Hi Wayne,
I thought the newsletter was well written and elaborated quite a bit on company's developments and strategy going forward with some very insightful points.
I was quite heartened by this passage...
There were six peptides approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2012 out of a total 32 novel drug approvals during the year (see Figure 1). The FDA expedited the review and approval of over half of these new medicines by using its several review authorities for important new drugs, including Fast Track, Priority Review, and Accelerated Approval.
The newly approved peptides included some lifesaving drugs for patients, such as a groundbreaking treatment for respiratory distress syndrome in premature infants, and a novel product for the unmet need of multiple myeloma.
Note: respiratory distress syndrome is one of the indications for the PYC35 or Glycinamide family. No doubt, the outreach process via Bio-Link is underway.
I was very impressed with the company's library improvement as well as the comprehensive upgrade to their screening capabilities. This will not be looked upon lightly by existing and prospective partners, as highlighted by this exciting passage below...
The encouraging progress of the Janssen collaboration, together with the successful findings from our relationship with Roche on cell-penetrating peptides targeting the blood-brain barrier, suggest that Phylomers can be used to target specific types of cell and deliver large biological payloads across cell membranes. These conjugates have broad application in many disease areas such as cancer and other indications with a high unmet medical need.
There is enormous potential value in this area of emerging interest to the pharmaceutical industry, which is why we are evolving our discovery platform with new technologies to optimise the screening of our libraries to identify cell-specific peptides that can penetrate cell membranes.
This provides us with a further advantage over our peers in discovering and developing next-generation peptide therapeutics.
Perhaps the most exciting key phrases...
The newsletter highlighted Roche i.e., "successful findings" and "suggest", we now know this is referring to current studies that Roche have been conducting on the BEN_5000 Phylomer as well as a few of the other phylomers from the BEN family that are publicly highlighted and featured in presentations and on the Telephon website which you and I have been discussing for the past few months. The word in the passage that stood out for me was "suggest". Not sure what you think, but that word may very well be a very strong indication that Phylogica are extremely close to announcing something truly transformational with Roche.
As for PYC35 or should I say Glycinamide re the LMDB deal....
Under the terms of the agreement Phylogica will receive a significant royalty on all sales of Le Métier’s cosmetic products that contain Glycinamide.
How many of LMDB's range of products are we talking here? Perhaps a whole new range under the same brand. Again, Bio-Link now have the go-ahead to target the largest global players in this space. What are the royalties going to look like with some of these billion dollar companies? Phylogica are only warming up in this space.
I've been impressed by the PYC35 family for quite some time and particularly it's use for skin burns. Bio-Link are now in prime position to target Big Pharma in this space and soon.
For example the peptide significantly improved the process of wound healing in a well-validated model of severe skin burns.
Note: We also know from the CFO's comment re: my post of February 8, that "Bio-Link will be picking up on our leads at Janssen and Genentech with the AP-1 family".
I must say Wayne, this passage below is what has me very excited (in-house programs)....
The commercial returns from out-licensing our validated candidates could be several multiples above those achieved with a pure discovery alliance model, since we would have added more respective value. Furthermore, while acknowledging the inherent risks of R&D, the development of our platform and internal projects is largely within our control and, thus, we can more reliably provide guidance on anticipated progress and news flow.
Several multiples on our deals achieved to date. Much larger upfronts and bigger overall package/s is what this screams out to me.
And how about this....
Guidance on timelines for anticipated advancement of our in-house pipeline will be set out in our next newsletter.
For Phylogica to highlight this passage, suggests that things must be getting much much closer than any of us realise.
Regards,
Tony
(20min delay)