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This positive data triggered a $35 million milestone from our partner, Blackstone Life Sciences, earlier than anticipated, and we are planning to provide a data update on all patients treated by mid this year, most likely at ASCO, with longer follow-up planned at the end of 2023 as well as planned BLA submission to the U.S. FDA by the end of the year. December was a busy month for us. We also had a number of clinical updates at the American Society of Hematology Annual Conference, including presenting longer term follow-up data from our adult ALL patients in the ALLCAR19 Phase I study of obe-cel showing 35% of patients in ongoing remission at 36 months of follow-up--median follow-up, with no additional anti-leukemia therapy. In addition, obe-cel continued to show high levels of clinical activity in relapsed refractory non-Hodgkins lymphoma and chronic lymphoblastic leukemia patients paired with a well manageable safety profile.

We were also very encouraged with the data we presented from our pediatric ALL program, the CARPALL Phase I trial of AUTO1/22, our dual targeting CAR T therapy targeting CD19 and CD22 with over 80% of patients achieving a molecular complete remission with no antigen negative relapses observed. Additionally, we've provided longer term follow-up on the LibrA T1 Phase I trial of AUTO4 in peripheral T cell lymphoma with some patients experiencing durable metabolic CRs, including one patient up to the one year mark post treatment and obviously in continued remission. We will be providing updates on these programs over the course of this year and will also be presenting data from the CAROUSEL study of obe-cel in peripheral CNS lymphoma patients, the MCARTY Phase I trial of AUTO8 in multiple myeloma patients, and finally the Phase I trial of AUTO6NG in neuroblastoma patients is expected to start in the next quarter.

Turning to Slide 5, we've made some great operational progress during the quarter. Towards the end of the year, we closed a public offering, raising aggregate gross proceeds of $164 million and net proceeds after underwriting discounts and offering expenses of $152.4 million, including a partial exercise of the by the underwriters. We believe we are well positioned financially to bring obe-cel, an innovative and potentially transformative treatment to an underserved adult ALL patient population. In 2023, we will be fully focused on submitting a BLA application at the end of the year and working towards commercial launch in 2024. As I mentioned earlier, we also received a $35 million milestone from our partner, Blackstone Life Sciences, as a result of the positive interim analysis of obe-cel in adult ALL.

At the same time, we received an additional $35 million milestone from Blackstone as a result of planned activity supporting the performance and qualification of the obe-cel manufacturing process. You will recall that we signed the agreement with Blackstone at the end of 2021, a part equity and part program financing collaboration for our lead candidate, obe-cel, and we have now received $220 million of the total $250 million committed capital. We were very pleased to announce three deals, two in October 2022 and one post period end in January 2023, which underscores what we believe is an industry-leading cell programming technology platform we have developed at Autolus. We signed an agreement with Bristol Myers Squibb granting them access to our proprietary RQR8 rituximab-induced safety switch for incorporation into a set of selected cell therapy programs.

In addition, Moderna exercised an option on one of the proprietary binders being developed against an undisclosed immuno-oncology target for the delivery of pioneering messenger RNA therapeutics. This license option stems from the deal we announced with Moderna in August 2021. Finally, in January 2023 we signed an agreement with Cabaletta Bio which allows them to incorporate the RQR8 safety switch into a cell therapy program for the treatment of autoimmune disease. The total license revenue was $6.2 million in 2022 and each of these deals has the potential for additional revenue in near term option exercise fees, milestone payments, and royalties. We continue to make steady progress in our manufacturing at CMC operations. The first phase of the build of our commercial manufacturing facility was completed with the handover of the first of three clean rooms at the end of last year.

We have named this facility the Nucleus. We are now working on the qualification and validation of the Nucleus and we remain on track for good manufacturing practice operations commencing in the second half of 2023. We're also undertaking the development work and report generation for the CMC package planned to support the BLA submission to the FDA. Finally, total cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash at the end of December were $382.8 million. With that, let's talk more about obe-cel on Slide No. 7. Obe-cel has a unique mechanism of action. What's fundamentally different about our product candidate is that it has an ability to engage physiologically with the target cell, rapidly binding to the target, which delivers specificity paired with a fast off-rate for rapid disengagement from the target cell once the kill has been delivered.

