Absci Corp 10-K

Item 1. Business Our Mission Absci is a generative AI drug creation company that combines AI with scalable wet lab technologies to create better biologics for patients, faster. With the data to train, the AI to create, and the wet lab to validate, our vision is to deliver breakthrough therapeutics at the click of a button, for everyone. We recognize the extraordinary medical and economic potential of protein-based therapeutics (biologics) and the significant challenges the biopharmaceutical industry faces to discover novel biologics. We look at the end game – getting life-changing medicines to patients, faster — and ask: how? Our technology is built to be that how. Our Integrated Drug Creation platform replaces the fragmentation and inefficiencies of traditional biologic drug discovery by simultaneously optimizing multiple drug characteristics important to preclinical and clinical development, as well as therapeutic benefit. In turn, this has the potential to significantly shorten time to clinic and increase the probability of success. We leverage our platform to expand biological possibilities — shifting from a paradigm of drug discovery to drug creation — with the goal of advancing better biologics into clinical trials on shortened timelines and, if approved, ultimately into the marketplace to impact people’s lives. Overview We are a generative AI drug creation company harnessing deep learning and synthetic biology to expand the therapeutic potential of proteins. We leverage our Integrated Drug Creation platform to identify novel drug targets and create biotherapeutic candidates that are optimized. We believe our approach enables us, and our partners, to develop novel biologics that are optimized for many traits at disruptive speed. We couple our powerful deep learning AI models, built to understand and predict determinants of protein function, with our proprietary synthetic biology capabilities, which include high-throughput single-cell assays that can evaluate billions of drug sequence variants, each within its production cell line, for target binding affinity, protein quality, and production level (titer). This combination of in silico modeling with wet lab testing allows us to generate immense real-world datasets that we harness to train and refine our deep learning models. These models guide our protein and cell line designs and enable in silico optimization of multiple attributes. Our target platform technology (formerly “Totient”) uses machine learning computational methods to evaluate patient tissue samples and, without biological bias, identify disease-relevant fully human antibodies and their disease- and tissue-specific molecular targets. In addition to the direct utility of these antibodies and targets as drug discovery assets, these data comprising antibody-epitope recognition elements expand our AI models’ training sets and may improve predictive capabilities for future discovery campaigns. 5 Table of Contents Through iterative AI predictions, wet lab validation, and AI training we enable a virtuous cycle that we believe will accelerate us toward fully in silico biologic drug discovery. Our unique Integrated Drug Creation approach has the potential to significantly shorten preclinical development timelines and expand therapeutic possibilities. Our goal is to become the technology leader in biologic drug creation. Our business model is to use our platform for the rapid creation of biologic drug candidates by establishing partnerships with biopharmaceutical companies and developing our own drug discovery pipeline. Our core competencies include: • AI-powered antibody optimization: With multiparametric AI lead optimization, we work to simultaneously evaluate variants for improved target affinity, manufacturability, and other pharmacologic characteristics, bringing lead candidates to the clinic. • Novel target identification: We reconstruct prevalent immune-response molecules such as antibodies from disease tissue and identify their corresponding antigens, offering new therapeutic targets, as well as the cognate binding partners, for further potential validation and optimization. • De novo antibody design: Starting with an envisioned drug format and target antigen, we generate a library of relevant sequence variants to establish the target specificity, which are designed to create novel lead drug candidates with desirable attributes, including manufacturability and low immunogenicity. • Antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) capabilities: With genetic engineering, we incorporate site-specific non-standard amino acids (nsAAs) with chemical handles that can be used for post-translational modifications including glycosylation, PEGylation, and ADC-payload conjugation, as well as novel branched proteins and chemical conjugates. We believe the flexibility of our platform enables us to address specific challenges with existing targets or product candidates and open up opportunities to create new modalities and generate lead drug candidates that previously had not been possible. Our goal is to demonstrate the value of our fully integrated approach and expand our work with an increasing number of partners and programs. We believe we offer a compelling value proposition by: • Shortening timelines from idea to drug candidate; • Enabling the creation of new biologic modalities; • Improving the production capability of biologics; • Designing better drug candidates; • Raising biologics production yields and lowering manufacturing costs; and • Expanding potential life cycle management opportunities related to existing or legacy therapeutic franchises. Our near-term vision is to enable the discovery of novel, targeted biologic drug candidates for our partners and for our internal drug discovery pipeline. Strategy We believe we represent a new breed of biotechnology company, integrating powerful artificial intelligence with new synthetic biology technologies to create biologics. We intend to use our Integrated Drug Creation platform to empower innovation by identifying new targets, creating new modalities, driving efficiencies, broadening pipelines, and shortening preclinical timelines. Our strategy to accomplish this is as follows: • Enable the discovery and development of biologics and new modalities through our proprietary platform. Our ability to design, construct and rapidly screen large populations of genetically distinct cells enables us to evaluate billions of unique protein variants and increase the probability of finding the most promising biologic drug candidate. We design and optimize new-to- 6 Table of Contents nature modalities with insights from our AI Engine (formerly referred to as our Denovium Engine). We also harness the power of nature, using synthetic biology approaches with our E. coli SoluPro strains to produce complex proteins and new modalities. Unlike other biologic drug discovery methods, we evaluate the variants of these desired proteins in the fully-constructed scaffold to enable creation of biologics while optimizing for target affinity as well as high-titer expression and scalable manufacturability from the beginning of the discovery process. We believe that our platform will empower us and our partners to bring new and better drugs to market. • Accelerate biologic drug discovery and cell line development by unifying these processes as “Integrated Drug Creation.” Our platform integrates multiple steps across the biologic drug discovery and cell line development process and our foundational technologies that power our Integrated Drug Creation platform improve efficiencies at each step. Our approach also has the flexibility to address challenges at specific points in the biologic drug discovery and cell line development process and enable our partners to pursue more efficient biologic drug discovery across expanded solution spaces. By accessing our platform, infrastructure and expertise, our partners have the potential to eliminate extended timelines, reduce costs associated with setting up biologic drug discovery applications and cell line process development, and advance their preclinical programs more efficiently. • Drive rapid adoption by becoming a partner of choice for large pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology companies. We form partnerships with large pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, and other organizations deploying our breakthrough technologies to enable biologic drug discovery for these partners and to continually expand the breadth and depth of our partnered programs. We believe our innovative approach and ability to create better biologics faster, along with the scalability of our platform, will enable us to build a diversified portfolio of potential milestone revenues and royalty streams from a variety of biologics across multiple indications. • Advance the promise of in silico drug creation by leveraging proprietary data and AI. Our AI Engine learns with each new program we undertake. We