Brownstein and his team also run Vaccine Finder, a platform to help people more easily find clinics and pharmacies that offer COVID vaccinations. In his role as Advisor, Dr. Brownstein is also published extensively on issues of patient privacy, and his expertise will enable MINDCURE to best optimize the translation and utilization of patient data collected through iSTRYM, with the intended goal to uncover optimal protocols and treatment methods.
We are honoured that Dr. Brownstein will be joining us as an Advisor. His credentials, experience, and track record speak for themselves and his contributions to the global medical community are unrivaled. He was trained as an epidemiologist at Yale University. Overall, his work aims to have translation impact on the surveillance, control and prevention of disease.
He has been at the forefront of the development and application of data mining and citizen science to public health. And then along this journey in the last six months at The Capital Network I've actually really solidified my decision to be a founder, and to really step into this role. It's been a great learning experience. Tell us about Hilltop Biosciences, and what you're doing.
We're taking the human technology of amniotic membrane and fluid, and bringing it to the veterinary space to help them with orthopedic injuries, ophthalmic injuries, so eye ulcers, and many different other indications.
AMANDA DROBNIS: I have a lot of experience in the veterinary space, I also have someone on the human allograft side, my father has built a business and is one of the inventors on the human allograft side of things, and so he has allowed us to take this technology and bring it to the veterinary side, but he's also supporting me and teaching me all of the ways that you need to grow this business.
SAL DAHER: Excellent, so the moat here is that you have this technology that's successful with humans, and you have exclusive rights to its application in the animal space. Tell us a little bit about that technology that sets it apart from other methods of getting the material from the animal placenta that is so useful in helping to heal injuries.
AMANDA DROBNIS: There's lots of other regenerative therapies out there, but this therapy in particular is really interesting because it has all of the proteins and all of the properties to regenerate tissue, and we can now have the technology to use it at a room temperature.
So it's easy for the veterinarian to grab off the shelf and use it the same day as diagnosis. A lot of the other regenerative therapies out there right now require you to collect the tissue and send it off to a lab, or for the veterinarian to be the lab technician in the field, they have to have specialized equipment to do certain things. And so those technologies, while they're great and they work, this is a much better option, it's a time saver for the veterinarian, but then it also helps heal those wounds, whether it's an orthopedic injury or an actual superficial wound, in almost half the time as some of the other options out there.
And how about tissue rejection, is that a problem with this? The tissue, placenta and amniotic fluid, is HLA antigen free, so therefore there's minimal, almost no chance of rejection from where you're putting that tissue. So basically your father's patent is on a process that allows you to produce the vital ingredients of this in room temperature, to store it in room temperature, so it's helpful in making the process more effective.
That's the breakthrough that will help set your company apart from potential competitors. In the field, there are competitors out there I guess you would be creating a profitable sideline for the vets.
AMANDA DROBNIS: Yes, you're making it convenient for them, they can have higher margins with this product, so it's a good opportunity for them to change their business model just a little bit in having this off-the-shelf product, that they don't have to keep going back to that horse, or that animal, and treating it several times. Typically, with this, it's just one injection, one or two injections, or one or two pieces of membrane.
So it's very easy for them to use, and therefore it makes it easier for them to take on this idea. Either it can be infused, the active ingredients infused, into a membrane, or they can be injected. How do you plan to reach out to the vets and to get them to use this?
AMANDA DROBNIS: We have already an established network of most of our key opinion leaders and early adopters in the veterinary, specifically horse space to start off, and we have our contacts within the three major distribution channels.
So our goal is to use our distribution channels, direct sales, and through our major contacts for key opinion leaders, to really drive the early adoption. And this is a recurring revenue product, so we want our vets to stock it on their shelves and use it for a variety of indications, and that means that, if they use it three times, the next month maybe, hopefully, they'll use it for five times.
So really our goal is to increase their use of it on a regular basis. Really how large is the market for this? So it's a fairly large market for horses, and then an even larger market in small animal. Are you selling the product, or are you selling a workflow for the vet to produce the product? And it did have a very high success rate. My father worked with a manufacturing company at the time, so we decided to inject my hip. And it's been seven years, and I still feel great.
