Good morning, and welcome to the Voyager Therapeutics Second Quarter 2016 Financial and Operating Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the formal remarks we will open up the call up for Q&A. Please be advised that this call is being recorded at the Company’s request. At this time, I’d like to turn the call over to Matt Osborne, Voyager’s Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please proceed.

Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome to the Voyager Therapeutics second quarter 2016 financial and operating results conference call. This morning we issued a press release which outlines these results and provides a business update that we plan to discuss today. The release is available at our Web site at www.voyagertherapeutics.com. Today on our call, Dr. Steve Paul, Voyager’s President & CEO will discuss the program highlights; Jeff Goater, Voyager’s CFO will review the financial results and then we will open up the call for your questions. Dr. Bernard Ravina, Voyager’s VP of Clinical Development would join us on the call for the Q&A period. Before we begin just a reminder that the estimates and other forward-looking statements included in this call represents the Company's view as of today August 11, 2016. Voyager disclaims any obligation to update these statements to reflect future events or circumstances. Please refer to today's earnings release as well as Voyager's filings with the SEC for information concerning risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. With that let me pass the call over to the Steve.

Thank you, Matt and good morning everyone. As you know Voyager’s goal our mission is to become the leading gene therapy company focused on developing manufacturing and commercializing gene therapy medicines for serious diseases of the central nervous system and we have made strong progress towards achieving this goal during the past quarter as I will discuss. But first I want to briefly highlight the solid foundation we have built in just over a two short years since the company was founded. We have assembled a highly skilled research and development team with deep and relevant expertise in the areas of drug discovery and development. The team has pioneered significant advances in AAV gene therapy, neuroscience, CNS drug discovery and importantly has extensive expertise not only in drug development but also in AAV vector manufacturing. We also have deep technical expertise in the way that we are targeting these diseases, either through gene replacement, gene knockdown or silencing or newer approach that we announced at our R&D Day in April where we used AAV vectors to deliver therapeutic proteins such as monoclonal antibodies. Through the efforts and dedication of the Voyager team we have generated a robust pipeline of programs that have the potential to improve the lives of patients suffering from devastating diseases of the CNS. And if we project out over the next 18 to 24 months we plan to have multiple programs in clinical development targeting these diseases. And we also have a very productive strategic collaboration with Sanofi Genzyme, a committed and early pioneer in the field of gene therapy. I'll spend the next few minutes describing the progress of our lead program VY-AADC01 for the treatment of advanced Parkinson’s disease and the key milestones we expect to deliver later this year and in 2017 before…

Thank you, Steve. Voyager continues to maintain a strong balance sheet with efficient use of capital applied for its generating value-added progress with our pipeline. In this morning’s press release we reported a GAAP net loss for the second quarter of 2016 of $9.3 million or $0.37 per share compared to a net loss of $6.7 million or $5.94 per share for the same period in 2015. R&D expenses for the second quarter of 2016 were approximately $10.5 million compared to $6.5 million for the same period in 2015. R&D expenditures for the quarter relate primarily due to R&D manufactured and personnel cost associated with Voyager’s pipeline progress as Steve described in detail. G&A expenses were $2.9 million for the second quarter of 2016 compared to $2.4 million for the same period in 2015. The increase was largely due to expenditures in G&A personnel associated with the growth of the Company including expenses related to operating as a public Company. We reported cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities totaling approximately $204 million as of June 30, 2016 compared to approximately $214 million on March 31, 2016. This morning we’re reiterating the financial guidance that we initially provided on March 17, 2016. Based on our current operating plan, we expect to end 2016 with cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of approximately $160 million and we project that our existing cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities will be sufficient to fund operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements into 2019. With that we would now like to open up the call for questions, operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from line of Jim Birchenough of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

This is Yanan Zhu in for Jim. Two questions, the first is on a few questions on duration of follow-up, wondering if we could see longer duration than six months for Cohort 1, because that Cohort was started earlier than Cohort 2, and additionally also on that point of duration follow-up, what might be the appropriate duration of follow-up in the future pivotal trial? Thanks.

