Alpine Immune Sciences, Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining the Alpine Immune Sciences second quarter 2021 financial results and corporate update conference call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following management prepared remarks, we will hold a question and answer session. To ask a question at the time, please press star followed by one on your touchtone telephone. If anyone has difficulty hearing the conference, please press star zero for operator assistance. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Tuesday, August 10th, 2021. I would now like to introduce Alex Shariff, Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Mary. With me on today's call from Alpine Immune Sciences are Executive Chairman and CEO, Dr. Mitchell Gold, President and Head of Research and Development, Dr. Sanford Pang, Chief Financial Officer, Paul Rickey, and Chief Business Officer, Dr. Remy Durand. This afternoon, Alpine Immune Sciences issued a press release announcing the company's second quarter 2021 financial results and corporate update. If you have not received this news release and would like to read it, or if you would simply like to be added to the company's distribution list, You can do both on the investor relations page of the company's website at www.alpineimmunesciences.com. During the course of today's conference call, Alpine's management will make forward-looking statements including, but not limited to, statements regarding the company's preclinical and clinical development plans and the timing thereof, expectations regarding the sufficiency of cash to fund operations, including any cash received from potential milestone payments under Alpine's collaborations, the timing and publication of future clinical data, expectations regarding Alpine's ongoing collaborations and potential future collaborations, including the anticipated strategic and financial benefits of the option and licensing agreement between Alpine and AbbVie for the development and commercialization of ALPN 101 or CASI-COLSEPT, Alpine's ability to successfully develop its product candidates and achieve milestones under its collaboration with AbbVie and others, and the financial and business outlook for Alpine. These forward-looking statements are based on the company's current expectations and inherently involve significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results and the timing of events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of these risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause results to be different from these statements also include factors the company describes in the section entitled risk factors in Alpine's quarterly filing on form 10Q for the period ended June 30th, 2021 and filed with the SEC on or about August 10th, 2021. Alpine cautions you not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and undertakes no duty or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or changes in its expectations. With that, I will now turn the call over to Alpine's Executive Chairman and CEO, Dr. Mitchell Gold.

Thanks, Alex, and welcome to our second quarter 2021 financial results conference call. We had a highly productive second quarter with substantial progress made across our portfolio. We look to continue to build on our strong momentum and accelerate development of our pipeline of innovative therapies for patients living with cancer and autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Before Stanford provides a summary of the key updates for our three most advanced programs, I wanted to take a step back and highlight where the company sits today. When we founded the company over six years ago, we had a goal of targeting CD28, the key costimatory ligand on T-cells, as a therapeutic approach both for oncology and for autoimmune diseases. In 2015, CD28 was seen as too risky a direct target given early experiences with the case of narrow monoclonal antibody eliciting near-fatal cytokine storm. We believed that biology was too compelling and believed we could successfully engineer approaches that were both safe and effective. That belief resulted in the development of ALPINE-101, which we will refer to going forward by the generic name Acazocosept or Acazi, a dual inhibitor of CD28 and ICOS for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, and ALPINE-202, our conditional CD28 agonist in oncology. Yesterday, CD28 came to the forefront in an all-day investment conference hosted by Bernstein focused on how to target CD28 in cancer. Stanford, along with the scientific leaders of two other companies, and Mike Curran from MD Anderson, presented on CD28 as a therapeutic target. We believe the data from the programs at Alpine will support CD28 as being a rational and effective target, both in oncology and in other immune diseases. We are proud to have lit the CD28 torch back in 2015, and we look forward to continuing to carry it across the finish line to help patients in need of new therapeutic approaches. At the same time, we are strongly encouraged by the progress of our discovery platform beyond CD28 and the immunoglobulin superfamily. The Alpine 303 program, for instance, has demonstrated our ability to target the TNF superfamily as well. It has shown promising preclinical data and we are particularly excited about this program. Stanford will go into more detail on this and review our most recent clinical progress across all of our development programs. Stanford? Thank you, Mitch.