VolitionRX Ltd (VNRX) Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

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VolitionRX Ltd (VNRX -2.60%)
Q3 2021 Earnings Call
Nov 11, 2021, 8:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to VolitionRx Limited's Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This conference call is being recorded today, November 11, 2021.

I'd now like to turn the conference over to Scott Powell, Executive Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Scott Powell -- Executive Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you and welcome everyone to todays earnings conference call for VolitionRx Limited. This call will cover Volition's financial and operating results for the third quarter of 2021, along with a discussion of our recent activities and key upcoming milestones. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the conference call to a question-and-answer session. Also on our call today are Mr. Cameron Reynolds, President and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Terig Hughes, our Chief Financial Officer; and Dr. Tom Butera, Chief Executive Officer of Volition Veterinary Diagnostics Development LLC.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that some of the information discussed on this conference call will include forward-looking statements covered under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on our beliefs, as well as assumptions we have used based upon information currently available to us. Because these statements reflect our current views concerning future events, these statements involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Actual future results may vary significantly based on a number of factors that may cause the actual results or events to be materially different from future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these statements. We have identified various risk factors associated with our operations in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake an obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements made during the course of this call.

I'd now like to turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Cameron Reynolds. Cameron?

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Thank you everyone for joining Volition's conference call today. I know I always say it, but we especially appreciate your time. Given how busy all are during earnings call season. Whilst we usually kick off with Terig and our financial report, where we have continued to keep our cash burn rate low, this quarter, given the anticipated surrounding updates on Volition Vet, we will start our presentation with Dr. Tom Butera, Chief Executive of our Veterinary subsidiary. Tom over to you.

Tom Butera -- Chief Executive Officer, Volition Veterinary Diagnostics Development LLC

Thanks a lot, Cameron, and thanks everyone for joining the call today. Whilst it's been quite a ride since I joined the team in May, to use an American football analogy for all the sports fans out there, I believe we are on the 10-yard line with respect to executing a term sheet for our first licensing distribution deal for our Nu.Q Vet Cancer Screening Test. I'm delighted to say that we are on advanced term sheet discussions with three top global veterinary companies and anticipate signing the term sheet, with one of those parties before the end of 2021.

We have been in continued extensive and wide-ranging negotiations with each of these three large multinationals on launching our test product worldwide both the reference labs and point-of-care tests and on both an exclusive and non-exclusive basis. Large multinational organizations and indeed deals of this nature require extensive due diligence, but especially before launching a revolutionary test like ours. After all, this would be the first launch of a low-cost companion animal cancer screening test so they obviously need to be sure. I'm excited to say that I believe each of these potential partners either have completed or are near completion of their extensive due diligence process of all aspects of the product. The due diligence process in all three companies has included, but not been limited to, our intellectual property, validating the test in their own labs, understanding learnings from our beta launch in Texas and determining the potential total addressable market and platform development. It's very apparent to me from this process to date that all three companies share our vision for the Nu.Q Vet Cancer Screening Test to be a simple, low cost, easy to use tests available to veterinarians and pet owners around the world.

Pricing has probably been our biggest learning from the beta launch and so it's comforting to note that all three companies share the desire for a sub-$75 price point and possibly even as low as $50 to the pet owner. We feel at this price point, our test can very much be a mass market product, especially in the hands of these large multinational sales teams. It's even more comforting to note that all three potential counterparties identified the significant unmet need in the market for a simple screening test for cancer and have desire to build out their blood based oncology diagnostic franchises. They have also expressed the belief that the potential total addressable market runs into the millions of tests each year, which at a $50 to $75 price point, would result in very substantial revenue for everyone involved. Indeed, our potential partners have expressed a general belief that our Nu.Q Vet Cancer Screening Test could eventually be one of the most popular diagnostic tests utilized by the veterinary community in the future. Certainly, a great target that we feel the same enthusiasm for. So, while that requires patience and we're not quite there yet, I think we are close. And while we don't want to over emphasize the football analogy too much, this has truly been a great team effort with every member of the squad playing their part. So I'd like to publicly thank the entire team for all their hard work to date. Let's keep up the great momentum we have.

In particular, I'd like to thank Chief Commercial Officer Gael Forterre and Cheyenne Kruse, our Senior Business Administrator for their fantastic focus and organizational management. From a personal perspective, I want to reassure you that finalizing one or more of these licensing distribution deals is our absolute priority at Volition Vet and I promise that we will stay focused on our goal of getting the first term sheet signed by the end of 2021.

