacks), computer viruses, computer hackers, malicious code (such as viruses and worms), malware (including as a result of advanced persistent threat intrusions), employee theft or misuse, supply-chain attacks, software bugs, server malfunctions, software or hardware failures, loss of data or other information technology assets, denial-of-service attacks, credential stuffing, credential harvesting, ransomware attacks, adware, attacks enhanced or facilitated by AI, sophisticated nation-state and nation-state-supported actors, unauthorized access, natural disasters, terrorism, war and telecommunication and electrical failures.

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In particular, severe ransomware attacks are becoming increasingly prevalent and can lead to significant interruptions in our operations, ability to provide our products or services, loss of sensitive data and income, reputational harm, and diversion of funds. Extortion payments may alleviate the negative impact of a ransomware attack, but we may be unwilling or unable to make such payments due to, for example, applicable laws or regulations prohibiting such payments.

 

It may be difficult and/or costly to detect, investigate, mitigate, contain, and remediate a security incident. Our efforts to do so may not be successful. Actions taken by us or the third parties with whom we work to detect, investigate, mitigate, contain, and remediate a security incident could result in outages, data losses, and disruptions of our business. Threat actors may also gain access to other networks and systems after a compromise of our networks and systems. For example, threat actors may use an initial compromise of one part of our environment to gain access to other parts of our environment, or leverage a compromise of our networks or systems to gain access to the networks or systems of third parties with whom we work, such as through phishing or supply chain attacks.

Remote work has increased risks to our information technology systems and data, as more of our employees utilize network connections, computers, and devices outside our premises or network, including working at home, while in transit and in public locations. Additionally, future or past business transactions (such as acquisitions or integrations) could expose us to additional cybersecurity risks and vulnerabilities, as our systems could be negatively affected by vulnerabilities present in acquired or integrated entities’ systems and technologies. Furthermore, we may discover security issues that were not found during due diligence of such acquired or integrated entities, and it may be difficult to integrate companies into our information technology environment and security program.

 

We rely on third parties to operate critical business systems to process sensitive information in a variety of contexts. Our ability to monitor these third parties’ information security practices is limited, and these third parties may not have adequate information security measures in place. If the third parties’ with whom we work experience a security incident or other interruption, we could experience adverse consequences. While we may be entitled to damages if the third parties with whom we work fail to satisfy their privacy or security-related obligations to us, any award may be insufficient to cover our damages, or we may be unable to recover such award. In addition, supply-chain attacks have increased in frequency and severity, and we cannot guarantee that third parties’ infrastructure in our supply chain or that of the third parties with whom we work have not been compromised.

While we seek to protect our information technology systems from system failure, accident and security breach, if such an event were to occur and cause interruptions in our operations, it could result in a disruption of our development programs and our business operations, whether due to a loss of our trade secrets or other sensitive data or other disruptions. For example, the loss of clinical trial data from completed, ongoing or planned clinical trials could result in delays in our regulatory approval efforts and significantly increase our costs to recover or reproduce the data. If we were to experience a significant cybersecurity breach of our information systems or sensitive data, the costs associated with the investigation, remediation and potential notification of the breach to counterparties and data subjects could be material. In addition, our remediation efforts may not be successful. If we are unable to build and sustain the proper technology and cybersecurity infrastructure, we could suffer significant business disruption, including transaction errors, supply chain or manufacturing interruptions, processing inefficiencies, or the loss of or damage to sensitive data.

Although we have implemented security measures designed to help protect sensitive data from unauthorized access or disclosure, our information technology and infrastructure may be vulnerable in the future to attacks by hackers or viruses, failures, or breaches due to third-party action, employee negligence or error, malfeasance, or other incidents or disruptions. For example, we have been the target of phishing attacks in the past and we expect such attacks will continue in the future. Furthermore, while we have implemented data privacy and security measures that are designed to comply with applicable laws and regulations relating to privacy and data protection, some health-related and other personal information or confidential information may be transmitted to us or processed by third parties, who may not implement adequate security and privacy measures, and it is possible that laws, rules and regulations relating to privacy, data protection, or information security may be interpreted and applied in a manner that is inconsistent with our practices or those of third parties who transmit health-related and other personal information or confidential information to us or process such information on our behalf. While we may be entitled to damages if our third-party service providers fail to satisfy their privacy or security-related obligations to us, any award may be insufficient to cover our damages, or we may be unable to recover such award.

We take steps designed to detect, mitigate, and remediate vulnerabilities in our information systems (such as our hardware and/or software, including that of third parties with whom we work). We may not, however, detect and remediate all such vulnerabilities including on a timely basis. Further, we may experience delays in deploying remedial measures and patches designed to address identified vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities could be exploited and result in a security incident. Any of the previously identified or similar threats may in the future cause a security incident or other interruption that may in the future result in unauthorized, unlawful, or accidental acquisition, modification, destruction, loss, alteration, encryption, disclosure of, or access to our sensitive information or our information technology systems, or those of the third parties with whom we work.

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A security incident or other interruption could disrupt our ability (and that of third parties ) with whom we work to provide our services. We may in the future expend significant resources or modify our business activities (including our clinical trial activities) to try to protect against security incidents. Additionally, certain data privacy and security obligations may require us to implement and maintain specific security measures or industry-standard or reasonable security measures to protect our information technology systems and sensitive data.

To the extent that we or third parties with whom we work are found to have violated data security laws, rules or regulations or if we (or a third party with whom we work) experience a security incident or are perceived to have experienced a security incident, including an incident that results in a loss of, or damage to, our or our third-party vendors’, collaborators’, consultants’ or other third parties with whom we work data or systems, or inappropriate disclosure of confidential or proprietary information, we could experience material adverse consequences including but not limited to litigation exposure (including class claims), government enforcement actions (for example, investigations, penalties and fines, audits, and inspections); additional reporting requirements and/or oversight; indemnification obligations; restrictions on processing sensitive data (including clinical trial data); reputational harm; monetary fund diversions; diversion of management attention, our competitive position could be harmed and the further development and commercialization of our product candidates could be delayed. Any of the above could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations or prospects.

Our contracts may not contain limitations of liability, and even where they do, there can be no assurance that limitations of liability in our contracts are sufficient to protect us from liabilities, damages, or claims related to our data privacy and security obligations. We cannot be sure that our insurance coverage will be adequate or sufficient to protect us from or to mitigate liabilities arising out of our privacy and security practices, that such coverage will continue to be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all, or that such coverage will pay future claims.

In addition to experiencing a security incident, third parties may gather, collect, or infer sensitive data about us from public sources, data brokers, or other means that reveals competitively sensitive details about our organization and could be used to undermine our competitive advantage or market position.

Risks Related to the Ownership of Our Common Stock

An active trading market for our common stock may not be sustained.

There is a risk that an active trading market for our shares will not be sustained, which could put downward pressure on the market price of our common stock and thereby affect the ability of our stockholders to sell their shares. An inactive market may also impair our ability to raise capital to continue to fund operations by selling shares of our common stock and may impair our ability to acquire other companies or technologies by using our common stock as consideration.

The market price of our common stock may be volatile.

Our stock price is, and is likely to continue to be, volatile. For example, our stock traded within a range of a high price of $53.40 and a low price of $3.03 per share for the period of January 1, 2025 through May 7, 2026. As a result of volatility, our stockholders may not be able to sell their common stock at or above the prices at which they purchased their shares. Some of the factors that may cause the market price of our common stock to fluctuate include:

the success of existing or new competitive product candidates or technologies;
the timing and results of clinical trials for our product candidates;
announcements by RemeGen of clinical trial results for telitacicept in RemeGen’s development programs in Greater China;
failure or discontinuation of any of our product development and research programs;
results of preclinical studies, clinical trials or regulatory approvals of product candidates of our competitors, or announcements about new research programs or product candidates of our competitors;
commencement or termination of collaborations for our product development and research programs;
regulatory or legal developments in the United States and other countries;
developments or disputes concerning patent applications, issued patents or other proprietary rights;
the recruitment or departure of key personnel; the level of expenses related to any of our research programs, product candidates or clinical development programs;

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the results of our efforts to develop additional product candidates or products;
actual or anticipated changes in estimates as to financial results, development timelines or recommendations by securities analysts;
announcement or expectation of additional financing efforts;
sales of our common stock by us, our insiders or other stockholders;
variations in our financial results or those of companies that are perceived to be similar to us;
changes in estimates or recommendations by securities analysts, if any, that cover our stock;
changes in the structure of healthcare payment systems;
market conditions in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors;
global or regional public health emergencies, and geopolitical instability, including terrorist attacks, civil unrest and actual or threatened armed conflict;
general economic, industry and market conditions, including heightened interest rates and inflation; and
the other factors described in this “Risk Factors” section.

In recent years, the stock market in general, and the market for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in particular, has experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have often been unrelated or disproportionate to changes in the operating performance of the companies whose stock is experiencing those price and volume fluctuations. Broad market and industry factors may seriously affect the market price of our common stock, regardless of our actual operating performance. Following periods of such volatility in the market price of a company’s securities, securities class action litigation has often been brought against that company. Because of the potential volatility of our stock price, we may become the target of securities litigation in the future, which could result in substantial costs and divert management’s attention and resources from our business.

If securities analysts do not publish research or reports about our business or if they publish negative evaluations of our stock, the price of our stock could decline.

The trading market for our common stock will be influenced by the research and reports that industry or financial analysts publish about us or our business. If one or more of the analysts covering our business downgrade their evaluations of our stock, the price of our stock could decline. If one or more of these analysts cease to cover our stock, we could lose visibility in the market for our stock, which in turn could cause our stock price to decline.

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

Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market could occur at any time. These sales, or the perception in the market that the holders of a large number of shares of common stock intend to sell shares, could reduce the market price of our common stock. Our outstanding shares of common stock may be freely sold in the public market at any time to the extent permitted by Rules 144 and 701 under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), or to the extent such shares have already been registered under the Securities Act and are held by non-affiliates.

Moreover, holders of a substantial number of shares of our common stock have rights, subject to conditions, to require us to file registration statements covering their shares or to include their shares in registration statements that we may file for ourselves or other stockholders. For example, in December 2022 we filed a registration statement on Form S-3 to register the resale of up to 581,395 shares of common stock held by RA Capital Healthcare Fund L.P. which were purchased from us in a private placement, and in January 2025 we filed a registration statement on Form S-3 to register the resale of up to an aggregate of 6,285,515 shares of common stock held by Reprogrammed Interchange LLC and entities affiliated with RA Capital Management, L.P., consisting of (i) 2,793,562 shares of common stock and (ii) 3,491,953 shares of common stock issuable upon the exercise of outstanding warrants to purchase shares of common stock, which were purchased from us in a private placement. We have also filed a registration statement on Form S-3 to register the resale of up to 34,999,999 shares of common stock issuable upon exercise of outstanding warrants, which were purchased from us by certain institutional investors in a private placement, and 16,000,000 shares of common stock that are issuable upon exercise of a warrant to purchase common stock issued to RemeGen as partial consideration for our license agreement with RemeGen, as well as registration statements on Form S-3 to register the resale of up to 13,876,032 shares of common stock purchased from us in December 2025 and up to 5,338,078 shares of common stock purchased from us in the March 2026 Private Placement.

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We have also registered or will register all shares of common stock that we may issue under our equity compensation plans or that are issuable upon exercise of outstanding options on a registration statement on Form S-8 and will continue to register any additional shares that become available under such plans due to any annual, automatic increases under the terms of those plans. These shares can be freely sold in the public market upon issuance and once vested, subject to volume limitations applicable to affiliates. If any of these additional shares are sold, or if it is perceived that they will be sold, in the public market, the market price of our common stock could decline.

Insiders have substantial control over our company, which could limit the ability of our other stockholders to affect the outcome of key transactions, including a change of control.

Our executive officers and directors, combined with our stockholders who own more than 5% of our outstanding common stock, and their affiliates, in the aggregate, beneficially own shares representing a substantial amount of our outstanding common stock, as well as warrants to purchase shares of our common stock warrants, which, if exercised, would result in such stockholders owning an even larger percentage of our outstanding common stock. As a result, these stockholders, if they act together, may be able to influence our management and affairs and would control all matters requiring stockholder approval, including the election of directors and approval of significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or its assets. This concentration of ownership may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change in control of our company or discouraging a potential acquirer from making a tender offer or otherwise attempting to obtain control, even if that change in control would benefit our other stockholders. This significant concentration of ownership may also adversely affect the trading price for our common stock because investors often perceive disadvantages in owning stock in companies with controlling stockholders.

If we fail to establish and maintain proper and effective internal control over financial reporting, our operating results and our ability to operate our business could be harmed.

Ensuring that we have adequate internal financial and accounting controls and procedures in place so that we can produce accurate financial statements on a timely basis is a costly and time-consuming effort that needs to be re-evaluated frequently. Our internal control over financial reporting is a process designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.

Implementing any appropriate changes to our internal controls may distract our officers and employees, entail substantial costs to modify our existing processes and take significant time to complete. These changes may not, however, be effective in maintaining the adequacy of our internal controls, and any failure to maintain that adequacy, or consequent inability to produce accurate financial statements on a timely basis, could increase our operating costs and harm our business. In addition, investors’ perceptions that our internal controls are inadequate or that we are unable to produce accurate financial statements on a timely basis may harm our common share price.

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

We are an “emerging growth company,” as defined in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 (the “JOBS Act”). We will be an emerging growth company during this year and may remain an emerging growth company through 2026. For so long as we remain an emerging growth company, we are permitted and plan to rely on exemptions from certain disclosure requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not emerging growth companies. These exemptions include not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (“SOX”), not being required to comply with any requirement that may be adopted by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board regarding mandatory audit firm rotation or a supplement to the auditor’s report providing additional information about the audit and the financial statements, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation, exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved, and being permitted to provide only two years of audited financial statements. As a result, the information we provide stockholders will be different than the information that is available with respect to other public companies. For example, we did not include all of the executive compensation related information in our Annual Report that would be required if we were not an emerging growth company. We cannot predict whether investors will find our common stock less attractive if we rely on these exemptions. If some investors find our common stock less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our common stock, and our stock price may be more volatile.

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In addition, the JOBS Act provides that an emerging growth company can take advantage of an extended transition period for complying with new or revised accounting standards. This allows an emerging growth company to delay the adoption of certain accounting standards until those standards would otherwise apply to private companies. We have availed ourselves of this extended transition period and we cannot predict whether investors will find our common stock less attractive due to this election.

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

We will continue to incur increased costs as a result of operating as a public company, and our management will be required to devote substantial time to new compliance initiatives and corporate governance practices.

As a public company, and particularly after we are no longer an “emerging growth company,” we will continue to incur significant legal, accounting and other expenses that we did not incur as a private company. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the listing requirements of the Nasdaq Global Select Market and other applicable securities rules and regulations impose various requirements on public companies, including establishment and maintenance of effective disclosure and financial controls and corporate governance practices. We expect that we will need to continue to hire additional accounting, finance and other personnel in connection with our efforts to comply with the requirements of being, a public company, and our management and other personnel will need to continue to devote a substantial amount of time towards maintaining compliance with these requirements. These requirements have increased and will continue to increase our legal and financial compliance costs and make some activities more time-consuming and costly. These rules and regulations are often subject to varying interpretations, in many cases due to their lack of specificity, and, as a result, their application in practice may evolve over time as new guidance is provided by regulatory and governing bodies. This could result in continuing uncertainty regarding compliance matters and higher costs necessitated by ongoing revisions to disclosure and governance practices.

Pursuant to SOX Section 404, we are required to furnish a report by our management on our internal control over financial reporting, but while we remain an emerging growth or a smaller reporting company with less than $100 million in annual revenue, we will not be required to include an attestation report on internal control over financial reporting issued by our independent registered public accounting firm. To maintain compliance with SOX Section 404 and achieve compliance within the prescribed period for the attestation report by our independent registered public accounting firm, we have and will be engaged in a process to document and evaluate our internal control over financial reporting, which is both costly and challenging. In this regard, we will need to continue to dedicate internal resources, potentially engage outside consultants, adopt a detailed work plan to assess and document the adequacy of internal control over financial reporting, continue steps to improve control processes as appropriate, validate through testing that controls are functioning as documented and implement a continuous reporting and improvement process for internal control over financial reporting. Despite our efforts, there is a risk that we will not be able to conclude, within the prescribed timeframe or at all, that our internal control over financial reporting is effective as required by SOX Section 404. If we identify one or more material weaknesses, it could result in an adverse reaction in the financial markets due to a loss of confidence in the reliability of our financial statements.

Our management team has broad discretion in the use of our cash reserves and may not use them effectively.

Our management has broad discretion to use our cash reserves and could use our cash reserves in ways that do not improve our results of operations or enhance the value of our common stock. The failure by our management to apply these funds effectively could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. Pending their use, we may invest our cash reserves in a manner that does not produce income or that loses value.

We do not expect to pay any dividends for the foreseeable future. Accordingly our stockholders must rely on capital appreciation, if any, for any return on their investment.

We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our equity securities. We do not anticipate that we will pay any dividends to holders of our common stock in the foreseeable future. Instead, we plan to retain any earnings to maintain and expand our existing operations. In addition, any future credit facility that we enter into may contain terms prohibiting or limiting the amount of dividends that may be declared or paid on our common stock. As a result, capital appreciation, if any, of our common stock will be stockholders’ sole source of gain for the foreseeable future.

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Unfavorable global economic conditions, new tariffs or bank closures could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Our results of operations could be adversely affected by general conditions in the global economy and in the global financial markets, including as a result of heightened inflation and interest rates. A severe or prolonged economic downturn, or additional global financial crises, including related to potential future pandemics, geopolitical issues, armed conflicts or U.S.-China trade and political tensions, could result in a variety of risks to our business, including weakened demand for our product candidates, if approved, or our ability to raise additional capital when needed on acceptable terms, if at all. A weak or declining economy could also strain our suppliers, possibly resulting in supply disruption. Any of the foregoing could harm our business and we cannot anticipate all of the ways in which the current economic climate and financial market conditions could adversely impact our business.

Significant political, trade, or regulatory developments in the United States or other countries in which we have clinical trials, third party suppliers or service providers may have a material adverse effect on us. Similarly, changes in U.S. federal policy that affect the geopolitical landscape could give rise to circumstances outside our control that could have negative impacts on our business operations. Political tensions as a result of trade policies could reduce trade volume, investment, technological exchange and other economic activities between major international economies, resulting in a material adverse effect on global economic conditions and the stability of global financial markets. Any changes in political, trade, regulatory, and economic conditions, including U.S. trade policies, could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition or results of operations.

We could also be affected by new and increased tariffs between the United States and other countries, including China. These additional tariffs and any retaliatory tariffs by other countries could substantially increase our costs associated with the manufacture and supply of our product candidates. The global trade environment is rapidly evolving, and the United States and other countries may impose additional new tariffs, the scope of which we are unable to predict but that may adversely impact our business. For example, on April 2, 2026, the U.S. presidential administration issued a proclamation entitled “Adjusting Imports of Pharmaceuticals and Pharmaceutical Ingredients into the United States,” which would impose tariffs of up to 100% on certain covered imported patented pharmaceutical products and associated pharmaceutical ingredients, subject to exemptions and reduced-rate pathways. We currently contract with third parties outside the U.S. for the manufacture and supply of telitacicept, including suppliers in China. The scope, implementation and availability of exemptions or reduced-rate pathways under this proclamation remain uncertain, and telitacicept or any future product candidates may not qualify for such exemptions or pathways. If our activities or those of our third-party suppliers or service providers fall within the scope of any of these or other tariffs, our costs may increase significantly.

In addition, our available cash and cash equivalents are held in accounts managed by third party financial institutions and consist of cash in our operating accounts and cash invested in money market funds. At any point in time, the funds in our operating accounts may exceed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insurance limits. While we monitor the cash balances in our operating accounts and adjust the cash balances as appropriate, these cash balances could be impacted if the underlying financial institutions fail. We can provide no assurances that access to our operating cash or invested cash and cash equivalents will not be impacted by adverse conditions in the financial markets.

Provisions in our certificate of incorporation and bylaws and under Delaware law could make a change in control of us, which may be beneficial to our stockholders, more difficult and may prevent attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management.

Provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and our amended and restated bylaws may discourage, delay or prevent a merger, acquisition or other change in control of us that stockholders may consider favorable, including transactions in which our stockholders might otherwise receive a premium for their shares. These provisions also could limit the price that investors might be willing to pay in the future for shares of our common stock, thereby depressing the market price of our common stock. In addition, because our board of directors is responsible for appointing the members of our management team, these provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management by making it more difficult for stockholders to replace members of our board of directors. Among other things, these provisions:

establish a classified board of directors such that not all members of the board are elected at one time;
allow the authorized number of our directors to be changed only by resolution of our board of directors;
limit the manner in which stockholders can remove directors from the board;
establish advance notice requirements for stockholder proposals that can be acted on at stockholder meetings and nominations to our board of directors; require that stockholder actions must be effected at a duly called stockholder meeting and prohibit actions by our stockholders by written consent;

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limit who may call stockholder meetings;
authorize our board of directors to issue preferred stock without stockholder approval, which could be used to institute a stockholder rights plan, or so-called “poison pill,” that would work to dilute the stock ownership of a potential hostile acquirer, effectively preventing acquisitions that have not been approved by our board of directors; and
require the approval of the holders of at least 662⁄3% of the votes that all our stockholders would be entitled to cast to amend or repeal certain provisions of our charter or bylaws.

Moreover, because we are incorporated in Delaware, we are governed by the provisions of Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law (the “DGCL”), which prohibits a person who owns in excess of 15% of our outstanding voting stock from merging or combining with us for a period of three years after the date of the transaction in which the person acquired in excess of 15% of our outstanding voting stock, unless the merger or combination is approved in a prescribed manner. We have not elected to opt out of DGCL Section 203. These provisions could discourage potential acquisition proposals and could delay or prevent a change in control transaction. They could also have the effect of discouraging others from making tender offers for our common stock, including transactions that may be in our stockholders’ best interests. These provisions may also prevent changes in our management or limit the price that investors are willing to pay for our common stock.

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

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

any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf;
any action asserting a breach of fiduciary duty;
any action asserting a claim against us arising under the DGCL, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation or our amended and restated bylaws; and
any action asserting a claim against us that is governed by the internal-affairs doctrine.

This provision would not apply to suits brought to enforce a duty or liability created by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Furthermore, Section 22 of the Securities Act creates concurrent jurisdiction for federal and state courts over all such Securities Act actions. Accordingly, both state and federal courts have jurisdiction to entertain such claims. To prevent having to litigate claims in multiple jurisdictions and the threat of inconsistent or contrary rulings by different courts, among other considerations, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation further provides that the federal district courts of the United States will be the exclusive forum for resolving any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act. While the Delaware courts have determined that such choice of forum provisions are facially valid, a stockholder may nevertheless seek to bring a claim in a venue other than those designated in the exclusive forum provisions. In such instance, we would expect to vigorously assert the validity and enforceability of the exclusive forum provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation. This may require significant additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions and there can be no assurance that the provisions will be enforced by a court in those other jurisdictions.

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

 

Item 5. Other Information

Director and Officer Trading Arrangements

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During the quarter ended March 31, 2026, no director or officer, as defined in Rule 16a-1(f), adopted or terminated a "Rule 10b5-1 trading arrangement" or a "non-Rule 10b5-1 trading arrangement," each as defined in Regulation S-K Item 408.

 

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Item 6. Exhibits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Incorporated by Reference

Exhibit

Number

 

Description

 

Form

 

File No.

 

Exhibit Number

 

Filing Date

 

Filed Herewith

3.1

 

Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation of the Registrant

 

8-K

 

001-39979

 

3.1

 

February 9, 2021

 

 

3.2

 

Certificate of Amendment to the Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation of the Registrant

 

8-K

 

001-39979

 

3.1

 

May 23, 2025

 

 

3.3

 

Certificate of Amendment to the Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation of the Registrant

 

8-K

 

001-39979

 

3.1

 

September 17, 2025

 

 

3.4

 

Amended and Restated Bylaws of the Registrant

 

8-K

 

001-39979

 

3.2

 

February 9, 2021

 

 

10.1^

 

Securities Purchase Agreement, dated March 26, 2026, by and between the Registrant and the investors named therein

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

X

 

10.2^

 

Registration Rights Agreement, dated March 26, 2026, by and between the Registrant and the investors named therein

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

X

 

10.3+

 

Non-Employee Director Compensation Policy

 

10-K

 

001-39979

 

10.15

 

March 30, 2026

 

 

31.1

 

Certification of Principal Executive Officer pursuant to Rules 13a-14(a)/15d-14(a) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, as adopted pursuant to Section 302 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

X

31.2

 

Certification of Principal Financial Officer pursuant to Rules 13a-14(a)/15d-14(a) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, as adopted pursuant to Section 302 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

X

32.1†

 

Certification of Principal Executive and Financial Officer pursuant to 18 U.S.C. Section 1350, as adopted pursuant to Section 906 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

X

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

101.INS

 

Inline XBRL Instance Document

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

X

101.SCH

 

Inline XBRL Taxonomy Extension Schema Document

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

X

101.CAL

 

Inline XBRL Taxonomy Extension Calculation Linkbase Document

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

X

66


 

101.DEF

 

 

Inline XBRL Taxonomy Extension Definition Linkbase Document

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

X

101.LAB

 

 

Inline XBRL Taxonomy Extension Label Linkbase Document

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

X

101.PRE

 

Inline XBRL Taxonomy Extension Presentation Linkbase Document

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

X

104

 

The cover page from the Company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026, formatted in Inline XBRL.

 

+ Indicates management contract or compensatory plan.

^ Schedules and similar attachments have been omitted pursuant to Item 601(a)(5) of Regulation S-K. The Registrant will furnish a supplemental copy of any omitted schedule or similar attachment to the SEC upon request.

† The certifications furnished in Exhibit 32.1 hereto are deemed to be furnished with this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and will not be deemed to be “filed” for purposes of Section 18 of the Exchange Act. Such certifications will not be deemed to be incorporated by reference into any filing under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Exchange Act, except to the extent that the Registrant specifically incorporates it by reference.

 

 

67


 

SIGNATURES

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned thereunto duly authorized.

 

VOR BIOPHARMA INC.

Date: May 13, 2026

By:

/s/ Jean-Paul Kress

Jean-Paul Kress

President and Chief Executive Officer (Principal Executive Officer)

 

Date: May 13, 2026

By:

/s/ Sandesh Mahatme

Sandesh Mahatme

Chief Financial Officer (Principal Financial Officer and Principal Accounting Officer)

 

68


EX-10.1 2 vor-ex10_1.htm EX-10.1 EX-10.1

 

SECURITIES PURCHASE AGREEMENT

 

This SECURITIES PURCHASE AGREEMENT (this “Agreement”) is dated as of March 26, 2026, by and among Vor Biopharma Inc., a Delaware corporation (the “Company”), and each of the purchasers listed on Exhibit A attached to this Agreement (each, an “Investor” and together, the “Investors”).

WHEREAS, the Company and the Investors are executing and delivering this Agreement in reliance upon the exemption from securities registration afforded by Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act;

WHEREAS, the Company desires to sell to the Investors, and each Investor desires to purchase from the Company, severally and not jointly, upon the terms and subject to the conditions stated in this Agreement, shares of Common Stock (the “Shares”); and

WHEREAS, contemporaneously with the sale of the Shares, the parties hereto will execute and deliver a Registration Rights Agreement, substantially in the form attached hereto as Exhibit B, pursuant to which the Company will agree to provide certain registration rights in respect of the Shares under the Securities Act and applicable state securities laws.

NOW THEREFORE, in consideration of the mutual agreements, representations, warranties and covenants herein contained, the Company and each Investor, severally and not jointly, agree as follows:

1.
Definitions. As used in this Agreement, the following terms shall have the following respective meanings:

“Affiliate” means, with respect to any Person, any other Person that, directly or indirectly through one or more intermediates, controls, is controlled by or is under common control with such Person.

“Agreement” has the meaning set forth in the recitals.

“Amended and Restated Bylaws” means the Bylaws of the Company, as currently in effect.

“Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation” means the Certificate of Incorporation of the Company, as currently in effect.

“Benefit Plan” or “Benefit Plans” means employee benefit plans as defined in Section 3(3) of ERISA and all other employee benefit practices or arrangements, including, without limitation, any such practices or arrangements providing severance pay, sick leave, vacation pay, salary continuation for disability, retirement benefits, deferred compensation, bonus pay, incentive pay, stock options or other stock-based compensation, hospitalization insurance, medical insurance, life insurance, scholarships or tuition reimbursements, maintained by the Company or to which the Company or any of its subsidiaries is obligated to contribute for employees or former employees of the Company and its subsidiaries.

 


 

“Board of Directors” means the board of directors of the Company.

“Business Day” means any day except any Saturday, any Sunday, any day which is a federal legal holiday in the United States or any day on which banking institutions in the State of New York are authorized or required by law or other governmental action to close.

“Closing” has the meaning set forth in Section 2.2.

“Closing Date” has the meaning set forth in Section 2.2.

“Code” means the U.S. Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended.

“Common Stock” means the Company’s common stock, par value $0.0001 per share.

“Common Stock Equivalents” means any securities of the Company that would entitle the holder thereof to acquire at any time Common Stock, including, without limitation, any debt, preferred stock, rights, options, warrants or other instrument that is at any time convertible into or exchangeable for, or otherwise entitles the holder thereof to receive, Common Stock.

“Company” has the meaning set forth in the recitals.

“Confidential Data” has the meaning set forth in Section 3.30.

“Disclosure Document” has the meaning set forth in Section 5.3.

“Drug Regulatory Agency” means the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) or other foreign, state, local or comparable governmental authority responsible for regulation of the research, development, testing, manufacturing, processing, storage, labeling, sale, marketing, advertising, distribution and importation or exportation of drug or biological products and drug or biological product candidates.

“Environmental Laws” has the meaning set forth in Section 3.15.

“ERISA” means the U.S. Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended.

“Exchange Act” means the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and all of the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder.

“Financial Statements” has the meaning set forth in Section 3.8(b).

“Fundamental Representations” means the representations and warranties made by the Company in Sections 3.1 (Organization and Power), 3.2 (Capitalization), 3.4 (Authorization), 3.5 (Valid Issuance), 3.6 (No Conflict), 3.7 (Consents), 3.8 (SEC Filings; Financial Statements), 3.18 (Nasdaq Stock Market), 3.19 (Sarbanes-Oxley Act), 3.23 (Price Stabilization of Common Stock), 3.24 (Investment Company Act), 3.25 (General Solicitation; No Integration or Aggregation), 3.26 (Brokers and Finders), 3.27 (Reliance by the Investors) and 3.28 (No Additional Agreements).

“GAAP” has the meaning set forth in Section 3.8(b).

2


 

“GDPR” has the meaning set forth in Section 3.31.

“Governmental Authorizations” has the meaning set forth in Section 3.11.

“HIPAA” has the meaning set forth in Section 3.21.

“Indemnified Person” has the meaning set forth in Section 5.9.

“Investor” and “Investors” have the meanings set forth in the recitals.

“IT Systems” has the meaning set forth in Section 3.30.

“Licenses” has the meaning set forth in Section 3.21.

“Lock-up Period” has the meaning set forth in Section 5.10.

“Material Adverse Effect” means any change, event, circumstance, development, condition, occurrence or effect that, individually or in the aggregate, (a) was, is, or would reasonably be expected to be, materially adverse to the business, financial condition, properties, assets, liabilities, stockholders’ equity or results of operations of the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, or (b) materially delays or materially impairs the ability of the Company to comply, or prevents the Company from complying, with its obligations under this Agreement, the other Transaction Agreements, or with respect to the Closing, or would reasonably be expected to do so.

“Nasdaq” means the Nasdaq Stock Market LLC.

“National Exchange” means any of the following markets or exchanges on which the Common Stock is listed or quoted for trading on the date in question, together with any successor thereto: the NYSE American, The New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq Global Market, the Nasdaq Global Select Market and the Nasdaq Capital Market.

“Person” means an individual, partnership, corporation, limited liability company, business trust, joint stock company, trust, unincorporated association, joint venture or any other entity or organization.

“Personal Data” has the meaning set forth in Section 3.30.

“Privacy Laws” has the meaning set forth in Section 3.31.

“Privacy Statements” has the meaning set forth in Section 3.31.

“Process” or “Processing” has the meaning set forth in Section 3.31.

“Registration Rights Agreement” has the meaning set forth in Section 6.1(j).

“Rule 144” means Rule 144 promulgated by the SEC pursuant to the Securities Act, as such Rule may be amended from time to time, or any similar rule or regulation hereafter adopted by the SEC having substantially the same effect as such Rule.

3


 

“SEC” means the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

“SEC Reports” means (a) the Company’s most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K and (b) all Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q or Current Reports on Form 8-K filed or furnished (as applicable) by the Company following the end of the most recent fiscal year for which an Annual Report on Form 10-K has been filed and prior to the execution of this Agreement, together in each case with any documents incorporated by reference therein or exhibits thereto.

“Securities Act” means the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and all of the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder.

“Shares” has the meaning set forth in the recitals.

“Short Sales” include, without limitation, (a) all “short sales” as defined in Rule 200 promulgated under Regulation SHO under the Exchange Act, whether or not against the box, and all types of direct and indirect stock pledges, forward sale contracts, options, puts, calls, short sales, swaps, “put equivalent positions” (as defined in Rule 16a-1(h) under the Exchange Act) and similar arrangements (including on a total return basis), and (b) sales and other transactions through non-U.S. broker dealers or non-U.S. regulated brokers (but shall not be deemed to include the location and/or reservation of borrowable shares of Common Stock).

“Tax” or “Taxes” means any and all federal, state, local, foreign and other taxes, levies, fees, imposts, duties and charges of whatever kind (including any interest, penalties or additions to the tax imposed in connection therewith or with respect thereto), whether or not imposed on the Company or its subsidiaries, including, without limitation, taxes imposed on, or measured by, income, franchise, profits or gross receipts, and also ad valorem, value added, sales, use, service, real or personal property, capital stock, license, payroll, withholding, employment, social security, workers’ compensation, unemployment compensation, utility, severance, production, excise, stamp, occupation, premium, windfall profits, transfer and gains taxes and customs duties.

“Tax Returns” means returns, reports, information statements and other documentation (including any additional or supporting material) filed or maintained, or required to be filed or maintained, in connection with the calculation, determination, assessment or collection of any Tax and shall include any amended returns required as a result of examination adjustments made by the Internal Revenue Service or other Tax authority.

“Transaction Agreements” means this Agreement and the Registration Rights Agreement.

“Transfer Agent” means, with respect to the Common Stock, Computershare Trust Company, N.A., or such other financial institution that provides transfer agent services as the Company may engage from time to time.

2.
Purchase and Sale of Securities.
2.1
Purchase and Sale. On the Closing Date, upon the terms and subject to the conditions set forth herein, the Company agrees to sell, and the Investors, severally and not jointly, agree to purchase, the number of Shares, for the aggregate purchase price, set forth opposite the Investor’s name on Exhibit A. The price per Share is $14.05.

4


 

2.2
Closing. Subject to the satisfaction or waiver of the conditions set forth in Section 6 of this Agreement, the closing of the purchase and sale of the Shares (the “Closing” and the date on which the Closing occurs, the “Closing Date”) shall occur remotely via the exchange of documents and signatures at such time as agreed to by the Company and the Investors but (i) in no event earlier than the second Business Day after the date of this Agreement and (ii) in no event later than the fifth Business Day after the date of this Agreement. At the Closing, the Shares shall be issued and registered in the name of the Investor, or in such nominee name(s) as designated by such Investor, representing the number of Shares to be purchased by the Investor at the Closing as set forth in Exhibit A, in each case against payment to the Company of the purchase price therefor (the “Aggregate Purchase Amount”) in full, by wire transfer to the Company of immediately available funds, at or prior to the Closing, in accordance with wire instructions provided by the Company to the Investors at least one Business Day prior to the Closing. On the Closing Date, the Company will cause the Transfer Agent to issue the Shares in book-entry form, free and clear of all restrictive and other legends (except as expressly provided in Section 4.10 hereof) and the Company shall provide evidence of such issuance from the Company’s Transfer Agent as soon as reasonably practicable following the Closing Date to each Investor. In the event that the Closing has not occurred within one Business Day after the expected Closing Date, unless otherwise agreed by the Company and such Investor, the Company shall promptly (but no later than one Business Day thereafter) return the previously wired Aggregate Purchase Amount to each respective Investor by wire transfer of United States dollars in immediately available funds to the account specified by each Investor, and any book entries for the Shares shall be deemed cancelled; provided that, unless this Agreement has been terminated pursuant to Section 7, such return of funds shall not terminate this Agreement or relieve such Investor of its obligation to purchase, or the Company of its obligation to issue and sell, the Shares at the Closing.
3.
Representations and Warranties of the Company. Except as set forth in the SEC Reports (other than as to the Fundamental Representations, which are not so qualified), the Company hereby represents and warrants to each of the Investors that the statements contained in this Section 3 are true and correct as of the date of this Agreement and as of the Closing Date (except for the representations and warranties that speak as of a specific date, which shall be made as of such date).
3.1
Organization and Power. The Company is a corporation duly organized, validly existing and in good standing under the laws of the State of Delaware, has the requisite power and authority to own, lease and operate its properties and to carry on its business as now conducted and described in the SEC Reports and is qualified to do business in each jurisdiction in which the character of its properties or the nature of its business requires such qualification, except where such failure to be in good standing or to have such power and authority or to so qualify would not reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect. Each of the Company’s subsidiaries is (i) duly incorporated and validly existing and in good standing under the laws of the jurisdiction of its incorporation and has the requisite power and authority to carry on its business as now conducted and to own or lease its properties and (ii) qualified to do business as a foreign corporation and in good standing in each jurisdiction in which such qualification is required, except in each case as would not reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect.

5


 

3.2
Capitalization. The Company’s disclosure of its authorized, issued and outstanding capital stock in the SEC Reports containing such disclosure was accurate in all material respects as of the date indicated in such SEC Reports. All of the issued and outstanding shares of Common Stock have been duly authorized and validly issued and are fully paid and non-assessable. None of the outstanding shares of capital stock of the Company were issued in violation of any preemptive or other similar rights of any securityholder of the Company which have not been waived, and such shares were issued in compliance in all material respects with applicable state and federal securities laws and any rights of third parties.
3.3
Registration Rights. Except as set forth in the Transaction Agreements or as disclosed in the SEC Reports, the Company is presently not under any obligation, and has not granted any rights, to register under the Securities Act any of the Company’s presently outstanding securities or any of its securities that may hereafter be issued, other than such rights and obligations that have expired or been satisfied or waived.
3.4
Authorization. The Company has all requisite corporate power and authority to enter into the Transaction Agreements and to carry out and perform its obligations under the terms of the Transaction Agreements, including the issuance and sale of the Shares. All corporate action on the part of the Company, its officers, directors and stockholders necessary for the authorization of the Shares, the authorization, execution, delivery and performance of the Transaction Agreements and the consummation of the transactions contemplated herein, including the issuance and sale of the Shares, has been taken, including, without limitation, the approval of the Board of Directors (or a committee thereof) in accordance with Section 144(a)(1) of the Delaware General Corporation Law (the “DGCL”). This Agreement has been duly executed and delivered by the Company and, assuming the due authorization, execution and delivery by each Investor of this Agreement and that this Agreement constitutes the legal, valid and binding agreement of each Investor, this Agreement constitutes a legal, valid and binding obligation of the Company, enforceable against the Company in accordance with its terms, except as such enforceability may be limited by bankruptcy, insolvency, reorganization, moratorium and similar laws relating to or affecting creditors generally or by general equity principles (regardless of whether such enforceability is considered in a proceeding in equity or at law). Upon its execution by the Company and the other parties thereto and assuming that it constitutes legal, valid and binding agreements of the other parties thereto, the Registration Rights Agreement will constitute a legal, valid and binding obligation of the Company, enforceable against the Company in accordance with its terms, except as such enforceability may be limited by bankruptcy, insolvency, reorganization, moratorium and similar laws relating to or affecting creditors generally or by general equity principles (regardless of whether such enforceability is considered in a proceeding in equity or at law).
3.5
Valid Issuance. The Shares being purchased by the Investors hereunder have been duly and validly authorized and, upon issuance pursuant to the terms of this Agreement against full payment therefor in accordance with the terms of this Agreement, will be duly and validly issued, fully paid and non-assessable and will be issued free and clear of any liens or other restrictions (other than those as provided in the Transaction Agreements or restrictions on transfer under applicable state and federal securities laws), and the holder of the Shares shall be entitled to all rights accorded to a holder of Common Stock.