are enhancing the predictive power of our AI Engine by training its deep learning models with our unique multi-dimensional data sets. With enough data and iterations, we aim to achieve in silico creation of novel drug candidates with desired pharmacologic attributes, in bespoke scaffolds, along with high titer production cell lines. With our target technology we are expanding the content of our training datasets to develop models that understand immune protein interactions and determinants of antibody-antigen specificity. Our AI Engine is the link that correlates business scale with speed and precision. The more partners we have, the more data we generate, the more our AI Engine learns. As our AI Engine gets smarter, we can create new and better biologic constructs for our partners faster. • Continuously invest in our platform to push the boundaries of science and unlock the untapped power of biology. We intend to maintain our technological differentiation through investments in teams and technologies, and to continue bolstering our capabilities in areas such as bioinformatics, molecular sciences, biology and chemistry, computation, and protein engineering. We expect to grow and enhance our intellectual property portfolio to protect and secure the value of our innovations. Similar to our acquisitions of Denovium, Inc. (AI Engine) and Totient, Inc. (Target platform), we believe we will continue to evaluate strategic technology acquisitions that would be additive to expand and strengthen the capabilities of our platform and deepen our expertise in biologic drug discovery and cell line development. Industry Biologics Biologics are generally made using living organisms to produce large, complex molecules that can target specific molecules or pathways involved in disease. This may allow for more precise and targeted therapies, which can lead to fewer side effects compared to traditional small molecule drugs. A number of biologics have been shown to be highly effective in treating chronic diseases such as cancer, autoimmune disorders, and rare diseases that were previously untreatable. 7 Table of Contents Biologic drug discovery has been revolutionized by the introduction of next-generation sequencing, bioinformatics and computational biology, which has led to the identification of new targets, improved understanding of disease mechanisms, and the development of new therapeutics. Market Over the last two decades, biologics have emerged as one of the fastest growing class of therapeutics. Evaluate Pharma World Preview 2021 forecasts that worldwide pharma R&D spend will grow at an annualized rate of 4.2% to $254 billion in 2026, and worldwide prescription sales will top $1 trillion by 2026, with the top 10 best-selling drugs mostly being biologics valued at $127 billion. Therapies based on biotechnology are estimated to account for 37% of total prescription and over-the-counter sales in 2026, up from 30% in 2020. In 2020, cumulative global sales of protein-based biologics reached approximately $254 billion, representing 33% of the sales of all drugs. In 2020, 72 protein-based biologics reached blockbuster status with annual worldwide sales higher than $1.0 billion. We believe that the biopharmaceutical industry remains constrained in pursuing new biologic modalities because it lacks suitable and cost-effective approaches to efficiently create biologics. Existing solutions are largely limited to operating within the scope of what nature has already created. They are not adaptable to the full range of possible human-designed scaffolds or to the incorporation of non-standard amino acids (nsAAs) into the protein-of-interest. They do not effectively leverage AI to derive and apply non-obvious insights across the discovery and manufacturing process development value chain nor to explore potential drug sequences and structures that lie beyond nature’s boundaries. Challenges The process of developing a clinical stage-ready biologic drug candidate remains complex, inefficient, and failure-prone, and is typically accomplished through an assembly of isolated technologies. On average, preclinical drug development for biologics takes several years, ranging from 2 to 5 years or more, before the drug candidate is ready to move into clinical trials. A 2021 Nature’s Review cited that, from investigational new drug application (IND) to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval, it takes another 8.3 years (median time). A Journal of the American Medical Association publication cited that a 2020 study of 63 new therapeutic drugs and biologic agents approved by the FDA between 2009 and 2018, the estimated median capitalized research and development cost per product was $1.1 billion, counting expenditures on failed trials. We believe the industry suffers from the following challenges and limitations of existing solutions: • Current methods involve fragmented steps and a patchwork of outdated technologies; new technologies generally focus on isolated steps and do not integrate the processes. • Commercially available biologic drug discovery platforms are generally constrained as to the types of biologic modalities they can explore. • Current approaches to biologic drug production are not readily adaptable to novel protein modalities. • Current approaches do not leverage AI to explore beyond opportunities within nature. • Existing production organisms, or systems, can be inefficient and costly. Accordingly, we believe the biopharmaceutical industry can benefit from a newly-designed approach that incorporates the best current technologies and AI to accomplish the goal of discovering and advancing promising new biologic drug candidates into clinical development as quickly as possible. Our Integrated Drug Creation Platform AI promises to revolutionize drug discovery, but advances in drug creation also depend on scalable wet lab technologies to produce and validate biological data at scale. Our Integrated Drug Creation platform 8 Table of Contents combines the data to train, the AI to create, and the wet lab to validate millions of AI-generated designs a week. It can take us from AI-designed antibodies to wet lab-validated candidates in as little as six weeks. Data to Train : Our SoluPro technology is a multiplex synthetic biology approach designed to overcome the limitations of today's highest-throughput automation labs. It constructs billions of genetically-distinct cells, each containing instructions to make one version of a protein of interest, as well as a different assortment of folding and expression solutions. Our ACE assay then evaluates and sorts hundreds of millions of designs to collect the best hits - versions of the protein-of-interest, based on target binding, protein quality, and expression titer. We use this high-quality, high-throughput data to train our AI models. AI to Create : We design new therapeutic candidates using generative AI models similar to those used for creating text and images from natural language prompts. Working from massive biology datasets, we apply generative AI to design drug candidates that are optimized based on target affinity, tolerability, manufacturability, and other traits. Generative AI expands the solution space and enables us to create completely new antibody designs in the computer, unlocking new opportunities in in silico drug design. Wet Lab to Validate : We support our generative AI designs with our wet lab's throughput functional validation capabilities, which are designed to prove our AI models in the lab. They can take us from AI-designed antibodies to wet lab-validated candidates in as little as six weeks. The quality and scale of wet lab data give us extensive training data, propelling our iterative design-build-test-learn cycle. Applications of our Integrated Drug Creation Platform The flexibility of our platform enables us to onboard a given program at multiple points in the biologic target identification, drug discovery, and cell line development process. Starting with a given target and a desired scaffold format for an eventual drug candidate, we may perform comprehensive de novo biologic drug discovery through to cell line development. We may enhance discovery opportunities by building new scaffolds and designing new molecules to incorporate nsAAs to facilitate post-purification chemical modifications. We may further expand program scope to start with target identification activities incorporating our target technology. We may also design and optimize a high-titer production cell line for a partner’s already-established lead drug candidate. Discovery involves screening for lead drug hits directed to the desired target; the target may be provided by a partner or identified using our computational antibody and target discovery technology. Unlike other 9 Table of Contents screening methods commonly used for biologic drug discovery, we are screening for hit variants in the complete scaffold, not a domain fragment to be subsequently reformatted. We also screen