Why I feel TT-034 still has a spot, page-18

Here is the last question from the interview conducted on the 5th of May with Dr. French.


Q8: How far are Benitec Biopharma’s products fromreaching the

market?

Dr Peter French: The programs at the moment are at the early clinical or

pre-clinical phases and, typically for a gene therapy product, it requires a

considerable amount of safety data to be sure that we’re not endangering

people’s lives. Now, we are confident in our approach and with the extensive

data that’s been done to date on those programs that that is the case.

However, there are of course quite stringent regulations around bringing

drugs to market. We would expect that we would need to do another clinical

trial in hepatitis C to be able to validate the optimal dose and then we would

partner that program, and hopefully the other programs, at the appropriate

stage with big pharma companies who have the resources and the regulatory

ability to be able to ultimately bring these products to market. But we’re

talking still a number of years awaybefore the products come to the market.

However, the shareholders should be aware that that’s not our major

strategy. Our strategy is to take these programs through to clinical proof of

concept, where we can show that these programs, this technology is both

safe and effective for treatment and cure of the diseases for which they’re

being developed. Having done that, that effectively de-risks the programs for

big pharma companies to be able to make the decision to acquire the

programs or to license the programs from us at levels which should see the

faith in the shareholders rewarded in terms of value returned to the company.

So that’s our aim for all our programs currently – to advance the

programs through to clinical proof of concept whereby maximising the

value we can expect to achieve from partnering those programs with big

pharma companies. Those goals are achievable within the next one to

two years, I believe.