Transcription of Finance News Network Interview with Viatar CTC Solutions Inc (OTCBB:VRTT) President and CEO, Ilan ReichCarolyn Herbert: Hello I’m Carolyn Herbert from the Finance News Network and joining me from Viatar CTC Solutions Inc (OTCBB:VRTT) is President and CEO, Ilan Reich. Ilan, welcome to Sydney.
Ilan Reich: Pleasure to be here.
Carolyn Herbert: First up, can you start by giving us an introduction to the company?
Ilan Reich: Viatar is the cancer dialysis company. People understand intuitively that dialysis is a way of purifying the blood of people with kidney failure. And in the same fashion, our technology purifies the blood of cancer patients. It takes out the cells that circulate in the blood that come out of the primary tumour. Science has known for many years that early on in the development of a primary tumour, well before it’s even visible under an MRI, the tumour is sending out several million circulating tumour cells each day. These contain the DNA of the primary tumour and are responsible for metastasis, which is the spreading of cancer at distance sites, such as the lungs, brain or liver.
Carolyn Herbert: So can you explain how the technology helps the treatment of cancer?
Ilan Reich: Cancer is a genetic disease and all cancer therapies today are drug based. And essentially they treat a specific subtype of cancer, such as one of 40 types of breast cancer, one of five main types of lung cancer. Our technology takes advantage of the fact that all of these circulating tumour cells that are responsible for metastatic growth, are larger and more deformable than normal blood cells. And that applies across the board to all solid tumours, which constitute 90 per cent of the cancer cases. Our technology does not apply to lymphoma or leukaemia.
But within that category of solid tumour cells, what we do is we take the blood, it goes through the filter and goes underneath it. And at a high flow rate, the tumour cells the circulating tumour cells, are going at too fast a rate to get pulled through the filter. On the other hand, there’s a second pump, which pulls through the normal blood cells and sends them back to the patient. So the tumour cells stay within the filter, recirculate for a three-hour period and at the end, this device is thrown away. Or the collected cells could be used for research and new drug development.
Carolyn Herbert: Can you tell us how the company is progressing with its commercial strategy?
Ilan Reich: We are very close to commercialisation. We’re currently completing the regulatory compliance work and the manufacturing start-up, so that we can start our human clinical trial in Germany probably, later this year. By the end of the second quarter of next year, we expect to get regulatory approval for Europe, Canada, Australia. That’s called the CE Mark. In parallel to that, we’ve applied to the FDA in the United States for permission to do another trial, just focused on lung cancer.
Carolyn Herbert: Now to financials, are you fully funded for 2016?
Ilan Reich: Yes we are. Earlier this year we were able to close a $US4.2 million financing and that provides us with the funds through the end of the year, and into the clinical trial for next year.
Carolyn Herbert: The company is planning to list on the ASX later this year. Why the dual listing?
Ilan Reich: Australia is a gateway to Asia Pacific, both from a standpoint of sales, because ultimately this area of the world Australia, South Korea and China will be very important markets for our product. Separately, the shareholder base in Australia is not just Australia; it’s also people from Hong Kong and China. We had a recent set of meetings in Hong Kong and there was a tremendous amount of interest. The dual listing gives us the ability to also expand our shareholder base in the US, up list to the NASDAQ later this year and thereby, open up our stock to institutional investors in the US, who’re interested in life science and biotech companies.
Carolyn Herbert: So when will the offer open and where can people get a copy of the prospectus?
Ilan Reich: The offer starts in mid-June and the prospectus will be available, both from brokers as well as on our website.
Carolyn Herbert: So what sets your company apart from other cancer therapy companies?
Ilan Reich: First our goal is to make cancer a chronic, rather than a fatal disease. 90 per cent of cancer deaths are due to metastasis. And that statistic has not changed, even after decades and trillions of dollars of research. By removing the progenitor, the core source of metastatic spread, mainly the circulating tumour cells, we hope to be able to give patients much more of a survival than they have today.
If you recall 30 years ago, virtually everybody died of AIDS and today it’s a chronic disease. With modern medicines that came out, virtually nobody dies of AIDS today. Our goal is to improve the survival of patients with metastatic disease, by keeping their circulating tumour level low enough, so that the immune system can kick in and do its job, and moderate cancer.
There are other therapies today that do that. They are very expensive, they cost upwards of $200,000 a year and they provide, based on the data in trials, 60/70 days of extra life. Modern societies cannot afford that. No country, whether it’s Kuwait, the United States, it doesn’t matter where, can afford that kind of cost. Our therapy is designed to be literally 10 per cent of the cost of those drugs - $US15,000 a year versus $US150,000 to $US200,000 a year.
The benefit for the patient is the technology, because we don’t add chemicals, we don’t take anything away other than cells that we want to get rid of, has no side effects and it’s easy to administer. And it will not cause patients to be debilitated, either in their pocket book or physically.
Lastly we have a management team that’s done this before. Everybody on our team has several decades of experience, bringing technologies from the concepts phase, all the way through research and development, regulatory approval and commercialisation. So we have a very clear understanding of what it takes to bring a product to market.
Carolyn Herbert: Finally Ilan, where would you like to see the company in 12 months time?
Ilan Reich: Our long-term goal is to be a multibillion-dollar global company. That bold assumption is grounded in the fact that there are over 10 million patients each year, who show up with metastatic disease. In one per cent market share in that addressable market, equals about $US1.5 billion of revenue. So a year from now, our goal is to be on the market with a CE Mark in Europe, equivalent regulatory approvals in countries like Canada, Australia and South Korea. And well advanced and beginning commercial sales in those countries. And well advanced with the FDA in terms of US approval.
Carolyn Herbert: Ilan Reich thanks for the update.
Ilan Reich: Thank you.
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