Team:Stockholm/Entrepreneurship
The rise of multidrug-resistant bacteria has resulted in an increased interest in phage therapy, which historically preceded antibiotic treatment against bacterial infections. To date, there have been no reports of serious adverse events caused by phages. They have been successfully used to cure human diseases in Eastern Europe for many decades. More recently, clinical trials and case reports for a variety of indications have shown promising results. However, major hurdles to the introduction of phage therapy in the Western world are the regulatory and legal frameworks.
PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
Antibiotic resistance is becoming a growing problem in society. It has been predicted that during the next 30 years, 10 million deaths will result from this problem.
Due to this, alternatives need to be developed. Phage therapy is one of the viable solutions to face this problem. It is based on the functioning of viruses that destroy bacteria, i.e. bacteriophages. Making use of their 2 alternative life cycles, useful pills can be developed for the treatment of gut infections.
In the rising field of personalized medicine and diagnostics this seems like an innovative option to combat gut infections in the following way. Every gut infection in every individual is different and requires a different cocktail of phages, the microbiota is unique in every human being, some might even call it our second fingerprint. A fecal sample from the patient should be obtained and analyzed to define the phages required and the mixture is then to be administered intravenously or orally. Nevertheless, because of the high mutation rate in bacteria and phages, a new mixture must be administered to each patient every single time and this may result resource consuming and unsustainable in the long-term.
To tackle this problem, we have developed a switch between the life cycles of these specialized viruses which will surprise bacteria and we believe it will come to be a sustainable way to make use of resources and face the problem of antibiotic resistance.
Therefore, we define our need as the development of a sustainable alternative to antibiotics that will not be rendered useless and resource consuming in the long-term and will be suitable to use in the near future.
STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
In order to assess the key players involved in our product market and their relevance according to their power and interest, a stakeholder analysis has been performed. This was built taking into account their roles and overall impact.
Table 1. Description of the roles and interests of our potential stakeholders.
It can be observed that many stakeholders should be taken into account. The main key players identified are phage companies, pharma companies, and the Swedish Health Agency. The first 2 listed being our main customers and the later having a main role in the approval of the product. Its high importance for people infected with multiresistant bacteria must also be taken into account, this meaning their identification as a main stakeholder even with their low power.
MARKET ANALYSIS
INTRODUCTION
Before launching our product (XYZ), we wanted to do thorough research on what our customers’ needs and demands are like. In order to meet them while minimizing the risks and maximizing the benefits of the novel phage therapy, market analysis led us to identify opportunities and reduce threats by making optimal use of our strengths and weaknesses. As a result, we have been able to define our business model and therefore key activities that can aid in executing the model.
MARKET SEGMENTATION
It is well known that during WW2, phage therapy was widely applied in the USSR. Nowadays, the three main countries with applied phage therapy are Georgia, Poland and Russia. Russia is one of the biggest immunobiological product manufacturers of phage products “Microgen”, which specializes in phage cocktails. The Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy in Poland is famous for carrying out phage therapy as part of experimental therapy as well as conducting research. Phage Therapy Centre TM in Georgia is another destination for people to get phage-based therapeutic treatment. https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/d/d3/T--Nottingham--legistlation-report.pdf.
We carried out a market segmentation in order to understand each segment’s behavior and identify which regions would offer the best market to launch our product. There are four types of segmentation: demographic, behavioral, psychographic and geographic [8]. In this case, we first performed a geographic segmentation. In developing nations, key contributors identified included: (1) Lack of surveillance of resistance development, (2) poor quality control of available antibiotics, (3) clinical misuse, and (4) ease of availability. In contrast, in developed countries, factors contributing to antibiotic resistance included: (1) poor hospital-level regulation and (2) overuse of antibiotics in food-producing animals. Finally, there is a significant lack of research on new antibiotics, which affects both developing and developed nations. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6380099/
We chose Sweden as the primary country to launch our product. But our focus would be to expand our sales in the two most affected countries in the world ie India and Russia.
Both countries are the most affected countries by MDR. India is the primary country that shows resistance by most pathogens and to most antibiotics. Whereas Russia is the hot spot where one of the biggest immunobiological product manufacturer of phage products “Microgen”, which specializes in phage cocktails is present to give us a big market share. It is also economically sound to provide us with the capital needed for our research. In these countries, the kind of industries that we aim to target are hospitals, phage therapy centres or companies, pharmacies, and research institutions.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Main competitors in the market
- Other alternatives to antibiotics
- Antibiotics???
- Personalized medicine?
- Already existing phage companies
- Vaccination
- Probiotics
- Antimicrobial peptides
- Innovative drugs
- mainly indirect competitors since it is such a novel product.
SWOT
Strengths
Weknesses
Oppotunities
Threats