 Rich Picks Daily is an online community for traders to exchange smart, straightforward, and profitable investment ideas. And join us today at richpicksdaily.com. Subscribe to us on YouTube to learn useful stock trading secrets and discover the next 10-banker. Hi, how's everybody doing today? I'm your host Rich here on behalf of Rich2eLive with our very special guest, Jack Regan, the CEO of LexiGene Holdings. How you doing today, Jack? I'm doing great, Rich. Thanks for having me on the show. Hey, my pleasure. And we'd like to learn a little bit more about LexiGene Holdings. So LexiGene Holdings is a molecular diagnostics company that develops molecular diagnostic systems for pathogen detection and genetic testing. Can you tell us a little bit more about the technology you've developed and the markets it will serve? Yeah, sure. So LexiGene, as you just said, we're a molecular diagnostic company. I would say prior to 2020, the vast majority of investors out there didn't know what PCR was. And I think we've been sort of inundated with PCR testing in the whole COVID space right now. And so what we do at LexiGene is we take PCR. PCR is typically done in a reference lab. It sends off-site. It takes time to get that result back. What we've done is we've developed an instrument called the MyQ Lab. It brings PCR to the point of need. We often say the point of care. And so we've simplified a very complex technology made in a very simple ECUs box that can really be used across multiple market verticals. We've just mentioned coronavirus. We're certainly working towards the FDA. We'll get into that a little bit later on. But our primary market right now is actually veterinary diagnostics. And we're also looking at other markets like food safety testing, the contract drug manufacturing sector. There's a tremendous amount of sectors that want to do PCR-based testing. And our technology can really be used in any of those. Very good. Now what sets the MyQ Lab system apart from other rapid diagnostic systems currently available on the market? Yeah, so vaccine technology is unique in several ways. First and foremost, we are what we call an open access system. So what does open access mean? When you hear the word open access, think of the ability to customize the test. This might not be important for, say, strict COVID testing, but there are many spaces out there in research labs like academics, government labs, the contract drug manufacturing sectors that want to have control over what tests are done. And so we enable that through open access testing. And so it's a feature that currently isn't available at all in the marketplace. We are the first technology that is open access. So what this means is we have the ability to really define markets, really create new markets where previously people were forced to manually do PCR in a lab. And that is a fully equipped lab with people who are highly trained to do PCR. They can then swap that out effectively for a very simple, easy to use box where they can effectively hire a person with no technical background to do a very, very complicated test. So open access customized testing is a selling feature of our technology that's not available in any other technology which should help us really define new markets. The other unique feature is we are a flow through system that allows for us to process larger volumes of sample. And this allows for us to have higher sensitivity than other technologies in the market. So where is this important? Food safety, we're aware that the food safety sector is a big deal. People get sick from food poisoning all the time. The industry is looking for faster, better, cheaper ways to do passage and detection on our food items, including the drinks. And so how do you get more sense of detection for food safety? In this case, it's not some animal or human that's sick. It's literally E. coli on a head of lettuce and how do you detect that? One of the ways in which you detect that is you process a larger volume of fluid and that drives your sensitivity down, which is a good thing. So those are two selling features. The third one is cost of goods. For us to manufacture are consumable. That is how we make our money. At high volume manufacturing, the manner in which we assemble our technology allows us to provide that a much lower cost. This allows us to get into industries that are very price sensitive and importantly have a very, very healthy profit margin. Now you mentioned that LexiGene just expanded its sales team and will focus on the veterinary market initially. You touched on that. What fueled the decision to pursue this market first and how will the MyQLab system help both vets and pet owners? So I founded LexiGene in late 2016 and I intentionally focused on markets that I felt were underserved and had great opportunity. That for me was not immediately human clinical diagnostic. Human clinical is certainly on the roadmap and the coronavirus pandemic has brought that to the forefront somewhat, but nonetheless, as a new company launching a technology for the first time, it's advantageous for us to go for effectively the lower hanging fruits and generate some sales. So for that reason, the vet diagnostics which has a lot of corollaries to human clinical diagnostics with the exception of the regulatory hurdle is a great greenfield opportunity for LexiGene. There's effectively no competition in the vet space. Veterinarians are desperate for technology. Pet owners these days are willing to pay anything to keep their pets, their family members, healthy and well. And so there's a clamoring on the vet side to provide better quality care for their animals basically