Team:Leiden/Entrepreneurship
S.P.L.A.S.H.
Suckerin Polymer Layer to Achieve Sustainable Health
Entrepreneurship
University research is often focused on more fundamental aspects instead of a direct application. Therefore, an ideal way to distribute our product commercially is by starting up a biotechnology company. However, creating a business model and writing a business plan can be complex. The iGEM Leiden 2019 team has constructed a business plan to market an innovative suckerin-based hydrogel to treat burn patients. For future iGEM teams, our team has made a novel three-phase comprehensive roadmap to launch a successful business. Complete each flag to make a comprehensive business plan from your research project.
Click on the flags and see how we have done this!
1A. product idea
Describe what problem you want to solve. Why is this a problem? How could your product solve the current problem? Shortly explain the science behind your product.
1B. unique selling points
What is your potential solution to the problem? What are the unique selling points of your product? What makes it more interesting than products from other companies? Provide a clear product vision.
1C. market analysis
Analyze the market: what is your target market and are the market needs? How widespread is that market? In your business model, show that the demand is big enough for new inventions. Show a couple of key points why you outcompete or improve on the competition.
2A. product validation
Show the effectiveness and safety of your product. Have you done clinical trials, if needed? What problems were addressed, and how were they solved?
2B. intellectual property
Intellectual property is one of the key points of a successful company. Have you filed a provisional patent on your project? In which countries do you want to apply for a patent?
2C. business plan
In your business plan, you have to show how you want to sell and distribute your product. Calculate for which price you can sell your product. How would you distribute your product? Include market analysis data and business models in your plan.
3A. investors and customers
You have to find investors and customers to develop your product successfully. How will you build your company? Have you spoken with investors and customers? Calculate the different costs, such as salaries.
3B. incorporate and execute
Having finished all the points stated above, it is now time to start up your company. Who owns the company? Who are the stakeholders? Who are the shareholders, directors, and officers?
3C. minimal viable product
Finally, you have now constructed a minimal viable product. This product should have just enough features to satisfy early customers, providing feedback for future product development.
CHECKPOINT
Have you validated your product, filed a patent and constructed a clear business model? If so, you can go to phase 3.
CHECKPOINT
Have you described your product idea and its unique selling points, and have you analyzed the market? If so, you can go to phase 2.
FINISH
Congratulations! You have now created a business plan, good luck with developing and marketing your product!
Our entrepreneurship program
Worldwide, burn wounds account for an estimated 300,000 deaths annually [1]. Studies over the last decade have shown that approximately 42%-65% of fatalities are caused by bacterial infections [2]. By building a start-up company, the Leiden iGEM team wants to provide these patients with a novel hydrogel to cover wounds: S.P.L.A.S.H. This novel suckerin-based hydrogel forms a platform of antimicrobial peptides, preventing bacterial growth and providing a moist environment for wound healing.
Our project, an innovative suckerin-based hydrogel platform with antimicrobial peptides to treat third-degree burn wounds, is the result of numerous conversations with potential customers, such as wound specialists from hospitals and burn wound centers, as well as entrepreneurs within the medical biotechnology field. In our proposal, we elaborate on the various stages of our company. We would start with early preclinical tests and intellectual property development, followed by clinical trials and in the end our minimal viable product to take our product to the market. Various consulted customers, such as insurance companies, have already shown interest in our product.
1A. Product idea
Globally, 11 million burn injuries require medical attention each year [3]. In the United States, approximately 50,000 of these require hospitalization, with around 20,000 patients having major burns involving at least 25 percent of their total body [4]. Around 4,500 of these people die. These numbers show that there is a large demand for methods to treat burns and prevent further debilitation.
Current treatments are mostly based on donor skin. However, suitable donor skin is scarce due to highly specific requirements and numerous processing steps [3]. Besides this, donor skin fails to stop many infections, leading to a high demand for alternative treatments. The size and depth of the wound may even be increased by the lack of proper wound care [5]. In facing this challenge, hydrogels emerged as a promising substitute, since they have the ability to absorb and retain wound exudate, prevent surrounding bacteria from reaching the wound, and are non-adhesive to body cells [3]. However, these hydrogels are not yet sufficient enough to prevent and stop bacterial growth of pathogenic species.
Our product is the solution against microbial infections of open wounds. Our suckerin-based hydrogel has a platform of antimicrobial peptides preventing bacterial growth and providing a moist environment for wound healing.
