DNAP - newsletter from Tony Frudakis, CEO
NEWSLETTER
Dear Investor,
On the occasion of our first anniversary, I thought I would take a moment to keep each of you informed about your company. This will be the first in a series of newsletters I will send out over the course of the year, and I hope you find them useful.
During our first year, we formed several key relationships for product partnering (Orchid), biological specimen collection (Naples Group, Jacksonville Physician Group, University of Miami etc.) and to expand our business (DNAPRO, Malaysia). But the most important things we have been doing are directly related to the science of developing our products. Here is a run-down.
We invested heavily in the infrastructure and expertise needed to perform research of the highest caliber. Having built our foundation, we are now actively engaged in the development of our pipeline of genomics-based patient classification products. Most of our future expenses will be directly related to operating this pipeline.
We have constructed a library of SNP maps, showing where, in genes, individual human beings differ from one another. Our maps are by far the best in the world. Due mainly to our proprietary (and patent pending) protocols, our SNP maps are deeper and more detailed than those held publicly (NCBI) or privately (such as at Celera, Affymetrix, Incyte, Human Genome Sciences and even Gennaissance). Furthermore, our maps cover the entire length of the gene in the genome. The maps being constructed by others are focused at the ends. This is a crucial point because the depth and breadth of the maps are important! You can think of them as "treasure maps" - the more detailed and accurate the map, the better your chance of
finding the treasure. As an investor in DNAPrint genomics, you should feel proud that you own a piece of the most comprehensive and valuable pharmaco-relevant SNP library on the planet.
We continue to write code for the high-throughput and automated mining of complex genetic pattern from our data. When I speak at meetings with executives of other private and publicly held companies, I am continually amazed at how little effort they are putting into genetics IT and discovery. The reason for this is, that it's hard, and hard things tend to get done last. Thus, any company that builds a system to solve genetics problems on a genomics scale is worth its' weight in gold. At the close of year one, DNAPrint is about half way to having our informatics platform for solving these problems completed. We have developed 8 different software components of this platform, and filed patents covering their composition and use. For example, we have filed on a proprietary cladistics-based, geometric modeling scheme for identifying epistatic and dominance components of quantitative genetic variance. To our knowledge, there are no other programs like this anywhere in the world.
We have assembled a world-class laboratory with state-of-the-art equipment. We are sequencing well over 1 Million bases per week and scoring about 2,000 genotypes per day. We have assembled what may well be the most extensive, detailed and valuable pharmacogenomics specimen databank in the world. We have had the foresight to collect multi-drug consent from our donors, and to log everything in their patient files into our database. No other company does this. Since most of our patients are on multiple medications and since we genotype every person at every pharmaco-relevant marker (unlike our competition), we have the ability to perform multiple and simultaneous pharmacogenomics projects. Please appreciate what this means. Using this type of "master" databank, DNAPrint will be able to outrun its competition in getting pharmacogenomics products discovered and developed to market. For example, when a company decides to do a study on Drug X, they start by collecting specimens, picking markers out of a public database, genotyping and analyzing the results in slow time. Specimen collection, on its' own, usually takes months. Going on to Drug Y, they start all over again. At DNAPrint, we will use our "master" databank to work 100 times faster. When we decide to look for a solution for problem Y related to use of Drug X, it is simply an informatics problem. The genotypes, patient data, consent - all of it - is in place and ready to be mined the minute we decide we want to spend time on the project. Unlike the competition, we don't have to start from the beginning collecting specimens, making DNA, building SNP maps, selecting markers, genotyping and analyzing. This imparts a HUGE advantage to DNAPrint.
As you can see, the level at which we are performing here at DNAPrint is about as high as it can be. We are the envy of our larger Nasdaq peers, and this bodes well for the prospects of increased shareholder value in the months and years to come. In fact, our research is already beginning to pay off. It is my personal goal to be able to announce to you, by year's end, the company's first product and product license.
You should know that there are only about 40 companies in the entire world with the hardware technology we have and significantly fewer with the analytical/software technology we are developing. You should also know that of all of these genomics-capable companies, we are the only micro-cap. In fact, most pharmaceutical companies would have to spend well over $10 million to set up a division with our capabilities.
This brings up the most important point I will leave you with.
On a budget of about $1 million, a head count of 14 full time employees (10 on and 4 off-site), and a very small market cap of $20 million, we are literally beginning to outrun larger companies in terms of actual results and enabling infrastructure. We are working smarter, building deeper maps, making "master" databanks and building more sophisticated analytical algorithms than companies with budgets 10 times as large as ours. These things lead to products, which will lead to revenues and profits. They can also enhance shareholder value through other mechanisms. We will continue to build and devote ourselves to making DNAPrint a stunning success.
We are the first micro-cap company that I know of, anywhere, to begin to make an impact in the challenging and expensive field of genomics. You should feel proud of the company you have helped build!
Sincerely,
Tony Frudakis, CEO |