Go ahead.

Yes. Hi it’s Bernard Yanan, very good question and just a thing I will take you backup to remind you where we’re a little bit. So we are in the midst of a very rigorous those escalation study, where we are systematically increasing concentration as well as volume for coverage and containment. So, Cohort 1 of that study yes we have subjects who are now out to two years and for Cohort 2 of that study we have subjects who will by the end of this year have completed six months to one year of follow-up. Then for next year as we mentioned we just initiated Cohort 3 so we will be seeing six month data from that cohort in the first half or early second half of next year so that's sort of where we are in terms of that overall picture. In terms of your specific question about what duration is appropriate I think we have to see how the data evolves and how the treatment effects evolve overtime, but we suspect that approximately six months out to one year would be an appropriate time point or spectrum to see the effects evolve as well as to be able to demonstrate that those effects are durable.

Right. And if I may ask a follow-up on that that is for any potential placebo effect due to the surgical procedure alone what would the expectation be for that placebo effect to last? Is there a consensus on that? Thanks.

Yes it's a very good question. And so we are absolutely cognoscente of the placebo effects and as we've discussed towards the second half of next year we expect to be initiating a placebo or sham surgery controlled randomized study. In terms of the duration and the effect of that it really varies as you look at prior studies or prior gene therapy studies but the key is simply to have a placebo or sham surgery group in there that you can compare to the actively treated group at six months and at 12 months and that really fully accounts for the placebo effect, so it's not so much a question of duration of that it is just making sure you have the appropriate placebo or sham surgery comparative.

Thanks. Last question and I'll jump back in the queue. Is this because I think Cohort 3 and 4 are expected to have the same volume of injection. So is this the correct expectation that a coverage will be the same as Cohort 2? And if I also may ask Cohort 1 and Cohort 2 when we compare we see increasing both dose and coverage or actually due to volume. Do you have a sense of the benefit seen in Cohort 2 how much of that benefit i.e. in patient number six is that due to the volume increase and how much is due to the dose increase just to anticipation of the Cohort 3 data? Thanks.

Yes, so good questions. So right we are systematically varying volume we increased the volume in Cohort 2 keeping the concentration the same. Cohorts 3 will have a threefold increase in concentration and the first patient in that cohort was just reasonably dosed. Cohort 4 will also increase concentration approximately another twofold so systematic varying of volume, coverage of the putamen as well as concentration and that’s really the goal of the study is to understand the dose-related or dose-dependent effects of increasing concentration, as well as increasing coverage of the putamen. So, we will report out Cohort 2 as well as Cohort 1 at the end of the year so we will get initial understanding of that and into next year, we will have further disclosures of Cohort 3, and see how the concentration related changes effect the outcomes of interest.

Yes. As we have said, this is Steve Paul. We have only limited non-human primate dose response data, but we can gain from that, is that we believe we need about a 30% coverage now that could be plus or minus a few percentage points if you will. And we don’t know exactly what the completely optimal concentration of the vector is. We know we’re on the low-end of the dose response curve we have seen very good safety, so there is no reason not to explore higher doses, which is exactly what we’re doing right now. We don’t have the data yet completed in Cohort 2, so we can't be absolutely certain that the dose we used in volume in Cohort 2 is not adequate. But we feel we need to go up and not wait for those data in order to continue to optimize this whole protocol.

And your question about coverage for the subsequent Cohort 3 and 4, correct, we’re keeping the volume the same, so we expect similar overall coverage of the putamen. However, as the surgeons gain experience there may be incremental improvements in coverage both in the putamen overall as well as in specific regions like the posterior putamen.

The other good news here is that the variability between patients in each of these Cohorts is really rather low, which is really good news.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Phillip Nadeau of Cowen & Company. Your line is now open.

Steve, one for you on a comment you just made and what did you really base your decision to go into Cohort 3, was it safety data that you're seeing real-time, due to some anecdotal efficacy data or was this just simply the default pathway unless there actually had been a problem in Cohort 2?

