Company: ABUS
Filing Date: 2025-03-27
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001447028-25-000083
Chunk: 47

Company: Arbutus Biopharma Corp
Filing Date: 2025-03-27
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 47
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, continuing technological innovation and potential in licensing opportunities to develop and maintain our proprietary position.

In addition to our proprietary expertise, we own a portfolio of patents and patent applications directed to RNAi drugs and processes directed at particular disease indications, chemical modification of RNAi molecules, LNP inventions, LNP compositions for delivering nucleic acids such as mRNA and RNAi, and the formulation and manufacture of LNP-based pharmaceuticals. In the United States our patents might be challenged by inter partes review or opposition proceedings. In Europe, upon grant, a period of nine months is allowed for notification of opposition to such granted patents.  If our patents are subjected to inter partes review or opposition proceedings, we would incur significant costs to defend them. Further, our failure to prevail in any such proceedings could limit the patent protection available to our therapeutic HBV programs, coronavirus programs or RNAi platform, including our product candidates.

We own many patent families related to our compounds, formulations, and technology, but we cannot be certain that issued patents will be enforceable or provide adequate protection or that pending patent applications will result in issued patents.

The following table shows the estimated expiration dates, based on filing dates of pending patent applications, in the United States and the European Union for the primary patents for our product candidates currently in clinical trials. 

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Product candidateEstimated Patent Expiration in USEstimated Patent Expiration in EUImdusiran20382038AB-10120422042LNP20292029

Human Capital  

Employee Composition

As of December 31, 2024, we had 44 full-time employees. In the first quarter of 2025, our Board took action to reduce our workforce by 57% resulting in a total workforce after reductions of 19 employees. None of our employees are represented by a labor union or covered by a collective bargaining agreement, nor have we experienced any work stoppages. We believe that relations with our employees are good. We supplement our in-house expertise with outsourced capabilities when it would be cost prohibitive to build our own in-house capabilities. For example, we outsource a substantial portion of our clinical trial work to clinical research organizations and a majority of our drug manufacturing is out-sourced to contract manufacturers. Our in-house clinical development and manufacturing teams implement our development strategies and oversee the activities of our outside vendors.

Employee Oversight, Training and Development

We are invested in the professional development of our employees.  In order to promote long-term retention and to maximize the potential of our employees, we provide