Timothy Miller
Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald. Please proceed with your question
Thanks Christine and thanks for everyone for joining us this morning. 2016 and the fourth quarter especially were marked by notable achievements and advancements for Abeona and our goals for expanding and building ourselves as a rare disease leading gene therapy company. We’ve expanded our program pipeline with the addition of a clinical stage asset. We reported on positive clinical data in our lead program for Sanfilippo syndrome type A, as well as our programs for Epidermolysis Bullosa, and we’ve achieved multiple regulatory designations in multiple programs. Furthermore, we have stated that we are further developing our work in the library of next generation AAV viral vectors, our AIM viral vector platforms, which we have global exclusive rates with the rights to sublicense. To go over some of the milestones that we achieved, particularly in the clinical domain, we will talk a little bit about our lead program ABO 102, which is a treatment, gene therapy treatment for the patients with Sanfilippo syndrome type A. We have met many of our goals for advancing this lead gene therapy program, it is the only one in the clinic in 2016 and currently in 2017 that is enrolling patients for patients with Sanfilippo syndrome. For those that don't know, this is a lysosomal storage disease, these children have problems with an enzyme in breaking down sugars. 70% of these children don't reach the age 18, and it is rather notable to note that recently there have been a lot of popularized deaths from children with this disease. Right now, Abeona is the only program in the world that has a gene therapy muscles and the other therapy in development and in clinical trials. Some of the regulatory achievements in this program were that the EMA or the European Medicinal Agency has granted Orphan Drug Designation, and we also received Fast Track designation from the FDA from this program, which enables us to file [indiscernible] biologics licensing application. We are already building on the granted rare disease Pediatric Designation and the Orphan Drug Designation in the United States. The significance and of these designations is not to be really undermined, it is certainly as we look to the future going to be helpful for us looking to file potentially in late 2018. We do have a dosing and complete reporting of the low dose cohort, which will be -- some of which will be reported tomorrow at the New York Academy of Sciences and otherwise reported at the American Society for Gene & Cell Therapy Conference coming up in May. It is important that we do note that the priority review voucher, we are eligible for this program and look forward to updating more as we go forward with our regulatory strategies. We have recently reported positive data from the low dose, demonstrating central nervous system and peripheral organ disease bio-potency. As a review of the data that was reported out, we did report out two patients worth of data, although we do have much of the third patients dose data to report up soon. ABO 102 is well tolerated in all subjects to date with three low dose and two high dose patients tested. We are through over 750 days of follow-up with no serious adverse events, which is rather remarkable for gene therapy program as delivered by intravenous delivery. And we have seen a significant reduction in the heparan sulfate, which is the actual GAG or glycosaminoglycan in the cerebrospinal fluid, over 60% in - over three patients. Continued evidence of bio-potency has been demonstrated with reduced liver and spleen volumes and decreased urinary GAGs, as well as total GAGs. To the subject that says that the six-month time point showed evidence for stabilization or improvement, an average of 60% over two subjects in multiples - the Mullen subdomains, and the adaptive behavior ratings on the Vineland stabilized. Importantly, subject showed improved ability to complete individual items in the Leiter-R non-verbal IQ assessment resulting in improved raw scores. This is particularly important as these first three subjects had all been in rewarding the Natural History Study and so we had a long term longitudinal data on them able to demonstrate that severe disease progression over the ages of 5 to 6, and then as they came in for their baseline visit, they actually had gone through the floor of their ability to be able to scored. Why this is important is because six months post injection, these children have improved to a point where they could be scored again on their non-verbal IQ. Looking at, as we go into the high dose cohort, where we are going to be completing the enrolment, the planned enrolment of three patient at Nationwide Children's Hospital in April, and we will most likely be expanding the enrolment either at this dose or at a higher dose at some point in the near future. As important to note that we have – are expanding our enrolments in Spain and Australia, the sites are both being initiated in April, so we will be set to screen starting late April or beginning of May, so as we go into the end of the second quarter, we will be enrolling 2 to 3 patients a month. And we as we start to set some of our enrolment timelines, this is important because we will be moving towards an enrolment goal of 15 patients in the next few months, I’m sorry throughout the end of 2017. This is extremely valuable to the company as we seek to become a leader in Sanfilippo gene therapy, but in gene therapy overall. Our second lead gene therapy program is in the form of autologous keratinocyte corrective gene therapy for a horrifying disease called epidermolysis bullosa, otherwise known as butterfly skin syndrome and we are treating the most severe form of this, the recessive dystrophic version. In this program, children come in or adolescents come in or adults come in and they have a biopsy taken, the keratinocytes, which are actual skin cells are taken out and purified and expanded. Using a gene therapy, they are corrected, and the kids have an underlying