Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Myopharm, CEO and Executive Chair Karinza Phoenix
Lel Smits: Myopharm is developing treatments for metabolic and inflammatory diseases led by its type 2 diabetes drug candidate TriGlytza. A recent preclinical study achieved its key HbA1c endpoint and reported stronger results than metformin over one month of treatment. I’m joined today by Myopharm CEO, Karinza Phoenix, to discuss TriGlytza®, its clinical pathway and the company’s growth strategy.
Karinza, welcome to the Stock Network.
Karinza Phoenix: Thank you, Lel. Thanks for having us on today.
Lel Smits: Pleasure. Now, TriGlytza® targets inflammatory pathways linked to pancreatic beta cell loss. How does it differ from current type 2 diabetes treatments? And also, what do you think it could offer patients? Yeah, it’s highly novel and very different to most of the other type 2 diabetes medications out in the marketplace.
A lot of the medications for glomeruli are beta cell-centric. So they’re focusing really on that beta cell space and lowering glucose. Our therapy is a lot more novel and expansive, working on the underlying levers of type 2 diabetes.
It takes a bit of the work off the pancreas. A lot of the drugs are making the pancreas work harder, so you’re seeing more beta cell exhaustion. Ours is having a nice beta cell-centric preservation effect by taking work off the pancreas.
And we’re seeing a really nice statistically significant reduction in adipocytes. And we know that they contribute in a big way to inflammation. We also have seen some novel mechanistic action in muscle mass retention.
So a big problem out in the market right now, particularly in the GLP-1 space. And we see ourselves as very much complementary to that space. But patients who have been on GLP-1s for long term, will suffer a lot of muscle atrophy.
Lel Smits: Okay, and really looking on to some recent milestones, you have just recently received Australian ethics approval, also FDA approval. What does that mean for the Resilience Phase 2a program?
Karinza Phoenix: Yes, so within the space of a week, we did receive US Food and Drug Administration approval overnight, which was fantastic. And then following that, we received Australian ethics, Valbury approval as well.
So those really are the safety clearances for us to proceed with our planned Resilience 2a trial, trialing in type 2 diabetes. And we’re in the process of activating sites right now. So we can start to recruit patients in the new year.
It is a very big milestone for the company. And it’s unusual to have multi-jurisdiction approvals in such a close period of time.
Lel Smits: Absolutely, it certainly is.
And you’ve also just released an announcement regarding a preclinical type 1 diabetes model. What’s the significance of this development?
Karinza Phoenix: Yeah, this is potentially very significant for Australian type 1 diabetes landscape and globally. We had certain hypotheses that this drug, TriGlytza®, could work in a type 1 diabetes model.
Obviously two very different diseases, type 1 diabetes versus type 2 diabetes. One’s an immune-based disorder and the other one’s multifactorial in origin. But we were very pleased recently to crunch the data from a trial being run at Monash University.
Although it was just an animal trial, we saw a really nice reduction in monocytes and inflammation markers. So while these are really early signals, this puts us in a good position now to start our next trial, which is going to be more of a spontaneously beta cell-reduced damage model. And we’ll be able to further assess that as part of a preclinical model in type 1 diabetes and hopefully be able to deliver upon a new pipeline for our shareholders.
And obviously that would have a nice impact on our valuation as well.
Lel Smits: Absolutely. Karinza, thank you for the update on Myopharm and congratulations on your recent milestones as well.
Karinza Phoenix: Thank you for having me.
Ends