6


 

Subject to the accuracy of the representations and warranties made by the Investors in Section 4, the offer and sale of the Shares to the Investors is and will be (i) exempt from the registration and prospectus delivery requirements of the Securities Act and (ii) exempt from (or otherwise not subject to) the registration and qualification requirements of applicable securities laws of the states of the United States.
3.6
No Conflict. The execution, delivery and performance of the Transaction Agreements by the Company, the issuance and sale of the Shares and the consummation of the other transactions contemplated by the Transaction Agreements will not (i) violate any provision of the Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation or Amended and Restated Bylaws of the Company, (ii) conflict with or result in a violation of or default (with or without notice or lapse of time, or both) under, or give rise to a right of termination, cancellation or acceleration of any obligation, a change of control right or to a loss of a benefit under any agreement or instrument, credit facility, franchise, license, judgment, order, statute, law, ordinance, rule or regulations, applicable to the Company or any of its subsidiaries or their respective properties or assets, or (iii) result in a violation of any law, rule, regulation, order, judgment, injunction, decree or other restriction of any court or governmental authority to which the Company or any of its subsidiaries is subject (including federal and state securities laws and regulations) and the rules and regulations of any self-regulatory organization to which the Company or its securities are subject, or by which any property or asset of the Company or any of its subsidiaries is bound or affected, except, in the case of clauses (ii) and (iii), as would not, individually or in the aggregate, be reasonably expected to have a Material Adverse Effect.
3.7
Consents. Assuming the accuracy of the representations and warranties of the Investors, no consent, approval, authorization, filing with or order of or registration with, any court or governmental agency or body is required in connection with the authorization, execution or delivery by the Company of the Transaction Agreements, the issuance and sale of the Shares and the performance by the Company of its other obligations under the Transaction Agreements, except (a) as have been or will be obtained or made under the Securities Act or the Exchange Act, (b) the filing of any requisite notices and/or application(s) to the National Exchange for the issuance and sale of the Shares and the listing of the Shares for trading or quotation, as the case may be, thereon in the time and manner required thereby, (c) customary post-closing filings with the SEC or pursuant to state securities laws in connection with the offer and sale of the Shares by the Company in the manner contemplated herein, which will be filed on a timely basis, (d) the filing of the registration statement required to be filed by the Registration Rights Agreement, or (e) such that the failure of which to obtain would not have a Material Adverse Effect. All notices, consents, authorizations, orders, filings and registrations which the Company is required to deliver or obtain prior to the Closing pursuant to the preceding sentence have been obtained or made or will be delivered or obtained or effected, and shall remain in full force and effect, on or prior to the Closing.
3.8
SEC Filings; Financial Statements.
(a)
The Company has filed all forms, statements, certifications, reports and documents required to be filed by it with the SEC under Section 13, 14(a) and 15(d) of the Exchange Act for the one year preceding the date of this Agreement and is in compliance with General Instruction I.A.3 of Form S-3.

7


 

As of the time it was filed with the SEC (or, if amended or superseded by a filing prior to the date of this Agreement, then on the date of such filing), each of the filed SEC Reports complied in all material respects with the applicable requirements of the Exchange Act, and, as of the time they were filed, none of the filed SEC Reports contained any untrue statement of a material fact or omitted to state a material fact required to be stated therein or necessary in order to make the statements therein, in light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading. There are no outstanding or unresolved comments from the SEC staff with respect to the SEC Reports. To the Company’s knowledge, none of the SEC Reports are the subject of an ongoing SEC review. The interactive data in eXtensible Business Reporting Language included in the SEC Reports fairly presents the information called for in all material respects and has been prepared in accordance with the SEC’s rules and guidelines applicable thereto. The Company is not, and has never been, an issuer subject to Rule 144(i) under the Securities Act.
(b)
The financial statements of the Company included in the SEC Reports (collectively, the “Financial Statements”) comply in all material respects with applicable accounting requirements and the rules and regulations of the SEC with respect thereto as in effect at the time of filing (or to the extent corrected by a subsequent restatement) and fairly present in all material respects the consolidated financial position of the Company as of the dates indicated, and the results of its operations and cash flows for the periods therein specified, all in accordance with United States generally accepted accounting principles (“GAAP”) (except as otherwise noted therein, and in the case of unaudited financial statements, as permitted by Form 10-Q of the SEC, and except that the unaudited financial statements may not contain certain footnotes and are subject to normal and recurring year-end adjustments) applied on a consistent basis throughout the periods therein specified (unless otherwise noted therein). Except as set forth in the Financial Statements filed prior to the date of this Agreement, the Company has not incurred any liabilities, contingent or otherwise, except (i) those incurred in the ordinary course of business, consistent with past practices since the date of such financial statements or (ii) liabilities not required under GAAP to be reflected in the Financial Statements, in either case, none of which, individually or in the aggregate, have had or would reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect.
3.9
Absence of Changes. Between December 31, 2025 and the date of this Agreement, (a) the Company has conducted its business only in the ordinary course of business and there have been no material transactions entered into by the Company (except for the execution and performance of this Agreement and the discussions, negotiations and transactions related thereto); (b) no material change to any material contract or arrangement by which the Company or any of its subsidiaries is bound or to which any of its assets or properties is subject has been entered into that has not been disclosed in the SEC Reports; and (c) there has not been any other event or condition of any character that has had or would reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect; provided, however, that none of the following will be deemed in themselves, either alone or in combination, to constitute, and that none of the following will be taken into account in determining whether there has been or will be, a Material Adverse Effect under this Section 3.9:

(i) any change generally affecting the economy, financial markets or political, economic or regulatory conditions in the United States or any other geographic region in which the Company conducts business, provided that the Company is not disproportionately affected thereby; (ii) general financial, credit or capital market conditions, including interest rates or exchange rates, or any changes therein, provided that the Company is not disproportionately affected thereby;

8


 

(iii) any change that generally affects industries in which the Company and its subsidiaries conduct business, provided that the Company is not disproportionately affected thereby;

(iv) earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes, floods, mudslides, fires or other natural disasters, weather conditions, global pandemics, epidemic or similar health emergency, and other force majeure events in the United States or any other location, provided that the Company is not disproportionately affected thereby;

(v) national or international political or social conditions (or changes in such conditions), whether or not pursuant to the declaration of a national emergency or war, or the occurrence of any military or terrorist attack, provided that the Company is not disproportionately affected thereby;

(vi) material changes in laws after the date of this Agreement; and

(vii) in and of itself, any material failure by the Company to meet any published or internally prepared estimates of revenues, expenses, earnings or other economic performance for any period ending on or after the date of this Agreement (it being understood that the facts and circumstances giving rise to such failure may be deemed to constitute, and may be taken into account in determining whether there has been, a Material Adverse Effect to the extent that such facts and circumstances are not otherwise described in clauses (i)-(v) of this definition).

3.10
Absence of Litigation. There is no action, suit, proceeding, arbitration, claim, investigation, charge, complaint or inquiry pending or, to the Company’s knowledge, threatened against the Company or any of its subsidiaries which, individually or in the aggregate, has had or would reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect, nor are there any orders, writs, injunctions, judgments or decrees outstanding of any court or government agency or instrumentality and binding upon the Company or any of its subsidiaries that have had or would reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect. Neither the Company nor any subsidiary, nor to the knowledge of the Company, any director or officer of the Company or any subsidiary, is, or within the last ten years has been, the subject of any action involving a claim of violation of or liability under federal or state securities laws relating to the Company or such subsidiary or a claim of breach of fiduciary duty relating to the Company or such subsidiary.
3.11
Compliance with Law; Permits. Neither the Company nor any of its subsidiaries is in violation of, or has received any notices of violations with respect to, any laws, statutes, ordinances, rules or regulations of any governmental body, court or government agency or instrumentality, except for violations which, individually or in the aggregate, have not had and would not reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect. The Company and its subsidiaries have all required licenses, permits, certificates and other authorizations (collectively, “Governmental Authorizations”) from such federal, state or local government or governmental agency, department or body that are currently necessary for the operation of the business of the Company and its subsidiaries as currently conducted, except where the failure to possess currently such Governmental Authorizations has not had and is not reasonably expected to have a Material Adverse Effect.

9


 

Neither the Company nor any subsidiary has received any written (or, to the Company’s knowledge, oral) notice regarding any revocation or material modification of any such Governmental Authorization, which, individually or in the aggregate, if the subject of an unfavorable decision, ruling or finding, has or would reasonably be expected to result in a Material Adverse Effect.
3.12
Intellectual Property. The Company owns or has valid and enforceable licenses or other rights to all patents, copyrights, copyrightable works, trademarks, service marks, trade names, and service names (including all applications and registrations relating to any of the foregoing), and all inventions, know-how, trade secrets and other proprietary or confidential information (whether or not patentable), systems or procedures and all other technology and intellectual property rights necessary for the conduct, or the proposed conduct, of the business of the Company in the manner described in the SEC Reports (collectively, the “Company Intellectual Property”); the Company Intellectual Property disclosed in the SEC Reports as being owned by the Company is owned by the Company free and clear of all material liens, security interests, and encumbrances, and to the Company’s knowledge, there are no rights of third parties to such Company Intellectual Property; to the Company’s knowledge, the Company Intellectual Property is valid, enforceable and subsisting; and other than as disclosed in the SEC Reports, (i) the Company is not obligated to pay a material royalty, grant a material license, or provide other material consideration to any third party in connection with the Company Intellectual Property, (ii) no action, suit, claim or other proceeding is pending or, to the knowledge of the Company, is threatened, alleging that the conduct of the business of the Company in the manner described in the SEC Reports is infringing, misappropriating, diluting or otherwise violating any intellectual property rights of others, (iii) no action, suit, claim or other proceeding is pending or, to the knowledge of the Company, is threatened, challenging the validity, enforceability, scope, registration, ownership or use of any of the Company Intellectual Property, (iv) no action, suit, claim or other proceeding is pending or, to the knowledge of the Company, is threatened, challenging the Company’s rights in or to any Company Intellectual Property, (v) to the Company’s knowledge, no third party has any ownership right in or to any Company Intellectual Property in any field of use that is exclusively licensed to the Company, other than any licensor to the Company of such Company Intellectual Property, (vi) no employee, consultant or independent contractor of the Company is, to the Company’s knowledge, in violation in any material respect of any term of any employment contract, patent disclosure agreement, invention assignment agreement, non-competition agreement, non-solicitation agreement, nondisclosure agreement, or any restrictive covenant to or with a former employer or independent contractor where the basis of such violation relates to such employee’s employment or independent contractor’s engagement with the Company or actions undertaken while employed or engaged with the Company, (vii) the Company has taken reasonable measures to protect its material confidential information and material trade secrets and to maintain and safeguard the material Company Intellectual Property, including the execution of appropriate nondisclosure and confidentiality agreements, and (viii) the Company has complied with the material terms of each agreement pursuant to which the Company Intellectual Property has been licensed to the Company, and all such agreements are in full force and effect; except in each of (i)–(viii) such as would not, if determined adversely to the Company, individually or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect.

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All patents and patent applications within the Company Intellectual Property disclosed in the SEC Reports as being owned by the Company have, to the knowledge of the Company, been duly and properly filed and maintained; to the knowledge of the Company, there are no material defects in any of such patents or patent applications; to the knowledge of the Company, the parties prosecuting such applications have complied with their duty of candor and disclosure to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (the “USPTO”) in connection with such applications; and the Company is not aware of any facts required to be disclosed to the USPTO that were not disclosed to the USPTO and which would preclude the grant of a patent in connection with any such application or could form the basis of a finding of invalidity with respect to any patents that have issued with respect to such applications; except such as would not, if determined adversely to the Company, individually or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect.
3.13
Employee Benefits. Except as would not be reasonably likely to result in a Material Adverse Effect, each Benefit Plan has been established and administered in accordance with its terms and in compliance with the applicable provisions of ERISA, the Code, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, as amended, and other applicable laws, rules and regulations. The Company and its subsidiaries are in compliance with all applicable federal, state and local laws, rules and regulations regarding employment, except for any failures to comply that are not reasonably likely, individually or in the aggregate, to have a Material Adverse Effect. There is no labor dispute, strike or work stoppage against the Company or its subsidiaries pending or, to the knowledge of the Company, threatened which may interfere with the business activities of the Company, except where such dispute, strike or work stoppage is not reasonably likely, individually or in the aggregate, to have a Material Adverse Effect.
3.14
Taxes. All Tax Returns of the Company and its subsidiaries required by law to be filed have been filed and all Taxes shown as due on such returns or that otherwise have been assessed, which are due and payable, have been paid, except: (i) assessments against which appeals have been or will be promptly taken in good faith and as to which adequate reserves have been provided in accordance with the applicable accounting principles, or (ii) as would not, individually or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect. No audits, examinations, or other proceedings with respect to any material amounts of Taxes of the Company and its subsidiaries are presently in progress or have been asserted or proposed in writing without subsequently being paid, settled or withdrawn. There are no liens on any of the assets of the Company. At all times since inception, the Company has been and continues to be classified as a corporation for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Neither the Company nor any of its subsidiaries has been a United States real property holding corporation within the meaning of Code Section 897(c)(2) during the period specified in Code Section 897(c)(1)(A)(ii).
3.15
Environmental Laws. The Company and its subsidiaries (i) are in compliance with any and all applicable foreign, federal, state and local laws and regulations relating to the protection of human health and safety, the environment or hazardous or toxic substances or wastes, pollutants or contaminants (“Environmental Laws”), (ii) have received all permits and other Governmental Authorizations required under applicable Environmental Laws to conduct their business and (iii) are in compliance with all terms and conditions of any such permit, license or approval, except where such noncompliance with Environmental Laws, failure to receive required permits, licenses or other approvals or failure to comply with the terms and conditions of such permits, licenses or approvals would not, individually or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect.

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None of the Company nor any of its subsidiaries has received since January 1, 2026, any written notice or other communication (in writing or otherwise), whether from a governmental authority or other Person, that alleges that the Company or any subsidiary is not in compliance with any Environmental Law and, to the knowledge of the Company, there are no circumstances that may prevent or interfere with the Company’s or any subsidiary’s compliance in any material respects with any Environmental Law in the future, except where such failure to comply would not reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect. To the knowledge of the Company: (i) no current or (during the time a prior property was leased or controlled by the Company) prior property leased or controlled by the Company or any subsidiary has received since January 1, 2026, any written notice or other communication relating to property owned or leased at any time by the Company, whether from a governmental authority, or other Person, that alleges that such current or prior owner or the Company or any subsidiary is not in compliance with or violated any Environmental Law relating to such property and (ii) the Company has no material liability under any Environmental Law.
3.16
Title. Each of the Company and its subsidiaries has good and marketable title to all personal property owned by it that is material to the business of the Company, free and clear of all liens, encumbrances and defects except such as do not materially affect the value of such property and do not interfere with the use made and proposed to be made of such property by the Company or its subsidiaries, as the case may be. Any real property and buildings held under lease by the Company or its subsidiaries is held under valid, subsisting and enforceable leases with such exceptions as are not material and do not interfere with the use made and proposed to be made of such property and buildings by the Company or its subsidiaries, as the case may be. The Company does not own any real property.
3.17
Insurance. The Company carries or is entitled to the benefits of insurance in such amounts and covering such risks that is customary for comparably situated companies and is adequate for the conduct of its business and the value of its real and personal properties (owned or leased) and tangible assets, and each of such insurance policies is in full force and effect and the Company is in compliance in all material respects with the terms of such insurance policies. Other than customary end-of-policy notifications from insurance carriers, since January 1, 2026, the Company has not received any notice or other communication regarding any actual or possible: (i) cancellation or invalidation of any material insurance policy or (ii) refusal or denial of any coverage, reservation of rights or rejection of any material claim under any insurance policy.
3.18
Nasdaq Stock Market. The issued and outstanding shares of Common Stock are registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Exchange Act and are listed for trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “VOR”. The Company is in compliance with all listing requirements of Nasdaq applicable to the Company. As of the date of this Agreement, there is no suit, action, proceeding or investigation pending or, to the knowledge of the Company, threatened against the Company by Nasdaq or the SEC, respectively, to prohibit or terminate the listing of the Common Stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market or to deregister the Common Stock under the Exchange Act. The Company has taken no action as of the date of this Agreement that is designed to terminate the registration of the Common Stock under the Exchange Act.

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3.19
Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The Company is, and since January 1, 2026, has been, in compliance in all material respects with all applicable requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and applicable rules and regulations promulgated by the SEC thereunder.
3.20
Clinical Data and Regulatory Compliance. The clinical trials that are described in the SEC Reports were, to the Company’s knowledge, and, if still pending, are being, conducted in all material respects in accordance with the protocols submitted to the FDA or any foreign governmental body exercising comparable authority, and all applicable laws and regulations; the descriptions of the clinical trials conducted by or, to the Company’s knowledge, on behalf of the Company or by a licensor, and the results thereof, contained in SEC Reports are accurate and complete in all material respects; the Company is not aware of any other pre-clinical studies or clinical trials, the results of which materially call into question the results described in SEC Reports; and the Company has not received any written notices or correspondence from the FDA, any foreign, state or local governmental body exercising comparable authority or any Institutional Review Board or ethics committee or similar body requiring the termination, suspension, material adverse modification or clinical hold of any clinical trials conducted by or on behalf of the Company or by a licensor. Neither the Company or its subsidiaries nor any of their respective officers, employees or directors, nor, to the Company’s knowledge, any of its respective agents or clinical investigators, or licensors, has, for the past three (3) years, been excluded, suspended or debarred from participation in any U.S. federal or foreign health care program or human clinical research, or is subject to a governmental inquiry, investigation, proceeding or other similar action that could reasonably be expected to result in debarment, suspension, or exclusion, or convicted of any crime or engaged in any conduct that would reasonably be expected to result in debarment under 21 U.S.C. § 335a or comparable foreign law.
3.21
Compliance with Health Care Laws. The Company, its subsidiaries and their respective directors, officers and employees, are and for the past three (3) years have been, in compliance with applicable Health Care Laws (defined herein), including, but not limited to, the rules and regulations of the FDA, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Office for Civil Rights, and the Department of Justice, except for such noncompliance that would not, individually or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect. For purposes of this Agreement, “Health Care Laws” shall mean, as applicable, the federal Anti-kickback Statute (42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b(b)), the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7h), the civil False Claims Act (31 U.S.C. §§ 3729 et seq.), the criminal False Claims Act (42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b(a)), applicable criminal laws relating to health care fraud and abuse, including, without limitation, those set forth at 18 U.S.C. §§ 286, 287 and 1349, the exclusion law (42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7), the civil monetary penalties law (42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7a), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (42 U.S.C. §§ 1320d et seq.), as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (42 U.S.C. §§ 17921 et seq.) (“HIPAA”), and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. §§ 301 et seq.), the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. §§ 201 et seq.) and comparable state, local and foreign laws, each as amended from time and the regulations promulgated thereunder. The Company is not a party to or does not have any ongoing reporting obligations pursuant to any corporate integrity agreement, deferred or non-prosecution agreement, monitoring agreement, consent decree, settlement order, plan of correction or similar agreement imposed by any governmental authority.

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The Company has not received any written notification, correspondence or any other written or oral communication, including, without limitation, any Form FDA 483, notice of adverse finding, warning letter, untitled letter or other correspondence or notice from the FDA or any similar regulatory authority, or any notification of any pending or, to the Company’s knowledge, threatened claim, suit, proceeding, hearing, enforcement, investigation, arbitration or other action, from any governmental authority alleging or asserting potential or actual material non-compliance by, or material liability of, the Company under any Health Care Laws. Each of the Company and its subsidiaries possesses, and is in compliance with the terms of, all applications, certificates, approvals, clearances, registrations, exemptions, franchises, licenses, permits, consents and other authorizations issued by the appropriate governmental authorities and necessary to conduct its business (collectively, “Licenses”), including, without limitation, all Licenses required by the Drug Regulatory Agencies. All such Licenses are in full force and effect and the Company is not in violation of any term or conditions of any such License. Each of the Company and its subsidiaries and has fulfilled and performed all of its respective obligations with respect to such Licenses and, no event has occurred which allows, or after notice or lapse of time would allow, revocation or termination thereof or results in any other impairment of the rights of the holder of any such License. The Company has not received any written notice of proceedings from the applicable Drug Regulatory Agency proposing to revoke or materially adversely modify any such Licenses and, to the Company’s knowledge, no Drug Regulatory Agency has taken any action to limit, suspend or revoke any such License possessed by the Company.
3.22
Accounting Controls and Disclosure Controls and Procedures. The Company maintains a system of internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) of the Exchange Act) that is designed to comply with the requirements of the Exchange Act applicable to the Company and provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with GAAP, including policies and procedures sufficient to provide reasonable assurance (i) that the Company maintains records that in reasonable detail accurately and fairly reflect the Company’s transactions and dispositions of assets, (ii) that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in accordance with GAAP, (iii) that receipts and expenditures are made only in accordance with authorizations of management and the Board of Directors and (iv) regarding prevention or timely detection of the unauthorized acquisition, use or disposition of the Company’s assets that could have a material effect on the Company’s financial statements. Except as disclosed in the Company’s SEC Reports filed prior to the date of this Agreement, the Company has not identified any material weaknesses in the design or operation of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting. The Company’s “disclosure controls and procedures” (as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) of the Exchange Act) are designed to provide reasonable assurance that all information (both financial and non-financial) required to be disclosed by the Company in the reports that it files or submits under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in the rules and forms of the SEC, and that all such information is accumulated and communicated to the Company’s management as appropriate to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure.
3.23
Price Stabilization of Common Stock. The Company has not taken, nor will it take, directly or indirectly, any action designed to stabilize or manipulate the price of the Common Stock to facilitate the sale or resale of the Shares.

