 I'm Chris Thompson for Investor Intel and today I'm with Alan Davidoff, the founder, president and CEO of Zortex Therapeutics. How are you today Alan? I'm well Chris, thank you for the invitation and opportunity to chat with you and your investors. So Zortex is a biotechnology company and it focuses on developing therapies for kidney diseases. Why don't you give us a quick overview of the company and its products? Zortex Therapeutics from its inception has been looking at progressive kidney disease as an area where there are very few therapeutic options and a great opportunity to develop drugs. Our focus is really on defining what's happening in a number of kidney disease like the orphan kidney disease, autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease and bringing to that area, to patients in that area, therapies that would reduce the oxidative stress and aberrant purine metabolism that play a role in the mechanism of injury that we see occurring and with our second program in acute kidney injury associated with COVID infection, we also see that there's a role for aberrant purine metabolism and high uric acid that could be driving worse outcomes for kidney's heart and potentially the susceptibility to serious sepsis infection. Now you've started with using an existing drug in the marketplace and reformulating that drug. Can you just go over the drug itself and what's the advantages of starting at that point? So our focus with the autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease program is to take a drug that's been materially advanced through FDA filings and has received an FDA approval letter in the past. Despite that advanced stage it's never been approved for marketing anywhere in the world. One can argue based on the evidence that it's the best tolerated of any of this antinoxidase inhibitor class of drugs and so a great starting point for us knowing that it's potentially approvalable, knowing that the safety and effectiveness is well defined and knowing that we can improve on that drug by novel innovative formulations and deliver it to patients across a broader dosing range often comes with an improved side effect profile and so we see this as a young company that's advancing to a late stage as the ideal scenario. And the market you're looking at let's just focus on the acute kidney injury or what people sometimes call AKI. What size of market is this? Well this is a market today if you look at the the US numbers today there were around 6000 individuals who are hospitalized the data from a partnership that we established with Mount Sinai Hospital Group in New York City is showing that about half of all hospitalized individuals have a combination of acute kidney injury and very high uric acid levels that are concerning. The impetus there is to test them early that 3000 patients a day represents a large number almost a million people a year that probably could be addressed with a therapy that rapidly lowers their uric acid and then maintains it low over the course of their infection and we see that as a new opportunity that's really emerged since March and doesn't seem to be going away as as COVID you know all indicators are the COVID is endemic to the world and is not something that we can overcome at this point. And recently you raised you know over 13 million dollars US and also uplisted onto the NASDAQ stock exchange to get more US based investors. What are you planning to do with those funds? Right well the NASDAQ listing of course the advantage is to listing on the on the major US exchanges is that you open the doors to investors across the globe not not just the US or Canada or or other jurisdictions. Those funds are important for the next steps that we're taking we see 2022 is a very exciting year we are moving from the final step in characterizing these formulations for the two programs the one in autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease and in acute kidney injury due to COVID as eminently advanceable through pharmacokinetic studies in the first part of 2022 and then advancing into late-stage registration trials in the summer and autumn of next year. When you're doing that the trial is that what would they would typically call a phase three trial with the FDA? Right so the discussions we've had with the FDA are that that our formulations that drugs are safe and effective we see them as requiring only a single registration trial so a single phase three trial to advance them to marketing approval in the case of polycystic kidney disease that would be an orphan indication so we're seeking orphan drug designation for that program we see that clinical trial being about 32 months 36 months somewhat or in that range and then we're then being ready for approval. In the terms of the COVID trial that's a much shorter trial we believe that rapidly lowering uric acid when patients are hospitalized and then suppressing the production of uric acid over the course of their infection will have a meaningful effect on their outcome for acute kidney injury the work from the Mount Sinai group is also showing that the heart seems to be a injured by Sander organ and the susceptibility to sepsis we're just defining now but that represents a very large unmet medical need in hospitals across the globe. Interesting now we talked briefly about the AKI market and the other market you're going after what you call the polycystic kidney disease market and you mentioned orphan disease and so can you give us a sort of an idea of what the size of that market is? Right so the definition of orphan diseases in the US in Japan and in Europe is a rare disease in the US it's under 200,000 individuals that are addressable in the case of polycystic kidney disease it's fairly large it falls at the the upper end of that scale so 150,000 patients or so in that space there are very few therapeutic options physicians generally prescribe blood pressure drugs and there is a single drug that was approved in 2018 called Tolvaptin or Genarc it is it's poised in year three of approval to sell almost a billion dollars worth of drug despite the fact that it's addressing about 5% of the market. So there is a large remaining unmet medical need for 95% of that market we see that as addressable with our drug and certainly addressable in terms of the mechanism of injury that we're defining right now and and have very high hopes for the successful conduct of the phase phase three registration trial that we're planning to initiate in the fall this year. Now in addition to working with Investor Intel doing videos I'm also the head of research at e-research and we cover your company we did a report recently where we have our biotech farm analysts did a buy recommendation update report in a 27 dollar price target currently you're trading below $3 so we see quite an upside to this based on the trials taking place and some revenue being generated in a few years from now as investors looking at the stock what can they look forward to as far as news flows goes say over the next six months or even for all of 2022 because as a biotech farm company you're planning further out ahead than that so what's in store for 2022 for you? Yeah so our key activities and certainly the ones we see as value creating steps are obtaining the orphan drug designation in polycystic kidney disease completing our basic work our pharmacokinetic work for these new formulations prior to starting the phase three trials certainly the start of those phase three trials are are important steps for the company and and you know we also see because we're late stage the potential for many of the discussions we're having with pharma to turn into co-development deals and and certainly support us as we go through phase three and marketing and sales into the future so a lot of exciting work being done this year the funding that we did with the NASDAQ uplisting and the pipe that we concluded in February of 2021 will support that work and allow us to advance and create further value. Well thanks for your time Alan I think was a great overview I was speaking with Alan Davidoff who is the founder of president and CEO of Zortex Therapeutics. Thank you Cressy I appreciate the chance to chat with you.