Operator
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Conference Call to Discuss Second Quarter 2016 Financial Results. There will be a question-and-answer session to follow. Please be advised that this call is being taped at the company's request. I would now like to turn the call over to the company. Christine Regan Lindenboom - VP-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications: Good afternoon. I'm Christine Lindenboom, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at Alnylam. With me today are John Maraganore, Chief Executive Officer; Barry Greene, President and Chief Operating Officer; Akshay Vaishnaw, Executive Vice President of R&D and Chief Medical Officer; and Mike Mason, Vice President of Finance and Treasurer. In addition, DA Gros, Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer, is in the room and available for Q&A. For those of you participating via conference call, the webcast slides can also be accessed by going to the investor page of our website, www.alnylam.com. During today's call, as outlined in slide two, John will provide some introductory remarks and provide some general context; Akshay will then summarize recent clinical progress; Mike will review our financials and Barry will provide a brief summary of our 2016 goals and beyond before opening the call to your question. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call contains remarks concerning Alnylam's future expectations, plans and prospects, which constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the Safe Harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as well as results of various important factors, including those discussed in our most recently quarterly report on file with the SEC. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent our views only as of the date of this recording and should not be relied upon as representing our views on any subsequent date. We specifically disclaim any obligation to update such statements except as maybe required by law. With that, I would like to turn the call over to John. John M. Maraganore - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Christine, and thank you, everyone, for joining us on this beautiful afternoon. The second quarter and recent period were once again marked by important progress as we advanced RNAi therapeutics through clinical trials and toward the market. Akshay will go into our recent pipeline progress in more detail. But I would first like to provide some overall context. First, these are certainly exciting times at Alnylam, as we continue to execute on our Alnylam 2020 strategy. As a reminder, Alnylam 2020 is our goal to build a multi-product commercial stage company with a deep and sustainable clinical pipeline by the end of 2020, achieving a profile that has rarely been achieved in our industry and that is comparable to a top five biotech. To that end, we are at an important stage of growth in the company where we're expanding the needed capabilities in our R&D organization, growing our manufacturing and quality efforts and seeding the beginnings of our commercial teams in both the U.S. and European Union. Second, I'd like to provide some context on key quarter two and recent period clinical data readouts across our pipeline. With both patisiran and fitusiran, we achieved what we believe to be important positive results. Specifically, we reported 24-month data from our Phase 2 open label study showing that patisiran continues to be generally well tolerated and has the potential to halt or possibly even improve the neuropathy progression in patients with hATTR. More recently with our fitusiran program in hemophilia and rare bleeding disorders, we were very pleased to report interim Phase 1 data just last week at the World Federation of Hemophilia meeting and showing a median estimated ABR of 0 in patients with hemophilia A or B without inhibitors along with encouraging initial data in patients with inhibitors, and importantly, an encouraging safety profile with no related SAEs and no thromboembolic events through the data cutoff date. These new data sets with patisiran and fitusiran highlight what we believe to be the transformative potential for RNAi therapeutics. We also reported clinical data from our revusiran program in hATTR cardiomyopathy patients, where we believe results are slightly too early to interpret as they relate to clinical endpoints in hATTR cardiomyopathy. We continue to believe that we'll need to await results from our controlled studies, namely from ENDEAVOUR as well as the cardiac subgroup in APOLLO to truly assess the effect of TTR knockdown on clinical outcomes in the setting of hATTR cardiomyopathy. And then, we reported our initial PNH patient data with ALN-CC5 at EHA. These data have driven a shift in our ALN-CC5 strategy, where we're planning to execute on this change in a Phase 1/Phase 2 study in eculizumab inadequate responder patients later this year. In some, we believe that our Q2 and recent clinical data readouts have been highly informative for the advancement of these important clinical programs, and we're very encouraged by the potential for all of these programs to make a difference in patients' lives. Finally, over the second quarter period, Alnylam achieved a new milestone of having 10 