Hank Fuchs
Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead
Sure thing, Chris. The challenge oftentimes in genetic diseases is the diagnostic odyssey and the delay. And we hope that during our development program, we can overcome some of those barriers and start to teach our colleagues that early diagnosis is really the path to improve overall outcomes in genetic conditions. As to regulatory requirements for the under three population, that's a TBD. The one thing I'd say about that is, we've got a lot of wind at our back with health authorities around the world who recognize the safety and the efficacy of VOXZOGO in children under three years of age essentially approved from infancy ran on the world in achondroplasia, that's a very good platform to develop even further confidence of VOXZOGO in very young children. So, stay tuned for how the diagnostic Odyssey is going to unfold, how the clinical program will unfold and how the regulatory proceedings might unfold. As Alexander said earlier, we got -- we just got BRINEURA approved for the very young population. So, I think the agencies are now quite familiar with BioMarin and the strategy of obtaining earlier and earlier approvals and the rising confidence in the safety VOXZOGO efficacy can only help us. As regards to 349 and Vertex's most recently announced decision, I would just contrast two very different approaches that have been undertaken. Vertex, I think, was kind of shooting for the stars to do two very difficult things simultaneously. One was to restore antitryptic activity and the other was to prevent polymerization, which causes the liver disease. And they've had now a couple of bites at that apple. And have not so far succeeded and maybe they'll gain further traction, preclinically, don't know. What we on is a much more single-minded focus which is to stop one of the two big, big problems. And actually, it's the currently untreated problem than alpha-1 antitrypsin. As you know, there's replacement therapy for the lung disease, the loss of function mutations. The problem that we're addressing is a different molecular problem, which is the gain of function mutation, which causes the alpha-1 mutant proteins to polymerize in the liver, and that is currently unaddressed medically. Doing so has the advantage of -- and what we've shown preclinically is that we can solubilize these polymers, increase their exclusions in the liver and then restore liver health as a consequence. The related result of that is that in patients who have only one genome copy of the mutant protein that we can -- but we can reduce the Z polymerization and leave the M protein unaffected and therefore, preserve its antitryptic activity. result of all of that in the competitive landscape is having an oral and therefore, better titratable product and also a product that's potentially much more broadly deliverable. So, we're very excited about the 349 program. And again, I'll update you further on progress that we're making at Investor Day.