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3.24
Investment Company Act. The Company is not, and immediately after receipt of payment for the Shares will not be, an “investment company” within the meaning of the U.S. Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended.
3.25
General Solicitation; No Integration or Aggregation. Neither the Company nor any other person or entity authorized by the Company to act on its behalf has engaged in a general solicitation or general advertising (within the meaning of Regulation D of the Securities Act) of investors with respect to offers or sales of Shares pursuant to this Agreement. The Company has not, directly or indirectly, sold, offered for sale, solicited offers to buy or otherwise negotiated in respect of, any security (as defined in the Securities Act) which, to its knowledge, is or will be (i) integrated with the offer and sale of the Shares pursuant to this Agreement for purposes of the Securities Act or (ii) aggregated with prior offerings by the Company for the purposes of the rules and regulations of the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Assuming the accuracy of the representations and warranties of the Investors set forth in Section 4, neither the Company nor any of its Affiliates, its subsidiaries nor any Person acting on their behalf has, directly or indirectly, made any offers or sales of any Company security or solicited any offers to buy any Company security, under circumstances that would adversely affect reliance by the Company on Section 4(a)(2) for the exemption from registration for the transactions contemplated hereby.
3.26
Brokers and Finders. Neither the Company nor any other Person authorized by the Company to act on its behalf has retained, utilized or been represented by any broker or finder in connection with the transactions contemplated by this Agreement.
3.27
Reliance by the Investors. The Company has a reasonable basis for making each of the representations set forth in this Section 3. The Company acknowledges that each of the Investors will rely upon the truth and accuracy of, and the Company’s compliance with, the representations, warranties, agreements, acknowledgements and understandings of the Company set forth herein.
3.28
No Additional Agreements. There are no agreements or understandings between the Company and any Investor with respect to the transactions contemplated by the Transaction Agreements other than (i) as specified in the Transaction Agreements and (ii) any side letter agreements with any of the Investors, which side letters the Company has shared with all Investors.
3.29
Anti-Bribery and Anti-Money Laundering Laws. Each of the Company, its subsidiaries and, to the knowledge of the Company, any of their respective officers, directors, supervisors, managers, agents, or employees are and have at all times been in compliance with and its participation in the offering will not violate: (A) anti-bribery laws, including but not limited to, any applicable law, rule, or regulation of any locality, including but not limited to any law, rule, or regulation promulgated to implement the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, signed December 17, 1997, including the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, as amended, the U.K. Bribery Act 2010, or any other law, rule or regulation of similar purposes and scope; (B) anti-money laundering laws, including, but not limited to, applicable federal, state, international, foreign or other laws, regulations or government guidance regarding anti-money laundering, including, without limitation, Title 18 US.

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Code sections 1956 and 1957, the Patriot Act, the Bank Secrecy Act, and international anti-money laundering principles or procedures by an intergovernmental group or organization, such as the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, of which the United States is a member and with which designation the United States representative to the group or organization continues to concur, all as amended, and any executive order, directive, or regulation pursuant to the authority of any of the foregoing, or any orders or licenses issued thereunder; or (C) except as would not reasonably be expected, individually or in the aggregate, to result in a Material Adverse Effect, any laws with respect to import and export control and economic sanctions, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations, the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations, and economic sanctions regulations and executive orders administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Asset Control.
3.30
Cybersecurity. The Company and its subsidiaries’ information technology assets and equipment, computers, systems, networks, hardware, software, websites, applications, and databases (collectively, “IT Systems”) are adequate for, and operate and perform in all material respects as required in connection with the operation of the business of the Company and its subsidiaries as currently conducted, and are free and clear of all material Trojan horses, time bombs, malware and other malicious code. The Company and its subsidiaries have implemented and maintained commercially reasonable physical, technical and administrative controls designed to maintain and protect the confidentiality, integrity, availability, privacy and security of all sensitive, confidential or regulated data (“Confidential Data”) used or maintained in connection with their businesses and Personal Data (defined below), and the integrity, availability continuous operation, redundancy and security of all IT Systems. “Personal Data” means the following data used in connection with the Company’s and its subsidiaries’ businesses and in their possession or control: (i) a natural person’s name, street address, telephone number, e-mail address, photograph, social security number or other tax identification number, driver’s license number, passport number, credit card number or bank information; (ii) information that identifies or may reasonably be used to identify an individual; (iii) any information that would qualify as “protected health information” under HIPAA; and (iv) any information that would qualify as “personal data,” “personal information” (or similar term) under the Privacy Laws. To the Company’s knowledge, there have been no breaches, outages or unauthorized uses of or accesses to the Company’s IT Systems, Confidential Data, or Personal Data that would require notification under Privacy Laws (as defined below).
3.31
Compliance with Data Privacy Laws. The Company and its subsidiaries are, and at all prior times were, in material compliance with all applicable state, federal and foreign data privacy and security laws and regulations regarding the collection, use, storage, retention, disclosure, transfer, disposal, or any other processing (collectively “Process” or “Processing”) of Personal Data, including without limitation HIPAA, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) (Regulation (EU) No. 2016/679), all other local, state, federal, national, supranational and foreign laws relating to the regulation of the Company or its subsidiaries, and the regulations promulgated pursuant to such statutes and any state or non-U.S. counterpart thereof (collectively, the “Privacy Laws”). To ensure material compliance with the Privacy Laws, the Company and its subsidiaries have in place, comply with, and take all appropriate steps necessary to ensure compliance in all material respects with their policies and procedures relating to data privacy and security, and the Processing of Personal Data and Confidential Data (the “Privacy Statements”). The Company and its subsidiaries have, except as would not reasonably be expected, individually or in the aggregate, to result in a Material Adverse Effect, at all times since inception provided accurate notice of their Privacy Statements then in effect to its customers, employees, third party vendors and representatives.

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None of such disclosures made or contained in any Privacy Statements have been materially inaccurate, misleading, incomplete, or in material violation of any Privacy Laws.
3.32
Transactions with Affiliates and Employees. No relationship, direct or indirect, exists between or among the Company or any of its subsidiaries, on the one hand, and the directors, officers, stockholders, customers or suppliers of the Company, on the other hand, that is required to be described in the SEC Reports that is not so described.
4.
Representations and Warranties of Each Investor. Each Investor, severally for itself and not jointly with any other Investor, represents and warrants to the Company that the statements contained in this Section 4 are true and correct as of the date of this Agreement and the Closing Date:
4.1
Organization. The Investor is duly organized, validly existing and in good standing under the laws of the jurisdiction of its organization and has the requisite power and authority to own, lease and operate its properties and to carry on its business as now conducted.
4.2
Authorization. The Investor has all requisite corporate or similar power and authority to enter into this Agreement and the other Transaction Agreements to which it will be a party and to carry out and perform its obligations hereunder and thereunder. All corporate, member or partnership action on the part of such Investor or its stockholders, members or partners necessary for the authorization, execution, delivery and performance of this Agreement and the other Transaction Agreements to which it will be a party and the consummation of the other transactions contemplated in this Agreement has been taken. The execution, delivery and performance by such Investor of the Transaction Agreements to which such Investor is a party has been duly authorized and each has been duly executed. Assuming this Agreement constitutes the legal and binding agreement of the Company, this Agreement constitutes a legal, valid and binding obligation of such Investor, enforceable against such Investor in accordance with its respective terms, except as such enforceability may be limited or otherwise affected by bankruptcy, insolvency, fraudulent conveyance, reorganization, moratorium and/or similar laws relating to or affecting the rights of creditors generally or by general equity principles (regardless of whether such enforceability is considered in a proceeding in equity or at law).
4.3
No Conflicts. The execution, delivery and performance of the Transaction Agreements by the Investor, the purchase of the Shares in accordance with their terms and the consummation by the Investor of the other transactions contemplated hereby will not conflict with or result in any violation of, breach or default by such Investor (with or without notice or lapse of time, or both) under, conflict with, or give rise to a right of termination, cancellation or acceleration of any obligation, a change of control right or to a loss of a material benefit under (i) any provision of the organizational documents of the Investor, including, without limitation, its incorporation or formation papers, bylaws, indenture of trust or partnership or operating agreement, as may be applicable or (ii) any agreement or instrument, undertaking, credit facility, franchise, license, judgment, order, ruling, statute, law, ordinance, rule or regulations, applicable to such Investor or its respective properties or assets, except, in the case of clause (ii), as would not, individually or in the aggregate, be reasonably expected to materially delay or hinder the ability of the Investor to perform its obligations under the Transaction Agreements.

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4.4
Residency. The Investor’s residence (if an individual) or offices in which its investment decision with respect to the Shares was made (if an entity) are located at the address immediately below the Investor’s name on the signature pages hereto or Exhibit A, except as otherwise communicated by the Investor to the Company.
4.5
Brokers and Finders. The Investor has not retained, utilized or been represented by any broker or finder in connection with the transactions contemplated by this Agreement whose fees the Company would be required to pay.
4.6
Investment Representations and Warranties. The Investor hereby represents and warrants that, it (i) as of the date of this Agreement is, if an entity, a “qualified institutional buyer” (as defined in Rule 144A under the Securities Act) or an institutional “accredited investor” as that term is defined in Rule 501(a) under Regulation D promulgated pursuant to the Securities Act; or (ii) if an individual, is an “accredited investor” as that term is defined in Rule 501(a) of Regulation D of the Securities Act and has such knowledge and experience in financial and business matters as to be able to protect its own interests in connection with an investment in the Shares. The Investor further represents and warrants that (x) it is capable of evaluating the merits and risk of such investment, and (y) that it has not been organized for the purpose of acquiring the Shares and is an “institutional account” as defined by FINRA Rule 4512(c). The Investor understands and agrees that the offering and sale of the Shares has not been registered under the Securities Act or any applicable state securities laws and is being made in reliance upon federal and state exemptions for transactions not involving a public offering which depend upon, among other things, the bona fide nature of the investment intent and the accuracy of the Investor’s representations as expressed herein.
4.7
Intent. The Investor is purchasing the Shares solely for the Investor’s own account and not for the account of others, and not with a view to the resale or distribution of any part thereof in violation of the Securities Act, and the Investor has no present intention of selling, granting any participation in, or otherwise distributing the same in violation of the Securities Act without prejudice, however, to the Investor’s right at all times to sell or otherwise dispose of all or any part of such Shares in compliance with applicable federal and state securities laws. Notwithstanding the foregoing, if the Investor is purchasing the Shares as a fiduciary or agent for one or more investor accounts, the Investor has full investment discretion with respect to each such account, and the full power and authority to make the acknowledgements, representations and agreements herein on behalf of each owner of each such account. The Investor has no present arrangement to sell the Shares to or through any person or entity. The Investor understands that the Shares must be held indefinitely unless such Shares are resold pursuant to a registration statement under the Securities Act or an exemption from registration is available. Nothing contained herein shall be deemed a representation or warranty by the Investor to hold the Shares for any period of time.
4.8
Investment Experience; Ability to Protect Its Own Interests and Bear Economic Risks. The Investor acknowledges that it can bear the economic risk and complete loss of its investment in the Shares and has knowledge and experience in finance, securities, taxation, investments and other business matters as to be capable of evaluating the merits and risks of investments of the kind described in this Agreement and contemplated hereby, and the Investor has had an opportunity to seek, and has sought, such accounting, legal, business and tax advice as the Investor has considered necessary to make an informed investment decision.

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The Investor acknowledges that the Investor (i) is a sophisticated investor, experienced in investing in private placements of equity securities and capable of evaluating investment risks independently, both in general and with regard to all transactions and investment strategies involving a security or securities and (ii) has exercised independent judgment in evaluating its participation in the purchase of the Shares. The Investor acknowledges that the Investor is aware that there are substantial risks incident to the purchase and ownership of the Shares, including those set forth in the Company’s filings with the SEC. Alone, or together with any professional advisor(s), the Investor has adequately analyzed and fully considered the risks of an investment in the Shares and determined that the Shares are a suitable investment for the Investor. The Investor is, at this time and in the foreseeable future, able to afford the loss of the Investor’s entire investment in the Shares and the Investor acknowledges specifically that a possibility of total loss exists.
4.9
Independent Investment Decision. The Investor understands that nothing in the Transaction Agreements or any other materials presented by or on behalf of the Company to the Investor in connection with the purchase of the Shares constitutes legal, tax or investment advice. The Investor has consulted such legal, tax and investment advisors as it, in such Investor’s sole discretion, has deemed necessary or appropriate in connection with its purchase of the Shares.
4.10
Securities Not Registered; Legends. The Investor acknowledges and agrees that the Shares are being offered in a transaction not involving any public offering within the meaning of the Securities Act, and the Investor understands that the Shares have not been registered under the Securities Act, by reason of their issuance by the Company in a transaction exempt from the registration requirements of the Securities Act, and that the Shares must continue to be held and may not be offered, resold, transferred, pledged or otherwise disposed of by the Investor unless a subsequent disposition thereof is registered under the Securities Act or is exempt from such registration and in each case in accordance with any applicable securities laws of any state of the United States. The Investor understands that the exemptions from registration afforded by Rule 144 (the provisions of which are known to it) promulgated under the Securities Act depend on the satisfaction of various conditions including, but not limited to, the time and manner of sale, the holding period and on requirements relating to the Company which are outside of the Investor’s control and which the Company may not be able to satisfy, and that, if applicable, Rule 144 may afford the basis for sales only in limited amounts. The Investor acknowledges and agrees that it has been advised to consult legal counsel prior to making any offer, resale, transfer, pledge or disposition of any of the Shares. The Investor acknowledges that no federal or state agency has passed upon or endorsed the merits of the offering of the Shares or made any findings or determination as to the fairness of this investment.

The Investor understands that any certificates or book entry notations evidencing the Shares may bear one or more legends in substantially the following form and substance:

“THE SECURITIES REPRESENTED HEREBY HAVE NOT BEEN REGISTERED UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933, AS AMENDED (THE “SECURITIES ACT”), OR THE SECURITIES LAWS OF ANY STATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

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THE SECURITIES HAVE BEEN ACQUIRED FOR INVESTMENT AND MAY NOT BE SOLD, TRANSFERRED OR ASSIGNED UNLESS (I) SUCH SECURITIES HAVE BEEN REGISTERED FOR SALE PURSUANT TO THE SECURITIES ACT, (II) SUCH SECURITIES MAY BE SOLD PURSUANT TO RULE 144, (III) THE COMPANY HAS RECEIVED AN OPINION OF COUNSEL REASONABLY SATISFACTORY TO IT THAT SUCH TRANSFER MAY LAWFULLY BE MADE WITHOUT REGISTRATION UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT, OR (IV) THE SECURITIES ARE TRANSFERRED WITHOUT CONSIDERATION TO AN AFFILIATE OF SUCH HOLDER OR A CUSTODIAL NOMINEE (WHICH FOR THE AVOIDANCE OF DOUBT SHALL REQUIRE NEITHER CONSENT NOR THE DELIVERY OF AN OPINION).”

In addition, the Shares may contain a legend regarding affiliate status of the Investor, if applicable.

4.11
No General Solicitation. The Investor acknowledges and agrees that the Investor is purchasing the Shares directly from the Company. Investor became aware of this offering of the Shares solely by means of direct contact from the Company as a result of a pre-existing, substantive relationship with the Company and/or its advisors (including, without limitation, attorneys, accountants, bankers, consultants and financial advisors), agents, control persons, representatives, Affiliates, directors, officers, managers, members, and/or employees, and/or the representatives of such persons. The Shares were offered to Investor solely by direct contact between Investor and the Company and/or its representatives. Investor did not become aware of this offering of the Shares, nor were the Shares offered to Investor, by any other means, and none of the Company and/or its representatives acted as investment advisor, broker or dealer to Investor. The Investor is not purchasing the Shares as a result of any general or public solicitation or general advertising, or publicly disseminated advertisement, article, notice or other communication regarding the Shares published in any newspaper, magazine or similar media or broadcast over television, radio or the internet or presented at any seminar or any other general solicitation or general advertisement, including any of the methods described in Section 502(c) of Regulation D under the Securities Act.
4.12
Access to Information. The Investor acknowledges and agrees that the Investor and the Investor’s professional advisor(s), if any, have had the opportunity to ask such questions, receive such answers and obtain such information from the Company regarding the Company, its business and the terms and conditions of the offering of the Shares as the Investor and the Investor’s professional advisor(s), if any, have deemed necessary to make an investment decision with respect to the Shares and that the Investor has independently made its own analysis and decision to invest in the Company. Neither such inquiries nor any other due diligence investigation conducted by the Investor shall modify, limit or otherwise affect the Investor’s right to rely on the Company’s representations and warranties contained in this Agreement.
4.13
Certain Trading Activities. Other than consummating the transaction contemplated hereby, the Investor has not, nor has any Person acting on behalf of or pursuant to any understanding with the Investor, directly or indirectly executed any purchases or sales, including Short Sales, of the securities of the Company during the period commencing as of the time that the Investor was first contacted by the Company or any other Person regarding the transaction contemplated hereby and ending immediately prior to the date of this Agreement.

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Notwithstanding the foregoing, in the case of an Investor that is a multi-managed investment vehicle whereby separate portfolio managers manage separate portions of such Investor’s assets and the portfolio managers have no direct knowledge of the investment decisions made by the portfolio managers managing other portions of such Investor’s assets, the representation set forth above shall only apply with respect to the portion of the assets managed by the portfolio manager that made the investment decision to purchase the Shares covered by this Agreement. Other than to other Persons party to this Agreement and to its advisors and agents who had a need to know such information, the Investor has maintained the confidentiality of all disclosures made to it in connection with this transaction (including the existence and terms of this transaction). Notwithstanding the foregoing, for avoidance of doubt, nothing contained herein shall constitute a representation or warranty, or preclude any actions, with respect to the identification of the availability of, or securing of, available shares to borrow in order to effect Short Sales or similar transactions in the future.
5.
Covenants.
5.1
Further Assurances. Each party agrees to cooperate with each other and their respective officers, employees, attorneys, accountants and other agents, and, generally, do such other reasonable acts and things in good faith as may be necessary to effectuate the intents and purposes of this Agreement, subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement and compliance with applicable law, including taking reasonable action to facilitate the filing of any document or the taking of reasonable action to assist the other parties hereto in complying with the terms of this Agreement. The Investor acknowledges that the Company will rely on the acknowledgments, understandings, agreements, representations and warranties contained in this Agreement. Prior to the Closing, the Investor agrees to promptly notify the Company if any of the acknowledgments, understandings, agreements, representations and warranties set forth in Section 4 of this Agreement are no longer accurate.
5.2
Listing. The Company shall use commercially reasonable efforts to maintain the listing and trading of its Common Stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and, in accordance therewith, will use reasonable best efforts to comply in all material respects with the Company’s reporting, filing and other obligations under the rules and regulations of Nasdaq.
5.3
Disclosure of Transactions.
(a)
The Company shall, by 9:00 a.m., New York City time, on the first (1st) Business Day immediately following the date of this Agreement, file with the SEC a Current Report on Form 8-K (including all exhibits thereto, the “Disclosure Document”) disclosing all material terms of the transactions contemplated hereby and by the other Transaction Agreements and attaching a copy of the form of this Agreement and the other Transaction Agreements as exhibits to such Disclosure Document. Following the filing of the Disclosure Document, no Investor shall be in possession of any material non-public information concerning the Company disclosed to the Investors by the Company or its representatives. The Company understands and confirms that the Investors will rely on the foregoing representation in effecting securities transactions.

