Suffering from traumatic injuries can leave a person with long-term damages and/or side effects that are hard to navigate long after the initial incident has passed.
Our next company is a publicly traded bio-pharmaceutical company, working on the development of its “ExoTherapy” production platform and products.
NurExone Biologic Inc. (TSXV:NRX) is focused on bringing its first acute spinal cord Injury therapy to market while monetizing on its proprietary ExoTherapy technology.
Joining The Market Herald Canada today is Dr. Lior Shaltiel, CEO of NurExone, who is here to divulge all the information about the company.
TMH: This seems to be a complex company, but it also has clear strategy. Can you inform our listeners as to what the exosome therapy, called “ExoTherapy,” that is in production and what the goal of the company is?
Shaltiel: The ExoTherapy is our platform technology. This is the technology that we bring to the market, to our investors, dealing with three pillars. One is how to produce the exosomes, how to produce the EVs with a special biological fingerprint and better efficacy, better yield of production, etc.
Second is what to do with the exosomes, how to load them, how to give them an extra boost of energy I would say. In this case we use siRNA and we load it with our methods and we can get synergistic effect.
And third is water loading inside. In our case, as I said, is siRNA.
Our first product is Exo-PTEN, which is exosome loaded with siRNA against the protein called PTEN and with this combined therapy in one product, we can see region regeneration of neurons and several times in several proofs of concept.
Our proof of concept now is in rats and we wanted to translate it to a full clinical trial as requested from the FDA.
TMH: In June the company released imaging results from a pre-clinical study following a traumatic transection of the spinal cord in rats. What do these results suggest?
Shaltiel: The results suggest very clearly that with our product regenerates neurons. We chose a very hard, harsh model when we complete transect spinal cord area. We have a full section, full lesion of the spinal cord. There is no way back, although we have the lesion, we can create a regeneration of neural connect again and then we can see a functional recovery.
In the movie that you would see on our website, you see rats that can walk again after those injuries and we repeat it. I can tell you that we repeat it again and again in another two proof of concept studies not related even to one vendor that gives us the cells, and we see again and again the results of functional recovery.
It’s changed between walking, full walking or other functional recovery can be motor, sensory, reflex and control of bladder and so there is (a) different way of functional recovery. And of course everybody would like to see a paralyzed person that can walk again, this is very, very challenging, but the first step to go there is to really see regeneration of neurons and this (is) what we see.
TMH: Walk us through how this product will benefit the market for those suffering from acute spinal injuries.
Shaltiel: When we speak about the acute spinal cord injury now is you going to have a car accident or a ski accident and you cannot feel your legs. This is our market. Those are patients that enter the hospital and they don’t have a solution other than after the injury, special operation, very, very intensive care.
We want to come with our product, Exo-PTEN to the stage of between three to 14 days and try to offer an alternative non-invasive treatment as extra to the standard of care and give you more of a chance to maybe to walk again and maybe to have some kind of functional recovery after this severe injury.
TMH: Last month the company closed the first tranche of non-brokered private placements. Congrats on that. Financially, what is the company’s position?
Shaltiel: The position again is based on the business. We have a hybrid business product, which we now understand how we proceed with the FDA guidance to IND submission and clinical trials and on the other side we will have also our technology that we want to show to the world how we do it. Most of it is unpublished, our PCTs patents will be published just later this year and we can show to the world that we can produce exosomes in a very unique way.
We have a fingerprint of our exosomes, which is not only higher production, it is also better efficacy and how to load those exosomes and what to load the exosome. So the other business, which is more short term will be partnership, joint ventures in some kind of joint research like we are trying to do with Canadian companies.
TMH: What makes this company a good investment for those wanting to add a bio-pharmaceutical company to their portfolio?
Shaltiel: There are not a lot of alternatives. It’s very simple. If you’re going worldwide to see if you can invest in (an) exosome company, there are not a lot to look like at. We are few publicly trade companies in the field of exosomes. And there is no doubt by scientists, by even analysts, that the new medicine – after we saw canopies, we saw stem cells medicine, which took more than 20 years of development – the next step will be the exosome therapy. This is the new century of medicine, and so if you want to be part of this, exosome can be a good position for investment since you don’t have other options.
For more information on NurExone Biologic, visit nurexone.com.
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