News

2018 EGBVentures update.

Items mentioned:
• Isla Pharmaceuticals
• Invisio
• Race Oncology

Dr. Bill Garner is interview by Paul Kelly at 2018 J.P. Morgan Conference in San Francisco.

Items touched on in interview:

• Some of the companies invested in Australia and globally
Race Oncology
InMed Pharmaceuticals
Isla Pharmaceuticals

• The Global world including
Austrailia
Canada
Vietnam
United States

• Bill’s book – Garnering Capital

• Some quotes from interview
“Humbling to see the quality of the science around the world”

“Fundamental gains in knowledge will allow generating better solutions for patients”

• Compelling reasons to investing in smaller companies vs. larger companies

•Some reasons to invest in non-US markets versus the large US markets.

• Bill Garner’s background, medical and financial industry.

Genesis of Race Oncology

Current Events and Updates Video

Biopharma Investment Opportunities

In this episode of the Healthcare Innovation Podcast, Zubin Kapadia speaks with the Founder and CEO of EGB Ventures, Dr. William Garner about biopharma investment opportunities.

Video from portfolio company Race Oncology.

Race Oncology Raises Money, Dengue Flares Around the World Highlight Need for Isla’s Drug

On July 10th Race Oncology (www.raceoncology.com) (ASX:RAC), Perth, Australia, announced a letter of intent to enter into a joint venture with TargImmune of Basel, Switzerland. On July 17th Race also raised capital in a placement.

In July Isla Pharmaceuticals (www.islapharma.com), San Juan, PR, met with a potential investigator for our planned clinical trial of Isla101 in Dengue virus infection in Puerto Rico. Dengue has been in the news this month with spikes in cases in Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

In the past 50 years, the incidence of dengue worldwide has increased 30-fold, largely as a consequence of the growth of cities and increased travel. Dengue fever is an infectious disease carried by mosquitoes and caused by any of four related dengue viruses. This disease used to be called “break-bone fever” because it sometimes causes severe joint and muscle pain that feels like bones are breaking. People get the dengue virus from the bite of an infected Aedes mosquito. It is not contagious from person to person. (From OutbreakNewsToday.com).

The newest EGB portfolio company is Isla Pharmaceuticals based in San Juan, PR. The mission of Isla Pharmaceuticals is to develop therapies for emerging viral diseases such as Dengue and Zika. Our business model is capital efficient, virtual, and focused on clinical development with the goal of filing for marketing authorization.

Please let me know if you would like additional information we will have available next week.

William J. Garner, MD MPH

This is not an investment recommendation.

From the CEO of Race Oncology:
To all Race supporters and shareholders,

Today we announced the appointment of IriSys (San Diego) as our finished product manufacturer (attached). IriSys will receive Bisantrene API from Sai Life Sciences (India), complete the final formulation work in San Diego and then package Bisantrene for sale (and further clinical trial use).

This is important, because it’s the final piece in our pathway to market for Bisantrene and culminates four months of work to assemble all the partnerships we needed in place to get Bisantrene on the market:

– Crystal Pharmatech (pre-manufacturing formulation)
– Sai Life Sciences (API manufacturing)
– IriSys (finished product formulation and manufacturing)
– Camargo (regulatory management)
– CarthaGenetics (NPP distribution and sales)

Having all these players locked in should send an important risk-reduction signal to the market.

Also, yesterday, we announced the appointment of the second US oncologist to our Scientific Advisory Board. This should be seen as positive as well, as it shows that even though Bisantrene is an older molecule, these high-profile AML experts are interested in it, because of the unmet medical need in relapsed and refractory AML. We are aiming for one more oncologist to come on board and then we will have our full complement for an SAB of experts that will guide our marketing of Bisantrene in Europe and further clinical development in the US.

October 25th I am presented to investors at the ‘Australia Biotech Invest 2016′ conference as part of the Ausbiotech national conference at the Melbourne Convention Centre.