in production cell line variants. Our Discovery applications are scaffold-agnostic. Whether we are screening variants of an antibody, a T-cell engager, a multivalent Fc-fusion, or any other human- or AI-designed modality, our platform is adaptable to simultaneously optimize for functionality and manufacturability of lead candidates. The Discovery applications that we expect to address with our Integrated Drug Creation platform are the following: • Novel target identification - From tissue samples that are of particular therapeutic interest, we identify prevalent immune-response molecules such as antibodies along with the corresponding antigens, offering new therapeutic targets as well as cognate binding partners for further validation. Whatever the desired biologic modality, we can design, construct, and select the appropriate sequence for lead drug development. • Scaffold design and drug platform development - We are uniquely capable of assembling and producing new-to-nature biologic scaffolds. We may therefore empower our partners with the ability to execute on theoretical modalities, creative fusions, and multivalent molecular hybrids. Within the context of those assembled scaffolds we can evaluate variants to discover new drug candidates designed for optimal target affinity and other desired characteristics. • De novo discovery - We may perform de novo discovery by starting with a desired scaffold format for the desired drug and creating a library of relevant sequence variants that will establish the target specificity (e.g., CDR regions of antibody). • Bionic protein creation (nsAA incorporation) - We may engineer a signal into the gene encoding the drug candidate that directs incorporation of an nsAA into the growing protein chain in a site-specific manner. The nsAA provides a handle for chemical modifications including glycosylation, PEGylation, ADC-payload conjugation, and novel branched proteins and chemical conjugates. • Human antibody discovery - From our catalog of human-derived antibody sequences we are building a collection of unique fully-human monoclonal antibodies with specificity for validated targets of interest. We may optimize monoclonal antibodies or biologics derived from these sequences as lead drug candidates in partnered programs. • Lead optimization - We may start with drug discovery leads and introduce modifications into the sequences to evaluate variants for improved target affinity, manufacturability, and other pharmacologic characteristics that also may expand the potential life cycle management opportunities. Thus we can optimize leads that our partners may advance through preclinical development. 10 Table of Contents Advantages of our Integrated Drug Creation Platform Our platform integrates biologic drug discovery and cell line development processes, accomplishing these activities in parallel rather than sequentially, as illustrated relative to established approaches in the figure below. Our Integrated Drug Creation platform aims to provide the following potential benefits: • Shortened timelines from idea to drug candidate: Our platform integrates biologic drug discovery and cell line development, collapsing time-consuming fragmented activities into one integrated process. We can bypass common failure points and avoid the need for molecular reformatting or subsequent cell line development because from the start we screen for hits in the 11 Table of Contents desired scaffold format and in the cell line that will scale up for manufacturing. Our timelines relative to industry standards are depicted in the figure below. • Creation of new biologic modalities: Utilizing our Integrated Drug Creation platform, we specialize in creating new biologic modalities, discovering new biologics in engineered scaffolds, and creating Bionic proteins that incorporate nsAAs. • Efficient production of complex biologics: With our Integrated Drug Creation platform, we are not restricted to making proteins that look like proteins found in nature; our SoluPro strains are readily adaptable to making biologics in new scaffolds or incorporating nsAAs. Because of the scope and throughput of our assays, we can evaluate billions of potential strains to efficiently identify configurations of folding and expression solutions that confer protein production performance that is optimized. • Design of better drug candidates based on AI predictions: We use deep learning artificial intelligence models trained on our proprietary datasets, as well as functional characteristics of millions of proteins represented in public databases, to design new drug candidates to have desired pharmacologic performance without constraining ourselves to what nature has already discovered. We harness evidence from each project to progressively train our deep learning AI Engine, which then outputs progressively more relevant and valuable predictions to direct our synthetic constructions. Our AI Engine models enable multi-parameter predictions and simultaneous optimization of attributes in parallel, making predictions that solve for desired attributes. Insights we achieve through the integration of deep learning will ultimately help identify new drug candidates with the best chances for clinical success. Our Business Model Our business model is to use our platform for rapid creation of biologic drug candidates by: Establishing partnerships with stakeholders in the drug and technology development life cycle: We develop drug candidates for partners, including those who are responsible for preclinical and clinical testing of the biologic candidates generated by our platform. Our partnerships will provide us with the opportunity to participate in the future success of the biologic candidates generated utilizing our platform, through potential clinical, regulatory and commercial milestone payments as well as royalties on net sales of approved products. We aim to assemble economic interests in a diversified portfolio of partners’ biologics across multiple indications. Developing our own drug discovery pipeline: We intend to develop drug candidates for our own drug discovery pipeline. With the potential to find both targets and lead candidates, we intend to 12 Table of Contents develop promising lead candidates to up to the IND stage or later. We believe this will increase the value of our assets and serve as further validation of our platform as we continue to simultaneously establish partnerships with stakeholders in the drug and technology development life cycle. We may enter into clinical trials and/or manufacturing partnerships to advance a lead candidate. We believe our business model is capital efficient as our partners fund our technology development work, and we do not significantly invest in clinical development or scaled manufacturing infrastructure. Our Partnerships We structure our partnerships as technology development agreements (each molecule we address is a “program”) with options for our partners to license intellectual property rights to the biological assets we create after completion of the technology development phase. For the technology development phase, partners may (i) provide a target for discovery of a new biologic and/or Bionic protein or novel scaffold, (ii) supply a specified lead drug candidate sequence for cell line development, or (iii) request a scope that falls somewhere in between (i) and (ii) with optimization of a lead candidate or set of candidates as the primary goal. For most future partnerships, we expect to negotiate and agree to downstream economic terms of any license to our intellectual property rights before initiating the technology development phase. We anticipate that these technology development and license agreements may provide us with rights to receive payments upon the achievement of various clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones for the applicable product candidates, as well as royalties on net sales at least during the marketing exclusivity period of candidates approved for commercialization. Active Programs We define “Active Programs” as programs that are subject to ongoing technology development activities intended to determine if the program can be pursued by our partner for future clinical development, as well as any program for which our partner obtains and maintains a license to our technology to advance the program after completion of the technology development phase. There is no assurance, however, that our partners will advance any drug candidates that are currently the subject of Active Programs into further preclinical or clinical development or that our partners will elect to license our technologies upon completion of the technology development phase in a timely manner, or at all. As of December 31, 2022, we had drug candidates in 16 Active Programs across five current partners’ preclinical or clinical pipelines. We have negotiated license agreements, or expect to negotiate license agreements upon completion of certain technology development activities, with potential downstream milestone payments and royalties for all active programs. Thirteen Active Programs comprise of Discovery applications, which include three through our agreement with Merck & Co., Inc., three through our agreement with EQRx, and seven with an undisclosed biotechnology company. Three Active Programs are focused on developing production cell lines for drug candidates that our partners are developing. Two of these cell line development Active Programs are preclinical and one is in Phase 3 (PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals’ drug candidate, bentracimab, assumed by SFJ Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in January 2023). Exclusive of our 16 Active Programs with partners, we have utilized our platform to perform technology development activities related to 31 additional molecules. These programs were both internal research programs and technology development programs with third parties intended to demonstrate our platform’s capabilities as we address successively broader ranges of biologics and modalities. We have not transferred technology or granted licenses related to these programs. 