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spk02: Good day and welcome to the Sangamo Therapeutics first quarter 2024 teleconference call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker today Louise Wilkie, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.
spk00: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us on the call today. On this call are several members of the Sangamo Executive Leadership Team, including Sandy McRae, Chief Executive Officer, Pratusha Durrababu, Chief Financial Officer, Amy Pooler, Head of Research, Natalie Dubois-Stringfellow, Chief Development Officer. Slides from our corporate presentation can be found on our website, Sangamo.com, under the Presentations page of the Investors and Media section. This call includes forward-looking statements regarding Sangamo's current expectations. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements related to the therapeutic and commercial potential of our product candidates and engineered capsids, and the potential of our next-generation genome engineering technology. The anticipated plans and timelines of Sangamo and our collaborators for regulatory submissions, initiating and conducting clinical trials, and presenting clinical data, advancement of our product candidates, anticipated regulatory submissions, advancement of preclinical programs to the clinic, our strategic reprioritization and reallocation of resources and the anticipated benefits thereof, plans to partner certain of our programs, the sufficiency of our resources, cash runway, and plans to seek additional capital, upcoming catalysts and milestones, and other statements that are not historical facts. Actual results may differ materially from what we discussed today. These statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that are discussed in our filings with the SEC, specifically in our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023, supplemented by our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2024, filed with the SEC. The forward-looking statements stated today are made as of this date, and we undertake no duty to update such information except as required by law. Please note that all forward-looking statements about our future plans and expectations are subject to our ability to secure adequate additional funding. Now, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Sandy McRae.
spk05: Thank you, Louise, and good afternoon to everyone joining the call. I'm very pleased to be speaking to you today from the American Society of Cell and Gene Therapy annual meeting in Baltimore. where we have been presenting important preclinical data from our epigenetic regulators, AAV capsid delivery platform, and next generation genomic engineering platform. These data showcase both the depth of Sangamo's neurology pipeline and the power of our scientific capabilities, which we believe provide strong opportunities to advance programs ourselves and with potential partners. In order to progress these compelling programmes, Sangamo must be well capitalised. The leadership team and I have been laser focused on addressing our funding needs. In late March, we were pleased to announce a registered direct offering with institutional shareholders, including an important existing investor that raised approximately 24 million in gross proceeds. This was a significant development, and we are thankful for their support of our science and our mission. That was, however, the first step in our current journey to securing additional funding. I would like to emphasize that we are resolutely focused on building upon this foundation to position Sangamul for long term success. That continues to be my number one priority. Business development is an important part of these efforts, and I am pleased with the progress that is being made on this front. We are currently engaged in very encouraging conversations with multiple potential partners across our portfolio, including our Fabry disease program, our novel STAC BBB engineered capsid, our preclinical neurology product candidates, and our next generation genome engineering capabilities. I understand your desire to hear more concrete news on this front, but we are unable to share more until any potential transaction is finalised. Be assured that we are encouraged by the progress of these discussions and hope to announce news of one or more transactions. Over recent months, Sangilmo has presented important preclinical data that solidify our sharpened focus in neurology, validate our differentiated science, and help contextualize why we made this important decision to dedicate ourselves to addressing neurological disorders. In March, we were proud to share remarkable preclinical data from our new intravenously administered neurotropic AAV capsid. which demonstrated industry-leading blood-brain barrier penetration and brain transduction in non-human primates. This novel capsid, STAC-BBB, showed robust penetration of the blood-brain barrier with 700-fold higher transgene expression in neurons compared to the benchmark capsid, AAV9, and outperformed all other known published capsid variants evaluated in the study. Combined with our potent epigenetic regulation cargo, we showed robust stack BBB mediated expression of zinc finger cargo in neurons with potent and widespread repression of the prion and tau genes observed across all key brain areas, illustrating the exciting potential to modify disease progression in prion