But before I hand the call back to Cameron, I wanted to take a couple of minutes to briefly discuss some of our other fantastic work our colleagues at the Texas A&M Veterinary School Oncology Department and Volition's R&D team have been jointly working on which includes recent presentations at the Veterinary Cancer Society Annual Conference, which was held virtually last week. I am so excited that the first data was published in relation to what will likely be our second Nu.Q Vet product on track for a planned launch in 2022. We believe this additional test has significant potential to help improve the treatment and the quality of life for dogs by providing valuable additional information to inform the clinical decision-making process for both the veterinarian and pet owner. Not to get too technical here, but the data demonstrates that Nu.Q Vet may serve as a more sensitive measurement of both minimal residual disease and remission and could be a very useful monitoring test for dogs with cancer. Given Nu.Q is a simple blood test, this could be an incredibly useful tool in the clinic and in a general practitioner veterinarian's office. Being able to use the Nu.Q test to not only screen for cancer as part of our current product helping identify disease earlier, but also to then be able to help monitor the disease progression as an early indication that a dog is coming out of remission will meet a real unmet need in the market. Really great first data and I know that Dr. Robles and the whole team are excited to finish this study of over 100 dogs to publish findings early in 2022 and progress the product to an expected launch in 2022.

The second poster presented at the conference reports our first study using Nu.Q Capture, Volition's enrichment to better understand the types of circulating nucleosomes and their genome patterns in the plasma of dogs with lymphoma. It was exciting to see that once again the animal data shows similar findings to human studies and that canine lymphoma patients have circulating nucleosomes, lacking linker DNA, that is shorter nucleosomes, that are not detected in plasma from healthy canines and then Nu.Q Capture is capable of enriching canine cancer associated nucleosomes in plasma of lymphoma patients. This is truly cutting-edge research and a really exciting set of findings for us. So please watch the space as we look forward to expanding our research in this area.

And lastly, as I appreciate I'm taking quite a bit of time today with the Veterinary update, but in addition to our commercialization and R&D product development efforts, we are also continuing our education campaign for veterinarians with Dr. Sue Ettinger AKA Dr. Sue Cancer Vet presenting on future of cancer diagnostics at the New York Vet Show last week and this week we were presenting at the prestigious London Vet Show. As the world opens up, however slowly, I'm very much looking forward to hearing the continued thoughts about Nu.Q Vet from our veterinary colleagues across the globe, all findings to date, point to need for a low cost, easy-to-use blood test to be ubiquitous. And on the positive note, I'll say please stay tuned for veterinary updates. We expect that 2022 will be a very exciting year on the Nu.Q Vet side with the planned commercialization of our products.

And with that, I'll pass it back to Cameron. Cam?

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Thanks very much, Tom, for that comprehensive update and thanks to all of Veterinary team for their hard work this quarter. It is an exciting, fast moving part of our business, with significant potential for not only helping man's best friend, but also in generating significant revenue for the Company. I look forward to our first deals signed and the launch of our second product in cancer treatment monitoring expected in 2022. And from one exciting part of our business to the other, Nu.Q NET NETosis. I am delighted that our team is involved in such cutting-edge research with several internationally renowned institutions. As a reminder, we believe our Nu.Q NET assays have wide applicability for monitoring diseases with a NETs component such as COVID-19, influenza, sepsis, autoimmune disease and even cancer and potentially to risk stratify patients for treatment selection.

During this quarter, our new Product Manager Remi Rabeuf joined the team and is spearheading NETosis product development and has immediately focused on defining the intended use of the product and our regulatory strategy. I am delighted to announce that we expect to register CE marks on our first Nu.Q NETs product across multiple platforms including ELISA plate, automated beads and a proof of concept on very high throughput platform by the summer of 2022. These are ambitious, but achievable targets, given the huge amount of background work we have done on our platform. We intend to register our Nu.Q NETs products with a broad, almost C.R.P. style claim, for the detection and valuation of infection, tissue injury, inflammatory disorders and disease associated with NETosis. We believe that not only is this broad claim achievable, it also gives us the largest possible market opportunity.

