Agenus Inc (AGEN) 2015 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Agenus' fourth-quarter and year-end 2015 financial results conference call. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would like to introduce your host for today's conference, Michelle Linn. Ma'am, please begin.

Thank you. Welcome to the Agenus fourth-quarter and full-year 2015 conference call. Before I continue I would like to remind you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the Company's potential income stream, research and development and clinical trial activities, the publication of data and potential application of the Company's technologies and product candidates toward the prevention and treatment of diseases.

These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Reference to these risks and uncertainties is made in today's press release and they are disclosed in more detail in our most recent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

These statements speak only as of the date of this call and Agenus undertakes no obligation to update or revise statements. All forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. When evaluating Agenus' business and securities, investors should give careful consideration to these risks and uncertainties.

As a reminder, this call is being recorded for audio broadcast. With me today are Dr. Garo Amen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Dr. Robert Stein, President of R&D; and Evan Ballantyne, our Chief Financial Officer. During the call Garo will provide a corporate update, Bob will provide an R&D update and then Evan will review our financial results. We will then open up the call for questions. With that let me turn the call over to Garo.

Thank you, Michelle, and thank you all for joining us this morning. In 2015 we reached a number of important milestones in pursuit of our mission of curing cancer with immuno-oncology treatments.

We started the year entering into a global oncology collaboration with Incyte Corporation. We extended our existing oncology collaboration with Merck. We made several strategic acquisitions, advanced our preclinical programs leading up to the successful filing of two INDs for checkpoint modulator programs, made progress with our lead clinical vaccine program and also, very importantly, substantially strengthened our balance sheet closing the year with $172 million in cash.

In 2015 we made a series of strategic acquisitions that helped us build a vertically integrated Company with an internal engine that enables us to rapidly discover and optimize antibody candidates, develop best-in-class cell lines and to manufacture our own immunotherapies faster, more cost effectively and under [G&P] conditions.

Our greatest asset, however, is our intellectual capital, comprised of an exceptional team of immunologists, molecular biologists, translational biologists, computational chemists and structural chemists. We believe a multidisciplinary approach is critical because the future of cancer therapy will be based on the ability to identify subpopulations of patients that are likely to best respond to specific immuno-oncology agents or combinations of agents.

This will also require a wider use of biomarkers to determine the best combinations of immuno-oncology treatments including antibodies, vaccines and adjuvants, as well as cell therapies. At Agenus we believe that we are uniquely positioned in the immuno-oncology landscape by having assembled the critical parts of what we would consider the future of the immuno-oncology ecosystem.

I'm now going to briefly expand on several of our corporate achievements during the quarter and the year. And then Dr. Robert Stein, our president of R&D, will provide an update on our clinical and preclinical development activities.

As I mentioned earlier, we began last year with an alliance with Incyte Corporation to discover and develop novel antibodies using Agenus' state-of-the-art discovery platforms. The alliance focuses initially on the development of checkpoint modulator antibodies directed against four key immune checkpoint targets: GITR, OX40, LAG-3 and TIM-3.

Agenus and Incyte share all cost and profits for the GITR and OX40 antibody programs on a 50-50 basis with Agenus eligible for milestones. TIM-3 and LAG-3 are royalty bearing programs to be funded by Incyte entirely with Agenus eligible for milestones and royalties.

Agenus received a $60 million upfront payment comprised of $25 million in technology and program access fee plus $35 million in equity investment. We are eligible to receive up to $350 million in development, regulatory and commercial milestones for the four lead programs.

During 2015 we made considerable progress in our work with Incyte and are very pleased that we extended our alliance later in the year to include three additional undisclosed checkpoint targets. Dr. Stein will provide further updates on the progress we've made with Incyte later on, including the first successful IND filing and the FDA clearance of the first immuno-oncology candidate under this alliance.

In addition, we are also very pleased to start 2016 with the clearance by the US Food & Drug Administration of our investigational new drug application for AGEN1884, an antibody that binds to the clinically and commercially validated immune checkpoint target, CTLA-4. We own the rights to our CTLA-4 antagonist.

Last summer our academic collaborators at Northwestern University, led by Dr. Orin Bloch, presented updated positive results from a Phase 2 study of our autologous cancer vaccine, Prophage. This was done at an Oral session at ASCO.

The results showed that the newly diagnosed glioblastoma patients treated with Prophage plus standard of care experienced substantially longer progression free survival and median overall survival compared to historical controls alone.