This unique engagement drives maximal activity while minimizing toxicity and is at the heart of the differentiated clinical profile we are observing in acute lymphoblastic leukemia, non-Hodgkins lymphoma patients, and chronic lymphoblastic leukemia patients. Moving onto Slide No. 8, our clinical experience with obe-cel in ALL shows high overall response rate across all--shows a high level of clinical activity across all indications. Our clinical experience with obe-cel in ALL shows a high overall response rate across all patient populations, including a very high level of clinical activity over the longer term that we have now observed in the ALLCAR19 study. We have a median follow-up of 36 months now in this study and with a follow-up of 24 to 47 months of observation, we see that 35% of the patients are in long-term remission after receiving obe-cel and receiving no further anti-leukemia therapy.

The safety profile is well manageable with low levels of high grade CRS and ICANS. The midsection of the slide shows the patients with long term remission and continued presence of CAR T cells over the entire observation period. The program is developed under RMAT, PRIME and ILAP designations. Moving to Slide 9, we completed the enrollment and dosing of a pivotal study, the study we call the FELIX study, in adult relapsed refractory ALL patients, and as I mentioned, we announced in December that we had met the primary end point of overall response rate in an interim analysis based on the first 50 patients followed for at least three months of follow-up. Clinical benefit in ALL will be assessed based on patients remaining in sustained complete remission.

We conducted this study in 34 centers, 24 centers in the U.S., seven centers in the U.K., and three centers in Spain during the peak of the pandemic. It is important to realize that relapsed refractory adult ALL patients are highly immune suppressed and the pandemic poses a significant added risk to them. Moreover, due to access restrictions and various other pandemic rules and regulations, we could not access our clinical trial sites for the most part of the FELIX study. As you can imagine, end stage ALL patients are about as difficult a patient population to work with, particularly in an environment where there is a high risk of infection, and indeed we did lose patients to COVID. In many ways, this study was more of a real world study conducted under difficult circumstances.

In addition to patient safety, every aspect of product delivery and logistics were pressure-tested during this trial with massively reduced air traffic and impact of the pandemic on our manufacturing teams. Remarkably, manufacturing for all patients from our facility in the U.K. turned out to be an asset also for U.S. delivery as the long haul flights between the U.S. to the U.K. have priority over U.S. and also EU domestic flights. Next, a key data readout is planned for ASCO in June this year. Moving to Slide No. 10, this slide summarizes the announcement we made in December regarding the pre-specified interim analysis of the first 50 out of 90 patients dosed that had reached at least three months of follow-up. The primary end point is based on overall remission rate, which includes patients in complete remission and patients in complete remission with incomplete bone marrow recovery, or CR and CRI.

The ORR was 70% and in fact all recent programs in ALL have used ORR as a primary end point in their respective studies. Safety analysis was conducted on a larger 92 patient data set and showed an excellent profile with high grade cytokine release experienced in less than 3% of patients and higher grade ICANS or neurotoxicity in less than 8% of patients. ICANS were fully reversible and less than 25% of patients had any grade of neurotoxicity, in contrast to approved T cell or T cell engaging therapies, a very unusual safety profile in this population. As I mentioned earlier, this exciting data set triggered a $35 million milestone from Blackstone. Moving to Slide No. 11, this slide summarizes our current experience with obe-cel across ALL. As you can see, the data are highly consistent across the various studies, both in safety and efficacy.

Worth noting is that the CARFALL and ALLCAR19 studies were conducted prior to the pandemic, while both parts of the FELIX study were conducted during the pandemic. Both the CARFALL and ALLCAR19 study were conducted in the U.K. while the FELIX study was largely conducted in the U.S. What we did pick up is that the patients in the FELIX study were more advanced in their disease based on tumor burden and increased presence of so-called extra-medullary disease. This is in essence a gain of function of the leukemia that allows is to leave the bone marrow and successfully settle and grow in other organs. Patients with extra-medullary disease respond poorly to any type of anti-leukemia therapy. Moving to Slide 12 to look further into the data we presented at ASH from the ALLCAR19 study, when we did look into the outcome or long-term observation from the ALLCAR19 study, we're up to obviously with four years of follow-up and you can see that we have a quite unusual clinical profile.

