Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Agenus First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. Now, I would like to turn the conference over to Dr. Jennifer Buell, Head of External Affairs and Communications at Agenus. Please go ahead, Dr. Buell.

Thank you, and welcome to the Agenus first quarter financial results conference call. Before I continue, I'd like to remind you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements, including without limitation, statements regarding the company's development and commercialization plan and timelines. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties disclose in more detail in our most recent filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. And that could cause actual result to differ materially. These statements speak only as of the date of this call and Agenus undertakes no obligation to update or revise these statements, except to the extent required by law. All forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. When evaluating Agenus' business and securities, investors should give careful considerations to these risks and uncertainties. As a remainder this call is being recorded for audio broadcast. Joining me today are Dr. Garo Armen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Christine Klaskin, our Vice President of Finance. During this call, Garo will provide a corporate update and Christine will provide a financial review. We will then open the call for questions. With that, let me turn the call over to Garo.

Good morning and thank you for joining us for our quarterly update. As you will see in the next few minutes, we have had a very productive several years, including the substantial progress we made in the past several months. These have been in our clinical programs, as well as the substantial number of new discoveries which are about to enter the clinic. I will speak about these in more detail, but in summary we have made a conscious decision several years ago to pursue two antibodies, which have become the backbone of immuno-oncology cancer treatment today. These are antibodies that target PD-1 and CTLA-4. We have advanced them into the clinic individually and in combinations. So far we have treated 100 patients and observed a number of responses, which will be presented at ASCO this year. We believe these backbone molecules are critically important and we plan on pursuing combinations of them, including with one another to achieve regulatory approvals. But we also believe they will play an important role in combinations with our portfolio of novel antibodies, neoantigen vaccines, and cell therapies. How we have accomplished what we have thus far, innovation and speed are the basis of our immuno-oncology business model with five INDs filed over the past 18 months, six INDs on track to be filed this year, and two additional INDs planned in the first half of next year. Our IND roster for this year includes bispecific antibodies that modify the tumor microenvironment in order to make the tumor more susceptible to immune attack. Tumor microenvironment modifiers are amongst the most desirable next gen immuno-oncology approaches. We have at least two antibodies with uniquely desirable properties. In addition to the INDs I mentioned, we expect our cell therapy company AgenTus to also file its first…

Thank you, Garo. Cash and cash equivalents balance was $52.3 million at March 31, 2018 this compares to a balance of $60.2 million at December 31, 2017. For the first quarter of 2018, we reported research and development expenses of $29.4 million as compared to $32.6 million for the same period in 2017. Our net loss for the three months ended March 31, 2018, was $54.3 million or $0.53 per share, compared to a net loss of $17.1 million or $0.18 per share for the first three months of 2017. This increase in our net loss in the first three months of this year was due to several one-time items as well as non-cash charges. These items in aggregate affected this year’s quarter unfavorably and prior year’s quarter favorably. In the first quarter of this year, we recorded a loss on the extinguishment of our debt and had increased non-cash charges. Whereas during last year’s first quarter, we recorded a large accelerated milestone payment we received from Incyte. Notwithstanding these items, our total R&D and G&A expenses were lower for the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter of 2017. I will now turn the call back to Garo.

Thank you, Christine. I’d like to turn it back to our operator Rockwell to begin questions.

[Operator Instructions]. And ladies and gentlemen at this time we have Matt Phipps from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Garo you’d previously said that I think the timeline for a potential BLA in second line cervical was 2020. Is there any way to accelerate that now that it has become your primary focus?

It’s possible, I think it would be perhaps over reaching it to accelerate it earlier than 2020. But, it’s possible, because we are looking at a number of opportunities in patients who are refractory to current treatments, including IO treatments that could potentially give us readouts very rapidly. And we also believe that particularly in those patient populations, the availability will be much greater than in highly competitive areas such as first-line, non-small-cell lung cancer hence shifting our strategy as you alluded to Matt.

Great, thanks. And then could you also just update us on kind of where the current cash you think gets you as far as runway? There is a number of discussions ongoing to hopefully extend that, but just as it stands now.

So let me point out to everyone that so far we have managed our cash versus spending pretty well. I mean given the level of activity that’s going on in the company, and the progress that we have made on a number of fronts with almost unprecedented number of IND filings planned for this year and for the first half of next year, our cash position because of our creative structures that we have come up with has dropped only from $60 million three months ago or at the end of last year to $52 million and change. So that takes obviously the ability to manage cash properly. Now having said that, as you alluded to Matt, there is no question we will need cash going forward. And if I look at our prospects for cash, they certainly include partnership prospects, and because we have a number of active discussions, not just one, our probabilities of success to bring one of these deals to closure is higher than it would have been if it was just one or two companies. So that’s one issue. And the second one is we are looking at a number of geographic opportunities for Agenus and AgenTus that could bring in cash in addition to what we are talking about or in place of what we are talking about. And we’re also talking to potential synergistic private investors in the company. So all of these prospects that are being pursued in parallel and our very last resort would be an equity offering.

Thanks. And I guess one last thing for me. When do you believe you will be able to disclose the bispecifics that you have planned into the clinics, it will be at IND filing, at first patient dosing, somewhere in that timeframe?

Yes, I will ask Jen to answer that question because she is intimately familiar with the timelines in these programs. Jen go ahead.

Thanks, Garo. Hi, Matt. I will share with you that we had hoped and could take advantage of the opportunity to disclose these targets. However, these antibodies, particularly the bispecific antibodies are of great interest and are undergoing some of these partnering discussions. So for the sake of protecting the IP around these assets both for our own purposes as well as those for potential partners, we're not disclosing them at this time.

And also Matt, it's not just IP, but also knowhow of targets and structures of these antibodies that we would like to keep, I hate to say this in the new world of blockchain transparency, but it is best to keep it secret at this point.

Okay, thanks for taking the questions.

[Operator Instructions]. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I’d like to turn the conference back over to Garo Armen for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much everybody for your attentiveness. We have covered quite a bit in our session today. And if you have any questions beyond those that were asked during the session please do not hesitate to contact Jen and our team. We're always available for you. Thank you.

And thank you, sir. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.