GENETIC MEDICINES THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE IS NOW

We're at a time at Regeneron now where our productivity in discovering new targets and new biology is at an all-time high. What we're finding now is that so many of these targets are not addressable by antibodies and those other protein therapeutic platforms that we have. So in a sense, our productivity in genetics discovery really necessitated that we also now become a genetic medicines company. Genetic medicines is actually something that is not new to Regeneron. From its foundation Regeneron was very interested in understanding how genetics explain how disease is being manifested and understand different biological pathways by understanding genetics. Regeneron Genetic Medicines is sitting at this great intersection where we can access all of this knowledge and technology. Being able to work in this technology where we are either modifying the gene directly or giving back a normal copy of the gene, allows us to address many disorders, whether it be hearing loss, whether it be balance, whether it's neurodegeneration or a metabolic disorder. We're not locked into one particular platform or one particular technology. We're thinking holistically, what is going to be the best approach. So there's all sorts of ways that we're thinking about the overlap between the various areas at Regeneron and how we can maximize the utility for the purpose of our therapeutics. All these technologies have been invented and existed at Regeneron now can take the field of genetic medicines and make them turnkey. The lessons that we learned from one program can be broadly applicable to the lessons that we learned from another, because at the end of the day, it's all genetics. Over the years we've tried to set up multiple collaborations with like-minded companies, companies that are trying to come up with innovative approaches for both protein therapeutics and genetic medicines. We've been very fortunate to work with highly motivated and highly innovative companies such as Intellia Therapeutics, Decibel Therapeutics, and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals to advance programs really rapidly and help us gain confidence and experience in working in this new area. The auditory space is a great place for Regeneron to do work because the technologies that Regeneron has been building for years can be applied to the inner ear in a way that has not been done before. There are some patients that are born completely deaf and we've found certain genes you can reintroduce In the case of lysosomal diseases, it's a really powerful combination where we can use antibodies to direct, essentially direct the medicine to the specific parts of the cell that need to be treated and then we can find that with genetic medicines in a way that makes it a single treatment that a patient may only have to take once in their lifetime. These were things that were, you know, in movies, you know, 10 or 20 years ago, and we are actually doing them in a lab on a daily basis, and we are testing them in human beings every single day. The long-term promise for genetic medicines at Regeneron is to have the type of success that we've experienced and enjoyed with antibody therapeutics and protein therapeutics. My hope is that we can use genetic medicines to really reach these areas of biology that have traditionally not been well-served by the existing tools. I think this idea of using the body to make your own drug will really be revolutionary. We'll have many more treatment options available to people and have more targeted treatments because we've gone exactly to the genetic lesion and made a difference at the root cause. Not only have we been able to get access to genetic information in a much larger scale than we've been able to get before, but we also live at a time where some of these genetic medicines started getting some early clinical validation. So we believe that this is the right time to invest even harder, work even harder, and take as many of these approaches forward as possible so that we can do things that we couldn't imagine we could do five years ago. That's the the blueprint, that's the goal, that's the vision for what we can do in genetic medicines.