1B. Unique selling point
Our interviews with burn specialists from the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and the Dutch Burn Centre in Beverwijk made clear that there is a large demand for hydrogels that could keep a burn wound moist and prevent pathogenic bacterial growth. Therefore, our revolutionary product is a suckerin-based hydrogel platform with antimicrobial peptides to prevent pathogenic bacterial growth.
The use of allogeneic (from another individual) skin grafts poses a great risk of disease transmission and immunogenicity [6]. In contrast to biological substitutes, synthetic substitutes abolish the risk of disease transmission [7]. However, only a few synthetic skin substitutes are currently on the market due to limitations in materials for patients [7]. The use of the suckerin protein opens up a new field of possibilities. Production of suckerin in microorganisms, such as Escherichia coli, accounts for the drawbacks of the materials currently in use. In addition, preliminary data suggest that this protein is non-cytotoxic and biocompatible [8,9].
Biocompatibility assays for one of the suckerins, suckerin-19, have thus far shown negligible in vitro cytotoxicity against various cell lines, including human dermal fibroblast cells (HDF) [10]. Solubilized suckerins allow for the formation of mechanically robust, enzymatically cross-linked hydrogels [11]. In contrast to current hydrogels, our hydrogel brings the advantage of elasticity, modularity and scalable production in microorganisms. This could improve the demand problem, as there is a large variety of suckerin proteins that can be produced. In addition, because suckerin is a protein, it is easier to attach other compounds by changing the genetic code of the host microorganism, without having to add it later. This combination of a genetically alterable protein that also forms a mechanically robust hydrogel is what makes suckerin unique, as natural proteins rarely exhibit physical properties fit for a hydrogel [12]. All scientific explanations of the suckerin protein can be found on our project description page.
One other unique selling point of our hydrogel is the inhibition of bacterial growth by implementing antimicrobial peptides into the hydrogel which are released by proteases of pathogenic bacteria. According to our conversation with Peter Nibbering, associate professor in bacterial and fungal infections at the LUMC, most antimicrobial peptides interact with the polar part of the cell membranes of bacteria, inducing breaks in the cell membrane. This makes antimicrobial peptides extremely bactericidal.
Both minor and severe burn wounds trigger the wound healing process, consisting of various highly integrated and overlapping mechanisms [11]. Besides this, severe burns also promote persistent pathophysiological stress responses. Altered physiology of the wound lowers the antibiotic concentration locally, and can therefore give rise to antibiotic resistance. For this reason, our hydrogel has a linker system by which the controlled release of antimicrobial peptides can be established. The use of cleavable linkers, which will be cleaved by proteases secreted by various pathogenic bacterial species, enables prolonged, controlled release and makes the risk on resistance negligible.
Figure 1. A simplified illustration of our suckerin hydrogel with antimicrobial peptides
One other advantage of our hydrogel is the fact that it can be adjusted to serve personal requirements. We want to direct treatment away from a one-size-fits-all approach and consider the patients’ burn characteristics, phase of injury, and category of burn pain. This way, appropriate measures can be taken to account for every patient needs. Future research is needed to provide insight into specific drug pharmacokinetics (PK), pharmacodynamics (PD) and clearance rates upon burn injury [13]. This way, the linker system can be used to couple suitable drugs, which will be released to achieve a necessary concentration.
Table 1. Our product compared to donor skin and current hydrogels for burn treatment
|
Donor skin |
Current hydrogels for |
S.P.L.A.S.H. |
|
|
Easily available |
no |
yes |
yes |
|
Unlimited supply |
no |
no |
yes |
|
Non-cytotoxic and biocompatible |
no |
yes |
yes |
|
Elasticity |
no |
yes |
yes |
|
Modularity |
no |
no |
yes |
|
Easy to attach other compounds |
no |
no |
yes |
|
Personalised medicine |
no |
no |
yes |
|
Risk of disease transmission |
yes |
no |
no |
1C. Market analysis
To have a clear overview of the current market in burn wound healing, we have analyzed the market and calculated the production costs. For this, we used Clarivate Analytics Integrity, an extensive database with almost all patents, companies, and products. If we would sell 1 liter of our hydrogel per patient worldwide, the minimal expected profit worldwide within five years would be US$3,300,000,000.