13 Table of Contents The following table summarizes the biologic modalities for all of our current and historical programs, including our Active Programs Biologic Modality # of Programs Active Programs All Programs Bispecific mAb 1 1 Bispecific T-cell engager 3 Cytokine 2 Fab* 1 4 Multivalent Fc*-fusion 2 Plasma protein 1 1 mAb 1 6 Fc-fusion 2 scFv*-fusion 3 VHH*-fusion 2 Enzyme 4 Hormone 5 Not specified 12 12 Total 16 47 Absci Pipeline In addition to our partnerships, we intend to selectively develop lead drug candidates for our own drug discovery pipeline. With the potential to find both targets and lead candidates, we intend to develop promising lead candidates up to the IND stage or later. We may out-license or transfer our drug candidates for clinical advancement by a partner for a greater share in the economics relative to the milestone and royalties we secure for our core platform technology development. We believe our pipeline will increase the value of our assets and serve as further validation of our platform. * Our Growth Strategy Our goal is to establish our proprietary, end-to-end platform as the industry standard for biologic drug discovery. We are laying the groundwork for integration into our partners’ discovery organizations, with the goal to be the de facto starting point for new drug creation, while also initiating our own drug discovery pipeline. Our growth strategy is to: • Establish new partnerships to create biologic drug candidates. We believe that our platform has a clear and differentiated value proposition for biologic drug discovery and cell line development. We have been successful in attracting initial partners, and we are continuing to expand our capabilities and enhance our platform to offer an even more powerful integrated solution. Given the increasing level of biopharmaceutical industry interest in creating novel biologics, we believe there is a large untapped market of potential partners ranging from traditional large pharmaceutical companies to emerging biotechnology innovators who can realize benefits from our platform. We believe that we offer a way to transcend the discovery and production challenges faced by the many companies that are investing in developing innovative new protein-based medicines. As we continue to establish our platform as the go-to solution for biologic drug creation, we expect to continue to attract new partners. We employ a business development team focused on raising awareness of our capabilities and establishing new partnerships. • Increase the number of molecules on which we work with our existing partners. We believe that achieving technical success with an existing partner’s drug candidate is the best proof of concept, and we intend to leverage those successes to expand our existing partnerships to address additional molecules in our partners’ respective pipelines. Partners may have a unique scaffold upon which they build successive drug candidates, hence pursuing additional programs based on the same scaffold is a clear opportunity for expanding existing partnerships. Regardless of modality, we expect to generate additional business from existing partners as they experience firsthand the success and efficiency of 14 Table of Contents our platform. Our alliance management team is focused on supporting our partnership success and growing the number of molecules on which we work with our existing partners. • Expand the scope of our partnerships across the biologic drug discovery value chain. We intend to grow existing partnerships across all of our drug creation applications, which include novel target identification, lead optimization, de novo discovery, Bionic protein creation (nsAA incorporation), human antibody discovery, and the enablement of novel scaffold designs that could spawn new modalities. We look to expand the scope of partnerships to address additional classes of molecules, thereby presenting additional milestone and royalty opportunities. • Create new biologic modalities and novel conjugates with Bionic proteins that incorporate nsAAs. We aim to use our platform to pursue a wide range of applications and to enable the creation of new biologic drug modalities and previously inaccessible conjugates. To achieve this, we introduce customized machinery into our Bionic SoluPro strain that empowers it to incorporate nsAAs at specified locations in proteins. We aim to create entirely new drug modalities and assemble previously inaccessible conjugates using straightforward chemistry in combination with the nsAA incorporation. We expect to apply this differentiated capability repeatedly across numerous programs to add substantial value to our partners’ discovery and development processes. • Grow our platform through R&D and strategic acquisitions. We intend to continue innovating and extending avenues for creating better new biologics and cell lines at a faster pace. Biological validation technologies, preclinical evaluation models, and downstream protein purification technologies are all potential areas of strategic interest that could further enhance our value proposition to partners and provide us with important insights to steer our internal efforts. • Create our proprietary asset pipeline. We intend to selectively create our own lead drug candidates and advance them up to the IND stage or later. In some cases we may out-license or transfer drug candidates for clinical advancement by a partner, with the expectation of a greater share in the economics relative to the milestones and royalties we may secure for our core platform technology development licenses. • Leverage our platform to address market opportunities outside of biopharmaceuticals. Although we are currently focused on the biopharmaceuticals markets and we intend to maintain this focus in the near term, we believe our platform has the foundational technology and capabilities in place to capitalize on the opportunity to create proteins of value in many other industries. Such potential target applications include materials science, industrial chemicals, cosmetics, synthetic foods, and agriculture. Over the longer term, we may create new biological tools and designer enzymes that lead to applications spanning, but not limited to, bioremediation solutions, bioprocessing achievements, organic agricultural advances, and cost-effective protein-based consumables. Competition The market for technologies that enable biopharmaceutical research and development, such as ours, is global, characterized by intense competition and subject to significant intellectual property barriers. The solutions and applications offered by our competitors vary in size, breadth, and scope, and we face competition from many different sources. Due to the significant interest and growth in biopharmaceutical research and development more broadly, we expect the intensity of this competition to increase. We do not believe there are any other commercially available solutions that enable high-throughput screening of biologic drug variants in the assembled scaffold in the production cell line. Moreover, we are not aware of technologies that allow for efficient discovery of full length protein based therapeutics. We are aware of potential competitors addressing certain steps in the target identification, biologic drug discovery, and cell line development processes or adjacent aspects of the broad process, including: • in the field of novel target identification, we may face competition from academic, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology research initiatives, as well as companies focused on novel methods for target identification, including Insitro, Inc., TScan Therapeutics, Inc., and 3T Biosciences, Inc.; • in the field of AI-guided drug design and discovery, we may face competition from companies designing novel proteins such as