Ann: Novartis and Mesoblast Remestemcel-L Collaboration, page-701

It's true that the early guidance from Mesoblast was to be fully enrolled by August, and then the guidance was updated for the end of the year, and then it was updated to January 2021. If you follow the recruitment announcement timings then it was easy to see that they were going to slip from the end of year guidance, so it would have been nice to have some clarity on why at the AGM, so I agree with you on that.

Where you are being a bit harsh is on holding them to initial enrollment guidance delivered in May when the trial started. At that point we were in the middle of a huge upswing, there wasn't 1000 other trials competing for patients, the pandemic trajectory was less known, and they had no way of knowing at what rate they would be able to enroll at from the patients coming through. I give them a pass on the August guidance.

Overall, this has been the only negative so far on the covid trial, everything else seems to be going really well. Two continuation recommendations, doing groundwork with the FDA on scenarios for the 60% readout, and a partner deal. Amazing progress in such a short time. Looking forward to the 60% readout and the full results if required.