programs in clinical development and having now enrolled over 1,000 cumulative patients in our clinical studies. In addition to the four programs I mentioned earlier, these 10 investigational clinical programs include many promising programs across our three strategic therapeutic areas, or STArs. Furthermore, our partners at The Medicines Company completed enrollment in the ORION-1 Phase 2 trial of ALN-PCSsc during the second quarter, and this 501-patient study represents the largest single trial for an investigational RNAi therapeutic ever conducted. So, in addition to our Q2 and recent clinical results, we're also very pleased with the excellent progress our team is making on drug discovery, R&D filings, clinical trial starts and patient enrollment, the operational nuts and bolts of drug development. Importantly, because of this high quality execution, the back half of 2016 is now poised to include data readouts from almost all of these programs, in addition to more data from fitusiran and ALN-CC5. With all of these clinical data readouts in the coming months, we believe it will be a highly informative period throughout the rest of the year, and we really can't wait to share our results as they mature. With those introductory comments, I'd like to now turn the call over to Akshay to review our pipeline progress in more detail. Akshay? Akshay K. Vaishnaw - Chief Medical Officer, EVP-Research & Development: Thanks, John, and good afternoon, everyone. We've indeed continued to make great progress with our pipeline of investigational RNAi therapeutics. I'll begin with the programs in our Genetic Medicines STAr and start with our RNAi therapeutics for the treatment of TTR amyloidosis or ATTR amyloidosis. As you know, we have multiple product candidates in this area. Let's start with patisiran, our most advanced effort, which we're developing for the treatment of hereditary ATTR amyloidosis with polyneuropathy, or hATTR-PN. At the ISA meeting last month, we reported initial 24-month data from our open-label extension, or OLE, study. These results continue to provide evidence that patisiran administration has the potential to halt or improve neuropathy progression in patients with hATTR-PN. Specifically, as shown on slide seven, our new data showed a mean 6.7% decrease in mNIS+7 at 24 months in the 24 patients with data available from this current analysis. We believe this is a very encouraging result and compares very favorably to an expected mean increase in mNIS+7 of 26 points to 30 points at 24 months, estimated from analyses of historical data sets in untreated hATTR-PN patients with similar baseline characteristics. Furthermore, 71% of patients had either an improvement or no change in their mNIS+7 at 24 months. The maximal individual improvement in mNIS+7 observed was a decrease of 35 points. We continue to be very encouraged by the generally favorable safety profile we've seen with patisiran with treatment out to 25 months. SAEs were reported in six patients and all were reported as unrelated to study drug. The majority of reported adverse events were mild to moderate. At the ISA meeting last month, we also reported on the baseline demographics with patients enrolled in APOLLO. As shown in this slide, the 225-patient Phase 3 study represents a truly global patient population with over 55 unique TTR mutations and enrollment at 44 sites in 19 countries. Of note, 54% of patients entered the study with cardiac involvement at baseline. Since APOLLO includes a number of secondary and exploratory endpoints regarding cardiac measures, we'll certainly be interested in seeing how patisiran performs here as compared with placebo, and this may inform further discussions with the regulators. In summary, we're very pleased with the progress on our patisiran program. Our results support the therapeutic hypothesis that TTR knockdown with patisiran has the potential to halt or even improve neuropathy progression. We believe these results bode well for our APOLLO Phase 3 trial, which is fully enrolled and where we expect to report top-line results in just a little over a year from now. Assuming positive data from APOLLO, we expect to file our first regulatory applications for approval in late 2017. Let's now turn to revusiran, our most advanced subcutaneously administered RNAi therapeutic in the clinic today, focused on the treatment of ATTR amyloidosis patients with cardiomyopathy or hATTR-CM. As a reminder, revusiran employs our first-generation standard template chemistry, or STC, GalNAc-conjugate technology. As John alluded to earlier, the patients comprising our Phase 2 OLE study population are relatively advanced in their disease course with a mean time from diagnosis to first dose of 35 months. hATTR-CM is a terrible disease that is generally fatal within a few years of diagnosis, not unlike cancer. So, our Phase 2 OLE patients comprise a rather advanced study population. And to put this in context, the mean time from diagnosis to first dose is approximately one year for the first 139 patients enrolled in our ENDEAVOUR Phase 3 trial. Regarding clinical activity, revusiran achieved robust and sustained TTR knockdown over 18 months, with an up to 98% maximum and 88% mean maximum knockdown of TTR. In terms of 6-minute walk distance, we were pleased