Five Easy Questions Ep 6 - MicroBix (MBX.T) CEO, Cameron L. Groome, talks antigens, QAPs and VTMs
all right microbics biosystems develops manufactures and markets biological products or technologies to customers in north america and around the world the company is a leading provider of native antigens used in infectious disease tests it also markets quality assurance products which saw a 40 sales increase in fiscal 2020 and lastly it manufactures viral transport medium vtm which through a grant with the government of of ontario is expected to scale production to 60 000 vials per day with the infectious disease testing expected to increase in a post-covered world microbics is targeting stabilized antigen sales for 2021 as well as expanding its qap pipeline if none of that made any sense to you you are in the right place hi i'm maddie grace this is five easy questions where we break down the market for new investors today i'm speaking with cameron groom president ceo and director of microbics to get a better understanding of the company industry and science behind it thank you so much for joining us today cameron you're most welcome maddie thank you for having me it's pleasure all right i'm going to jump right into it first question definition time what are antigens qaps and vtms well we'll we'll do that very quickly so antigens are the complement to an antibody so when you often see the y-shaped antibody that binds to something what it binds to is an antigen and we supply in our context inactivated and highly purified bacteria and viruses to drive the tests the biology at the heart of the test the intel inside to run the tests of over a hundred different international diagnostics companies so if you want to look at whether you've been exposed to a virus or bacteria or whether you have immunity to a virus or bacteria that's when you need the antigen to be at the heart of that test to drive it we supply those critical ingredients for a whole catalog of different diagnostic tests then quality assessment products this is what we call caps qaps for short and these are the um controls that are effectively a mimic of a patient sample of an infectious patient sample sample from an infected patient that looks to a test exactly like a patient sample but the difference is it isn't infectious it's stable and it's reliable so you can see behind me in the in the screen this is one of our products that's a control for covid molecular tests for pcr tests for covid and it's actually formatted onto the same nasopharyngeal swab that you'd collect the sample on so if you're wanting to know hey i'm running a hundred tests in my lab today how do i know they're they're right you know how do i know a positive is a positive and a negative is really a negative well you need a control and so that's what we provide we provide we provide them on swabs we can provide little liquid samples in little vials like this that um to the test looks exactly like a patient positive sample and exactly where exactly like a patient negative sample and we we make those to ensure that you can have confidence that all the tests run through the day are are accurate otherwise how do you know right and uh the third product we're we're making very importantly and this is the one you alluded to that the province of ontario has asked us to make is viral transport media this is the liquid vial of stuff that swab from somebody's nose or throat it gets snapped off and put in one of these vials to ensure that the virus is still intact and can be tested for by the time it's tested at the clinical lab hours or days later and um this has been a product that's been incredible critically short supply all over the world nobody to our knowledge was making in canada and our expertise in growing all these organisms and manipulating and purifying meant we know how to make very complex media so we started producing these producing this to have a secure domestic supply of high quality product rather than having to rely on oh wait a minute um you know china is not releasing product out of um you know out of its production because they've got a problem at home now or or the supply from india maybe wasn't quite what we thought it was going to be and it isn't working on the test format so we really everybody's very conscious that we need these domestic supplies just like the conversation is going on around the need for domestic supply of vaccines we need to fly of these of these critical testing materials so we're making all this crazy mad scientist stuff helping public health in canada and internationally to to help manage the pandemic oh i am so impressed that was so articulate i was expecting to ask you so many questions and be like i have no idea what you're talking about but i actually i i understood all of that that's amazing okay um next question how long does it take to bring a qap to the market uh well the the qap products we've got to create and i'll just this is one of our uh i want to look like that in the background but this is one of our prototypes so if we're looking at creating um one of our qap products we have to make sure that that product is going to work on every test on the market and that's something that we do we're very careful to do that we want to make sure if we're offering qaps for molecular tests for example we don't just want it to work on an abbott test we want to be able to go down the whole alphabet of