Current hydrogels
With the current standard of living, burn injuries are an unavoidable fact on a global scale, resulting in a large demand for novel innovative hydrogels [3]. In 2004, medical attention was required for nearly 11 million people and ranked fourth in all injuries [14]. Per burn patient, the hospital care costs, in high-income countries, is estimated to exceed US$88,000 [15]. For the development of our suckerin-based hydrogel, we have spoken to Egbert Krug, a trauma surgeon at the LUMC. He emphasized that wound dressings like our hydrogel need to be easily removable and need something to keep the wound moist. The minimum requirements of hydrogels are rapid healing, affordable costs for the patient, aesthetics, and prevention of infection [16]. Our product has all of these points.
Clarivate Analytics Integrity
One of the unique aspects of our entrepreneurship program is the use of Clarivate Analytics Integrity in collaboration with the Centre for Human Drug Research (CHDR). This immense database has been developed for large companies to find other companies and patents on certain products. Having analyzed the large dataset, we did different interesting findings:
- There are only a few clinical trials for burn wound treatments. We have found 76 completed clinical trials on hydrogels, none of them specific to burn wounds.
- Two current, prominent hydrogels are Aquacel, which allows vertical transportation of fluid, and alginates, which are used to cover skin donor wounds.
- CellTran has developed UlcoDress, a biocompatible and biodegradable polymer matrix hydrogel dressing.
- No patents and clinical trials were found for suckerin in any form. However, Clarivate Analytics Integrity does not contain all patent offices worldwide. The material science and engineering group of Ali Miserez at the University of Singapore has already patented the production of suckerin proteins in microbes, thereby referring to 2B (Intellectual property) of this page.
Total Addressable Market Analysis
Patients will have the willingness to pay because our product can add many quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) by preventing complicated aftercare on damaged skin and sepsis due to bacterial infections. However, adding antibiotics to a wound would increase the chance of antibiotic resistance, as described earlier in 1B (Unique selling points). Therefore, our hydrogel has a linker system by which the controlled release of antimicrobial peptides can be established, thereby minimizing the risk on resistance.
For the calculations of our minimal expected profit, Eugen Kaprov, investor at Synbio.tech supporting emerging synthetic biology companies, suggested applying the so-called Total Addressable Market (TAM) Top-Down Approach from Alex Graham, a London-based CFA charter holder. This method starts at the very top of a macro data set, chipping away at the data to find a market subset [17]. We start with a population and then logically apply economic assumptions to eliminate irrelevant segments. The following formula is used: Minimal expected profit = price of the hydrogel x the market (if all patients use it) x percentage of everyone using it.
Each year in the United States, approximately 50,000 burn injuries require medical hospitalization, with around 20,000 patients having major burns involving at least 25 percent of their total body [4].
- The price of 250 mL of our product would be US$20. This is based on the average cost times the margin of 120%. We would sell one liter of our product for US$80.
- The volume of our hydrogel per patient is based on 10 mL for wounds of 20 square centimeters, in a 2 times daily application for 50 days. This is based on standards from other hydrogel treatments.
- The market in the United States would consist of approximately 50,000 patients.
- The approximate percentage of the patients using our hydrogel would be 75 percent.
If we would sell 1 liter per patient in the United States, the minimal expected profit annually for the United States would be: US$80 x 50,000 x 0.75 = US$3,000,000. Within five years, our profit would be US$15,000,000.
Worldwide, medical attention is required for nearly 11 million people [14]. If we would sell 1 liter of our product per patient worldwide, the minimal, annual expected profit would be US$80 x 11,000,000 x 0.75 = US$660,000,000. Within five years, our minimal expected profit would be US$3,300,000,000.
Cost calculations
As we talked to Vincent van der Wel, Director of Patient One and Business Development Manager & Project leader at Fair Medicine, there are two important things in determining our price. First, the production costs of our suckerin-based hydrogel have to be earned back within five years, a generally agreed-upon term. Second, marketing costs should be calculated, the total cost of delivering our products to customers. The U.S Small Business Administration states that small businesses typically spend 7-8% of revenue on marketing. The cost price is calculated as follows: Cost price = the total cost/amount of patients. The cost price (per patient) is US$110,000,000 / 11,000,000 = US$10. So, we will annually spend approximately US$10 as costs per patient.
