Voyager Therapeutics, Inc.

Good morning, and welcome to Voyager Therapeutics' fourth quarter and full year 2021 conference call. All participants are now in listen-only mode. There will be a question and answer session at the end of this call. Please be advised this call is being recorded at the company's request. I would now like to turn the call over to Julie Bjork, Vice President of Finance at Voyager.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this conference call to discuss our most recent license option agreement and to review our fourth quarter and full year 2021 results, both announced this morning. A replay of today's call will be available on the investor section of our website approximately two hours after completion of this call. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A. As a reminder, various remarks that we make during this call about the company's future expectations plans, and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from these indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the risk factors section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, which is on file with the SEC, and as updated by our subsequent filings. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent our views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date. Except as required by law, we specifically disclaim any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, even if our views change. I'm joined today by members of Voyager's leadership team, including our Interim Chief Executive Officer, Michael Higgins, our Chief Business Officer, Alan Nunnally, and our Interim Chief Scientific Officer, Glenn Pierce. Board Director, Al Sandrock, and Chief Operating Officer, Robin Schwartz, will also join the Q&A portion of the call. Now, I will turn the call over to Michael.

Thanks, Julie, and good morning, everyone. I'm extremely pleased to share that earlier this morning, we announced a License Options Agreement with Novartis for target-specific access to our proprietary tracer AAV capsules. This transaction is the second major licensing agreement around our novel capsids in the last five months and provides Novartis with access to our novel AAV capsids and options to license our capsids for potential use with three undisclosed CNS targets plus options to access capsids for two additional targets to be determined in the future. The transaction further validates the potential of our tracer capsid discovery platform to broadly enable a new wave of AAV gene therapies across the field and across our internal pipeline. It's also complimentary to our agreement with Pfizer announced last October. That transaction provided Pfizer with target-specific access and option rights to our tracer capsids for exclusive use with one CNS target and one cardiovascular target. Together, these major transactions reinforce our corporate strategy to pursue internal and external applications of our tracer platform. Importantly, The targets and transgenes involved in the Novartis and Pfizer collaborations are distinct from those planned for our internal pipeline. Outside of these agreements, we continue to retain global rights to our tracer AAV capsid platform, as well as all capsids arising from its use with other targets. We believe there is considerable potential for future business development opportunities around the tracer platform, given the focused nature of the deals we've done to date, as well as our expanding and maturing capsid libraries. We view these agreements as critical validation for the potential of the tracer capsid discovery platform to enable gene therapies that may target desired cells and tissues with greater specificity at lower doses and with fewer off-target risks than conventional AAV serotypes. We believe that our approach could enable a new wave of AAV gene therapies to treat serious disease both in the CNS and beyond. These transactions also strengthen Borger's balance sheet, extending our cash runway into 2024 and providing greater flexibility as we pursue internal development efforts. The Novartis and Pfizer agreements include substantial upfront and potential downstream economics. Our incremental investment requirement for these programs are very low under these transactions as they are designed to tap into our ongoing platform investments and allow us to expand that investment into our programs. In a moment, I will turn the call over to Alan to discuss the Novartis agreement in more detail. But first, I'd like to say a few words about the direction we're taking as a company. Borger is leading the evolution of next-generation AAV gene therapies, as evidenced by groundbreaking non-human primate data from our tracer capsids and our recent collaborations with Novartis and Pfizer. Our tracer platform has shown the ability to identify highly differentiated novel capsids with substantially enhanced tropism for CNS and other tissue targets, in non-human primate studies. We have proven experience in the design and development of diverse payloads and prosecution of preclinical validation studies. We're also capable of manufacturing essentially everything required to evaluate most early stage gene therapy candidates. We're utilizing these capabilities with our novel capsids to develop therapeutic programs that have the potential to demonstrate the performance of our capsids in humans that may ultimately provide much needed therapeutic benefit to underserved patients. Our potential to help patients extends far beyond what we may achieve with our internal development programs to include an array of therapeutic opportunities that could result from the licensing agreements and partnerships now underway. The data we've generated over the past year for our highly differentiated capsids have been particularly exciting in demonstrating our ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and access specific tissues and cell types in the brain in non-human primates. We are also moving beyond the CNS, applying our tracer technology to discover enhanced capsids for targeting other tissues. We expect tracer capsids to power our in-house pipeline of gene therapy programs. In addition to collaborations with two leading companies in gene therapy, the recent addition of Al Sanrock to a board of directors and executive committee is indicative of the progress we're making. Al is a scientific visionary with a long track record of spotting promise in early research. He's already playing an important role working with the leadership team to help shape future strategies for our tracer platform and therapeutic programs, as well as beginning his efforts to further expand our external collaborations with scientific leaders and industry partners. I'm also thrilled that Robin Schwartz has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer. Robin is a proven and respected leader whose passion for patients is reflected in her deep commitment to Voyager. Her 25 years of operating experience from multiple roles at Sanofi Genzyme are a tremendous asset for Voyager. With that, I'll turn it over to Alan. Thank you, Michael.