5.4.22-Startup-Ecosystem-Vaxess

LIVIO VALENTI: OK. Hi, everyone, Livio Valenti, co-founder of Vaxess Technology. Let's talk a little bit about skin patches. So I think like most of the novel technologies are the convergence between different fundamental discoveries, a new way to actually implement it practically, and some discoveries that are very fundamental in our case around novel materials.

So here the intuition was that it's not only what you deliver, but where and for how long. So this breakthrough discovery really led us to think about how do we actually deliver vaccines, therapeutics, and other molecules in the skin, which is a very immunocompetent tissue. And at the same time, it led us to develop a new way to actually deliver it, which is this device that we develop.

And everything comes together with the novel material that enables all this to happen, which is silk fibroin. But let me tell you where we are. First of all, we're based here in Cambridge, we're about 45 people. And we've been working really to advance this technology from the early days of academic discovery to the point that we actually finally launch our GMP facility up in Woburn just outside Boston.

It's the only facility that can produce clinical products here in the United States for vaccine patches. So we developed that. It took us a long time, but we have it ready. And why did we do that? Because we're entering a phase I clinical trial in July, currently slotted for July 18, for our first product.

And that would be a flu vaccine that we administer right here in your forearm. So this is real, skin patches are coming, whether people like it or not. How does it work? So first of all, you'll see here initially we think about deploying these through doctors in the doctor's offices. But we have ambition to actually ship this thing to your desk and potentially apply by yourself.

But let's be realistic for now. So what if you go to a doctor? The patch can apply to your forearm, as I said. Very, very painless delivery, click of a button. The patch gets deployed into your forearm. After five minutes, you remove it and you move on.

You throw it away. There is no sharps, and you can just move on with your life. So as we said before, is not just what we deliver, but for how long, and where. So this is a little bit how it looks like.

So this is a picture of actual microneedle or skin patches. And the blue portion is where the vaccine is concentrating alongside our proprietary polymer that is extracted, as I said, from natural silk fibroin, that gives all this property of mechanical integrity and capacity of deliver this vaccine or drug in the skin for a prolonged period of time, whether it's one minute, whether it's six months. We have the skills and the capacity to engineer the delivery in the way we like it, to optimize immune responses.

So this is how it looks like, very nice design, user-friendly. And the idea is that we're able to distribute these very efficiently across the globe. The interesting thing that I was mentioning before is that our novel material that has been investigated for many, many years in terms of properties such as thermal stability and mechanical integrity. So if you want to keep something inside your skin for a prolonged period of time, your body's warm, you need something to preserve those molecules.

So we're able to do that thanks to the proprietary formulation that we developed and all the processing and the technological advancement that we made in the actual understanding of this novel material. So as I mentioned before, we're very proud of being able to actually produce those patches, those skin patches at scale. And thanks to the government support and obviously the investor support, we actually launched our GMP facility that is able to produce those patches for this clinical trial.

There was nothing more that we could go and ask for producing those products. So for us, it was a big decision to actually do it on our own. This is a little bit of our pipeline. So we're developing a range of different applications with this patch.

And so the one that I mentioned is the influenza vaccine. And the idea is really to simplify administration. We've been lucky also to receive a lot of funding not only from investors but also from global health organizations like Gates Foundation, NIH, DARPA, Department of Defense and others, to really bring this technology forward, being able to distribute vaccine and therapeutics better.

And this is our pipeline. So we have obviously some work going on on the COVID space and mRNA and other targets. So ultimately I feel like we envision a world in which maybe we'll ship these patches to your home, and you can apply by yourself. And now we all see why this could be beneficial in time of a pandemic, but also in our daily life.

If we want to vaccinate the world, we're going to have to ship those things everywhere in every corner. And the combination of temperature stability, easy administration, maybe you don't need a nurse. People can do on their own. Or maybe someone that is less trained can do it. Think about developing countries and places which the cold chain is a big problem.

Those products are stable, easy to distribute, and easy to apply. So we see a world in which maybe in the US you can tap your button like you do it for Amazon and now you get your patch and you apply by yourself. What are we looking for? We always want to collaborate with corporates.

And so that's very important for us. We have our program that we are advancing independently. But at the same time, we look forward to collaborate with anyone who's interested to try some of your molecules in our system. And so I thank you for that. And thanks a lot for the attention.

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