disease and various tauopathies. These data support further advancement of our prion and tau programs, which we are on track for regulatory submission sent to the clinic by the end of 2025. Meanwhile, we continue to advance our lead candidate in chronic neuropathic pain, NAV1.7, which uses an established intrathecally administered capsid toward an IND submission expected in the fourth quarter of this year. We believe our ability to combine potent zinc finger epigenetic regulation payloads with exciting new industry leading capsid delivery technology could unlock significant potential for the treatment of devastating neurological diseases. Indications for which delivery of treatments to the central nervous system has historically proved challenging. Building on this, we're proud to be presenting three platform presentations and 17 posters at this week's ASGCT annual meeting. These presentations showcase the depth of our neurology pipeline, including various applications for our zinc finger epigenetic regulation platform, exciting advances in our capsid delivery technology, and the discovery of potentially transformative next generation integrative technology engineered to enable large scale genome editing. In epigenetic regulation, we have shared advances in zinc finger activators and repressors for the potential treatment of a remarkable range of neurological diseases such as prion disease, tauopathies, Charcot-Marie-Tooth diseases type 1A and 2A, Derivet syndrome, SOD1-mediated amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, Phelan-McDermott syndrome, Parkinson's disease, Angelman syndrome, and many other neurological disorders. We have also demonstrated Sangmo's potent delivery capabilities developed through our AAV capsid engineering platform, SIFTR. Here we presented additional STAC BBB findings, including prion and tau repression data achieved via STAC BBB delivery. We also presented for the first time exciting initial findings for a possible mechanism supporting how STAC BBB may cross the blood-brain barrier. Our sifter platform is designed to engineer capsid for various routes of administration, such as intrathecal and intravenous delivery. Sifter can also engineer capsids for in vitro discovery. So in a platform presentation tomorrow, we will present findings from STAC 150, a novel capsid that's been shown to be highly potent in neurons and enables high throughput screening of neurology focused transcriptional regulators. We anticipate the STAG 150, which we believe manufactures easily at small scale, will help accelerate the discovery of potent and highly specific epigenetic regulators. Finally, building on our deep expertise in that protein DNA interactions derived from our Syncfinger platform, We presented for the first time a potentially breakthrough new approach for integrating large sequences of DNA into the genome to potentially treat with a single medicine patients who have unique mutations in the same gene. Precisely integrating large synthetic DNA constructs into a desirable chromosomal site has been the dream for people working in this field for many years. Our modular integrase or MINT platform is a versatile protein guided genome editing method that understands and engineers BXB1, a serum serine recombinase to insert or replace entire genes and adds to Sangamo's toolbox of editing capabilities. We are hopeful that our mint platform could be used to correct many disease causing mutations in a diverse patient population by inserting a correct copy of the gene into its natural locus. Mints could be deployed internally for various neurological indications, but also provide potential partnering opportunities, both for human disease and in agricultural biotech settings. we are already in active discussions with potential partners about our integrase capabilities and are hopeful that MINT could provide us with another potential non-dilutive funding opportunity. Alongside our presentations on this topic at ASGCT this week, we have also published a manuscript in BioArchive further outlying these next generation integrase advancements, which is also available on the publications page of the website. I encourage you to learn more about this exciting development in the field of genomic medicines. Now, looking at our clinical programs, we have made strong advances in the first quarter for our Fabry disease program, having dosed the final patient in the Phase 1-2 STAR study of Iserala gene Sivaparvavec, our investigational gene therapy for the treatment of Fabry disease. With 33 patients now dosed, screening, enrollment, and dosing are complete. One additional patient has been able to stop enzyme replacement therapy, or ERT, resulting in a total of 14 patients withdrawn from ERT to date. The four remaining patients dosed since February 2024 who began the study on ERT already have plans in place to withdraw ER treatment at the appropriate time. At the 20th Annual World Symposium in February, we presented compelling updated preliminary clinical data from the STAR study showing sustained benefit and a differentiated safety profile. These results underscore the program's potential as a single administration treatment for Fabry disease. As a reminder, this quarter we announced alignment with the US FDA on an abbreviated pathway to potential approval. We've also been granted prime eligibility by the European Medicines Agency and ILAP designation by the UK Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. We