Open Orphan plc (LON:ORPH) Executive Chairman Cathal Friel caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the results from the COVID-19 characterisation study, the next phase of the human challenge programme and whether we can expect COVID-19 revenue this year.
Q1: Now you’ve announced the results of the COVID-19 characterisation study this morning. What does this mean for Open Orphan?
A1: It’s exciting time. There’s been a lot of talk about this study, it’s the world’s first, the United Kingdom leads world in the study of COVID.
Really what it means is we’ve held off signing commercial COVID-19 contracts because we use healthy volunteers for trials and we have to be absolutely certain, it had to be published internationally that the COVID 19 human challenge characterisation was safe, so it’s safe.
Now that means not saying it’s opening the floodgates but that means we’re open for business to deal with big pharma and biotech’s who want to test their COVID-19 products and we know there’s a lot of them coming down the track.
Q2: So, when do you plan to initiate the next phase of the human challenge programme?
A2: Up to this, we were very much dealing with a partnership, funded by the Vaccine Task Force, the British government, our colleagues and friends, the sponsor Imperial College and ran in their Royal Free Hospital.
So, going forward, one naturally knows dealing with a lot of bodies like that can be a bit slower and our plan now, we will focus on the commercial studies, highly academic studies. We will certainly keep close and work with our colleagues and friends in the Imperial University, but where it goes now, we would be looking to do commercial studies, testing the efficacy of a lot of COVID-19 therapies, vaccines that we all know is in the pipeline.
Q3: Are these studies still needed to approve new vaccines and antivirals?
A3: Yes. It’s great news. I think the pandemic is over with the arrival of Omicron so we’re in post-pandemic in my head or getting there, but COVID is not going away. It’s in the camp of influenza now and RSV common cold, it’s going to pop up every winter.
So, the only difference is there’s so many hundreds of products being developed all around the world to deal with COVID, a lot of them are a combination, you’ll get the flu job and the COVID jab, you’ll get an RSV and the COVID jab. So all of them be tested. Now that COVID is reducing., there’s never been a better time to use human challenge studies because we can do, in three months, what can take a year or two or three in the field.
So, yes, we believe there will be quite a bit of work for us, but I’d say let us quote first, let us sign it, let us announce it and let’s see where that goes in the coming weeks and months ahead.
Q4: You said before Christmas that Open Orphan had 95% of 2022 targeted revenues contracted, this was non-COVID revenue. Can we expect to see some COVID-19 revenue this year?
A4: Absolutely, we would be very optimistic we’ll have COVID revenue. What we tried to do last year is set guidance, we have a very fast grown, sustainable, profitable, a large cash balance that grows by the month and it’s primarily influenza studies or RSV studies, malaria studies, asthma studies, and HRV studies. That’s our bread and butter.
Going forward, now that we have a characterisation study that is safe to use and we have 95% of our target this year in revenues in non-COVID already contracted, it’s a great start to the year.
So, any revenues we get from COVID will be on up of that 95% and people might say, where’s the capacity, well, there’s always the Royal Free and we always can create capacity, we’ve proven exactly this time last year, we doubled our capacity by converting the former White Chapel Hotel to a quarantine clinic. So people shouldn’t worry about capacity.
Let’s see if we sign some commercial COVID contracts first and then that will be on top of the current 95% of our existing target already in the bank, already signed.
