Global Blood Therapeutics, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Global Blood Therapeutics Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow prepared remarks. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Steven Emmergott. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to GBT's conference call to discuss the company's financial results for the first quarter of 2021 and to provide a business update. I'm Steven Inbergut, Head of Communications and Investor Relations. Joining me on the call are Dr. Ted Love, our President and CEO, who will provide an update on our progress in the first quarter. Jeff Farrow, our Chief Financial Officer, will review our financial results. David Johnson, or DJ, our Chief Commercial Officer, We'll give an update on the Oxbrita launch. Ted will then introduce Dr. Kim Smith-Whitley, who joined GBT this week as Executive Vice President and Head of R&D. Kim will provide a view on the current environment for sickle cell patient care. Ted will then close with an update on our pipeline and efforts to expand access to Oxbrita. Earlier this afternoon, we issued a press release announcing GBT's business progress financial results for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2021. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that certain statements we make on this call that are not historical facts may be forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements are contained in our SEC filings, including but not limited to our most recent quarterly report on form 10Q as well as in today's press release. Copies of our SEC filings and press releases can be obtained from the investor's page or our company website at GBT.com. The forward looking statements made on this call are only as of the time they are made and you should not place undue reliance on such statements. Future events or simply the passage of time may cause our beliefs to change and we disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements other than as required by law. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ted.

Thank you, Stephen, and good afternoon, everyone. In the first quarter, we continued to make progress on our mission to discover, develop, and deliver life-changing treatments for people with sickle cell disease. The fundamentals of the OxyPytoLaunch remain strong. We continue to see patients benefiting from OxyPrida and increasing real-world experience from healthcare professionals. I'd like to start by highlighting a real-world evidence study presented just two weeks ago at the annual meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology Oncology. Dr. Alan Anderson and colleagues from Greenville, South Carolina, presented data on 76 OxyPrida patients age 12 to 70. For these patients, on average, hemoglobin increased by 2 grams per deciliter. Reticulocyte percent decreased from 11.6% to 6.5%. And total bilirubin decreased by 1.4 milligrams per deciliter. These results are consistent with and exceed the clinically important benefits seen in the HOPE study. Adverse events were rare. Two patients had diarrhea, and one patient had a rash, and all were resolved with dose modification. The real well evidence is consistent with what we've been hearing from many HCPs and adds to our confidence in the long-term potential of VoxPreda. However, as we expected, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt the daily lives of sickle cell patients and limit their access to healthcare. Sickle cell patients continue to have fewer visits to their physicians and fewer hospital admissions compared to pre-pandemic. In addition, while we are optimistic that the availability of vaccines will improve the environment for sickle cell patients, this will take time. Initial data indicate that the majority of patients are wary of being vaccinated in the early phase of the rollout. All of this is important because the greatest impact to the Oxford at a lunch has been the lack of growth of new prescriptions due to COVID. GBT's product sales, like many companies in our industry, were impacted by the increasing infection rate during the first quarter. we had approximately 950 new prescriptions in the quarter, consistent with the expectation we provided. Let me make an important point. While changes such as inventory levels and growth to net can impact revenues, we recognize in the early stage, we are pleased to see the net number of patients on Oxbrita increasing quarter over quarter. We feel there is light at the end of the tunnel. As we all know, every day more people in the United States are being vaccinated, making progress toward herd immunity. For those with sickle cell disease, we believe that with time, sentiment toward the vaccine will improve. Based on these trends and the momentum our commercial team is building with patients and HCPs, we continue to believe we will see accelerated growth when sickle cell patients are more comfortable reengaging in person with the health care system, which we think should begin to happen in the second half of 2021. Our focus on supporting sickle cell patients, educating patients and physicians on OXBRETA, and developing our innovative pipeline of potential treatment options is stronger than ever. With that, I will turn the call over to Jeff to provide an update on our first quarter results.