The clinical benefit in these patients is the ability to convert patients into complete remission and sustain them over long periods of time, which is obviously what we're seeing for a good proportion of these patients. When you look at the swing plot moving from the bottom up, we had obviously some patients that did not respond to therapy, then we have some patients that responded but relapsed quickly. The yellow circles are patients that relapsed with so-called CD19 negative disease. In essence, the leukemia became invisible to the therapy while losing the very structure the therapy was designed to recognize. If you then go a little further up, you see three red circles. Those are patients that relapsed because the CAR T cells, the obe-cel product candidate, didn't persist long enough and patients relapsed with CD19 positive disease.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Above those, you then see a group of patients that are in long term remission between two and four years without any additional therapy. Seven out of the 20 patients, or 35% are in continued remission without receiving any additional anti-leukemia therapy with median follow-up of 36 months in the range of 24 to 47 months. Every single one of these patients has persistent CAR T cells. You see one additional patient with long term remission who received a stem cell transplant while in complete remission. Moving to Slide 13, Blincyto, a T cell engaging CD19 targeting monoclonal bispecific antibody has become the standard of care in relapsed refractory adult ALL over the last few years. Key to its success has been the well manageable safety profile.

A key focus from a patient management perspective is the monitoring of neurotoxicity of our ICANS, which impact 65% of patients treated with Blincyto. In contrast, obe-cel had less than 25% of patients experience ICANS of any grade. High grade CRS for Blincyto is low with about 5% and obe-cel seems to be similar and potentially slightly better in terms of high grade CRS. In contrast to Blincyto, Tecartus, a CAR T program approved for this indication induces high grade cytokine release interim in 26% of patients and high grade neurotoxicity in 35% of patients, while 87% experience neurotoxicity of any grade. Forty percent of patients received vasopressers. Managing such a safety profile often requires access to ICUs. Finally, inotuzumab while active is primarily used as a bridging therapy.

Moving to Slide 14, the market opportunity in relapsed refractory ALL is in fact unchanged with about 3,000 patients in high need for therapy between the U.S., Europe and Japan. Moving to Slide 15, Blincyto, the standard of care in relapsed refractory ALL has reached sales in 2022 of $583 million with a year-over-year growth of 24%. This product is commercialized by Amgen. Currently, the product reaches about 2,000-plus adult patients with ALL, on average receiving two cycles of Blincyto. Patients with low disease burden can receive up to four cycles of Blincyto at a combined cost comparable to CAR T therapy. The key to Blincyto's market penetration is its well manageable safety profile which allows delivery in non-academic hospitals in addition to the academic centers.

We believe that obe-cell with its high level of clinical activity, attractive safety profile, and one-time administration is well positioned to capture that opportunity. When we look overall in terms of the price level for CAR T therapies in ALL, they are in the range of $450,000 in the U.S. Moving to Slide 16, when we look at the steps forward, first of all, we're planning to disclose the FELIX data from all patients dosed in mid 2023, likely at ASCO and also at EHA. Long term follow-up is planned for ASH. We're targeting the BLA submission for the program towards the end of the year, MAA filing towards the end of the first quarter 2024, and the U.K. filing in the second quarter of 2024. That sets us up very nicely for the key territories that we expect to be initially active in.

In addition to the mature clinical data, the submission will also require data from the validation of our commercial manufacturing site. This work has been a key focus throughout the first half of 2023 and will continue into the third quarter. Importantly, our commercial manufacturing facility is set up to cover supply for approximately two-thirds of the estimated market from the start. As we're moving through 2023, we need to prepare three key areas for commercialization: first, creating awareness for the program through a focused medical affairs program; second, establish a value proposition for payors in our HGA dossiers; and finally, third, prepare for and start center on-boarding, a process that will take between nine and 15 months to get each center ready to deliver CAR T therapy.

