BioXyTran. They're an OTC QB company trading under the ticker BIXT. The company is a clinical stage biotech with three revolutionary platform technologies that were quickly developed using the power of AI. They have a broad-spectrum oral antiviral drug that recently completed clinical trials and achieved 100% viral reduction in seven days, a feat only accomplished by one other drug in the past decade. Their drug is a galectin inhibitor that not only neutralizes COVID-19, but also neutralizes influenza and RSV, and prevents it from entering cells. They are currently recruiting patients for their dose optimization study, which will give them the ability to proceed with their registrational trial in India after they finish. They have a second platform drug, an oxygenation molecule being developed to treat stroke, and its development is supported by the FDA-approved device that detects local tissue oxygenation.
Now, due to the molecule's small size, it has the ability to carry oxygen into areas of poor circulation. The company has a third platform technology that's capable of treating cancer, metastasis. I've been following the press release, Mike, and particularly the ones about bird flu, the egg shortage, poultry prices. You have to be living under a rock to miss it. It's been a hot topic. Give us some background and some economic advice. How do we get to $10 a dozen egg prices, and what does BioXyTran plan to do about it?
You know, no doubt, like bird flu, it's a problem, a serious issue, both economically and biologically. You know, it's disrupting supply chains, driving up prices, putting pressure on producers. And we're uniquely positioned to address this issue because of our broad-spectrum antiviral technology. If we can make our technology work in birds, we could make a tremendous impact not only on combating bird flu, but also stabilizing the market itself. Our drug candidate has a unique property of being water-soluble. What many people don't realize is that most drugs under development don't have this property. It gives us the advantage of getting treatment to the bird much easier than either like an injection or a pill. While this is just my opinion, I believe we're looking at a potential game changer here.
Interesting. Thanks for breaking that down. What I want to dive a little deeper into, because it looks like you're working with universities, and I want to understand how that factors in with the USDA's latest announcement providing $100 million in funding to support bird flu prevention, therapeutics, and vaccines.
BioXyTran's NDA with the University of Georgia highlights the importance of academic partnerships in finding solutions for bird flu treatment. Universities help us leverage the expertise of renowned virologists and poultry medicine specialists. Now, these guys, they're the expert, and they're going to help us adapt our new water-soluble galectin antagonist as a potential treatment for infected chickens. Now, the timing of the $100 million funding initiative, it's actually ideal, because it demonstrates the government's resolve to seek out new solutions and move beyond the policies of culling birds as a form of containment. You know, this is something that I talked about in my LinkedIn article back in 2024, in April. That's almost a year ago. Now, what I want to do is I want to get into why we think prevention and therapeutics are superior options compared to vaccines.
The primary factor driving this bird flu initiative, it's economics. Culling chickens simply is not economical or sustainable for that matter. We can't continue to hand out billions of dollars to farmers whose chickens become infected. The other things we can't do is we really can't mandate vaccination of chickens, because that is going to cripple the world export market, right? They won't buy vaccinated chicken products. In the early 2000s, China faced a number of bird flu outbreaks, and they ended up creating a vaccine. You know, and it worked for a while. Eventually, the virus mutated. We've all been there, created new strains, and then it did, it jumped to humans, and those strains were resistant to the human antivirals. To prevent a major outbreak, they basically stopped the practice of vaccination in chickens. Now, could vaccines technically work? Sure.
You have to treat each bird individually versus a mass treatment using what? A water-soluble formulation like ours. In my opinion, vaccines should only be used as a last resort. Now, universities play a critical role in this effort by conducting cutting-edge research and providing insights into biosecurity measures and therapeutic interventions. Now, BioXyTran's foray into this arena shows how private companies can work with academic institutions to address pressing challenges, especially in poultry health.
Wow. I had no idea that vaccines on chickens were so controversial, like on humans.
Yeah.
I also wanted to clarify for the investors, so if BioXyTran plans to apply for this government funding?
That's kind of a tough question. See, here's the thing. If we apply directly to the government, we might miss out on the experience and expertise of the universities. It might actually be better for us to network with a number of universities and have them apply using our molecule. Then we have multiple shots on goal. Not really sure, but look, regardless of the result, what it does look like is that we have a clear pathway to a non-dilutive source of financing for this trial. Now, if I were to play devil's advocate, the wheels of government, they turn really slowly. It might actually be a good idea to stack the deck, so to speak, in our favor and get, you know, go out there and get a quick proof of concept underneath our belts.
Now, if we do that, we get a successful bird flu trial in animals, investors need to be aware that we are talking about a problem that currently costs American taxpayers billions per year.
Let's go down that rabbit hole a little bit and explore what that looks like if BioXyTran actually finds a solution for bird flu. What about your other clinical trials, your broad-spectrum antiviral? I mean, is your team able to handle development of a veterinary drug and human drug at the same time?
