At the beginning of 2025, Sten R. Sörensen announced Cereno Scientific’s positive Phase 2a results in PAH for lead asset CS1. He’s now moving forward with a global Phase 2b trial starting in Q2 2026. The company also progresses its second HDACi asset CS014 toward Phase 2. Cereno’s developing pioneering treatments with disease-modification potential for rare cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases.
Learn more about Cereno: https://bit.ly/cereno-e52
⭐️ ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Sten joined Cereno as CEO in 2015, with decades of experience in pharma, ranging from Monsanto Pharma to AstraZeneca.
🔗 LINKS MENTIONED
- Cereno’s website – https://cerenoscientific.com/
- Cereno Scientific | BioStock Life Science Summit 2024 – https://www.youtu.be/A5b3Ud_PSas
- Cereno Scientific announces positive topline results of Phase IIa trial with lead candidate CS1 in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension – https://cerenoscientific.com/press-single/?releaseIdentifier=2D7F159764FDB891
- Cereno’s HDAC inhibitor reduces risks from pulmonary arterial hypertension in phase 2 trial – https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/cerenos-hdac-inhibitor-reduces-risks-pulmonary-arterial-hypertension-phase-2-trial
- Cereno Scientific Receives FDA Clearance to Initiate Global Phase IIb Trial of CS1 in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH) – https://cerenoscientific.com/press-single/?releaseIdentifier=008944355F62DA91
- Competing drug Winrevair / sotatercept by US Merck – https://www.drugs.com/winrevair.html
Transcript
[00:00:00] Intro
Sten Sörensen: We got this data. We got the fast track. Investigators like to use the drug So far, what we want to do in the next study, it’s a global study. We’re gonna pursue it in the us, Europe, and Latin America. Around 125 patients. Your
Phillip Hemme: market cap is on $250 million.
Sten Sörensen: We grew our shareholder base with 25% last year.
So with around 13, 14,000 shareholders.
Phillip Hemme: I’m always curious ’cause I think over the last 10 years, first I haven’t heard about too many success stories and repurposing, but I’ve heard quite a few failures as well and I’ve heard quite a few pushbacks, especially in VCs. I don’t like it too much. Farmers don’t
Sten Sörensen: like it too much.
We define the opportunity that we could improve survival with this old drug if it was used differently in heart failure. What happened with this study was that we improved survival with more than 30% published New England Journal Medicine, great success.
Phillip Hemme: We have new to. I’m your host Philip, and I’m the Flood Bio Show.
I’m interviewing the best Europeans in biotech to help you grow. Getting a positive phase two A results in the high and medical need as an independent biotech is quite an achievement. Reno Scientific recently reached, so I caught up with its CEO Stan while I was in London, in the southwest of Sweden. I had never met Stan, but I followed him and Reno for the past two years.
Upcoming to the results, we talked about the next steps. Of cno, including the upcoming phase two B. We also talked about how the company reached one of the largest retail investor communities in Sweden, and also talked about success stories in drug repurposing. For transparency, this episode has been sponsored by cno.
So here’s my conversation with Stan and please hit the follow button if you’re enjoying it.
Good. Welcome to the show, Stan.
Sten Sörensen: Thank you Philip. Good to be here.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah, it’s course it’s good. Yeah.
[00:02:04] Cereno’s Phase2A results
Phillip Hemme: So I wanna start with, Sno. You had really nice phase two A results. You are starting your phase two B. The first and all. Very soon we’ll talk about this, but actually. I want to start, and I haven’t found too much about the origin of the molecule and where like it was, where the molecule come from.
So maybe you can start with that. Just tell me more about it.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah, sure. Again, we’re super excited about this stage we’re in as a company and we really believe we have something here, but it started a long time ago for the molecule. So sometime late 18 hundreds in Swedish 1800.
80 90, the molecule was discovered as a molecule. It was later applied and eventually laws launched for neurological diseases. And the major use has been for prevention of epilepsy. And that’s been the case until fairly late. It’s been applied also for cancer together with other therapies but never really pursued into what we are doing.
And we’re very excited about the development of knowledge around, that type of molecule. Yeah. There are, when we did our review, there are 600 articles about HDAC inhibition, most of them VPA, which is our molecule. And a lot of documentation on other things, the neurological disorders that are very exciting as a platform.
And we believe that applying HD inhibition, which this molecule is able to do,
Phillip Hemme: histo
Sten Sörensen: decease inhibition.
Phillip Hemme: Epigenetic modulation.
Sten Sörensen: Exactly. So about 30 years ago, if I’m fairly correct that capacity to, that the molecule was an HDAC inhibitor was discovered. What does that mean? It can inhibit hisone decease delay.
And what is that? DNA as we know, is the map of the protein production in the body, but it’s a map for the factory of protein production. But around this DNA are regulating enzymes and HDAC are one of those abilities to regulate the production. And that’s all fine when it works well.
But if doesn’t work well, something goes wrong in the production and that could have serious impact on the body’s ability to function well. And we can maybe address that a little later in the talk. Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: Okay. Okay. And then I’m curious if the molecule was discovered solid, so how do you build IP around it?
Sten Sörensen: Yeah so again what you can do, of course when you discover that, oh, this molecule has a different capacity than what was, what has been applied for and patented for and used for a long time you can of course apply for use patent around the molecule, which we have done at Sno. We have also produced d research developed and produced a very different administration form, a packaging and administration form that fits the needs that we believe we have in order to get efficacy we want.
So we have. Three patent families around the drug that we have applied in, in, in all the markets which we pursue, and most of the key markets will already have patent. In addition, if you want to protect a molecule like this for a new use if you are pursuing an orphan disease, a rare disease you could, if you have enough.
Data and the authorities, FDA believe that you have something you could apply for orphan disease designation. If you get that accepted designation, you will have in the US seven years protection, exclusivity, and in Europe, 10 years. So we have done that. We’ve done that also. So we have it both in Europe and the US for this molecule, which we call CS one, which has VPA inside it.
Phillip Hemme: Okay. Okay. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. And then, and so you the, main indication is pulmonary fibrosis or PAH and that’s where you got the phase two A data. Can you talk a bit more about the, data and. Sure. The results. Yeah.
Sten Sörensen: The, what we did when we found all these all this documentation with numerous proof of concepts in various animal models, et cetera, we decided that we should pick the.
Disease that we believe had the highest impact from our point of view with our capacity and the mode of action that we have with the least time and least capital effort to get the work done and be able to help patients. So we picked the orphan disease, pulmonary arterial hypertension, which is actually not a, mainly a fibrotic disease.
It is most affecting females. And they, upon diagnosis, they have seven years, about seven years to live. Cool. And what happens is that they end up getting the die of right heart failure. And why is that? So the diagnosis is really that these females have a hard time getting oxygen to their lungs.
And the reason is that as they live the pulmonary artery between the right hearts and the lungs, the connection, the tube, the vessel where the heart is supposed to pump blood and oxygenate the blood and then flow back to the right side and pump out into, to the body that pulmonary artery the myocyte inside the muscle inside grow to get to produce a more narrow tube.