Moving to Slide 18, we can talk about the broader opportunities we see with obe-cel. As part of the ALLCAR19 extension study, we have been evaluating obe-cel in relapsed refractory non-Hodgkins lymphoma and chronic lymphoblastic leukemia patients. We see consistently very high response rates combined with a very attractive safety profile suitable for outpatient use. The data will form the basis for the selection of our second indication after ALL. In terms of the life cycle, we started to work on the next version of obe-cel, which we call AUTO122. We are looking to minimize with this product CD19 antigen loss-driven relapses with its dual targeting approach. Building on obe-cel, we're adding a highly potent CD22 CAR that can recognize very low amounts of CD22 on the surface of leukemia cells.

This program was initially evaluated in children who have failed Kymriah or were not eligible for Kymriah therapy. In this very challenging patient population, we saw an 83% molecular response rate and none of the children relapsed with de novo CD19 negative disease. Comparing this activity to obe-cel, we would have expected a molecular CR rate of approximately 40, maybe 50%. We are working on further streamlining the manufacturing process of AUTO122 knowing that we have an attractive life cycle option. Timing of investment decisions in AUTO122 will be balanced with additional indication investments for obe-cel. Slide 19, switching gears, moving on and switching gears to Slide 20 as well as 21. Our technology platform allows us to engineer a range of properties into T cells to drive specificity of recognition, resilience against negative signals used by tumor cells to evade T cell attack, and providing survival signals for T cells.

Our strength in T cell engineering drives our pipeline and is also at the heart of the three collaborations reported on in 2022 and early 2023 with Moderna, BMS and Cabaletta. On Slide 22, we have a quick summary of the earlier stage programs in T cell lymphoma with AUTO4/5, AUTO6NG in neuroblastoma, and AUTO8 in multiple myeloma. Both AUTO4 and AUTO8 are in Phase I clinical studies and AUTO6NG is expected to start Phase I in the next quarter. Moving to Slide 23, T cell lymphoma has a very high medical need quite similar to B ALL. In fact, when you look at the NCCN guidelines, where it basically says that once you're through the frontline therapy and fail, you have to go on a clinical trial. Moving to Slide 24, with its unique targeting approach, AUTO4 starts to show meaningful clinical impact at the higher dose levels that we have evaluated.

The first metabolic CRs are reaching one year post-treatment and we continue to follow those patients. In addition, we have streamlined the manufacturing process and are exploring the activity in an additional cohort and we're planning to report on that outcome later in 2023. Moving to Slide 26 to talk about manufacturing, cell manufacturing is at the core of any autologous cell therapy. Developing a highly reliable, robust and economical process is critical for the success of any program. In addition, we have to be able to deliver product at scale and matching the capacity to the size of the medical need in its indication, and it is important to be able to do that to have a successful roll-out of your therapy. Building on the robust and well characterized process used to manufacture for the FELIX clinical study, we're standing up our commercial cell manufacturing facility, called the Nucleus, about a mile away from the clinical trial manufacturing site we had used for the study.

This proximity is important as we will be able to move our entire staff to the new facility, and in fact many of them are already in the process of validating the Nucleus facility. The capacity of the Nucleus in its initial set-up is 2,000 patient batches per year or about two-thirds of the adult ALL market size in terms of capacity. The Nucleus has been a fantastic project to realize with an innovative design of about 75% offsite building to accelerate the build while maximizing the quality of the build. With that, I would like to turn to Slide 28 and pass the call over to Lucinda for our fiscal year 2022 financial update. Lucy?

Lucinda Crabtree: Thanks Christian. Good morning or good afternoon to everyone. It's my pleasure to review our financial results for the fiscal year to December 31, 2022. Cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash at December 31, 2022 totaled $382.8 million as compared to $310.7 million at December 31, 2021. Net total operating expenses for the 12 months ended December 31, 2022 were $168 million net of grant income and license revenue of $6.4 million, as compared to total operating expenses of $165 million net of grant income and license revenue of $2.3 million for the same period in 2021. Research and development expenses increased by $7.2 million to $142 million for the year ended December 31, 2022 from $134.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2021.