are engaged in active discussions with potential collaborator partners for our Fabry disease programme and continue to defer additional investments in planning for a potential registrational trial until a collaboration partnership or financing for this programme is secured. Moving to our partner clinical program, we look forward to the pivotal readout expected in mid-2024 in the Phase III affine trial of Gerotocogene phytoparvovac, an investigative gene therapy we're developing with Pfizer for patients with moderately severe to severe haemophilia A. Pfizer anticipates submitting a biologics license application and a marketing authorization application in early 2025 if the pivotal readout is supportive. As a reminder, we are eligible to earn up to $220 million in milestone payments and up to 14 to 20% royalties on potential sales from this program. We end the quarter with approximately 54 million in available cash and cash equivalents, which includes funds from the aforementioned registered direct offering. We believe these resources, in combination with this cost savings expected from the recent restructurings, workforce reduction and other potential cost reductions, will be sufficient to fund our planned operations into the third quarter of 2024. As I outlined earlier, we are actively pursuing a range of different options to raise important additional capital and are encouraged by the business development discussions ongoing across our Fabry programme, capsid engineering and next generation genome engineering efforts. We believe our company has the science required to potentially transform the lives of patients living with devastating neurological conditions and are committed to raising the funding required as we seek to make our vision a reality. Operator, please open the lines for questions.
spk02: Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, You will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of James Stamos at Jefferies. James, your line is open.
spk03: Hi, this is James on for Morrie Gray Croft. Congrats on the progress and thanks for taking our question. I just wanted to ask, where are you with preclinical and GLP tox studies with STAC BBB, and what are your latest thoughts on which targets or indications would make the most sense to partner or keep in-house?
spk05: Thank you for your question. One of the reasons that we like STAC BBB so much is that our manufacturing team have been able to work with it and found that it is very manufacturable. They can take it so far up to 50 litre scale and are going higher, that they can use the same purification and assay techniques, and that it feels like a capsid that will be able to give us great yield. and also be able to use many of the processes in CMC work that really is underappreciated in the importance of capsid selection. We've said publicly that we are moving ahead with tau and with prion. You could imagine the amount of external interest in tau, not just because it's a high on medical need, but because the capsid gives you the brain penetration and widespread delivery that's needed. And our zinc finger repressors are really unique in being able to almost switch off tau in the cells that they can get to. We are having many discussions with companies about our capsid and we'll choose wisely, I believe, which ones we partner and which ones we take forward ourselves. What we understand, and I want to say this again and repeat what I said in the chosen words, is that we understand the need to bring in money to the company. And that's always a balance between the desire that we have to take things forward and the money that's available from many of the partnerships I'm sure we will achieve in the coming weeks.
spk03: Great. That's very helpful. And just to go on to some of the more specialized parts of your ASGCT presentation, can you talk about the importance of targeting the pons and motor neurons in Alzheimer's? And are there any other companies that you're aware of that have the ability to target these sites?
spk05: I think Thank you for your question. It's really been a remarkable ASG CT and the field moves closer to these tools being able to address such important disease. Amy, can you talk a little about this? I know this is one of your passions.
spk04: Yeah, I would love to. Thank you for the great question. What's really important here is being able to target brain regions that would be traditionally challenging to target using something like a direct injection approach. The PONS being part of the brainstem is not a region that you would necessarily want to reach using a direct injection-guided approach, even for the most severe of diseases. So we were so excited to see the biodistribution that was able to be achieved with the SAC-BBB capsid, especially for what it means for the tau program. The PONS is critical in progressive supernuclear palsy, but also other tauopathies like Alzheimer's disease. In addition, as you notice, the motor cortex, which is part of the frontal cortex, We use this as an example of how STACPBB is able to transduce those cortical neurons. Really, we believe that this kind of widespread brain targeting is critical for halting or slowing the progression of the disease.
spk03: Thanks, Amy. Great. Thank you for taking our questions. I'll hop back in the queue.
spk02: Thank you very much. One moment for our next question, please. Our next question comes from Gina Wang of Barclays. Gina, your line is open.