And there’s also a fibrotic element, connective tissue. So this tube that becomes more narrowing also becomes more. Less elastic, so it becomes a narrow. More narrow and narrow tube over time, less elastic. And that provides a very hard resistance for the right heart to pump through the blood. So the right heart hypertrophy and eventually collapses of too much work.
So you go from an early diagnosis when you may be a little tired when you do exercise. That’s New York heart classification, one of heart failure and through. Class two, class three, and class four, where you’re bedridden, you can’t really move. And through these phases the heart becomes less functionable.
So what do you do with these patients? You try up to now you have helped these patient by. Dilating the vessel, the pulmonary artery, and that’s a temporary relief. It has helped them to go from around two and a half years to seven years, life expectancy from diagnosis. But at the end of the day, you don’t reduce the progression of the muscle growth and the connective tissue growth.
So at the end. This heart still collapses and you die after seven years. So what everybody’s looking for is something that can slow down, halt, and even reverse this progression for these patients.
Phillip Hemme: More yeah, from a systemic point of view rather than a MedTech med. Like a physical
Sten Sörensen: rather than a physical hemodynamic point of view.
Of course, you want the hemodynamic both, yeah, you want both. And of course you’d like to do that very quickly, but in the long run, you need a disease modifying agent that can impact this progression, hal it, and maybe reverse it. And that’s what we believe that we have. This is what has been documented in animal proof of concept studies.
They’re done in rats where you can see that you can prevent the progression to pH by introducing the agent early. If you introduce it, when you have established pH in these animal models, you can reverse it. So that’s very encouraging, and that’s one of the reasons that we picked this disease, that data was already there.
So we have then taken this or HD inhibitor and pursued this this in indication for these patients. And we got some very encouraging data out of our trial that we pursued after FDA acceptance phase two trial. We pursued it in 10 centers in the US in 25 patients. And we presented the data last year in, let’s see, in the beginning of last year.
And it was very encouraging for us. And I could maybe mention some of the data that we got
Phillip Hemme: in the trial. Definitely. It’s, yeah, don’t even have the date, but yeah.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: So as a phase two A, and you had favorable safety intolerability and basically positive results.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah. So this was a fairly small trial.
We added the drug on top of standard of care.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah.
Sten Sörensen: And they should be stable on in the disease over a three months period. And they should be newer card classification two and three, so fairly sick patients. And we added our therapy and we followed them for three months. And what we saw after these three months was that we had a impact in 44% of the patients and.
The valuable patients were 21, so it’s a small group, but in nine of 21 patients, we improved the prognostic value. Reveal risk score is a tool you use as a doctor to value the prognosis of of the patient and the risk of dying actually. So we improved that more than one point in this scale that is used, which means that over a year we improved the risk of mortality with 24%.
So the less than the risk of mortality. And then. We also looked at New York Heart Classification, this class that they were in. And after only three months on top of standard of care, we moved one third of the patients to less severe class. So five patients were moved from class three, heart failure to two and two patients from class two to one reversed.
You almost not feel the disease.
Phillip Hemme: It really reversed.
Sten Sörensen: We reversed their functional class, so the how their heart was functioning for them. And in addition, two thirds of the patient, we reduced the pulmonary pressure on. We worked with Abbott with an implantable device. So wirelessly we could measure the pressure with this device, and in two thirds we reduced the pressure, which is also a good signal.
What was maybe. Even most intriguing here was that after this three months, we saw an improvement of the right heart to contract. That is the mo the strongest risk prognostic indicator for these patients. How well can the right heart contract pump the blood into the lungs? So we had a significant improvement of this global longitudinal strain factor, which is what is called.
Then of course FDA released a, an article I think it was in March or April last year, about what’s expected of drugs that want to help pH patients. Now what do we expect? What do you want them to do? They want to have a disease modifying agent and they want to see impact on prognosis, classification of heart failure, hospitalizations, and they want to see that these patients actually feel better.
Because that also is a very strong goal from the regulatory authorities when you introduce new drugs. And we did both heart failure, the Missouri questionnaire and specific for PH sim impact, and we had an improvement between 30% to 85% in these questionnaire of the wellbeing that they expressed after taking our drug.
So all in all, very exciting data for us. We think we are seeing. The effect of what has, what was documented in the animals now in patients for the first time. So we are now embarking on
Phillip Hemme: the phase two B.
Sten Sörensen: Phase two B,
Phillip Hemme: you just received, or in December, you received, what was it approval from the F or clearance from the FDA.
Sten Sörensen: Yes. And
Phillip Hemme: then we start
Sten Sörensen: exactly. But before then, actually even what happened during this study was that the investigators asked us when the study they were done. Studying the patients, all the data we’re seeing, they said, we don’t want to stop taking your therapy or giving your therapy to our patients, so please submit compassionate use application to the FDA so we can continue.
So we did that and we got that accepted by the FDA. So now a number of patients 10 were enrolled in this compassionate use program. So they got to use our drug for a year longer. And we haven’t had re readout on that data yet, but we have supplied these investigators, the drug and the patients have had the drug for a year beyond the trial, which is.
Interesting specifically for safety intolerance reasons, I would say. We might also see some efficacy data, but specifically safety intolerance is important for this drug in this patient group. And then of course, after this data was. Presented and we had a meeting with FDA type C meeting and declared our ambitions and the data.
We got the feedback from them, and then we also actually got fast track designation by FDA in September last year.
Phillip Hemme: So you have often drug designation and fast track.
Sten Sörensen: Yes, exactly. So we feel, we have the nod from FDA we think you have something here, that’s why you get fast track.
We will work with you in a good manner to get this as well and as fast as possible to the patients. Of course, providing that you continue to show the efficacy and then document safety and good tolerance on the drug. Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah. And then I saw first patient in your expecting, I think Q2 2026 and then top line data.
Q4, end of 2028 and 126 patients. I’m reading the, it was all in the first release, but just to have a the exact number, but to have an id. That’s correct right there.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah that’s correct. And I think so we got this data, we got the fast track. The investigators like to use the drug so far we have compassionate use going on.
It’s actually stopped and we are gonna analyze the data and what we want to do in the next study, it is a study’s gonna be around 60 sites. It’s a global study. We’re gonna pursue it in the us, Europe, and Latin America around 125 patients. And it’s a, the study design is very much in line with what is the, now the modern way of documenting N pH, which is a longer study.
So we are gonna do 36 weeks.
Phillip Hemme: Okay.
Sten Sörensen: And we are gonna have two dosages and one placebo arm, 36 weeks. Then we are going to do re distribution of so those who have had placebo will get one of the two dosages that are active, and then we’re gonna continue for another 24 weeks. Okay. So it’s a longer study a year.
Yeah, it’s a year. It’s a longer study. And that will provide us the ability to document the disease modifying capacity that we want to capture. And it also provides for all the patients to get active drug. So not one group. And that are gonna be only on inactive treatment. You also can have a greater ability to potentially see if the data that you have will linger on which is, would be a signal of disease modifying capacity also.
Phillip Hemme: And why do you need 60 plus centers? If you want 120 patients.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah. You know that. It’s a good question. It’s a rare disease.
