Get what you're thinking but no, it's an available marketed drug that doctors/clinicians can already prescribe patients. Investigational studies testing a new drug in an indication that already has a treatment available will usually use the current market treatment as a comparative arm.
The company of the current treatment aren't involved just because their drug is being used in the comparative arm, think how much time and resources major pharma companies would need to allocate to oversee all of their marketed drugs being used as comparative arms in all the clinical trials happening across the globe.
Unrelated to the above, it's been interesting watching this news break and seeing all these new posters pop up sounding so confident. I wish them all the best, but so far this has played out like last year's pump and dump where the SP ran up to $5 across a day and then dropped after that, with no recovery until this news. I'll say up front that I count myself lucky enough to have gotten out in that suspicious jump last year, still for a loss but at least not as brutal as what it was sitting at post-consolidation (my average post-consolidation was $9.50ish).
ZLD has also said that they will be required to look at registered "formal FDA" clinical trials to progress this. I always thought it was fishy that none of ZLD's trials they've done (except for one related to HOPE) have been registered in the two major clinical trial databases (clinicaltrials.gov and anzctr.org.au). The registries exist for transparency and validity, not registering trials on these databases is not a good look. The other thing about this statement is that from this point, to move forward they will need to run at least 3 formal FDA clinical trials (one each of phases 1, 2, 3), each trial requiring larger patient populations. These cost tens of millions of $, which ZLD does not currently have. If they raise by issuing shares and continue to exclude retail shareholders, which they've been doing a lot of recently, given the current share price retail holders will be looking at incredibly significant dilution.
Good luck to the long term holders still hanging on, Eagle, McDunk, Cue, etc. I hope for your sakes some big pharma comes and offers a lot of money to take this off ZLD's hands and gives you all a good payday... to the new holders please do some reading beyond the company announcements to understand the belly of the beast you've willingly stepped into
