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TWST: Let’s start with a quick introduction to Profile Therapeutics (London:PTP.L)?

Mr. Lisle: Profile was previously known as MedicAid and has been around for about 25 years now. The core business developed and sold inhalation equipment, medical devices and so on. It grew steadily, had a management buy out in 1997, and floated on the London Stock Exchange in March of 2000. The current situation is that we’ve got a good steadily growing profitable business that makes roughly 50% margins in traditional nebulizers and consumables, and exciting growth that’s going to start imminently in specialist pharmaceuticals. There we have our first product, Promixin, which is an inhaled antibiotic for cystic fibrosis patients, that we anticipate launching in the UK quarter one of this year. Finally, we have a proprietary and patent-protected delivery technology – our intelligent inhaler – which creates a compelling platform for our medicines.

TWST: How do you define or position your company in the healthcare space?

Mr. Lisle: We develop and commercialize specialist, inhaled therapies to improve the treatment of respiratory patients. Our first medicines are products where the molecule is already proven in the market and well characterized, and we are revitalizing them and innovating through the delivery system. So we have a much lower risk approach than a traditional biotech and bring products to market at lower cost than a traditional pharmaceutical company, whilst still enjoying high margins. In terms of the target market, it’s respiratory treatments for severe or chronic patients, especially the elderly, pediatric or breathing-impaired. Patient treatment is at home through nebulized therapy not disposable “puffers”. Our initial markets are in cystic fibrosis, asthma and COPD with others in the future as well. We are typically looking at high value patients, so for example treatment costs for cystic fibrosis patients are anything up to $30,000 per patient per year. And they’re often receiving therapy, medication or physiotherapy of one form or another up to four hours a day. It can be a pretty miserable condition and therefore anything we can do that improves the treatment or shortens the time that it takes to take the medication is a big step forward, and Promixin delivered through our intelligent inhaler aims to do both. Finally, alongside this our solid business in inhalation and ventilation equipment, sleep therapy, etc. provides both profit and a well-established relationship with many of the target patients for our medicines.

TWST: Can you give a summary of the objectives and milestones that you’ll be looking to accomplish in the next 12-24 months?

Mr. Lisle: The next milestone is to deliver the results for the half-year to December. The second one will be the regulatory authorization and launch for Promixin. After that we are working to broaden our portfolio and pipeline of medicines we have available to go through the device, and there is an expectation of news on that in the first half of this calendar year. Thereafter there will be the follow-on European licenses for Promixin that will start to come through around the end of this year. And then in the first half of 2004, a key milestone will be launch of the handheld device. And that’s going to be great. We’ve got a powerful offering at the moment but that will be fantastic and frankly I can’t wait!

TWST: Is anyone else working on handhelds?

Mr. Lisle: There are other people working on handheld systems, but nobody else has our proprietary intelligent system, so they don’t deliver precision dosing, and nobody else therefore can put their drug through what patients and clinicians see as a very advantageous device without us enabling it. The other thing about that device is because it only doses exactly what you need and it only fires when you’re breathing, you don’t need so much medicine in it and therefore there are some formulation options down the line that would give us a unique position.