Phillip Hemme: Okay.
Sten Sörensen: So there are, that’s one reason. That’s the main reason. Yeah. And we want to be fast when it comes to the recruitment. We have learned our lesson. And then the other point is that there are other trials going on at the same time in the world in these, this patient group.
So you want to have a broad enough phishing net to bring in capture patients that are, would like to be in the trial. And that’s why it’s it’s designed that way.
Phillip Hemme: Okay.
[00:21:59] Phase2B
Phillip Hemme: And I think I heard that you were, that maybe hoping that there would be a phase two B three, but doing phase two B. That’s correct.
So it’s
Sten Sörensen: not really. We had a, a strategic. Thinking around what should we do? What’s smartest to do here? Should we pursue a two B three trial or two B trial? So we were not, hadn’t decided yet, but we said that’s a possibility. And then when we. I took a hard look at that after the data and then realizing that if you do a phase two B three trial, you’re stuck with a certain design upfront.
And so the flexibility of a phase two B trial is a better setup to run this program on. It provides, we believe a stronger possibility of positive outcome of the data than if you do a phase two B three because you’re you move yourself into locked situation for a both phase two B and A three outcome.
Yeah. You don’t do that if you do phase two B first. So that’s why. And we also one reason is of course strategic for us. We believe that we think that this study will be positive both from safety and tolerance. We think we will have the best drug in terms of safety tolerance when we come out.
The drugs out there are quite nasty to take, including the latest one, CEPT, the wind river. It’s, it has its drawbacks and also safety risks. This will have been in man forever, 60 years plus in high dosages, will using low dosages and oral drug. So safety intolerance will be an administration will be very good.
We believe that if we can document the efficacy that we are after that we will do a deal either before the trial is done or when the phase two B trial comes out. Because that will be a very attractive proposition. We believe. So we would, we don’t want to, so the journey of a biotech, as is either you go all the way to market Yes.
Or you go to, you do a deal. Yeah. We believe this setup is the best setup to get to a deal.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah.
Sten Sörensen: So that’s another strategic reason. Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: Makes sense. Makes sense. It’s, as you what you just said, but it’s very rare. Especially for European biotech to bring their first assets to commercial.
Sten Sörensen: Yes.
Phillip Hemme: It’s, I don’t know. No. So many Argen X maybe the big exception.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah. CITAs actually did it. Yeah. And that was a repurposing, so that was budesonide in a different disease when they was on the, they were later acquired
Phillip Hemme: when they was on the show, so she was,
Sten Sörensen: yeah. Yeah. Really? Yeah. I know her well.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah. Now she joined Hanza. Yeah. And she was already CEO of Hanza. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, Argen I think is even different scale. It’s
Sten Sörensen: a different scale actually. We have a mentor to me and later to Eno. The last years is Don Dezi, he’s Vice chairman of Argen. Okay. So I have had a good relationship with him.
He lives in Copenhagen.
Phillip Hemme: Okay.
Sten Sörensen: So we meet now and then, and he’s actually an advisor both to the board and to operations nowadays. My
Phillip Hemme: god.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah. He has a good big person. Yeah. He has a good empiric knowledge
Phillip Hemme: can imagine.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: Okay. That was a little sidetrack. Yeah, sure. That and what you mentioned competition.
I, I had it listed because I think Merck or American Merck is a, the drug is approved. Was it first in class disease modifying as well? You said you have some side effects, but I guess from a market capture, I guess they have a pretty good position. Yeah,
Sten Sörensen: absolutely. One thing that struck us when we looked at our the data around VPA and then we call it CS one.
Now this is repurposed, but was that we found cept preclinical work and we found the work on BPA and they were very similar.
Phillip Hemme: Okay.
Sten Sörensen: So we said, Hey Merck just bought Acceleron
Phillip Hemme: Yeah.
Sten Sörensen: For 11 and a half billion US dollars. And
Phillip Hemme: that’s the, when we were drug after.
Sten Sörensen: So tarter was in that deal valued to 7 billion US dollars.
And so Tarter had just done their phase two program. Phase two B program finalized. So they bought that asset at that time based on the work that had been done in preclinical and then in their phase two program. And we said wait, a second. We have preclinical data that is very different.
We have a very different mode of action and then winner were Merck pursued the rest of the program and they’ve had great success with their sales. And I, I think projected sales are like 7 billion used dollars per year now exceeding expectations. The reason is there’s such, where was it?
Phillip Hemme: Where is it today or 2024, what you say?
Sten Sörensen: No, I think it pro projected peak sales.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah. Yeah. But where is it that today?
Sten Sörensen: I don’t have the latest figures. Okay. But they’re exp exceeding analyst. Okay. Expectations So far, the reason, of course is the huge need for a different kind of therapy than vasodilation.
Phillip Hemme: Yes.
Sten Sörensen: Realizing that Soter is a TGF beta. Monoclonal trap molecule. So what is that? TGFB is a promoter of changes in relation to pH is an inflammatory promoter. Now monoclonal antibodies are not necessarily off often that nice to take as a patient. And what happened to another company?
Caris Therapeutics that had a drug that was, is a bit similar to cept, they crashed the phase two B program because they had per cardiac effusion fluid in the heart, in heart wheel. And they stopped the whole development now soter as the mono monoclonal. TGF beta trap molecule has currently to be taken as an injection.
It has iv.
Phillip Hemme: It’s iv,
Sten Sörensen: yes. In
Phillip Hemme: the hospital?
Sten Sörensen: No, a, a syringe.
Phillip Hemme: Okay. Syringe. Yeah.
Sten Sörensen: So injection every third week. And what has been documented on the side effects side and a safety side is there has been fatal bleedings. There’s a risk for either bleed or thrombosis. You have had pericardial infusion incidents and there are other side effects or tolerance issues.
So this drug has this combination of being quite effective for these patients up at least to a six months period, but has its risks. We know that if we succeed with our efficacy in our trial, that we will be VA very good addition to the therapeutic arsenal that the physicians have and that it can be used.
We believe together with Wind River, it can be used with the others. And this is very similar to what happened in heart failure over the last 20, 30 years, that originally patients in heart failure was a pump and plumbing exercise. So with drugs diuretics to get fluid out in a tropic agents to help the heart pump and so on.
And then there was an a development of hormonal control that improved survival and wellbeing for these patient and extended their period of living. Pulmonary arterial hypertension ends in right heart failure. That’s how you die. The, this development of new drugs for pH is 30 years behind heart failure development of drugs.
We believe so. And the people involved with Sereno were involved in development of heart failure drugs. And I’ve been part of that journey. So we believe now that by adding new agents to pH, we will be able to extend the life and wellbeing of these patients. And that the oral administration of an HDA inhibitors such as us will do that job.
Phillip Hemme: Okay.
Sten Sörensen: And what we will believe we will be able to do is actually slow down, maybe halt the progression of this muscular fibrotic development that is narrowing the pulmonary artery.
Phillip Hemme: And in terms of efficacy, you are. You ex what you want or you’re expecting similar level of efficacy was when we were, even if you’re all versus a like injected me, like
Sten Sörensen: Yeah, I think we will have it’s difficult to gorge the level of efficacy, but I one will when you look at the drug and its possibility for approval so far, f FDA is looking at the additional efficacy that you can give on standard of care.
