Tell me more about hormonic discovery and what impact you guys are trying to have.
So with harmonic discovery, we are developing a treatment for one of the most common rare diseases on Earth with very strong roots here in the Mina region, and as you said earlier, the disease is called sickle cell anemia, and there is a cure in the form of gene therapies, but the problem is that gene therapies are extremely expensive and toxic, so not everyone is.
For you know for those type of therapies, so what we are doing at Harmonic is essentially mimicking the mechanism of action of gene therapy but developing a pill that can be easily taken at home orally, so very safe but accessible to everyone.
In that case, why did you guys choose Abu Dhabi and ADGM specifically to grow this company?
Yeah, um, you know, we see Abu Dhabi and ADGM, uh, really the UAE as perhaps the next sort of biotech ecosystem and and place to be, right, maybe the next Boston of, of the Middle East, and, um, we're really excited about, you know, being part of that kind of ecosystem.
Um, and really, you know, we wanted to think about, you know, places to do things like pre-clinical development of our drug and, um, Abu Dhabi came up as sort of a really exciting area where there's patients that need this therapy and, um, this the biotechnology infrastructure for us to develop our therapeutic.
OK.
And why have 71?
So Hub 71 is a great entry point into the region into Abu Dhabi, but also the Middle East is the region and you know like we love the energy at Hup 71 like we love the people and we love like you know how they help us enable like doing our work here.
OK.
And so when it comes specifically to this disease and and and treating it, what is so novel about uh your specific cure?
Yeah, so you know, imagine having one of the most painful episodes, like an immensely painful episode in your life, um, and requiring so painful that you need hospitalization for.
This is something that patients with this disease suffer not once, not twice, but multiple times a year.
And we have therapies.
Many of these drugs are drugs that we discovered in the 1970s and have partial effects, and we now also have a cure, right?
And this cure is gene therapies, but only a small proportion of patients can have access to these gene therapies.
They cost millions of dollars and they require, you know, hospital infrastructure that's just not available everywhere the sickle cell disease is, is imminent.
And so what we really wanted to do is, can we take the mechanism of gene therapies?
Can we.
Use this mechanism of a cure and boil it down to a pill where patients can have access to it.
Everyone has access to it and they don't have to pay a multi-million dollar price tag and they don't have to take IVs for the rest of their lives.
So that's why we're really excited about building this therapeutic and really excited about coming to Abu Dhabi.
So what's next for Hallmark Discovery?
What are you guys trying to achieve in the next couple quarters?
Uh, so we are actually planning to launch the phase one clinical.
In 18 to 24 months so we are very hard working towards that and we really want to develop this drug like fully here in the UAE, so we are really like you know exploring the ecosystem and you know starting this pre-clinical or continuing the pre-clinical development here and we are also opening most likely our next fundraising ground sometime early next year.
And then what does impact mean to you on a personal level?
What kind of impact do you want to leave, whether it's as individuals or as part of this company?
Yeah, I think impact means really, you know, impacting people's lives in some way, right?
Having a positive impact means that people are, you know, better off using whatever you're doing, whatever you're doing, right?
And for us, you know, we wanna create therapeutics and we wanna help as many people as possible and that's the sort of impact we wanna leave, you know, individually and as a company around the world.
Anything to add, I completely agree with phrase.
This is really the like you know reason why I went into biotech and why.
I like, you know, when I like started loving data science, machine learning in this field, why I wanted to apply it for biomedicine in order so that we can like actually help people and improve people's lives.
I love that.
Now one last question for you guys how do you caffeinate yourself?
Coffee, carrot or matcha?
Coffee always coffee.
OK.
Capuccino, cappuccino.
All right, well I'll let you guys get back to the event.
Thank you so much for your time today and I'll keep me updated on harmonic discovery.