to see that the majority of evaluable hATTR-CM patients, five out of nine to be precise, exhibited generally stable 6-minute walk distance results. In terms of safety, 14 patients in the revusiran OLE presented with serious adverse events. One SAE was deemed possibly related to study drug, a case of lactic acidosis in a patient with many other complicating factors. There were a total of seven deaths, all of which were unrelated to study drug. The majority of AEs were mild to moderate in severity and included injection site reactions in 12 patients. Importantly, beyond the three cases reported on at the ECATTR conference last November, there were no further discontinuations due to ISRs. In summary with revusiran, we continue to believe that we'll need to await results from controlled studies, namely from ENDEAVOUR, as well as from cardiac subgroup analyses in APOLLO to evaluate the effect of TTR knockdown on clinical outcomes in hATTR-CM. Also, we recently guided that the enrollment in ENDEAVOUR is proceeding well. Indeed, we now expect to complete enrollment by the end of the summer putting us in a position to present initial top-line data in early 2018. And finally, within our ATTR amyloidosis portfolio, we initiated a Phase 1 trial for ALN-TTRsc02, an ESC-GalNAc-siRNA conjugate targeting TTR. Based on the preclinical profile of this candidate as well as the emerging clinical profiles of other ESC-GalNAc conjugates in our pipeline, we believe that ALN-TTRsc02 has the potential to support a low volume once-quarterly subcutaneous dose regimen. Beyond our ATTR programs, another exciting milestone in the recent period was the presentation of interim Phase 1 results with fitusiran or ALN-AT3 which we're developing for the treatment of hemophilia and rare bleeding disorders. Fitusiran is designed to lower levels of antithrombin with the goal of promoting sufficient thrombin generation to restore hemostasis, thereby preventing bleeding in patients with hemophilia and rare bleeding disorders. As a once-monthly low volume fixed dose subcutaneous prophylactic treatment option that could be shown to provide durable and consistent bleed prevention without the risk of antidrug antibodies and without the peaks and troughs found with factor replacement, we believe that fitusiran could positively change the paradigm of hemophilia treatment. Data presented last week at the WFH meeting showed that monthly subcutaneous dosing with fitusiran achieved dose-dependent AT lowering, increases in thrombin generation and a median estimated annualized bleeding rate, or ABR, of 0 in patients with hemophilia A or B without inhibitors. Furthermore, in the initial low dose cohorts, in patients with inhibitors, where patients received a once-monthly fixed dose of 50 milligrams, fitusiran achieved antithrombin lowering, increased thrombin generation, and preliminary evidence for reduced bleeding. We'd be interested in seeing how these data mature with longer follow-up, as well as how fitusiran performs in inhibitor patients in the second cohort, where they're now receiving an 80-milligram fixed dose. We also remain encouraged by the safety profile for fitusiran. As reported at WFH, fitusiran administration was generally well tolerated in patients with and without inhibitors, with no SAEs related to study drug and no thromboembolic events or laboratory evidence of pathologic clot formation through the data transfer date. One patient discontinued due to a severe AE, being possibly related to drug, an event of non-cardiac chest pain that resulted in the symptomatic management using analgesics and antacids. As we announced at WFH we updated our Phase 3 guidance following initial constructive discussions with U.S. and European regulators and now plan to be in pivotal trials in early 2017. We're also actively enrolling Phase 1 patients over into fitusiran Phase 1/2 OLE study where 21 patients have now received up to 13 months of dosing. We look forward to sharing initial data from this study later in the year, likely at the ASH conference in December. These are indeed very exciting times for people living with hemophilia and we believe that fitusiran has the potential of becoming an important treatment option for them in the future. Turning now to our recent progress with ALN-CC5 in development for the treatment of complement-mediated diseases; at the European Hematology Association meeting in June we presented initial data from six patients with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, or PNH. In patients who were eculizumab or Ecu naïve, we observed impressive knockdown of serum C5 of up to 99%. While there was an up to 50% lowering of lactate dehydrogenase, or LDH, a marker of red cell hemolysis, LDH levels were not reduced to a level below 1.5 times the upper limit of normal, which is the goal for management of PNH. On the other hand, exploratory evidence was obtained demonstrating that ALN-CC5 has the potential to reduce the dosing frequency of Ecu administration. We also demonstrated that ALN-CC5 administration to an inadequate responder patient resulted in rapid reduction of LDH to below 1.5 times the upper limit of normal with associated clinical improvement. ALN-CC5 was generally well tolerated in patients with PNH after multiple doses with the