Among our plans for the year are to start well-controlled randomized trials in GBM including studies of Prophage in combination with [STPM], a checkpoint modulator in GBM. Dr. Stein will elaborate on our plans for Prophage later on on this call as well.

On the financial front, in 2016 we significantly strengthened our cash position through our partnership with Incyte, a public stock offering and a non-dilutive royalty transaction. Together these transactions highlight our ability to execute on a variety of financial opportunities.

The capital provides financial flexibility to advance our proprietary and partner pipeline programs and also allowed us to make value enhancing strategic acquisitions which put us in a very unique position with the opportunity to pursue our objectives with greater flexibility, speed and efficiency.

The non-dilutive royalty transaction with the investor group led by Oberland Capital Management brought in $100 million of non-dilutive capital. Under this agreement the investor group, Oberland Capital, obtained the right to receive 100% of Agenus' rights to the worldwide royalties on sales of GlaxoSmithKline's shingles and malaria prophylactic vaccines that contain QS-21 adjuvant.

This financing also allows us to retain any upside from the vaccine royalties remaining after the Oberland returns are satisfied. We expect our partner GSK to submit an application for regulatory approval of the shingles vaccine in the second half of this year.

In May of 2015, we also raised approximately $75 million through the sale of common stock in a public offering led by Jefferies and William Blair and with joint book running managers led by Oppenheimer acting as co-manager.

In 2015 we made several strategic technology acquisitions through -- these acquisitions we have built a state-of-the-art engine for sustainable innovation. I want to highlight two important acquisitions that I believe could bring us both short-term and long-term benefits.

Late in the year we acquired a closely held private market company called PhosImmune, expanding our vaccine approach to cancer neo-antigens. New antigens represent an important new field of research for cancer vaccines. PhosImmune discovered an extensive novel portfolio of cancer new antigens based on aberrant phosphorylation of proteins.

Our acquisition of PhosImmune provides us with the unique potential to accelerate the development of novel off-the-shelf and personalized cancer vaccines based on immunogenic phosphoryl peptides, and also may synergize with our AutoSynVax vaccine platform for targeting mutation-based patient specific tumor neo-antigens.

I would also like to highlight briefly our acquisition of an antibody pilot production facility from XOMA Corporation. This pilot plant will enable Agenus to meet its growing GMP antibody production requirements for clinical development through proof of concept studies.

The facility should reduce our dependence on outside contract manufacturing organizations. These advantages should be especially significant in light of the fact that we have one of the deepest and broadest portfolios of antibody drug candidates in the immuno-oncology subsector of the biotechnology industry.

Finally, we continue to strengthen our management and scientific teams. In addition to bringing aboard key scientific talent through the year, some of whom you have heard from our two Analyst Day events last year, we appointed Evan Ballantyne as the Company's Chief Financial Officer. Evan brings more than three decades of financial and operational experience to Agenus having been CFO of Synthetic Biologics of Clinical Data, Inc. among other leadership roles.

With that I will return the call to Bob Stein, President of R&D, for an update on our clinical and preclinical programs and I will come back to give some closing remarks. Bob?

Thank you, Garo. As mentioned, last year we achieved a very important milestone with the filing of INDs for two checkpoint modulating antibodies, both identified as development candidates after our acquisition of 4-Antibody in January 2014.

Both of these INDs were cleared by the FDA 30 days after their submission which enables us, and also our partner Incyte, to move forward into Phase 1 clinical studies with these two checkpoint modulator antibodies, the first to progress through Agenus' pipeline.

We will soon be initiating a Phase 1 study of AGEN1884, which binds to be immune checkpoint target CTLA-4. We believe our CTLA-4 blocker will be the third CTLA-4 antagonist antibody in clinical development. CTLA-4 blockers are emerging as central components of effective combination immunotherapy to regimens for cancer.

We will keep you abreast of our clinical development plans regarding this exciting candidate to the extent that we can in the very competitive arena.

Moving on to our Incyte partnered programs, under our collaboration, Incyte will initiate a Phase 1 study of INCAGN01876 which targets GITR, another critical immune checkpoint target molecule. This program is partnered 50-50 with Incyte.

We believe this drug candidate has certain properties that may confer competitive advantages and we look forward to telling you more about that at a later time once we receive more data, although we will obviously be careful not to dull our competitive edge.

