Michael Partridge - Vice President-Investor Relations
Management
Good evening. This is Michael Partridge, Vice President of Investor Relations for Vertex. Welcome to our Second Quarter 2016 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode right now. And later, we will open the lines for question. You can access the webcast slides by going to our website where our replay will also be available later tonight. Dr. Jeff Leiden, Chairman and CEO; and Ian Smith, Chief Financial Officer will provide prepared remarks this evening. They will be joined by Stuart Arbuckle, Chief Commercial Officer; and Dr. Jeff Chodakewitz, Chief Medical Officer for the Q&A portion of the conference call. We will make forward-looking statements on this conference call. These statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties discussed in detail in today's press release and our 10-K, which has been filed with the SEC. These statements, including without limitation, those regarding the ongoing development and potential commercialization of our drug candidates, our expectations regarding our approved medicines, and Vertex's future financial performance are based on management's current assumptions. Actual outcomes and events could differ materially. Information regarding our use of GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP is available in tonight's press release. I would also refer you to slide four of tonight's webcast. I will now turn the call over to Dr. Jeff Leiden. Jeffrey M. Leiden - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Michael. Good evening, everyone. It's just over one year ago that we received FDA approval for ORKAMBI, marking the most significant step to date in our journey to develop new medicines for people with cystic fibrosis. Tonight I'm pleased to report on our significant and steady progress in CF and I'll review three key phases in our efforts to bring all people with CF a medicine to treat the underlying cause of their disease. If we're successful in these efforts, we believe significant and sustained revenue and earnings growth will follow. Today there're approximately 27,000 people eligible for treatment with ORKAMBI or KALYDECO. However, we're only treating approximately 9,000 or one-third of these patients. The first and most significant near-term step to increase the number of eligible patients being treated with our medicines is to gain reimbursement of ORKAMBI in key European and other country. Progress with reimbursement for ORKAMBI would enable the vast majority of currently eligible patients to be treatment with one of our CF medicines. The second step to treat more people with CF is to further expand the labels for both ORKAMBI and KALYDECO, which could increase the total number of eligible patients from 27,000 to approximately 44,000. And the third step is to potentially treat all people with CF with new combinations of CFTR modulators as well as other approaches to treatment such as ENaC inhibition, gene editing and mRNA therapies. First, to reimbursement for ORKAMBI; outside the U.S. the reimbursement process is ongoing. And these discussions are progressing as anticipated across Europe, Canada and Australia. We're encouraged that many reimbursement authorities have acknowledged the significant clinical benefits that ORKAMBI provides. We believe that we will achieve reimbursement from European and other government payers, just as we've seen in the U.S. We look forward to updating you as we obtain reimbursement in key countries going forward. Second, to our label expansion efforts for both ORKAMBI and KALYDECO. Specifically there're some 12,000 additional patients younger than age 12 with two copies of the delta 508 mutation who we believe could be helped by ORKAMBI. In the second quarter, the FDA accepted for review our supplemental new drug application for the use of ORKAMBI in children ages six to 11 years and granted our request for priority review, setting a target review date, or PDUFA date, September 30, 2016. If approved, we expect to be ready to bring ORKAMBI to these patients immediately following approval. In parallel, we're also progressing with our efforts to bring ORKAMBI to children ages six to 11 years in Europe where we plan to submit our application for approval in the first half of next year following the conclusion of our fully enrolled Phase 3 efficacy and safety study in this group of patients. We estimate that there are approximately 2,400 children ages six to 11 years in the U.S. and 3,400 in Europe who would be eligible for ORKAMBI. There're approximately 5,000 additional patients in North America, Europe and Australia; largely those with residual function mutations who could be helped by KALYDECO. While we received a complete response letter from the FDA earlier this year regarding our application for approval of KALYDECO, in people with CF ages two and older who have one of 23 residual function mutations, I believe the KALYDECO will be beneficial to these patients is unchanged and we continue to pursue FDA approval for these patients as soon as possible. There're approximately 1,500 people with CF in the U.S. who have the mutations included in our residual function sNDA. And third, to our expanding pipeline of investigational CF medicines; the most advanced pipeline program in CF is our broad Phase 3 program for VX-661 in combination with ivacaftor. VX-661 plus ivacaftor may have an improved benefit risk profile compared to ORKAMBI in people with two copies of the delta 508 mutation, and may provide enhanced clinical benefits over ivacaftor monotherapy for other patients with gating mutations. Enrollment in the study of VX-661 plus ivacaftor in people ages 12 and older with two copies of the delta 508 mutation, is expected to complete in August. Data from this six-month study are expected in first half of 2017. The other three Phase 3 studies of VX-661 are also progressing as planned. We plan to submit a new drug application to the U.S. FDA for VX-661 in combination with ivacaftor in the second half of 2017. Importantly, VX-661 is also positioned to play a key role in the triple combination regimen with a next-generation corrector and ivacaftor. We believe that this triple combination approach may allow us to treat an additional large group of patients. Specifically, those with one delta 508 mutation and one mutation that results in minimal CFTR function. These patients do not currently have a medicine to treat the cause of their disease. Our two next-generation correctors VX-152 and VX-440 are being evaluated in Phase 1 studies in healthy volunteers. Pending data from these studies, we expect to move into Phase 2 clinical development in the second half of 2016 in people with CF. These studies would evaluate one or both for our next-generation correctors with VX-661 and ivacaftor. Beyond the CFTR modulators, we've entered into multiple strategic collaborations that broaden our ability to evaluate additional approaches to CF treatment that may be complimentary to CFTR modulation in the future. While the underlying technology and science of each approach differs, the collaborations have a shared goal to develop the best possible future treatments for all people with CF. Earlier this month we entered into collaboration with Moderna Therapeutics aimed at using messenger RNA to potentially enable cells in the lungs of the people with CF to produce functional CFTR protein. This is the second platform technology collaboration we have entered into, following our agreement with CRISPR Therapeutics focused on the use of CRISPR/Cas9 for gene editing that we began in late 2015. These platform technologies add to our development stage collaboration with Parion Sciences focused on the use of ENaC inhibition to treat CF. As we enter the second half of 2016, I'm pleased with both the near-term and long-term growth opportunities for our business. Our goal is to consistently discover and deliver transformative new medicines for patients and to reinvest in scientific opportunities to create future medicine. We believe our business model, which is focused on significant investment to create value through innovation, research and development, will position us to achieve this goal over the coming years. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ian.