majority of adverse events being mild or moderate in severity. While it's important to keep in mind that this is a small study with just fixed PNH patients, these findings have informed what we believe to be an exciting path forward for the program. Specifically, in PNH, durable hepatic C5 synthesis inhibition with ALN-CC5 could improve overall disease management and quality of life and also reduce the burdens associated with frequent intravenous infusions required for the anti-C5 monoclonal antibody therapy. We plan to explore the potential for ALN-CC5 in patients who are inadequate responders to eculizumab as well as for sparing of anti-C5 monoclonal antibodies. We believe that at least 20% to 30% of PNH patients require higher than label doses of Ecu, and that significant unmet medical need exists for these patients and their caregivers. We look forward to evaluating ALN-CC5 further, both in ongoing analyses of PNH patients in the current Phase 1/2 study, and in a Phase 2 study initially in inadequate responder patients that we expect to start by year's end. We also see a potential broader opportunity for ALN-CC5 as mono-therapy in a number of complement-mediated diseases, where there is no CD55, CD59 deficiency, including aHUS and myasthenia gravis and we expect to begin studies in one or more of these diseases in 2017. We've also continued to make strong progress across the rest of our Genetic Medicines pipeline. In our ALN-AS1 program in acute hepatic porphyrias, we're targeting an enzyme ALAS1 in the heme biosynthesis pathway that's self-regulated and leads to accumulation of the toxic attack-causing heme synthesis intermediates ALA and PBG. By targeting ALAS1, we aim to decrease flux through the pathway, reducing levels of ALA and PBG and reduce porphyria attacks. In our initial report last September, we presented preliminary data from asymptomatic porphyria patients, showing that we can silence ALAS1 and reduce levels of ALA and PBG. Next month, we plan on updating you on results from asymptomatic patients in Parts A and B of the Phase 1 study. In the meantime, we are currently dosing symptomatic patients in Part C of the Phase 1 study, where ALN-AS1 is being evaluated in recurrent attack porphyria patients. Here, we will look to see whether ALN-AS1 can reduce the frequency and severity of porphyria attacks in these patients. Our goal is to present initial data from Part C later this year. If these Phase 1 data are positive we plan to advance to a Phase 3 trial in 2017. Turning to ALN-AAT for the treatment of alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency associated liver disease, we continue with our ongoing Phase 1/2 study and we plan to present initial data at the OTS conference in September. We are also developing ALN-GO1 for the treatment of primary hyperoxaluria type 1, or PH1. We believe ALN-GO1 has the potential to lower oxalate levels and prevent the formation of kidney stones and renal damage in patients with PH1. The ongoing Phase 1/2 trial is being conducted initially in normal healthy volunteers, and will soon move into patients with PH1. We are pleased to announce today that we plan on sharing initial human healthy volunteer data from the trial at the IPNA meeting next month. I will now turn to a review of progress from our Cardio-Metabolic Disease pipeline. Of course, our leading program in this STAr is ALN-PCSsc which targets PCSK9. As a reminder, ALN-PCSsc is an investigational RNAi therapeutic targeting PCSK9, with the potential for a once quarterly or even biannual subcutaneous dosing regimen. As John noted earlier, our partners at The Medicines Company recently announced completion of enrollment of the ORION Phase 2 trial for ALN-PCSsc with 501 patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. The Medicines Company have guided that they expect to report initial data from the trial later this year, and more recently confirmed that they are on track. We'd expect that this report will occur at the AHA meeting in November, pending abstract acceptance. It's worth noting that these data constitute the largest single study safety database of an ESC-GalNAc conjugate to date. Finally, we're also making strong progress in our hepatic infectious disease STArs and recently initiated our Phase 1/2 trial of the ALN-HBV, which we're developing for chronic hepatitis B virus infection. The study is being conducted initially in healthy volunteers to evaluate safety and will then move into patients infected with HBV. We continue to be very excited about this program as we believe that it could emerge as the best-in-class RNAi therapeutic in the field with potential for subcutaneous, once-monthly or once-quarterly dosing profile and a wide therapeutic window. Initial data from the Phase 1/2 trial are expected in mid-2017. In summary, we believe we're making excellent progress on programs in our RNAi therapeutics pipeline across all three STArs. It's really been an especially exciting and productive time for us as we continue to lead the translation of the science of RNAi toward the development of innovative medicines. We very much look forward to sharing additional clinical data with you in the back half of the year. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Mike for a review of our financials. Mike?