So a couple of factors Phil, one is from the non-human primate data that we have and again I want to say it's not complete dose response data. We know we're on the lower end of the dose response curve, still affected in the monkeys put on the lower end. The fact that we are seeing good safety no vector related issues whatsoever at this point in time and the fact that we have already on hand formulated vector to go up at least six-fold from Cohort 2 we are going up threefold in Cohort 3. All leads us to the conclusion that we just need to explore higher doses and higher concentrations and not wait until we have the complete six month data in-hand on Cohort 2.

And really the perspective is that fully exploring the dose range will really put us in a good position to select a concentration as well as target coverage for subsequent randomized sham controlled studies.

And in most gene therapy trials before you move to the new cohort DSMB looks at the safety data and kind of gives you green light can we assume that that happened here that you weren’t seeing a lot of side effects from Cohort 2 in order to be able to move on to Cohort 3?

Yes.

That's correct.

Okay, great. Then similar question I guess on Cohort 4 when is that decision going to be made is that going to be made after you see that six month data from cohorts 1 and 2 or could that decision actually be made before we even see that data?

So that decision will be made after we've completed dosing in Cohort 3 and as you suggested it really depends on the safety in Cohort 3.

Go it, okay. And then one more clinical question, can you help us frame the data at the end of the year. What do you hope to see in terms of efficacy from Cohort 2 to qualify as formal proof of concept? And as a follow-up to one of the prior questions there is no placebo here so what quality of efficacy would give you very strong sense that it's not just placebo effect that you are seeing real efficacy from transferring?

Yes, it is a really important question so again just back to the picture this is an interim look, and we are in the midst of this dose escalation study so with that in mind it's not any particular single end-point in a given patient at a given point in time that way you would expect to see in a Phase 2 or a Phase 3 trial. So what we really are looking for here is, is the totality of the data and to make sure that multiple end-points that kind of affirm that we are hitting the mechanism and see that those are moving in the right direction. So with that in mind there are of course particularly important clinical end-points in this population that is the Parkinson's diary data looking at their off time as well as their molecular motor examiner or motor severity of the unified Parkinson's rating scale. So those are the important clinical end-points but what we want to see is that the patients’ PET scans measuring their expression of AADC as well as their responsiveness to Levodopa measured by how much Levodopa they need and their response to IV levodopa all move in the right direction. So it's really that coherence of data in addition to the magnitude of the effects that will give us confidence that we are moving in the right direction in an unblinded trial like this.

Got it, that's very helpful. And just one last question for you, can you remind or can you tell us what the current share count is?

Sure. It's right around 27 million fully diluted.

27 million, perfect. Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations on the progress.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Katherine Breedis of Stifel. Your line is now open.

Just getting back to the dosing for Cohort 3 to understand that a little bit better we know the dosing for Cohort 2 converts to about 900 microliters per putamen by volume so, and we know also that I guess Cohort 3 dosing is roughly three times or more than that. Could you provide the conversion volume for Cohort 3 how we should think about that? Secondly if we know that Cohort 2 achieved approximately call it 36% to 38% coverage per putamen. Is it possible that Cohort 3 could potentially achieve 100% putamen coverage? And then lastly it sounds like if Cohort 3 provides the dataset that you are looking for and you are contemplating a placebo controlled Phase 2 studies starting the second half of 2017, the dose that we're testing in Cohort 3 could indeed be the next dose that you take forward into Phase 2, is that correct? Thank you.

So good question, and just to come back on the dosing there is always a little bit of a point of confusion, so the total dose of vector is the concentration on to the volume that we infuse. So for Cohort 2, it was 900 microliters of volume. For Cohort 3, we're keeping the volume the same but the concentration goes up approximately threefold so the total dose goes up approximately threefold. And then to the second half of your question we are doing this stepwise increasing concentration as well as coverage to understand what the appropriate dose is both in terms of safety and efficacy that we should select for our future study. So we really need to see how the data evolves this Q4 look end of the year will be the first interim discussion of cohorts 1 and 2 and then we'll how Cohort 3 evolves from there.