Our cost price consists of fixed costs and variable costs. Fixed costs will be costs for business, such as rent, that are constant, independent on the amount of product produced. Variable costs change in proportion to production output, rising as production increases and falling as production decreases. By cooperating with other companies within and outside the Leiden Bioscience Park, we can strongly decrease the variable costs, referring to 2C (Business plan) on this page.
2A. Product validation
To successfully distribute our product, the suckerin-based hydrogel will be tested in various pre-clinical and clinical trials. With these tests, we can guarantee the safety, non-toxicity, and effectiveness of our product. To meet the requirements from insurance customers, the third party payers, we will closely communicate their expectations in our clinical trials.
Pre-clinical trials
Before starting with clinical trials, our product will be tested in vivo and in vitro. To prove the effectiveness of antimicrobial peptides, they will be tested on bacterial cell cultures in combination with our suckerin-based hydrogel. The most common burn-infecting pathogenic species will be tested, such as Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pyogenes, Streptococcus agalactiae, Escherichia coli, Proteus, Klebsiella sp., Pseudomonas sp., Acinetobacter sp. and Stenotrophomonas sp. The stability of both the suckerin-based hydrogel, as well as the antimicrobial peptides will be tested using various tests:
- Temperature shelf-life tests will be conducted to investigate what temperature suckerin-based hydrogels can withstand.
- Our suckerin-based hydrogel will be tested using a fibroblast scratch assay of cell cultures to investigate whether the hydrogel stays intact and does not degrade into the wound. This was suggested by Martin Sieber, Professor for Clinical Research at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg.
- The toxicology of our product will be tested using in vivo animal models.
Clinical trials
The central questions of our clinical trials are the following: is the hydrogel safe? Do the suckerin hydrogel and the antimicrobial peptides reach the site of action? For safety, our hydrogel will be tested for both local and systemic stability, immunogenicity, and toxicity. For our clinical trials, we have spoken with Adam Cohen, Professor of clinical pharmacology and since 2018 CEO of the Centre for Human Drug Research (CHDR), and Wouter ten Voorde, research assistant at the CHDR. Since there are already various successful hydrogel producing companies in the Netherlands and the United States, we want to conduct in vivo testing in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies. For the clinical trials involving antimicrobial peptides, we have talked to Leonie de Best, Chief Business Officer from Madam Therapeutics.
Our phase 1 clinical trial will be a so-called challenge model, reducing risk and maximizing outcomes. Our product will be applied to approximately 50 healthy patients with small burns, after which the immunogenicity and the toxicity of our product can be determined. This method has already been shown to be successful in earlier clinical trials with burn wound healing products (personal communication with Wouter ten Voorde from CHDR). Phase 1 clinical trials should ensure that our suckerin-based hydrogel and antimicrobial peptides, reach the site of action and have no off-target effects. In addition, these trials should determine what the optimal dose of our hydrogel per burn wound would be. If this phase is successful, we can continue with our phase 2 clinical trials.
In phase 2 clinical trials, our product will be tested on hospital patients with non-inflicted burn wounds. This group will consist of a larger group of approximately 150 people. The efficacy and side effects of our product will be tested. If phase 2 clinical trials have succeeded, research will continue with phase 3 clinical trials. Here, the effectiveness of our hydrogel and, thereby, its value in clinical practice will be assessed with approximately 1000 individuals. Besides, our product will be compared with currently used treatments. Last but not least, phase 4 clinical trials will help us optimize the hydrogel doses. These tests are ongoing during active medical use of our product, evaluating the effectiveness and the safety of our product.
2B. Intellectual property
The material science and engineering group of Ali Miserez at the University of Singapore has already patented the production of suckerin proteins in microbes. To receive a license for our product, we will discuss with the research group to get a theoretical exclusive license of suckerin-based hydrogels for the treatment of burn injuries. This would enable us to patent our product.
The test phase of our product is in Europe and the United States. After 18 months, our team will go to WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization. At WIPO, we will choose the countries we want to sell our product in. Since we can only apply for a patent once, we have made a selection of countries where we want to sell our product. Besides patenting the use of our product for burn wound treatment, we will also include the use of suckerin for other implementations in our patent (a second patent is not needed). Examples of this would be the covering of chronic and diabetic wounds. For patenting our product, we have talked to Rob Mayfield, Director of Knowledge Partnering with Luris, the Knowledge Exchange Office of Leiden University and Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), and Frits Fallaux, Knowledge Broker with Luris, the Knowledge Exchange Office of Leiden University and LUMC.
