Agenus Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Agenius second quarter 2021 conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note that this event is being recorded and may be used in future Agenius promotional material. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Medina, Director of Investor Relations. John, please go ahead.

Thank you, Myra, and thank you all for joining us today. Today's call is being webcast and will be available on our website for replay. I'd like to remind you that this call will include forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our clinical development, regulatory and commercial plans, and timelines, as well as timelines for data release and partnership opportunities. These statements are subject to risks and Uncertainties, and we refer you to our SEC filings for more details on these risks. As another reminder, this call is being recorded for audio broadcast. Joining me today are Dr. Garo Armen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Jennifer Buell, President and Chief Operating Officer, Andy Hurley, our Chief Commercial Officer, and Christine Klaskin, Vice President of Finance. Now I'll turn the call over to Garo to highlight our progress during 2021 so far. Garo?

Thank you very much, John, and thank you everyone for joining us today. In addition to the named officers of the company, we also have Dr. Steven O'Day, our chief medical officer, to answer any questions that you may have at the end. I will start by displaying what I did at our shareholders meeting approximately eight weeks ago. and there we try to explain our business in simple terms so that there's clarity about what we focus on, our key operational drivers and some of the supportive programs we have. Starting with our significant value creators, 1181, that's AGEN 1181, which is our next generation CTLA-4 compound. That is beyond what just the CTLA-4 does. And you'll hear about that on many future occasions, as you have heard before. And with our 1181 program, we have already enrolled well over 100 patients in our clinical trials. And the results of updated clinical data will be made available in the second half of this year at major at least one major clinical conference. Our second significant value driver, which we talked about at the shareholders meeting, is our Agent 797 program, which is our INKT cells. Now, we cannot say very much about that because we have filed an S-1 for a proposed public offering. Third major driver, is our agent 2373. Now, this is a 41BB agonist. We also call it CD137. This compound, which has been tested for the last almost a year, has shown excellent safety profile, and we're seeing now hints of very early clinical activity. and in the second half of this year, you'll hear more about this compound. And of course, we have our QS21 program, which has gotten a lot of attention because of COVID and because of what this compound can do for other vaccines beyond what's been in the headlines with COVID prophylaxis. Now, as you know, we get questions often about which programs to prioritize and how do we fund these programs. And, of course, early on, in the beginning of this quarter, we closed on a very important transaction. It was the Bristol-Myers in-licensing of our TIGIT bispecific and the bispecific arm has not been disclosed yet. Now this is a very exciting compound. We have thought that Bristol is one of the best candidates to advance this program, if not the best candidate. And we also disclose that at the time of our consummation of this transaction, that it was a competitive process. So this transaction allows us to get the $200 million which we've already received. In addition to that, the well over a billion dollars worth of contingent milestone payments and royalties upon commercialization. But also very importantly, we have a number of other potential transactions in the queue. And some may happen. during the course of the second half of this year, and some beyond. Now, we also talked about potential spin-out strategies. We talked about the S-1 filing for a proposed IPO for Mink. Mink, by the way, for those of you who may remember, is the original agentus company. This is our cell therapy company. and we also anticipate other potential spin-outs from businesses that have been cultivated with Agenis and are ready to be on their own. Now, we've also talked about potential project financings as a strategy to bring in additional cash, particularly for programs that we plan on pursuing ourselves without necessarily having to out-license them. And there are a number of such programs in our portfolio. Now, the third category that we mentioned were what we call supportive programs. And supportive programs certainly include Bostilumab, RPD-1 Anybody. And we've said that while RPD-1 Anybody on its own may not be a Blockbuster Potential. It can be a Blockbuster Potential product in connection with some of the other elements in our portfolio. We've also talked about our Bostilumab plus Zolifilumab, and you will hear more about that very soon at a major medical conference, ESMO, which we announced with our earnings disclosure today. Now, we've also been in discussions for potential clinical collaborations for some of our earlier assets, meaning bostilumab as well as zoliferulamab. These compounds can be very valuable in connection with other people's assets that will benefit from the synergy provided by PD-1 and CTLA-4 combinations, and those will benefit us further by expanding the market with these combinations for our PD-1 and first-generation CTLA-4 antibodies. The fourth pillar we spoke about are our key operational capabilities, which on one hand allow us to advance our programs in the clinic very rapidly. On the other hand, they also allow us to manufacture our candidates reliably and rapidly. And thirdly, they allow us to be able to launch our own products as Dr. Andy Hurley today will be speaking about briefly. So with that, I will turn this call to Dr. Jennifer Buell. Thank you, Jennifer.