Dear shareholders,
I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year, briefly summarize the past year for Xintela and its subsidiary Targinta, and focus on some important upcoming events that we are looking forward to in 2022.
It has been a fantastic and eventful year for our companies with, among other things, an approved GMP facility for the production of our stem cell products, preparations for two clinical studies with XSTEM, recruitment of several key people in GMP production and clinical development, and also successful preclinical studies for Targinta, which has now chosen its first antibody-based candidate drug TARG10. Our patent portfolio has also developed very positively with the approval of patents that protect our drug development in both stem cell therapy and antibody-based cancer therapy and at the same time give us a strong position towards competitors.
In the stem cell business, we have conducted four different preclinical studies during the past year, all of which were very successful and showed positive effects of our selected stem cells for the treatment of both osteoarthritis, difficult-to-heal wounds and the lung complication ARDS (Acute Respiratory Disease Syndrome). The results have given us important information about the mechanisms of action of the stem cells and strong support for continued clinical development in these areas. This has led to Xintela now entering a clinical phase and starting its first clinical studies with XSTEM. We will start treatment of patients with knee osteoarthritis in the beginning of this year in Australia and in the middle of the year start a clinical study in Linköping on patients with difficult-to-heal leg ulcers. The goal is to show safety and preliminary efficacy and we expect to have the first readouts by the end of this year. XSTEM is the first integrin α10-selected stem cell product to enter clinical trials and, based on our preclinical results, we have high hopes to see regenerative effects in both osteoarthritis of the knee and in difficult-to-heal leg ulcers.
Our positive preclinical studies on horses, with the stem cell product EQSTEM, have also led us to start a collaboration with the Danish veterinary company ScanVet with the goal of jointly bringing EQSTEM to the market for the treatment of osteoarthritis in horses. Since our approved stem cell product patent protects both XSTEM and EQSTEM for all therapeutic use, we can look forward to developing stem cell-based treatments in a number of medical areas going forward.
In the oncology program, which is run by our subsidiary Targinta, we have during the year worked intensively to develop human antibodies and evaluate these in preclinical cancer models. The goal is to identify effective drug candidates for the treatment of aggressive cancer including the brain tumor glioblastoma and triple-negative breast cancer. The work has led to selection of our first candidate drug, TARG10, which has an inhibitory effect on both tumor growth and metastasis in cancer models. Work is also ongoing to evaluate antibodies armed with powerful toxins, so-called antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), in order to soon be able to select the next candidate drug. The success of the research gives Targinta a really good start when the company is to be spun off at the beginning of the year and further developed as an independent company. We have convened a general meeting on January 17 to get our shareholders’ decision to implement the planned spin-off with the goal of listing Targinta shortly thereafter. In addition, Targinta has been strengthened with a very experienced management and board and has the best conditions to take quick steps towards partnerships and clinical studies.
We at Xintela and Targinta are now looking forward to a really exciting 2022.
With best regards,
Evy Lundgren-Åkerlund, CEO
Xintela AB