spk08: Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. The first one also is about the STAC BBB, and it seems like very exciting new capsid. What is the highest dose you used in non-human primates, and what is the limiting dose toxicity there? And then the second question, quickly, regarding the heme, I know it's your partner Pfizer's is in charge, but just wondering for the mid-24 phase 3 update, would that be just a press release from Pfizer? And then for the 220 milestone payment, the first milestone, you know, is that the drug approval, and is that a big portion of the $220 million?
spk05: Gina, thank you for your questions, and I know you've been following he may for for a great deal of time so it's it's good to be coming closer to the point where we where it gets to registration and approval so let me do the let me pass this on to two people amy can you talk about the dose that we've used and um whether there was any toxicity please yeah absolutely um we
spk04: As part of the STAC BBB study that we discussed yesterday, and we also will discuss later today at the poster session at ASGCT, we performed a dose range finding study with our TAO clinical lead zinc finger. And we did three different doses, and the top dose was 1E14. We were really happy to see that with the histopathology results that we didn't see any dose-limiting toxicity and really no findings in the brain, the spinal cord, or the liver, these peripheral organs. So really, really positive and encouraging data.
spk05: Gina, does that answer your question? Is there any follow-up?
spk08: Yeah, like more thinking like other than, you know, the dose finding, like what is the highest dose you tested for the safety toxicology perspective?
spk05: 1E14. So, 1E14.
spk08: That's 1E14. Okay.
spk05: That's it. It's the highest we've, so we went there in the efficacy study that we just reported and we really saw nothing sorry we saw nothing that would give us any concern when we we will now go and do the GMP tox study which is the only thing remaining to complete the IND enabling studies for that but we we will clearly start at a lower dose in the clinical study because that's the right thing to do and that's what the agency will ask us to do But thus far, it's a very clean capsid, which is great, great news. And then can we talk about Humane Natalie? I know you've been speaking to your friends at Pfizer regularly.
spk07: Sure, sure. Yeah, we're very excited that the mid-2024 pivotal readout in MA is coming up soon. We, you know, the partnership allows for 220 million in potential milestones. and 14 to 20% royalty on potential sell, but the specific amount of each milestone is not publicly disclosed. But this, you know, could start as early as the start of 2025 if the pivotal readout is positive and if Pfizer would like to see regulatory approval to the program.
spk05: And Gina, just to reflect on that, we're limited in what we can say. When you sign these deals, there's always an agreement about who talks about what. But the regulatory milestones, which are, we get one for the US, one for Europe, and one for Japan, are not for approval. They're for submission of the package. And then the commercial milestones, which are, are for first patient dose rather than for reaching a certain sales threshold. So they're very, very favorable milestones that will fund the company in 25 and 26. Very helpful.
spk07: I need to mention that the significant portion of the 220 million is near term and we could also choose to monetize them now.
spk05: Yeah, so the closer we get to when the data is revealed and then when Pfizer submits this, we have the option of monetizing those royalties. But we can also choose to wait and use them to fund 25 and 26. And what will make that decision is the... The non-dilutive funding from business development that we do now will tell us whether we need to make that decision. I know that there is a concern from people that followed us for a long time about our near-term cash runway. We feel that we are fortunate to be able to do both capsid deals, fabry deals, technology deals, and to have this large amount of cash next year that we can bring forward if necessary.
spk02: Thank you very much.
spk05: Thank you, Gina.
spk02: Thank you very much. One moment for our next question, please. Our next question comes from Patrick Cuccio of HC Wainwright. Patrick, your line is open.
spk06: Hi, everyone. This is Luis Santos for Patrick. Congratulations on the recent progress and your impressive presence at ASGCT. I am interested in knowing if you already guided to the TAO program and if it's going to be in Alzheimer's, do you know which patients you're going to be treating and which other indications you are going to push forward here with the TAO program? Then I have a follow-up question.
