Rob Hill Presents TAE Life Sciences at LSI Europe '23

Transcription

Rob Hill  0:04  
I'm Rob Hill as was introduced the CEO of TAE Life Sciences, I've spent my life optimizing radiation treatments for cancer patients. And while radiation treatments have gone a long way over the last 25 years, there's still a long way to go. And the therapy really needs to be improved in the future. We're focused on taking radiation therapy and making it biologically targeted. And the way we're doing that is through a drug device combination that uses a type of therapy called boron neutron capture therapy, BNCT. Here's how the therapy works, the patient gets an infusion of a drug. And the drug is designed to deliver boron 10 to the tumor cells as selectively as possible. Boron 10 is a stable isotope of boron, it's it's an inert material, it has no impact on the patient by itself. But once the boron is localized in the tumor cells, we take the patient to a special radiation facility, where we treat them with low energy neutron radiation. Neutrons in this energy range don't do much damage to healthy tissue, but they have a high affinity for interacting with boron. When a neutron hits a boron atom, it creates two daughter particles, one is an alpha particle, and the second is a lithium seven ion, those are energized to around 200,000 volts of energy, and they deliver all of that energy over a range of five to nine microns. This is incredibly damaging to tumor cells, and results in double strand DNA breaks, which destroys the cells. So this therapy is unique in terms of other forms of radiation. Standard radiation therapy targets a region of the patient, not the cancer cells themselves. And this therapy has what we call a double focus, where you're the radiation being focuses on a region of the patient. And the drug focuses on the tumor itself. So the cells are targeted directly, but only in a region of the patient. So you don't have to worry about downstream effects, and other challenges with using things like radiopharmaceuticals. So some background on our company, we're based in Southern California, we're six years old, we've raised $90 million in funding to date, we have around 134 patents, and we have around 100 people working on this project. And it's a drug device combination. So we're both a medtech company, and a biotech company all rolled into one, which is why we've raised 90 million and at this meeting, we're looking to raise our Series C 75 million more in financing. So I talked about radiation therapy and why it's insufficient. So about one in three people will get cancer. And about half of those people will receive radiation therapy as part of their course of treatment, and standard radiation, you treat a region of the patient. And the damage that's done through cells is primarily single strand DNA breaks. The therapy can be relatively toxic, so patients have to come every day, usually for four to eight weeks, depending on the tumor and the dose that's being delivered to the patient. With our approach BNCT 70% of patients are treated in a single treatment session, about 30% of patients receive two treatments. And it's targeting the radiation where the problem is at the cellular level. And this type of radiation using alpha particles, tends to do double strand DNA breaks, which is far more damaging and effective in treating the cancer. So clinicians are very excited about this therapy. Why why is that? Well, some, some cancers are very well treated with radiation, but others the tumors tend to be radio, radiation resistant. They and the tumors can be refractory and can't be treated with standard techniques. This therapy is well suited for treating those types of tumors. There's significant clinical evidence for the technique and treating cancers of the brain like glioblastoma multiforme, and also meningioma. It's also very well suited for treating head and neck cancers, specifically squamous cell carcinoma. I mentioned before it's one or two treatments only. It takes around 30 minutes of being on time, about 60 minutes for the entire treatment course. It's very well suited for treating solid tumors, particularly those that have limited treatment options. Over 2000 patients have been treated historically with this technique using older generations of technology. And now with new technologies that are available, and that we're bringing to market, it will be very well suited for treating local and regional metastatic tumors. And it also has been shown to have strong immune response as well. So, what I just shared with you is not theoretical, we've now treated 14 patients actually, the slide is out of date this morning, we treated the 15th patient. The patient that was treated today had a recurrent glioblastoma very difficult to treat cancer. For the patients that had been treated previously. I'll share too on this slide. The top slide is a patient that has a squamous cell carcinoma, a specifically a recurrent cancer, those cancers tend to have very poor outcomes. This patient was treated about six months ago and achieved a complete response to the tumor. The second patient is a patient that has a relatively rare cancer called Kandra sarcoma. The patient had previously had surgery and chemotherapy, and had a difficult outcome, the tumor returned, and the patient refused to subject themselves to that therapy going forward, that were treated twice with this therapy, and has had an outstanding response so far. So this opportunity compared them to many venture deals that you will look at is relatively de risk. The the drug that we use to deliver the boron to the tumor cells called BPA Varano phenyl alanine has already been used extensively on patients. It's actually approved in Japan from a manufacturer there, it's an off patent drug. So that's a relatively low risk endeavor. The treatment machine that produces the the neutron radiation is now installed and commissioned and is in clinical use and showing the results that I just showed you. So we think this is significantly de risked compared to many opportunities that you'll look at. We have a lot of exciting clinicians that are interested in this technology in the United States, we signed MOU us with two top medical centers to get the technology. In Europe, we've signed MOU with three medical centers, one in the United Kingdom, one in Birmingham, another just recently, the slide hasn't been updated in Switzerland. And our first installation will happen at an innovative radiation center near Milan, in northern Italy. In Asia, we've chosen a partnership model, we have a joint venture in China, where we're treating the first patients that I just showed you. And we have a market leading distributor and partner in Korea. And there are several other distributors in place in Asia as well. So customers are really excited about this technology. We also have significant research relationships with MD Anderson in the United States doing preclinical research in Kyoto University in Japan. I mentioned before that the BPA drug was off patent. BPA is a good drug. It's an amino acid based drug. And it's selectivity of getting Boron the tumor cells versus healthy cells is about three to one. And that is responsible for the clinical results that I just showed you. However, we have new drugs that are under development that dramatically improve the selectivity of getting boron into tumor cells enable us to get more boron into tumor cells, which increases the effective dose to patients tumors. Also, the new drugs expand the indications available. So we've got a strong leadership team. I have a 25 year background in optimizing radiation. I've been in every major cancer center in the United States, Kendall Morrison, as our chief scientist, he has a long experience in in Big Pharma. And in particular, he's an expert in antibody targeting of drugs. And we have significant other executive experience in the industry. So we're focused on reinventing radiation therapy and delivering this as the new standard of care over time. And we're currently raising 75 million in our Series C. If any investor would like to speak I'll be available after the session. Thank you.