So Katherine this is Steve Paul. The actual volume that's going to be administered in Cohort 3 is going to be same roughly, roughly as Cohort 2. And we're going to increase the concentration 3x so given equivalent volume the dose is going to go up about threefold. But we don't anticipate more coverage in Cohort 3 relative to Cohort 2, we just believe that we'll get more transduction more expression of the enzyme given that we are increasing the concentration of the vector. And having said that one thing that I think is worth pointing out and underscoring is that, we're getting better and better as we do more of these procedures that are actually just delivering this vector, so the surgeons may actually increase beyond 30%, 35% if you will even with the same volume. So there is a sort of a surgical protocol procedure variable here that we want to emphasize and just like DBS in the beginning, it was a longer more conversant procedure and then got pretty reutilized we are seeing sort of the same thing evolve with our procedure as well. So we may actually achieve greater coverage than Cohort 2 which by the way averaged 34% in Cohort 3 on top of the increase in the concentration and thus the increase in total dose. But let me also underscore that we don't know yet whether Cohort 2 is not an adequate dose, if we see roughly-roughly the same equivalent efficacy in Cohort 3, as we do in Cohort 2, we may elect to go with Cohort 2 so we're just not sure until we actually see the data.

Well in terms of the Cohort 3 patients you mentioned that we could see data from some patients in the fourth quarter and you described it as preliminary data, could you characterize what we should expect to see in that dataset, will it just be surgical coverage, is there -- are there any biomarkers of efficacy that could readout at that time? And how many patients do you think you may have enrolled by the end of year in Cohort 3?

So as you know a lot of the key efficacy outcomes as well as the repeat PET and things like the levodopa infusions occur at six months, so we'll only have those for Cohort 1 and Cohort 2 for Cohort 3 we dosed the initial subject, we're hopeful that we by the end of the year we'll have an additional one or two subjects but we can comment on. We will certainly know their coverage data at that point and we may have some initial clinical data but again the key endpoints occur at six months.

Okay.

And the clinical data is also collected at three months and if we may have one or two patients at three months just like patient number six, which should be again diary off UPDRS off etcetera.

That's great. And then in terms of the clinical trial sites you mentioned that you are going to begin adding additional sites which is great news, do you think they will be added to the Phase 1b protocol or you are really thinking ahead for the start of your Phase 2 study in the second half of 2017?

Really both, so what we wanted to is make sure that we get these sites onboard and that they have experience with the delivery as part of our Phase 1 studies and as Steve mentioned as the surgeons do this they get technically more confident and so there is potential to optimize the coverage even more so we would like to have those surgical sites onboard with most of them having completed since surgeries and prior to the start of that randomized study.

Yes.

So these are all sites this is Steve again, that do a lot of Stereotactic surgery mostly for DBS and what we plan to do obviously is use these sites not only for further clinical development i.e. in a pivotal trial but also eventually for commercialization purposes as well.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of David Nierengarten of Wedbush. Your line is now open.

Most of my questions have been asked, but I had a maybe a little bit of a patient disposition question, do -- the patients -- do you know if the patients are coming in and recommended for the trail were they otherwise going to go for deep brain stimulation or were they just advanced Parkinson's patients and asking their physician for whatever they could provide if you could have a little bit of detail on that I would appreciate it? Thanks.

Yes, it's a good question so really the question is how are these patients identified, where they come from, it's a mix so some of these are people who their physician has simply identified that they have advanced PD and they are poorly controlled. Others were identified as potential DBS candidates and this is really a very similar group of patients to those who would be DBS candidates so that's what is a natural point of referral.

Thank you. And I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the cal back over to management for closing remarks.

Okay, well this is Steve Paul, CEO. Thanks to everyone for their interest in Voyager Therapeutics and we look forward to future updates as the year progresses. Thanks so much.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. That does conclude today's program and you may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.