Regarding our first two checkpoint antibody candidates in our preclinical studies, anti-CTLA-4 antibodies, when combined with our (inaudible) protein-based vaccines, enhanced antitumor efficacy compared with either agent alone.

This is consistent with clinical data that were disclosed by Bristol-Myers Squibb on the combination of their CTLA-4 antibody, Yervoy with the Bavarian Nordic prostate cancer vaccine, PROSTVAC which is currently in Phase 3 clinical development.

Notably we have developed novel mechanistic insights related to our first two immuno-oncology antibodies. Both anti-CTLA-4 antagonist 1884 and GITR agonists can deplete intratumoral regulatory T cells thereby enhancing the antitumor efficacy of T effector cells. One of our important R&D objectives this year is to continue to explore combinations of our immune modulator CPMs with our immune education approach using vaccines.

Our alliance with Incyte continues to progress and, as we noted at our Analyst Day in November, we now have seven partnered CPM programs up from the four programs at the start of the alliance in January of 2015.

Moreover, in addition to these two R&D clearances we just received for the CTLA-4 and GITR programs, we expect to initiate clinical studies with two or more additional checkpoint antibodies by the end of 2016.

And as previously noted, we also have a collaboration with Merck in which we are discovering and developing antibody drug candidates against two undisclosed immuno-oncology targets which are distinct from our own checkpoint modulator programs.

Agenus is eligible to receive milestones of up to $100 million per successful compound as well as undisclosed royalties from Merck for any approved products that emerge from this alliance.

Regarding the advances made with our vaccine platforms, at our Analyst Day in November we introduced our AutoSynVax, or autologous synthetic vaccine program. AutoSynVax is our second generation autologous vaccine platform and complements our first-generation autologous vaccine platform which is the basis for Prophage.

While Prophage involves preparation of vaccines from tumor tissues surgically resected from patients, AutoSynVax enables production of fully recombinant vaccines and therefore potentially unlimited quantities of vaccines which incorporate new antigens that are unique to each patient's tumor.

Briefly, we start with generation DNA sequencing of a patient's tumor. We then identify and characterize mutations in the tumor genome and from these we then identify candidate neo-antigens that we predict will be most immunogenic. We then use these candidate new antigens to make our individualized AutoSynVax vaccine.

Looking ahead we expect to start a Phase 1 study of AutoSynVax in the second half of 2016 as well as our first combination study of our vaccine together with a checkpoint modulator.

Given the breadth of the immuno-oncology interventions we have at our disposal, we have the flexibility to develop optimal combination regimens. In this regard we are exploring plans to evaluate AutoSynVax in combination with our adjuvant QS-21 Stimulon, and with our checkpoint modulator antibodies to create highly efficacious immunotherapies for patients with cancer.

In addition, our PhosImmune acquisition was synergistic with our AutoSynVax vaccine platform as it increases the number and types of neoantigens that can serve as tumor specific immunogens and may allow us to create off-the-shelf yet patient specific vaccines.

As Garo noted earlier, last year our academic [collabories] at Northwestern University presented very encouraging updated results from a Phase 2 study of Prophage in newly diagnosed glioblastoma. Showing that patients treated with Prophage on top of standard of care achieved a median overall survival of approximately 24 months compared with 15 to 19 months for historical control patients receiving only standard of care.

Progression free survival was 18 months compared with five to nine months for progression free survival for roughly comparable historical controls receiving only standard of care.

Most striking, however, was the finding that patients with less elevated baseline levels of PD-L1 on their circulating monocyte white blood cells achieved a median overall survival of approximately 45 months as well as a progression free survival of 27 months. We plan to advance Prophage and to a well-controlled randomized study in newly diagnosed glioblastoma this year.

We also strengthened our checkpoint modulator pipeline in 2015 by acquiring rights to the anti-CEACAM1 monoclonal antibodies from the Italian Biotech Company Diatheva. CEACAM1 or carcinoembryonic antigen cell adhesion molecule 1, is overexpressed on some solid tumors and antibodies targeting CEACAM1 are thought to have the potential to effectively treat cancers alone or in combination with other CPMs including those in our own development pipeline.

CEACAM1 has been shown in preclinical studies to suppress both innate and adaptive immune responses to cancers allowing tumors to escape immune destruction. It is also the target of Merck's antibody, CM024.

