Today, I'm joined by Ziccum's CEO, Ann Gidner, to discuss the company's recent Q1 report and its highlights. Ann, hello. Hello, Jonathan. Good to see you. Let's start with the mRNA achievements. It's been a very busy quarter for you, and in the report you highlight significant mRNA milestones beyond your expectations. What are these milestones, and in what way did they exceed expectations? Indeed, it's quite amazing that we have been able to produce very clear data, also very strong, good data, in a very short time. The first portion is our partner study, the biotech cooperation. This is our first study ever for mRNA with an industry partner. And we had very good readouts on technical parameters, and then excellent readouts on the key activity of mRNA. And this was already beyond our expectation, I would say, to have such clear, clear readouts in the very first collaboration. Secondly, we have been pursuing animal studies on our own behalf. We managed to get to the stage of mouse trials during January, completing them. And here again, because it's not obvious even to get a proper animal model set up the first time you test a completely new entity. But we here were able to get clear data, and again, very strong data. Complete preservation of the mRNA activity. So this is well beyond expectations, and it's a very nice proof now of the technology, because this is a key step for any pharmaceutical project, for any pharmaceutical company. And we see now we don't have to prove the effect any longer. We have a fantastic remaining and preserved activity. Now we can move on to investigating other parameters, when we could move on to animal trials in the next stage. Then we have a third readout during the month, which is the inhalation project, where we have an academic collaboration working at high pace to engineer inhalable mRNA in LNP. There's no such product existing today. We have midway readouts on technical parameters, and we have achieved all the wishes we had, all the hopes we had for LaminarPace to be the right treatment and very applicable to obtain dry powder material for inhalation. All these expectations were met on technical parameters. So we are very, very happy about this. And turning to technology development, during the quarter you reported progress in your industrial scale-out projects, and after that, three new patents following that report. Can you elaborate on this industrial scale-out to start with? Indeed. As we have been reporting, we have a very ambitious project to take our technology all the way to market. It includes optimization of the technology, the scale out, and then to have a fully implementable rig that you can just plug into an existing facility. In parallel, we are running digital 3D modeling, because it's a much quicker way to produce data and reach conclusions. We have reached a very nice stage, that the model is now close to completion. So we, Ziccum can now start generate data, not just from physical trials, but also from digital trials. So that's a great milestone in the project. We have great achievements together with a number of partners, and we have added a new partner for the equipment. We have been assessing several partners, and we have found a top-notch international high precision equipment producer, and they are also experts in prototyping. So we look forward to a lot of close collaboration there. There's the third element of patent protection, and this is a very, very important milestone for Ziccum, because we have generated a lot of nice and good mRNA data. We have also developed the equipment for years now. Last year we went in with applications for the first stage to secure our position for LaminarPace. During one year since then, we have been generating excellent data, and now we are filling, so to say, each shell of a patent application with a very large amount of data. This is also beyond our planning, that we could generate so much strong data, and this is supporting both equipment patent, where we have years of development now being covered in our new application. Process parameters, where we are bringing the knowledge from the internal development and from the 3D modeling to cover the best way of processing with the LaminarPace. And then thirdly, it's also formulation. It's a formulation patent, and that's where we now enter all these strong and clear readouts. Mainly for mRNA, but also covering other formulations. Regarding partnered projects and business development in Q1, what, what stage is Ziccum at here? Yeah, we really want to focus. We have so much interest now in the industry, and we have this really proof delivered now with our data sets. So we have a lot of interest, and we need to spend more resources on the BD. We are taking our partner projects forward, and I want to give an update there. First, we have the biotech collaboration on mRNA with an mRNA-leading biotech corporation. The readouts were very quick and perfectly positive. The assessment now is slower to see how and where to apply it, and we are patiently waiting to see that come along. The second project is with our big pharma partner, the vaccine player in the big pharma league. There we have completed the project work more or less. We are now assessing it jointly. Then we have a third project with our CDMO partner, contract manufacturing organization, and there we have a pause now. They have, during the quarter, during the quarter communicated they have a pause, the reason being they're looking for which project to apply it in. Because this is not a pharma company, it's a contract manufacturing company, so they're looking where to apply it. Could you give me a comment on the organizational changes as well? Because you announced on April 3rd that you were streamlining your business and finance functions, and you appointed two new positions. How will this play out? Thank you. Yes, like mentioned, we really need to work on BD. We need to capture all the interest we have generated now. And I'm really happy we have secured two candidates, two really high-caliber international talents. So quite young in age, very talented. It's one finance manager who has a background in financials, and he's been training on Wall Street. He's then been a financial analyst in London. His name is Hristo Vasilev, we will present him a bit further shortly. The second candidate is to take care of business and also project management, since we have so many dialogues and we are planning for a number of projects ahead. This is a very good pharmaceutical, high-caliber individual coming from a pharma company, also with an international track record and joining us from Gothenburg. Her name is Ilkim Atmaca, and she will also be presented shortly. She's joining next week, and we are very happy for this. Looking ahead, what, what can we expect now going into the next quarter and the next half year? We are, as ever, looking forward to further readouts in the existing projects. We are looking to take the dialogues with new players ahead. We have, we have communicated a few of the new dialogues we have in our portfolio overview. They are, they are very interesting companies. It's, it's biotech companies mainly. We're looking forward to take them to projects, hopefully, of course. We are moving on with the academic collaboration. Very, very eager to see our good midway readouts being confirmed in further studies there. Obviously, we are also moving along with the equipment development and finalizing, fine-tuning the capacity, the effect, also ensuring GMP with our new equipment partner. This is very important for any pharma operation, obviously. Ann, thank you very much for taking the time today, and good luck with your future studies and projects. Thank you so much.
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