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Notwithstanding anything in this Agreement to the contrary, the Company shall not publicly disclose the name of any Investor or any of its Affiliates or advisers, or include the name of any Investor or any of its Affiliates or advisers in any press release or filing with the SEC (other than any registration statement contemplated by the Registration Rights Agreement) or any regulatory agency, without the prior written consent of the Investor, except (i) as required by the federal securities laws in connection with (A) any registration statement contemplated by the Registration Rights Agreement and (B) the filing of final Transaction Agreements with the SEC or pursuant to other routine proceedings of regulatory authorities, or (ii) to the extent such disclosure is required by law, at the request of the staff of the SEC or regulatory agency or under the regulations of the Nasdaq Global Select Market.
5.4
Integration. The Company shall not, and shall use its commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that no Affiliate of the Company shall, sell, offer for sale or solicit offers to buy or otherwise negotiate in respect of any security (as defined in Section 2 of the Securities Act) that will be integrated with the offer or sale of the Shares in a manner that would require the registration under the Securities Act of the sale of the Shares to the Investors, or that will be integrated with the offer or sale of the Shares for purposes of the rules and regulations of any National Exchange such that it would require stockholder approval prior to the closing of such other transaction unless stockholder approval is obtained before the closing of such subsequent transaction.
5.5
Removal of Legends.
(a)
In connection with any sale, assignment, transfer or other disposition of the Shares by an Investor pursuant to Rule 144 or pursuant to any other exemption under the Securities Act such that the purchaser acquires freely tradable shares and upon compliance by the Investor with the requirements of this Agreement, if requested by the Investor by notice to the Company, the Company shall request the Transfer Agent to remove any restrictive legends related to the book entry account holding such shares and make a new, unlegended entry for such book entry shares sold or disposed of without restrictive legends as soon as reasonably practicable following any such request therefor from the Investor, provided that the Company has timely received from the Investor customary representations and other documentation reasonably acceptable to the Company in connection therewith. The Company shall be responsible for the fees of its Transfer Agent and its legal counsel associated with such legend removal.
(b)
Subject to receipt from the Investor by the Company and the Transfer Agent of customary representations and other documentation reasonably acceptable to the Company and the Transfer Agent in connection therewith, upon the earliest of such time as the Shares (i) have been registered under the Securities Act pursuant to an effective registration statement; (ii) have been sold pursuant to Rule 144; or (iii) are eligible for resale under Rule 144(b)(1) without the requirement for the Company to be in compliance with the current public information requirements under Rule 144(c)(1) (or any successor provision), the Company shall, in accordance with the provisions of this Section 5.5(b) and as soon as reasonably practicable following any request therefor from an Investor accompanied by such customary and reasonably acceptable documentation referred to above, (A) deliver to the Transfer Agent irrevocable instructions that the Transfer Agent shall make a new, unlegended entry for such book entry shares, and (B) cause its counsel to deliver to the Transfer Agent one or more opinions to the effect that the removal of such legends in such circumstances may be effected under the Securities Act if required by the Transfer Agent to effect the removal of the legend in accordance with the provisions of this Agreement.

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5.6
Withholding Taxes. Each Investor agrees to furnish the Company with any information, representations and forms as shall reasonably be requested by the Company from time to time to assist the Company in complying with any applicable tax law (including any withholding obligations).
5.7
Fees and Commissions. The Company shall be solely responsible for the payment of any placement agent’s fees, financial advisory fees, or broker’s commissions (other than for Persons engaged by an Investor) relating to or arising out of the transactions contemplated hereby.
5.8
No Conflicting Agreements. The Company will not take any action, enter into any agreement or make any commitment that would conflict or interfere in any material respect with the Company’s obligations to the Investors under the Transaction Agreements.
5.9
Indemnification.
(a)
The Company agrees to indemnify and hold harmless each Investor and its Affiliates, and their respective directors, officers, trustees, members, managers, employees, investment advisers and agents (collectively, the “Indemnified Persons”), from and against any and all losses, claims, damages, liabilities and expenses (including without limitation reasonable and documented attorney fees and disbursements and other documented out-of-pocket expenses reasonably incurred in connection with investigating, preparing or defending any action, claim or proceeding, pending or threatened and the costs of enforcement thereof) to which such Person may become subject as a result of any breach of representation, warranty, covenant or agreement made by or to be performed on the part of the Company under the Transaction Agreements, and will reimburse any such Person for all such amounts as they are incurred by such Person solely to the extent such amounts have been finally judicially determined not to have resulted from such Person’s fraud or willful misconduct.
(b)
Any person entitled to indemnification hereunder shall (i) give prompt written notice to the indemnifying party of any claim with respect to which it seeks indemnification and (ii) permit such indemnifying party to assume the defense of such claim with counsel reasonably satisfactory to the indemnified party; provided that any person entitled to indemnification hereunder shall have the right to employ separate counsel and to participate in the defense of such claim, but the fees and expenses of such counsel shall be at the expense of such person unless (a) the indemnifying party has agreed in writing to pay such fees or expenses, (b) the indemnifying party shall have failed to assume the defense of such claim and employ counsel reasonably satisfactory to such person or (c) in the reasonable judgment of any such person, based upon written advice of its counsel, a conflict of interest exists between such person and the indemnifying party with respect to such claims (in which case, if the person notifies the indemnifying party in writing that such person elects to employ separate counsel at the expense of the indemnifying party, the indemnifying party shall not have the right to assume the defense of such claim on behalf of such person); and provided, further, that the failure of any indemnified party to give written notice as provided herein shall not relieve the indemnifying party of its obligations hereunder, except to the extent that such failure to give notice shall materially adversely affect the indemnifying party in the defense of any such claim or litigation. It is understood that the indemnifying party shall not, in connection with any proceeding in the same jurisdiction, be liable for fees or expenses of more than one separate firm of attorneys at any time for all such indemnified parties.

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No indemnifying party will, except with the consent of the indemnified party, which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld, conditioned or delayed, consent to entry of any judgment or enter into any settlement unless such judgment or settlement (i) imposes no liability or obligation on, (ii) includes as an unconditional term thereof the giving of a complete, explicit and unconditional release from the party bringing such indemnified claims of all liability of the indemnified party in respect of such claim or litigation in favor of, and (iii) does not include any admission of fault, culpability, wrongdoing, or malfeasance by or on behalf of, the indemnified party. No indemnified party will, except with the consent of the indemnifying party, which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld, conditioned or delayed, consent to entry of any judgment or enter into any settlement.
5.10
Subsequent Equity Sales. From the date of this Agreement until the earlier of (a) thirty (30) days after the Closing Date and (b) the Business Day immediately following the effective date of the registration statement filed pursuant to the Registration Rights Agreement (the “Lock-up Period”), the Company shall not (A) issue shares of Common Stock or Common Stock Equivalents, (B) effect a reverse stock split, recapitalization, share consolidation, reclassification or similar transaction affecting the outstanding Common Stock or (C) file with the SEC a registration statement under the Securities Act relating to any shares of Common Stock or Common Stock Equivalents, except pursuant to the terms of the Registration Rights Agreement. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the provisions of this Section 5.10 shall not apply to (i) the issuance of the Shares hereunder, (ii) the issuance of Common Stock or Common Stock Equivalents upon the conversion, exercise or vesting of any securities of the Company outstanding on the date of this Agreement or outstanding pursuant to clause (iii) of this sentence, (iii) the issuance of any Common Stock or Common Stock Equivalents pursuant to any Company stock-based compensation plans or in accordance with Nasdaq Stock Market Rule 5635(c)(4), (iv) the filing of a registration statement on Form S-8 under the Securities Act to register the offer and sale of securities pursuant to an inducement plan, equity incentive plan or employee stock purchase plan, or (v) the issuance of shares of Common Stock sold pursuant to the Sales Agreement entered into on December 23, 2022, by and between the Company and Stifel, Nicolas & Company, Incorporated.
6.
Conditions of Closing.
6.1
Conditions to the Obligation of the Investors. The several obligations of each Investor to consummate the transactions to be consummated at the Closing, and to purchase and pay for the Shares being purchased by it at the Closing pursuant to this Agreement, are subject to the satisfaction or waiver in writing of the following conditions precedent:
(a)
Representations and Warranties. The representations and warranties of the Company contained herein shall be true and correct in all material respects, except for those representation and warranties qualified by materiality or Material Adverse Effect, which shall be true and correct in all respects, as of the date of this Agreement and as of the Closing Date, as though made on and as of such date, except to the extent any such representation or warranty expressly speaks as of an earlier date, in which case such representation or warranty shall be true and correct in all material respects as of such earlier date, except for those representations and warranties qualified by materiality or Material Adverse Effect, which shall be true and correct in all respects as of such earlier date.

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(b)
Performance. The Company shall have performed in all material respects the obligations and conditions herein required to be performed or observed by the Company on or prior to the Closing Date.
(c)
No Injunction. The purchase of and payment for the Shares by each Investor shall not be prohibited or enjoined by any law or governmental or court order or regulation and no such prohibition shall have been threatened in writing.
(d)
Consents. The Company shall have obtained any and all consents, permits, approvals, registrations and waivers necessary for the consummation of the purchase and sale of the Shares, all of which shall be in full force and effect.
(e)
[Reserved]
(f)
Adverse Changes. Since the date of this Agreement, no event or series of events shall have occurred that has had or would reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect.
(g)
Opinion of Company Counsel. The Company shall have delivered to the Investors the opinion of Cooley LLP (“Cooley”), dated as of the Closing Date, in customary form and substance to be reasonably agreed upon with the Investors and addressing such legal matters as the Investors and the Company reasonably agree.
(h)
Compliance Certificate. An authorized officer of the Company shall have delivered to the Investors at the Closing Date a certificate certifying that the conditions specified in Sections 6.1(a) (Representations and Warranties), 6.1(b) (Performance), 6.1(c) (No Injunction), 6.1(d) (Consents), 6.1(f) (Adverse Changes), 6.1(k) (Listing Requirements), and 6.1(l) (No Injunction) of this Agreement have been fulfilled.
(i)
Secretary’s Certificate. The Secretary of the Company shall have delivered to the Investors at the Closing Date a certificate certifying (i) the Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation; (ii) the Amended and Restated Bylaws; and (iii) resolutions of the Company’s Board of Directors (or an authorized committee thereof) approving this Agreement, the other Transaction Agreements, the transactions contemplated by this Agreement and the issuance of the Shares.
(j)
Registration Rights Agreement. The Company shall have executed and delivered the Registration Rights Agreement in the form attached hereto as Exhibit B (the “Registration Rights Agreement”) to the Investors.
(k)
Listing Requirements. No stop order or suspension of trading shall have been imposed by Nasdaq, the SEC or any other governmental or regulatory body with respect to public trading in the Common Stock. The Common Stock shall be listed on a National Exchange and shall not have been suspended, as of the Closing Date, by the SEC or the National Exchange from trading thereon nor shall suspension by the SEC or the National Exchange have been threatened, as of the Closing Date, in writing by the SEC or the National Exchange; and the Company shall have filed with Nasdaq a Notification Form: Listing of Additional Shares for the listing of the Shares and Nasdaq shall have raised no objection to such notice and the transactions contemplated hereby.

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(l)
No Injunction. No judgment, writ, order, injunction, award or decree of or by any court, or judge, justice or magistrate, including any bankruptcy court or judge, or any order of or by any governmental entity, shall have been issued, and no action or proceeding shall have been instituted by any governmental entity, enjoining or preventing the consummation of the transactions contemplated hereby or in the other Transaction Agreements.
(m)
Payment. Except as may be agreed to among the Company and one or more Investors in accordance with Section 2.2, the Company shall have received payment, by wire transfer of immediately available funds, in the full amount of the purchase price for the number of Shares being purchased by each Investor at the Closing as set forth in Exhibit A.
6.2
Conditions to the Obligation of the Company. The obligation of the Company to consummate the transactions to be consummated at the Closing, and to issue and sell to each Investor the Shares to be purchased by it at the Closing pursuant to this Agreement, is subject to the satisfaction or waiver in writing of the following conditions precedent:
(a)
Representations and Warranties. The representations and warranties of each Investor in Section 4 hereto shall be true and correct on and as of the Closing Date, with the same force and effect as though made on and as of the Closing Date and consummation of the Closing shall constitute a reaffirmation by the Investor of each of the representations, warranties, covenants and agreements of the Investor contained in this Agreement as of the Closing Date.
(b)
Performance. Each Investor shall have performed or complied with in all material respects all obligations and conditions herein required to be performed or observed by such Investor on or prior to the Closing Date.
(c)
Injunction. The purchase of and payment for the Shares by each Investor shall not be prohibited or enjoined by any law or governmental or court order or regulation.
(d)
Registration Rights Agreement. Each Investor shall have executed and delivered the Registration Rights Agreement to the Company in the form attached as Exhibit B.
(e)
Payment. Except as may be agreed to among the Company and one or more Investors in accordance with Section 2.2, the Company shall have received payment, by wire transfer of immediately available funds, in the full amount of the purchase price for the number of Shares being purchased by each Investor at the Closing as set forth in Exhibit A.
7.
Termination.
7.1
Termination. The obligations of the Company, on the one hand, and the Investors, on the other hand, to effect the Closing shall terminate as follows:

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(i)
Upon the mutual written consent of the Company and the Investors that agreed to purchase a majority of the Shares prior to the Closing;
(ii)
By the Company if any of the conditions set forth in Section 6.2 shall have become incapable of fulfillment, and shall not have been waived by the Company;
(iii)
By an Investor (with respect to itself only) if any of the conditions set forth in Section 6.1 shall have become incapable of fulfillment, and shall not have been waived by such Investor; or
(iv)
By either the Company or an Investor (with respect to itself only) if the Closing has not occurred on or prior to the fifth Business Day following the date of this Agreement;

provided, however, that, in the case of clauses (ii) and (iii) above, the party seeking to terminate its obligation to effect the Closing shall not then be in breach of any of its representations, warranties, covenants or agreements contained in the Transaction Agreements if such breach has resulted in the circumstances giving rise to such party’s seeking to terminate its obligation to effect the Closing.

7.2
Notice. In the event of termination by the Company or the Investor of its obligations to effect the Closing pursuant to Section 7.1, written notice thereof shall be given to the other Investors by the Company. Nothing in this Section 7 shall be deemed to release any party from any liability for any breach by such party of the other terms and provisions of the Transaction Agreements or to impair the right of any party to compel specific performance by any other party of its other obligations under the Transaction Agreements.
8.
Miscellaneous Provisions.
8.1
Public Statements or Releases. Except as set forth in Section 5.3, neither the Company nor any Investor shall make any public announcement with respect to the existence or terms of this Agreement or the transactions provided for herein without the prior consent of the other party (which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld). Notwithstanding the foregoing, and subject to compliance with Section 5.3, nothing in this Section 8.1 shall prevent any party from making any public announcement it considers necessary in order to satisfy its obligations under the law, including applicable securities laws, or under the rules of any national securities exchange or securities market, in which case the Company shall allow the Investors reasonable time to comment on such release or announcement in advance of such issuance, and the Company will consider in good faith any Investor comments. The Company shall not include the name of the Investor in any press release or public announcement (which, for the avoidance of doubt, shall not include any filing with the SEC if so required by the applicable rules of the SEC) without the prior written consent of the Investors, except as otherwise required by law or the applicable rules or regulations of any securities exchange or securities market, in which case the Company shall allow the Investors, to the extent reasonably practicable in the circumstances, reasonable time to comment on such release or announcement in advance of such issuance. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Section 8.1, Investor review shall not be required for Company disclosures that are substantially consistent with prior Company disclosures.

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8.2
Notices. Any notices or other communications required or permitted to be given hereunder shall be in writing and shall be deemed to be given (a) when delivered if personally delivered to the party for whom it is intended, (b) when delivered, if sent by electronic mail during normal business hours of the recipient, and if not sent during normal business hours, then the earlier of (x) confirmation of receipt or (y) on the open of business on the recipient’s next Business Day, (c) three (3) days after having been sent by certified or registered mail, return-receipt requested and postage prepaid, or (d) one (1) Business Day after deposit with a nationally recognized overnight courier, freight prepaid, specifying next business day delivery, with written verification of receipt:
(a)
If to the Company, addressed as follows:

Vor Biopharma Inc.

500 Boylston Street, Suite 1350
Boston, Massachusetts 02116

Attention: Adi Osovsky
Email: aosovsky@vorbio.com

 

with a copy (which shall not constitute notice):

Cooley LLP
1299 Pennsylvania Avenue NW STE 700
Washington, DC 20221

Attention: Madison Jones
Email: madison.jones@cooley.com

 

(b)
If to any Investor, at its address or e-mail address set forth on the signature pages hereto or Exhibit A, or such address as subsequently modified by written notice given in accordance with this Section 8.2.

Any Person may change the address to which notices and communications to it are to be addressed by notification as provided for herein.

8.3
Consent to Electronic Notice. Each Investor consents to the delivery of any stockholder notice pursuant to the DGCL, as amended or superseded from time to time, by electronic mail pursuant to Section 232 of the DGCL (or any successor thereto) at the e-mail address set forth below the Investor’s name on the signature pages hereto or Exhibit A, as updated from time to time by notice to the Company. To the extent that any notice given by means of electronic mail is returned or undeliverable for any reason, the foregoing consent shall be deemed to have been revoked until a new or corrected e-mail address has been provided, and such attempted electronic notice shall be ineffective and deemed to not have been given. Each party agrees to promptly notify the other parties of any change in its e-mail address, and that failure to do so shall not affect the foregoing.

8.4
Severability. If any part or provision of this Agreement is held unenforceable or in conflict with the applicable laws or regulations of any jurisdiction, the invalid or unenforceable part or provisions shall be replaced with a provision which accomplishes, to the extent possible, the original business purpose of such part or provision in a valid and enforceable manner, and the remainder of this Agreement shall remain binding upon the parties hereto.

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8.5
Governing Law; Submission to Jurisdiction; Venue; Waiver of Trial by Jury.
(a)
This Agreement shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with, the laws of the State of New York without regard to choice of laws or conflicts of laws provisions thereof that would require the application of the laws of any other jurisdiction, except to the extent that mandatory principles of Delaware law may apply.
(b)
The Company and each of the Investors hereby irrevocably and unconditionally:
(i)
submits for itself and its property in any legal action or proceeding relating solely to this Agreement or the transactions contemplated hereby, to the general jurisdiction of the any state court or United States Federal court sitting in the Borough of Manhattan, City of New York in the State of New York;
(ii)
consents that any such action or proceeding may be brought in such courts, and waives any objection that it may now or hereafter have to the venue of any such action or proceeding in any such court or that such action or proceeding was brought in an inconvenient court and agrees not to plead or claim the same to the extent permitted by applicable law;
(iii)
agrees that service of process in any such action or proceeding may be effected by mailing a copy thereof by registered or certified mail (or any substantially similar form of mail), postage prepaid, to the party, as the case may be, at its address set forth in Section 8.2 or at such other address of which the other party shall have been notified pursuant thereto;
(iv)
agrees that nothing herein shall affect the right to effect service of process in any other manner permitted by law or shall limit the right to sue in any other jurisdiction for recognition and enforcement of any judgment or if jurisdiction in the courts referenced in the foregoing clause (i) are not available despite the intentions of the parties hereto;
(v)
agrees that final judgment in any such suit, action or proceeding brought in such a court may be enforced in the courts of any jurisdiction to which such party is subject by a suit upon such judgment, provided that service of process is effected upon such party in the manner specified herein or as otherwise permitted by law;
(vi)
agrees that to the extent that such party has or hereafter may acquire any immunity from jurisdiction of any court or from any legal process with respect to itself or its property, such party hereby irrevocably waives such immunity in respect of its obligations under this Agreement, to the extent permitted by law; and
(vii)
irrevocably and unconditionally waives trial by jury in any legal action or proceeding in relation to this Agreement.

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8.6
Waiver. No waiver of any term, provision or condition of this Agreement, whether by conduct or otherwise, in any one or more instances, shall be deemed to be, or be construed as, a further or continuing waiver of any such term, provision or condition or as a waiver of any other term, provision or condition of this Agreement.
8.7
Expenses. Except as expressly set forth in the Transaction Agreements to the contrary, each party shall pay its own out-of-pocket fees and expenses, including the fees and expenses of attorneys, accountants and consultants employed by such party, incurred in connection with the proposed investment in the Shares and the consummation of the transactions contemplated thereby; provided, however, that the Company shall pay all Transfer Agent fees (including, without limitation, any fees required for same-day processing of any instruction letter delivered by the Company), stamp taxes and other taxes (other than income taxes) and duties levied in connection with the delivery of any Shares to the Investors.
8.8
Assignment. None of the parties may assign its rights or obligations under this Agreement or designate another person (i) to perform all or part of its obligations under this Agreement or (ii) to have all or part of its rights and benefits under this Agreement, in each case without the prior written consent of (x) the Company, in the case of an Investor, and (y) the Investors, in the case of the Company, provided that an Investor may, without the prior consent of the Company, assign its rights to purchase the Shares hereunder to any of its Affiliates or to any other investment funds or accounts managed or advised by the investment manager who acts on behalf of such Investor (provided each such assignee agrees to be bound by the terms of this Agreement and makes the same representations and warranties set forth in Section 4 ). In the event of any assignment in accordance with the terms of this Agreement, the assignee shall specifically assume and be bound by the provisions of this Agreement by executing a writing agreeing to be bound by and subject to the provisions of this Agreement and shall deliver an executed counterpart signature page to this Agreement and, notwithstanding such assumption or agreement to be bound hereby by an assignee, no such assignment shall relieve any party assigning any interest hereunder from its obligations or liability pursuant to this Agreement.
8.9
Confidential Information.
(a)
Each Investor covenants that until such time as the transactions contemplated by this Agreement and any material non-public information provided to such Investor are publicly disclosed by the Company, such Investor will maintain the confidentiality of all disclosures made to it in connection with this transaction (including the existence and terms of this transaction), other than to such Investor’s outside attorney, accountant, auditor or investment advisor only to the extent necessary to permit evaluation of the investment, and the performance of the necessary or required tax, accounting, financial, legal, or administrative tasks and services and other than as may be required by law.
(b)
The Company may request from the Investors such reasonable and customary additional information as the Company may deem necessary to evaluate the eligibility of the Investor to acquire the Shares, and the Investor shall promptly provide such information as may reasonably be requested to the extent readily available; provided, that the Company agrees to keep any such information provided by the Investor confidential, except (i) as required by the federal securities laws, rules or regulations and (ii) to the extent such disclosure is required by other laws, rules or regulations, at the request of the staff of the SEC or regulatory agency or under the regulations of Nasdaq.

