Big News Is Accelerating This Small Cap Biotech
Q BioMed (OTCQB: QBIO) treats its first commercial patient with non-opioid alternative for the alleviation of cancer-related bone pain.
The widespread push to reduce the use of opioids means that clinicians are actively seeking effective alternatives. Opioid addiction is at crisis levels.
But addiction isn’t the only problem with opioids. For those with the most severe pain, there are few alternatives. Yet the side effects of opioids can be so debilitating that many patients prefer the pain.
Brain fog, nausea, vomiting, abdominal distention, and constipation can be excruciating for opioid users. What’s worse, prolonged use can lead to tolerance, which means the drug is no longer able to mask the pain.
For the hundreds of thousands around the world who suffer with cancer that has spread to the bone, Q BioMed (OTCQB: QBIO) Strontium Chloride offers an effective and welcome alternative to the horrors of opioids and may reduce or even eliminate the need for them in these patients.
Strontium Chloride is specifically designed to target pain caused by cancer that has spread to bone, which is a common occurrence in prostate, breast, and lung cancers, among others.
The active ingredient in Strontium 89 Chloride is a radioactive isotope of the chemical element strontium. When injected into the body strontium acts like calcium, being taken into bone at the sites of growing tumors and lesions.
Strontium89’s pivotal clinical trials revealed:
- More patients with ZERO pain
- More patients with ZERO need for analgesics
- Fewer new pain sites
Q BioMed (OTCQB: QBIO) owns both the generic and brand name of Strontium Chloride, Metastron, which it purchased from GE Healthcare in 2018, where it surprisingly never got the marketing resources necessary to grow sales, even though it’s development was hailed by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries as a “major advance” in pain control.[2]
Strontium Chloride is FDA-approved, and Metastron, the brand, is approved for sale in 22 countries. It is reimbursable by Medicare and most health plans. On November 20, 2019, the FDA approved Q BioMed’s U.S. based contract manufacturing facility and the Company expects a roll-out of Strontium 89 in early 2020.
Importantly, there is evidence to support this strategy. For example, a Phase II clinical trial published in the medical journal The Lancet, showed that cancer patients lived nine months longer when given Strontium Chloride as a combination therapy, significantly longer than the comparison cancer drug.[3]
The Company plans to undertake a Phase IV trial, sometimes called a post-marketing study, to confirm those results.
A positive result would allow Q BioMed (OTCQB: QBIO) to market this drug for both therapeutic and pain indications.
Medications for alleviating the pain occurring from cancer comprise more than 25% of the overall pain management therapeutics market, which is set to reach $83 billion by 2024.[4]
The market for bone cancer treatment is even larger than for cancer bone pain control. In 2018 that market reached $62.9 billion.
While there are treatments currently available, their effectiveness is often limited for long term pain management, they are associated with several undesirable side effects, and/or are constrained by factors like chemotherapy and the health condition of the patient.
It is estimated that over 10,000,000 people are living with painful skeletal metastatic cancer today. In addition, an expected 20-30% of breast and prostate cancer diagnoses will develop metastatic disease, as well as most other primary cancers.
Q BioMed intends to pursue label expansion to include therapy for bone metastasis from several primary cancers, possibly in combination with other therapies, such as external beam radiation therapy, of which there are 500,000 treatments a year in the US for bone pain.
Strontium Chloride is just one of the drugs in Q BioMed (OTCQB: QBIO) pipeline.
That isn’t the only news driving heightened interest in Q BioMed.
In a recent announcement, Q BioMed (OTCQB: QBIO) entered into a financial restructuring of approximately $7.8 Million. Substantial Positive shareholder equity was achieved when it restructured $3.8 Milllion of debt into equity and raised $4 Million in new capital which is a significant step towards a Nasdaq listing anticipated in the not-too-distant future.
This influx of new capital offers Q BioMed enough runway to bring its FDA-approved, non-opioid, Strontium89 Chloride drug into full commercialization, as well as advance other key pipeline assets.
Q BioMed (OTCQB: QBIO) follows an unconventional business model in the micro-cap pharma sector. The Company conducts its own research to identify innovative technologies that have been under-served, undervalued, or ignored, but which management believes have inherent potential. Although it does not invent those technologies, it attempts to create greater value through the use of its human capital and economic investments.
By carefully building a portfolio of assets in pre-clinical stage, Phase I trials, one commercial ready asset, and one that has just found entrance to the commercial market, the Company hopes to build value for its patients and shareholders for years to come.
