LBT Innovations (ASX:LBT) developing clean-room technology for pharma companies

LBT Innovations Limited (ASX:LBT) CEO and Managing Director Brent Barnes discusses new opportunities for the company's automation technology.

Tim McGowen: We're talking today with Mr Brent Barnes, who is both the Managing Director and CEO of LBT Innovations (ASX:LBT). "LBT" is the ASX ticker, and it has market cap of around $25 million. The company is a groundbreaking designer of advanced technology solutions for the medical industry. Its core capabilities include AI image analysis, software engineering solutions that improve medical diagnostic workflows. Brent, thanks for your time today. Nice to meet you face to face.

Brent Barnes: Yeah, likewise, Tim.

Tim McGowen: Brent, you recently made an announcement in regards to your new product pipeline strategy using your APAS technology. Can you talk us through the product opportunity and also the market size?

Brent Barnes: Yeah. Sure. We're really kind of excited about this because we've been working on this somewhat in the background this calendar year, and I think it sets the scene for where we're going to take the company from a technology perspective. I think, importantly, the foundations of the strategy is all around reusing our existing platform. And so, specifically, we've spent over $30 million on the imaging station and the AI technology stack, which is what we use to develop our analysis modules. These are the apps that do all the interpretive software. So, fundamentally, we're reusing what we have to go into new markets and to expand existing markets. And so, part of the strategy was two opportunities that we saw. The first we call APAS Pharma. And so, as you would expect, the pharma application, it's looking at environmental monitoring, specifically for drug development. So, it turns out that when you manufacture drugs, they're done in a clean room and there's a quality control measure. And so, these agar plates or settle plates are put into the clean rooms and tested. And so, we're looking to automate that kind of workflow within that particular sector. The second one, as we've called it, APAS Micro, and this is kind of contemplating a smaller hardware platform. Again, reusing the existing imaging platform — there's backwards compatibility for all of the existing analysis modules we've got — and opens up the market for really all labs, both in the clinical space and the non-clinical space.

Tim McGowen: Now, Brent, you recently completed a proof of concept for your APAS technology with a multinational pharmaceutical company. Can you talk to us about what that entails and what's the next steps?

Brent Barnes: Yeah. So, this is that APAS pharma element I just kind of spoke about before. And this is the microbial quality control. So, think of a clean room, and this is perfect for APAS, by the way, because clean rooms are meant to be clean. And so, what that means for our technology is that most of the time there's nothing growing. But it's really, really important to be able to identify if something is growing. And so, that's fundamentally what our feasibility work did. We ran a number of samples through, looking at this new application of microbial quality control, and the results were extremely positive. And the great thing about our recent kind of commercial traction in the market is that we've had this group come to us, and it's been a really great initial partnership, where we've really de-risked the technology, and we'll look to move forward from here.

Tim McGowen: What does success look like in this market for LBT?

Brent Barnes: So, the feasibility kind of is done, and that's really great, but really the full development is where we want to get to. And I think the way that shareholders should think of that opportunity is looking to have a partnership. So, we're not looking to do this alone. We've had our key investment in the technology. In order to go through that verification validation and the full technology development, a partner that we've kind of not named but kind of indicated we have a relationship with would kind of help us through that journey. And so, that's really what success would look like over the future time period.

Tim McGowen: And that of course may take some time. What's the kind of product pipeline look like for LBT in the meantime?

Brent Barnes: Look, currently we're all focused on developing our urine modules, mainly targeted for the US and Europe. And so, we're getting a lot of traction in the US after we appointed Thermo Fisher about a year ago now as our exclusive distributor in that market. So, all of our energy's going there. And second to that is the antimicrobial resistance, the APAS AMR monitoring. And so, this is looking at automated disc diffusion technology for antimicrobial resistance. So we expect to have that product in the market towards the end of next year, and already had some really great positive results from our key opinion leader, who's presented it at a number of conferences this year.

Tim McGowen: Brent Barnes, nice to talk to you. Thanks for your time.

Brent Barnes: Thanks, Tim.

Source: Finance News Network