Phillip Hemme: Yes.
Sten Sörensen: So we believe will add additional efficacy to the standard of care, which will be then vasodilators and in some countries maybe win Rivera cept. It’s not yet. But it will be part of our trial. Okay. And we believe we’ll have the efficacy that is required. From regulatory authorities to approve the drug together with other agents.
It’s similar to what Cept was doing. So they got it approved on top of other agents. Yeah.
[00:32:41] Cereno’s pipeline
Phillip Hemme: Okay. I like what you mentioned with with the team and how you were involved in, before we hit record, you told me also about the repurposing. I want to talk about that a bit later. But first I want to finish on the, a bit on the pipeline as well, because you have a second product.
I think it’s CS 0 1 4 or one four.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah. C oh 14 we call
Phillip Hemme: C oh 14.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: And that’s, you had the positive phase one result, I think mid last year, right?
Sten Sörensen: Yeah. So yeah, it’s just why are we doing that one? Yeah. Because it’s also an hst, a inhibitor. Yeah. And. When we realized all of the proof of concept data that’s there on HDAC inhibitor, especially on VPA in pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases, and that hasn’t been pursued into man and as a valuable drugs to help these patients either with wellbeing or prognosis progression.
We decided quite early that, okay, we’ll take VPA, we repackage it to a, an administration. That is a good one, and we protected with. Patent families. We have three and we protect with orphan disease designation for the first indication. That’s pH. But we said this potential of this concept is too big for this first attempt.
We want to produce a new chemical entity that’s also optimized from the first one, still capturing the efficacy. Capacity of the first molecule. Okay. So we decided to pursue a second generation. Okay. And that’s CS O 14.
Phillip Hemme: Okay.
Sten Sörensen: And it’s actually the same molecule, but we have optimized it by izing it in two position of the molecule.
And why did we do that? We wanted to get rid of a metabolite that VPA has, and we have basically abolished that metabolite root. And why that metabolite? It’s if applied to children, it’s toxic for the liver. So one in 20,000 kids get liver toxicity. That’s not a problem for pH, of course, but if you want to pursue many different indications, why not do a new molecule? And why not do one that’s has the new chemical entity protection? And also, some pharma companies prefer new chemical entities, so that will. Be a broader and for some, a more attractive pro proposition. Okay? Now, CS O 14 is pursued for a different purpose than CS one.
The purpose is lung fibrosis.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah, IPF, right? That’s,
Sten Sörensen: yes. IPS the, so why can we do that when we are pursuing a muscular disease progression pathological one, mainly in the pulmonary hypertension. Because there are also proof of concept studies on the lung fibrosis models with HDAC inhibition.
Phillip Hemme: Okay,
Sten Sörensen: so we now decided to go for another orphan disease, which is IPF. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis with our second drug. That way we are documenting the ability of disease modification and two different orphan diseases that has already proof of concept in animal work.
Phillip Hemme: Okay.
Sten Sörensen: And that gives us, of course, two attempts to succeed.
And it’s, so it’s hedging the attempt, but it’s also two very unmet medical need markets.
Phillip Hemme: Okay.
Sten Sörensen: Now, IPF is affecting mostly men compared to pH, which is mostly females. So that’s why we are doing CSO 14, what it is and why we’re choosing IPF.
Phillip Hemme: Okay. And then IPF actually had, I had on the show the CEO of silico.
I think, I don’t know if you know him.
Sten Sörensen: I don’t know
Phillip Hemme: the company, but they have I think, phase two A results in IPF as well.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah. Good. There are almost no drugs. There
Phillip Hemme: are
Sten Sörensen: a couple of drugs. They have very bad safety and tolerance problems, and they haven’t really proven either symptomatic or prognostic relief.
Okay. But that’s what’s there. That’s so the market needs new things and we hope we can help any company that’s succeeding in these we applaud them.
Phillip Hemme: That’s good.
Sten Sörensen: They need it.
Phillip Hemme: Okay. That’s cool. And I, and if people want to, so it’s silico and what’s actually quite cool about them and quite unique is that it’s the first AI generat look from scratch that has gotten efficacy data.
It’s the globally
Sten Sörensen: Oh, it is cool
Phillip Hemme: with
Sten Sörensen: actually, but I don’t have it there actually
Phillip Hemme: in my head. Alex,
Sten Sörensen: I think is that
name.
Yeah. Where’s the company base?
Phillip Hemme: Headquartered in Boston, but quite global. Yeah.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: With a, quite a base in China as well. Yeah. And they actually, they just iPod on Hong Kong stock exchange.
I think two or three weeks ago they raised $300 million. Yeah. So
Sten Sörensen: yeah. Good.
Phillip Hemme: And check it out. They’re paying to do
Sten Sörensen: it.
Phillip Hemme: Good.
Sten Sörensen: And and so I should say also that I think that CSO 14 might we’re actually looking at it because we, what we did with CSO 14, we just published, and the original idea when HDAC inhibition, epigenetic modulation, that was the idea of the founder, professor Sw y and some of his colleagues in 2012.
Was that you could actually prevent thrombosis in man without increasing bleeding risk. And that has been documented with CSO 14. We just published it. So that is still in long-term possibility with this approach, it would be fantastic. Thrombosis is the biggest killer on the planet.
All causes that are non-communicable, so non infection and things like that so that is still a possibility. With this concept. But if we look at our work that we did with CS O 14, we actually repeated a pH study with CS O 14. There is a study with or two studies with VPA and what we saw with CS O 14 was that we had impact on plexiform lesions.
And that’s actually the very root cause of the small arteries in the lung that we had an impact on those dependent impact on those. And on the fibrotic development, it’s not yet published. We have talked about it not yet, yet published. So that strengthen our belief that there’s a possibility for disease modification and we have actually.
Considered to pursue CSO 14 in the adjacent disease P-H-I-L-D. Yeah. Interstitial lung disease. So pulmonary hypertension in interstitial lung disease. Yeah. There is a fraction of those that have IPF, but P-H-I-L-D is something that we might pursue as we move forward. So there are several avenues here.
Yeah.
[00:40:56] The finances of running a Phase2B
Phillip Hemme: Yeah. Some potential for more. I’m curious on the also. Doing two latest stage, Charles, from a finance point of view, I mean it’s, yeah, it’s expensive to run a phase two B.
Sten Sörensen: It is, yes.
Phillip Hemme: I agree.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah. We are,
Phillip Hemme: but you’re quite you’re quite well financed. So the fundraising you made, I think your market cap is around $250 million as we talk around there.
Sten Sörensen: Yes. Yeah. So we had we had, we grew our shareholder base with 25%, around 25% last year. So we around 13,000, 13, 14,000 shareholders.
We have fairly good liquidity in the stock for our size and being in Sweden, we are Nasdaq first North. And then we, we grew our market cap last year with around close to 30%, 27%, I think it was. We were actually beyond 3 billion Swedish. And over the fall it’s gone down again to 2 billion.