Anna, our strategy has always been one of licensing. Let's say we do come up with a solution for bird flu. We're talking about a solution that every chicken farmer in America is going to need now and every time in the future. We could easily license this out to a veterinary livestock company. I'll give you an example, like Zoetis. The only issue with Zoetis is that they're currently working on an H5N1 bird flu vaccine in chickens and cattle, and that competes with our treatment option. The current administration is so utterly negative on vaccines, I don't know if you realize it, they yanked $500 million in funding from Vaxart, and it's just doing a COVID-19 vaccine program.
If there's a viable solution that doesn't increase the threat of mutation that enables the jump to human, it's pretty clear to me that they're going to be leaning toward the therapeutic option like ours. Now, the bottom line is that we can do both humans and animals, because our business strategy is and always has been licensing to big pharma. However, the revenue numbers on the livestock side of the business are staggering. I checked and found out that if the Zoetis vaccine was approved and widely adopted, you know what they're projecting? $2 billion in annual sales. Why the heck couldn't a therapeutic generate that level of sales? The real icing on the cake or multiplier effect comes from the publicity of actually solving a national problem like bird flu. Right now, no one knows who BioXyTran is.
No one realizes we have a broad-spectrum antiviral with enormous potential that can solve a number of viral challenges. Think of the boost in productivity if people's viral infections go to de minimis numbers. This is the type of debate that's going to get us the awareness we need, which in my opinion is going to lead to complete funding of our pipeline.
Okay, so enough about bird flu. Let's talk about something different, like the licensing strategy you mentioned. Who are you talking to? Big pharma? Government? What sort of progress can you talk about with investors?
We have a domestic and we have an international strategy. We are going in multiple directions. We have not completely given up on small pharma, but it is extremely difficult. The issue with small pharma is getting the right one that will actually listen to you. You have to present a value proposition, and the only way to do that is to show how great your technology is. In doing so, you are actually dissing their tech. Your sales pitch is just basically calling the baby ugly, and that is not a way to win a popularity contest. Our other domestic licensing initiatives revolve around dermatology, oncology, and ophthalmology. It is a lot of ologies. We have a slide presentation on all three of the ologies and have been getting feedback on how to present these to big pharmas.
Now, what I want people to understand is that I got contacts in the business developments at all these big pharmas that we want to talk to for combination therapy with their checkpoint inhibitors. If investors are curious about the list, go to our slide deck, you know, go to our updated investor slide deck. You know, I like to push people back there. So go visit our website. Now, our strategy is unique because big pharmas are slow to move, which means you have to create this sense of urgency. And we can create that sense of urgency because we figured out why the big pharmas with the immune checkpoint inhibitors are having miraculous results on not all patients, right? It all boils down to a silly little galectin-3 staining test, which isn't being given to screen out the non-responders before they even take the drug.
If this prognostic test was used to screen out patients, only 40% of them are going to make the cut. That means the drug companies would instantly lose 60% of their existing patients. Now, consider an industry the size of $50 billion. I mean, that's how big it is. That would definitely cut into revenues by $30 billion. On the positive side, it might boost responders' rate close to 90%. There's like this give and take. Now, our plan revolves around a research project with Arizona State University. I'm currently mentoring, and I'm proud to say this, six students that are doing a report that not only demonstrates the science behind using galectin antagonists in cancer, but also the impact the development and adoption of a galectin-3 staining test would have on big pharmas.
I wouldn't be surprised if this independent academic report ultimately shows how a government agency that funded the validation of a galectin-3 staining test could end up saving the healthcare industry tens of billions of dollars. In the hands of a politician, this finding could basically reset the landscape and force pharma to look aggressively for galectin antagonists that could be used in combination with their drug, and that ultimately takes away the checkpoint resistance. Now, there's a mountain of evidence to this effect in our cancer metastasis slide deck that suggests that we're basically knocking on the doors of a functional cure for cancer, but we need the combination therapy clinical trials to basically prove this thesis. The ASU report would have that power to make this case for combination therapy. The good news is the report is due out in early July.
Now, after this report circulated, we would expect big pharma to actively seek partnerships with companies that have galectin antagonists, right? I talk a lot about this domestic strategy, but now let's switch gears and talk about our international strategy, which is focused on Japan, and it's really gaining traction. While we haven't officially signed an NDA, we have gotten positive feedback from basically the ophthalmology presentation I did in February. Our Japanese licensing strategist has had a number of face-to-face meetings with some of the largest Japanese pharma out there, and we're hoping to be signing NDA shortly and moving on to, you know, basically the presentation and deal-making stage. You also asked about government. When it comes to government funding programs, we have a lot of paperwork to do, and we intend to get into the queue.
