What kind of company is MetrioPharm?
Dr. Wolfgang Brysch
We have spent this summer on the road. While the scientific team oversaw the progress of our Phase II clinical trial, our Business Development and Investor Relations staff introduced MetrioPharm AG to many different people: potential development partners, medical scientists, financial analysts, healthcare experts and investors.
So our contacts came from very different backgrounds and they each had very specific questions for us. But there was one question we came across on all these occasions – without being asked directly. This question is: What kind of company is MetrioPharm?
Even before our first meeting, our counterparts had formed an opinion, had decided how to classify us. Which drawer MetrioPharm belongs in. They come up with two different answers. Sometimes we are addressed as a pharmaceutical company, sometimes as a biotech company.
However, these are two different concepts, two different drawers. So what is MetrioPharm? Are we a biotech company, maybe even – as we often hear – a biotech start-up?
Our key objective is the development and approval of MP1032, which is not a biotechnological but a chemical product. We do not work with microorganisms or enzymes, nor do we develop genetic engineering processes. So MetrioPharm does not actually do biotechnology – in the literal sense of the word. How do we then end up in this category?
We develop MP1032 in a fast and very cost-effective way, with a small, flexible core team, we look for highly specialized external partners for every step of the development. This is how we got to the second clinical stage in record time.
We made a conscious decision to work in a way that is associated with start-ups or – in scientific research – with biotechnology. Particularly in the early phase of our development, we noticed that the label biotech helped our business partners to understand the way we work. It helped them to understand how we wanted to get into clinical phase II as an independent developer.
We have therefore chosen a middle course. Our way of working is reminiscent of agile, adaptable biotechnology; the goal of our work lies in the world of classical pharmaceuticals.
The molecules of our MP1000 platform are small molecule compounds that act as ROS scavengers to reduce oxidative stress in immune cells (more information: www.MetrioPharm.com). The product we are developing is a pharmaceutical product. We also hold pharmaceutical patents and are working on a pharmaceutical approval process.
And our strategy for the near future also points in this direction: we are seeking collaborations with large pharmaceutical companies. To this day, we continue working quickly, efficiently and flexibly. However, MetrioPharm has always been a pharmaceutical development company, as you can tell from the -Pharm in our name.