We also acquired the SECANT niche display platform of Celexion, a privately held biotech company, which is designed to enable highly efficient interrogation of drug targets such as checkpoint proteins. Later in the year we also obtained an exclusive license to a phage display library from IONTAS and additionally entered into an agreement for cell line development technology with Selexis.

These new capabilities in combination with Agenus' Retrocyte Display platform gave us an exceptionally broad vertically integrated and highly productive antibody discovery and development platform designed to result in greater overall efficiencies and faster improved product development.

Thank you for your attention. I would now like to turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Evan Ballantyne, who will review our financial performance.

Thank you, Bob, and now I would like to review the fourth-quarter and full-year 2015 financial results. For the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2015, Agenus reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $15.7 million, or $0.18 per share basic and diluted, compared with a net loss attributable to common stockholders for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2014 of $26 million or $0.41 per share basic and dilutive.

The decrease in net loss attributable to common stockholders for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2015, compared to a net loss attributable to common stockholders for the same period in 2014, and was primarily due to a $14.8 million decrease in net noncash charges related to our contingent obligations, as well as increased revenues of $6 million related to our Incyte collaboration.

Partially offset by increased expenses related to our CPM programs. This compares to noncash income of $623,000 related to the contingent purchase price consideration for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2015.

For the year ended December 31, 2015 the Company reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $88.1 million or $1.13 per share basic and diluted compared with a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $42.7 million or $0.71 per share basic and diluted for the year ended December 31, 2014.

The increase in net loss attributable to common stockholders for the year ended December 31, 2015, compared to the net loss attributable to common stockholders for the same period in 2014, and was primarily due to the advancement of our checkpoint modulator programs.

Partially offset by increased revenues of $17.8 million related to our Incyte collaboration and a $13.2 million charge for the acquisition of the SECANT yeast display platform and other license and technology transfer agreements.

We also recorded a total of $13.6 million in non-cash expense for the fair value adjustment to our contingent obligations. During the same period in 2014, we reported non-cash expense of $6.7 million due to the fair value adjustment of the contingent purchase price consideration and non-cash income of $2.1 million related primarily to our various GSK vaccine trial results containing QS-21 Stimulon and its impact on the contingent royalty obligation.

For the year ended December 31, 2015, we recorded revenue of $24.8 million. Cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments were $171.7 million as of December 31, 2015. Michelle -- I'm sorry, Garo.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Evan. As I said earlier, we successfully advanced the transformation of Agenus into a vertically integrated leading immuno-oncology Company with a unique portfolio of checkpoint modulators, a diversified vaccine platform and clinically validated vaccine adjuvants.

2016 is looking to be an even more exciting year for us as we build on our momentum, advance on our programs and some of the key anticipated milestones for the year include: the start of Phase 1 trials for CTLA-4 and GITR checkpoint modulator programs; filing of one or more additional INDs for CPM programs; filing our first IND for an AutoSynVax vaccine candidate while advancing our [phospho peptide-based] vaccine efforts; advancing our lead vaccine program, Prophage, into randomized trials including those in combination with checkpoint modulators; and very importantly, securing additional strategic alliances and partnerships.

With that I would like to thank you for joining us on this call today. We hope that you found this update informative and we look forward to providing you with additional updates. With that I will turn the call back to Michelle.

Thank you, Garo. Operator, you can now open the call for questions.

(Operator Instructions). Mike King, JMP Securities.

I just wanted to see if we could understand a little bit better about -- we have an abstract titles out for AACR that talk about your CTLA-4, GITR and OX40 antibodies. And without giving away the data prior to the abstract, I'm just wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about what kind of data will be in there?

Will these be in cellular assays? Will they be in animals? Any other color you can give us on those -- what's contained within those abstracts would be helpful.

As you know, Mike, we have to be very careful on how much information we release on these subjects. So with that caveat I will ask Dr. Stein to address the question in a way that will not jeopardize any presentation. Bob?

Hi, Mike. Thank you, Garo. The abstracts do give some further biochemical and cellular characterization of our antibodies moving forward. There is some description of ways in which they are perhaps superior to some of the competitive compounds.

We don't have animal data with our actual compounds because they are not cross-reactive with the rodent targets. But the details will have to wait AACR presentations.

Okay, that is helpful. And then just in regard to the combination regimens that you are talking about with both Prophage as well as AutoSynVax and your phosphoryl peptides, Garo, you had said that one of the important milestones for this year will be data with Prophage plus checkpoint modulators.