Generate Biomedicines, Inc., as well as adjacent technology companies pursuing small molecule design such as Schrodinger, Inc., Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Relay Therapeutics, Inc., Atomwise Inc., Valo Health, Inc., and Exscientia Limited; 15 Table of Contents • in the field of scaffold design and drug platform development, we may face competition from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies developing novel biologic modalities including Amgen Inc., Crescendo Biologics Limited and Harpoon Therapeutics, Inc., among others; • in the field of novel human/humanized antibody discovery, we may face competition from companies such as AbCellera Biologics Inc., Adimab LLC, and Alloy Therapeutics, Inc.; • in the field of non-standard amino acid protein engineering, we may face competition from companies such as Ambrx Inc. and Sutro Biopharma, Inc. (Sutro); and • in the field of cell line generation and single-cell screening, we may face competition from service providers, such as Lonza Group AG and Selexis SA, companies offering instrumentation, such as Berkeley Lights Inc., and companies with alternative protein production systems, such as Sutro. We are aware of other synthetic biology companies focused on developing various custom cell lines in a variety of model organisms for biomanufacturing of molecules relevant to other industries. These companies may in the future pursue biopharmaceutical applications of their platforms that could compete with our technologies. Our target partners may also elect to develop their own processes on legacy systems, use in house solutions, or use traditional methods, rather than implementing our platform and may decide to stop using our platform. In addition, there are many large established players in the life science technology market that we do not currently compete with but that could develop systems, tools or other products that will compete with us in the future. These large established companies have substantially greater financial and other resources than us, including larger research and development staff or more established marketing and sales forces. For a discussion of the risks we face relating to competition, see “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Biologic Drug Development—The biopharmaceutical platform technology market is highly competitive, and if we cannot compete successfully with our competitors, we may be unable to increase or sustain our revenue, or sustain profitability.” Human Capital Our employees, who we refer to as “Unlimiters”, are essential in our ability to serve our partners and achieve our mission to create better biologics for patients, faster. Our core values set the tone for how we work together: • Believe in the impossible • Proceed with passion and grit • Foster collaboration and communication • Expect integrity and excellence • Enjoy the adventure Building these values into our culture enables our people to translate ideas into impact as we strive to create a better, faster path to new medicines. Collectively and individually we are defying conventions and disrupting the biopharmaceutical industry with bold ideas and passionate pursuit of new possibilities. As of December 31, 2022, we had 193 employees, many of whom have advanced post-graduate degrees. We believe that our Unlimiters are our most important asset. To facilitate talent attraction and retention, we strive to make Absci an inclusive, safe, and healthy workplace with opportunities to grow and develop, supported by strong compensation, benefits, community, health and well-being programs. Compensation and benefits: Our compensation philosophy is designed to establish and maintain a fair and flexible compensation program that attracts and rewards talented individuals who possess the skills necessary to support our mission, create long-term value for our stockholders and assist in the achievement of our strategic goals. We provide employees with competitive pay, a wide range of benefits, and an equity incentive program. The principal purposes of our equity incentive plans are to attract, retain, and motivate 16 Table of Contents selected employees, consultants and directors through the granting of stock-based compensation awards and cash-based performance bonus awards while aligning the interests of our employees with our stockholders. All full-time employees receive an equity grant upon hire and are eligible for annual equity grants thereafter. Our employee benefits includes an employee stock purchase plan, generous healthcare benefits for employees and their families, unlimited vacation, parental leave, 401(k) matching, referral bonuses, access to mental health resources, wellness programs, and onsite services. Training and development: We offer a number of educational resources and development opportunities with emphasis on internal mobility and fair and equitable talent practices. Employees take advantage of live courses, leadership programs, online training, team building events, seminars, conferences, lectures, university programs, peer-to-peer and leadership-guided training and other learning opportunities across the company. All employees are eligible for an annual monetary stipend for continuing education and career development training. Additionally, we have a paid internship program that offers university or graduate students real-world experience and the chance to work with our extraordinary people, while helping Absci identify and develop the next generation of Unlimiters. Ethics and compliance : We have adopted and regularly review the Code of Business Conduct and Ethics to aid our directors, officers and employees in making ethical and legal decisions when conducting business and performing day-to-day duties. All directors, officers and employees are required to review and sign an acknowledgment regarding the Code of Business Conduct and Ethics. We have established a reporting hotline and web form that enables employees to anonymously report any suspected violations of the Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, and we have a strict non-retaliation policy for all claims brought forward in good faith. Communication and employee engagement : We employ a variety of tools to facilitate open and direct communication including open forums with executives, employee surveys and engagement through employee-led groups and committees. Our campus is intentionally designed to create a space for collaboration and camaraderie. We hold company wide meetings monthly and regularly schedule time for our colleagues to connect. We appraise and refine our employee programs through our company pulse surveys. We conducted our first annual employee engagement survey in 2022 to assist us in appraising and refining our employee programs. Our annual employee engagement survey process utilizes a third-party survey tool, and we supplement this process with periodic pulse surveys to help us gauge ongoing progress and employee sentiment. The executive leadership team continues to identify key initiatives that tie directly back to employee feedback to further increase employee engagement. Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) : Our vision is to deliver breakthrough therapeutics at the click of a button — for everyone. That vision isn’t possible unless we live in a diverse and equitable world, where everyone benefits from the potentially life-changing technology we’re creating. In addition to creating innovative change in the world, we are also working for change much closer to home. We are committed to building a team with a variety of backgrounds, skills and views. We encourage grassroots efforts by employees such as the formation of affinity groups like our Women’s Alliance Group and Rainbow Group. All employees complete annual DEIB training that includes details on how to report any violation of DEIB policies. We continue to evolve and advance our DEIB efforts. We believe the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. Health, safety, wellbeing : We are committed to promoting the health, safety, and wellbeing of our employees. Our Employee Safety Committee is comprised of cross-departmental members and meets regularly to review workplace safety and adherence to safety policies. We require annual workplace safety training to reinforce workplace safety procedures that may be useful in the event of emergency situations and to assist our employees in helping to prevent workplace accidents. We have numerous employees with current first aid, CPR, and AED certifications for emergency preparedness. We have been dedicated to prioritizing the health and safety of our employees and business partners during the COVID-19 pandemic. We continue to monitor federal, state and local laws and regulations to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at our workplace. Intellectual Property We use a variety of intellectual property protection strategies, including patents, trademarks, trade secrets and other