spk05: So, thank you for your question. We haven't guided on that. There's been an enormous amount of interest in our presentation yesterday at ASGCT. It clearly was, I think, the most remarkable presentation of all of the many people that are moving forward in blood-brain barrier penetrant capsets. We feel that the tau asset, the cargo that's within it, doubles down, makes this even more interesting. The role of tau in Alzheimer's, I think, is becoming increasingly clear. The Biogen data is very encouraging. The idea that it's the thing that is relevant to the clinical stages of tau, of Alzheimer's, rather than in the early pre-symptomatic ones, makes this a much more easy lift. However, we're very conscious that Alzheimer's studies are large programs, and that we need to make sure that we either do ourselves well or partner with someone who has a real expertise in Alzheimer's.
spk06: On the follow-up, thank you, that was helpful. On the follow-up on partnerships, but for the Mint platform, you mentioned that there are business development opportunities there. Do you have any potential collaborators in mind and what diseases would you be targeting?
spk05: The MINT integrase is remarkable. The presentation at ESG CT was just 57 minutes ago and there was a lot of excitement in the room about it. We have already been. We've been speaking to people for three months on this and I want to put the business development discussions into perspective. We had the regulatory clarity for Fabry just in February. We had the capsid results just in March. We've finally taken mint to a place that we feel we can share it in May, so I understand the desire for signed deals, but the results that are going to lead to them have only come out over the past two or three months, which means that at the moment you could imagine our business development group is incredibly busy in talking to lots of people about this. Now, integrase is something that is has the potential for really disruptive genomic engineering. It's the kind of thing that David Liu, when he was asked, said was his dream of what the ideal genomic medicine was, which was an integrase that could be engineered to go to your site of choice and put in pieces of DNA, gene-sized pieces of DNA that would replace all of the mutations downstream. And the team at Sangamo, because of their expertise in understanding the interaction between proteins and DNA from the Syncfinger platform, have been able to do this remarkable engineering. And the whole alpha fold and understanding artificial intelligence of how you understand proteins has helped us. We feel that this is something that Sangamo can use, but it also has attracted great interest from the hardcore science pharma companies that you could imagine who all see this as the future of genomic engineering. And so we have a responsibility to put it in as many people's hands as possible. I think you will hear more about this mint platform for some time to come. Thank you.
spk02: Thank you very much. One moment for our next question, please. Our next question comes from the line of Luca Easy at RBC. Luca, your line is open.
spk10: Oh, great. Thanks for taking our questions. This is Lisa for Luca. I just want to ask another question on the mint technology. Just wondering if you can give us a sense of, you know, what kind of targets here would be good candidates. For instance, would it be possible to integrate something like a full-length CFTR gene, which is around roughly 190 kilobases, or should we think about something larger, like full-length dystrophin, which is measuring closer to over 2,000 kilobases? Just any color here would be helpful. Thanks.
spk05: You ask really important and interesting questions. And as always with Sangamo, we've thought about size. Because as you know, zinc fingers are an eighth of the size of CRISPR. And even the small mammoth CRISPRs are four times as big as the zinc finger. And that's important because of delivery. It's the same with mint. because we've tried to keep the technology as small as possible so as we could put both the integrase and a cargo in an AAV. Now, when you get to the size of some of the genes that you're talking about, it comes down to what kind of delivery you're using. my dream for mint is to be able to drop a cdna copy of the gene or of the exons that are that are um mutated into intron one of um the genome it would then be run off of the promoter have all the locus control elements and it would it would alleviate the requirement to edit all the individual mutations that usually are the cause of genomic disease. Now, to put in a whole genomic copy would be unnecessary, I would argue. And then we need to look at what are the diseases where the cDNA is packageable into the delivery mechanisms that are available, because the mint should be size agnostic and has so far shown great potential. Amy, is there anything else? Amy, I'm aware that you're on the line, and as our head of research, perhaps you have other things to add to that.
spk04: No, that's a fantastic explanation, Sandy. I would just add that there are specific genes as well that are involved in some neurological disorders, and I'm thinking of things like Rett syndrome, where MECP2 needs to be fine-tuned at a very specific level, something like an integrase, where you could integrate in perhaps the healthy copy of exon 1 or even a bigger portion of the gene so that it's under control of the endogenous promoter. could be really transformative for a disease like that. So I think it's incredibly exciting to see what are the opportunities around this new mint platform.