By way of example, C.R.P. C-reactive protein, is used extensively around the world with approximately 85 million tests each year. We are also in process of developing our U.S. clinical study plan which is likely to start with a pilot study in the second half of 2022 using the CE mark product as a base while more details of this will be announced in the coming months. Other NETosis related activity this quarter included the publication of data at an International Congress by two collaborators from leading U.K. hospitals using the Nu.Q NET assays in COVID-19 studies. These processes included early stage data showing that the results with the Nu.Q NETs test on admission could predict future COVID-19 disease severity and that zero results correlated with disease progression, a fantastic result and great for the data to be reported at such reputed Congress.

We are pleased to be making progress in our more rigorous approach to present data where we can in either peer-reviewed papers or at conferences. However, it does mean a lag in time from study results to publication. By way of example, the data from these studies was finalized in February, March, however, only released at the end of July. That said, these studies resulted in strong findings and I'm delighted to say we have further large studies completed in COVID-19 and sepsis which are now waiting the finalization of data analysis and publication, as well as studies in other diseases in progress with the results expected in the coming quarters.

So to summarize, we are in what I think is an extremely exciting new area of our use of our proprietary Nu.Q platform. We have had excellent results to date with a range of different world-class collaborators with more results to be published and we are now shifting gears to focus on the regulatory registration to transform these results into a range of products worldwide, starting in Europe. Given the broad use claim that we have identified to date and our expectation for further identified uses, we have already expanded the team to include a very experienced industry professional to help us with this process. We anticipate our first CE mark NETs products in the summer of 2022, across several platforms and to outline the full strategy for an FDA approval of NETs products in the next few months.

Moving on from Nu.Q NETs to our work in human cancer. As I've said on previous calls, unfortunately given the pandemic, some, but thankfully not all, of our studies have been affected due to the very difficult collection and enrollment environment and we have pivoted to those areas, we can still make progress during lockdowns. The brightest note in this pillar during the pandemic is Asia where we have reached our target patient cohorts for both colorectal and lung cancer, all collected in conjunction with the National Taiwan University, a fantastic effort by the team there. We are excited to have completed preliminary analysis of the colorectal cancer study, both asymptomatic and symptomatic populations, and have submitted these findings at a presentation at a conference in early 2022. We are excited to have just completed preliminary analysis of the lung cancer study and also look forward to reviewing with Professor Chen and his team ahead of publications either through clinical paper or conference abstracts.

As previously reported, collection for the U.S. EDRN study reinitiated enrollment in June of this year. The latest update is the enrollment has been slow but steady. The EDRN have devoted some efforts to drive recruitment and as announced during the last earning call, we anticipate study completion in the fourth quarter of 2022. Our two U.S. blood cancer studies have also been impacted to varying degrees by the pandemic due to collection and protocol issues, the smaller proof of concept monitoring study is ongoing an interim analysis of a small subset is promising so far. However, due to missing samples, we are not in a position to publish data yet. And so collection continues. And we look forward to analyzing a more complete dataset in 2022.

Given the pandemic delays in the larger NHL study of over 1,000 subjects, we have taken the opportunity to alter the study protocol and are in the process of upgrading the platform through a high throughput platform, which will help facilitate an FDA compliant product. Consequently we now expect the study to initiate recruitment in the first quarter 2022 with the study completion anticipated in 2023. Something that became more apparent during the pandemic and in particular in relation to the U.S. studies is that we have been under reserved [Phonetic] in U.S. from a personnel perspective. And so now, we are really shifting gears to expand our US operation. The delays have been primarily due to lockdowns. However, we're using the time to greatly strengthen our US team and operations to be robust enough to handle multiple FDA studies in both human cancer and NETosis and we are outsourcing and FDA compliant U.S. production facility for a range of products.

Dr. Gaetan Michel,, our Chief Operating Officer, has recently relocated to the U.S. and has started building out the team with roles expected to be filled in the quality, regulatory and manufacturing functions. He is a brilliant operator, having built the Belgian Volition team up from 10 people to about 50 and commissioning both our R&D and production facilities in Belgium. Now he has been tasked with upgrading our U.S. operations. Dr. Terry Kelly has also continued to recruit team members for our innovation hub in San Diego, many of whom are concentrating on our next pillar to discuss Nu.Q Capture.