methods of protecting proprietary information. Our success depends in part on our ability to obtain and maintain intellectual property protection for the components of our Integrated Drug Creation platform; to defend and enforce our patents, to preserve the confidentiality of our trade secrets; to operate 17 Table of Contents without infringing valid and enforceable patents and other proprietary rights of third parties and to identify new opportunities for intellectual property protection. As of December 31, 2022, we own 61 issued or granted patents and 126 pending patent applications worldwide, which includes seven issued U.S. patents and 57 pending U.S. patent applications. We also have granted patents in the EU, Australia, Japan, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Israel, and Mexico. Our patents and patent applications, if issued, are expected to expire between August 2033 and December 2042, in each case without taking into account any possible patent term adjustments or extensions and assuming payment of all appropriate maintenance, renewal, annuity, or other governmental fees. Our patents and patent applications include the following: Technology Issued Patents Pending Applications Type of Protection Cell Line & Expression Technology 7 U.S. 54 foreign 42 applications Compositions, methods, kits Proprietary Assays and Techniques 22 applications Compositions, Methods Antibody Discovery 51 applications Compositions, methods, kits Artificial Intelligence 9 applications Systems, methods The protection provided by a patent varies from country to country, and is dependent on the type of patent granted, the scope of the patent claims, and the legal remedies available in a given country. In addition, the term of individual patents depends upon the legal term of the patents in the countries in which they are obtained. In most countries in which we file, the patent term is 20 years from the earliest non-provisional filing date, subject to any disclaimers or extensions. The term of a patent in the United States can be adjusted due to any failure of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to meet certain statutory and regulation deadlines for issuing a patent. In addition, in the United States, the term of a U.S. patent that covers an FDA-approved drug may also be eligible for patent term extension, which, if granted, permits patent term restoration as compensation for the patent term lost during the FDA regulatory review process. The Hatch-Waxman Act permits a patent term extension of up to five years beyond the original expiration of the patent. The length of the patent term extension is related to the length of time the drug is under regulatory review. Patent term extension cannot extend the remaining term of a patent beyond a total of 14 years from the date of product approval and only one patent applicable to an approved drug may be extended and only those claims covering the approved drug, a method for using it, or a method for manufacturing it may be extended. Similar provisions are available in Europe and other foreign jurisdictions to extend the term of a patent that covers an approved drug. In the future, if we determine to develop our own product candidates and any such product candidates receive FDA approval, we expect to apply for patent term extensions on patents covering those products. While we may seek patent term extensions of our relevant issued patents in any jurisdiction where such extensions are available, there is no guarantee that the applicable authorities, including the FDA in the United States, will agree with our assessment of whether such extensions should be granted, and if granted, the length of such extensions. As of December 31, 2022, we owned registered trademarks for Absci, SoluPro and SoluPure in the United States, as well as eleven trademark registrations in other jurisdictions. In addition to patent and trademark protection, we also utilize other forms of intellectual property protection, including copyright, internal know-how and trade secrets, when such other forms are better suited to protect a particular aspect of our intellectual property position. For example, our trade secrets encompass certain algorithms associated with our deep learning AI Engine, our computational antibody and target discovery technology, manufacturing protocols for our E. coli SoluPro strains, libraries of protein folding solutions and design of molecular libraries for drug discovery. We believe our proprietary rights are strengthened by our comprehensive approach to intellectual property protection. It is our policy to require our employees, consultants, advisors and other independent contractors to execute confidentiality and invention assignment agreements upon accepting employment, consulting or similar relationships with us. These agreements provide that all confidential information concerning our business or financial affairs developed or made known to the individual during the course of the individual’s relationship with us is to be 18 Table of Contents kept confidential and not disclosed to third parties except in specific circumstances. We also take precautions through the use of security measures to prevent the release of our proprietary information to third parties. Although we take steps to protect our proprietary information and trade secrets, including through contractual means with our employees, consultants, advisors and other independent contractors, these agreements may be breached and we may not have adequate remedies for any breach. In addition, third parties may independently develop substantially equivalent proprietary information and techniques or otherwise gain access to our trade secrets or disclose our technology. As a result, we may not be able to meaningfully protect our trade secrets and other proprietary technology. For a discussion of the risks we face relating to intellectual property, see “Risk Factors—Risks Related to our Intellectual Property.” Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) We are integrating ESG considerations into our business strategy as we continue to grow. To establish an oversight structure, in 2022, we amended the charter of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee of the Board (the “Committee”) to stipulate that the Committee would oversee and coordinate with the Board and its other committees the periodic review of corporate responsibility and ESG matters pertaining to the Company, which may include the evaluation of industry practices, investor views, reputational impact, legal standards, and overall risks and benefits of ESG initiatives, as well as public reporting on these matters. Cybersecurity Our cybersecurity program is aligned with standards established by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Center for Internet Security (CIS). We conduct regular internal security audits, a comprehensive annual third-party cybersecurity audit, and we engage with third-party experts to perform industry standard penetration testing. We maintain cybersecurity insurance coverage to provide financial protection against certain cyber liability and data breach claims. For a discussion of the risks we face relating to cybersecurity, see “Risk Factors—General Risk Factors.” As of the date of this filing, we have not to our knowledge experienced any cyber security incidents or breaches. Government Regulation Regulations Related to the Discovery, Development, Approval and Commercialization of Biotherapeutics Our focus is on the use of our platform to enable our partners to improve the speed and success of their biologic product discovery and development efforts. As such, while we are subject to a number of regulations, such as those governing our laboratory facilities as well as regulations that apply to businesses in the private sector generally, we are not subject to many of the types of regulations that ordinarily apply to companies in the life sciences, biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors and industries. However, we believe that the long-term success of our business depends, in part, on our partners’ ability to successfully develop and sell products identified and created through our platform technology. The regulations that govern our pharmaceutical and biotechnology partners are those we therefore believe have the most significant impact on our business. Government authorities in the United States, at the federal, state and local level, and in the European Union and other countries and jurisdictions, extensively regulate, among other things, the research, development, testing, manufacturing, quality control approval, labeling, packaging, storage, record-keeping, promotion, advertising, distribution, post-approval monitoring and reporting, marketing and export and import of pharmaceutical products, including biological products such as those that our partners develop. The processes for obtaining marketing approvals in the United States and in foreign countries and