Garo Armen
Analyst · JMP Securities. Please go ahead
Thank you, Michelle, and thank you all for being with us this morning. 2016 was a productive year for Agenus. Last year four different antibody programs entered clinical stage development. These include our partnered antibody GITR and OX40 as well as CTLA-4 and PD-1. We consider the latter two clinical for us to achieve commercial status in the next four years. We believe that both of our molecules CLTA-4 and PT-1 will be critical to our ability to build a differentiated portfolio of combinations, while we're also leveraging our CLTA-4 and PT-1 candidate as a backbone of future immune-oncology combinations with our own novel portfolio of immune-oncology agents. During 2016, we also streamlined our in-house product development and commercialization capabilities with an emphasis on quality, speed and cost and which we believe by the way will be hallmarks for future success. In this regard, we put into place our manufacturing and cell line development capabilities through acquisitions and in licensing. We added our anybody discovery engine by building and in-house page display capability in addition to our mammalian and display platforms. This provides us with the ability to develop best-in-class compounds. We’ve also optimized our structural, engineering and computational sciences capabilities. We reinforced our management and clinical teams with Chief Medical Officer, Jean-Marie Cuillerot. Jean-Marie is one of very few in oncology clinical experts having successfully developed tow immune-oncology antibodies Yervoy and Avelumab. Jean-Marie will provide additional details on our clinical development strategy during this call. In addition to these achievements, we advanced several novel targets in our portfolio, including our antibodies targeting 41BB, TIGIT and by specific antibody candidates. You will hear more about our progress in this regard as the year unfold. We expect these to enable long-term competitiveness and ensure leadership of our company in the field of immune-oncology. Our [indiscernible] neoantigen vaccine candidate is slated to enter the clinic in the coming months. Recently, we announced an NCI sponsored Phase 2 clinical trial or top agent combination with Maersk key product. We also streamed our alliance with Incyte in addition to GSK shingles vaccine containing QS-21 Stimulon was filed for regulatory approval in the U.S., Canada and Europe. I would like to say a few words about our restructured alliance with Incyte. As you know, our coloration agreement with Incyte was conceived in January 2015 and initially centered around four immune checkpoint targets, GITR, OX40, TIM-3 and LAG-3. Last month, we emended the terms of this agreement. We believe the emended terms are mutually beneficial and streamline our relationship with Incyte. Among other things, we converted GITR and OX40 clinical stage programs from 50-50 profit share who have flat 15% royalty rate payable to Agenus plus milestone payments. Importantly, this removed the financial burden of clinical development cost from us for these assets enabling us to focus our expenditures on our internal programs. These costs that were now refills would have escalated significantly in coming years as GITR and OX40 advancing the clinic. With regards to financial terms of the recent transaction, Agenus received $60 million in equity at a premium price of $6 per share and $20 million in accelerated milestone payments from Incyte. With this transaction, having strengthened our balance sheet and reduced our burn rate, we will prioritize for them that will get us to registration over the next several years and bring our novel differentiated antibodies and vaccines to the clinic. Dr. Jenn Buell will provide some details on why we believe these novel targets and vaccines that we're pursuing are compelling, particularly given our ability to advance these compounds in combinations. So far what we're seeing in the clinic and what scientific observation strongly suggest is that combinations will drive the future success of immune-oncology. Overall, as I indicated earlier, our focus is to register our antibodies to validated targets CTLA4 and PD1 as soon as possible and to advance our novel and differentiated immune-oncology leads to the clinic. We will provide an update on our progress during 2017. While we started the year with the restructuring of Incyte transaction, which brought $80 million into Agenus and reduced our burn rate, completing additional corporate transaction with an emphasis on improving our balance sheet and further reducing our burn rate is a priority for us. With that, I'd like to introduce Jenn Buell, who will talk about the progress we've made with our preclinical programs. Dr. Buell?