Investors need to realize that non-dilutive funding from the government has really dried up, especially under this administration, unless it's influenza or one of the antiviral threats. Luckily, they are interested in us, but we have a tiny bit more development work to do in order to check some of those boxes that they need to apply for their funding programs. Let me close out this licensing discussion to say that these initiatives take a lot of time and effort. I want investors to know that the company is working on developing a number of collaborations covered under currently signed NDAs, and we could be very close to agreements. Keep the faith.
Okay, good to hear. Mike, your stock has been flat for a while, and it's seeing some signs of life. What was going on for the past couple of years, and why weren't you able to get traction?
We've been trying to retire convertible note for the past couple of years so we could raise money and advance the science, but no one seemed to care about COVID, even though we had a 100% response rate in our clinical trial. What we were left with was basically a grumpy note holder that didn't want to convert and just wanted his money back, and no investors were available to take him out. They were responsible for over 90% of the selling over this period. We would go to the DTC reports and we'd see them because it came out of one account and went directly into the hands of the retail investors. The bottom line is the stock is worth whatever he says it was. We had basically no price discovery from retail, which means it wasn't behaving like a fair and efficient market.
In January of this year, we announced we had a funding source to take out the note. Investors did not understand that the overhead of the stock was pretty much gone. We had until the end of March to take out the note for a negotiated price of $805,000. No one paid attention to the fact that the overhang was gone. Otherwise, the stock would have bid up right away. We released the bird flu news, and the stock took off and realized, whoa, there is no overhang. Now the stock is volatile. We are in a period of what I call price discovery, and this means the stock could move wildly to seek some new equilibrium point for our market cap.
Also in January, BioXyTran announced a deal with Triton Funds to extinguish your convertible note and fund clinical development. It also looks like the management team also fortified $460,000 in accrued payroll. Give investors an update on the status of Triton's investment, and have you actually completed the transaction, or is it still pending?
Good question. The Triton deal was a result of basically three years of perseverance on their part to find a way to work with us. After watching us stick to our guns, turning away highly dilutive deals in order to protect our investors, they came to understand that the low stock price was basically a product of a note holder who just wanted out, and we just talked about that. Once we secured a buyout of the note from the note holder for a fixed price of $805,000, we went on to strike a deal with the Triton Funds to take out the note and provide us some working capital. While we have not officially consummated the transaction, we can say that we have until the end of the month to tap what is effectively a line of credit.
We fully intend to extinguish the note. Triton was the first institutional investor to recognize that the market cap was severely undervalued and saw an opportunity for outsized returns by funding the debt buyout through an equity offering. I kind of got a punt on this question for now, but I can say we would issue an 8-K if we like to move forward with the S-1 financing, okay?
Thank you for that. Also, the company has had so little in the way of resources yet. Here you are still alive and preparing to get rid of your note. That is a pretty inspiring story. Share with investors how you can operate so lean.
The principals of the company, myself included, all passed the cut at one time or another to keep the dream alive because we knew what we had. Convincing investors of that, well, that's a different story. You know, basically filings and audits have been the primary expenses, and we did most of the work ourselves to the point that our vendors took pity and charged us considerably less. I know I did presentations, research, and business development with basically little to no assistant. We all looked for shortcuts when it came to manufacturing and clinical trial development. We chose India. We also didn't use any fancy promotional companies and did the old-fashioned way of calling people directly on the phone. Whenever possible, we used stock to pay for people. So that's pretty much how we did it. End of story.
Can you provide some insights into your technology, including its effectiveness and safety profile? I would like to hear about your competitors, specifically what they are doing in terms of clinical trials and how their safety and efficacy profiles compare.
Good. We should talk about competition. BioXyTran competes on a couple of different levels. On the virology side, we compete against companies like NanoViricides, stock symbols NNVC, and Aethlon Medical, AEMD. Talk about NanoViricides first. NanoViricides has something like a cellular mimic. I explain it as a flying carpet of cellular receptors designed to basically stick to the spike proteins and then wrap around them. Once it wraps around them, it affects you, you know, it almost like crushes them and eventually neutralizes and breaks that viral envelope and neutralizes it. Their keywords are bind, engulf, and destroy. That's basically what my hands just showed you. I mean, that's what they do. They claim to have broad-spectrum antiviral that they're testing on a number of viruses.
I mean, we're talking about COVID, H5N1, RSV, measles, shingles, HIV, influenza, you name it, it sounds like they're doing it. Now, they finished a phase I-A in COVID-19, and they had pretty good safety results. They're expanding to a phase II and going after a number of viruses. Now, while I think their technology has merit and is comparable to us, it has limitations. I think our cost of manufacturing is going to be significantly lower than their nanoparticle technology. When considering antivirals for the masses, the method of administration is very important. In their first clinical trial, they used an IV. Now, compare that to an oral chewable tablet. The only thing they can do right now are antivirals. Us? We have two other platform technologies. Now, let me move on to Aethlon Medical.