2C. Business plan
The first milestone is to achieve profits in Europe and North-America. Thereafter, we will sell our product to the rest of the world. To achieve this, we will closely collaborate with various biotech companies within the Leiden Bioscience Park.
Exploitation strategy
As suggested by Vincent van der Wel, we have made a selection of countries worldwide where we want to sell our product, since we can only apply for a patent once. The plan is to first earn money in Europe and North-America (the United States and Canada). Because our hydrogel is a medical product, our product has to be approved by the FDA and EMA to sell our product in these countries. Due to the effect of reference pricing in Europe, our product will first be sold in Northern and Western Europe, followed by Southern European countries, and finally in Eastern European countries, such as Poland and Russia. Thereafter, we will sell our product to the rest of the world.
Collaborations with other companies
By delegating tasks to companies who have the resources for our research, we increase the chances of success of our plan and lower our initial costs. Because our company will begin as a small start-up, we will cooperate with other companies within the Leiden Bioscience Park, the largest life sciences cluster in the Netherlands and one of the most successful science parks in Europe. We want to work together with BaseClear for microbial strain characterization. For bioreactor work, we want to collaborate with the Institute of Biology in Leiden. When our company is well-established in a later stage of our company, we will purchase our own bioreactors. For clinical trials, we will also collaborate with pharmaceutical companies in the Leiden Bioscience Park and the CHDR. To optimize the production process and find the optimal conditions for bioreactor scale, we have already cooperated with EV Biotech to model these conditions. Results of this collaboration can be found on our model page.
Team
In our conversation with Eugen Kaprov, it became clear that an interdisciplinary cooperative team is as important for a successful biotech company as the product. Our team consists of eleven highly-talented students from various disciplines. As co-founders, we have backgrounds in medical biotechnology, biopharmaceutical sciences, and chemistry. Our company will be made up of different departments. The list below describes the most important functions of our company.
- In vitro clinical testing: This team tests the various antimicrobial peptides, their mechanisms of action and effectiveness on various microbial species. They will also test our hydrogel and tissue cultures.
- Business development: The business development team will work on the commercialization of our product, closely working with customers to identify needs. The team will also be responsible for enlarging our network with a wide range of industries.
- Process development: The process development team manages the manufacturing of our product for commercial scale. Moreover, the team focuses on downstream processing to produce and optimize our product.
- Organism engineering: The organism engineering team works on improving our E. coli strains to improve the production of suckerin and antimicrobial peptides.
Working culture
Eugen Kaprov emphasized that it is important for startups in synthetic biology to describe what working culture we would like to build in our venture. The key points of our company are openness (willingness to explore and to change), curiosity (inclination to learn), perspective (ability to see the big picture) and cooperation (willingness to collaborate).
Public involvement
We believe that a biotechnological company should establish a close relationship with its users. Therefore, we will establish educational programs to inform a large public about burns and how to prevent them. We will closely collaborate with various hospitals from all over the world. After we have established a global customer network, we want to enhance public health and safety in developing countries. This is especially the case for African and South-East Asian countries, where we want to help villages by, for example, installing fire alarms. This way, the commercialization of our product is mutualistic, in which both parties can benefit from our hydrogel.
3A. Approach investors and customers
It is vital to involve potential customers in the development of our product at an early stage. This will enable us to solve real issues of burn victims, thereby improving our Value Proposition (VP). We have already spoken with burn wound specialists from the LUMC and the Dutch Burn Centre in Beverwijk. We communicated what we learned, as described in the human practices page.
Potential customers
Since our product is suitable for third-degree burns and it makes use of antimicrobial peptides, it will not be sold directly to customers, such as burn patients and hospitals, but rather to insurance companies. Besides insurance companies, we have to convince doctors to use our product. In the city of Leiden, we have contacted the insurance company DSW, to see if they would be interested in buying our product. One advantage of our product is the use of a controlled-release system for antimicrobial peptides, which makes the risk of resistance negligible. This was emphasized by Leonie de Best, CBO at Madam Therapeutics.
