Hope all is going well. When preparing for this week’s blog, I was thinking about all of the information that I need to relay to you this week that has occurred over the past two weeks. This gave me my inspiration for the title for the blog, which originates from the print version of The New York Times. This slogan dates back to 1897 when Adolph S. Ochs, the owner of The New York Times, created the famous slogan which still appears on the masthead of the newspaper today. Ochs wrote the slogan as a declaration of the newspaper's intention to report the news impartially. As I always mention, I will give you an honest assessment about our company. Only thing I can’t give you is impartiality since I am very biased about what we do 😊.
Let’s start with what I mentioned in our last blog. We now have a formal date for the news release, which will happen next Friday, April 8th. This news is focused on some key people joining the company in advisory roles. Since you are insiders by reading the blog, you are the first to know when we will be releasing this information. We are excited to have these two individuals joining us! There will be more additions over the next several months as we look to bring in new viewpoints and ideas into the company.
The next area I would like to talk about are two poster presentations given by Drs. Patrick Hayden and Jayashree Chakravarty at this year’s Society of Toxicology (SOT) Meeting. Both posters are related to their respective research using our Bio-Spun™ scaffold materials for benchtop testing. If you were not able to attend the SOT meeting but wanted to learn more about their research, you are in luck. Both posters along with previously presented data will be uploaded onto our website within the next few weeks. Since you are an insider, however, we are going to give you exclusive access to these posters and allow you to hear about their work in a pre-recorded audio from both Pat and Jayashree. Jayashree presented her research entitled "Evaluation of 96-Well Insert Plates that Contain 3D Electrospun Scaffolds as Substrates for In Vitro Tissue Models” which can be reviewed and listened to by clicking HERE. Pat presented his work entitled "Characterization of Inflammatory Responses of an In Vitro Human Alveolar Tissue Model Produced on HTS TranswellÒ Plates with Electrospun Scaffolds” which can be reviewed and listened by clicking HERE.
We are continuing to build the in vitro research tools (IVRT) business, by doing both internal development programs like what was presented at SOT to working with customers on their specific programs. Over the past couple of weeks, we have sent out different versions of our Bio-Spun™ scaffolds to both research institutions as well as large companies looking to evaluate three-dimensional surfaces. This technology has garnered interest from groups outside of the US. All of this with limited advertising on our part. We are being diligent in how we go about releasing this technology in that we want to have several internal models that we can help provide to potential customers. The goal is to have no more “black boxes” in that you receive tissue but cannot make any changes. This will allow researchers to fully control their own process by growing their own tissue using published protocols with experienced support from the BioSurfaces team. We are also evaluating possible commercial partnership opportunities as well to see what will be the best way for us to bring this valuable technology to full use. Lots of good stuff happening on this front.
One thing that I pride myself on is being uber-organized, which allows me to be on top of many different areas at once. To me, it is critical to be in control since, as a small business owner, you really don’t have anyone to help you with your schedule or to keep you in line in areas you are working on. This week, for the first time in a long time, I decided to summarize all of the business opportunities that we have ongoing, not only as an outline for myself but for the business team. Even after thinking it through for a while, I am embarrassed to say that after making this list I still missed several areas we are working in. I can’t say that has ever happened before. It could be due to my advancing age or that we have more opportunities than we’ve ever had before (I’ll go with the latter option). It is so exciting to be in so many different areas yet with the great team we have, we are really doing well advancing all of them. It is also concerning to me that we are stretched so thin. We are hopeful that this will not be for long as we look to advance our business plan. This will give our team much needed space to breathe (both literally and figuratively).
Make sure to check out our announcement next Friday April 8th. We’ll see you back here on April 15th and will start #FactualFriday back up on April 22nd.
Matt