As I've said on previous calls, we believe the Nu.Q Capture technology will be transformational as a DNA enrichment technology which could potentially aid diagnosis, treatment selection and both treatment and disease monitoring when used in combination with either sequencing and or our Nu.Q assays. We have made great progress this quarter in the NuQ Capture program, having now identified multiple methods for enrichment and have continued to conduct experiments and studies utilizing different applications such as mass spectrometry and as Tom mentioned earlier on the call, we have recently published a poster with the Cancer Society meeting, using our Nu.Q Capture technology in dogs with lymphoma. It is exciting to see our pillar of Nu.Q Capture branching out in terms of research from humans to veterinarian uses as well. We feel this extremely cutting-edge use of our Nu.Q platform will be a key part of the product development from next year on.

And lastly, to reiterate, as part of the U.S. team expansion, we've added a number of hires to our early research innovation team based in California State University in San Diego. Another gear shift for sure. And so I look forward to sharing publications and data on that front in the coming quarters. We have made significant amount of progress on many of our pillars this year. It really is shaping up to be quite an amazing year for us, despite the challenges of the pandemic.

To wrap up the call, I will now pass over to our Chief Financial Officer, Terig, for the all-important financial report. Terig?

Terig Hughes -- Group Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Cameron, and thank you everyone for joining our earnings call today.

I will now provide a summary of the key financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2021. We closed out the third quarter of 2021 with cash and cash equivalents of approximately $22.9 million compared with $19.4 million at the end of last year. The cash burn rate this quarter averaged approximately $1.7 million per month, a little lower than in the prior quarter and our previous guidance, mainly reflecting our ongoing efforts to tightly manage costs and improve cash management. Nevertheless, we continue to expect a gradual increase in the monthly cash burn rate to around $2 million a month by year end, excluding the impact of any receipts from a licensing deal or deals, if any. The main reasons for the expected increase in spend is due to increased human resources costs as we build out the organization, including the U.S. team as Cameron just mentioned.

From a revenue perspective, the sales of our Nu.Q Vet Screening Test have remained stable quarter-on-quarter, as expected, given the nature of our beta launch. We also anticipate Nu.Q Discover to add to the revenue this year with several contracts in process. The net loss this quarter was $7.2 million versus $5.6 million the prior quarter, with this increase primarily due to non-cash items.

From an operational perspective, the finance team along with senior management has been working with managers across the business on a detailed planning exercise for 2022 and beyond. This ensures we have clear priorities and good visibility over the resources required further strengthening our financial control over the business.

So to summarize, the Company continues to be in a healthy financial position with sufficient runway to achieve our near-term commercial milestones. Cameron, Tom and I, along with the rest of the Board and indeed the whole company very much look forward to sharing Volition Vet licensing and the results of key studies and publications over the coming months and quarters.

Thank you for joining the call today. We very much appreciate it given the busy earnings call season. We're happy to take your questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Bruce Jackson with The Benchmark Company. Please proceed with your question.

Bruce Jackson -- The Benchmark Company -- Analyst

Hi, good morning and thank you for taking my questions. So, with the Vet product, obviously, you're contemplating some menu expansion with additional tests. In terms of the negotiations with the vet companies, how do those term sheets contemplate the new test? Is it something that can get folded in automatically or do you have to renegotiate for every test?

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Hi. Yeah, thanks for the question. A couple of things on that. So each agreement's a little bit different. Obviously, each company has its own worldwide reach. Some are more lab-based, some very vet focused, some are quite point of care focused. So each one's a bit different and I think how these negotiations typically go is they tend to try to roll everything in at the start, and we try to kind of break it out, so that we can continue to kind of get value for each one as we add on. So it could easily be either of those two, rolled in -- it depends on the company and what they are after, but it is for the same cancers. So it does kind of naturally fit with the first test. It's a different market and the monitoring could easily be millions of test per year as well because there are 6 million dogs with cancer and you may need it three or four or five times for every animal to trace or even more so -- to monitor.

So in some discussions, it is part of it and some discussions it's separate, but obviously there is a lot of potential products beyond these two as well as you can tell, just what, from the capture side, but also from other animals, also a range of other cancers and other things. So we would say there's strong potential for a handful of products in the vet space at least. But having said that, I think once we work with a partner or partners, we'd probably -- if everything is equal, everything is going well, we'd prefer to keep relationship with them and work through with them as kind of a cancer franchise, but we're working with different companies on different discussions and so each one's a bit different, but it would be probably working with the same company or companies on both of those products.