Still a sizable company in the market. So we have in a way gone against the stream after 21 when most biotechs had a reduction in 70 or more percent in the market cap. So I think we have a strong following and a growing following on the stock market. We’ve been able to finance the company in a good way.
I think so far it’s been a tough market for the last five years, or four, four years. So we’ve had a growth period then I think it’s because we’ve been able to deliver on what we have said and maybe a little beyond that, and that the. There’s a very visible bench in the wind River growth and deal that Merck did with acceleron and valuation there.
So if we succeed I think the investors believe that they can get a good return on their investment and that’s why they’re with us. And increasing that doesn’t take away that it’s a challenging financing market. So we recently did debt equity financing which we did at the premium.
A slide premium. And so that by itself requires the share price to go to a certain level for the conversion of the debt financing we have, and the next one to come in and also for Warren packages to come in. So we are carefully looking at our development and we will address if we need to do more to get to the finish line.
So that’s where we are.
Phillip Hemme: Okay. But so you think you will be financed to at least finish the phase two B. To get the top of data?
Sten Sörensen: Yeah. If the current program
Phillip Hemme: and not as the current cache, but you
Sten Sörensen: No, the
Phillip Hemme: current
Sten Sörensen: structure that we have. Yeah. And if for some reason that won’t work out, we’ll address that and do more financing.
Okay. So
Phillip Hemme: how much cache you have on the balance sheet?
Sten Sörensen: Oh,
Phillip Hemme: the
Sten Sörensen: latest data? Yeah. That’s a difficult one because the q the Q4 is not released yet. That’s on the 28th. Yeah we raised a hundred million in equity and we refinanced the loan. So I think
Phillip Hemme: million SEK, so
Sten Sörensen: it’s Swedish. Swedish. It’s around 10, 12 dollars gone down.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah.
Sten Sörensen: We have a lot of expenses in dollars. That’s a good thing for us. But yeah, so I don’t think I, I’m well read enough to qualify on, on, on what
Phillip Hemme: we, I think we can edit and add the, yeah. At least the Q3 figure.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: Okay. But I guess enough to move,
Sten Sörensen: yes, move
Phillip Hemme: forward. Move forward and finance was okay.
[00:45:07] Investor base of Cereno
Phillip Hemme: And talking still about finance investors, I’m curious on your investor base you said there 14,000, I think you have a quite strong also retail investor base.
Sten Sörensen: Yes, we have.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah, we have. In, in term of when I joined the company on the board 2014, and it was an idea, really no money, one animal study going and no real business plan.
And I’ve been in biotechs and pharma before, so I knew what was needed and we needed cash. We needed a good business span and cash for this fantastic opportunity, which I, we can come back to later. Why I thought so already then. I’ve been 11 years on this now but yeah.
The the investor base, the choices at that time was no patent, no money, no real data. More than the early, very early data, experimental data and some animal work. No VC’s really present. Health Cap was here. The others gone after the the last recession
Phillip Hemme: which was stock cap invested.
Sten Sörensen: No health cap didn’t invest. No, we didn’t even go to them at that time. But, so we decided to let’s go to the stock market. It was open, people were interested in going in, so we put together a prospectus and after nine months we had a 30 million Swedish in the bank, an evaluation of 84 million Swedish from zero.
So that was a good start for us. And we are on that road, I would say. So what has then happened over time is that the investor base around four years ago for
Phillip Hemme: That’s, you mean, so you iPod kinda at the eight, let’s say $8 million valuation and now you added 250 million valuation with you. Yes.
Sten Sörensen: But again, this was, it took
Phillip Hemme: some time,
Sten Sörensen: but 2016,
Phillip Hemme: yeah.
Sten Sörensen: But I think that what happened about four and a half years ago, we got some investors interested in the company. And they started to really read up on our information including what I mentioned before here all day. Preclinical data that’s available and our data. And then it said we want to stay here long term.
And that this group has actually created something called a Discord. A space where they store all the data on the company and it’s a fantastic place. They have a lot of maps of on patents, science, publications, everything that’s going on with the company. A very good competitive intelligence source for me because there are people there working day and night to source the information and comment on it, et cetera.
And I think this was the start of people. Knowing the company, understanding it, understanding science, and there are cardiologists, people working in with heart failure patients, et cetera. They’re there, there are investors, et cetera. So I think that was the start of that. And that group is now close to 5,000 people.
Wow. And there are a group of investors there that are very strong and has been with us for a long time. And I think we had 12 investors in our last equity race together with the debt financing. And they’re part of that group. Okay. Very convinced of our potential and our, future success.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah, because I saw in the, actually I have two, two things that I saw on this. One is actually I think two or three. Retail investors actually messaged me.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah. Yeah. They’re very active. They want to, are you gonna do an interview?
Phillip Hemme: Yeah. You need to stand on phone. No, no other I haven’t received a message like this one from other, they’re very interested and crazy.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah. They’re very interested. And I, like the interest. It’s a double-edged sword. Yeah. Because sometimes I can’t answer mail from 13,000 people. I would do nothing else. I wouldn’t even do that. I think so it’s a double-edged sword to have such a following, I think. Yeah.
But, in general, it’s a very good thing. Yeah. It’s similar to you, you have 30,000 followers, you want followers if you are on a quest to change the world. Yes. And to change the paradigm in, in these orphan diseases. So I like it a lot. But. Back to our investor base. That’s our investor base.
Yeah. And of course as we move forward, we would like to attract other types of investors, more institutional even more high net worth family office or other types of investors such as potential pharma partners either local, regional or so or global or more of the VC oriented that to go in when there’s data enough that they believe this is gonna fly.
So that’s the that’s the future. Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: Sounds good.
[00:50:42] A strong team is crucial for Cereno
Phillip Hemme: I wanna finish more on the team and then it’ll be a good transition. I think also to your own experience, because I think you have like pretty strong team I mean yourself. And also I saw that the, your CMO was actually a CMO of cardio.
Claudia, the CEO was on the show and cardio was a really nice exit to Novo Nordisk. Exactly. I think a bit more than 1 billion
Sten Sörensen: box. 1 billion euros. So
Phillip Hemme: Euro. Euro, I don’t know. And I didn’t manage to get front, but I heard it was very sizable upfront.
Sten Sörensen: Thomas Moon, it saw the same
Phillip Hemme: c This. I dunno, founder, CS OI guess, or founder?
He
Sten Sörensen: was founder. He’s founder of Uni.
Phillip Hemme: And then I think your CSO was there also before you joined at Serano. Yeah,
Sten Sörensen: it was at what at Sno was on the board was the Pat e s and Brn Dole. Unas and Brn joined the founders first. Okay. Already in 2012 when the company was founded? Yes.
Together with university Ventures.
Phillip Hemme: Okay.
Sten Sörensen: And they were the first investor with number of hundred thousand.
Phillip Hemme: That’s why the company’s based in Gartenberg as well,
Sten Sörensen: yeah, because yeah. And that and Gosenberg is the foundation of AstraZeneca’s success in cardiovascular disease.
And then TI and the collaboration with the universities and hospitals
Phillip Hemme: was, it was the head. Quarter of Astras research.
