Our corporate strategy has three main components. We plan to:
Advance pandemic and seasonal influenza vaccines into clinical trials.
We are currently developing pandemic and seasonal influenza vaccine candidates. Our pandemic H5N1 influenza VLP vaccine successfully completed a Phase I human clinical trial in December, 2009. We are currently preparing a regulatory file which is expected to be submitted to Health Canada in the following months. If granted approval, we will initiate a Phase II clinical trial and results should be available in the fourth quarter of 2010.
Leverage the current pandemic influenza market opportunity to execute our first commercial agreements.
The current pandemic influenza market provides opportunities to establish commercial agreements with target countries without sufficient domestic vaccine production capacity. Our plant-based Proficia™ technology offers these markets a system that is highly scalable and more cost-effective than traditional egg-based and cell production systems.
Seek development opportunities outside of influenza.
We plan to grow our infrastructure and overall capacity allowing us to develop and manufacture potential products through later development and commercial stages. We also believe that our technologies may be suitable for applications beyond the biopharmaceutical market. Patents of most current biological drugs are expiring in the next ten years and the regulatory environment favoring biosimilars is gaining momentum. Medicago’s plant-based manufacturing platform has the potential to offer a significant competitive edge in this market as it can potentially reduce the capital and operating costs required to produce biosimilars. Another example would be the possibility of supplying, at competitive prices, enzymes required for the production of bio-ethanol, an alternative to conventional fuel.