And would that be your checkpoint modulators or would that be with someone else's? And I guess the same question would be true about AutoSynVax and the phosphoryl peptide technology. Thank you.

So, I just want to make one correction. So we I think it would be premature for us to anticipate data from such trials this year. But we will initiate these trials. And the answer to your question is both will be our strategy, meaning doing it both with existing marketed products as well as our own checkpoint modulators.

Okay, and then in conjunction with the proved CPMs, would that entail some kind of formal collaboration with the sponsors of those agents? Or would you just be I guess essentially using them in patients who already have approval for therapy with CPMs?

So, if we were to do it with an existing CPM it would be a formal collaboration.

Thank you.

[Swayampakula], HC Wainwright.

This is on the Phase 3 Prophage study that you are planning to initiate later this year. So, is this study protocol -- has it been decided through the FDA as to whether there is going to be a registration study?

Or because they are talking about adding CPMs in combination could potentially be those that have been approved and those that are your own, which means they have not gone through any clinical study yet. So how should we think of this late stage clinical study?

So, a couple of data points for you. As you know, the first time a CPM plus a vaccine medical study, which was disclosed a little over a year ago, suggested that the combination of CTLA-4 with the Bavarian Nordic vaccine for prostate cancer showed much better outcomes than either agent alone. And we have generated preclinical data suggesting the same with a CTLA-4 antibody.

So having said that, we have preliminary evidence to be enthusiastic about combinations and known combinations as I just mentioned.

Now with regard to our plans for a randomized study for Prophage, the outcomes of a randomized trial in terms of how robust the outcomes are and how promising the results are of such a study will determine whether or not that study will be registrational.

However, have we gotten I think the implicit question that you may have meant was have we gotten an SBA with the FDA. The answer is no, and we don't intend on seeking an SBA.

Thanks for clarifying that. Then this is more a question for Bob, the next couple questions. We all [tend to] know on Monday that Astra (inaudible) CTLA-4 did not get through as a monotherapy in mesothelioma. So does your anti-CTLA-4 differ from that?

And in the same vein, we know Yervoy does okay in certain cancers but certainly has quite a bit of a safety issue that we need to deal with. So do you think the anti-CTLA-4 from Agenus could be better or does it have a better profile compared to these two molecules at least at the preclinical stage?

So there are two aspects of that. Our first molecule, 1884, has a [FC] segment similar to that of Yervoy and we think it will perform as well or better than Yervoy. Our second molecule has a [IDG-2] FC, which makes it more like tremelimumab, which is the Astra Zeneca compound for CTLA-4.

And what we believe is that the 1884 may have better efficacy as a single agent. But as you pointed out, the combination of CTLA-4 blockade with PD-1 blockade is actually pretty laden with side effects. And it is our belief that the tremelimumab like pharmacology that is characteristic of our second candidate may well turn out to be more suitable in combination regimens.

So my belief is that CTLA-4 blockade is an important part of the foundational regimen for good immuno-oncologic interventions, that the 1884 may be more powerful as a single agent and 2041 may be more well tolerated in conjunction with PD-1 blockade.

And then the next question is on anti-GITR. As far as I know your anti-GITR would probably be the second one coming to the clinic after what Merck has put out there. Obviously there is quite a bit of expectations as to what kind of data could show up at ASCO from the Merck's molecule.

Not sure how much intelligence you have, but what do you think about Agenus' molecule and how much of a different profile could we expect from Agenus molecule?

First, I like to think I have some intelligence, but beyond that --. What I would say is that our molecule is actually likely to be the third molecule in because GITR Inc. has the molecule that was first created by Tolerx, TRX518. And then behind that comes Merck's GITR antagonist and behind that comes ours.

Without giving details, we have compared ours to versions of the competitive compounds and we believe we have some distinctions that should play out as advantages clinically. And the lead TRX518 has been in the clinic for a very long time without any data having emerged. So we don't know exactly how that is going to stack up.

But Merck obviously has developed a certain level of enthusiasm around the target because they have put a second molecule targeting (inaudible) development pipeline as well. And we are very, very excited about ours; we think it is going to have very nice performance characteristics.

Okay, and the last question is on the financial side of it. When GSK gets to file Stimulon in the second half, does Agenus get a milestone payment? And is that -- if it is true is that a (inaudible) within your financial guidance of cash reserves until the first half of 2017?

Right.

Right. So those milestone payments -- any payment up until the returns are satisfied go to Oberland.

