BioLineRx Ltd. (NASDAQ/TASE: BLRX) | Stock News Now

Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here.

Okay, so BioLineRx was founded 12 years ago. We're located in the Tel Aviv area in Israel. Our focus is on bringing innovative assets into our pipeline from Israeli academic institutions and also smaller startups, and then putting anywhere from three to six years of development into those assets and bringing them to a stage of development where they would interest the global pharmaceutical companies. We're mainly focused in oncology and immunology at this point, and we have a number of interesting assets. Also, we are privileged to have several very important strategic collaborations, one of which is with Novartis Pharma. We signed a deal with Novartis Pharma about two years ago. They invested $10 million into our company. They're actually our largest shareholder now; they own about 10% of our company. And this collaboration is for us to screen and look for interesting projects in Israel for Novartis Pharma, bring that into our pipeline, develop it for Novartis, and then based on whether the development is successful, we would then out-license it to Novartis. They would have some type of option on the asset. They would also fund approximately 75% of our development costs. So this is a great validation for us. In addition, just to sort of finalize the picture, we have two additional collaborations, one with Merck and one with Genentech in the immuno-oncology space. We're doing right now five or six studies that are either started already or will be starting in 2017 in the immuno-oncology space in pancreatic cancer, in leukemia, gastric cancer, etc., with Genentech and with Merck, using their blockbuster—each of them has a blockbuster immuno-therapy checkpoint inhibitor. And so we are doing combination trials with them in order to see whether certain of the tumors or cancers that their agent has no effect on right now might be successful using it in combination with our drug.

You're exactly right. We've said that we bridge the development gap that exists in Israel because historically there's been a tremendous amount of innovation in Israel, but either because the academic institutions or the smaller startups don't have the financial capability or the development expertise to bring those assets to a point where they would interest the global pharmaceutical companies, it was felt that they needed some type of help. Or, you know, the founders of BioLineRx thought there would be a great business model to establish a company that doesn't do its own basic research but rather looks for interesting projects and then in-licenses those projects and then puts anywhere from three to six years of development into them and then looks to out-license them after a Phase 2 proof-of-concept in humans.

Yes, so we started in 2003. We received a grant from the Israeli Ministry of Industry of up to $20 million over the first five or six years of our company. It was actually started—one of our founders was Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which I'm sure everyone has heard about. It's one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. So they were a founder, as were several other VC funds in the Israeli life sciences arena. They invested $30 million in our company. So together with the amount of money that we received from the Israeli government, we set out, we looked for assets, we brought them in, we set up an entire organization, and we've been looking for assets and developing them since 2003 or 2004. We went public in Tel Aviv in 2007. We had the largest biotech IPO ever in the history of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange at that time. We raised $50 million in 2007. In 2011, we listed on NASDAQ, and we've been publicly traded on NASDAQ since 2011 for the last five years. Right now, actually, about 70% of our investor base is US-based at this point. NASDAQ is our main market at this point, even though we started off in Tel Aviv.

That's a very good question. So first of all, there's the science. Obviously, there has to be a clear mechanism of action. There has to be—but not only just the initial science based on whether there's efficacy, there are safety issues. We have to make sure that it's safe. We have to make sure that the patent position is strong, the IP position is strong. We have to make sure, for example, that the synthesis—that it's easy to synthesize so that the drug will not cost a lot or there won't be impurities in it. Those are all sort of the criteria. We have an entire sort of matrix of questions that we look at when we're looking at assets and trying to bring them in. And of course, then, of course, the economics are important because, you know, we're right now we're still a smallish company, so, you know, we can't afford to pay a very large upfront payment to an academic institution to license. So we're looking for niche assets that are highly innovative but yet that we can afford to bring in because we'd like to spend most of our money on the actual development and not on the licensing of the asset.

It just depends on the asset, of course. Yeah, we generally will not bring in anything where there's no proof of concept in animals. So there has to be some type of efficacy studies in animals, in vivo efficacy studies. That's the earliest we will take in an asset. But we're also looking more and more at later-stage assets. I have to say, the place where we'd really like to bring in an asset is maybe up to 18 months before the clinic. That's where we think there might be a very, very good value inflection point. So we're looking, you know, 18 months, 24 months before the clinic. But we've also brought in assets that are already in Phase 1 and already in Phase 2. It depends on whether we think we can add value. For example, we're also looking at assets that maybe the indication that the researcher was developing it for isn't maybe the right indication. For example, they're looking to go into, I don't know, liver failure, and we think that maybe a better indication would be in cancer or something. So we're looking often to change the indication, sometimes looking to change the method of administration. For example, we've had assets that were in, for example, a cardiology asset that was in open-heart surgery, and we changed it to an intracoronary injection. So those are the kind of things that we're trying to do to add value to the project as we go along.

Right now, we actually have one asset that's in the market that's being sold right now. It's an over-the-counter asset. Actually, we out-licensed it to a company called Perrigo. It's one of the largest OTC companies in the world, and it's being sold in Europe. It's not a huge indication; it's not going to be a blockbuster drug, but we expect to have very nice revenues from it over the next 15 or 20 years. So that is one success. We have a number of assets in our pipeline now that have had successes in early clinical stage trials, and we're hoping that maybe one of the next clinical trials or indications will potentially be a blockbuster. I really believe the immunotherapy combinations, while they're high-risk, they're extremely high reward. It's the Holy Grail right now of oncology, all the immunotherapy agents that are out there. And we believe that if we would enable some of them to attack cancers that until now they've not been able to attack, like pancreatic cancer, we might have a huge blockbuster on our hands. Again, it's very risky, but that's the nature of the game here.

Yeah, so I'm a finance person. I'm US-born. I moved to Israel when I was 30, about 25 years ago. I'm the CEO. I've been with the company for seven years. My background is mostly finance and strategy and business development. We have a team of about—75% of our team are PhDs and advanced degrees in molecular biology, biology, chemistry, etc. We have a management team with top-notch people who have worked at global pharmaceutical companies, Sanofi, Genentech, Roche, etc. So I think we have a really excellent team with a lot of experience, and we've been around already for 13 years. And we've brought 45 molecules into our pipeline, and so we've developed quite a number of them in many indications. So we have, I'd say, a top-notch staff.

On our website, which is biolinerx.com. We have a very, very well-made and up-to-date website. They can look there, and also they can contact us. We have an information email address on the website as well. We'd be happy to answer any questions. We're very good at answering questions when they come into our website.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time.