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The Investor acknowledges that the Company may file a copy of this Agreement and the Registration Rights Agreement with the SEC as exhibit to a periodic report or a registration statement of the Company.
8.10
[Reserved]
8.11
Third Parties. Nothing in this Agreement, express or implied, is intended to confer on any Person other than the parties to this Agreement any rights, remedies, claims, benefits, obligations or liabilities under or by reason of this Agreement, and no Person that is not a party to this Agreement (including, without limitation, any partner, member, shareholder, director, officer, employee or other beneficial owner of any party to this Agreement, in its own capacity as such or in bringing a derivative action on behalf of a party to this Agreement) shall have any standing as a third party beneficiary with respect to this Agreement or the transactions contemplated hereby. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Indemnified Persons are intended third-party beneficiaries of Section 5.9.
8.12
Independent Nature of Investors’ Obligations and Right. The obligations of each Investor under this Agreement are several and not joint with the obligations of any other Investor, and no Investor shall be responsible in any way for the performance obligations of any other Investor under this Agreement. Nothing contained herein, and no action taken by any Investor pursuant hereto, shall be deemed to constitute the Investors as, and the Company acknowledges that the Investors do not so constitute, a partnership, an association, a joint venture or any other kind of entity, or create a presumption that the Investors are in any way acting in concert or as a group, and the Company will not assert any such claim with respect to such obligations or the transactions contemplated by this Agreement. The Company acknowledges and each Investor confirms that it has independently participated in the negotiation of the transaction contemplated hereby with the advice of its own counsel and advisors. Each Investor also acknowledges that Cooley has not rendered legal advice to such Investor. Each Investor shall be entitled to independently protect and enforce its rights, including, without limitation, the rights arising out of this Agreement, and it shall not be necessary for any other Investor to be joined as an additional party in any proceeding for such purpose. The Company has elected to provide all Investors with the same terms and Transaction Agreements for the convenience of the Company and not because it was required or requested to do so by any Investor.
8.13
Headings. The titles, subtitles and headings in this Agreement are for convenience of reference and shall not form part of, or affect the interpretation of, this Agreement.
8.14
Counterparts. This Agreement may be executed in two or more identical counterparts, all of which shall be considered one and the same agreement and shall become effective when counterparts have been signed by each party and delivered to the other party; provided that a facsimile or pdf signature including any electronic signatures complying with the U.S. federal ESIGN Act of 2000, e.g., www.docusign.com shall be considered due execution and shall be binding upon the signatory thereto with the same force and effect as if the signature were an original, not a facsimile or pdf (or other electronic reproduction of a) signature.

31


 

8.15
Entire Agreement; Amendments. This Agreement and the other Transaction Agreements (including all schedules and exhibits hereto and thereto), together with any side letter agreements with any of the Investors, constitute the entire agreement between the parties hereto respecting the subject matter of this Agreement and supersedes all prior agreements, negotiations, understandings, representations and statements respecting the subject matter of this Agreement, whether written or oral. No amendment, modification, alteration, or change in any of the terms of this Agreement shall be valid or binding upon the parties hereto unless made in writing and duly executed by the Company and the Investors of at least a majority in interest of the Shares then held by the Investors, provided that prior to the Closing the consent of all Investors shall be required. Notwithstanding the foregoing, this Agreement may not be amended and the observance of any term of this Agreement may not be waived with respect to any Investor without the written consent of such Investor unless such amendment or waiver applies to all Investors in the same fashion. The Company, on the one hand, and each Investor, on the other hand, may by an instrument signed in writing by such parties waive the performance, compliance or satisfaction by such Investor or the Company, respectively, with any term or provision of this Agreement or any condition hereto to be performed, complied with or satisfied by such Investor or the Company, respectively.
8.16
Survival. The covenants, representations and warranties made by each party hereto contained in this Agreement shall survive the Closing and the delivery of the Shares in accordance with their respective terms. Each Investor shall be responsible only for its own representations, warranties, agreements and covenants hereunder.
8.17
Contract Interpretation. This Agreement is the joint product of each Investor and the Company and each provision of this Agreement has been subject to the mutual consultation, negotiation and agreement of such parties and shall not be construed for or against any party hereto.
8.18
Arm’s Length Negotiations. For the avoidance of doubt, the parties acknowledge and confirm that the terms and conditions of the Shares were determined as a result of arm’s-length negotiations.
8.19
Waiver of Conflicts. Each party to this instrument acknowledges that Cooley has acted as counsel solely to the Company with respect to this instrument and the transactions contemplated hereby (together, the “Financing”), and has negotiated the terms of the Financing solely on behalf of the Company. Cooley may have, in the past, represented and/or may, now or in the future, represent the Investor and/or its affiliates in other matters, including matters that are similar, but not substantially related, to the Financing. The applicable rules of professional conduct require that Cooley inform its clients of these representations and obtain their waivers of the conflicts that may arise from such representations. Each of the Company and the Investor hereby (i) acknowledges that such party has been advised about such circumstances and has had an opportunity to ask for additional information; (ii) acknowledges that, with respect to the Financing, Cooley has represented solely the Company and no other party; and (iii) gives its informed consent to Cooley’s representation of the Company in the Financing and Cooley’s representation of the Investor and/or its affiliates in other matters.

 

32


 

[Remainder of Page Intentionally Left Blank.]

33


 

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties hereto have executed this Agreement as of the day and year first above written.

COMPANY:

Vor Biopharma Inc.

By: /s/ Jean-Paul Kress
Name: Jean-Paul Kress
Title: Chief Executive Officer

 


 

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties hereto have executed this Agreement as of the day and year first above written.

INVESTOR:

TCG CROSSOVER FUND II, L.P.

By: TCG Crossover GP II, LLC
Its General Partner

By: /s/ Chen Yu

Name: Chen Yu

Title: Managing Member

Address:
[●]
Email: [●]

 


 

EXHIBIT A

INVESTORS

 

Investor Name

 

Shares

 

Purchase Price

TCG CROSSOVER FUND II, L.P.

 

2,669,039

 

$37,499,997.95

TCG CROSSOVER FUND III, L.P.

 

2,669,039

 

$37,499,997.95

TOTAL:

 

5,338,078

 

$74,999,995.90

 

A-1

DOCPROPERTY"SWDocID" .


 

EXHIBIT B

 

B-1


EX-10.2 3 vor-ex10_2.htm EX-10.2 EX-10.2

 

REGISTRATION RIGHTS AGREEMENT

 

FORM OF REGISTRATION RIGHTS AGREEMENT THIS REGISTRATION RIGHTS AGREEMENT (this “Agreement”), dated as of March 26, 2026, is entered into by and among Vor Biopharma Inc., a Delaware corporation (the “Company”), and the several investors signatory hereto (individually as an “Investor” and collectively together with their respective permitted assigns, the “Investors”). Capitalized terms used herein and not otherwise defined herein shall have the respective meanings set forth in the Securities Purchase Agreement by and among the parties hereto, dated as of the date hereof (as amended, restated, supplemented or otherwise modified from time to time, the “Purchase Agreement”).

WHEREAS:

 

A.
Upon the terms and subject to the conditions of the Purchase Agreement, the Company has agreed to issue to the Investors, and the Investors have agreed to purchase, severally and not jointly, an aggregate of 5,338,078 shares (the “Shares”) of the Company’s common stock, par value $0.0001 per share (the “Common Stock”), pursuant to the Purchase Agreement.

 

B.
To induce the Investors to enter into the Purchase Agreement, the Company has agreed to provide certain registration rights under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and the rules and regulations thereunder, or any similar successor statute (collectively, the “Securities Act”), and applicable state securities laws.

 

NOW, THEREFORE, in consideration of the promises and the mutual covenants contained herein and other good and valuable consideration, the receipt and sufficiency of which are hereby acknowledged, the Company and the Investors hereby agree as follows:

 

1.
DEFINITIONS.

 

For purposes of this Agreement, the following terms shall have the following meanings:

 

(a)
“Person” means an individual, partnership, corporation, limited liability company, business trust, joint stock company, trust, unincorporated association, joint venture or any other entity or organization.
(b)
“Prospectus” means (i) the prospectus included in any Registration Statement, as amended or supplemented by any prospectus supplement, with respect to the terms of the offering of any portion of the Registrable Securities covered by such Registration Statement and by all other amendments and supplements to the prospectus, including post-effective amendments and all material incorporated by reference in such prospectus, and (ii) any “free writing prospectus” as defined in Rule 405 under the Securities Act, relating to the terms of the offering of any portion of the Registrable Securities.

 

(c)
“Register,” “Registered,” and “Registration” refer to a registration effected by preparing and filing one or more registration statements of the Company in compliance with the Securities Act and providing for offering securities on a continuous basis, and the declaration or ordering of effectiveness of such registration statement(s) by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”).

 

(d)
“Registrable Securities” means the Shares and any Common Stock issued or issuable with respect to the Shares as a result of any stock split or subdivision, stock dividend, recapitalization, exchange or similar event. Registrable Securities shall cease to be Registrable Securities upon the date on which the Investors shall have resold all the Registrable Securities covered by the Registration Statement.

 


 

 

(e)
“Registration Expenses” means all registration and filing fee expenses incurred by the Company in effecting any registration pursuant to this Agreement, including (i) all registration, qualification, and filing fees, printing expenses, and any other fees and expenses associated with filings required to be made with the SEC, FINRA or any other regulatory authority, (ii) all fees and expenses in connection with compliance with or clearing the Registrable Securities for sale under any securities or “Blue Sky” laws, (iii) all printing, duplicating, word processing, messenger, telephone, facsimile and delivery expenses, and (iv) all fees and disbursements of counsel for the Company and of all independent certified public accountants of the Company (including the expenses of any special audit and cold comfort letters required by or incident to such performance).

 

(f)
“Registration Statement” means any registration statement of the Company filed with, or to be filed with, the SEC under the Securities Act, that Registers Registrable Securities, including the related Prospectus, amendments and supplements to such registration statement, including pre- and post-effective amendments, and all exhibits and all material incorporated by reference in such registration statement as may be necessary to comply with applicable securities laws. “Registration Statement” shall also include a New Registration Statement (as defined below), as amended when each became effective, including all documents filed as part thereof or incorporated by reference therein, and including any information contained in a Prospectus subsequently filed with the SEC.

 

(g)
“Selling Expenses” means all underwriting discounts and selling commissions applicable to the sale of Registrable Securities and all similar fees and commissions relating to the Investors’ disposition of the Registrable Securities.

 

2.
REGISTRATION.

 

(a)
Mandatory Registration. The Company shall, as promptly as reasonably practicable and in any event no later than thirty (30) days after the Closing Date (the “Filing Deadline”), prepare and file with the SEC an initial Registration Statement (the “Initial Registration Statement”) covering the resale of all Registrable Securities. Before filing the Registration Statement, the Company shall furnish to the Investors a copy of the Registration Statement. The Investors and their counsel shall have at least three Business Days prior to the anticipated filing date of a Registration Statement to review and comment upon such Registration Statement and any amendment or supplement to such Registration Statement and any related Prospectus, prior to its filing with the SEC. Subject to any SEC comments, such Registration Statement shall include the plan of distribution substantially in the form attached hereto as Exhibit A. The Company shall (a) use commercially reasonable efforts to address in each such document prior to being so filed with the SEC such comments as the Investor or its counsel reasonably proposed by the Investor, and (b) not file any Registration Statement or Prospectus or any amendment or supplement thereto containing information regarding the Investor to which Investor reasonably objects, unless such information is required to comply with any applicable law or regulation. The Investors shall furnish all information reasonably requested by the Company and as shall be reasonably required in connection with any registration referred to in this Agreement.

 

(b)
Effectiveness. The Company shall use its reasonable best efforts to have the Initial Registration Statement and any amendment declared effective by the SEC at the earliest possible date but no later than the 60th calendar day following the Closing Date (the “Effectiveness Deadline”); provided, further, that if the SEC is closed for operations due to a government shutdown or lapse in appropriations, the deadline shall be extended by the same amount of days that the SEC remains closed for operations. The Company shall notify the Investor by e-mail as promptly as practicable, and in any event, within 24 hours, after the Registration Statement is declared effective or is supplemented and shall provide the Investor with copies of any Prospectus to be used in connection with the sale or other disposition of the securities covered thereby.

2


 

The Company shall use reasonable best efforts to keep the Initial Registration Statement continuously effective pursuant to Rule 415 promulgated under the Securities Act and available for the resale by the Investors of all of the Registrable Securities covered thereby at all times until the earliest to occur of the following events: (i) the date on which the Investors shall have resold all the Registrable Securities covered thereby; and (ii) the date on which the Registrable Securities may be resold by the Investors without registration and without regard to any volume or manner-of-sale limitations by reason of Rule 144, without the requirement for the Company to be in compliance with the current public information requirement under Rule 144 under the Securities Act or any other rule of similar effect (the “Registration Period”). The Initial Registration Statement (including any amendments or supplements thereto and prospectuses contained therein) shall not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact required to be stated therein, or necessary to make the statements therein, in light of the circumstances in which they were made, not misleading.

 

(c)
Sufficient Number of Shares Registered. In the event the number of shares available under the Initial Registration Statement at any time is insufficient to cover the Registrable Securities, the Company shall, to the extent necessary and permissible, amend the Initial Registration Statement or file a new registration statement (together with any prospectuses or prospectus supplements thereunder, a “New Registration Statement”), so as to cover all of such Registrable Securities as soon as reasonably practicable, but in any event not later than ten Business Days after the necessity therefor arises (the “New Registration Filing Deadline”). The Company shall use its reasonable best efforts to have such amendment and/or New Registration Statement become effective as soon as reasonably practicable following the filing thereof but no later than the earlier of (a) the 75th calendar day following the initial filing date of the New Registration Statement if the SEC notifies the Company that it will “review” the New Registration Statement and (b) the fifth Business Day after the date the Company is notified (orally or in writing, whichever is earlier) by the SEC that the New Registration Statement will not be “reviewed” or will not be subject to further review (the earlier of such dates, the “New Registration Effectiveness Deadline”). The provisions of Section 2(a) and (b) shall apply to the New Registration Statement, except as modified hereby.

 

(d)
Liquidated Damages. If (i) the Initial Registration Statement has not been filed by the Filing Deadline, (ii) the Initial Registration Statement has not been declared effective by the Effectiveness Deadline, (iii) the New Registration Statement has not been filed by the New Registration Filing Deadline, (iv) the New Registration Statement has not been declared effective by the New Registration Effectiveness Deadline or (v) after any Registration Statement has been declared effective by the SEC, sales cannot be made pursuant to such Registration Statement for any reason (including without limitation by reason of a stop order, or the Company’s failure to update such Registration Statement), but excluding any Allowed Delay (as defined below) or, if the Registration Statement is on Form S-1, for a period of 20 days following the date on which the Company files a post-effective amendment to incorporate the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K (a “Maintenance Failure”), then the Company will make pro rata payments to each Investor then holding Registrable Securities, as liquidated damages and not as a penalty, in an amount equal to 1.0% of the aggregate amount paid pursuant to the Purchase Agreement by such Investor for such Registrable Securities then held by such Investor for each 30-day period or pro rata for any portion thereof during which the failure continues (the “Blackout Period”). Such payments shall constitute the Investors’ exclusive monetary remedy for such events, but shall not affect the right of the Investors to seek injunctive relief. The amounts payable as liquidated damages pursuant to this paragraph shall be paid in cash no later than five Business Days after each such 30-day period following the commencement of the Blackout Period until the termination of the Blackout Period (the “Blackout Period Payment Date”). Interest shall accrue at the rate of 1.0% per month on any such liquidated damages payments that shall not be paid by the Blackout Period Payment Date until such amount is paid in full. Notwithstanding the above, in no event shall the aggregate amount of liquidated damages (or interest thereon) paid under this Agreement to any Investor exceed, in the aggregate, 5.0% of the aggregate purchase price of the Shares purchased by such Investor under the Purchase Agreement.

3


 

Notwithstanding anything in this Section 2(d) to the contrary, during any periods that the Company is unable to meet its obligations hereunder with respect to the registration of the Registrable Securities because any Investor fails to furnish information required to be provided pursuant to Section 2(a) or Section 4(a) within three Business Days of the Company’s request, any liquidated damages that would otherwise accrue as to such Investor only shall be tolled until such information is delivered to the Company.

 

(e)
Allowable Delays. On no more than two occasions and for not more than 30 consecutive days or for a total of not more than 60 days in any 12 month period, the Company may delay the effectiveness of the Initial Registration Statement or any other Registration Statement, or suspend the use of any Prospectus, in the event that the Company determines in good faith that such delay or suspension is necessary to (A) delay the disclosure of material non-public information concerning the Company, the disclosure of which at the time is not, in the good faith opinion of the Company, in the best interests of the Company or (B) amend or supplement the affected Registration Statement or the related Prospectus so that such Registration Statement or Prospectus shall not include an untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact required to be stated therein or necessary to make the statements therein, in the case of the Prospectus in light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading (an “Allowed Delay”); provided, that the Company shall promptly (a) notify each Investor in writing of the commencement of an Allowed Delay, but shall not (without the prior written consent of an Investor) disclose to such Investor any material non-public information giving rise to an Allowed Delay, (b) advise the Investors in writing to cease all sales under the Registration Statement until the end of the Allowed Delay and (c) use commercially reasonable efforts to terminate an Allowed Delay as promptly as practicable.

 

(f)
Rule 415; Cutback. If at any time the SEC takes the position that the offering of some or all of the Registrable Securities in any Registration Statement is not eligible to be made on a delayed or continuous basis under the provisions of Rule 415 under the Securities Act (provided, however, the Company shall be obligated to use reasonable best efforts to advocate with the SEC for the registration of all of the Registrable Securities) or requires any Investor to be named as an “underwriter,” the Company shall (i) promptly notify each holder of Registrable Securities thereof and (ii) make commercially reasonable efforts to persuade the SEC that the offering contemplated by such Registration Statement is a valid secondary offering and not an offering “by or on behalf of the issuer” as defined in Rule 415 and that none of the Investors is an “underwriter.” The Investors shall have the right to select one legal counsel, at such Investors’ expense, to review and oversee any registration or matters pursuant to this Section 2(f), including participation in any meetings or discussions with the SEC regarding the SEC’s position and to comment on any written submission made to the SEC with respect thereto. No such written submission with respect to this matter shall be made to the SEC to which any Investor’s counsel reasonably objects. In the event that, despite the Company’s reasonable best efforts and compliance with the terms of this Section 2(f), the SEC refuses to alter its position, the Company shall (i) remove from such Registration Statement such portion of the Registrable Securities (the “Cut Back Shares”) and/or (ii) agree to such restrictions and limitations on the registration and resale of the Registrable Securities as the SEC may require to assure the Company’s compliance with the requirements of Rule 415 (collectively, the “SEC Restrictions”); provided, however, that the Company shall not name any Investor as an “underwriter” in such Registration Statement without the prior written consent of such Investor (provided that, in the event an Investor withholds such consent, the Company shall have no obligation hereunder to include any Registrable Securities of such Investor in any Registration Statement covering the resale thereof until such time as the SEC no longer requires such Investor to be named as an “underwriter” in such Registration Statement or such Investor otherwise consents in writing to being so named). Any cut-back imposed on the Investors pursuant to this Section 2(f) shall be allocated among the Investors on a pro rata basis and shall be applied first to any of the Registrable Securities of such Investor as such Investor shall designate, unless the SEC Restrictions otherwise require or provide or the Investors otherwise agree.