They use carbohydrate chemistry to filter out viruses, and it can be also used to filter out what they call tumor-derived exosomes, which are thought to play a role in cancer metastasis. Now, I'm going to oversimplify this concept because they basically took something like our carbohydrate type of drug, stuck it in like one of these water filter things, and then they basically run the blood through it to filter it out. It's highly invasive and takes a bunch of time while you're sitting there with an IV in your arm. It does look promising, though. I just don't see their antiviral solution as scalable for the masses like an oral chewable tablet. Now, I look at the stock. They had this huge rally late last year on news that they could filter out H5N1 in lab experiments.
But, you know, that euphoria died down when people figured out it was intravenous. This is why I think they pivoted to oncology. It looks like they can remove tumor-derived exosomes, but in my opinion, I don't think this is the right drug we'll target for cancer metastasis like galectin-3. What they basically have are two phase I assets. For the most part, that pretty much sums up virology part of our competitors. Now let's move on to oncology. I want investors to understand that BioXyTran has no data on oncology, but we still consider this a platform technology. Why? Because what we do have is nuclear magnetic resonance imaging testing that shows that we have a galectin-3 antagonist or antagonists. That pretty much means that anything other galectin-3 antagonists target, it's fair game for our drugs too.
Now, we plan to partner with big pharma by leveraging the research off these galectin-3 antagonists. The top players in oncology are Galectin Therapeutics, Galecto, and True Binding. Now, I'm going to start with Galectin Therapeutics. Their stock symbol is GALT, and they have an intravenous galectin-3 blocker called belapectin. Our CEO is intimately familiar with this molecule as it was developed while he was CEO of the company over 15 years ago. The drug has shown positive results in cancer, but the company abandoned the cancer track to focus on liver disease. Researchers have continued to push the science forward with positive results. Their oncology program has taken a backseat since 2012. Now, they have the best combination oncology treatment results with Keytruda in melanoma indication. We're talking about 100% objective response rate at the optimal dosage in melanoma.
Their study is like the poster child of how to combat immune checkpoint resistance, which also happens to be what? The topic of the Arizona State University research report. Galecto is the other competitor out there, GLTO. They have an intravenous and oral small molecule, galectin-3 antagonist. Ironically, they had a COVID-19 drug that had good results, but what did they do? They abandoned it to focus on what? The liver opportunity. They're going after lung cancer, melanoma, head and neck cancer, and liver cirrhosis. I got to comment on this. They're basically copying almost everything Galectin Therapeutics is doing. The primary difference is that they have small molecules, whereas Galectin Therapeutics has a carbohydrate-based galectin antagonist. Galecto has really good clinical trials results in cancer as well.
They did combination therapy with Tecentriq and had a 40% response rate in their first cohort and a 60% response rate in their second cohort. All this was using combination therapy. Now, using Tecentriq alone, historical results are 25%. Combination therapy with their molecule was clearly superior. You know, they're going to move to a phase II-A trial. True Binding, that's a private company. I actually met with these guys at one of the conferences. I want to let you know, we don't have an NDA signed yet, but they do have amazing data on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and raised $100 million to get through their phase II-A data. They have a galectin-3 monoclonal antibody. It's actually able to penetrate through the blood-brain barrier, and the results are pretty amazing. They do have aspirations for oncology, but nothing really yet.
Let me summarize this. We feel we have the best of breed technology in oncology and virology, but we are using a different tactic toward regulatory approval. We're going after an approval in virology with the idea of a label expansion to oncology. Why? Saves a lot of time and money in the process. That might seem like a wild idea to some of the investors out there, but all these companies I just mentioned, they have that crossover between virology and oncology. That is actually probably my next LinkedIn article topic. Stay tuned.
Wonderful. Mike, you talked about a lot. You covered a lot. Do you have any closing remarks for our viewers today? You got about a minute or so left.
I want to thank everyone for being here, obviously. I hope you kind of see the overhang in our stock. It's disappeared. You can kind of see that. We got a lot of licensing opportunities out there. We have three incredible platform technologies, and we're going to get the licensing done on that. The bird flu potential, we have a real opportunity to solve a real big problem. There's a lot of catalysts coming as well. You know, your money is, or your support goes a long way with our cost-efficient capital structure. We can do a lot with just a little. We really appreciate your support. Thank you.
Wonderful. Thank you, Mike. Great presentation as always. We look forward to seeing you again real soon.
All right.
All right, everyone. We'll be right back.