deficit of a protein called collagen. Collagen is really the zipper that holds your skin onto your body, and because these patients don't have that they have these blistering diseases that open and form chronic wounds that don't heal for years. We are now partnered with the Stanford University, a very large natural history study showing that none of the therapy that have already been tried to date have worked to help close these wounds, including improved dermatologic programs, the products. Right now, what we do is, we -- while we go up and make these sheets -- they are off the size of an iPhone 7 and each subject gets six of them, placed on top of their wounds. To date, we have - again we have continued to expand our programs with this particular clinical stage asset. We have received EMA Orphan Drug Designation and reported positive Phase 1 clinical results for ABO 101, which are published last year in the Journal of American Medical Association or JAMA, which highlighted that the therapy was well-tolerated in these patients and demonstrated clinical efficacy in 67% of the healed wound in six months, some of which have continued to last 12 months, and importantly has seen biomarker expression of collagen in these wounds. This is significant as we look to have regulatory meetings in the second and third quarter to talk about registrable endpoints for this program, particularly looking at what will be the amount of wound closure and biomarker expression in a one-time point. So accordingly we have treated the sixth patient and the seventh patient has recently been treated as well. So this is a total of 42 wounds that have been treated, and the next steps the company anticipates providing a clinical update at the upcoming annual meeting in Society for Investigative Dermatology in April 2017. Additional regulatory is we have US Orphan Drug Designation and the Rare Pediatric Disease Designation hoping to come in later this year, as well as additional enrolment targets to try and hit 10 to 12 patients by the end of the year. Next, we have, to talk about is our second Sanfilippo program. So recall that for those that are not very familiar with Sanfilippo syndrome or four types, Type A, B, C, and D. We are focusing on the two most common types, Type A, which is our ABO 102 program and then we have any ABO 101 program, which is for Sanfilippo syndrome type B. This is again another adeno-associated virus gene therapy program. We have received the IND to go ahead and start the clinical trial. And it is on track and we are anticipating that we will help patients enrolled in that very soon. The IND has been granted and we will be seeking initial regulatory approval in Europe. Currently, we have two of the three necessary steps completed in Europe to start the clinical trial there as well. We have been granted Orphan Drug Designation in Europe and continue to look forward to announcing additional regulatory designations in this program later this year, as well as reporting our later in the second half of 2018. Moving on to our Proprietary AIM Vector, so we haven't given a lot of guidance yet on how well we are approaching this AIM Vector program, but it does encompass the Vectors that have tissue tropisms from multiple targets, including the hematologic and dermatology phases. We have partnered with University of North Carolina in developing the AIM Vector system. That is a novel AAV-based Vector technology that may also target additional tropisms such as muscle tissue, the liver and or syndrome nervous system. So, right now we are looking forward to reporting out some data on the platform with the American Society for Gene Therapy in collaboration with our partners at the University of North Carolina. It is a very exciting program. We are looking forward to how - this is really how we see approach to second generation products for our lead programs, as well as additional de novel or new programs to be brought in-house at Abeona. We do have two additional programs that I will comment on today. We have our Batten disease programs. So Batten disease is another lysosomal storage disease, so when you look at the top of our pipeline at metabolic and you will see four AAV programs that are all targeting lysosomal storage disease, so the Sanfilippo programs are currently clinical stage and the Batten disease programs at preclinical, but we anticipate that these will be clinical stage by the end of the year. For our juvenile Batten program, which is ABO 201 or the CLN3 version of the disease, the EMA has granted Orphan Drug Designation. We announced preclinical data supporting clinical trials for ABO 201 were published in September, the Journal of Neuroscience. We have completed a lot of the preclinical studies necessary to get into the NIDA and conducted a pre-IND meeting last year, which was very successful. The IND enabling studies for this have been initiated and we are engaging in the FDA an additional comments. Things are looking very, very good in the animals to date, there is no doubt and things look, unlike they are on track for this program to be - again the IND by the end of the year. For ABO 202 the sealant one version of the disease are infantile. We are continuing to advance this towards IND enabling study and we again anticipate that human clinical trials will be commenced by the end of the year. So it has been a very exciting year and really beginning of the year in 2017 for Abeona. Our gene therapy programs, you have three of them that are clinical stage. There are very few companies in the world that have actual clinical data in gene therapy much less a broad enough pipeline. We are setting ourselves up well with the inductor platform to enhance our programs and essentially you for any additional programs for use of the AIM Vector platform, and look forward to announcing that data at the upcoming conferences later on in the year. So with that, I’ll turn this over to Jeff Davis to give our fourth quarter and year-end summary financial results, and look forward to answering any questions coming up at the end of the call. Jeff?