TRANSCRIPTION OF FINANCE NEWS NETWORK INTERVIEW WITH ECOBIOTICS LTD, CEO, DR VICTORIA GORDON
Clive Tompkins: Hello Clive Tompkins reporting for the Finance News Network. Joining me for the first time from EcoBiotics is CEO, Victoria Gordon. Victoria welcome to FNN. Can you start by introducing EcoBiotics.
Dr. Victoria Gordon: EcoBiotics is a company that I’m a co-founder of and we established nine years ago. We’re in the business of discovering and developing new pharmaceuticals sourced from the tropical rainforest. We’ve been through the process of really building a great pipeline of very early stage products and from that we’ve selected, at this point, one key product that we’re concentrating our efforts on which is an anti-cancer drug. To date we’ve had quite a degree of success with bringing in angel investment or early seed investment of over $10 million to support our activities so the company is well established and it’s going well.
Clive Tompkins: So what success have you had so far?
Dr. Victoria Gordon: I think the outstanding success to date is our anti-cancer drug EBC-46. This is proving to be really a delightful drug, certainly in its early stage development for the human market - it’s basically late stage pre-clinical - but we’re also developing it for the veterinary market. We have finished off phase 2 clinical in the veterinary market for horses, dogs and cats and we’re now recruiting patients for phase 3. The drug is proving to be quite an extraordinary drug compared to the other competition in the market, the other anti-cancer drugs which really they’re a balance between really destroying the tumour before you destroy the patient. What our drug is doing is it has a rapid knock-down of tumours and we’re developing it for solid tumours, its only applicable for solid tumours but of course that’s a very broad market, anyway the drug functions by rapid knock-down of the tumour and then a very fast healing progression with no adverse side effects to date with all of the animal patients we’ve treated.
Clive Tompkins: You’re moving from development to commercialisation of your anti-cancer drug EBC-46, how is this going to happen?
Dr. Victoria Gordon: For development for the veterinary market we should have it ready for commercialisation within two years. For the human market of course it’s going to take a little bit longer, most probably four years before it gets to phase 2. What we’re doing with the drug is we have established a subsidiary company in Europe to develop the drug for the human market. There is a dedicated team we’ve already built into that company and they’ll be developing the drug through to phase 2 clinical development, and we will be looking at a trade sale of the company at that point. In Australia we’re developing the drug through to basically registration and commercialisation. We will be marketing and distributing the drug ourselves in Australia. Potentially we will collaborate with one or a couple of the bigger companies for marketing and distribution into other countries, but basically that’s the progression of the drug that we’re looking at.
Clive Tompkins: Victoria EcoBiotics is seeking to raise up to $3 million, where will the money go?
Dr. Victoria Gordon: That $3 million, the majority of that will be invested in getting the veterinary product through to market. We will be finishing off the development, the phase 3 development. We will also be looking at large scale production of the drug and really preparing it for distribution. A small amount of that funding will be injected into the European company’s initial seed and that will set the company up for a sound valuation for their first round of funding in Europe.
Clive Tompkins: Ok, so what’s the pay off?
Dr Victoria Gordon: Investors can expect at least a ten-fold return on their investments, which we don’t think is unreasonable, within three years. The company has been going for nine years now, we’ve actually been working on this lead drug for five years and so this will be ready for commercialisation within that time.
Clive Tompkins: What do you base these projections on?
Dr Victoria Gordon: We’re basing our projections on the demand for the veterinary product. It’s quite a large market, $33 million for the Australian market alone, and we’re expecting to have revenue from our drug in year three. For the human market we’re basing out projections on size of market and demand in that market. Returns for the company will come from trade sale of the European company.
Clive Tompkins: Last question. Where do you see EcoBiotics two years from now?
Dr. Victoria Gordon: At the two year point we expect EBC-46 to be ready for commercialisation for the veterinary market. For the human market we expect to have the drug at the beginning of phase 2 development, which is a major milestone for that area of development. The company really will be at the point where it’s moving to quite a different stage which is a revenue gaining stage.