rule in or rule out an infection and figure out how best to treat an animal given the fact that we have antimicrobial resistance cropping up and being more and more of a problem and that gets to the strength of LexiGene technology. If I didn't mention it before, not only do we do PCR but we do what's called highly multiplex PCR. Why is that important? We look for many different targets at once and for a certain disease states that can be caused by multiple organisms for say urinary tract infections. There's about nine or 10 organisms that commonly cause the illness plus many of those sometimes harbor genes that confer resistance to the drugs that we often treat these infections with. And so what we want to be able to do is provide a test of veterinarians and ultimately human clinical market that allows for veterinarians to very quickly identify what's causing the infection and inform them on how best to treat the infection. So if that animal isn't coming back into the clinic a couple of days later with the pet owner in tears saying, listen, fluffy here is downward spiral because they haven't been treated appropriately. And we have the ability with point of care genetic testing to provide informative data on how best to treat that animal. That's huge. People love their animals and they're willing to do almost anything for them these days. The MyQ lab for open access testing is another area of focus. Can you tell us a little bit more about the system and why it has the potential to completely revolutionize various markets? Yeah, so as I mentioned, open access is really unique to LexaGene. We are the only platform out there that is open access, easy to use, multiplex PCR testing. So our open access bin really is a catch bin for many different market verticals. We have say border crossing looking for our cultural pathogens coming in from New Mexico or say Canada. We have looking for pathogens that might affect the aquaculture industry like shrimp and salmon species. We also have things like contract drug manufacturing. In this past year, there's been a lot of focus on these major pharma companies like the Pfizer, the Moderna, the Johnson Johnson who are cranking out these vaccines. Where are those vaccines produced? They're produced in these organizations called contract drug manufacturing organizations. They have these massive bioreactors that literally can hold 100,000 if not millions of dollars of product. And it's very, very important for these contract drug manufacturing organizations to do proper QC checks on the raw materials. When they scale up the size of the bioreactor, are they checking to make sure there's not a contamination in there that's gonna bring down the bioreactor? And so what they're looking for are not human pathogens, but they are contaminants that can destroy a product and thereby the FDA won't allow it to be sold. So what are they looking for? They're looking for technology that's easy to use that can do multiplex testing like we can do. And that is very sensitive to effectively identify the contamination hopefully of a raw material before it even goes into the bioreactor. And certainly if somehow during use, the bioreactor gets contaminated by personnel, identify that quickly so they're not investing hundreds to millions of dollars in action to this bioreactor to have it all set in crash out and lose all that product. So the contract drug manufacturing sector is a sector within open access that we see a lot of promise in because our first sale went to a contract drug manufacturing organization. And so we've looked more and more into this industry. It is an industry that I would say is second, if you will, to veterinary diagnostics for us. Again, a non-regulated industry that we can immediately start selling into. And so for that reason, we see it as a fantastic opportunity for the company. That sounds great. Now I know a lot of our investing community is really interested in learning about your FDA emergency use authorization for SARS COVID-19 testing. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, certainly. So lexigene views are a technology as a premium product and it is certainly better than a lot of the technologies being used for coronavirus tests after on the market today without a doubt. That doesn't necessarily, that doesn't mean period that the FDA all setting gives us a green path to go start marketing technology. We have a brand new system that has to go through many checks through the FDA in regards to our firmware, our hardware, our software and our chemistry. Everything needs to be validated as a completely new system because they've never seen this before. This is in contrast to some of the multi-billion companies out there that actually have previously put technologies through the FDA. It's already 510K cleared. So getting the EUA on top of that is very, very simple. For us, we're going to the FDA for the very first time. And so the FDA does take a very close look to make sure the system meets all their requirements, including making sure lexigene's quality management system is up to snuff and all the validation work has happened. So we are progressing our way through that work. It is a large body of work. We feel very confident in our technology of what we will be able to do in regards to human clinical diagnostics, but it does take some time. And because of that, until we feel like the submission and approval is imminent, we're going to be relatively quiet in the airways regarding FDA just because we don't want to, you know, set a false pretence to how quickly this is going to happen to the FDA. But we're certainly optimistic in our prospects. Now the company's