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TWST: Could you give us a brief overview and history of your company (Nasdaq:KOSN)?
Dr. Santi: The company was founded in late 1995 with laboratory operations beginning in April 1996. It was founded by myself and Stanford professor Dr. Chaitan Khosla. The company was founded on early, stage technology under development in Dr. Khosla’s laboratory. That technology allows us to change the genes or genomes of microorganisms that make a class of natural products called polyketides and therefore change the structures of these natural products. The reason this is important is because polyketides are all small organic molecules that provide an extremely rich source of pharmaceuticals; molecules such as erythromycin, FK-506, rapamycin, a whole host of heavy hitter pharmaceuticals with huge markets. What we basically do is to create new pharmaceuticals using this technology; by changing the genes to change the structures and to correct deficiencies in known pharmaceuticals that have very large markets. In short, we have developed a novel and very proprietary technology platform that allows us to modify very valuable pharmaceuticals in a way that the chemists and pharmaceutical companies cannot.
TWST: Where would you like to see the company in three years?
Dr. Santi: I would like to see the company have several very high value pharmaceuticals of the types that I’ve mentioned to you in clinical trials, with some of them held by the company itself, instead of partnered out. We want to capture the high value of late– stage clinical trial products.
TWST: What major changes do you expect in your markets or in the industry over the next several years?
Dr. Santi: Large pharmaceutical companies, through mergers and growth, are going to be even more hungry for early –and late– stage clinical products. So, the appetite of large pharmaceutical companies for products like ours is going to grow considerably. Because of the surge in the financing of biotechnology companies over the past year, many biotechnology companies like ours are fairly well financed and won’t have to partner out products at an early stage. You’re going to see a lot of biotechnology companies grow larger and take their products into later stage clinical trials.
TWST: What benchmarks or milestones can investors use to judge your progress over the next several years?
Dr. Santi: Our progress should be monitored by our ability to develop high value pharmaceuticals and to demonstrate that we can bring these pharmaceuticals into clinical trials in a relatively short period of time. I think a good example of the type of progress we would like to make is exemplified by the two major programs I mentioned to you in infectious disease and cancer. In a very short period of time, literally about two years in the case of both, we’ve been able to start from scratch and bring a product to the point where we are close to clinical trials. We should also be measured by our ability to continue to make very significant developments on the technology front.
TWST: If you were sitting down now with a bunch of potential long-term investors, what reason would you give them to invest in Kosan Biosciences today?
Dr. Santi: I think that long-term investors who invest in Kosan today are going to, in a not unbearable time period, benefit from the fruits of the potential billion–dollar products that we’re working on. |
