Genflow Biosciences plc (LON:GENF) Chief Executive Officer Dr. Eric Leire caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss recent progress, funding, market opportunities, and upcoming catalysts.
Q1: Some incredible progress and achievements made over the last 6 to 12 months. Eric, what were the key highlights for you?
A1: I would especially like to focus on the dog study, animal health, where the ongoing clinical trial is moving according to the plan, with now the recent publication of interim results that were very promising.
Second, we moved to an ophthalmic programme with the ambition to change the way we treat glaucoma. Glaucoma now is treated as a pathology of the high pressure in the eye, but the real problem is the degeneration of the retina, so your posterior part of the eye and the beginning of the nerve. We have here some preliminary data that are extremely exciting. We can revolutionise the way we treat glaucoma.
I will not forget that we got some good progress in sarcopenia, and also, we are moving very comfortably with the transition from AAVs to now an mRNA LNP platform.
It’s all very positive.
Q2: You recently announced successful funding and a €4 million grant. What will that funding be used for?
A2: That’s part of the excitement for 2025. It was a successful year. We secured the MASH grant that will cover €4 million, so that’s a significant addition in terms of non-dilutive grants. It’s coming in addition to the grant we have for the sarcopenia programme and for the ‘Exofastrack’ programme. So, we have now three grants that are funding the company.
In addition to that, we did also a nice series of little fundraising, classical fundraising, non-dilutive with historical shareholders.
Q3: What can you tell me about the size of the markets that you were targeting?
A3: That’s one part of the company that we don’t communicate enough.
One of the appeals of Genflow Biosciences is the fact that we’re targeting very large market opportunities. When I say large market opportunities, I’m not talking only about the number of patients we could treat, but also the size of the unmet need that allow us to have some very attractive pricing opportunity.
For MASH – Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatohepatitis – for example, we target a segment of the market. The early stage of MASH is relatively well covered with GLP-1 and a product from Madrigal, Resmetirom. We are more interested in the late stage when the MASH has really evolved towards cirrhosis and risk of hepatocarcinoma. Here, we only compete against liver transplantation. Very expensive, very difficult, a lot of logistical problems. So, very nice competitor to compete with. It’s still a very large market opportunity. This segment is one third of MASH, MASH being more than 30 to 40 million people based on different estimations in the world.
If I take glaucoma, the second cause of blindness, treated only to lower the pressure into the vitreum, we will change that as an opportunity also to prevent the evolution toward blindness. As you imagine, that’s a huge opportunity.
Sarcopenia also is a therapeutic area with a large unmet need and a very large number of patients. So, yes, we are not targeting small markets. The market opportunities are extremely large for the company and that’s definitely one of the appeals for the investor regarding Genflow Biosciences.
Q4: Just turning to the future now. What can investors be looking out for in terms of news flow?
A4: Short term, we will publish the final results of the animal health, the dog clinical trial we’re running and we’re starting now to discuss with animal health companies, two are under CDAs. We want to sell this programme or to out license this programme to find a partnership, a partner in an animal health company. We definitely have no added value in animal health in terms of commercialisation and development of product. Animal health partner will do much better than us.
This will provide certainly very nice non-dilutive revenues from business development within the company and should have a major impact on our market cap. For example, let’s say the worst scenario, we have an upfront. The upfront is way larger than market cap, you can imagine the impact on our market, on our share price in relatively short term. So, very nice opportunity.
Other than that, we have also the opportunity to have partnerships and we will publish results in glaucoma, and we expect to present at the conference American Academy of Ophthalmology in the US in New Orleans at the end of the year.
Last but very important, maybe less important for the investors, but extremely important for us and for the business development, is IP. Our key patent is now entering national phase, and we have some geographies where we are extremely close to having the patent granted. So, when we have a patent granted, that is very nice protection for the company, it changes also the valuation of the company, and it allows you to have access to the business development opportunities.