ongoing success can be attributed to its impressive leadership team and advisory board. Can you talk about some of the key members of the team and what the experience they have brings to the table? Yeah, and so just going back to the FDA thing, you know, if you look at our staff, one I'm extremely proud of the staff that I've hired, they come with a tremendous amount of expertise. You know, if you look at Steve Armstrong, he's our COO. He has helped companies launch more than 50 devices through the FDA and not just the FDA in the United States, but actually placing these devices in over a hundred countries worldwide. So he is effectively a regulatory expert and he is really our lead engineer, manufacturing QC person at the company. And so he is phenomenal. We also have Dr. Nathan Walsh. He's got a biochemistry degree from Brown University. He went on to get his doctorate at MIT. He's brilliant. He has over 20 years of experience working in the genomics and microfluidic space. And then I'm not going to go into all of our directors, but I encourage your viewers to go look at our webpage, look at the bios of the team. The team is extremely talented, not just the executive offices, if you will, of the company, but look at our directors and also look at the scientific advisory board. I've gone to great lengths to build integrity into the company. And I'm very proud of each and every one of the higher management, if you will, of the company. So look into their backgrounds and I'm sure you'll be pleased with what you say. So we've got investors here at Rich TV Live that will be watching this video from many countries all over the world. What should investors watch out for from Lexi Gene in the next few months? So looking at Lexi Gene now is actually an opportune time. If you look at the history of the company, again, found in 2016, at the time we had effectively nothing. I had licensed two patents from a private company. We had executed a reverse takeover of a public shell in Canada and we were a prime target, if you will, for pump and dump artists. And so we went through some fluctuations early on at the highly speculative stock with effectively nothing behind the company aside from my name and my integrity. And so with piece by piece, we worked on developing the story, developing the product and over the first two and a half years, again, very slow progress because the company had effectively very little funding. But we built an alpha prototype and demonstrated principle in the first two and a half years. The following year, we built and tested the beta prototype. That was actually field tested very successfully. And this past year, we've been working on our commercial system called the My Key Lab. So here we are today. And it is now, I guess it's May. And if you look at the stock price over the course of this past five months or so, a lot of the market cap companies have been hit hard, particularly diagnostics. A lot of people are thinking that the coronavirus pandemic is on its way down and up the door. We certainly hope that to be true. But one of the things that I wanna emphasize here is that LexiGene is not just a coronavirus company. It's certainly something that's on our roadmap. But again, this company was founded on the principles of basically serving the underserved markets, the veterinary diagnostic space, the contract drug manufacturing space and certainly with time we expect to be through the FDA and servicing the human clinical space. But within open access, again, we have the ability to target many different market verticals and our technology is prime to do that. So as we approach basically June and the rest of the summer, we've just hired four sales reps. And the reason we've done this is because we have a lot of confidence in our technology where it is today and we're gonna be pushing strongly for early adopter sales. And so as we progress through the summer, we expect to be announcing progressively more sales with every passing month. And we think we're gonna be in a great position in a few months. And the stock certainly, I would expect the value of the stock to reflect that. Yeah, and when we look at the stock, we can see a company that's undervalued, in my opinion, underappreciated, underexposed. Hopefully these types of interviews will help you gain more exposure and get more eyeballs on the security and get people to learn more about the company. What is the best way for an investor to get in contact with the company if they have any questions, Jack? So we always try to be as responsive as possible to any inquiry coming to the company. And so if an investor is contacting us, we have IR at lexigen.com. That email is available on our website. You have general questions regarding the company. We have an info at lexigen.com. And generally we try to respond, generally it's been 24 hours or 48 hours. And certainly if it's a level of high concern, it could elevate it to me and I try to address it. So we appreciate any comments that come in. Well, thank you so much for your time today. Jack Regan, the CEO of LexiGene Holdings. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. And before everybody says goodbye, just remember Rich TV Live is strictly for information education purposes. Please do your due diligence, do your research before you invest in anything that we discuss here in Rich TV Live. If you liked the video, please smash the like button, comment down below, share the video everywhere and subscribe if you're not winning, you're not watching, we bring you the winners and we bring them to you first. Thank you for watching everybody. Thank you, Jack. Have a nice day, everyone. Thank you.