Naturally, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

In our last newsletter, we highlighted RACE Oncology (ASX:RAC) and its successful listing on the ASX in July, 2016. Peter Molloy, Managing Director & CEO, RACE Oncology will be available to meet in New York City on September 16th-17th. To request a meeting with Peter, please email me directly.

This month, guest blogger Stuart Roberts, Founder, NDF Research, a Sydney based independent research firm, provides a unique perspective on what makes the ASX worth following, particularly in life sciences.

Hello from Stuart Roberts in Sydney, Australia,

Three months ago I started NDF Research (ndfresearch.com) an equities research business focused on Life Sciences companies that were publicly traded on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). One of the reasons that I did this was that I think there’s going to be a serious boom in Life Sciences stocks in this part of the world and I wanted my new firm to be part of it. Hopefully after reading this blog piece you’ll be interested in travelling Down Under to do your homework on this coming boom as well.

To understand why Australia is rapidly becoming a global Power in Life Sciences, I want to draw an analogy with men’s basketball. Time was when the US reigned supreme as the global power in basketball and everyone else trailed way behind. Then things started to change. America had easily won gold at every Olympics since 1936, then got very narrowly beaten by the Soviet Union at the basketball final in the Munich Olympics in 1972 (indeed, I think the Commies stole that match). They came back in 1976 by beating Yugoslavia, and they triumphed in 1984 against Spain, but in 1988 the unthinkable happened – the US was relegated to bronze while the USSR took gold and Yugoslavia silver. It happened again in 2004 when America was at bronze again while Argentina and Italy fought it out for gold and silver. It wasn’t that America had weakened. It was that the rest of the world was learning how to play the game properly and America had to innovate and go to the next level in order to maintain its lead. To its credit, the last three US Olympic basketball teams have done that.

Now don’t get me wrong. American is still the No. 1 Superpower at basketball and at biotechnology. My point is that a lot of other countries are learning to do biotech as adventurously and as professionally as America has traditionally done, not unlike how a lot of countries have been improving with their basketball talent. And Australia is one of the rapidly improving countries.

On the ASX there are around 100 listed Life Science companies. ASX is home to Cochlear, the company that gave the world the cochlear implant, and ResMed, which was the pioneer of the CPAP machine. It’s also home to CSL, one of the world’s largest pharma companies and a global leader in plasma therapeutics. Sirtex, the global pioneer of brachytherapy, is an Aussie company. So is Ellex, one of the world’s leading medical laser companies. We’re pretty good at this Life Sciences game.
Emerging from underneath these established companies are around 95 drug and medical device developers that you have probably never heard of, but, were they traded on Nasdaq and headquartered in San Diego, Cambridge Ma., or the Bay Area, they would be worth orders of magnitude more than they are currently valued at on ASX. Why so cheap? Mainly because Australian investors are only just realizing the treasure trove they are sitting on, having spent most of the period from 2003 to the present time focused on mining and oil stocks. I routinely describe our Life Science companies, without mentioning their names, to sophisticated US investors and ask the question ‘how much would you be prepared to pay for this?’ and when I tell them the price they are astounded at the undervaluation.

The reason I think the valuation gap is about to close is that we now know how to play the game much better. Our clinical trials are structured much better. Our partnering discussions with Big Pharma are more two-way than they use to be. And our early stage R&D has become much more commercial in orientation. We’re catching up fast, and I think eventually our stock prices will catch up as well.

Want to start looking at this treasure trove? Visit my web site, ndfresearch.com, where there’s plenty of useful information, including a list of companies to look at, and a league table that suggests that, after the US and the UK, we are the No 3. power in biotech globally. Not unlike our basketball team. At the Rio Olympics we finished fourth, and we only missed the bronze to Spain by a single point.

*Thanks Stuart for your insight and update on the ASX. We look forward to following NDF and your future guest blog pieces.