test companies so no matter what test you're running in your lab we want to make sure that microbic's control is going to work and that presents a whole a whole other level of help to the lab that they don't say oh i need i need one control for every different instrument i'm running and for example ontario uh last time i spoke with with them about this they were running 18 different molecular testing systems so you can imagine the nightmare if you needed 18 different controls or even didn't have any controls at all yeah we create controls that work on everything and that's a huge skill that we've developed over the years so when we saw uh and now to get back to your question how long um we saw covid coming along and we said you know i don't know you know who's world health is saying this isn't a pandemic but it kind of looks like it is right and we started in the start of late january actually we started working to create a covid molecular test control and by the end of march we had validated that internally and with arms length external partners and we were able to announce a proof of concept we had that available in canada in late april in the u.s in may and in europe in june and yeah so we've been working pretty hard this year and that's now in use in uh in over 20 different countries now we have registered the product for use in the eu with their ce mark program with the usfda with health canada under a medical devices establishment license and even with the australian therapeutic goods administration their tga so this is what we've done we've created now as well controls for the rapid antigen tests or covid we have controls flu a flu b rsv black human papilloma virus molecular testing for the virus that causes cervical cancer as well as a number of others and a growing list of tests that we can support to make sure they're accurate so that's that's what we do and and where we want to get to is getting a new product like this out every couple of months with uh using our internal expertise and that's a big big lift so a lot of international diagnostics companies are now saying you know what we're great with microfluidics and software and assays this controls business you guys got this we're going to work with you oh cool wow that is very neat this is a this is a big scale so yeah well you know we're moving from being a little known canadian company doing ingredients to providing innovative proprietary and branded products all over the world so it's a it's a transformative time for us and we're delighted to be able to help help public health in ontario across canada and internationally right all right next question why will infectious disease testing increase after the introduction of cova vaccines a great question maddie um you diagnostic testing is is runs neck and neck with vaccines as the best value for dollar in health care you know the biggest thing in treating a disease is what's the problem give me a give me an accurate diagnosis tell me what's wrong with me then we can start to intervene and and treat it and fix things and historically there was we've been developing over the past 20 odd years very sophisticated testing capability that we can tell a lot more than we ever could before about um particularly about infectious diseases you know if you've got an infection why why aren't we saying exactly what bacteria it is and exactly what antibiotic is going to work against it rather than guessing and these these sorts of tests have been available but the argument was yeah it's a great value but we don't have the test capacity to do these tests we know it would save money to the system but we don't have the test capacity now we've built out massive increases in molecular and other testing capacity for covid what are we going to do after covet are we going to throw all that stuff in a garbage bin now that we've invested the capital in the capacity or we're going to use it intelligently and i'm hopeful that the governments and health authorities are going to say you know what now we've got this capacity let's use it and for those sophisticated tests you're you're absolutely need the controls to ensure their accuracy and we've created intellectual property and expertise to be able to create the controls to ensure the accuracy of these far more advanced tests so i'm really optimistic uh postcovid we're going to have some benefits of better healthcare from this better testing and that our company will be able to support that with uh with an increasing breadth of product offering to support these new tests that's great all right what are the three biggest criteria in picking a new qap product to develop the obviously as as business people and as responsible citizens we're looking at where is it going to help you know where is the real value added to the health system um for the the kind of qaps that we can develop the second thing we look at is um are we are we able to do something really at the forefront where it's going to be impactful on healthcare as well and do we have the capability to deliver it and and the partners to deliver it i'll give you a great example there's there's a there's an infection called m-gen or or microplasma genitalia and it's a sexually transmitted infection and you've probably never heard of it but maybe maybe a fifth of adults carry m-gen and it is um a big cause of urinary and reproductive tract inflammation um it causes infertility it