About a year after my injection I reached out to the manufacturing company I was working for, and asked them if we could bring this into the placental allograft, into the equine community for horses, because my horse had an injury to her hind leg that wasn't healing.
So that's how this whole idea about five years ago came to be. Why aren't we doing this with the horses, and using my dad's technology and so forth? So we did eventually use it for my horse, but it's been a long journey since that happened.
SAL DAHER: So, you already have a population of veterinarians and influencers that understand the value of the product, and you have a connection with them because you've been in the distribution business before. So what do you think are gonna be the obstacles to getting adoption to this? And mostly it comes down to research and to prove While it's proven for those indications on the human side, they really wanna see those same studies on the animal side.
We don't need to get specific approval for some of our products, but other products have to go through the same veterinary FDA, that we would have to do those research trials.
But our veterinarians still want, regardless of whether there's the need for the veterinary FDA, our veterinarians still wanna see that it has some sort of third-party research. So it's a little bit of cart before the horse, so how do you plan to get that and launch your business at the same time? AMANDA DROBNIS: Within our contacts are quite a number of veterinary schools that are interested in working with us to do the research for us, and then we also have several veterinarians outside of the veterinary schools that are willing to work with us, to start doing further research.
It really just depends on what type of indication we're looking at to start off. SAL DAHER: Okay, so your thought would be some of these early studies might give results, and these results then will allow you to start bootstrapping the company, getting some sales in, because I suppose the vet schools will do the research, but you probably have to give them some contribution. But our first study is really looking at what all of the proteins are that are in the fluid, so that we can really educate our veterinarians why this works.
Not just that it works, but why it works. So that's a quick study, it's not gonna take us very long, and that'll be our first sales point for them.
And then, going into the next few studies, we'll work on shorter studies so that we can start having more research, and then be able to further bootstrap the company in the future. He had his own practice, he's built several practices, several businesses, and always been running his own thing, and it really introduced that concept to me, that I could run my own business.
And then my mom too, she also has had several of her own businesses that she's run, so I think it might run in the family. Like Bryanne Leeming, who was the founder of Unruly Studios, her family, they're entrepreneurs. Alice Lewis, her father is an entrepreneur, and I think her mother as well, but at least her father is an entrepreneur. Sometimes it comes out of the blue, Sean Eldridge of Gain Life, which is some episodes back, his family, there are no entrepreneurs anywhere to be seen, and yet he decided after a career in large corporate life to start a company, and is doing something very near to my heart, helping people with their health and so on.
Very good. I really went into TCN and didn't quite know anything about the startup community. I knew what I was doing, but I didn't know how to get anywhere. All of their programs I can't even express my gratitude for how much those programs have helped me learn the process of starting a company, and then reaching out for funding, and how to meet funders and angel investors in the community. It's been a most amazing program, I can't thank them enough.
I have a female founder scholarship from them, and so that's a great program as well because it really encourages more female founders, which I think is fabulous. And then I got to know all of these other female founders. So overall I can't speak highly enough of that program, it's been excellent. It's interesting, they run a whole gamut, from having these events, these pitch competitions and so forth, and then they also have classes on your cap table, your capitalization table, how you calculate people's ownership before the investment, after, pre-money, post-money and all that technical sort of thing.
And BridgeBio's publicly traded subsidiary, Eidos, is running a phase 3 trial for its cure for TTR Amyloidosis, a disease that affects more than , people. In its Form S-1, BridgeBio identifies five programs that the company believes are its key value drivers, and it has prioritized them.
Three of BridgeBio's key programs are not in clinical trials yet, so it will be a while before the market can value them. BridgeBio does have a major program in cancer. Its subsidiary, QED Therapeutics, is enrolling patients for a phase 3 study for Infigratinib, a front-line therapy for bile duct cancer. The company is also planning a phase 3 trial for bladder cancer.
BridgeBio is a fascinating small-cap biotech stock. It has near term catalysts, as several of its drugs are in phase 3 trials.
And it also has a huge pipeline of drugs to spur future growth. And MeiraGTx has an impressive pipeline of its own, with six molecules in clinical trials. I'm bullish on both companies, but given the price differential, I'd favor MeiraGTx right now. Discounted offers are only available to new members. Stock Advisor will renew at the then current list price.
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