We are sitting here with Gustav Gram, CEO of Pila Pharma. Warm welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you. For those who aren't familiar with you, could you start by telling us briefly about Pila Pharma?
We're a clinical stage biotech company working on a novel type of drug for treatment of type two diabetes, but now also obesity. This is an oral drug that we could potentially position as an alternative to existing treatments in this space.
Given the growing interest in oral treatment for obesity and diabetes, how do you plan to position your lead candidate to compete with treatments already launched or in development by Big Pharma?
We, of course, have seen that the obesity market has come around in many ways. Of course, that's a very big deal. It's very interesting to see how many different modalities are coming through. We've seen GLP-1s have been tremendously successful in their way of regulating body weight successfully, and thereby also preventing a lot of diseases that derive from having, let's say, overweight, right? We feel, and what we hear and see from the industry as well, is that the market is going to fragment going forward. There will be space enough for a lot of different modalities, different pathways, different targets, whatever you wish to call it.
Of course, there will be a heavy emphasis on coming forward with oral drugs, since that is basically the only way in which you can make a scalable solution that can address the volume in the market, which is set to be more than a billion people on a global stage.
It's very interesting. What is your Pila Pharma's plan to progress for your lead candidate going forward here?
Yeah, so we have a TRPV1 antagonist, which is quite an unusual target in this space. We have already conducted quite a few clinical trials, actually, in type two diabetes. That has resulted in us having quite a good foundation in the sense of knowing a lot of the safety around the molecule that we work with. We also see good signs of efficacy now, which is very interesting, because it means the drug is actually working. In parallel to what we have done so far, now we intend to also make a bet on more pure obesity studies. We, of course, have seen that there's interest in the market from other pharma companies. We can sense from our investors that they feel like now is maybe the time to really give it a go.
That is why we, of course, are looking now to establish a parallel track where we will investigate our drug in pure obesity models, starting with rat studies and subsequently, if successful, of course, moving into human studies.
Thank you. If we look a little bit on the financial side, you're currently carrying out a share issue, quite unusually underwritten to almost 100%. What will this capital be used for?
Like I say, it's quite unusual for 100% share raising biotech these days. We're very happy with that. It gives us a ton of confidence that there's investor confidence in what we do and what we propose, and that there's value to be had down the line, both short term as well as long term. Like I mentioned before, the capital here now will be used for the separate track. We will still move forward with our diabetes part, if we can call it this, where we are looking to send in a clinical trial application to the authorities. This is still ongoing. Simultaneously, we will now be starting one or more rat studies to investigate the effect in obesity. Of course, this is very exciting.
It means that potentially in as short as six months, we could know whether a drug has a real effect in regulating body weight.
Pretty big milestone to look out for then.
Yeah, it could be very interesting. I think that's also to some degree why there's been so much support in this rights issue. I mean, more than 50% that were subscribed for were from existing investors who feel that this is a very attractive price to come in. There's also some warrants attached to the offering that have a strike after the proposed rat data, so that we've basically de-risked it for investors now and put the risk on the backside of those potential studies. We feel like it's a model that has favored investors. It seems like they agree with us. That's very nice.
Just to round it up here, why should investors take a close look at you as a next potential investment?
Because the obesity market is going to be the next big thing in the medical scientific world. The estimates are that more than a billion people are living with obesity, so more than many other diseases on a global stage. The latest estimates that I heard was that overweight as such, BMI more than 27, is four billion people. This is a globally prevalent disease that has so many consequences. There will be an exceptional amount of treatments needed in order to stimulate every type of patient group that is out there. Of course, there are some types of molecules and drugs in development now that are showing really good promise. Ours is very different. We're hoping to potentially have a very differentiated profile, both on efficacy, but also on safety and side effects.
That is why we believe that in a very short time frame, if we are successful with first this rat study and subsequently a human study, we could have a very comprehensive data package that would be of interest for a Big Pharma company to either in-license or alternatively to acquire.
Big thanks for joining us today. Good luck going forward.
Thank you.