Sangamo Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGMO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Kevin Strang: Hi, this is Kevin Strang on for Maury. Thanks for taking our questions. Just wanted to – you already touched on sort of the Fabry Phase 3 where you left off the talks with the FDA, but I wanted to switchover to CAR-Treg for that program. Can you talk about what went into your decision to not show cohort one data by the end of the year? Is that basically because you’re getting to the potential efficacious dose earlier than you originally thought? And then, can you say whether or not you looked at any of the renal biopsy data? And then saw evidence of presence or expansion of T-Regs or any commentary you can share around safety so far?

Sandy Macrae : Good morning. Yes. Thank you and you are spot on with why we are delaying showing the data. Originally, the study design was three patients per cohort and then an SMC and then another three patients. And with the with the complication of running a study in renal transplant that was driving the top doors way out into ‘25 with our really novel clinical design from the clinical team, they’ve managed to bring this in much quicker with a – design. And we will have doors patients in the top doors as early as January of next year. Therefore, we’ll have a package of data that we can share next year, rather than dribbling it out cohort by cohort. And I’m sure you will agree that makes your job a lot easier. As to what we’ve seen so far, we’ve dosed three patients in cohort one and one patient in cohort two and, Nathalie, they’re doing extremely well, aren’t they?

Nathalie Dubois-Stringfellow: Yeah. The safety of the product has been demonstrated for those two cohorts. We have also in addition added a fourth cohort to our new design, which is a dose that is 18-fold higher than the dosing cohort one. So we are very excited about this and it also demonstrates our manufacture capability for the T-Reg platform.

Sandy Macrae : And we’re very careful to save – to hold off showing all the data until next year, but encouraged with what we’ve seen so far. But really what will be most compelling would be if we show you all those levels and for a larger group of patients. So we look forward to doing that next year.

Kevin Strang: Great. Thank you.

Operator: Please stand by for the next question. The next question comes from Nicole Germino with Truist. Your line is open.

Nishant Poddar: Hi, this is Nishant. I’m on for Nicole. Thanks for taking our questions. Maybe talk a little bit about your focus – your efforts focusing on epigenetic regulation therapies, which you are focusing on now neurological disease and novel capsids. Is this an area of greater pharma very interest and is that why you’re focusing on it?

Sandy Macrae : So, I’m going to pass this over in a moment to Amy to say news, particularly good for our pharma regulation. Our decision is a very chosen one and it’s, as I said, we’ve been on this journey internally for three years. Neurological diseases are an enormous burden to society and we feel that this fits with our longstanding technologies and allows us to make a difference. Amy, why does the Zinc Fingers repressors work particularly well in this field?

Amy Pooler: Thanks, Sandy. We believe that the approach we are using the Zinc Fingers, it gives us a really unprecedented opportunity to regulate gene expression in the brain and match it specifically to the neurological disease indications being able to precisely and specifically up regulated or down regulated genes that are involved in these really challenging neurological diseases gives a new opportunity to treat those diseases. In addition because the Zinc Fingers are so small. They package very easily into a decapsid and that gives us another chance to not only design the cargo, but to design the delivery vessel that will bring them to the areas of the brain, or the areas of the nervous system where they can have the biggest impact in modifying the disease progression.