Fra transcript Q pres aug 2019, utklipp som omhandler samarbeid:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/edited-transcript-pcib-ol-earnings-221634918.html
And then, lastly, over to the fimaNAc program. This is, as I said, nucleic acid therapeutics. It’s an area of enormous development and huge potential because what you do really is to utilize the effect of the DNA and the DNA machinery, how cells really regulate themselves, and you can affect it directly on the regulation of cells with nucleic acid therapeutics.
One big problem for all of these products is that they are – they need to get into cells because otherwise they can’t affect the regulation. And they are all big molecules, they need to be big molecules. So they have one major hurdle and that is actually getting into cells. But they’re all taken up through endocytosis. And by using our technology, fimaVACC, we can release them from the endosomes and increase the uptake and the efficiency of these kind of agents.
It is important for us, of course, in a collaborative study like this – or a collaborative program like this to have good patent protection for what we’re doing and we are actively looking at how we can protect our technology. One of the latest patents that we have is on delivery of mRNA and we had recently then, what you call, an international search report and written opinion on that – received on that mRNA delivery patent from the International Search Authority. So that’s the initial feedback from the authorities on the patentability and what kind of claims you think you can actually get for a patent.
And this was very favorable. So it may give valuable intellectual property for fimaNAc mRNA delivery until 2039. And this is, as I said, and especially mRNA, not because – which is one class of nucleic acid therapeutics, it’s an emerging field with really massive investments and broad potential applicability.
Now as with the others and maybe more than with the others because these are really large molecules, sufficient intracellular delivery remains a major hurdle to realize this potential, and majority of the fimaNAc collaborations we have concern mRNA therapeutics. So this is a very important feedback from the International Search Authority for us.
We have also sent out a release on top 10 large pharma collaboration we had. That has now been extended to the end of 2019 and this is the final extension of this specific collaboration. So we’ve said that this can be done to complete the in vivo work that needs to be completed. But after that, we need to have a decision on whether this company is ready to go and take this to the next step or not. And we have allowed 6-month period for them after that to evaluate whether this is going forward.
We have 6 different collaborations ongoing. They are at different activity levels and are differing results. But the most important ones of these, I can say, that we have good progress and quite exciting results without being able to go in any more detail on that afterwards, okay?
Fra Q&A session
Unidentified Analyst, [43]
And regarding fimaNAc, you said there was more interest in this. Is there something that you will – will you allocate more resources on the fimaNAc area from your side because it seems that this is coming up as a pretty important part.
Per Walday, PCI Biotech Holding ASA - CEO [44]
Yes. And that’s a good and relevant question absolutely because as these collaborations progress and we get good results out of them and they potentially are converted into more sort of definitive agreement partnerships, we will need to put more resources into this, absolutely. And we have also done some work on the side, of course, of all the collaborations, especially for the specific patent that we have done now or a patent that was a specific piece of work that was done separately by us to make sure that we have good protection. So there are some activities but it’s not a big resource drain right now. But it may come – pick up depending on the outcome of some of those collaborations that we have ongoing.