Evgen Pharma PLC (LON:EVG) Chief Executive Officer Stephen Franklin caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss their final results for year ending 31st March 2016
Q1: Now you’ve just posted your maiden results, can you summarise the highlights for us please?
A1: Yes, well on the financial side everything is in line with expectation so clearly for a company such as ours it’s all about R&D spend and keeping that under control so that’s all in line with expectation. In terms of what I call the key performance indicators it’s all about the Phase II trials so we have started the Phase II trial in this rare stroke indication called Subarachnoid Haemorrhage and that started at the University Hospital Southampton not so long ago and we’re also tooling up now to start the second Phase II trial in metastatic breast cancer. One of the things we highlighted in today’s results was the pre-clinical data where we showed SFX-01 actually working in real breast cancer tumours albeit in xenograft models and now the intention of course it to take this forward into the Phase II trial.
Q2: How well are the Phase II trials going, I guess the most important question is when do they report?
A2: When they do their report is clearly key as that represents the big value inflection point so the stroke trial has started so there are actual patients now being treated and that will report out final report in early 2018, there’s a very good chance that later this year there’ll be a safety readout as well so it’s not a question of just waiting for 2018. In metastatic breast cancer the next bit of news flow related to that should be what called a clinical trial approval so that’s the approval to actually initiate the trial then that patient recruitment will start later this year and whilst that is a smaller trial, it’s got 60 patients versus the 90 stroke, that will also report out in early 2018. So early 2018 is clearly a very important time for value for Evgen Pharma.
Q3: Finally then, what news can investors and potential investors expect to see from Evgen Pharma over the remainder of the year?
A3: Whilst the big value inflection is in 2018 the good news is we have material news flow that we expect between now and then and that’s clearly important for company’s such as ours so the kind of news items one could expect this year are things like the clinical trial approval for the breast cancer trial and then thereafter when the first patient goes in one would hope we would get all orphan designation from the FDA for SFX-01 in Subarachnoid Haemorrhage, that’s the rare type of stroke, and orphan designation is something that the regulatory authorities give you in recognition of the rarity of the disease and it enables certain fast track measures to get this drug to patients sooner. So orphan designation is something that we’d hope to be in a position to announce later this year and also another big one is we’ll be getting the data from SFX-01 versus Biogen’s drug Tecfidera in a study in multiple sclerosis and that is also reporting this year so we’re quite excited by the prospect of that data as well.
