Transcription of Finance News Network Interview with Anatara Lifesciences Limited (ASX:ANR) Chief Scientific Officer and R&D Director, Tracey Mynott
John Treadgold: Hello I’m John Treadgold for the Finance News Network and joining me from Anatara Lifesciences Limited
(ASX:ANR) is Tracey Mynott. Tracey, congratulations on today’s listing on the Australian Securities Exchange.
Tracey Mynott: Thank you John.
John Treadgold: Anatara Lifesciences is focused on the development of Detach, a non-antibiotic treatment for gastrointestinal diseases in animals and in humans. What stage of development are you at?
Tracey Mynott: Detach was a registered product in the early Nineties and it was marketed in Australia successfully, to prevent diarrhoea in pigs. The product had 40 per cent market penetration, but it was withdrawn from the market after only six months. And that was nothing to do with product failure; it was just purely corporate restructuring. So Anatara are bringing it back to the market now, new and improved, we’ve got a new formulation. We’ve already conducted trials in Europe, which were successful.
So in order to get it back to the market in Australia, we’re going to retrial here, which we will start within one month and get it back as soon as we can. On the human side, Detach has already shown to be safe in humans. We are confident of its efficacy because baby pigs are like baby people, but we’ll be looking to partner that human program.
John Treadgold: Why is a non-antibiotic treatment preferable?
Tracey Mynott: The problem now is the rise of antibiotic resistance and superbugs. The problem we have is with that antibiotic resistance, drugs no longer work and it’s now created quite a significant global health problem. So any drugs out there that can prevent or treat a disease, without using antibiotics, are actually a good thing for human and animal health.
John Treadgold: What price did Anatara Lifesciences list at and what market value does that put on the Company?
Tracey Mynott: We listed at 50 cents and that puts us at just under $19 million.
John Treadgold: The initial public offering was aiming to raise $7 million. How much did you raise and where will the funds go?
Tracey Mynott: We raised the $7 million and those funds were used to launch Detach in Australia, and Detach repeats in Europe and also in the United States.
John Treadgold: Where is the Company based and why did you choose to go public on the ASX?
Tracey Mynott: We’re based in Brisbane, Queensland and we chose to go public because it gave us greater and faster access to capital. Following our launch in Australia, we wanted to very quickly follow up with a launch in Europe and in the United States. And access in the capital markets allowed us to be able to do that. It also gives us the opportunity to profile the Company more and also gives you better validation of your technology in the Company, when you are a listed company.
John Treadgold: Where have you identified potential growth for your business, and how are you positioning the Company best to capture demand?
Tracey Mynott: So Australia first, Europe and United States which are much more significant markets than Australia, and then we’ll be looking at China and other Asian countries. There’re a lot of pigs in China and Asia. And certainly after that, other animal species, calves and chickens are important. They also require non-antibiotic alternatives to control disease. And then also significantly the human market as well, because human diarrhoea is a massive problem for travellers and also for children in developing countries. One million children still die every year of diarrhoea, so it’s a significant opportunity for us.
John Treadgold: For the shareholders who have just come on board, what milestones do they have to look forward to and what’s the timeline for reaching them?
Tracey Mynott: We’re about to start our animal trials, our pig trials here in Australia. They’ll start within the next month. Following those trials, we’ll be submitting our registration application to the Australian regulators, and in preparation for relaunch of Detach in 2016. The United States and the European program is approximately six months behind the Australian program. So we’ll be targeting launch in 2017 in those markets. We’re also engaged in significant partnering discussions with major companies at the moment. So we’ll be looking to hopefully announce a partnering deal sometime in 2015.
John Treadgold: Sounds great Tracey, thank you for introducing us to Anatara Lifesciences and congratulations on your ASX debut.
Tracey Mynott: Thank you very much, it’s very exciting.
Ends