This was primarily due to the following: an increase of $11.6 million in clinical cots and manufacturing costs, primarily relating to our obe-cel clinical product candidate; an increase of $0.4 million in legal fees and special consulting fees in relation to our R&D activities; an increase of $0.2 million related to information technology infrastructure and support for information systems related to the conduct of clinical trials and manufacturing operations; an increase of $0.2 million in cell logistics costs; a decrease of $3.7 million in facilities costs related to the termination and closure of our U.S. manufacturing facility in 2021 and shifting our overall manufacturing strategy; a decrease of $0.9 million in depreciation and amortization related to property and equipment and intangible assets; and finally a decrease of $0.6 million in salaries and other employment costs, including share-based compensation expenses, which is mainly due to lower exchange rates used upon consolidation for the year ended December 31, 2022 compared to the year ended December 31, 2021, and this was offset by an increase in employees engaged in R&D activities.

General and administrative expenses remained consistent at $31.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2022 and 2021 respectively, primarily due to the following: an increase of $1.4 million in salaries and other employment costs, including share-based compensation expenses mainly driven by an increase in the average number of employees engaged in G&A activities; an increase of $0.3 million primarily related to information technology costs; a net increase of $0.1 million in legal fees and special consulting fees in relation to our G&A activities, which was offset against lower D&O insurance--director and officer insurance; a decrease of $1 million of commercial preparation costs due to the timing of related activities; a decrease of $0.4 million in facilities costs related to the termination of certain lease agreements in the prior year, and a decrease of $0.4 million in depreciation and amortization related to property and equipment and intangible assets.

Interest income increased to $1.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2022 compared to $0.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. The increase in interest income of $1.4 million primarily relates to the increase in interest rates on our interest-bearing bank accounts and short term investments during the year ended December 31, 2022 compared to 2021. Interest expense increased to $8.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2022 as compared to interest expense of $1.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. Interest expense is primarily related to the liabilities of future royalties and sales milestones which arose upon the execution of our strategic collaboration and financing agreement with Blackstone in November 2021. The increase in interest expense for the year ended December 31, 2022 is primarily driven by the full year of the liability related to the Blackstone collaboration in 2022 compared to a partial year liability accrued in 2021.

Other income or expense increased to an income of $2 million for the year ended December 31, 2022 from expenses of $1 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. During the year ended December 31, 2022, we recognized a foreign exchange gain of $1.7 million, a sublease income of $0.2 million, and other income of $0.1 million. This compares to an expense of $0.1 million, as I mentioned, for the year ended December 31, 2021 which included a foreign exchange loss of $2.2 million offset by a gain on lease terminations of $2 million and other income of $0.1 million. Income tax benefit increased to $24.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2022 from $23.9 million for the preceding year ended December 31, 2021 due to an increase in qualifying research and development expenditures for the period.

Net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders was $148.8 million for the 12 months ended December 31, 2022, and this compares to $142.1 million for the same period in 2021. The basic and diluted net loss per ordinary share for the 12 months ended December 31, 2022 totaled $1.57 compared to a basic and diluted loss per ordinary share of $1.97 for the 12 months ended December 31, 2021. Finally, Autolus estimates that its current cash and cash equivalents on hand and anticipated project financing payments from Blackstone will extend the company's runway into 2025. Now back to Christian to give you a brief outlook on expected milestones. Christian?

Christian Itin: Thanks Lucy. Moving to Slide 30 finally, we think we have an exciting year ahead of us. A key focus is on getting obe-cel into the regulatory process with BLA filing targeted towards the end of the year, followed by filings in Europe in the first half of next year. Next up are the planned FELIX data presentations midyear 2023. In addition, we are preparing for commercial product supply and launch readiness. Finally, we also expect to provide updates on the pipeline programs with additional data and follow-up during the year, and with our key programs un-partnered at this stage, we have opportunity for setting up collaborations. Moving to Slide 31, with that we believe we're at a very interesting point with the company.

We've got the cash to deliver a very significant value step and we've got the data to show that with obe-cel, we have a differentiated product profile that addresses a high medical need with limited competition and with possibly a transformational outcome. Alongside that, we have additional opportunities for obe-cel in broader indications and a valuable pipeline of other oncology programs. As I mentioned, we're excited about our manufacturing facility and we have a strong technology foundation validated by our collaborators, BMS, Moderna, Cabaletta, and we look to do more deals of that nature in the future. With that, thank you very much, and we're happy to take questions.

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