spk10: Thanks so much. Thanks for taking our questions.
spk02: Thank you very much. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Ritu Beral of TD Cohen. Ritu, your line's open.
spk09: Hi, guys. Just a quick question on the Fabry program, actually. You've just 33 patients. We saw the data at World, plus you have the Phase III path going forward agreed upon with FDA. What is the next data update that we're going to get from that? And also, I guess, is there a data point or a follow-up point in a subset of patients that's gating to potential business development around or out-licensing of this program. Thanks.
spk05: Thank you, Rita. I'm going to pass this on to Natalie, but I'll just remind you again. The whole business development conversation around Fabry changed with Peter's presentation new way of thinking about this at the agency and the conversations that we had in February. And so it's like a new conversation we're having with potential partners. But Natalie, can you address some of the technical pieces, please?
spk07: Yeah, sure. So, you know, we've completed the dosing of all the patients in the phase 1, 2, so for a total of 33 patients. We continue to analyze the data, but the body of data that we have thus far is not gate-limiting for any partnership and any of the phase 2B preparation or registrational trial preparation. So, you know, we continue to analyze the data, and I've agreed with the FDA that we have enough data to move on to a phase 2B, and that's what we're discussing with partners, potential partners.
spk09: Sandy, when you say that the discussion has changed, are you talking about the structure of the deal that is in Sangamo's best interest? Do you think it could be like a COCO going forward, or is it just really sort of valuation terms that are different now?
spk05: I think it's much simpler than that, Rita. There was a concern that there wasn't clarity about what the regulators were wanting. And there was this worry that we've all talked about that it was going to be a head-to-head against ERT. And the agency now saying, no, it's a simple single study and that we can... They've named the number of patients and they've said we can come back halfway through the study and show them the data we've got if we feel it's compelling. I think that has completely changed how... the various companies that are going to. And I think great credit to Peter. He is walking the talk in this. And we have benefited greatly from it as being almost like the poster child for what it is, approval of a rare disease gene therapy is.
spk09: Great, thanks.
spk02: Thank you very much. One moment for our next question.
spk05: And if I may, Rita, we've initiated the conversations with the Europeans and uniquely the FDA is volunteering to send one of their staff with us to that conversation because they feel that it's the way forward for these kind of therapies is for a common approach to them. And I think it reflects the support that we have from the FDA in these discussions.
spk09: Thanks, Sandy.
spk02: Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Nicole Germino of Truist. Nicole, your line is open.
spk01: Hi, this is Bill. I'm for Nicole. We have a question. It's given the uptake for Roktavian, what is the read-through to potential uptake for Fabry disease gene therapy?
spk05: So thank you for your question. So the Roktavian launch I know has been a subject of great debate. We can't comment on how Biomarin launched it. All I know is the reason that we chose Pfizer to be our partner is I have great confidence that when Pfizer chooses to launch something, they do it well and effectively. follows through to our choice of partners for Fabry disease. There are several companies and there are some that are more obvious as being great commercialization engines and great launch companies. What I can tell you is in our conversations with these companies, we have had notes from the patient support groups who have been very keen to make sure that the pharma partners understand how supportive they are of the results that they have seen in our fabri program because you and i will talk about the biochemistry and the biopsies what the patients have said is how much better they feel on it how how delighted that they are to be off of ert so now we have 14 patients off of ERT and the four that are remaining on ERT in the study have already booked when they're going to come off of the therapy. So this has enormous support from the patients. And I think that is what is going to make it a very successful launch for the partner that can take it forward and make a difference.
spk07: And if I may add, we also have RMAT and PRIME, which are designations that really analyze an unmet medical need for Fabry. So the Fabry patient, even though can have access to ERT, are not satisfied with the current medicine and standard of care.
spk01: Thank you so much.
spk02: Thank you very much. At this time, I am showing no further questions, and I would now like to turn the call back to Louise Wilkie for closing remarks.
spk00: Thank you very much, and thanks to everyone for joining us on the call today. We look forward to speaking to you soon.
spk02: Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program, and you may now disconnect. Thank you.
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