Sten Sörensen: Astra had, I’ve worked for Astra Yeah. Globally and also my first year was a sales rep for Astro, but, so yeah, Astra had actually five research units once. Okay. But originally Astra was in Lund for respiratory diseases in Gothenburg, for cardiovascular and then GI and in Alia close to Stockholm for pain and CNS?
Phillip Hemme: Yes. Okay.
Sten Sörensen: And they were very the philosophy was most pharma today was to establish and work very closely with the university. And so that then sprang out to success in in, in various disease areas. But then again, of course Ska Yen professor Guillen and his colleagues were based at SKA in Gothenburg.
So that’s the reason they founded the company there.
Phillip Hemme: Okay. Yeah.
Sten Sörensen: But it’s a good position to be for this kind of company. We are currently, we moved into as source by Venture Hub when we were very young, when we listed the company. And then we have moved out to more grownup research facility platform, which is called goco, which is next to AstraZeneca’s facilities.
Just when you drive into Gothenburg. Okay. In the village, Al, just before that. And we have a very nice. Facility there, and I think there are around 60 companies there of, of sizable, including recure that just listed on Hong Kong stock exchange. Oh yeah. Yeah. So
Phillip Hemme: I was about to ask you bit about gift, but we can talk about gift, but
Sten Sörensen: Yeah.
So we so Bjorn is currently the Chief Scientific Officer and has been for a long time now, since around 2 20 18, I think. And then we have RAA Val, Dr. Ola Gval. Brn is a cardiologist and used to be a assistant a professor at in Gothenburg. And Raul is actually, he started as a cardiologist joined Manini and then was recruited over to Bayer, ran there among other things, the rejuvenation or pH on the market.
And then he was recruited into, top level positions at AstraZeneca and reporting directly to Pascal Sorio for his OMI three venture. So and he has had he’s had 250 patients in clinical trials worldwide. So Raul is when I got the opportunity to get my hands on Raul, so to speak. I was very happy.
He’s told me that I’m the only one that took reference on him in his career. But that’s a side story. But he he was with card cardio. He left Astro for cardio. And then cardio was bought by Nova Nordics. And just in that time, I got contact with him and we were happy to join forces.
Yeah. So he’s head of r and d and CMO for,
Phillip Hemme: yeah. That’s cool. It’s a very good
Sten Sörensen: team and,
Phillip Hemme: that’s solid.
[00:55:41] The Swedish biotech ecosystem
Phillip Hemme: I think we have done, yeah, quite a good tour of, Reno and maybe switching more to industry topics. I mean we, we talked about Gutenberg and, the Swedish biotech ecosystem. I want to maybe expand a bit there.
Gutenberg, I didn’t know too many companies. I know quite a few l, quite a few in Stockholm. And also what I just realized coming to Lund was that the universities, I knew Chalmers, of course I knew, I know Kaska, but that Lund is actually better than Chalmer of like very good also in top three, in that they are quite, I know equate, I don’t know if it’s a term, but they’re ranking quite closely.
At least London Linsky. I think they’re quite close. And Chalmers is also a very good university versus, I don’t know, in some other countries where it’s like number one is clearly ahead and
Sten Sörensen: it’s one. Yeah. No, here’s a good quite, it’s quite a good spread I think. And I think then one.
Could also, of course look at what are good platforms for growth. I think one of them has been for Sweden and is the ability for an inventor to, to own the patent. Yes. So do research such as in our case with Serano and be able to patent your research. It’s not captured by the hospital, which is the case in the US and we haven’t spent
Phillip Hemme: almost everywhere in the world, everywhere.
Sten Sörensen: So there is an entrepreneurial spirit that’s also double-edged sword because then you have to be able to capture people with experience on the venture. It’s not that easy for a professor to drive a company to success. So that person needs to be surrounded by knowledge and capacity to get it done.
And the journey is
Phillip Hemme: managed from professor to CEO, but
Sten Sörensen: it’s quite rare. It’s quite rare and there are some people that are brilliant on everything they do. So I all respect for that. But I think if one wants to look at the Nordic area maybe Sweden. One thing that happened here was that AstraZeneca actually closed down the research unit here in Lund.
And so that opened up for a facility that could be, occupied by entrepreneurs and also l was very early with the incubators for other types of startups, e Dion, which is next to medical Village, which is the old Asta respiratory research facility in marketing facility. By good intentions and good strategic thinking, Lund and an entrepreneur from a real estate company joined forces here and built medical village infrastructure and ambition for the entrepreneurs.
And I think fairly short after the whole facility was filled. And has had to expand. So I think that is similarly happening in Gothenburg. Yeah, you’ve had these holding companies, Chalmers Ventures and Juta Boy, university Ventures being incubator promoters for startups, helping the startup people, including professors, et cetera, in their fields, and then getting them on their way.
And the trick is then to have people such as maybe myself that has been in Big pharma and in other startups to join the venture and to get it going. So I think that is presented around Karolinska Institute, charmers and Ju Bos University, and down here in Lund. Also, there’s a growing hobby in Sal.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: Is very close to Stockholm. Yeah. So it’s, everybody wants their own identity, it’s like Malmo and Lund yeah.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: A bit.
Sten Sörensen: Lund has always been way back, the, like the center of knowledge based on the university. Later on Hur School was established and so on.
Phillip Hemme: And wasn’t banier from, she was at Lund when she discovered it.
What
Sten Sörensen: this, I don’t know.
Phillip Hemme: She was in Sweden,
Sten Sörensen: but I
Phillip Hemme: think she was
Sten Sörensen: in Lund. Yeah. Okay. I know more than me.
Phillip Hemme: No, the crazy stories that, because she dis she discovered and patented crispr
Sten Sörensen: Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: In Sweden.
Sten Sörensen: Oh yeah. bioTE. Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: So she has a holding company that manage older. The commercial rights for crispr and
Sten Sörensen: this is a big thing.
A big thing. A big thing, yeah. Yeah. I’ve actually worked with, I’ve had to work together with a BioNTech person and another board in another company yes,
Phillip Hemme: and we had under show the, so the CEO of CRISPR Therapeutics, which is the company that I founded as a scientific founder. And was episode six or something was, yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah, and maybe I should you, we spoke about the team RN and Raul and so on, and I think at some point we, maybe we’ll go into my background and so on, but I think the there are other people, of course, in the team I was I was lucky to be able to, during the downturn of the consultancy business in Sweden, I was lucky to be able to hire.
And I’ve hired four people out of capa really good people out of a consultancy company here in Sweden.
Phillip Hemme: You have PWC, right?
Sten Sörensen: Yeah, but that’s not the case. This was when I worked with Sereno. I’m very much for working with enablers because if you have your vision you have a core team, then you work with enablers that are really good at what they do, so you get things done.
And so I worked early on with the, I banks to get. The perspectives and business plan together in a format and so on very early. But then I worked with people on strategy, competitive intelligence communication, et cetera, through a company called Monocle in Gothenburg. And in the consultancy crisis, biotech crisis in 21,
Phillip Hemme: 20
Sten Sörensen: 21, they had to close down.