jurisdictions, along with subsequent compliance with applicable statutes and regulations and other regulatory authorities, require the expenditure of substantial time and financial resources. If we or our partners fail to comply with applicable laws or regulations at any time, we or our partners may become subject to administrative or judicial sanctions or other legal consequences, including among other things, restrictions on marketing or manufacturing, withdrawal of products, product recalls, fines, warning letters, untitled letters, clinical holds on clinical studies, refusal of the FDA to approve pending applications or supplements to approved applications, suspension or revocation of product approvals, product seizure or detention, refusal to permit the import or export of products, consent decrees, corporate integrity agreements, debarment or exclusion from federal 19 Table of Contents healthcare programs, mandated modification of promotional materials, issuance of safety alerts, Dear Healthcare Provider letters, injunctions or the imposition of civil or criminal penalties. Our partners must obtain the requisite approvals from the applicable regulatory authority prior to the commencement of clinical studies or marketing of a biological product in those countries. The requirements and process governing the conduct of clinical trials, product licensing, coverage, pricing and reimbursement vary from country to country. In the United States, biological products are subject to regulation under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the Public Health Service Act, and other federal, state, local and foreign statutes and regulations. The process required by the FDA before biologics may be marketed in the United States generally involves the following: • completion of preclinical laboratory tests and animal studies performed in accordance with the FDA’s applicable good laboratory practices regulations (GLP); • submission to the FDA of an application for an IND, which must become effective before clinical trials may begin; • approval of the protocol and related documentation by an independent institutional review board (IRB), or ethics committee at each clinical site before each trial may be initiated; • performance of adequate and well-controlled human clinical trials according to the FDA’s regulations commonly referred to as good clinical practices (GCPs), and any additional requirements for the protection of human research subjects and their health information, to establish the safety and efficacy of the proposed biological product for its intended use; • preparation of and submission to the FDA of a biologics license application (BLA), for marketing approval that includes sufficient evidence of establishing the safety, purity, and potency of the proposed biological product for its intended indication, including from results of nonclinical testing and clinical trials; • satisfactory completion of an FDA inspection of the manufacturing facility or facilities where the biological product is produced to assess compliance with cGMPs, to assure that the facilities, methods and controls are adequate to preserve the biological product’s identity, strength, quality and purity; • potential FDA audit of the nonclinical study and clinical trial sites that generated the data in support of the BLA; • review of the product candidate by an FDA advisory committee, where appropriate and if applicable; • payment of user fees for FDA review of the BLA (unless a fee waiver applies); and • FDA review and approval of the BLA, resulting in the licensure of the biological product for commercial marketing. We may selectively create our own biologic product candidates and advance such candidates up to the investigational drug application IND stage or later validation and cGMP manufacturing scale-up. Before testing any biologic product in humans, the product candidate must undergo rigorous preclinical testing. Preclinical studies include laboratory evaluations of drug chemistry, formulation and stability, as well as in vitro and animal studies to assess safety and in some cases to establish the rationale for therapeutic use. The conduct of preclinical studies is subject to applicable federal/national, supranational, state and local level regulations and requirements, including GLP, requirements for safety/toxicology studies. The results of the preclinical studies, together with manufacturing information and analytical data, must be submitted to the FDA as part of an IND or the appropriate regulatory authority in foreign countries as part of a clinical trial application (CTA). An IND is a request for authorization from the FDA to administer an investigational new drug to humans. In the United States, an IND must become effective before human clinical trials may begin. The IND automatically becomes effective 30 days after receipt by the FDA, unless the FDA, within the 30-day time period, raises safety concerns or questions about the proposed clinical trial. In such a case, the IND may be placed on clinical hold and the IND sponsor and the FDA must resolve any outstanding concerns or questions before the clinical trial can begin. Submission of an IND therefore may or may not result in FDA authorization to begin a clinical trial. Clinical trials involve the administration of the investigational product to human subjects under the supervision of qualified investigators in accordance with GCPs, which include the requirement that all 20 Table of Contents research subjects provide their informed consent for their participation in any clinical study. Clinical trials are conducted under written trial protocols detailing, among other things, the objectives of the clinical trial, the parameters to be used in monitoring safety and the effectiveness criteria to be evaluated. A separate submission to the existing IND must be made for each successive clinical trial conducted during product development and for subsequent protocol amendments. Furthermore, an independent IRB for each site proposing to conduct the clinical trial must review and approve the plan for any clinical trial and its informed consent form before the clinical trial begins at that site, and must monitor the study until completed. Regulatory authorities, the IRB or the sponsor may suspend a clinical trial at any time on various grounds, including a finding that the subjects are being exposed to an unacceptable health risk or that the trial is unlikely to meet its stated objectives. Some studies also include oversight by an independent group of qualified experts organized by the clinical study sponsor, known as a data safety monitoring board, which provides authorization for whether or not a study may move forward at designated check points based on access to certain data from the study and may recommend halting the clinical trial if it determines that there is an unacceptable safety risk for subjects or other grounds, such as no demonstration of efficacy. There are also requirements governing the reporting of ongoing clinical studies and clinical study results to public registries. For purposes of BLA approval, human clinical trials are typically conducted in three sequential phases that may overlap or be combined: • Phase 1—The investigational product is initially introduced into healthy human subjects or patients with the target disease or condition. These studies are designed to test the safety, dosage tolerance, absorption, metabolism and distribution of the investigational product in humans, the side effects associated with increasing doses, and, if possible, to gain early evidence on effectiveness. • Phase 2—The investigational product is administered to a limited patient population with a specified disease or condition to evaluate the preliminary efficacy, optimal dosages and dosing schedule and to identify possible adverse side effects and safety risks. Multiple Phase 2 clinical trials may be conducted to obtain information prior to beginning larger and more expensive Phase 3 clinical trials. • Phase 3—The investigational product is administered to an expanded patient population to further evaluate dosage, clinical efficacy, potency, and safety in an expanded patient population at geographically dispersed clinical trial sites. These clinical trials are intended to establish the overall risk/benefit ratio of the investigational product and to provide an adequate basis for product approval and product labeling. In some cases, FDA may require, or firms may voluntarily pursue, post-approval clinical trials, sometimes referred to as Phase 4 clinical trials, after initial marketing approval. These clinical trials are used to gain additional experience from the treatment of patients in the intended therapeutic indication, particularly for long-term safety follow-up. During all phases of clinical development, regulatory agencies require extensive monitoring and auditing of all clinical activities, clinical data, and clinical trial investigators. Concurrent with