Hope all is going well. It has been a busy two weeks since our last post. I figured things would slow down a little bit in August, but that has not been the case at all. I guess there are worse things, but I usually look forward to a slight down tick in the activity knowing that September will begin to ramp things up again once kids are back in school and summer vacations wind down. Doesn’t seem to be the case this year since we are already over half way through the month and the next few weeks seem to be equally busy. There are three main areas that are occupying our time: 1) executing our plan to grow the company, 2) working on programs with our partners and 3) advancing our scaffold business.
Over the past several months, my primary focus along with rest of our business team has been centered on our plan to grow BioSurfaces. We are excited about the plan we’ve put together and are just beginning to roll it out. Unlike many companies that put together crazy projections with astronomical numbers that they will never achieve, we have taken a more realistic approach to the opportunity. I just can’t come to grips with setting unrealistic expectations/predictions. I believe that this is not the way to operate. It has taken some time to put this together, from pitch decks and a one-page summary to reaching out to our personal networks. We are beginning to talk to various potential strategic partners to relay our vision. I am extremely passionate about the value our technology brings and the vision we are pursuing. This value was developed over 18 years of hard work and determination by our team. We continue to expand our knowledge and applications into various areas. Executing the plan will accelerate this growth exponentially.
We have also begun to visit companies again, something that we haven’t done since the beginning of the pandemic. It is such a nice feeling to meet face to face. There is no better way to gauge a potential partner than to meet in person. I figured I would share a photo of our business team’s most recent visit. Hopefully, in the future, I can share what company we visited. I can tell you that we really enjoyed our visit and tour of their facility. They are a great team of folks that share our passion for their biomaterials. I am hopeful that we will be seeing more of this group in the near future. I figured I would share a not so flattering picture of our team in our gowns during a tour of their manufacturing facility (sorry business team but I had to share). I could not help think that we all looked like the Bibendum, the Michelin Man. Maybe this was done intentionally? Not sure if you knew that the Michelin Man actually had a name so I figured I would share this tidbit of information. Hope this gives you a little chuckle. Many more stops on the tour to come.
Our technology continues to advance on several fronts. We still continue to develop new applications even after all of these years. Nothing is more exciting than trying new ideas and getting them to work. A majority of the time, your ideas do not work according to the plan. That’s what makes the COVID-19 vaccines so incredibly impressive. That they have the efficacy that they do along with an excellent safety profile is truly remarkable. Our Bio-Spun™ Cell Chamber, for example, has been producing a target drug for 9 months after being implanted and is still going. We are making a Bio-Spun™ material that locally releases an anti-clotting drug to prevent surface blood clots when a device is implanted. We’ve made Bio-Spun™ materials that can dissolve on contact with the skin for different applications. These are just a few examples of what we are doing.
Lastly, our scaffold business continues to grow as we continue to bring attention to this technology. This week, we received word that Dr. Patrick Hayden’s work focused on developing an alveolar tissue model on our Bio-Spun™ PDLGA material has been accepted for oral presentation at the 2021 American Society for Cellular and Computational Toxicology (ASCCT) Meeting in October. This tissue model has the potential to be used for COVID-19 research. Congratulations to Pat and the team! We also continue to distribute our scaffolds to different companies and individual investigators who are looking for a 3D matrix to grow their cells and tissues on. These groups are located around the world, which is exciting. We also continue to assess different formats to mount our Bio-Spun™ scaffolds onto in order to provide different options for researchers.
We have a lot of things we want to implement over the next several months, from a new animation for our cell chamber and new webcasts to expanding our product offerings. Stay tuned as we move BioSurfaces forward.
We’ll see you back here on September 3rd.
Matt