And I had been working with them for a couple of years. So I had the first chance to hire and I hired four people directly outta that very good people. And they are with the company and doing tremendously well. So they should not be forgotten. I also have Nick Oaks from Astra, preclinical, head of Preclinical and Fre free head of clinical operations.
But I think another part of the team is the scientific advisory board, which we might. Come to. Yeah. Because I think that by itself is a strong show of commitment Yeah. To what we try to do.
[01:02:54] Sten Sörensen’s background
Phillip Hemme: That’s, it’s a good transition. And also with, I mentioned we would go. Deep into repurposing and I think on your scientific advisor, but you had someone and quite some experience in that space.
Sten Sörensen: Exactly.
Phillip Hemme: So that we can expand there.
Sten Sörensen: Maybe we can go there. And I I I am a I started as a sales rep. I’m educated here in Lund and I was questioning should I convert from chemistry to medicine, become a medi medical doctor, because I really like to understand what, why you get sick and what you can do about it.
And then. I started biochemistry, physiology and so on. And I, there was not at that time really the in-between educations, biomedical education and so on, it was chemistry or medicine. And I got some good advice. You’ve studied now the basic science here, why don’t you go and learn business?
So I contacted Astro and became a sales rep, and then I met Gun Olson, a young professor who’s now on s board who educated the reps. And fast forward
Phillip Hemme: biotech is a long term gamer.
Sten Sörensen: Yes. Long term. You fast forward to, to when I was recruited from Sweden to, to Chicago and Monsanto, pharma, Monsanto acquired Gigi Searle, a successful family company, global company in many areas including cardiovascular.
And I was there as a young product manager from Sweden and. After a while realized together with a colleague that I was product manager and he was a medical doctor for a compound that was discovered and launched in the sixties, and Mr. Antagonist spironolactone, and nobody was really talking about it.
And we defined the opportunity that we could improve survival with this whole drug if it was used differently in heart failure. And we went to the American Congress of Cardiology. Everybody was talking about something else, so we decided to pursue this. I couldn’t convince the head of r and d to, to fund it.
And eventually I became head of marketing globally. And I had my own budget together with my, my president, international operations who just decided to pay for it ourselves. And so we pursued a trial called Rolls in heart failure. A global trial and we asked Dr. Burton Pitt now Professor Emeritus at University of Michigan to be the principal investigator and pursue this vision with us.
And we did so globally and curiosity. Dr. Burton Pitt is chairman of Seno Scientific Advisory Board today. What happened with this study was that we improved survival with more than 30% published New England Journal of Medicine, great success, and today, more than 90% are using that medicine to help patients to live longer and live better in heart failure.
I was recruited back to AstraZeneca in 95 and got in charge of beta blocker and a couple of other drugs in the cardiovascular field. I re-met Dr. Gun Olson, then a Professor Gun Olson, who was a big boss at Astra in, in globally then, and we both agreed to pursue. Beta blocker, metropolol tolo, ace los for heart failure because there was some new information that maybe also the the adrenergic drive should be tempered in heart failure and could help the patients.
So that time we got the financing quicker. We did this global trial with more than 4,000 patients and these two trials at sol, Monsanto, and Adestra finished the same year. They both improved survival with more than 30% and quality of life. And were both publishing New England Journal of Medicine. So bleeder blockers, when we started with contraindicated, were not allowed to be used in heart failure.
But we had enough information to say, this is gonna work. Now you fast forward again to when I met Sereno in 2014. With the vision to imply epigenetic modulation with a drug that’s been in man for 60 years, that is doing something different than it was thought to do originally. Something more broad and maybe much more important.
HA inhibition. And it was like a dejavu for me. And we decided to pursue the journey we are on. I at some point was asked by Dr. Pitt, I hadn’t spoken to him in 20 years, said, what are you doing nowadays, Stan? And I said, I’m doing this. We definitely should meet. Come where are you? When are you in us?
In December, let’s meet. So we met in December, 2018 13th of December. And he said, this is big. We should put a scientific advisor board together. And there’s so much information on this concept let’s work together. So that’s how we formed. Dr. Pitt became Chairman Faye Ard who was in both of these trials that I mentioned before.
Professor from France he’s also big name in heart failure joined. They also said, why don’t you ask Deepak Bath, who’s currently in charge of Mount Sinai and 280 cardiologists, reporting to him in New York. Eight hospitals, big naming cardiology editor for Brown World’s heart cardiology Bible and on the board of BMS he joined.
Yeah. And God Williams, who is also a person from the past, so they joined and they were part of reshaping the effort into orphan diseases and the belief that we can have disease modification. Impact impacting fibrosis, inflammation, myocyte remodeling, and helping to slow and maybe hold progression in these patients, both in cardiovascular and in lung.
And the list of indications is longer than pH and IPF. You have heart failure, you have a number of other indications that you could pursue. So we have just started with this and that’s also why we did the second CSO 14 to be able to approach the board. So these people are on the board. A scientific advisory board.
And we have, in addition, we have Don Dezi from our GenX as an advisor to the board and to operations. So I think we have quite a strong group supporting what we try to do, and we’re very happy with that. And we haven’t disclosed yet who’s gonna be working with us on the pH trial, but I don’t think anyone will be disappointed.
This is we feel that there is a gravity towards what we do. Now we just need to get it done. That
Phillip Hemme: done?
Sten Sörensen: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:10:39] Success in drug repurposing
Phillip Hemme: I want one last question before quick fire. So like I, I’m seeing the time just a quick question, quick answer, but the last thing, maybe briefly, but on the repurposing, I’m always curious ’cause I think over the last 10 years.
First, I haven’t heard about too many success stories in repurposing generally, just out of my mind, out of, just out of my head. But I’ve heard quite a few failures as well, and I’ve heard quite a few like pushbacks, especially on VCs who don’t like it too much, and I guess farmers don’t like it too much or maybe it’s very connected to the VCs as well.
So like how do you, like, why is that in general? Like, how do you look at it?
Sten Sörensen: Yeah, I think there are various ways to look at this. I think the reflection backwards on my own hi history here is that the head of RD didn’t want to do it. How do you get the gold star if you head of r and d new chemical entities?
Yeah. You don’t get it for pursuing trials on drugs that are on the market. So that’s one reason.
Phillip Hemme: But if you can patent them and you have a clinical outcome yes. And you have sales.
Sten Sörensen: Yes. Yeah. But in those days, decisions weren’t made business decisions. Even at Astra the second decision, we can come to that, but the decisions were not made business wise necessarily.
You have an r and d budget that’s pursued to get those goals done. Then you have a sales market and market operation and those, fast forward to today. I think pharma is much better taking business decision. They have business owners of franchises in gi rheumatology pulmonary diseases, et cetera.
So I think that’s better. But even when I was at Dasra, we actually had to force the decision and bring the decision up to the CEO of Astra because of the heads of r and d and the heads of sales didn’t have a business person responsible for portfolio investments. So I think that’s historically that’s been a reason.
I also think that repurposing efforts should. Preferably be done when you have orphan diseases to pursue because you can cover your exclusivity with orphan disease designation on top of whatever patents you pursue. So that, that’s what we have done with CS one. But the reason to do CSO 14 is actually to open up for new chemical entity deals on the same concept.