clinical trials, companies usually complete additional animal studies and also must develop additional information about the chemistry and physical characteristics of the biological product and finalize a process for manufacturing the product in commercial quantities in accordance with cGMP. To help reduce the risk of the introduction of adventitious agents with use of biological products, the Public Health Service Act emphasizes the importance of manufacturing control for products whose attributes cannot be precisely defined. The manufacturing process must be capable of consistently producing quality batches of the product candidate and, among other things, the sponsor must develop methods for testing the identity, strength, quality, potency and purity of the final biological product. Additionally, appropriate packaging must be selected and tested and stability studies must be conducted to demonstrate that the biological product candidate does not undergo unacceptable deterioration over its shelf life. Healthcare Laws and Regulations Biopharmaceutical companies are subject to additional healthcare regulation and enforcement by the federal government and by authorities in the states and foreign jurisdictions in which they conduct their business. These laws and regulations may constrain our relationships with our partners. Such laws include, without limitation, state and federal anti-kickback, fraud and abuse, false claims, and transparency laws and regulations related to drug pricing and payments and other transfers of value made to physicians and other healthcare providers. If our partners’ operations are found to be in violation of any of such laws or any other 21 Table of Contents governmental regulations that apply, by extension, we may be subject to penalties, including, without limitation, administrative, civil and criminal penalties, damages, fines, disgorgement, the curtailment or restructuring of operations, integrity oversight and reporting obligations, exclusion from participation in federal and state healthcare programs and responsible individuals may be subject to imprisonment. Additional Regulations In addition to the foregoing, state and federal U.S. laws regarding environmental protection and hazardous substances affect our business. These and other laws govern our use, handling and disposal of various biological, chemical and radioactive substances used in, and wastes generated by, our operations. If our operations result in contamination of the environment or expose individuals to hazardous substances, we could be liable for damages and governmental fines. We believe that we are in material compliance with applicable environmental laws and that continued compliance therewith will not have a material adverse effect on our business. We cannot predict, however, how changes in these laws may affect our future operations. Healthcare Reform Payors, whether domestic or foreign, or governmental or private, are developing increasingly sophisticated methods of controlling healthcare costs and those methods are not always specifically adapted for new technologies. In both the United States and certain foreign jurisdictions, there have been a number of legislative and regulatory changes to the health care system that could impact our ability to sell our products profitably. In particular, in 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (ACA) was enacted, which, among other things, subjected biologic products to potential competition by lower-cost biosimilars; addressed a new methodology by which rebates owed by manufacturers under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program are calculated for drugs that are inhaled, infused, instilled, implanted or injected; increased the minimum Medicaid rebates owed by most manufacturers under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program; extended the Medicaid Drug Rebate program to utilization of prescriptions of individuals enrolled in Medicaid managed care organizations; subjected manufacturers to new annual fees and taxes for certain branded prescription drugs; created a new Medicare Part D coverage gap discount program, in which manufacturers must agree to offer 50% (increased to 70% pursuant to the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, effective as of January 1, 2019) point-of-sale discounts off negotiated prices of applicable brand drugs to eligible beneficiaries during their coverage gap period, as a condition for the manufacturer’s outpatient drugs to be covered under Medicare Part D; and provided incentives to programs that increase the federal government’s comparative effectiveness research. Furthermore in August 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which among other things: allows for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to impose price controls for certain single-source drugs and biotherapeutics reimbursed under Medicare Part B and Part D. Anti-Corruption Laws We are subject to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, as amended (FCPA) the U.S. domestic bribery statute contained in 18 U.S.C. § 201, the U.S. Travel Act, the USA PATRIOT Act, and possibly other state and national anti-bribery and anti-money laundering laws in countries in which we conduct activities, such as the UK Bribery Act 2010 and the UK Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (Anti-Corruption Laws). Among other matters, such Anti-Corruption Laws prohibit corporations and individuals from directly or indirectly paying, offering to pay or authorizing the payment of money or anything of value to any foreign government official, government staff member, political party or political candidate, or certain other persons, in order to obtain, retain or direct business, regulatory approvals or some other advantage in an improper manner. We can also be held liable for the acts of our third party agents under the FCPA, the UK Bribery Act 2010 and possibly other Anti-Corruption Laws. In the healthcare sector, anti-corruption risk can also arise in the context of improper interactions with doctors, key opinion leaders and other healthcare professionals who work for state-affiliated hospitals, research institutions or other organizations. Corporate Information We were originally formed in August 2011 as an Oregon limited liability company and later converted into a Delaware limited liability company in April 2016 under the name AbSci LLC. In October 2020, we completed a reorganization whereby we were converted from a Delaware limited liability company named AbSci LLC to a Delaware corporation under the name Absci Corporation and all outstanding membership interests in AbSci LLC were exchanged for equity interests in Absci Corporation. 22 Table of Contents Our principal executive offices are located at 18105 SE Mill Plain Boulevard, Vancouver, Washington 98683. Our telephone number is (360) 949-1041. Our website address is https://www.absci.com/. Information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website should not be considered to be part of this Annual Report. You are advised to read this Annual Report in conjunction with other reports and documents that we file from time to time with the SEC. In particular, please read our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and any Current Reports on Form 8-K that we may file from time to time. You may obtain copies of these reports directly from us or from the SEC. In addition, the SEC maintains information for electronic filers (including Absci Corporation) at its website at www.sec.gov. We make our periodic and current reports available on our internet website, free of charge, as soon as reasonably practicable after such material is electronically filed with, or furnished to, the SEC. Available information Our Annual Reports on Form 10‑K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10‑Q, Current Reports on Form 8‑K, proxy and information statements and amendments to reports filed pursuant to Sections 13(a), and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the Exchange Act) are filed with the SEC. We are subject to the informational requirements of the Exchange Act and file or furnish reports, proxy statements and other information with the SEC. The SEC maintains an Internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC at www.sec.gov. Such documents and other information filed by us with the SEC are available free of charge on our investor relations website (https://investors.absci.com/) when such reports are available on the SEC’s website. Investors and others should note that we may announce material information to the public through filings with the SEC, on our investor relations website (https://investors.absci.com/), press releases, public conference calls, and public webcasts. We encourage our investors and others to review the information disclosed through such channels as such information could be deemed to be material information. Please note that this list may be updated from time to time.