Ann: OncoSil achieves milestone of 10 patients treated in Spain, page-4

This is a new and approved technology but it has only been able to get into the hands of clinicians since Covid restrictions eased.

This is very good news for several reasons:

1. It takes time to recruit the hospital and train the doctors to undertake the procedure. Also the logistics of getting the device to them is complicated. These are real barriers but they are one-off - once done in a hospital, the procedures should start to flow. We are seeing that in Spain and hopefully it can be replicated elsewhere. I would say the real milestone is the number of hospitals trained to do the procedure and actually doing it. The patients should then flow.
2. There is no pubic reimbursement yet - these are mostly funded ex gratia by the hospital. So, getting approval to fund hospital by hospital is an achievement and once approved, generally it is likely the funding continues. Especially if the clinicians report internally that it is working.
3. The uptake in Spain will demonstrate it's usefulness to other hospitals and clinicians in Europe. There is definitely a snowball effect in adoption of medical technology. We want the French, Germans and English to take note, and having an early adopter will remove some apprehension on their part. Also the Spanish will publish their findings in journals and present at Conferences.
4. It shows a potential buyer of the company that they will have cashflow from day 1

Training, logistics, funding and science based marketing: once each barrier is overcome, it provides the ongoing cashflow.

Pancreas cancer is generally managed in fewer more dedicated centres. So patients will be clustered or sent to those centres for the procedure. Once you get 50 specialist cancer hospitals in Europe doing this procedure, there will be no trouble recruiting patients. So, it may be that 4 hospitals in Spain might already be half of the possible number of hospitals that are targeted to do the procedure.

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