Support and Partners
To get our product onto the market, we would need support from partners. Since Leiden University has several programs such as Luris to help university start-ups from scratch, our university can be helpful in the first stages. Besides, we already have close contact with the Science meets Business foundation. This organization is focused on bringing scientists and entrepreneurs together. By organizing and participating in numerous activities and presentations, our start-up can be linked with investors, such as larger companies.
Fundraising
For our current project, we have already raised a sufficient amount of funds via sponsors and crowdfunding to conduct early research. By giving pitches at conferences and meetings, having conversations by mail and telephone, and visiting various companies, such as EV Biotech and CHDR, our team has become part of an extensive network of academics and entrepreneurs within the biotechnological field. Additionally, our team has already won a grant of 2000 euros by the OVBSP (business association of the Leiden Bioscience Park), showing the potential of our novel hydrogel.
Investors
Obtaining the necessary funding for a business is a critical part of starting a company, yet often shrouded in mystery. Luckily we can give you a simple plan to get started. To get an overall idea of how to tackle the challenge of contacting investors, our team has spoken to Rob Mayfield, the director of Luris, the technology transfer office (TTO) of Leiden University. A technology transfer office (TTO) is a university-affiliated organization responsible for the commercialization of university research. TTOs help to license university intellectual property (IP) and provide advice and training on entrepreneurship. Most importantly, they invest in startups and have a network of other investors. Through Luris we will connect to different funds and investors to obtain funding. This funding generally takes one of two forms: equity fundraising or debt fundraising.
Equity fundraising
Equity financing means that a company creates new shares that will be sold to investors at a certain valuation. The downside of equity fundraising is that it reduces our control of the company by reducing our ownership percentage. The advantage of equity fundraising is that there is no debt to be paid off. Additionally, most startup investors take an active interest in the success of their investment using their considerable experience and network to help it.
Debt fundraising
Debt financing means that a company takes out a loan, which is obligated to be paid back with interest. With startups, this debt is often secured with the startups IP as collateral. The advantage of debt funding is that it does not dilute our ownership of the company. The disadvantage is that the debt must be paid back and if this is not possible the company goes bankrupt.
According to Rob Mayfield, all funding for early-stage startups, like our own, comes from competition. Many funds exist that offer either debt or equity financing, but only to a select few applicants. The same can be said for angel investors, who only invest in a few startups they come across. For this reason, it is crucial to have completed the steps from phase 2 as they will form the basis of our pitch.
We will apply for as many funding options as possible and, since we lack experience starting companies, we will try to get at least one experienced investor on board to support our endeavor. After our initial funding, we will fund our enterprise with equity financing, until we have a dependable source of income. As is typical for medical development companies, this will take a long time and will only come after the expensive medical trials. Using debt financing could bankrupt us before the trials are over.
3B. Incorporate and execute
With funding secured, we can start a company. This process will differ slightly from country to country but is broadly the same. First, we go to the Chamber of Commerce (Kamer van Koophandel, KvK) to register our startup. Then we go to a lawyer and have the necessary paperwork drawn up.
This step is relatively simple but it is crucial to get right, as mistakes in this process can be very costly in the long run. We must pay special attention to the shareholder's agreement, the document that outlines what happens if a shareholder passes away or wants to leave the company, because the law does not cover these things.
Once the articles of incorporation have been filed we are officially a company! Now the hard work of leading that company towards success begins. We will execute our plan outlined in section 2C. Not everything will go according to plan, so we will have to flexibly adapt to whatever comes up.
3C. Minimal viable product
Bringing a biotechnological device to the market is a long and complicated process. One of the largest challenges for startups is to assess whether organizations or individuals are willing to pay for the product [18]. The goal of a minimal viable product (MVP) is to test this as early as possible. An MVP has just enough characteristics to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for future product development [19]. It is important to keep on developing the MVP by implementing the feedback from the product’s initial users. This will result in a final, complete set of features which can be brought to the market on a large scale.
In our case, our minimal viable product is a novel suckerin-based hydrogel with a platform of antimicrobial peptides. Because we are in the early stages of our research, we have not been able to demonstrate our MVP yet. As our hydrogel is a medical product, it would take many years to demonstrate our minimal viable product. This includes pre-clinical trials and clinical trials. To further develop our product, we will keep close contact with burn patients, doctors from hospitals and burn centers, and insurance companies. These conversations can help us to further develop our minimal viable product. With our product, we will make a big step in preventing bacterial growth and providing a moist environment for wound healing.
References
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