causes miscarriages and it's not widely tested for even though about one in five people carries this and it's treatable with antibiotics why isn't it tested for well nobody had controls and if you can't ensure the accuracy of the test you can't be accredited to do the testing if you can't be accredited to do the testing no government's going to pay for it so nobody or very few people were getting tested for mgen and we were able we've been able to create register a very accurate control for for mgen and so the industry is is looking at this saying great now we can start testing and we can start and it's this kind of opportunity that we look for to identify and it may not be obvious but we can identify this create the products to help the industry help our health and that's that's one of the things that excites us and gets us up in the morning that's amazing uh my last question what are your esg guidelines well we we've got some pretty unique ones and um you know we grow um over 50 different infectious organisms in our labs so you know the biggest esg thing uh for us is the safety of our staff the safety of the community and you know we don't grow anything in our labs that's gonna melt your face off like an indiana jones nazi or anything like that but it might make you uncomfortable so the first thing is that you know everybody stays safe at our facility and that nothing leaves there alive so for that we have you know biosafety level qualifications in our laboratories we have a joint health and safety commit that's incredibly diligent different iso standards and we operate under the pathogens and toxins act of health canada to make sure everybody is safe and everything stays well and then we've got of course many scientists qualified personnel with advanced degrees so we have an incredible multinational multi-ethnic and multi-gender team it's just wonderful that we have everybody working together here in that way and we're also of course very conscious to respect things like the ontario disabilities act to make sure that wherever possible we're giving uh giving people an exciting motivating a great place to work and uh you know we we're still you know our sense of humor might not be entirely politically correct uh all the time but but we we make sure everybody's having fun in a welcoming and uh inclusive environment that's amazing okay now i just have a quick rapid fire round for you okay quick questions are you ready i am okay tea or coffee coffee what is the first thing you do in the morning coffee what is your favorite sport to watch i would say sailing um yo yacht racing and sailing i i sailed as a kid and uh and just love it what is your favorite sport to play um not a huge team sport guy but i love i love scuba diving i love skiing um more i think activities where i'm challenging myself these are good these are unique answers i've never gotten any of those before um favorite book i would say a rather quirky novel uh called uh soon i will be invincible it goes with the mad scientist vibe oh i laugh there you go it fits the whole persona um cat or dog dog dog i'm i'm dogless at the moment but i i had the most wonderful dog in the world for 15 years and mr dearly value investment or a day trader value investor definitely uh student high or casual hmm gee let me think um no i i had a i had some video presentation with shareholders so uh normally i i druthers would probably be uh t-shirt shorts and flip-flops you know somewhere warm but but i can do either there you go uh if you had a thousand dollars to invest what company would it be not your own uh right now i invest in a private company i'm on the board of called negis in vancouver they're doing some wonderful work on uh making ocular therapies for for retinal and problems at the back of the eye where you can just put an eye drop on and it moves right to where it's needed and i think it's a it's a huge innovation and um private company that needs uh additional funding to move that forward that would be where i'd put it very cool uh what was the last movie you watched i watched red uh the retired extremely dangerous um you know sort of action comedy last night uh loved it laughed quite hard oh my goodness i haven't seen it but i can see my co-worker right now on zoom like killing himself laughing he's clearly watched it and i think enjoyed it he's giving me a thumbs up okay and then very very last question where do you think coveted vaccinations will be at in terms of progress by the end of the year i'm i'm hoping we'll um be on our way to herd immunity um you know the the um mrna vaccines from modern and pfizer are really have moved this extraordinary to move from a concept of vaccination to very effective products um at incredible speed and safety so those are excellent and then there's the astrazeneca vaccine as well on its way so i'm hoping between those three and possibly others we can get well on our way to herd immunity and and some of our work i'm hoping will help with the allocation of vaccines to direct them where they're most needed um as well that is great that's all the time we have today thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me a real pleasure and um hopefully we get to talk to you in the future look forward to it and um and thank you for the opportunity to present to your uh to your viewers of course thank you so much have a good rest of your day okay youtube you
2021-02-19 02:26