Okay.

So we -- the answer is yes, we have factored all of that into our forecast for the year.

Okay, thank you.

Biren Amin, Jefferies.

Just maybe a question on the CEACAM1 molecule that you are developing. It seems that the Merck competitors in IgG4 -- how would yours differ from the Merck compound which is currently in Phase 1 trials.

Bob, if you could answer that question.

You are correct in ours, we expect to have similar mechanism of action. Basically you need to disrupt the homodimeric interaction between a short form of CEACAM1 on tumors and a long form on T cells, because that is the inhibitory interaction.

You want to block the interaction between those two ways the molecule is expressed and presented. And that prevents the tumor from shutting down the T cells as they come to attack. And we believe that we will have at least similar performance characteristics to the Merck CM024.

And it seems Merck is going after I think six different solid tumor types, none of which are -- uveal melanoma. Would you consider uveal melanoma which is an orphan indication given CEACAM was overexpressed?

I think it is an interesting potential orphan indication, it is a setting where there is less of a mutational burden than there is in dermal melanomas. And so, it may be a little bit harder to get really good immunologic responses against it. But it is an interesting possible target.

There are other more common cancers that are on the list, as you know. And you can tell which tumors will respond because you can measure the CEACAM1 expression on the tumor as a marker of potential responsivity.

And when should we expect IND filing for this candidate?

We are not making a specific date at this point on that.

Great, thanks.

Chris Marai, Oppenheimer.

First, just on [1881], when might we start to see some of the first human data? Is it too far-fetched to think something like (inaudible) this year or are you thinking closer to something like mid-next year?

And then number two, I was wondering, maybe Bob, if you could speak to potential competition from -- for your LAG-3, TIM-3 programs from maybe bispecifics that interrogate multiple targets such as PD-1 and TIM-3 or LAG-3, which are sort of known to be co-expressed. Thanks.

Let me just address the first question and Bob will address the second one. So, we are not providing any guidance on the timing of that, Chris. It is too early. Although there are definitive plans to -- and dates to dose the first patient, I think it is a trial structure which will depend on obviously the interim data from dose escalation. And we will wait to provide more guidance on that later on. Bob, if you could address the second --.

Yes, sure. So it is true that both TIM-3 and LAG-3 probably will be most effective when blocked in conjunction with blocking PD-1. And there is a possibility of doing that with bispecifics. However, it will be somewhat challenging to get the affinities and the stoichiometry all managed up because there may not be a matched level of LAG-3 target in PD-1 or TIM-3 target in PD-1.

And so, in most cases having separate control of the two levers turns out to be superior to therapeutic intervention. And there will of course be some challenges with regard to pricing and it may be possible to price a bispecific like one therapy and may have to do something to acknowledge the pricing issues when you combine two interventions.

But in general it is not like you are using your bispecific to target a certain subpopulation. You're really trying to get a double pharmacology out of a single agent. And so, my belief is that it will still probably be superior to have the single agents combined with PD-1.

Thanks.

Jason McCarthy, Maxim Group.

It sounds like things are progressing. I just have a question for Bob and I want to just go back to the LAG-3. GSK and Novartis are excited about their LAG-3 antibodies though for very different indications.

And I was wondering if preclinically, if you have in-house data, where you might have a LAG-3 that is a depleting antibody that would be relevant for autoimmune diseases and maybe branch off into that sector. Or are you going to have an antagonist LAG-3 that would be useful for oncology? Or are you thinking about both sides when it comes to LAG-3?

Well, that is a very good question, Jason, because for all these interventions, or many of them, where one type of pharmacologic effect activates the immune system and is suitable for immuno-oncology and maybe for infectious disease. On the flipside pharmacology may well dampen down the immune response and could be used in the context of either autoimmunity or transplant.

We are very aware of that. We have some programs where that has already been a result of the intense activity on (inaudible) targets. I don't want to say too much more about it specifically. But it is a very interesting aspect of working in these areas is that some of the reagents we generate may well be suitable for other medical uses with the opposite desire where it is to tune down immune function.

Okay, great, thank you.

At this time I am showing no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. I would like to remind listeners that a replay of the call will be available approximately two hours after the call and that the call will also be accessible from the Company's website at www.agenusbio.com.

On behalf of the management team at Agenus I would like to thank everyone for joining us on today's call. We are available to receive any further inquiries following the call. With that, operator, please conclude.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.