24 Nov 2008 07:00
Embargoed for 7am Monday 24 November 2009
ReGen Therapeutics Plc ("ReGen" or "the Company" )
ReGen Therapeutics Plc focuses on Colostrinin™ revenue generation
The Board of Directors (the "Board" or the "Directors") of ReGen Therapeutics Plc ("ReGen" or "the Company") has conducted a review of the Company's strategic options for the future including ReGen's funding requirements for the coming year. In particular its aim is to deliver value as quickly as possible from its R & D expenditure since inception. The quickest way to do this is to focus on developing sales of Colostrinin™ the nutraceutical for healthy brain aging, which is already launched in the key US market. The Company is, therefore, accelerating its global marketing plan. Colostrinin™ offers the quickest route available to the Company to achieve a sustainable business. The Board sees sustainability as the prime objective for the Company in the current difficult economic climate and this will be crucial in addressing its funding requirements.
Turning to the detail of the Colostrinin™ situation, products based on Colostrinin™ sold as CogniSure™ have been on sale in North America and Australia for over a year. These are in the professional channel, although achieving professional awareness and endorsement was a necessary first step, retail distribution was always and remains our main objective. Indeed in Cyprus, where we have launched Colostrinin™ as Cognase™ in October 2008, its forecast sales in a retail market immediately reinforced our view as to what potential retail sales could be in a major market.
Most significantly we are now in active discussions about a retail sector deal in N America and are focussing on retail deals in other markets. At this stage we would particularly point out that we are in talks in India, which accounts for 17% of the world's population and despite the fact that the nominal GDP per head is low it is still a major consumer market for this product. We are also well advanced in talks in Turkey and are at a slightly earlier stage in Poland/Germany and Israel. All other major nutraceutical markets in the World continue to be actively pursued.
The results of the latest stage of the development programme for the peptides derived from Colostrinin™ are expected in the next few months. There are three programmes running at the moment, one looking at peptide activity against beta-amyloid and another versus Tau tangles, both of which are implicated in the development of Alzheimer's disease, and a third is examining anti-obesity activity. The Company is hopeful that it may be able to license out at least one of these peptides if results are positive.
Considerable scientific work on zolpidem has now been completed and a detailed outline protocol prepared for a second 'proof of concept' clinical study. Approaches to third parties in the sector are continuing, with a view to either attracting proposals for further co-development or to license out the zolpidem project.
It became clear to the Board in the early part of this year that equity funded related development was going to be very difficult to achieve. Thus, it put in place a number of measures to achieve a sustainable business. To this end zolpidem was prepared to a state ready to be licensed out, or co-developed, reducing our potential future cash spend by some £750K. We also took very severe measures to reduce overheads by cutting back on our advisory staff and more importantly reducing salaries. We should point out that the Directors have collectively agreed to draw only 50% of their remuneration entitlement until the Company's position has significantly improved. All of these measures are continuing to enable the Company to conserve cash as far as is possible, but the Company will still need to rely on some further equity funding and/or achieving a higher level of sales from its Colostrinin™ product.
The Board wishes to emphasis to shareholders that the Company has a launched product, Colostrinin™, which has considerable scientific support and commercial potential. We believe concentrating on generating revenue from this product will achieve the goal of building a sustainable business.
For further information:
Percy Lomax
ReGen Therapeutics Plc
Tel: 020 7153 4920
Roland Cornish/Felicity Geidt
Beaumont Cornish Limited
Tel: 020 7628 3396
Nick Bealer/David Scott
Alexander David
Tel: 020 7448 9820