Bruce Jackson -- The Benchmark Company -- Analyst

Okay, got it. And then, moving over to the human data from National Taiwan University, is that going to be -- can you tell us which meeting it could be presented at or which -- just generally, is it going to be a regional meeting or an international meeting?

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

And international meeting in Asia and it's a well -- we don't -- because that moves around. So it is the pandemic. Things start and totally move around. It's due for Q1. And they've submitted it and that will be hopefully early in Q1 and a big international meeting. That's why they are waiting for. They are adapting [Phonetic] with the data, so they want to present it in a big conference.

Bruce Jackson -- The Benchmark Company -- Analyst

Okay, got it. All right, thank you very much.

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Bruce. Take care.

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Steven Ralston with Zacks. Please proceed with your question.

Steven Ralston -- Zacks -- Analyst

Good morning and thank you for taking my questions.

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Good morning, Steven.

Steven Ralston -- Zacks -- Analyst

Good morning. Could you go into the progress that Silver One and bringing up the revenue base there? You've gotten some approvals. You mentioned that -- so you had some inquiries last quarter and how's that panning out?

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Yes. So, very well. So, Silver One has been a fantastic approach for us. It's a facility where we can manufacture the key components for ourselves, the key components most notably, being the antibodies, the controls, and as you rightly point out, Nu.Q Discover, which is where we are offering our services and what we do to a range of different companies. And yeah, as we said before, there's been a lot of interest. We have a handful of contracts in negotiation now for a range of different uses from actually -- from a quarter range -- a wide range of companies and processes. So this is kind of the maximum we can handle at a time to negotiate and we're working through that and we expect one or more to be signed this year and I think there's a good chance, I'd say, a number of those will reach completion and there has been a lot of interest.

Also -- so, Silver One will be producing the key component to what we do worldwide, the antibodies, the controls are boasted on the format of the plates, which are manufactured currently there, but also in the U.S., Dr. Michel has moved to the U.S. to really make sure we can get a strong start in the U.S. on production as well, so we're looking to outsource FDA compliant production of the plates and also the key components on the other platforms like the beads as soon as we can so that will really get things produced, but the Silver One itself will be producing the key components, but for those -- the two key components, the antibodies and the controls and we're also looking to expand, I guess, you could tell from the call the point of care. We've been working on a lateral flow so that we've produced externally as well, but again with our controls and our antibodies and also we're looking to do a very high throughput platform, particularly for the -- it's where the signal is very, very high, in sepsis and COVID, that would bring a fourth platform to what we do from the plates, the magnetic bead platforms, so large order analyzers, a point of care. And now, hopefully if everything goes well in the next few months, we'll have a very high throughput capacity machine as well.

So and that's -- Silver One, the facility mentioned, has been really key part of our strategy to control what we do, not only from the intellectual property front, from having the own trials to launch the first products and so that they work, but also to controlling all those aspects and launching on many platforms. And those platforms can be used in everything we do from the human, the vet, the cancer, the NETosis and also on the capture side obviously need the antibodies and the beads for new capture as well. So, yeah, it's been a really good decision that we took last year to develop that facility and produce our own and we expect the first revenue from that this year and to continue strongly for next year.

Steven Ralston -- Zacks -- Analyst

You also received another tranche of grant money from the local government there in Belgium. So another at least $400,000, so that's over $800,000 in the last two quarters. Are there any contingency of where that money is targeted or is that free flowing and you can designate it wherever you want?

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

It is targeted. So the region -- you're right. So we raise money a few different ways and the region in Belgium has been incredibly generous. We went there for that reason. Also, extremely good qualified staff that have really built out our facilities. The facility is a very, very cheap. It's just a few million dollars and we've got two very, very outstanding facilities now. It's a bit of both though, so they're targeted [Indecipherable] projects, but they can be used in developing antibodies or -- I mean, there's a lot of different ones which we can through separately or Gaetan can go through, but they are usually for projects, but they can help lift a lot of different boats as well.

The genius [Phonetic], I think with the Nu.Q platform is what helps us in one area can help us in many other areas. So as we talked about if you develop a point of care for the vet space, it can also be used in the human space and same with plates and beads and everything. So they are targeted to an area but we design them so that they can help us in as many areas as possible and I'd like to thank again the regions in Belgium have been tremendously helpful in giving us many millions. Terig, do you actually [Phonetic] remember, $6 million or $7 million dollars now. It's been a very big help for us. So not only is it a great place to work, it's a great place to hire people, a very low cost place to have great facilities and they've been extremely helpful in the non-dilutive funding as well.

