Video Transcript
What excites you about Laxxon?
Alex Ruckdaeschel:
What excites me about Laxxon is the opportunity to help patients by making existing products better for patients while also building a company from scratch, which could be, in the future, a $1B+ company.
Achim Schneeberger Ph.D.:
What excites me most is the beginning of drug development. So if you are a company, you have a nice new molecule, and you want to bring it to clinical testing, you typically need someone who's going to able to formulate it. That's a big effort.
With our technology, we can do a couple of these things at once or at "one printing plate". So we can create tablets of different sizes and tablets of different forms. Of course, beyond the tablet's formulation, the tablet's geometry will decide on the release profile. So that's speeding up drug development for partners.
One other area players don't typically think of---pediatric pharmacology. There are many examples of treatment for children with Laxxon's solutions. It's not only body weight that will decide how much of the API to take, but it's also the age of a given individual that will decide on the need.
When thinking about thyroid hormones, there is a different need according to different ages and growth rates of the body. So that is something Laxxon can tackle well because we adjust a few more layers and can tailor the API dose in a given tablet at the accuracy needed for pediatric treatment situations. Our technology could change the lives of children because, so far, this option is simply not available in pharmacology.
For example, a patient can't always just break a tablet into two if they need a small dose. If they have a tablet that is 10 milligrams and they can perhaps break it into two in order to make five milligrams. But if the patient needs 6.5 milligrams, they can't break a tablet accurately. However, our technology can add the respective number of layers. Then, we have these tablets available in the respective batch size, covering the entire community's needs.
How is Laxxon disrupting and advancing the pharmaceutical industry?
Helmut Kerschbaumer:
We can "extend patents for blockbuster drugs." To clarify, you cannot extend patents, but our new technology allows you to switch technology and achieve a kind of "patent extension" for big players.
We can generate advanced patented generics, which is a brand-new field of development. Since we can repurpose drugs, generic drugs, and register them, and because we have developed and manufactured them with our technology, you have a kind of "advanced patented generic drug," which is, of course, a significant improvement in the market for industrial partners.
Last but not least, we offer not only new drug development opportunities but also manufacturing solutions.
Achim Schneeberger Ph.D:
We can accommodate most every API into our tablets as the process relies more on the API in terms of a powder rather than needing features such as solubility, etc. So we are mild, very broad, and can control drug release in a very narrow range. So, that sets us apart from other additive manufacturing technologies.
Alex Ruckdaeschel:
I see Laxxon is also disruptive for the pharmaceutical industry. We are also a little bit more aggressive. We are not slow. We are innovative, which makes Laxxon so special. We can focus on different fields in the area, not just one business unit, making us very special.
Helmut Kerschbaumer:
Our technology is not only disruptive but also extremely price effective. There are a large variety of reasons why potential partners from the industry would choose Laxxon.
How has COVID-19 influenced the pharmaceutical industry?
Helmut Kerschbaumer:
Before COVID, people, investors, and society were asking for cheap medicine, which is fair. But when considering the cost of medicine, you should remember that we still need improvements in the industry and development programs. And improvements and innovations—you will not be able to finance innovations with cheap medicine.
However, COVID made people, society, politics, finance industry aware of the need for entrepreneurs and companies to take the risk of developing new drugs.
What are Laxxon’s Key Milestones?
Helmut Kerschbaumer:
I see the seed investment of the German government as the first key milestone. This brought Laxxon to the next level.
The second important step was moving to the US market. For us, with our ideas, with our vision, the US market was perfect.
We are also establishing the first GMP printer in the US market in the New Jersey area. Of course, before we had the development lab, non-GMP in Indiana, which is also significant.
We made significant milestones with the financing last year, 12.5 million US dollars, with a valuation of 2.5 per share.
Last but not least, we have intense negotiations and existing contractual agreements with the top 10 players in the market. The industry is already leaning towards Laxxon, and we are discussing the development of 5-7 great potential products.
Alex Ruckdaeschel:
The last round we did last December was the Series A round with $12.5 million. Now, we are doing a small bridge round. Laxxon was expecting to go public at the end of this year, but with this environment of global issues and the stock market, we decided on a small bridge round. The bridge round is between $5 and $8 million at $8 per share. This gives Laxxon a valuation higher than $200 million.
Laxxon Medical is dedicated to engineering patented 3D pharmaceutical solutions which optimize products and benefit patients. Our goal is to bring medical 3D printing to a whole new level and establish SPID®-Technology as a manufacturing process that has the individual and the pharmaceutical partner in mind.