Skinbiotherapeutics PLC (LON:SBTX) Chief Executive Officer Dr. Catherine O’Neill caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss passing third party cytotoxicity tests, their scientific update to the market & what’s next for the company
Q1: We saw this morning that the company has passed 3rd party cellular toxicity tests, can you tell me what was involved and what this means for Skinbiotherapeutics?
A1: So, basically this is the first key milestone that we set out in our IPO so passing cytotoxicity is very very important. These tests are to be run by a third party and the tests are necessary before we can take our programme actually into human trials so the fact that we’ve been passed them is very good.
Q2: Now, you also provided a scientific update to the market, what were the key points that investors should take from that?
A2: I think it’s more an operational update really, it’s not just a scientific update, we’ve actually been making progress across the board really.
So, in terms of the science, we’ve now shown that our SkinBiotix technology, we’ve shown the doses at which it needs to be applied for all three of our programmes, which if you remember are a cosmetic programme, an infection programme and an eczema programme, so we’ve defined doses for those. We’ve also done a timed course in respect of the infection programme so we know how often we’d have to treat the skin now for full effect.
Other areas where we’ve made a lot of progress are the manufacture scale up so, of course, we need scale up because we need to be able to make our product in larger amounts so we’ve made some headway with that. We’ve also started formulation work so making progress right across the board really and there are even some early commercial discussions underway too.
Q3: This is the first announcement that you’ve made since IPO in April, there seems quite a bit of news here?
A3: Yes, what we wanted to do on the back of cytotoxicity results, which of course are a material set of data, we wanted to give the market a full update really of what we have been doing and when we give an update we want it to be robust and of material value so hopefully, that’s what we’ve achieved today.
Q4: So, what is next for Skinbiotherapeutics, what should investors be looking out for in terms of news flow?
A4: I think it’s a very exciting time, both for our company and also for the skin microbiome sector as a whole so just a couple of weeks ago, I was at a scientific conference, a Wellcome Trust-funded conference, looking at the microbiome and how it interreacts with humans so this whole area is vibrant.
Specifically, for Skinbiotherapeutics, on Thursday of this week we’ve got our maiden final year results being issued so we’ll maybe be speaking again! Also, we’re continuing now preparing for the initial human study and, as I said, moving forward the early-stage commercial discussions but it’s important to stress that these are early-days.
For the sector as a whole, as I’ve suggested, the area is gaining a very increasing level of interest and attention so I think exciting times ahead of us, yes.