And a broader concept. You could do a deal with Sereno on pH with a drug that’s orphan drug protected and patent protected. That’s one deal. You can do a deal on the HA portfolio or you can do a deal on CSO 14, which is a platform deal for multiple indications. For that you need an NCE.
So I think that that’s, the strategic reason why we are pursuing a historic thought. And then in addition you can maybe take CITAs as a successful example, that pursued all the way to market budesonide genetic substance into an orphan disease and was later bought acquired quite recently a, a very good
Phillip Hemme: journey over, over a billion dollar
Sten Sörensen: acquisition.
Yes. Yes. So I think and I’ve spoken to, to the CEO who was very instrumental in that growth and deal ranier as you mentioned before about that journey because we are doing a similar journey with CS one. Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: I like that now and I guess it’s not necessarily repurposing that is bad as, I guess within repurposing.
There’s some repurposing that’s probably bad.
Sten Sörensen: Yes,
Phillip Hemme: exactly. But within repurposing you have some
Sten Sörensen: to discriminate between them, I think.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah.
Sten Sörensen: So you can, another example that’s an internal repurposing, that was the one that I mentioned with the Peter Blocker. At Astra. The sales at that time was $200 million or 2 billion Swedish, and they wanted to close down investment and there was 70% margin on the sales.
After this heart failure trial sales went to plus 2 billion US dollars per year in sales. And if you calculate that on a patent life that’s another 10, 12 years, which it was at the time, then that’s a tremendous commercial success. So as long as you are protected what you’re doing, you can take a mode of action and move it into a different disease.
If you are smart about it, you can also do a new chemical entity. Yeah. Which I think we have been smart about yeah,
Phillip Hemme: I like that. I like that.
[01:16:03] Quickfire
Phillip Hemme: Okay. A few quick questions to wrap up. The first one, and I think you have answered a bit, but what’s the most common misconceptions that investors have about Sino?
One misconception.
Sten Sörensen: One misconception I think pursuing a paradigm shift or like we believe we do, we’re pioneering this effort into, to these patients and helping them. The, there are a couple of things you need to achieve. You need to achieve an understanding around the growing conviction in many disease areas.
That epigenetics is a key player. And I think that’s a major force. We don’t control it. It’s happening. So I think, but that is a challenge I think.
Phillip Hemme: Do you think investors are not convinced about epigenetics?
Sten Sörensen: No, I think they are. They need to understand it. Okay. I think it’s much easier for a cancer therapy.
That’s a very targeted approach. Look, here we bind here. Here’s the outcome. So I think in general, cardiovascular disease has been more difficult to predict. I’ve been successful twice in heart failure which has been a graveyard for many. But by realizing, understanding the concepts. Yeah. And I think we are, Sereno is understanding the concept around epigenetics and age stacks way before most people, scientists or business people in the world.
So I think one of the things that has to be done to get people to understand this is actually to understand the literature that’s out there. The documentations that there’re already the nature publication that happened last year.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah.
Sten Sörensen: And the growing evidence that’s pursued in this direction. Yeah.
I think the other thing has been when I’ve been with this 11 years, so when you start out, you are always viewed as a little player, a small one. So for investors. In the US or big investors or, so there is a price, there’s a, an investment size, a volume that they want to do. So if you want to do a deal, any kind of deal, it’s about the same effort.
The small and a large deal. Most investors want to do a large investment. They can’t do that in a small cap company, so you have to grow to a certain size to get their interest to listen and understand the potential. Okay. So I think the size is not really a misconception. I think small has been a size but I.
Again we were recognized as the comp one of the shortlist is one of the companies of the year in Europe awards in London last year. And I was the CEO shortlisted for CEO of the year among 10. Two of the companies on the company award were acquired last year after that award. So I so I think we are succeeding in being noticed.
And we were fully booked again at JP Morgan. So we are getting there.
Phillip Hemme: Sounds good.
Sten Sörensen: Yeah.
Phillip Hemme: Is 2026 the years the biotech winter will end
Sten Sörensen: the year the biotech winter will end? Yeah, it’s a good question. I think sometimes I. Science I like science understanding what’s happening in science or in other areas.
And I think just being at JP Morgan this year there are a few people have written about this of course, already summarizing what’s, what was going on. But I think the energy at the conference was higher than the year before and several years before. So I think the, what’s happening is that, and there are other factors going on, such as interest rates coming down.
For a number of years, visas have been taking care of their own portfolio if they had money even to death. Yes. So they haven’t really been looking outside, but more inside. And the people putting funds into their. Funds money into their funds have been looking to put money in interest rate interest returning papers.
So I think that’s changing. So the macroeconomics are changing. I think there’s a key platform of pharma having tons of money that they need to spend and having very significant patent cliffs coming forward. And there is a movement towards fundamental delivery, clinical assets, small molecules.
So I think that’s happening and that’s playing in favor of Sereno. So I like that
Phillip Hemme: 26 will be the year.
Sten Sörensen: I think it’ll be I don’t think there necessarily will be a dramatic increase in valuations. And so I think there will be a number of deals on clinical assets or platforms. We believe we are both.
Yeah. So I think that will happen. I think there will be a. A careful investment climate still. Yeah. But I think whatever asset is recognized to be have a significant potential value will be taken. Yeah. By either investors or by pharma.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah. Last quick question. One advice to 40 years old.
10.
Sten Sörensen: Ah, that’s a really good question. Yeah, I think maybe if you want to pursue a journey like this, maybe try to get the company established in the US. The journey will be less spoon fed. Yeah. And I think a concept like this, if we had established this company a couple of years ago in the US we would have gotten a hundred million or 200 million dollars as a Series A.
Yeah. Is happening now actually for on unproven ideas but just had a great potential. So I think having established companies or working with companies such as Serena here is a long journey. And it’s a hard one. But I, the other advice, I think keep your friends from the past toes.
Yeah. Keeping contact. The life when you’re young, the life is con what you call it concave. Everything is outwards and spreading. When you get, when get to be a little older. Life is convex. Things are gravitating back to you in various parts of life including your kids maybe but so when they grow older but such as your relationships around the world is, which has been very useful for me and I think also for Erno in this case.
So I think keep your friends, keep your and maybe start in the us I wouldn’t say there, there are other parts of the world, of course.
Phillip Hemme: Yeah. Yeah. Good one. Good one. Thanks, 10. Thanks for the discussion. Sure.
Sten Sörensen: Land of pressure. Thanks for all the good questions and the thoughts. Appreciate it.
Phillip Hemme: I’m impressed by Oten as taking Serena from almost an inception to where this today I’m also impressed by his persistence and more uncommon path in pharma. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please hit the follow or review button. Any users action, help a lot more people discover the podcast. If you wanna see similar videos, please feel free to check our channels where we have many more.
I would also be curious to hear what you think. So if you could leave a comment wherever you are, or shoot me an email@philipatflo.bio. That’s P-H-I-L-I p@flt.io. Hi, thanks for watching to the end, and see you next episode.