Steven Ralston -- Zacks -- Analyst

Thank you for answering my questions.

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. Take care, Steven.

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Jason McCarthy with Maxim Group. Please proceed with your questions.

Michael Okunewitch -- Maxim Group -- Analyst

Hey, guys. This is Michael Okunewitch on the line for Jason. Thanks for taking the question.

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Michael Okunewitch -- Maxim Group -- Analyst

So Cameron, obviously the pandemic has placed a bit of pressure on timelines across biotech. So, I'd like to see if you can walk us through the expected timings for some of the near-term potential human commercial assets? And which datasets you need to obtain for those for the different regulatory environments?

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

So human commercial. I guess we'll start around the world and move across. So starting in Asia, which is where, I guess, the pandemic has caused us the least problems. We are working with a group in China, a very large group who've been adapting our platform to their machines and we're hoping to have the first licensing work underway with them in the next quarter or two. They've successfully adopted their platform. They've got some great results in colorectal cancer and they're looking to license it from us. So that's going to be a next year story.

National Taiwan University has, as you know, the lung and colorectal work going. We have got the data readout and obviously it's good enough to publish which they're doing it -- present it in a conference, which will be happening in Q1 and then we'll describe what that looks like for products hopefully in Taiwan. Their focus was on using ours as early detection and even in adenomas in conjunction with the current screening. So that something will have a better visibility when we can talk about our public after the conference, but we're hopeful from that. We're also hopeful from the lung cancer work in Taiwan that will be coming out -- they've finished it. So they're reviewing it now. So it's something we'll have to either assuming it's good enough to publish like the colorectal, will be sometime in the first half of next year.

On the human side, -- well, I guess, work through the rest of the human cancers. In U.S., the monitoring study, unfortunately, it was encouraging, but putting a lot of time points from one person during the pandemic's proven to be a very difficult thing to do. So the data has been what we were hoping to see, but pretty much everyone at this time have had some missing data points, time points. So we didn't want to publish until we had a very complete kind of set, which we're working on. So, we'd expect to have that next year as well. But I have to say every monitoring work we've had with our products has actually worked out very well, whether it's in human cancer, vet cancer, as you can see from the pipe is in the second product in the vet cancer and also in NETosis wide range of diseases. So we're very hopeful for that.

EDRN [Indecipherable] like every other group had had real problems collecting during the pandemic. They -- last update we had from them they are expected still, the same update as last time. So, that has not changed on the colorectal front, the finished collection at the end of next year. We'll see -- they've had a very -- no one quite knows what's going to happen in the next couple of quarters, timing wise, but they're trying to stick to the schedule of the end of next year. So as of last -- as of the timing we gave last quarter, that's still on schedule. I'm not sure if you really followed the NETosis side, but that was a big part of what we've done and we've actually really managed to move that ball forward this last quarter on a couple of fronts. The gentlemen we hired, Remi in U.S., is ex-Roche and he's worked on a lot of [Indecipherable] like what we're doing in the past. He's comes to conclusion that we have a potential for a very broad applicability in NETosis of our platform for the first CE mark approvals.

And as I said on the call, we're looking to get several of those approved by May or June or July, so over the summer which is possible because we've got the place very well developed and it's very well developed on the order of analyzers. And he is also trying to adopt it with our team to a very high throughput, HIA machine, which would bring down from -- down just a few minutes to run an even lower cost than we are at, which is possible because the signal is extremely, extremely high in COVID and sepsis and NETosis so you can use an even simpler platform than the one we're on. So, we would expect to have all of that a -- big amount of news and the first CE marks, as I said by the summer, but not just in one platform, but we're trying to get to really reach all the different areas of the market, have different platforms approved and then obviously launch it like we have in the vet space and license it as far as we can.

We've decided to go off the back of that to start the work in the U.S. It's -- we've got a lot going on from the U.S. at the same time for NETosis as all the other things going on. It was probably a bridge too far. So we're going to start the U.S. work off the back of the CE marks next summer. So that would be end of next year, 2023 kind of story for the U.S. studies for the sepsis side.