4


 

No liquidated damages shall accrue as to any Cut Back Shares until such date as the Company is able to effect the registration of such Cut Back Shares in accordance with any SEC Restrictions applicable to such Cut Back Shares (such date, the “Restriction Termination Date”). From and after the Restriction Termination Date applicable to any Cut Back Shares, all of the provisions of this Section 2 (including the Company’s obligations with respect to the filing of a Registration Statement and its obligations to use reasonable best efforts to have such Registration Statement declared effective within the time periods set forth herein and the liquidated damages provisions relating thereto) shall again be applicable to such Cut Back Shares; provided, however, that the date by which the Company is required to file the Registration Statement with respect to such Cut Back Shares shall be the tenth day following the Restriction Termination Date and the date by which the Company is required to have the Registration Statement effective with respect to such Cut Back Shares shall be the 55th day immediately after the Restriction Termination Date.

 

3.
RELATED COMPANY OBLIGATIONS.

 

With respect to the Registration Statement and whenever any Registrable Securities are to be Registered pursuant to Section 2, including on the Initial Registration Statement or on any New Registration Statement, the Company shall use its reasonable best efforts to effect the registration of the Registrable Securities in accordance with the intended method of disposition thereof and, pursuant thereto, the Company shall have the following obligations:

 

(a)
Notifications. The Company will promptly notify the Investors when any subsequent amendment to the Initial Registration Statement or any New Registration Statement, other than documents incorporated by reference, has been filed with the SEC and/or has become effective or where a receipt has been issued therefor or any subsequent supplement to a Prospectus has been filed and of any request by the SEC for any amendment or supplement to the Registration Statement, any New Registration Statement or any Prospectus or for additional information.

 

(b)
Amendments. The Company will prepare and file with the SEC any amendments, post-effective amendments or supplements to the Initial Registration Statement, any New Registration Statement or any Prospectus, as applicable, that, (a) as may be necessary to keep such Registration Statement effective for the Registration Period and to comply with the provisions of the Securities Act and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”) with respect to the distribution of all of the Registrable Securities covered thereby, or (b) in the reasonable opinion of the Investors and the Company, as may be necessary or advisable in connection with any acquisition or sale of Registrable Securities by the Investors.

 

(c)
Investor Review. The Company will not file any amendment or supplement to the Registration Statement, any New Registration Statement or any Prospectus, other than documents incorporated by reference, relating to the Investors, the Registrable Securities or the transactions contemplated hereby unless (A) the Investors and their counsel shall have been advised and afforded the opportunity to review and comment thereon at least three (3) Business Days prior to filing with the SEC and (B) the Company shall have given reasonable due consideration to any comments thereon received from the Investors or their counsel.

 

(d)
Copies Available. The Company will furnish to any Investor whose Registrable Securities are included in any Registration Statement and its counsel copies of the Initial Registration Statement, any Prospectus thereunder (including all documents incorporated by reference therein), any Prospectus supplement thereunder, any New Registration Statement and all amendments to the Initial Registration Statement or any New Registration Statement that are filed with the SEC during the Registration Period (including all documents filed with or furnished to the SEC during such period that are deemed to be incorporated by reference therein), each letter written by or on behalf of the Company to the SEC or the staff of the SEC, and each item of correspondence from the SEC or the staff of the SEC, in each case relating to such Registration Statement (other than any portion thereof which contains information for which the Company has sought confidential treatment) and such other documents as Investor may reasonably request in order to facilitate the disposition of the Registrable Securities owned by Investor that are covered by such Registration Statement, in each case as soon as reasonably practicable upon such Investor’s request and in such quantities as such Investor may from time to time reasonably request; provided, however, that the Company shall not be required to furnish any document to the Investor to the extent such document is available on EDGAR.

5


 

 

(e)
Notification of Stop Orders; Material Changes. The Company shall use commercially reasonable efforts to (i) prevent the issuance of any stop order or other suspension of effectiveness and, (ii) if such order is issued, obtain the withdrawal of any such order as soon as practicable. The Company shall advise the Investors promptly (but in no event later than 24 hours) and shall confirm such advice in writing, in each case: (i) of the Company’s receipt of notice of any request by the SEC or any other federal or state governmental authority for amendment of or a supplement to the Registration Statement or any Prospectus or for any additional information; (ii) of the Company’s receipt of notice of the issuance by the SEC or any other federal or state governmental authority of any stop order suspending the effectiveness of the Initial Registration Statement or prohibiting or suspending the use of any Prospectus or Prospectus supplement, or any New Registration Statement, or of the Company’s receipt of any notification of the suspension of qualification of the Registrable Securities for offering or sale in any jurisdiction or the initiation or contemplated initiation of any proceeding for such purpose; and (iii) of the Company becoming aware of the happening of any event, which makes any statement of a material fact made in any Registration Statement or any Prospectus untrue or which requires the making of any additions to or changes to the statements then made in any Registration Statement or any Prospectus in order to state a material fact required by the Securities Act to be stated therein or necessary in order to make the statements then made therein (in the case of any Prospectus, in light of the circumstances under which they were made) not misleading, or of the necessity to amend any Registration Statement or any Prospectus to comply with the Securities Act or any other law. The Company shall not be required to disclose to the Investors the substance of specific reasons of any of the events set forth in clause (i) to (iii) of the immediately preceding sentence (each, a “Suspension Event”), but rather, shall only be required to disclose that the event has occurred. If at any time the SEC, or any other federal or state governmental authority shall issue any stop order suspending the effectiveness of any Registration Statement or prohibiting or suspending the use of any Prospectus or Prospectus supplement, the Company shall use its reasonable best efforts to obtain the withdrawal of such order at the earliest practicable time. The Company shall furnish to the Investors, without charge, a copy of any correspondence from the SEC or the staff of the SEC, or any other federal or state governmental authority to the Company or its representatives relating to the Initial Registration Statement, any New Registration Statement or any Prospectus, or Prospectus supplement as the case may be. In the event of a Suspension Event set forth in clause (iii) of the first sentence of this Section 3(e), the Company will use its commercially reasonable efforts to publicly disclose such event as soon as reasonably practicable, or otherwise resolve the matter such that sales under Registration Statements may resume; provided, however, that if the Company has a bona fide business purpose for not making such information public, the Company may suspend the use of all Registration Statements for up to 60 consecutive calendar days; provided, further, that the Company may not suspend the use of all Registration Statements more than twice, or for more than 90 total calendar days, in each case during any twelve-month period.

 

(f)
Confirmation of Effectiveness. If reasonably requested by an Investor at any time in respect of any Registration Statement, the Company shall deliver to such Investor a written confirmation from Company’s counsel of whether or not the effectiveness of such Registration Statement has lapsed at any time for any reason (including, without limitation, the issuance of a stop order) and whether or not such Registration Statement is currently effective and available to the Company for sale of Registrable Securities.

 

6


 

(g)
Listing. The Company shall use best efforts to cause all Registrable Securities covered by a Registration Statement to be listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.

 

(h)
Compliance. The Company shall otherwise use best efforts to comply with all applicable rules and regulations of the SEC under the Securities Act and the Exchange Act, including, without limitation, Rule 172 under the Securities Act, file any final prospectus, including any supplement or amendment thereof, with the SEC pursuant to Rule 424 under the Securities Act, promptly inform the Investor in writing if, at any time during the Registration Period, the Company does not satisfy the conditions specified in Rule 172 and, as a result thereof, the Investor is required to deliver a prospectus in connection with any disposition of Registrable Securities and take such other actions as may be reasonably necessary to facilitate the registration of the Registrable Securities hereunder, and make available to its security holders, as soon as reasonably practicable, but not later than the Availability Date (as defined below), an earnings statement covering a period of at least 12 months, beginning after the effective date of each Registration Statement, which earnings statement shall satisfy the provisions of Section 11(a) of the Securities Act, including Rule 158 promulgated thereunder (for the purpose of this subsection 3(h), “Availability Date” means the 45th day following the end of the fourth fiscal quarter that includes the effective date of such Registration Statement, except that, if such fourth fiscal quarter is the last quarter of the Company’s fiscal year, “Availability Date” means the 90th day after the end of such fourth fiscal quarter).

 

(i)
Blue-Sky. The Company shall register or qualify or cooperate with the Investor and their counsel in connection with the registration or qualification of such Registrable Securities for the offer and sale under the securities or blue sky laws of such jurisdictions reasonably requested by the Investor; provided, however, that the Company shall not be required in connection therewith or as a condition thereto to (i) qualify to do business in any jurisdiction where it would not otherwise be required to qualify but for this Section 3(i), (ii) subject itself to general taxation in any jurisdiction where it would not otherwise be so subject but for this Section 3(i), or (iii) file a general consent to service of process in any such jurisdiction.

 

(j)
Rule 144. With a view to making available to the Investors the benefits of Rule 144 (or its successor rule) and any other rule or regulation of the SEC that may at any time permit the Investors to sell shares of Common Stock to the public without registration, the Company covenants and agrees to: (i) make and keep adequate current public information available, as those terms are understood and defined in Rule 144, until the earlier of (A) six months after such date as all of the Registrable Securities may be sold without restriction by the holders thereof pursuant to Rule 144 or any other rule of similar effect or (B) such date as there are no longer Registrable Securities; and (ii) file with the SEC in a timely manner all reports and other documents required of the Company under the Exchange Act; (iii) furnish electronically to each Investor upon request, as long as such Investor owns any Registrable Securities, (A) a written statement by the Company that it has complied with the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, (B) a copy of or electronic access to the Company’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K or Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and (C) such other information as may be reasonably requested in order to avail such Investor of any rule or regulation of the SEC that permits the selling of any such Registrable Securities without registration.

 

(k)
Cooperation. The Company shall cooperate with the holders of the Registrable Securities to facilitate the timely preparation and delivery of certificates or uncertificated shares representing the Registrable Securities to be sold pursuant to such Registration Statement or Rule 144 free of any restrictive legends and representing such number of shares of Common Stock and registered in such names as the holders of the Registrable Securities may reasonably request to the extent permitted by such Registration Statement or Rule 144 to effect sales of Registrable Securities ; for the avoidance of doubt, the Company may satisfy its obligations hereunder without issuing physical stock certificates through the use of The Depository Trust Company’s Direct Registration System.

7


 

 

4.
OBLIGATIONS OF THE INVESTORS.

 

(a)
Investor Information. Each Investor shall provide a completed Investor Questionnaire in the form attached hereto as Exhibit B in connection with the registration of the Registrable Securities. If the Company has not received such completed Investor Questionnaire from an Investor within three Business Days of the Company’s request, the Company may file the Registration Statement without including such Investor’s Registrable Securities.

 

(b)
Suspension of Sales. Each Investor, severally and not jointly with any other Investor, agrees that, upon receipt of any notice from the Company of the existence of an Allowed Delay or a Suspension Event as set forth in Section 3(e), the Investor will immediately discontinue disposition of Registrable Securities pursuant to any Registration Statement covering such Registrable Securities until the Investor's receipt of a notice from the Company confirming the resolution of such Allowed Delay or Suspension Event and that such dispositions may again be made; provided, for the avoidance of doubt, that the foregoing shall not limit the right of the Investor to sell or otherwise dispose of the Registrable Securities pursuant to Rule 144 or any other exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act or to settle a transaction pursuant to a Registration Statement as to which a contract for such sale was entered into prior to such Investor’s receipt of the notice from the Company of the existence of the Allowed Delay or Suspension Event. The Company shall cause its transfer agent to deliver unlegended shares of Common Stock to a transferee of an Investor in accordance with any sale of Registrable Securities pursuant to a Registration Statement with respect to which such Investor has entered into a contract for sale prior to such Investor’s receipt of the notice from the Company of the existence of the Allowed Delay or Suspension Event.

 

(c)
Investor Cooperation. Each Investor, severally and not jointly with any other Investor, agrees to cooperate with the Company as reasonably requested by the Company in connection with the preparation and filing of any amendments and supplements to any Registration Statement or New Registration Statement hereunder, unless such Investor has notified the Company in writing of its election to exclude all of its Registrable Securities from such Registration Statement.

 

5.
EXPENSES OF REGISTRATION.

 

All Registration Expenses incurred in connection with registrations pursuant to this Agreement shall be borne by the Company. All Selling Expenses relating to securities registered on behalf of the Investors shall be borne by the Investors pro rata on the basis of the number of Registrable Securities so registered.

 

6.
INDEMNIFICATION.

 

(a)
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Company will, and hereby does, indemnify, hold harmless and defend the Investors, each Person, if any, who controls the Investors, the members, the directors, officers, partners, employees, members, managers, agents, representatives and advisors of the Investors and each Person, if any, who controls the Investors within the meaning of the Securities Act or the Exchange Act (each, an “Indemnified Person”), against any losses, obligation, claims, damages, liabilities, contingencies, judgments, fines, penalties, charges, costs (including, without limitation, court costs and costs of preparation), reasonable and documented attorneys’ fees, amounts paid in settlement or reasonable and documented expenses, (collectively, “Claims”) reasonably incurred in investigating, preparing or defending any action, claim, suit, inquiry, proceeding, investigation or appeal taken from the foregoing by or before any court or governmental, administrative or other regulatory agency or body or the SEC, whether pending or threatened, whether or not an Indemnified Person is or may be a party thereto (“Indemnified Damages”), to which any of them may become subject insofar as such Claims (or actions or proceedings, whether commenced or threatened, in respect thereof) arise out of or are based upon: (i) any untrue statement or alleged untrue statement or omission or alleged omission of any material fact contained in any Registration Statement, any preliminary prospectus or final prospectus, or any amendment or supplement thereof, or (ii) any violation or alleged violation by the Company or any of its subsidiaries of the Securities Act, Exchange Act or any other state securities or other “blue sky” laws of any jurisdiction in which Registrable Securities are offered or any rule or regulation promulgated thereunder applicable to the Company or its agents and relating to action or inaction required of the Company in connection with such registration of the Registrable Securities (the matters in the foregoing clauses (i) and (ii) being, collectively, “Violations”).

8


 

The Company shall reimburse each Indemnified Person promptly as such expenses are incurred and are due and payable, for any reasonable out-of-pocket legal fees or other reasonable and documented expenses incurred by them in connection with investigating or defending any such Claim. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained herein, the indemnification agreement contained in this Section 6(a): (A) shall not apply to a Claim by an Indemnified Person arising out of or based upon a Violation which occurs in reliance upon and in conformity with information furnished in writing to the Company by the Investors or such Indemnified Person specifically for use in such Registration Statement or prospectus and was reviewed and approved in writing by such Investor or such Indemnified Person expressly for use in connection with the preparation of any Registration Statement, any prospectus or any such amendment thereof or supplement thereto, if such in each case if the foregoing was timely made available by the Company; (B) with respect to any superseded prospectus, shall not inure to the benefit of any such Person from whom the Person asserting any such Claim purchased the Registrable Securities that are the subject thereof (or to the benefit of any other Indemnified Person) if the untrue statement or omission of material fact contained in the superseded prospectus was corrected in the revised prospectus, as then amended or supplemented, and the Indemnified Person was promptly advised in writing not to use the outdated, defective or incorrect prospectus prior to the use giving rise to a Violation; (C) shall not apply to amounts paid in settlement of any Claim if such settlement is effected without the prior written consent of the Company, which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld, conditioned or delayed. Such indemnity shall remain in full force and effect regardless of any investigation made by or on behalf of the Indemnified Person and shall survive the transfer of the Registrable Securities by the Investor pursuant to Section 8.

 

(b)
In connection with the Initial Registration Statement, any New Registration Statement or any prospectus, the Investors, severally and not jointly, agree to indemnify, hold harmless and defend, the Company, each of its directors, each of its officers who signed the Initial Registration Statement or signs any New Registration Statement, each Person, if any, who controls the Company within the meaning of the Securities Act or the Exchange Act (each, an “Indemnified Party”), against any losses, claims, damages, liabilities and expense (including reasonable attorney fees) resulting from any Violation, in each case to the extent, and only to the extent, that such Violation occurs in reliance upon and in conformity with information about an Investor furnished in writing by such Investor to the Company and reviewed and approved in writing by such Investor or such Indemnified Person expressly for use in connection with the preparation of the Registration Statement, any New Registration Statement, any prospectus or any such amendment thereof or supplement thereto. In no event shall the liability of an Investor be greater in amount than the dollar amount of the proceeds (net of all expense paid by such Investor in connection with any claim relating to this Section 6 and the amount of any damages such Investor has otherwise been required to pay by reason of such untrue statement or omission) received by such Investor upon the sale of the Registrable Securities included in such Registration Statement giving rise to such indemnification obligation. Such indemnity shall remain in full force and effect regardless of any investigation made by or on behalf of such Indemnified Party and shall survive the transfer of the Registrable Securities by any Investor pursuant to Section 8.

 

9


 

(c)
Promptly after receipt by an Indemnified Person or Indemnified Party under this Section 6 of notice of the commencement of any action or proceeding (including any governmental action or proceeding) involving a Claim, such Indemnified Person or Indemnified Party shall, if a Claim in respect thereof is to be made against any indemnifying party under this Section 6, deliver to the indemnifying party a written notice of the commencement thereof, and the indemnifying party shall have the right to participate in, and, to the extent the indemnifying party so desires, jointly with any other indemnifying party similarly noticed, to assume control of the defense thereof with counsel mutually satisfactory to the indemnifying party and the Indemnified Person or the Indemnified Party, as the case may be, and upon such notice, the indemnifying party shall not be liable to the Indemnified Person or the Indemnified Party for any legal or other expenses subsequently incurred by the Indemnified Person or the Indemnified Party in connection with the defense thereof; provided, however, that an Indemnified Person or Indemnified Party (together with all other Indemnified Persons and Indemnified Parties that may be represented without conflict by one counsel) shall have the right to retain its own counsel with the reasonable fees and expenses to be paid by the indemnifying party, if, in the reasonable opinion of counsel retained by the indemnifying party, the representation by such counsel of the Indemnified Person or Indemnified Party and the indemnifying party would be inappropriate due to actual or potential differing interests between such Indemnified Person or Indemnified Party and any other party represented by such counsel in such proceeding. The Indemnified Party or Indemnified Person shall cooperate with the indemnifying party in connection with any negotiation or defense of any such action or claim by the indemnifying party and shall furnish to the indemnifying party all information reasonably available to the Indemnified Party or Indemnified Person which relates to such action or claim. The indemnifying party shall keep the Indemnified Party or Indemnified Person fully apprised as to the status of the defense or any settlement negotiations with respect thereto. No indemnifying party shall be liable for any settlement of any action, claim or proceeding effected without its written consent, provided, however, that the indemnifying party shall not unreasonably withhold, delay or condition its consent. No indemnifying party shall, without the consent of the Indemnified Party or Indemnified Person, consent to entry of any judgment or enter into any settlement or other compromise unless such judgment or settlement (i) imposes no liability or obligation on, (ii) includes as an unconditional term thereof the giving of a complete, explicit and unconditional release from the party bringing such indemnified claims of all liability of the Indemnified Party or Indemnified Person in respect to or arising out of such claim or litigation in favor of, and (iii) does not include any admission of fault, culpability, wrongdoing, or wrongdoing or malfeasance by or on behalf of, the Indemnified Party or Indemnified Person. Following indemnification as provided for hereunder, the indemnifying party shall be subrogated to all rights of the Indemnified Party or Indemnified Person with respect to all third parties, firms or corporations relating to the matter for which indemnification has been made. The failure to deliver written notice to the indemnifying party within a reasonable time of the commencement of any such action shall not relieve such indemnifying party of any liability to the Indemnified Person or Indemnified Party under this Section 6, except to the extent that the indemnifying party is prejudiced in its ability to defend such action.

 

(d)
The indemnification required by this Section 6 shall be made by periodic payments of the amount thereof during the course of the investigation or defense, as and when bills are received or Indemnified Damages are incurred. Any Person receiving a payment pursuant to this Section 6 which person is later determined to not be entitled to such payment shall return such payment (including reimbursement of expenses) to the person making it.

 

(e)
The indemnity agreements contained herein shall be in addition to (i) any cause of action or similar right of the Indemnified Party or Indemnified Person against the indemnifying party or others, and (ii) any liabilities the indemnifying party may be subject to pursuant to the law.

 

7.
CONTRIBUTION.

 

10


 

To the extent any indemnification by an indemnifying party is prohibited or limited by law, the indemnifying party agrees to make the maximum contribution with respect to any amounts for which it would otherwise be liable under Section 6 to the fullest extent permitted by law; provided, however, that: (i) no seller of Registrable Securities guilty of fraudulent misrepresentation (within the meaning of Section 11(f) of the Securities Act) shall be entitled to contribution from any seller of Registrable Securities who was not guilty of fraudulent misrepresentation; and (ii) contribution by any seller of Registrable Securities shall be limited in amount to the net amount of proceeds (net of all expenses paid by such holder in connection with any claim relating to this Section 7 and the amount of any damages such holder has otherwise been required to pay by reason of such untrue or alleged untrue statement or omission or alleged omission) received by such seller from the sale of such Registrable Securities giving rise to such contribution obligation.

