Surrozen, Inc. Common 12th Annual Cantor Fitzgerald Global Healthcare Conference

Great. Thanks, Steve, and thanks for having us. What we recently announced is that we'll be entering the clinic later this year. The DUET study is a two-part study. Part one is a single ascending dose, and we'll be enrolling both treatment-naive and treatment-experienced patients. Ultimately, the objective there is to study safety and tolerability and select two doses, which will enter part two of the dose expansion phase, where we'll have an active comparator VABYSMO. The primary endpoint will be at three weeks. We'll give three monthly doses of SZN-8141, and then we'll have four-month follow-up. Really the objective here is to tease out potential differentiation on a couple different fronts. One is on potential anatomical outcomes, so drying. Two is we do have some endpoints geared towards potential reperfusion, which is uniquely suited for the WNT mechanism.

Then three is really around potential durability given the four-month follow-up we have after the three loading doses that we're giving every month of A141. In terms of timing, as I mentioned, we'll initiate the study later this year, and we will look to have some initial clinical data in the second half of 2027.

Right. I think based on what we have demonstrated preclinically and the promise of combining both VEGF and WNT, we think we have the potential to be best in disease. In terms of what we considered for the design, typically phase I-B/II-A studies have been open label, but the stands have shifted a bit. It has become more competitive. Ultimately we shifted to potentially considering an active control, and then the next question was: What compound do we compare SZN-8141 to? Ultimately we landed on VABYSMO because we think that is the most commercially relevant product. It has demonstrated incremental improvements over anatomical outcomes relative to EYLEA. It is a multifunctional antibody. Ultimately we came to that conclusion that we would answer more questions than less by having an active comparator and by including VABYSMO.

Right. DME, I think DME was prioritized, although we did allude in our public disclosure that we will be looking at other We do not need to wait for the DME data in particular, but looking at other indications like wet AMD. I would say principally, there has been more published literature around the role of Frizzled-4 and LRP5, and its role in DME. There is also literature to suggest that their Frizzled-4 is expressed on the choroid, so there is potential for it to be effective in wet AMD as well, and certainly Merck has a wet AMD ongoing trial, and we are looking at, which we will lay out at some later point around what our wet AMD trial would look like.

Based on our preclinical data, we've demonstrated in the CNV model, which is the- Yeah wet AMD workhorse model that we're effective there.

Certainly, we'll take data in from external competitors like Merck.

Okay. But there are key differences between our molecule relative to theirs that I think are important to consider when thinking about wet AMD.

Right. I think we wanted a comprehensive data set, and also that's why we included an active comparator to get a sense for a potential signal around differentiation to the market leader, and I think that can manifest itself in a couple ways. It could be improvements in anatomical outcomes or drying. It could be on durability, and it also could be on these reperfusion metrics that we've included as well, given, as you mentioned, Wnt is uniquely suited to potentially address that, which no other therapies currently on the market do.