And on the -- oh the one I forgot was the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma study as it's being delayed, it's been very -- we didn't want to start collection, stop and start like EDRNs had to do. So we've been waiting for clear water ahead of us, if you will, but while that's been going on, we really wanted to -- I guess our platform has moved on from plates, which was that the format we started with, I mean, when it's all kind of started a year ago, but now that we've got to working on quite high throughput platforms, we've upgraded that trial to be a high-throughput platform. And so, assuming that goes the way it's looking now, we'll start collection in Q1 and hope we finish it all in 2023 for a non-Hodgkin's lymphoma human trial in the blood cancers in the U.S.

But as I said on the call, we have very much realized we didn't have remedy personnel at all in the U.S. So by moving Dr. Michel over there, who is definitely our best operator, to really kick start things. We're looking to make some big hires in the regulatory and also get some very good arrangements where we can manufacture the product in the U.S. that are FDA compliant. So it'd be a lot of news in the next year from U.S. work as well. I think I've covered everything? Did I -- that's the human side.

Michael Okunewitch -- Maxim Group -- Analyst

All right. Yes, thank you very much. Appreciate it. [Speech Overlap]. So on that larger NHL study, could you just touch a bit on the practical advantage from a regulatory commercial perspective to upgrading to the high throughput assay format. Does that just give you data with a more commercial ready product?

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So, the platform we've been using, obviously, because we're a small company and ELISA is a plate format, we've been working on beads for a long time. It's now [Phonetic] working incredibly well. Beads give you a lot of advantages. Plates are great for starting a lot of tests and direct products have been working greater on plates. But if you are going to be a mass market product, millions of test per year, it gets a bit tiresome running plates. I mean the beads are -- the magnetic beads and large order analyzer machines. Time wise, if you're looking for -- it's reasonably quick on plates. It can be done the same day in like six hours, but six hours, if you are in a critical situation or if you need turned around is obviously not ideal. The beads and the large order analyzers run it in under an hour and the new high throughput machines we're looking at can do it in a matter of minutes. So that's -- it gives you several advantages. The beads, you can -- you can do it one by one, you can run 10 or 20 or 50 or -- usually the machines run up to about 500 a day. But you can just do five or six in a day where on a plate, you do batches of 40, so -- which works fine, but if you want really high throughput and sort of plug and play, the next platform is definitely where you want to be.

So, because it's the delays are taken with the lockdowns we thought we might as well. We've moved on and keep improving. So we're upgrading that platform, but it gives you a lot of advantages. And actually if you continue on with that, if you look in the sepsis space or even 45 minutes might be too long if you're in emergency ward during an operation or in a process. So, we have been working very heavily on point of care like a lateral flow which will give you an almost instant result and also on these high throughput HIA machines which use latex beads and it can be done in -- you can turnaround in under 10 minutes and it's very, very high throughput. So, I think we are incredibly happy with our platform. We think its absolutely revolutionary and what we're doing is really special. And I think to really address all the different markets and the different needs from different people, we want to provide a lot of solutions, whether it'd be plates, which have their advantages and disadvantages, beads which have their advantages with large auto analyzer machines, point of care, as well as very high throughput machines. And I think by doing that, we'll become an incredibly successful company. So we've used the time as wisely as we can to really broaden out what we do, while -- well it's been -- in lockdowns in the process and I think coming out of it, we're going to be much stronger having done all the work we have.

Michael Okunewitch -- Maxim Group -- Analyst

All right, thank you very much. I appreciate the long answers, Cameron.

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. Thank you, Michael.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Mr. Reynolds for any final comments.

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Well, I'd just like as I thank you everyone. I know as I said everyone's extremely busy. It's an incredibly exciting time at Volition. We've managed to really pivot toward what we can do during the pandemic on the veterinary space, on NETosis while really keeping our platform development and broadening the team in what we do in the platforms and also keeping as much going as we can on the human cancer side as well. So, I think the next few months and the next few quarters are going to be very exciting. So please keep it close on us. I look forward to updating as things continue to go forward. Thank you for your time.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]

Duration: 43 minutes

Call participants:

Scott Powell -- Executive Vice President, Investor Relations

Cameron Reynolds -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Tom Butera -- Chief Executive Officer, Volition Veterinary Diagnostics Development LLC

Terig Hughes -- Group Chief Financial Officer

Bruce Jackson -- The Benchmark Company -- Analyst

Steven Ralston -- Zacks -- Analyst

Michael Okunewitch -- Maxim Group -- Analyst

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