 

8.
ASSIGNMENT OF REGISTRATION RIGHTS.

 

The Company shall not assign this Agreement or any rights or obligations hereunder (whether by operation of law or otherwise) without the prior written consent of the Investors holding a majority of the Registrable Securities then outstanding; provided, however, that in any transaction, whether by merger, reorganization, restructuring, consolidation, financing or otherwise, whereby the Company is a party and in which the Registrable Securities are converted into the equity securities of another Person, from and after the effective time of such transaction, such Person shall, by virtue of such transaction, be deemed to have assumed the obligations of the Company hereunder, the term “Company” shall be deemed to refer to such Person and the term “Registrable Securities” shall be deemed to include the securities received by the Investor in connection with such transaction unless such securities are otherwise freely tradable by the Investor after giving effect to such transaction, and the prior written consent of the Investors holding a majority of the Registrable Securities then outstanding shall not be required for such transaction.

An Investor may transfer or assign its rights hereunder, in whole or from time to time in part, to one or more Persons in connection with the transfer of not fewer than 500,000 Registrable Securities, with such number to be adjusted for any stock split or reverse stock split, by such Investor to such Person, provided that such Investor complies with all laws applicable thereto, and the provisions of the Purchase Agreement, and provides written notice of assignment to the Company promptly after such assignment is effected, and such Person agrees in writing to be bound by all of the provisions contained herein.

The provisions of this Agreement shall be binding upon and inure to the benefit of the Investor and its successors and permitted assigns.

 

9.
AMENDMENTS AND WAIVERS.

 

The provisions of this Agreement, including the provisions of this sentence, may be amended, modified or supplemented, or waived only by a written instrument executed by (i) the Company and (ii) the holders of a majority of the then outstanding Registrable Securities, provided that (1) any party may give a waiver as to itself, (2) any amendment, modification, supplement or waiver that disproportionately and adversely affects the rights and obligations of any Investor relative to the comparable rights and obligations of the other Investors shall require the prior written consent of such adversely affected Investor or each Investor, as applicable, and (3) any amendments to Section 6 or to the definitions of “Filing Deadline,” “Effectiveness Deadline,” or “Registration Period” shall require the written consent of each Investor. Notwithstanding the foregoing, a waiver or consent to depart from the provisions hereof with respect to a matter that relates exclusively to the rights of one or more Investors and that does not adversely directly or indirectly affect the rights of other Investors may be given by Investors holding all of the Registrable Securities to which such waiver or consent relates.

 

11


 

10.
MISCELLANEOUS.

 

(a)
Notices. Any notices or other communications required or permitted to be given hereunder shall be in writing and shall be deemed to be given (a) when delivered if personally delivered to the party for whom it is intended, (b) when delivered, if sent by electronic mail during normal business hours of the recipient, and if not sent during normal business hours, then on the earlier of (x) confirmation of receipt or (y) the opening of business on the recipient’s next Business Day, (c) three days after having been sent by certified or registered mail, return-receipt requested and postage prepaid, or (d) one Business Day after deposit with a nationally recognized overnight courier, freight prepaid, specifying next business day delivery, with written verification of receipt:

 

i.
If to the Company, addressed as follows:

Vor Biopharma Inc.

500 Boylston Street, Suite 1350

Boston, Massachusetts 02116

Attention: Adi Osovsky

Email: aosovsky@vorbio.com

 

with a copy (which shall not constitute notice):

Cooley LLP

1299 Pennsylvania Avenue NW STE 700

Washington, DC 20221

Attention: Madison Jones

Email: madison.jones@cooley.com

 

ii.
If to any Investor, at its e-mail address or address set forth on its signature page to the Purchase Agreement, or to such e-mail address or address as subsequently modified by written notice given in accordance with this Section 10.

Any Person may change the address to which notices and communications to it are to be addressed by notification as provided for herein.

(b)
Consent to Electronic Notice. Each Investor consents to the delivery of any stockholder notice pursuant to the Delaware General Corporation Law (the “DGCL”), as amended or superseded from time to time, by electronic mail pursuant to Section 232 of the DGCL (or any successor thereto) at the e-mail address set forth below the Investor’s name on the signature page, as updated from time to time by notice to the Company. To the extent that any notice given by means of electronic mail is returned or undeliverable for any reason, the foregoing consent shall be deemed to have been revoked until a new or corrected e-mail address has been provided, and such attempted electronic notice shall be ineffective and deemed to not have been given. Each party agrees to promptly notify the other parties of any change in its e-mail address, and that failure to do so shall not affect the foregoing.

 

(c)
Waiver. No waiver of any term, provision or condition of this Agreement, whether by conduct or otherwise, in any one or more instances, shall be deemed to be, or be construed as, a further or continuing waiver of any such term, provision or condition or as a waiver of any other term, provision or condition of this Agreement.

 

(d)
Governing Law. The provisions of Section 8.5 of the Purchase Agreement are incorporated by reference herein mutatis mutandis.

12


 

 

(e)
Headings. The titles, subtitles and headings in this Agreement are for convenience of reference and shall not form part of, or affect the interpretation of, this Agreement.

 

(f)
Counterparts. This Agreement may be executed in two or more identical counterparts, all of which shall be considered one and the same agreement and shall become effective when counterparts have been signed by each party and delivered to the other party; provided that a facsimile or pdf signature including any electronic signatures complying with the U.S. federal ESIGN Act of 2000, e.g., www.docusign.com shall be considered due execution and shall be binding upon the signatory thereto with the same force and effect as if the signature were an original, not a facsimile or pdf (or other electronic reproduction of a) signature.

 

(g)
Further Assurances. Each party shall do and perform, or cause to be done and performed, all such further acts and things, and shall execute and deliver all such other agreements, certificates, instruments and documents as the other party may reasonably request in order to carry out the intent and accomplish the purposes of this Agreement and the consummation of the transactions contemplated hereby.

 

(h)
Contract Interpretation. This Agreement is the joint product of each Investor and the Company and each provision hereof has been subject to the mutual consultation, negotiation and agreement of such parties and shall not be construed for or against any party hereto.

 

(i)
No Third Party Beneficiaries. Nothing in this Agreement, express or implied, is intended to confer on any Person other than the parties to this Agreement any rights, remedies, claims, benefits, obligations or liabilities under or by reason of this Agreement, and no Person that is not a party to this Agreement (including, without limitation, any partner, member, shareholder, director, officer, employee or other beneficial owner of any party to this Agreement, in its own capacity as such or in bringing a derivative action on behalf of a party to this Agreement) shall have any standing as a third party beneficiary with respect to this Agreement or the transactions contemplated hereby.

 

(j)
Severability. If any part or provision of this Agreement is held unenforceable or in conflict with the applicable laws or regulations of any jurisdiction, the invalid or unenforceable part or provisions shall be replaced with a provision which accomplishes, to the extent possible, the original business purpose of such part or provision in a valid and enforceable manner, and the remainder of this Agreement shall remain binding upon the parties hereto.

 

(k)
Non-Recourse. Notwithstanding anything that may be expressed or implied in this Agreement, the Company covenants, agrees and acknowledges that no recourse under this Agreement or any documents or instruments delivered in connection with this Agreement shall be had against any current or future director, officer, employee, stockholder, general or limited partner or member of the Investors or of any affiliates or assignees thereof, whether by the enforcement of any assessment or by any legal or equitable proceeding, or by virtue of any statute, regulation or other applicable law, it being expressly agreed and acknowledged that no personal liability whatsoever shall attach to, be imposed on or otherwise be incurred by any current or future director, officer, employee, stockholder, general or limited partner or member of the Investors or of any affiliates or assignees thereof, as such for any obligation of the Investors under this Agreement or any documents or instruments delivered in connection with this Agreement for any claim based on, in respect of or by reason of such obligations or their creation.

 

(l)
Specific Performance. In addition to any and all other remedies that may be available at law in the event of any breach of this Agreement, each Investor shall be entitled to specific performance of the agreements and obligations of the Company hereunder and to such other injunction or other equitable relief as may be granted by a court of competent jurisdiction.

13


 

 

(m)
Cumulative Remedies. The remedies provided herein are cumulative and not exclusive of any remedies provided by law.

 

[Signature Page Follows]

 

14


 

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties have caused this Registration Rights Agreement to be duly executed as of date first written above.

 

 

COMPANY:

Vor Biopharma Inc.

By: /s/ Jean-Paul Kress
Name: Jean-Paul Kress
Title: Chief Executive Officer

[Signature Page to Registration Rights Agreement]


IF " DOCVARIABLE "SWDocIDLocation" 4096" = "2" " DOCPROPERTY "SWDocID" 4885-9433-7646 " ""

 

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties have caused this Registration Rights Agreement to be duly executed as of date first written above.

 

 

INVESTOR:

TCG CROSSOVER FUND II, L.P.

By: TCG Crossover GP II, LLC
Its General Partner

By: /s/ Chen Yu

Name: Chen Yu

Title: Managing Member

 

 


 

Exhibit A

PLAN OF DISTRIBUTION

[Signature Page to Registration Rights Agreement] IF " DOCVARIABLE "SWDocIDLocation" Error! No document variable supplied." = "1" "" "" The selling stockholders, which as used herein includes donees, pledgees, transferees or other successors-in-interest selling shares of common stock or interests in shares of common stock received after the date of this prospectus from a selling stockholder as a gift, pledge, partnership distribution or other transfer, may, from time to time, sell, transfer or otherwise dispose of any or all of their shares of common stock or interests in shares of common stock on any stock exchange, market or trading facility on which the shares are traded or in private transactions. These dispositions may be at fixed prices, at prevailing market prices at the time of sale, at prices related to the prevailing market price, at varying prices determined at the time of sale, or at negotiated prices.

The selling stockholders may use any one or more of the following methods when disposing of shares or interests therein:

distributions to members, partners, stockholders or other equityholders of the selling stockholders;
ordinary brokerage transactions and transactions in which the broker-dealer solicits purchasers;
block trades in which the broker-dealer will attempt to sell the shares as agent, but may position and resell a portion of the block as principal to facilitate the transaction;
purchases by a broker-dealer as principal and resale by the broker-dealer for its account;
an exchange distribution in accordance with the rules of the applicable exchange;
privately negotiated transactions;
short sales and settlement of short sales entered into after the effective date of the registration statement of which this prospectus is a part;
through the writing or settlement of options or other hedging transactions, whether through an options exchange or otherwise;
broker-dealers may agree with the selling stockholders to sell a specified number of such shares at a stipulated price per share;
a combination of any such methods of sale; and
any other method permitted pursuant to applicable law.

The selling stockholders may, from time to time, pledge or grant a security interest in some or all of the shares of common stock owned by them and, if they default in the performance of their secured obligations, the pledgees or secured parties may offer and sell the shares of common stock, from time to time, under this prospectus, or under an amendment to this prospectus under Rule 424(b)(3) or other applicable provision of the Securities Act, amending the list of selling stockholders to include the pledgee, transferee or other successors in interest as selling stockholders under this prospectus.

1


 

The selling stockholders also may transfer the shares of common stock in other circumstances, in which case the transferees, pledgees or other successors in interest will be the selling stockholders for purposes of this prospectus.

In connection with the sale of our common stock or interests therein, the selling stockholders may enter into hedging transactions with broker-dealers or other financial institutions, which may in turn engage in short sales of the common stock in the course of hedging the positions they assume. The selling stockholders may also sell shares of our common stock short and deliver these securities to close out their short positions, or loan or pledge the common stock to broker-dealers that in turn may sell these securities. The selling stockholders may also enter into option or other transactions with broker-dealers or other financial institutions or the creation of one or more derivative securities which require the delivery to such broker-dealer or other financial institution of shares offered by this prospectus, which shares such broker-dealer or other financial institution may resell pursuant to this prospectus (as supplemented or amended to reflect such transaction).

The aggregate proceeds to the selling stockholders from the sale of the common stock offered by them will be the purchase price of the common stock less discounts or commissions, if any. Each of the selling stockholders reserves the right to accept and, together with their agents from time to time, to reject, in whole or in part, any proposed purchase of common stock to be made directly or through agents. We will not receive any of the proceeds from this offering.

The selling stockholders also may resell all or a portion of the shares in open market transactions in reliance upon Rule 144 under the Securities Act, provided that they meet the criteria and conform to the requirements of that rule, or another available exemption from the registration requirements under the Securities Act.

The selling stockholders and any underwriters, broker-dealers or agents that participate in the sale of the common stock or interests therein may be “underwriters” within the meaning of Section 2(a)(11) of the Securities Act (it being understood that the selling stockholders shall not be deemed to be underwriters solely as a result of their participation in this offering). Any discounts, commissions, concessions or profit they earn on any resale of the shares may be underwriting discounts and commissions under the Securities Act. Selling stockholders who are “underwriters” within the meaning of Section 2(a)(11) of the Securities Act will be subject to the prospectus delivery requirements of the Securities Act.

To the extent required, the shares of our common stock to be sold, the names of the selling stockholders, the respective purchase prices and public offering prices, the names of any agent, dealer or underwriter, and any applicable commissions or discounts with respect to a particular offer will be set forth in an accompanying prospectus supplement or, if appropriate, a post-effective amendment to the registration statement that includes this prospectus.

In order to comply with the securities laws of some states, if applicable, the common stock may be sold in these jurisdictions only through registered or licensed brokers or dealers. In addition, in some states the common stock may not be sold unless it has been registered or qualified for sale or an exemption from registration or qualification requirements is available and is complied with.

2


 

We have advised the selling stockholders that the anti-manipulation rules of Regulation M under the Exchange Act may apply to sales of shares in the market and to the activities of the selling stockholders and their affiliates. In addition, to the extent applicable, we will make copies of this prospectus (as it may be supplemented or amended from time to time) available to the selling stockholders for the purpose of satisfying the prospectus delivery requirements of the Securities Act. The selling stockholders may indemnify any broker-dealer that participates in transactions involving the sale of the shares against certain liabilities, including liabilities arising under the Securities Act.

We have agreed to indemnify the selling stockholders against liabilities, including liabilities under the Securities Act and state securities laws, relating to the registration of the shares offered by this prospectus.

We have agreed with the selling stockholders to use commercially reasonable efforts to cause the registration statement of which this prospectus constitutes a part to become effective and to remain continuously effective until the earlier of: (i) the date on which the selling stockholders shall have resold or otherwise disposed of all the shares covered by this prospectus and (ii) the date on which the shares covered by this prospectus no longer constitute “Registrable Securities” as such term is defined in the Registration Rights Agreement, such that they may be resold by the selling stockholders without registration and without regard to any volume or manner-of-sale limitations and without current public information pursuant to Rule 144 under the Securities Act or any other rule of similar effect.

3


 

Exhibit B

 

Investor Questionnaire

4


EX-31.1 4 vor-ex31_1.htm EX-31.1 EX-31.1

 

Exhibit 31.1

CERTIFICATIONS

I, Jean-Paul Kress, certify that:

1.
I have reviewed this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q of Vor Biopharma Inc.;
2.
Based on my knowledge, this report does not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact necessary to make the statements made, in light of the circumstances under which such statements were made, not misleading with respect to the period covered by this report;
3.
Based on my knowledge, the financial statements, and other financial information included in this report, fairly present in all material respects the financial condition, results of operations and cash flows of the registrant as of, and for, the periods presented in this report;
4.
The registrant’s other certifying officer and I are responsible for establishing and maintaining disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Exchange Act Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e)) and internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Exchange Act Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f)) for the registrant and have:
(a)
Designed such disclosure controls and procedures, or caused such disclosure controls and procedures to be designed under our supervision, to ensure that material information relating to the registrant, including its consolidated subsidiaries, is made known to us by others within those entities, particularly during the period in which this report is being prepared;
(b)
Designed such internal control over financial reporting, or caused such internal control over financial reporting to be designed under our supervision, to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles;
(c)
Evaluated the effectiveness of the registrant's disclosure controls and procedures and presented in this report our conclusions about the effectiveness of the disclosure controls and procedures, as of the end of the period covered by this report based on such evaluation; and
(d)
Disclosed in this report any change in the registrant's internal control over financial reporting that occurred during the registrant's most recent fiscal quarter (the registrant's fourth fiscal quarter in the case of an annual report) that has materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, the registrant's internal control over financial reporting; and
5.
The registrant’s other certifying officer and I have disclosed, based on our most recent evaluation of internal control over financial reporting, to the registrant's auditors and the audit committee of the registrant's board of directors (or persons performing the equivalent functions):
(a)
All significant deficiencies and material weaknesses in the design or operation of internal control over financial reporting which are reasonably likely to adversely affect the registrant's ability to record, process, summarize and report financial information; and
(b)
Any fraud, whether or not material, that involves management or other employees who have a significant role in the registrant's internal control over financial reporting.

 

Date: May 13, 2026

By:

/s/ Jean-Paul Kress

Jean-Paul Kress

President and Chief Executive Officer

(Principal Executive Officer)

 

 


EX-31.2 5 vor-ex31_2.htm EX-31.2 EX-31.2

 

Exhibit 31.2

CERTIFICATIONS

I, Sandesh Mahatme, certify that:

1.
I have reviewed this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q of Vor Biopharma Inc.;
2.
Based on my knowledge, this report does not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact necessary to make the statements made, in light of the circumstances under which such statements were made, not misleading with respect to the period covered by this report;
3.
Based on my knowledge, the financial statements, and other financial information included in this report, fairly present in all material respects the financial condition, results of operations and cash flows of the registrant as of, and for, the periods presented in this report;
4.
The registrant’s other certifying officer and I are responsible for establishing and maintaining disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Exchange Act Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e)) and internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Exchange Act Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f)) for the registrant and have:
(a)
Designed such disclosure controls and procedures, or caused such disclosure controls and procedures to be designed under our supervision, to ensure that material information relating to the registrant, including its consolidated subsidiaries, is made known to us by others within those entities, particularly during the period in which this report is being prepared;
(b)
Designed such internal control over financial reporting, or caused such internal control over financial reporting to be designed under our supervision, to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles;
(c)
Evaluated the effectiveness of the registrant's disclosure controls and procedures and presented in this report our conclusions about the effectiveness of the disclosure controls and procedures, as of the end of the period covered by this report based on such evaluation; and
(d)
Disclosed in this report any change in the registrant's internal control over financial reporting that occurred during the registrant's most recent fiscal quarter (the registrant's fourth fiscal quarter in the case of an annual report) that has materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, the registrant's internal control over financial reporting; and
5.
The registrant’s other certifying officer and I have disclosed, based on our most recent evaluation of internal control over financial reporting, to the registrant's auditors and the audit committee of the registrant's board of directors (or persons performing the equivalent functions):
(a)
All significant deficiencies and material weaknesses in the design or operation of internal control over financial reporting which are reasonably likely to adversely affect the registrant's ability to record, process, summarize and report financial information; and
(b)
Any fraud, whether or not material, that involves management or other employees who have a significant role in the registrant's internal control over financial reporting.

 

Date: May 13, 2026

By:

/s/ Sandesh Mahatme

Sandesh Mahatme

Chief Financial Officer

(Principal Financial Officer and Principal Accounting Officer)

 

 


EX-32.1 6 vor-ex32_1.htm EX-32.1 EX-32.1

 

Exhibit 32.1

CERTIFICATION PURSUANT TO

18 U.S.C. SECTION 1350, AS ADOPTED PURSUANT TO

SECTION 906 OF THE SARBANES-OXLEY ACT OF 2002

In connection with the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q of Vor Biopharma Inc. (the “Company”) for the period ended March 31, 2026, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on the date hereof (the “Report”), each of the undersigned officers of the Company hereby certifies, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 1350, as adopted pursuant to § 906 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, that to his knowledge:

(1)
The Report fully complies with the requirements of Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended; and
(2)
The information contained in the Report fairly presents, in all material respects, the financial condition and results of operations of the Company.

 

Date: May 13, 2026

By:

/s/ Jean-Paul Kress

Jean-Paul Kress

President and Chief Executive Officer

(Principal Executive Officer)

 

 

Date: May 13, 2026

By:

/s/ Sandesh Mahatme

Sandesh Mahatme

Chief Financial Officer

(Principal Financial Officer and Principal Accounting Officer)

 

 

 

This certification accompanies the Form 10-Q to which it relates, is not deemed filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and is not to be incorporated by reference into any filing of Vor Biopharma Inc. under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (whether made before or after the date of this Form 10-Q), irrespective of any general incorporation language contained in such filing.